Enjoying Life OTR

#65 End Chronic Pain on the Road with Butch Phelps

• Cindy Tunstall and Butch Phelps • Episode 65

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 Butch Phelps Shares Life-Changing Solutions for OTR Drivers

Long hours behind the wheel don’t have to mean chronic pain and stiffness. Butch Phelps, a licensed neuromuscular massage therapist and former trucker, understands the toll driving takes on your body—and he’s here with simple, practical solutions that fit into your day.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

  • How to stop pain before it starts with quick stretches that can be done in minutes—even at a stoplight.
  • Why small adjustments in posture, grip, and footwear can make a big difference for your comfort.
  • The surprising link between emotions and muscle tension—and how to break free from the cycle of discomfort.

Butch’s advice isn’t about overhauling your routine or ditching your steel-toe boots. It’s about giving your body what it needs to feel better with practical, easy steps that anyone can do. From improving flexibility to easing muscle tension, these techniques can change how you feel every day on the road.

🎧 Don’t let pain hold you back. Tune in and take the first step toward feeling better, driving safer, and enjoying life on the road. Share this episode with a fellow driver who deserves relief, too!

Connect with Butch Phelps and The Muscle Repair Shop:
The Muscle Repair Shop Website
The Muscle Repair Shop Youtube Channel

Butch Phelps on Social Media:
Instagram- musclerepairshop
Facebook- @musclerepairshop
LinkedIn- @butchphelps

"Stretch n' Release: The Missing Piece to a More Pain-Free Life" book by Butch Phelps.  This book is a godsend for people who suffer from muscle aches and pains and want to live a more pain-free life. Whether you are a 14-year-old soccer player who wants to garner a college scholarship, a weekend warrior on the golf or tennis court, or a happy retiree puttering around in your garden—Stretch n' Release is for you! If you've been in pain and have seen doctors and specialists, if you've tried braces and injections, pills and potions, or you're facing surgery, try Butch Phelps's revolutionary Stretch n' Release Technique! Developed over a 20-year massage and muscle ther

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For questions or to be a guest, email our host, Cindy Tunstall at EnjoyingLifeOTR@gmail.com #HealthierTruckers #EnjoyingLifeOTR #TruckerWellness #OTRLife #WorkLifeBalance



Brian Wilson:

Hey Drivers, welcome back to Enjoying Life. Otr, this is Brian Wilson, your roadie and guide on the side. You know that stiffness that we all get after you first climb out of the truck. I know, after all the years I've been out here, mine seems to be getting worse and worse by the day the ache right between your shoulders after you sit for six or eight hours behind the wheel. I've had to make some emergency visits to my local chiropractor the last month or so. That's why I'm telling you today I'm really excited about our guest. We're talking with Butch Phelps from the Muscle Repair Shop and he's about to share some game-changing techniques that could finally help us get relief from those nagging aches and pains. I've always thought, yeah, you know, that might just be all part of the job, and it really is, believe me, but the great part about it is is now we have options. These are solutions that we can actually use while we're out on the road. If you struggle with chronic pain, you're really going to enjoy this show. Let's get into it.

Cindy Tunstall:

Welcome back to Enjoying Life OTR. My name is Cindy Tunstall and I'm your host, and we have a fantastic episode for you today. Can you even imagine waking up pain-free every morning and ready to do whatever you want, with no limitations at your body, your back, your arms, your hips, your shoulder? That chronic pain that you've been living with is not there. You just wake up and you're ready to start the day. Well, that sounds like a dream come true for me, and I can't wait for you to meet our guest today. His name is Butch Phelps from the Muscle Repair Shop, and he's going to talk to us about chronic pain. He's tapped into this technique that we can do even while we're over the road and relieve some of that chronic pain that we've been living with. Welcome to the show, butch.

Butch Phelps:

Thank you. Thank you, I'm glad you have me on your show today.

Cindy Tunstall:

Well, I'm very excited, even personally, to hear the techniques and things that you have to offer and I'm so grateful that you're willing to come on and you know help drivers, because a lot of us out there are kind of struggling with some chronic issues and we need some help. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of things, can you give our audience a little summary about what you are and maybe what you aren't?

Butch Phelps:

Absolutely, cindy. Not a problem at all. I am a licensed neuromuscular massage therapist. My focus is on neuromuscular as well as sports massage. I went into it initially and we'll get into that in a little bit but I went into it initially to do massage because it was easier on my body to do massage, I thought at the time. But then I branched in and I started studying muscles at a much deeper level. I went back to school and got a degree in aging sciences because I wanted to study, not only from the muscle standpoint, but from the emotional as well as the physical standpoint, how we age from 30 to death. So I got a degree in 2018 in aging sciences, and so what that did was it helped me understand that the aging process whether you're 30 years old going on 31 or you're 60 years old going on 62, the whole thing of the aging process is there's an emotional side and there's also a physical side. Well, of all the systems in the body, the muscles actually tie both of those in together, and we'll get deeper into that later in the show.

Butch Phelps:

What I'm not is I'm not a physician, so, yes, I'm not gonna be called dr Butch or anything like that.

Butch Phelps:

What I do have is the experience of not only learning about the muscles themselves, but actually the things that I've had to deal with too. I've also been, in my past, a truck driver. I drove a cement truck for not only just delivering concrete to job sites, but I also drove over-the-road trucks where we went and picked up the dry cement and brought it back to the plant. So I can certainly relate to sitting behind the wheel of a truck, the lifting, the loading of things, and so forth. Most people, when they think of truck drivers, they think of you just sitting behind the wheel of a truck, the lifting, the loading of things, and so forth. That must be what I think of truck drivers. I think of you just sitting behind a wheel. But there's so much more to the job than just that, and so when I look at jobs, I look at jobs based on what activities you're doing, and I try to design programs to help you combat that.

Cindy Tunstall:

Okay, butch, I was excited to have you on the show before. I knew that you used to be a truck driver, so now I'm like really excited you get it.

Butch Phelps:

Exactly, exactly. One of the first trucks I drove, of course, being a new kid and I was 21, 22 years old was a really old white concrete truck and it was like you start this thing up and the engine would fire off, the whole truck would just start rattling. There was no AC concrete truck and it was like you start this thing up and the engine would fire off, the whole truck would just start rattling. There was no ac. There was. I mean, this was primitive stuff, you know, and when I got to move up the trucks like kenworths and freight liners, it was like I thought I was in heaven at that point, luxury riding exactly exactly that's awesome.

Cindy Tunstall:

Well, tell me a little bit about your history, about getting into this type of work. Like I'm curious, like why did this even stir in you as an issue that you wanted to tackle? Like why did this become important to you?

Butch Phelps:

Yeah, that's an awesome question because I didn't get into this really until I was about 40 years old. I had been in corporate America, like I said, I'd done the truck driving in my 20s, I'd worked on construction sites in my early 20s and mid-20s and I got into corporate America and what happened was I got to almost like age 39, 40, and it was time to just move out of that. I was no longer being fulfilled by it and leading up to that, at age 36, I actually gained about 100 and some pounds of weight. I weighed like 315 pounds. I'm like 6'4". Some people say, well, as tall as you are, you didn't really look that big. When I look at pictures, I was really that big. I was fortunate to meet a physician who taught me how to lose the weight and also keep the weight off. I've been able to do that for 20 of over 20 years and I lost like 135 pounds. So as I was losing the weight, I started working out, really trying to get my body back into shape. So between 37 38, as I was losing the weight, I really started working out in the gym. But by the time I got to 40 I would have back pain so bad that when I'd crawl out of my car I would literally crawl out of my car on my hand and then turn around and pull myself up by the door handle because I just couldn't stand up straight. I'd go to meetings and just pray to God that they didn't have to sit down, because getting back up was about a pretty sight. And that's what led me to get into massage, because I thought, well, I could do the massage and it wasn't that taxing on my body.

Butch Phelps:

As I thought the funny thing was was when I got into the massage school and started doing the massage. It was a strange time because I felt like and I used to say to my wife I know things. I don't know how I know things, but I did. And I started getting mentors coming into my life Not that I was out looking for them, but they showed up in my life. Two were neurosurgeons it was a kinesiologist, a chiropractor and a pt and they started bringing me pieces of the puzzle of how the muscle system works. The one neurosurgeon, who was into dementia, started talking about the emotional side of muscles and that really clicked in because nobody else was talking about that. And when I started to see that there was an emotional side to those muscles. And how do you let it go?

Butch Phelps:

What I learned was that as an athlete in high school, all the things I was taught about stretching and even massage was not totally correct. There were some missing pieces there and I started putting these pieces together and then within a couple of years my pain had just totally evaporated. It was going down, down, down and within a couple of years it totally evaporated. So at age 64, almost 65 today I wake up with no pain where at age 40, I was a lot stiffer and a lot more filled with pain pain.

Butch Phelps:

So the netting should be over the last 20 years to really start studying the human body from a movement standpoint, to start seeing that the common aches and pains we have low back pain, mid back pain, neck and shoulder pain everybody goes to the back side to start treating it. But when you start really studying the movement of the body, what you understand is that the front side, the outside chest muscles, the muscles on the front of your hips, the front of your thighs actually causes the pain on the back side. And so just by working on the back side was very futile at that point.

Cindy Tunstall:

So, like, if I'm having back pain, my initial response, even right now, I'm putting my hands on my lower back, I want to massage and work out that spot where the pain is. So what are you proposing that would be different? Like just to use lower back pain as an example, because I think that's a common issue for drivers.

Butch Phelps:

That's the number one reason people go to doctors every day. So you're sitting behind the wheel of a truck. So as you're sitting there, the muscles on the front of your thighs and muscles on the front of your hips, your abdominal muscles, are more into a shortened state. Now your muscles aren't really shortening and lengthening, because that's when I think of stretching. I think I'm going to pull the muscles out like I'm pulling Taffy. But what happens is, as you're sitting there, especially for long periods of time, those muscles get tighter and into more of a shortened state. Shorten the state.

Butch Phelps:

Well, when you start to stand up, getting out of the truck, what happens is that, because they're in that tight state, the pelvis itself tilts slightly forward, which increases the compression in the lower part of your back. Now the pain will show up in the back. Now, the reason for that is that we all want to stand up straight. Nobody wants to walk out hunched over. So we tighten the muscles on the back side to literally pull against the muscles on the front side to get us to stand up straight. Well, what happens is that those muscles on the back side fatigue out and and tighten even more, and that compression then compresses all nerves in the back, compresses on the disc in your back, and that can lead to things like bulging discs, punched nerves and herniated discs.

Butch Phelps:

And what most people, including most professionals, don't see is that it began on the front side, and so learning how to like in the morning, when you first get up, or in the evening when you, before you go to bed I mean you can do these laying in your bed, laying on your side, and then stretching out the front of your quadriceps or the front of your thighs and we're getting down on one knee and stretching the front of your hips can take a lot of pressure off your back, and the fun part about that is that, in following the techniques that I've helped develop here, is that you can do that and don't need any equipment.

Butch Phelps:

So if you're sleeping in the cab of your truck, you can do it in your bed before you come out. If you're standing on the outside, you can get down on one knee next to your truck and stretch the front of your hips out, and that will take a lot of pressure off your back. Now, the reason I always suggest doing it first thing in the morning, last thing in the day, is that everything you think, feel and do will tighten your muscles. So even if you're sleeping and you have a dream, or rolling around in bed, you're still tightening your muscles even though you were sleeping. So it gives you a good start to the day. And then, before you go to bed at night, do that at night. It'll give you a good night's sleep to get ready for the next day.

Cindy Tunstall:

Yeah, I think we all can relate to that waking up and still feeling that stiffness. And we should be waking up feeling where, you know, our muscles have been resting overnight but we're still waking up with the same tension that we went to sleep with. So that's very interesting. Okay, so you talked about lower back pain. Let's just talk about some common issues. I mean, I'll just use my own body as an example.

Cindy Tunstall:

Okay, I carry a lot of stiffness in my shoulders and pain and I, you know you talked about the emotional side of muscles. I think we all have a place where we feel it when we're feeling tense and um, or we're feeling stressed. You know driving is stressful, even on our best days. You know just having to be hyper-focused for 11 hours on safety and watching out for everything, and you know planning our trip and all of that thing. So a lot of things going on around, a lot of decision fatigue, a lot of stress. Even on the best days, it's stressful. So I carry that stress in my shoulders and my neck and what's happening in my body when and I'm curious about when you said the emotional side of muscles cause, I immediately thought of stress and so I thought. I thought, yeah, I could see where there's a link there.

Butch Phelps:

Yeah well, I mean, you think about it from the truck driver's perspective, since most of your audience are truck drivers. It's like, you know, you're going down the road, you're driving a rig that weighs tons of pounds of weight and it's like at any moment somebody can pull out in front of you, someone can change that's in front you, and those trucks don't stop as quick as our cars that we drive every day, and it's like so you're under that pressure all the time. So when you think about again setting mind the wheel of the truck, your hands are on the steering wheel. So a couple of things are happening here. As you get your hands on the steering wheel and you're gripping the steering wheel, you're tightening the muscles in your forearms, but you're also tightening the muscles on the outside of your chest. Here there's two major muscles on the chest. There's a pec minor on the outside and a pec major on the inside. That pec minor on the outside is what allows you, as you set forward, to bring your arms forward to grip the steering wheel.

Butch Phelps:

So when you're driving and you're under stress especially if you're driving through a city and you're trying to maneuver around in the city with a tractor trailer, it can be very difficult because when you're trying to make a right turn, for instance, somebody's not standing too far close to the light, it's difficult, because that trailer just doesn't bend in the middle, to get around that corner. So you've even got little stresses like that and those stresses will cause you to over grip on the steering wheel, which will go right up into the shoulders. And then, as you're looking around, looking around, looking around that whole chest, and starts to round in and as it rounds in it shifts that weight of the head forward, out in front of your chest. So your head weighs about 10 to 12 pounds just by itself, but every inch your head shifts in front of your chest. So your head weighs about 10 to 12 pounds just by itself, but every inch your head shifts in front of your chest to your, the amount of pressure on the back side, going down into your mid back, increases by 10 pounds per inch. So you can literally be sitting there driving this truck, especially in a stressful situation, and you might have 40 pounds of pressure going down between your shoulder blades and into your neck.

Butch Phelps:

And so the thing is is we want to be able to open that chest back up, free those hands and forearms back up and then that'll start to ease back on what's happening on the back side, because the back side is trying to pull the shoulders back up straight again. When we stand up, nobody wants to stand up looking like a humped over old lady or old guy. But when you're trying to pull the shoulders back up straight Again when we stand up, nobody wants to stand up looking like a humped over old lady or old guy. But when you're trying to do that with the muscles on the back side to pull your shoulders back, remember the muscles on the front side are tight, so that's like somebody grabbing your hands from the front side and pulling you forward as you're trying to pull your shoulders back. It's a losing battle.

Butch Phelps:

Those type of stretches you can easily do, in fact the stretches with your hands and into your forearms, as well as the self-massage there, you can do that sitting at a stoplight. Many times when I go home at night, because I use my hands every day as I sit at a stoplight, I can literally massage and stretch my forearms as I'm sitting at the stoplight. That gripping of the steering wheel can lead to things like elbow tendinitis, either on the outside or inside what they call golfer's elbow or tennis elbow. The stretching of the outside of the chest you could actually do on the corner of your truck, standing on the side there, and all you have to do with that and I've got plenty of videos that show it, you can see them for free on youtube is that you can put the hand behind your head, elbow, on the corner of the truck and then gently rotate your body away from your arm to stretch out that, that outside chest muscle.

Butch Phelps:

But when I'm talking about the stretching, it's not like I'm trying to pull this thing and force this muscle to let go.

Butch Phelps:

The muscle's not fighting with me If I hold too long. And when I mention hold too long, if you hold longer than that five or six seconds, what happens is that the brain then contracts the muscle for fear that you're going to tear your own muscle. And as it contracts, all of a sudden, now you're doing strength training for your legs, using your arm as resistance. What I'm talking about is stretching. Stretching you're only going to hold it for five or six seconds because we're going to play with the brain here. As you start to stretch gently, you're going to breathe out nice and slow and feel the muscle releasing as you turn your body. But you're going to repeat it 10 times, and the reason for the 10 times is that each time you chart your body, you're letting your brain see that you didn't die from this movement, you didn't tear anything and so it's okay to let go. And once the brain knows it's okay, it'll just let go.

Cindy Tunstall:

So these things are all easy to do right in the trunk itself well, this is fascinating to me because I think when I would would think about stretching in the past. I just I watched this stretching video recently and I think she was very well informed. She kept saying keep moving, because that's how the muscles work. We keep moving, we don't just hold it here, we move through this stretch. And I didn't know what, what the reason for that is. But now that you've explained that to me, that makes a lot more sense. And then I think about myself stretching in the past, when I was trying to become more flexible. What I would do is like I would bend over and I'd push and I'd hold that and I would. I would just think that I need to keep pressing through that discomfort because that was going to increase my flexibility.

Butch Phelps:

So that's the wrong kind of thinking, I see well, it is because you see, like the bending over and touching your toes, for instance you see people do that all the time, everywhere, gyms, everywhere the thing to keep in mind is that your your calf muscles, and there's four of those there. So the calf muscles allows your body to rotate. So when you're lifting things, putting things in a truck and so forth, you're rotating with your calf muscles. And then in the hamstrings, which is the back of your thighs, you have three muscles there which also work in rotation. So when you go down and you're trying to just touch your toes, you're literally trying to stretch at least seven muscles at one time.

Butch Phelps:

And so the brain is in a position of saying what is it you want me to do here? And then the more pain you put in, the more you you force it, the longer you do it. The brain's like we got to get out of here. This is insane. You're right into fight or flight, and then the brain then contracts the muscles and if you're not careful, you'll wind up with a spasm or you'll wind up really sore.

Butch Phelps:

And so what I always teach all of my clients is I give them, like an eight foot yoga strap or an eight foot rope, something that's not elastic, and then I show them how to use that strap to actually rotate their feet to, to get into each of those muscles one at a time, so you can free yourself and not have that pain. Now what I'm talking about is not spending an hour every morning and every evening. I'm talking about you're going to spend probably 15 to 20 minutes max during that time and then, as you get better at it, where you don't have to look at the videos, many of the stretches you can do, like I said, with the arms sitting on a stoplight, and that's really what we want to get to the point that it becomes just a piece of your life throughout the day, not just one big stretch regimen all at one time. So it's a different mindset.

Cindy Tunstall:

Well, I really love that. That's very encouraging for me because I think, you know, I just, even when you're talking, I'm thinking I can't add a whole lot more time to my day already, you know. But the reality though but you know this is true the reality is that pain that we're living with and we're saying we don't have time to take 15 minutes to fix that, that pain. We don't have time to take 15 minutes to fix that, that pain. I mean, I think especially about back pain. You know, I watched my father and he was having some back pain and it affected every single minute of his day. You know, in varying degrees. You know, for whatever the activity was, and even if he wasn't doing the thing that caused pain, his body is still preparing to be hurt again and experience that pulling or twitching or whatever.

Cindy Tunstall:

So I have a great appreciation for, um, chronic pain, having watched my father go through that. But so, what kind of like? Where would somebody start? Like how would you know? Like, say, you know I talked about shoulder pain. You know, maybe some people have some issues with their, their knees, or that's another example. That's common um pain spot for people. Where, where would you suggest someone begin and um, what are the first steps? I guess?

Butch Phelps:

so. So the first thing I would do I mean, you get some people who come to our office but not everybody can do that because not everybody's in sarasota. So I always say to people the first thing I would suggest doing, go to my youtube channel, which is at the muscle repair shop, and on that channel there's more than 150 videos there that dives into specific areas of the body like the back, the knees, the hips, the feet, um, and you start to really learn the actual mindset shift that I'm talking about and you get to see the videos of me or one of my clients doing the stretches themselves, so that you get an idea of what I'm talking about. You can see it visually. Secondly, you can also sign up for a newsletter that I have that comes out every Tuesday, called the Tuesday Morning Tips. That also dives into specific things and on those videos you get three videos on that newsletter that are about the stretching that I talk about in the newsletter. So not only do you get to see it in print but you also get to see it in video, so you get a visual of what I want you to do and talk to. Then always, you're always free to, either on the youtube channel, or you want to email me or you want to call me at my office. You know, go to musclerepairshopcom and all my information is there. You're welcome to call. I mean, I'm always offering free 30-minute consultations and most of the time they last longer than that because people have real concerns. But you're right when you're talking about your dad.

Butch Phelps:

When you're dealing with that chronic pain, your brain then? So your brain recruits muscles for everything. You do something as simple as standing up. The brain recruits a set of muscles for balance and it recruits a set of muscles to take a step and walk or to bend over or what have you when you were dealing with chronic pain. On a daily basis, your brain will recruit different muscles to eliminate as much pain as it possibly can. Now, that doesn't mean that by shifting to different muscles you may create another problem someplace else that people say well, you know, I'm 45, I'm going downhill fast. You know, my hip was hurting. Now my knee is hurting, now my foot is hurting, you know. But what happened? But what happened there was that the brain shifted and, as as it shifted, it brought in new muscles which you wound up tightening those muscles as well.

Butch Phelps:

So many things like joint replacements, back surgeries and so forth. Most of those things started 10, 15, 20 years ahead of actually the pain showing up because of the way we walk and what we do not understanding how to unwind that. So the easiest thing to remember about muscles think of them like a rubber band. If I take a rubber band and I start twisting, twisting, twisting, the rubber band gets shorter and shorter and at some point the rubber band will just break. Well, the muscles will do the same thing. So what we're talking about here is a different mindset, that instead of trying to pull my muscles and make them longer like Taffy, I want to unwind the tension, and the brain is required to unwind that tension. Once you learn how to do these things, they're very easy to do. The key to it is understanding how to use your brain to unwind that, and that's a major part of what I teach people.

Cindy Tunstall:

And so, just so I'm clear on this, when I go to the YouTube channel, I will be able to search for basically what my symptoms are like lower back pain and I could just put that in there and I'll be able to get some choices of options to tackle that issue.

Butch Phelps:

That's exactly right. So if you go to my YouTube channel at the Muscle Repair Shop, you go on there, you'll go down and you'll see the list of videos. You can literally go through, and I've got several in each area, whether it's low back pain, whether it's self-massage, whether it's knee pain. Even about the shoes that you wear and most people don't they even doctors, when I talk to them are like blown away. The shoes that you wear can create chronic pain in your body, and so there's even videos that will talk about that. But the whole key to it is our lives are busy. We need something that we can do pretty much on the fly, and if we can do a few things along the way each day on the fly, we can stop and even reduce most of the chronic pain that we deal with every day. And I'm telling you to wake up, just like you were saying in the introduction. I mean I, literally, at almost 65 years old, I wake up every day with no pain, regardless of what I did yesterday.

Cindy Tunstall:

Okay, I have a couple things in that comment that I want to tackle there. I definitely want to talk about shoes, so don't let me forget. Definitely want to talk about shoes and boots, because some of that stuff is fixed and we can't work around that. But I also want to ask you how will I know? You said that sometimes there could be different issues that are affecting you know, like why my back hurts, for example. So how will I know when I'm I've landed on the stretch that's actually going to solve my issue? Like how long would I do it before I would start to feel like I'm on the right track? Like how would I know I've, like this is the stretch for me?

Butch Phelps:

perfect question. So a couple of things. One thing to always remember with muscles, wherever the pain is, the cause is usually the opposite side, because we balance front to back, side to side. If I have low back pain, chances are% sure that the pain is going to come from the front of my thighs or my inner thighs. Okay, that's the first thing Mid-back pain, usually coming from the outer chest. So the second thing is that when you figure that out, you think about that and then you start doing the stretches, let's say, for the front of your thighs, for your low back pain, for instance.

Butch Phelps:

You're going to know within a couple of days if you're on the right track, because what you'll start to notice is you'll go, I got up, I didn't feel that pain that I felt yesterday, um, and then you can start moving and then, all of a sudden, as you start doing this and this is a big thing, I think of a dog or cat they stretch every day, three, four times a day. Don't even think about that's what I'm talking about for us. And so when you do that and you start to work through that, what's going to happen is that you'll start to notice how much better you feel and how much less pain that you have now. Once the pain goes away, it doesn't mean that you stop, because if you stop and continue doing what you're doing, it's going to come back, because you're going to do the same thing you did before. So it's like right out of a circle. So what I'm saying is is that as you start to notice you have chronic back pain, for instance low back pain then that person wants to really stay focused every morning and every evening of stressing out their the front of their thighs or their inner thighs, and as they do that, then they can keep that back pain away, regardless of what they did yesterday, because what you feel today really comes from what you did yesterday, and so that's the thing to think about.

Butch Phelps:

So when you think of things like elbow tendonitis, you can knock on anywhere from an hour to a day. I mean, I've had people who've had it for six, seven, eight months and I work on them. Within one or two visits are like, oh my God, it was like about a second or third day it was gone. Things like plantar fasciitis you can knock that out easily in two to five days, and so there's common things that people suffer with from weeks to months, but as you understand how your body works, it's like you know if you're driving a truck and nobody teaches you how that truck works, you're probably going to wind up in an accident, right? So with your body if you don't understand how it works, you're going to wind up with a problem. Your body if you don't understand how it works, you're going to wind up with a problem.

Butch Phelps:

And the sad part is so many people are afraid number one to really discuss it, afraid that you won't need them anymore.

Butch Phelps:

And the other side of that coin is we just, frankly, don't teach people about the emotional side of muscles. I mean, I was working on my degree in 2018 in aging sciences. I actually was asked by two professors to write a paper, using peer-reviewed journals, on what I was talking about. There's literally no pain with peer-reviewed journals on the emotional side of muscles because you can't measure it. You can't measure emotion, and so if you're worried about things, you're stressed about things, your muscles would be just as tight as if you were looking at something like that. That, and so that's the way when you start to look at the body and to start understanding that my body balances right to left, front to back that if the muscle on the right side gets tight, it's going to shift my body to the right, which means the brain's going to contract the muscle on the left side to bring me back into balance. So the muscle on the left side hurts, the pain is there, but the cause came from the right side well.

Cindy Tunstall:

This is very encouraging. I'm like I'm just I'm excited to get on your um, your channel, and check out some of these videos and come up with some solutions that'll work for me. And I like to stretch. It feels good to stretch my body and you know, sitting in the same position all day, I like to. You know it feels good when I start doing some stretches. We do a daily movement challenge in our facebook group and I'm trying to just encourage just a little bit. More movement makes a big difference. So I'm excited to add some of these your techniques into my rotation and I'm looking forward to seeing some good results. I'm very encouraged by that how quickly you could see results, because this is not like talking, like you have to do this for a year Exactly because this is not like talking like you have to do this for a year, exactly exactly.

Butch Phelps:

And that's the thing, because so many times people think, when they have like low back pain, if I wear a back brace, that it's going to help reduce that risk. But the truth of the matter is, even if you lift correctly, using your legs, the muscles on your thighs will get tight without stretching them. We were designed to move and stretch every single day. I mean, without the movement, the body becomes stagnant and you'll just die and it's like so. We were designed to do that every day. So even if you lift correctly, you're still using the muscles on the front of your thighs, they still will get tight and they'll have back pain. That's where people get a lot of frustration from that. I get guys who work in warehouses and stuff all the time who come to see me and they're like you know, I'm lifting the way I was told to lift. I'm wearing the back brace the way I was told to wear it. Why is my back still hurting? And it's just not understanding how we work.

Cindy Tunstall:

Well, that's very exciting. I'm so thankful that you've been able to share some of these things with me, and maybe even for me personally, I'm looking forward to having some relief from the things that I've just you know, and I do think that I do tell myself, well, you're getting older, you know, and I'm like, well, I, you know, it doesn't have to be that way. Okay, let's talk about shoes and feet, because, um, you know, I I personally wear doc martin boots, which I really love. A lot of drivers are required to wear steel toad boots. So some, some drivers, an option to change the footwear is not going to be on the table, or they're just not going to do it because that's their preference, the way that they want to work and the way they feel comfortable driving. So, talk to me about how our footwear is affecting us and if we're not going to change out the current boot we're wearing, what are some other solutions? Are there other solutions?

Butch Phelps:

There are that. So let's begin first with the anatomy of the foot. So each foot has 29 muscles and 33 joints in it with 26 bones, so there's a lot of movement there. The calf muscles like I said earlier, there's four of those. You have three shin muscles that control the movement of the ankle and the shoe itself.

Butch Phelps:

Now, like you said, for some people in the jobs that they have, they have to wear a certain type of shoes steel-toed shoes, boots and so forth and for some people they just feel comfortable doing that, which is fine. The thing is is that, as a human, if we can walk barefoot when it's possible, that's the best thing to do. Now, I know for a lot of you, if you've been to podiatrists or whatever they may say to you never walk on a hard surface barefoot and blah, blah, blah. But the truth of the matter is, if that the muscles in your feet are soft and you're stretching out your calf, you can walk on any surface barefoot and not have a problem. I've got people in their 90s doing that, so it's a possibility to do that.

Butch Phelps:

Here's the thing thing. When you look at your foot and we're going to put it in terms of a truck as you look at your foot, you know a truck has shocks, so that as you hit these little bumps you don't feel every single bump on it and your seat as you're going down the road, the arch of your foot, is your shock absorber. So when you step down to the ground, the arch of the foot is supposed to be able to expand and absorb the impact to the ground. Now where we've made a huge mistake for a lot of shoes is that we've made people believe that they need arch support for their arches. The problem is that the arch support itself prevents the arch from actually flexing and absorbing that pressure. That can lead to knee pain, because the knee then will be required to absorb that pressure and it was never designed to do that.

Cindy Tunstall:

I was just going to ask you what the symptoms would be if our shoe might be a problem. We would feel it where In the knee you said. Where else would we notice a problem?

Butch Phelps:

Yes, so if your shoes are a problem and your ankles are not bending well enough, it could be your knees, your hips, your low back and even your neck, because what happens is that if the sole of the shoe is too thick and the ankle cannot bend properly, what you will see with people is they will lead with their nose. In other words, your nose is out in front of their chest as they're walking. In other words, your nose is out in front of their chest as they're walking. Well, that head being out there like I said earlier, every inch is out front it increases the pressure on the backside by 10 pounds. That pressure is felt from the neck all the way down to your heel, and so, by not being able to bend the foot the way it's supposed to bend the ankle the way it's supposed to, if you watch people walk, they'll always lead with the nose. It's like they're walking into a headwind. So it starts down at the feet and into the calves and from that point on, every area of the body going all the way up can start to be affected by that. Um, wearing thicker sole shoes. In some cases it's a safety feature because of stepping on bales or whatever that you could step on there. I, I get it. You can't get away from that. I understand that. But just be aware that wearing the thicker sole shoes prevents the joints in the foot itself from moving. The other part of it is the wider toe box. When we step down, as the arch expands, the toes widen for balance. If the toe box of the shoe is too narrow, then what happens is it pushes the toes widen for balance. If the toe box of the shoe is too narrow, then what happens is it pushes the toes closer together and it will affect your balance, especially as you become older.

Butch Phelps:

So the things you can do when you have shoes that aren't necessarily the best for your feet but you're required to wear them anyway, is in the evening, once you take your shoes off, take your socks off, take your hand and you can put your leg up on your knee and you can take your thumbs and you want to just press in not rub, but press in one spot at a time into the arch of the foot. You want that arch of the foot to be as soft as the palm of your hands so that it has the ability to flex as you walk each day and absorb that impact. On top of that, on the top of the foot. Take your fingers and you're working from the toes back up to your ankles. You're going to work in between the bones that go out to your toes. There's muscles all in between there. Like I said, there's 29 muscles in each foot, so there's a lot of muscles there. But you want that top part of your foot to be soft. Now, many times when somebody first does that, it almost has a burning feeling to it. So don't dig that deep. When you first get started with it, work your way into it. But you want to work in between each of the toes, starting at the toes coming back up to the ankle. As you free that up now, the shoe has less and less effect.

Butch Phelps:

And then, lastly, the thing that I would do and I've got on my videos for doing the calf stretches use like an eight foot yoga strap or an eight foot rope, anything that's not elastic.

Butch Phelps:

It could be a strap.

Butch Phelps:

You could take a strap from the truck and actually use it, but you're going to set where your your hip and back is against the wall or against the hard back chair with your leg, one leg, straight out in front of you and you place that strap around the ball of your foot and then, as you pull that, that toe, the toes back towards you.

Butch Phelps:

You're going to breathe out, but it's not about how far I can pull my foot, because again, we're not working with a bicep curl here. What we're doing is is we're getting the muscles in the back of your cap to release and let go. You're going to feel it more behind the knee and again, as you breathe out and do that, you're going to repeat that 10 times and of course, then you'll rotate the foot to the outside so you get the inside calf muscle, then rotate the foot to the inside to get the outside calf muscle, and again you can see that on my channel. I've got an all over the place where you can see that one. Um, that was probably the most important stretch for you and being on the planet, because it changes everything. Everything starts in your feet and it changes everything well, I love this.

Cindy Tunstall:

This is fascinating. I'm like I'm excited to give myself a foot massage here in just a minute. Okay, so for the driver yeah, it's so good, right, I love that. Um, okay, I'm. Yeah, I definitely need to do that because I'm wearing some really thick sole boots. Okay, so the problem is the flexibility of the sole and too much arch support at times. So, like people putting in those stiff arch supports, that's the wrong solution. Okay, so make sure I'm taking away. Okay, what if? For the person that has a little bit more flexibility in what they could purchase for their shoes Like, what would be an ideal footwear for a driver that you know doesn't have to? You know, maybe we're on a long trip and we don't deliver onto the job site for four days, and you know. So when we're driving, we could wear a tennis shoe or whatever. What is a good, what's ideal if we could pick?

Butch Phelps:

Okay. So I'm going to tell you the ideal shoe, and it will probably make every podiatrist in the country cringe out there, but I'm going to do it anyway, all right. So when you buy a shoe, like I said earlier, it needs a wider toe box. So it's not going to be dainty and pretty, it's going to be a wider toe box. But you want a shoe that you can literally bend in half and stick in your pocket. The sole is going to be really thin.

Butch Phelps:

Sometimes they'll call them barefoot shoes or minimalist shoes or something of that nature but you, you want to make sure that that shoe bends, and the reason that you want that shoe to bend at the arch area in half is that when you again, when you walk, you want the arch to have the ability to flex, to absorb any impact. You also want your toes to be able to spread and you want your ankles to be able to bend the sticker of the sole. The problem there is that the ankle can't bend as well. So not only are you tightening the muscles in your feet, but you're tightening the muscles in your calf. So when you're on a long trip like that, where you don't have to wear the steel toe shoes or you don't have to wear the boots. That would be what I would recommend. The funny thing is is they weigh virtually nothing, so when you first, when you first put them on, you're going to feel like that you got nothing on your feet.

Cindy Tunstall:

It's going to feel weird for a while, but give yourself about two or three weeks and you'll get acclimated to that okay, I, while you're talking, I just keep thinking and I know driver, you're probably thinking this as well, but you know drivers that wear crocs. You know those little rubber shoes, that's that sounds like what you're describing, right?

Butch Phelps:

a little bit. But now here's the thing. So you sometimes they'll use crotch like a slip-on, because it's just easy to slip on and and for some guys they just can't bend over and tie their shoe, but you need a strap around that heel. Number one Crocs are pretty close to it. The sole again is a little bit thicker, and so what happens is it starts to affect balance to some degree. I mean, keep in mind, on the bottom of each foot you have 272 nerve endings that are sending messages to the brain constantly about the change in the gradation of the ground. So if the sole is too thick you start to block some of that message into the brain and the chance of falling becomes much greater. So I like to be able, when I'm walking, to be able to feel the ground. In fact that's all I wear. Of course I'm not driving a truck today, so I don't have any restrictions, but that's really all I wear. Is these barefoot style shoes? Yeah.

Cindy Tunstall:

Okay. So, and drivers, I'm not advocating for going out and buying Crocs. I personally don't like them. So just don't roast me. Okay, we're on the same team, okay, you don't like?

Butch Phelps:

the orange ones.

Cindy Tunstall:

Come on, I know I'm like, oh, I like some weird shoes, but I just can't bring myself to do it and they're so ugly.

Butch Phelps:

And then that big toe box which you described as beneficial looks so terrible to me, so I'm like okay it does?

Cindy Tunstall:

I do care about style, so I'm trying to think what could I do differently Anyway? So I have to think about that. Well, I might just incorporate some foot massaging and doing those things and keep my cute shoes and doing those things, and keep my cute shoes Really and truly.

Butch Phelps:

I mean if you do the foot massage at least three to four times a week. I try to do mine every night and so a lot of things that I talk about is I do to me all the time. That's what keeps me pain-free. But the thing is, if you do that foot massage on a regular time, you'll be surprised how much better it will be.

Butch Phelps:

Now, the narrow toe box on shoes if you're not careful especially like cowboy boots or and for women, high heels and so forth they can lead to things like bunions and mortons and aromas.

Butch Phelps:

Because if you watch somebody with a pointy or toe shoe, they can't push off the end of the shoe, they have to turn their foot slightly outward. So what happens there is they turn their foot slightly outward, they're going to push on the outside of the big toe, which is going to start to form a bunion on their foot. The other thing is that the rotating muscles in the hip. Then, even if they're barefoot, those rotating muscles get locked in at a state where the foot is pointing outward. And everybody used to put braces on the bottom of children's legs and they realized they didn't really change anything, and the reason for that is that what causes that foot to turn outward are the rotation muscles in the hips, and I've got some stuff for that as well. But you asked me to join your Facebook group as well, so I'll be on anybody who wants to look me up and ask questions there.

Cindy Tunstall:

I'll be checking it out myself and help you any way I can yeah, that would be great, and now you're free to share your content in there, so I know that that will be. I know there are just some simple things that, across the board, every driver could benefit from from this one, just because the common things that we do with our bodies, so I appreciate that so much. Well, is there anything else that we haven't covered that you think will be beneficial for our drivers? Anything that I haven't known enough about to ask you, or any final thoughts?

Butch Phelps:

Yeah, yeah, I mean. The final thing I would say is when you're stretching, it should not be work. When I look at my stretching at 15 to 20 minutes each morning and each evening, I look at it as brain breaks. I mean, we have enough stress in our lives every day getting things done, being places on time and so forth that that tightens our muscles so much, and what we can take those little brain breaks like that. What happens is that now we can reset our mind, reset our bodies, and we can be more productive and do more things and actually feel better in the meantime. And that's a real takeaway from all this. This is not about pulling muscles and making it longer. This is about how to not only help your body be free so you can lubricate your joints and lubricate your disc, but you can also free your mind of some of the day-to-day stress and you give those brain breaks with that.

Cindy Tunstall:

That's really the most important part of the whole thing you know and I was thinking about this too going to bed without pain and waking without pain, it's like our bodies are going to be resting better at night. So because we're not, you know, even when you toss over, you know, I know when I, when I tweaked my back in the past, you know and you roll over in the middle of your sleep and you're like ah, you know. So it's like we're going to wake up feeling more rested and that's going to help everything. So I'm very excited about what you've shared with our audience.

Butch Phelps:

I'm glad. I'm glad. Yeah, like I said, you can get up with me any way you can and I'm always open to ask answering questions or whatever and because my goal here is to help as many people as I can to get out of pain, I mean, that's really the goal here well, thank you, butch, and you didn't mention this, but I saw on your website that you will even do a video conference session, so that's a good option for a driver, say, that lives on the other side of the nation.

Cindy Tunstall:

And they say, okay, I've been trying this but it's not working. Can I just do a conference call with you, a video Zoom or something, and you could kind of do a session that way? Could you tell us just a little bit about that?

Butch Phelps:

I can to do a session that way. Could you tell us just a little bit about that? I can't. I can't actually what happened?

Butch Phelps:

I actually had one yesterday with a young man in amsterdam and we did it on zoom, and so what he, what he does there in his house, is he sets up his camera and he's showing me the exercises that he's doing and I'm, and I've been coaching him off and on, but I can see what he's doing and I can help him make that stretch better and work better for him, and so it works really well. In fact, when I first started doing it, I was like I'm not sure that's going to work really well, and a friend of mine said no, no, let's, let's do that, you know. And we started working with a couple of people. In fact, when I first began, I said I'm just going to do and it did work and it changed people. I've worked with people in Seattle, vancouver, all over the world, and so don't fret, if you're not in Sarasota, contact me. We can set up a Zoom call and we can see what's going on and I can help you a lot that way too.

Cindy Tunstall:

Well, butch, this is very exciting because I know a lot of drivers have been just like me just going, got to live with this as a part of the work you know and this is you know I'm going to have this pain because this is the work that I do. So I'm very encouraged by this and I'm thankful for your time, and I'm looking forward to learning more about your techniques and getting rid of some of this pain I've been living with.

Butch Phelps:

Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. Life's too short to live with pain every day.

Cindy Tunstall:

Well, Rich, tell us one more time the name of your YouTube channel and your website, so in case a driver wants to check that out.

Butch Phelps:

Gotcha. So go first to the YouTube channel. You see a lot of videos there. It's at the Muscle Repair Shop and my website is MuscleRepairShopcom. And I also have a book that was recently published on Amazon called Stretch and Release. It's just the N is not an N, it's an N with an apostrophe, but Stretch and Release, and it's now available online as well, so you can read about it, you can see it, you can also ask questions. So anything I do to help you, let me know.

Cindy Tunstall:

Well, thanks so much. I sure appreciate you have a great day. Thank you, you too. Bye-bye.

Brian Wilson:

Wow, what an eye-opening conversation. Let's recap some of the key points we learned today. First of all, the pain isn't necessarily where the problem is. If your back hurts, the issue might be in the front of your body. Those long stretching sessions aren't necessary. We can get results with just 15 to 20 minutes twice a day. That's awesome news. Relief could come much faster than we ever thought possible. We may feel like we don't have time to do 10 to 15 minutes of stretching each day, but the truth is that pain is exhausting and it's worth the time and believe me, guys, you do have the time. We'll feel better during the day and sleep better at night.

Brian Wilson:

I'm definitely heading over to Butch's YouTube channel at the Muscle Repair Shop to check out those stretching videos. You can find all his contact information in our show notes, and he'll also be available to answer questions on our Enjoying Life OTR Facebook group. Speaking of which, if you found value in today's episode, please share it with your fellow drivers. There are so many of us out there struggling with chronic pain, and your share could be the thing that brings someone else the relief they've been looking for. Don't forget to join our Facebook community, where we keep these important conversations going. Join us on the 1st and the 15th of each month for more great episodes as we discuss the issues that matter to drivers. And keep enjoying life. Otr. This is Brian Wilson. I'm going to get out of here for now, so stay safe and, most of all, just remember keep on trucking.

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We'll see you next time, through it all, through it all, through it all, through your heart's resilience and view, sharing our victory shining through Enjoying life all to your. This is for you. Victory's won. We're pushing through, finding strength in all we do On our own. We're standing tall, enjoying life, otr. Through it all, through it all, yeah, through it all, holding our hearts resilience in view. Set our victory shining through Enjoying life, otr. This is for you.

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