Episode #239: The Problem You Don't Feel... Until It's Too Late

In this episode of The Berman Method Podcast, Dr. Jake and Jenni Berman explain why lasting progress requires objective assessment, not guesswork. Through personal experiences, they show how small movement inefficiencies can go unnoticed until they lead to pain, injury, or poor performance, making regular evaluations essential for long-term health.

The hosts discuss the importance of measuring progress with the right tools, whether through movement assessments, body composition, nutrition tracking, or performance testing. They emphasize that simply repeating the same workouts or relying on how you feel is not enough to achieve meaningful results.

Watch the full video podcast here:
https://youtu.be/HxN5dco547o

Check Us Out On Social Media - 

Facebook: @bermanhealthclub , @physicaltherapynaples, @Berman Golf 

Instagram: @bermanhealthclub, @bermanphysicaltherapy , @Berman Golf 

Youtube: Berman Golf, Berman Physical Therapy

TikTok: Bermangolf, bermanhealthclub

Email us - 

drberman@bermanpt.com 

jenni@bermanwellness.com 

Check out our website - 

www.bermanpt.com 

www.bermanhealthclub.com

www.bermangolf.com

Transcript

Treat Problems Not Symptoms

Speaker 2 0:09

Here we go, baby! We are rolling with the Berman Method Podcast, treating problems and not symptoms. We are David going against Goliath, Goliath being the corporate medical system, big pharmaceutical companies, the health insurance companies, they do not have your best interests in mind. They will choose profits over patient outcomes every single time. And that's what we're about. Dr. Jake Berman here with my beautiful co-host, Jenni Berman, physician assistant. And we're ready to roll. Oh yeah. Yeah. Game time.

Speaker 0:40

Back on Mondays.

Speaker 2 0:41

Yeah, back on Mondays.

Coffee Rules And Hydration Truths

Speaker 2 0:43

And you're here after burning it at both ends, no sleep, straight off the red eye. Look how beautiful she still is. She just got off the red eye two hours ago and says that she's gonna roll straight into the podcast recording room. She said, Jake, just get it ready. Make sure that it's ready to go. Make sure that I got her coffee. So roll in coffee and ready to podcast.

Speaker 1:09

Well, I had protein before coffee. I had water and protein before coffee.

Speaker 2 1:14

Yeah.

Speaker 1:14

You shouldn't have coffee first thing.

Speaker 2 1:16

No. No, you shouldn't.

Speaker 1:18

And it's just an Americano with a splash of oat milk. Right?

Speaker 2 1:24

Yeah.

Speaker 1:25

So it's not a latte. Did you know lattes have a lot of calories in them?

Speaker 2 1:30

I did not know that.

Speaker 1:31

Lattes have a lot of calories because it's a lot of milk. And even if you're doing oat milk as opposed to like skim milk, it's still calories and sugar. Skim milk has 13 grams of sugar per cup. Did you know that? 13 grams of sugar per cup in skim milk. It's fat-free. But it has 13 grams of sugar. So lattes can be full of sugar and calories if you're not careful. But an Americano is just espresso in water with a splash of milk. So it's much better.

Speaker 2 2:09

Caffeine straight to the veins, baby.

Speaker 2:11

Yeah. So, anyways, you should have water, then protein, then coffee.

Speaker 2 2:16

Okay.

Speaker 2:17

So I follow the rules, but I might need an IV of that today.

Speaker 2 2:21

An IV of caffeine.

Speaker 2:25

Did you know for every cup of caffeine you should have a cup of water?

Speaker 2 2:28

Yeah, because it count cancels itself out.

Speaker 2:31

It's dehydrating.

Speaker 2 2:32

Yeah, caffeine's a diuretic.

Speaker 2:34

It is.

Speaker 2 2:35

Yeah. Which makes it dehydrating. So everybody that thinks that you're drinking your coffee and drinking your tea, doesn't that count as water intake? No.

Speaker 2:44

Yeah, it doesn't. It's kind of like alcohol. A water for every alcohol you drink. A water for every coffee.

Speaker 2 2:52

Yeah.

Speaker 2:53

You gotta stay hydrated. Jeez we dehydration will decrease your metabolism by 30%.

Speaker 2 2:58

You were on a roll full of backstabs. Oh my gosh. You should take the red eye more often.

Speaker 1 3:06

You were like, I got the topic. Don't worry, just look pretty.

Speaker 2 3:11

Here we are ramping. You're like on in zombie mode. Do you even know what you're saying right now?

Speaker 1 3:18

30 minutes from now, I'm gonna be like, what did I say? Was it any good?

Speaker 2 3:23

Jeez Louise, the topic that I had was all about me, so all you had to do was sit there and look pretty, and I'm like, wow, go ahead and steal the show.

Speaker 1 3:32

Okay. Well, it's just because you gave me caffeine, so now I'm like now you're ready to go. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Speaker 2 3:39

Geez Louise. She goes, she goes home and she goes, Alright, I got enough time to jump on the bike and take a quick nap.

Speaker 3:48

I didn't say a nap. I said jump on the bike, take a shower, because I needed a shower, and get to work. And you said, are you sure you should not take are you sure you shouldn't just take a nap instead of getting on the bike?

Speaker 2 4:05

And you said, no, I'm sure.

Speaker 4:07

Yeah. I felt so much better.

Speaker 2 4:09

Oh my gosh, no, you didn't. Anyways, let's get into the topic today.

The Power Of Being Assessed

Speaker 2 4:15

The topic is you don't know how wrong you're doing something until you have somebody watch you.

Squat Test Reveals A Dead Glute

Speaker 2 4:30

For example, we're gonna use me in this particular example where we have a new provider training on our PT side who's unofficially hired. She's going through our Berman method certification process right now to become a certified Berman method movement coach. So we're going through this training process and we're getting to the end right now. And I asked her last week to assess me from the lower quarter and assess me from the upper quarter and see if she could find something. So we went through a squat and I had her do an objective test on me that I do with everybody. I say get into a mini squat and then I pull on your elbows, see if you're bouncy or not, and that just tells me which muscles are or not working. And when she did the test of me, I was bouncy, which means that my big power muscles were not working. And I'm going, oh wow, I did not expect that. I thought that I was gonna be solid because here we are training for the high rocks again, coming up in six short weeks. And I'm going, I'm I'm locked in, I feel great, I have no pain at all, I feel really, really good in the lower quarter. Nope, not true. My right glute was not firing the way that it should be firing in a squatty, lungy position. Go figure. The same thing that I've been preaching for 15 years, I am now a victim of. So she does her intervention to get me to where I can fire it again. And lo and behold, when I get into the squat and the lunge position post treatment, I can feel my right glute firing like crazy. I'm going, oh my gosh, this thing's on fire. I'm like, damn it. So then I had to focus on that ever since then. Every time I do a squat or lunge, I'm really emphasizing that right glute firing. But the important thing is that we caught it early.

Speaker 6:25

Right, because you didn't have any pain yet, or uh like I don't know, I could say discrepancy, but it's probably not the word. You didn't have any inefficiencies that you could see or feel yet. Yeah, nothing they would have come.

Speaker 2 6:42

There were no signs. Now, here's what could have happened is I could have kept training, and as we get closer to the race, training ramps up. Like I'm trying training harder and harder and harder to prepare for this race. Something could have broke right before the race, and I would have been SOL. It's like, okay, now I can't compete, or if I do compete, it's gonna be crap. So that could have happened, or it could have happened during the race. Or it could have happened after the race. Okay, great, I went got it through got through the race, but I crippled myself doing it, and it takes me three months to recover. Right. Like these are all real things that could have happened had we not done this.

Speaker 7:22

Done some objective measures. Yeah, just having someone else look at you, assess you, make sure you're being efficient on both sides, you're symmetrical on both sides when you're doing these particular exercises or firing of muscles.

Speaker 1 7:38

Exactly.

Shoes And Travel Change Everything

Speaker 7:39

Do you think that getting new shoes affected you? You got new shoes for high rocks that you've been training in. Do you think that's one of the reasons that you've you became slightly inefficient and didn't realize it?

Speaker 2 7:54

Sure. It's a possibility. I've been trying to be very diligent though with only wearing those shoes when I'm doing my long runs. So I'm still wearing my normal no zero drop shoes when I'm training. But it's very possible. I don't know. I have no idea.

Speaker 8:14

Well, but that's just part of it. Like when people get I mean, we went through this with a friend who got new running shoes and immediately got a blister on one foot and then was having a groin issue on the other and trying to figure out where her inefficiencies came from with running with these new shoes. But it's like a true thing that if you get new shoes, new walking shoes, you go on vacation, you're wearing different shoes, it really could play a role. So you need somebody to assess you with these changes that your body's going through.

Speaker 2 8:46

Yes.

Speaker 8:46

It happened to me walking this weekend. We walked a ton this weekend, and yesterday I was having just really randomly, very sharp pain in my glute, like super sharp, right in my glute. I could pinpoint it like at my glute mean walking, and I like felt like I was like flailing my leg because it was really painful. Ficked my pelv fixed my pelvis, and it like totally went away. But I walked for at least 20 minutes with this like stabbing pain in my glute, and I'm like, what the heck is happening right now? Of course, we walked a ton, I was wearing flip-flops most of the time. One night I was wearing platforms. Is that what they're called? Oh no. Wedges, I guess. Wedges. But then I was still working out. Anyway, you gotta fix your pelvis too. But having somebody assess when you're going through these changes or on vacations, traveling.

Speaker 2 9:42

Yeah, it's just life. Yeah. As you're going through life, it's just a regular checkup. Yeah.

The Monthly Checkup Standard

Speaker 2 9:48

That's why you should be doing it at least every 30 days. Every 30 days you should have somebody else look at you, see how you're moving, just to make sure that it's perfect. Because if it's not 100% perfect, then it's some percent not perfect. So we use this analogy a lot. I've never in my entire career, in my entire career, have I ever had any of my clients come back after not seeing me for 30 days and perform their home exercise program or whatever their homework was, perform it 100% correct.

Speaker 10:20

Might be 99%, but that's not good enough.

Speaker 2 10:23

I don't know that I've ever had anybody do it 99% correct.

Speaker 10:26

Well, not me.

Speaker 2 10:27

No, you've never even been close. Oh, that's a no the closest you've ever been is 90.

Speaker 1 10:33

Okay, that's an A.

Speaker 10:36

It's winning.

Speaker 2 10:37

That's winning? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 10:39

It's an A. Yeah. But it's not perfect. And that's where problems come.

Speaker 2 10:42

Yeah, because it's 10% incorrect. So your 90% correct is 10% incorrect. And that's where the snowball starts to occur. So then next thing you know, 12 months, 18 months down the road, something flares up again, and it's like, what the hell? I'm just getting old. No, you're not. You just need to get regularly checked.

Speaker 1 11:01

Right.

Speaker 2 11:01

Like it's that simple. You gotta be checked on a regular basis. Yeah?

Speaker 11:08

Yes. At least once a month.

Speaker 2 11:11

At least once a month. So, same thing went for my shoulder.

Shoulder Pain And The Missing Fix

Speaker 2 11:16

I actually did have something going on with my left shoulder. I've been battling it for probably three months now.

Speaker 11:22

Probably since the last high rocks.

Speaker 2 11:24

No, I think it was a little bit after the last high rocks. But it's about around the same time frame. It's been going on for at least two months. Where I've got this left shoulder thing that's like a neck thing, and you can't fix yourself. So, anyways, I'm like, I'm gonna use this opportunity for this trainee to look at my left shoulder. So she's digging around, working on my neck, and I'm going, oh my gosh, there's all sorts of crap going on over here. We get done with soft tissue. Now it's time to re-educate the muscles and try to fix the reason why it happened in the first place. So we're getting into these posture positions, and my left shoulder was freaking out. Like it was, it did not like it at all. It was like 10 times harder on my left shoulder than it was on my right shoulder. I'm going, wow, no wonder this thing's flaring up. It can't even do this basic elementary activation thing 100% correct without freaking out. How in the world am I gonna throw a 20-pound medicine ball over my head? How am I gonna push around any weight, sled pushes, or anything when I can't even do this basic elementary thing? So no wonder the left shoulder hurts. So didn't know that either. But again, having somebody else objectively look at it gives me clarity on what is the one thing that you should be focusing on to fix a thing versus I was throwing everything at it. I was chucking crap at the wall left and right to see if I could fix my left shoulder, and none of it was working. I didn't do anything except or the only thing that I didn't do was the thing that I needed to do to fix it. I thought, now to be fair to myself, I thought I was doing the thing that I needed to do to fix it, but it wasn't good enough.

Speaker 13:17

Why wasn't it good enough?

Speaker 2 13:18

It wasn't perfect. It was like 98% correct.

Speaker 13:24

You had to be better than me, didn't you? 98%.

Speaker 2 13:28

It just wasn't 100% correct. And once Sarah put me in the right position, which was 100% correct, I'm going, oh my gosh, that is so much harder, and I feel the muscles working like crazy.

Speaker 13:43

But you just couldn't see it yourself.

Speaker 2 13:45

I couldn't see it myself.

Speaker 13:46

You can't see your back.

Speaker 2 13:47

You can't see it.

Speaker 13:48

Oh.

Speaker 2 13:49

I keep looking back there and I can't see it.

Speaker 13:52

What about taking videos of yourself?

Speaker 2 13:55

Oh, you can do it. I've done it, you've done it. We all try to do it, but we see what we want to see. You're we're all just too subjective to be objective.

Speaker 14:04

Okay. So we really are. We need a Berman method specialist to assess you.

Speaker 2 14:09

You need one.

Speaker 14:10

And then we gotta keep a regular cadence to fixing the problem and making sure it's a hundred percent perfect for at least a month. Yes. Before then you can go longer times between longer intervals between assessments.

Speaker 2 14:28

Yes.

Speaker 14:29

But the longest interval of an assessment will be

Why We Prefer Five Days Weekly

Speaker 14:32

one month.

Speaker 2 14:32

That's the way it should be.

Speaker 14:34

But initially it should be like five days a week checking and making sure it's perfect.

Speaker 2 14:38

When you're in the acute stage, it needs to be five days a week. So that was the biggest change that I made when I went off on my own was traditional PT has you come in in two to three days a week for four to six weeks. It's like, okay, that's a lot of room for error between sessions, versus what I say is, okay, I need you in here five days a week so that we know you're doing your homework 100% correct. Because if you're not doing it 100% correct, then you're doing it some percent incorrect, and we're just not going to get there fast enough.

Speaker 1 15:11

Right.

Speaker 2 15:12

Said differently, if we took 30 visits and spaced them out over two visits a week, we're talking 15 weeks to get through 30 sessions. But if we do 30 visits at five days a week, we're done in six weeks. So would you rather be done in six weeks or fifteen weeks?

Speaker 1 15:34

Right.

Speaker 2 15:35

Right? Like we fixed the problem in six weeks. It didn't take us fifteen weeks to even get close. No, we fixed it. We hit the bullseye in six.

Speaker 15:44

Which yeah, yeah. Oh, it's gonna well we have a problem sometimes with people even doing their homework. So if we're seeing them two days a week and they're not doing their homework at all, that's the other problem. Versus if you're in here five days a week, we know you're doing your homework because you're doing it for an hour every day with us watching you and doing it perfectly.

Speaker 2 16:05

Perfectly. Yes.

Objective Data For Training And Nutrition

Speaker 16:07

It's just like on the wellness side, like we have to have objective measurements. We need to see your food tracking, we need to measure body composition. We can't just look at a number on the scale. We need to take measurements of our waist circumference and our chest and our biceps and our quads to see the changes that are happening objectively and not just what the number on the scale says. Or you say you're eating on track, but then you're forgetting to track your lattes, which have 13 grams of sugar per latte and 240 calories that are playing into our macros here. So we need objective data, and on the PT side, somebody measuring you and testing you and actually utilizing your trademarked bourman method. Method method trademarked method techniques for testing and assessing and fixing is gonna be the most valuable.

Speaker 2 17:12

Yes. Agreed. If you want to improve it, you've got to measure it. You cannot improve something that's not measured.

Speaker 1 17:21

Right.

Speaker 2 17:22

It's not possible. It's just sheer chance if it does get better. But if you really want to improve something, you gotta measure it. And this episode is really for those that want more than what they're currently

Stop Paying For A Workout Friend

Speaker 2 17:36

doing. If you're happy with going to the gym two or three times a week and doing the same routine over and over again.

Speaker 17:43

Even with the trainer, but you're doing the same exact routine over and over and over again and make and having no change, no progression.

Speaker 2 17:52

That was something that we saw a lot when we used to work out over at the wellness.

Speaker 17:57

I still see it with clients now. They'll be like, Yeah, I've been with the same trainer for 12 years, and we do the same thing every week.

Speaker 2 18:03

And I'm like, What's what are you doing?

Speaker 18:05

What are you paying for? You could do that on your own without the trainer. I mean, they're holding you accountable to showing up.

Speaker 2 18:10

So that's you're paying for a friend.

Speaker 18:12

That's good.

Speaker 2 18:13

You're paying for a friend. I got this with a golfer right now. I'm working with a golfer virtually, and we have to agree to a strict homework protocol because if I'm not in the room with you, it's it's really hard to help you virtually. Not impossible. I've got it figured out. We just have to be we have to agree what the homework is. And he divulged to me the other day, he goes, you know, I went to this golf pro for six years before working with you, and I ended up telling him, I'm like, you know, I'm just paying you to be my friend, right? So I told him the other day, I'm like, listen, you're not paying me to be your friend, you're paying me to get your results, and we've got to do homework. If we don't do homework, like, what are we doing here? Like we've got to reach the objective goal and we've got to measure it. So I start getting homework videos now, and I'm like, all right, now we've got a chance.

Speaker 19:05

Right, right. The yeah, the videos is the your objective way of seeing what he's doing. The food tracking for me is the objective way, or taking pictures of your food is the objective way. The measurements that we're using, not the number on the scale, but the actual measurements of your body composition or measurements of you know specific body parts is the data, and that's how we make the objective changes. And then for you, actually seeing the provider virtually or in person, so virtually you guys can see things that a lot of trainers can see because of the Berman method techniques, and then in person you put your hands on, actually do these objective tests. So just having that evaluation is key to not be too subjective on yourself.

The Right Tool And Final Challenge

Speaker 2 19:57

Yeah, it's key to making progress. It's that simple. It's key to making progress. If you want to get better, you've got to measure it, and you got to make sure you're measuring it with the right tool. The right tool is rarely ever your personal trainer. No disrespect to personal trainers. They just are not looking at the things that I'm looking at. They're looking at does it look good? Yeah, it looks good to the training world, but it isn't efficient. Right. Like I'm looking at the minute details on symmetry and activation. Yeah, it looks great, symmetrical, but you're not activating that right side, so it's irrelevant. It's just completely different. It's apples and bananas. Not even oranges, not even oranges. We're going to bananas.

Speaker 20:43

Okay, okay. Got it.

Speaker 2 20:45

Good.

Speaker 20:46

All right. Don't be too subjective to be objective.

Speaker 2 20:49

Yes, go to bermanboomers.com to see if you're on track to arriving at 80 feeling 40. And if you're already in your 80s, kick your 90s ass. And make sure you share this episode with somebody that you know that's been using the same personal trainer for however many years and does the same routine over and over again. You got to get better. You got to push yourself. If you're not progressing, you're regressing.

Speaker 21:19

Cap now.