Athletic Performance Podcast
The Athletic Performance Podcast: we discuss all things performance-related, with a focus on pushing the boundaries of speed, power, and strength.
Athletic Performance Podcast
012 - James Fryer on Movement Models, Soft Tissue Tools & Recovery for Athletes
James Fryer is a Neuromuscular Therapist, Licensed Massage Therapist, and movement specialist with a background in Strength and Conditioning.
Here's a quick overview of our show:
✅ Movement Models such as PRI and DNS
✅ Soft tissue interventions for athletes
✅ Stress management and meditation
✅ Key recovery conepts for athletes to rejuvenate
✅ ..and much, much more
For more information visit Jakes Instagram at @jamesfryernmt or his website.
Please follow us on instagram @athleticperformancepod for more content and solutions to this podcast.
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Welcome to this episode of the Athletic Performance Podcast. Today, my guest is James Fryer, NMT. James is a certified neuromuscular therapist, a licensed massage therapist in Ohio, and has training in postural restoration, DNS, neurokinetic therapy. And USA weightlifting one. So to say James has a diverse and very intellectual background is to dismiss how much knowledge he really brings to the table. And so today we talk about a topic that I feel is very, uh, flies under the radar because. I'm fond of saying to my athletes, if you're going to train hard, you need to recover harder. And it's the recovery piece that interferes with a lot of athletes. So we have a number of athletes who are willing to train hard. They're willing to put in a lot of effort and down the line, if they don't do work like managing their soft tissue therapy, managing their gut and digestive health, managing their ability to control stress, they really start to just. overflow the cup with the amount of stress that that pops in. And so I think that the topics we touch on today may not be the most exciting because they're not, we're not directly talking about power development, but these topics are so extremely valuable and they're going to add so much in terms of what you need to do to actually enhance your overall performance. And so I really invite you guys to go on this journey because we dive deep into a lot of topics. We talk about, you know, different, um, Movement models, the P. R. I. The D. N. S. Even some of the stuff that Bill Hartman has brought to the forefront. We talk about how to create useful interventions with soft tissue tools, the foam roller, the lacrosse ball. A lot of these things have fallen out of favor because the Way that we used to describe them didn't really capture all of the benefits that these things can really offer. And so going back in and actually getting some hands on from a massage therapist or learning how to manipulate these tools to actually create a change in tension in the tissue. is super significant for helping our athletes move better. And it's something that we've prioritized a great deal since I recorded this podcast almost two months ago now. And we've seen better results for our athletes. And so if you're an athlete or you're a weekend warrior, or even if you're a coach, who's just kind of falling out of favor with some of these things that don't really feel like they have a place in the scope of your workout. My encouragement to you is there's a ton of value in this. James is a Tremendous, um, practitioner and inclination when it comes to implementing these things. And I think you guys are going to love this podcast. Thanks for tuning in. And as always, please hop on, give us a five star review. If we're not five stars, message me, let me know. We want to make sure that you guys are really getting a lot out of this podcast. I've loved doing it so far. We're only in about our 12th episode, but it's been fantastic. The guests have been amazing and I'd love to hear from you guys. So if you get a chance, please, Five stars, five stars only. And, uh, without further ado, here's James Fryer.
Ryan Patrick:James, we've known each other for a few years. I think we met. We, I think we had well, I mean, we've met a couple of times, but I know it's been a couple of years now we had lunch with John and Kyle Wall, who's already been on the podcast, but now you're living in Cincinnati. Which is fantastic for us because we always need somebody outside of a trainer who can put their hands on people. And that really is an area of your expertise. So I want to start very simply because I think there is a lot of debate around, you know, manual therapy around different movement models. And so from your perspective, just start with why, what is the value of having a clinician who understands. The movement models, like what is the value of having your hands actually go on somebody and help move them in a way and maybe they're not able to achieve on their own. Yeah. I think,
James Fryer:I think you hit the nail on the head in the sense that there's so many different pieces to try to put together as a coach, like which things should I be doing? What's best for my clients and how, how do we, you know, run into that? But. Really, I think the limitations of a personal trainer end up being where, you know, a client that's in front of you is attempting to move in a more efficient way or with less pain or, you know, move with more ease. A lot of times it's kind of where I end up kind of helping people and that, and that problem ends up lying. The amount of tension or compensation they need to create to do the motion that you're asking them to do, you know, it could be as simple as a golf swing where their golf swing feels stressed, like they have to crank themselves into those positions that the coach wants them to be in, you know, the coach is there to guide them into the best possible swing that's going to help them play the best. But if they can't achieve those positions, then it's always going to feel forced. It's always going to feel like tension in their body when they're trying to do these things. And again, that can be for any sport. And my goal as a manual therapist is to take those clients. and help their body move in a way with less effort typically, but also that they can't essentially achieve on their own. So if they're trying to move into shoulder overhead positions and they can't access that, it might be a lot more feasible for me to take their scapula, move it up their ribcage a little bit while assisting their arm in that position. So if their arm is too heavy, For their strength and motor control. If somebody assists them a lot of times they can get into those positions properly and then they, they feel it for the first time and they're like, Oh, like that's what my coach is asking me to do. And I, I feel it now and I understand it now. So a lot of times. Especially athletes that go by feel a lot and they only know what they're feeling at that moment and they don't know how to make those changes and they can copy movements really well. So the best movers can make any shape you ask them to typically, but they might have to do it in a very inefficient way. Because they're just trying to do what you said, and they don't know how to get there. So my, my biggest goal is to help people get there with the least amount of effort possible, and then they start to feel what that feeling is. It's kind of like the light at the end of the tunnel for them. It's wow that's what my shoulder should feel like when I put it over my head. And now we know what that should feel like. And then we take them through exercises where they get that same sensation and they know they're getting it right because they know the feeling in their body. Otherwise, they don't ever know if they're getting it. They're just like, yeah, I'm doing what you're saying, but it just doesn't feel right. Or my shoulder still hurts. Or it feels like way too much effort. So, you know, manual therapy is the first step. Step in movement, if somebody can't achieve it on their own, and then once they get that, then all of a sudden we can, you know, build from that space and hand them back to the coach or, you know, whatever makes sense there.
Ryan Patrick:So, there are plenty of modalities available to us, right? We have lacrosse balls, foam rollers there, you name it. And there was a time where I think, as a trainer, we were just like, well, maybe these, These things don't work the way that we think they're working And this is an area i've come back on for for different reasons Yeah, my perspective on it now is maybe the explanations we were using related to salt tissue work were Inferior, I think we have better explanations now for maybe what's happening and my perspective is a lot different There are a million iterations of exercises that I can use But there are still times Where I fall short of getting somebody into the position I want, and I can't physically use that in, I guess, you know, an easy way to think about this is why is something like putting hands on or having something physically manipulate their body different than say, oh, I'm just going to stretch my shoulder. And then it's gonna, you know, then I can reach overhead and it's fine.
James Fryer:I think that using, again, I agree though, a hundred percent is that I've come back to using more foam rollers or using a ball. Usually the, I, I still use softer tools now than I would have before. Like I would use a hard foam roller and get spikes on foam rollers and dig in there. Right. Yeah. Or like the hard lacrosse ball. So now I tend to move towards softer foam rollers. I tend to move towards practice lacrosse balls or kids practice lacrosse balls because they're actually squishy. So they don't break out all the windows in the building when they're playing inside in the winter. So I use these little bit softer tools because most people can't allow for that motion to happen if they're having pain still. So if the foam roller hurts, they're squeezing and bracing. Or if the lacrosse ball hurts their foot, because most people's feet are very sensitive initially, at least, is that they they can't let go of foot tension still when we're massaging it. And that's kind of where you'll see a lot of massage therapists just rail people. And you know, they think that they're making more progress that way, but people need to be able to let go of some of these tension patterns they're holding. And I think that's where I can teach them as well as a manual therapist to Oh, okay, I need you to let go of tension as we're moving your arm or moving your rib cage, where. They're still having that tendency with their laying on a foam roller to maybe hold some of that protective tension going on there. So I think I can kind of calibrate how much tension they're holding and they might not even realize it. Like a lot of times I have to tell people like, okay, let go of tension again. They're like, I did. I'm like, no, you're not like, and they're like, Oh, like there is another level of holding on that they don't realize is happening. So I think that's a big piece of it is like. feeling what letting go really feels like. And then just regulating pressure more and more for them and, you know, just allowing them to breathe and get comfortable, change their nervous system in those positions. I think it's another tool that I love to add in to help people feel that change in their rib cage or their scapula cause you can actually feel those differences by. going through breathing cycles while I'm doing the hands on tissue work versus just gritting and holding their breath because it hurts so bad. I think those are some of the main things. I think there is some placebo to the value people place in somebody putting their hands on them and working on them, versus you tell them to do it to themselves with a foam roller. I, I think it's unrealistic to assume there's not some placebo effect involved there. But I'll take that any day of the week if they're allowing me to work on them, they're seeing progress that they weren't able to capture on their own before. So, you know, I'm not, you know, negligent in that sense. Like it's just part of the process. If people value that and they think it's going to work, they're going to, you know, you know, move towards that. And I think that's part of seeing a light that we talked about is like people have to have a little bit of confidence. And the thing that they're doing is going to make them better. Whether that's fitness, like if somebody hates fitness and they think it's stupid and it's not going to help them, like there's a certain level of that's creates a little bit of a barrier for them to work and focus the way they need to on exercises and things like that.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, there's a few things I want to unpack there. One of the areas that you touched on that I think can be hard for trainers and performance coaches to get away from is this idea of tension, because people are supposed to be here to exercise, to work out, to put effort in, and there's always a miscalibration of what is an appropriate load. So the strategy becomes, I'm going to hold my breath. I'm going to create a high threshold strategy where I'm utilizing a ton of superficial musculature, which is going to restrict my ability to move. And then I'm going through this exercise wondering while damn, this is not getting better. And I feel like you're alluding to this fact that people need to learn, like when you're moving, you have to allow for space and range of motion to happen. Where is if you're tight all the time, that's, that's not allowing for this freedom of movement that we're looking for. And you and I both followed Bill for a number of years. Bill talks about, you know, ER space and movement is It's more open. It's fluid. It's you're not hiring through a whole golf swing, right? There's, you know, if I'm setting up in a golf swing, I have this initial pulse of contraction and then there's muscular relaxation. And at the end of my backswing, I'm going to have a toss, you know, an instantaneous contraction and then another release until contact and. I feel like that's an area where a lot of coaches can find themselves in trouble, or maybe even people who are trying to do these interventions. They're doing them with way too much tension and restriction and immobility, and it's just working against their efforts.
James Fryer:Yeah. I think like you alluded to the high threshold strategy, like athletes. naturally have a high threshold strategy. That is how they got good at what they were doing. That's how they move fast. That's how they're stronger, right? They are inherently high threshold and you can't be so good at high threshold. And so piss poor at low threshold and expect to live your life and feel comfortable. You can, you can play sports and feel wonderful, but when they want to go home and lay on the couch for a little bit, or, you know, I've had people like, I can't have sex with my partner, because everything is uncomfortable, it hurts, I can't relax, and like, All these high threshold strategies that we're implementing in them to be, to make them faster, to make them stronger, you know, and perform better. Nobody's teaching them low threshold strategies so they can actually enjoy and live their life and not be miserable. We don't want them to be, like, less sharp, you know, in that aspect. We just need to know how to turn it down. You know, it's more like a volume switch that you need to be able to ramp up and ramp down. And if they can't do that, they tend to just be miserable outside of their performance stuff. They could practice five hours a day and they feel great. And then they go home and they're miserable. So I think there's this huge lack of education around changing those strategies to low threshold recovery in that sense, so that they can actually regenerate, repair, heal, And feel good outside of their sport. Like they just get so good at their sport and that high threshold strategy that they've pretty much lost all of their low threshold strategies. And that's where they get hurt picking up a pencil off the floor. Those people don't get hurt lifting weights usually. So I think learning, it's a learned skill and you can look at other modalities like meditation or mindfulness or gratitude or any and all of these things that inherently relax us, slow us down. For some people, it's like faith, you know, and there's all different ways to look at it. But for me, I think the easiest way to connect with all, all phases of humans. Is focusing on our breath and, you know, mindfulness within ourselves because we don't have to have a religion or we don't have to have a meditation practice to focus on our breath and kind of become one with ourselves and learn to have that low threshold strategy and be less tense all the time.
Ryan Patrick:When I heard my back a few years ago, I did drive up to see Bill and we got into this kind of back and forth. I thought it was so funny at the time, but you know, I'm a failed athlete. So I'm using athlete very, very generously, but this was kind of at the peak of my power thing. I was as strong as I'd ever been, but I had probably likely herniated a disc in my back. I was having some sciatic pain. It was going down into the hip really bad to the point where I couldn't walk. So it was doing a number of things and the ranges of motion are coming back and the pain's not reduced, but the conversation was, okay, you know, you need to learn to chill. You need to learn to. Lesson of this tension. Go. You're always in Batman mode. Ready to go.
James Fryer:I'm
Ryan Patrick:like, okay, cool. So what do I do? Bill? He's well, that's just it. You don't need to do anything. I'm like, no, you don't understand. What do I do? Bill? He's well, just don't do. I'm like, no, what do I do? What? Just tell me what to do. Tell me what to do. So it ended up being. Where I would do some of these restorative mobility type of exercise as well as listening to the calm app and meditating. And it took it took a couple of weeks, but it made it really got me over the hump. And I hadn't had an issue since of learning how to have almost this yen. And this Yang, but the other side of it that I was thinking about, as you were talking everything is still there. high threshold for these athletes, they're going more, they're adding hitting lessons, they're adding this lesson, even recovery, like the water needs to be colder. The pressure in the Norma tech booths needs to be higher. Everything is like more, more, more. Yeah. And what you're communicating is if you want to move and you want to have some, some variability and just tension throughout your body that you have to be intentional about pursuing this as a practice.
James Fryer:Yeah, I really do think that that could be a, you know, very, very useful skill for all humans to, to know. Like literally just again, like it becomes very, you know, esoteric and oh my gosh, like I'm not a hippie, dippy, meditator person like I am. You know, like people have this I can't meditate. I won't meditate. And you can look at athletes or you can look at I. My career before being a immunotherapist, I was a strength conditioning coach, but most of the people I worked with were people with a lot of stress. So, lawyers, doctors, surgeons, you know, real type A's in that area, and some of them are failed athletes, some of them are not, some of them are just highly successful people, but they're the same. You know, like, when we're talking people that are, you know, Running huge companies like it's no different than being an athlete to them. Everything's go, go, go. Like they're tense. They're working, they're, they're focused. And they get so much change with just slowing down and breathing. There's some people, I don't even have to touch them in the first 20 minutes of a session. I'm like, we're going to lay here and breathe for 20 minutes and see what happens just for fun. And the pain that they walked in with. 20 minutes later is completely gone and I didn't touch them once. And they see that and they're like, ah, shit. You know, I really do need to chill out, don't I? Like they can put that together for themselves. So a lot of times on my first session, depending on the person, I won't touch'em. Especially like an the first day I considered an assessment anyways. I just won't touch them. I'll just let them breathe. And we're going to reassess what happens in 20 minutes of slowing down. And if that literally gives them full shoulder IR back and they started with 10 degrees, I'm like, I don't think you need me to touch you like, you know, like I'll still do it. Like I'm here, but I don't think that's the thing that's going to make you feel different longterm. Like you need to take this on yourself. And. Learn a breathwork practice or like you said use a calm app like there's a bazillion tools for that stuff Now people just need to find what's going to fit into their life And I can't I can't make it fit into their life for them. They have to find out where that fits so yeah, so, you know type a type people luckily too like my you know, I was at this personal training studio in columbus and it was called the human form and the owners mostly the the one is very into meditation, Buddhism, mindfulness. So a large part of the 10 years I was there, I was learning from him of like how important it is to change your nervous system and reflect on yourself and, and do all these things and how impactful that was for the clients that they worked with, you know, outside of the strength training. Like it was a strength training gym, but it really taught people how to regulate going hard and then going soft and just being able to, to move that, whether that's inhale, exhale, external, external rotation, internal rotation, yin, yang it's just creating those balances for people that they forgot they need or have never experienced in themselves.
Ryan Patrick:A lot of what you're talking about is countercultural and for the people that do buy it, and they tend to be on the extreme, the hippie, the yogis. Whatever you want to call it. How do you start to present this to people who are type a I'll, I'll use myself as part of this. I still use the calm app. I I've been using it for a while. I've tried a couple of different meditation apps. My mind runs, runs like crazy when I'm doing it. And so it becomes a practice, not a finding the Zen state, but of just refocusing, losing my focus and just refocusing. If I can just refocus. For five breaths, 10 breaths, and it's really good. That's good. That the whole practice is to write because I can in day to day life. I, I say, I mean, you, me, Santa Claus, Harry Potter, doesn't matter drift toward scrolling on social media drift towards things that I'm stressed about. So what's you already talked a little bit about using this? Let's just sit here and breathe for a minute. But how else are you drawing these people in to finding more of a balance without? It being overkill and maybe losing the training effect or the thing that beat them successful at what they're doing. So I'm just kind of athletes in mind, like what's, what's your process for this?
James Fryer:I think for most people, it's just meeting them where they're at and how, how open they are to this, you know? I think really for most people it's getting their mind out of what something should or shouldn't be. With meditation or mindfulness, like everybody has their preconceived ideas of what that means and what they need to do to do that. Like I need to sit cross legged, you know, in an empty room and not think of anything for hours. Kind of what you said, though, is that most people's Misconception is that they, their mind should be empty and they should never have something enter their mind or they're failing. So I think a lot of athletes, biggest thing is that they're going to fail at something because a lot of them don't like they're really successful in most of those aspects. And it's again, type a, like they're afraid of failure. They're afraid of. What it feels like to slow down and maybe they're running for something like, you know, maybe you start to get into the therapy end of things almost like the, you know, are you doing this for another reason, you know, outside of cause we're understanding that. Slowing down is actually going to help you perform and feel better if we get just the right dosage. And that's kind of what's important, right? It's like it's a dosage, you know, for some people. And if you can accomplish five minutes initially, it takes a lot less slowing down than it does ramping up to make a difference. As you were kind of alluding to if I can get five or 10 breaths that's great. Like we don't need hours of slowing down after going hard for eight hours a day. If most people just clock in 10 minutes, you know, like they feel substantially different. So I think it's understanding the dosage of that stuff, understanding that there's not a perfect way to do it. Like you don't need to be. Empty minded the whole time. Like you're going to think of things, you'd notice them and then come back to focusing on your breath. And I think the biggest thing that helps a lot of people is just the counting. So if they're actually counting each second of their breath, it's a lot harder to think about other things. If you're just breathing and not counting, it's a lot easier, I think, for your mind to start to drift back to work or what I have to do later. But literally, it could, to me, just be the physical act of counting, almost like counting sheep or something, right, when you're going to bed, that stops you from Letting your mind go somewhere else or else you start to lose count. I think if you can focus on the counting, I think that takes a lot of the drifting away for most people. If that's something that people can add into their practice. I think that answered your question though.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. Yeah. I'm happy with wherever this is going because so many thoughts are running through my head, you know, and as I'm hearing you talk, we're from a big 30, 000 foot view. I feel like we're talking about principles and just balancing autonomics, right? So for those listening who are familiar, the autonomic nervous system, you've got your, you know, fight or flight and you've got your rest and digest. And this almost just cleaves any of these. Movement models, especially the commercially available movement models that are out there that preach that they have the, the answer or the solution to the problems and you just like me, and probably every other coach has. Subscribe to some of these models, and I think a lot of them are great, whether it's, you know, PRI or FRC or you name it, there always seems to be a stop point where it just just doesn't work for this one person. So I'd like, I'd like you to just talk because I know you're very well educated in many of these models. But just how you're, you're integrating some of this stuff, where you kind of started to make this transition to just understanding maybe the bigger picture. I know this is a lot to unpack for you, but I mean, take it wherever you're going. Sure.
James Fryer:I think when you, when you look at. Some of the very successful types of care, I guess, or rehab, or whatever you want to call it whether it's DNS or PRI even like craniosacral, adding in some of those other pieces that, you know, maybe a little bit more in one direction for some people they are all focusing on breathing. The client's main focus is breathing in, breathing out, feeling that motion happen. So, you know, those things I think can be very impactful because we're, I think there's, there's four, three or four main components to breathing in itself, right? So we have the, Mechanics of the rib cage. Do we have optimal mechanics happening? So is the rib cage moves, the pump handle move, the bucket handle move, like our posterior menis dynam for some people, are all the rib cage moving. And I think that's an important part of the puzzle for a. Bunch of those modalities. So a couple of them are hitting those puzzle pieces and you're like, okay, I'm seeing good results from DNS and I see good results from PRI and I see craniosacral results. You know, they're all throwing that breathing component in. Some of the other components leave out breathing. So like FRC doesn't talk a ton about breath work and their stuff and, you know, strength conditioning inherently doesn't talk a ton about breathing when you're getting people to move for a lot of people, you know, yeah, sure, breathe in and out while you're doing this, or, you know, breathe in when you go down or breathe out when you stand up. So there's a little bit of that, but you see that stuff go out the window pretty quick when people start adding load with most personal trainers. So they're using tension and motor control to drive some changes a lot of times or adding strength, which again, a lot of people need to add strength in order to function better. Maybe not the athletes as much, but you know, a lot of our general population people that are still the majority of the population need those things. So I think it's identifying. What is the limitation in front of me for my person? Is it ribcage and breathing mechanics? Is it strength and motor control? Is it, you know, I think using these modalities is great, but if you pick PRI and this person can't do five or ten squats, eventually endurance and strength is going to wreck them at the end of the day. They're just not going to feel good at the end of a full day if they have to walk and work and do things. So, you can't ribcage mechanic somebody in that has no strength and endurance to get through their grueling day. So, I think it's just really identifying these things and, and applying what's most necessary at that moment. And again, without completely unpacking everything They, they all, Have models of you do this, then that you do this, then that we, we, you know, follow the guidelines of what we tell you to do and your clients should get better. And I think you, you mentioned it as yeah, like a lot of people get better, you know, but there's still some people that maybe don't and it's like, why aren't these people getting better? And when you're following. a guidebook like that, you don't have a clear understanding of why it's not working. Because you're not used to thinking for yourself in that way. So I think having a guidebook is cool but if you're not understanding why this theory works for these people and who to apply it to, then I think you still fall short on a few people. And yeah, you can use mentors, you can use other people to try to help you through that, you know, and people that have been there, done that before you, because inevitably I've really only been a manual therapist for going on seven years. So I don't know anything relative to people that have been doing it for 30 years. But I think creating this framework of what is happening in front of me with this person? What do I need to do to take the next steps? And then seeing where the roadblocks are happening is really the most important part of being a coach. It's like, where is the roadblock? What does this person need? And If you, you can't see the block, then you're at bay to the modality you're using, and I'm just going to try the next exercise and hope it gets better. But I think having your own framework or trying to create your own framework to understand those things is, is really important.
Ryan Patrick:I had my Emperor's New Clothes moment years ago, meaning I was just kind of standing there exposed with the obvious staring me in the face because a lot of young coaches, and even some seasoned ones buy into a movement model. They, you know, use this movement model and they almost fail to see what's right in front of them, right? So to your point, I've got a person who's clearly gen pop. They need exercise. They need to move. They need to drop body fat. They need to improve their resting heart rate, all the baseline, like physiologic, biomechanical things. And the FMS tells me that, well, they need to be doing a straight leg raise progression. And it was, it was one of those things where I kind of got, you just step back and you're like, why am I trying to intellectualize the use of this stuff? It has its place, it can be useful, but it's almost a trap that a lot of, I think, coaches fall into to try to get more nuanced, raise their perceived value. And at the end of the day, it's you've got to address some really simple things that are probably professionally within our scope of practice. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
James Fryer:Yeah. I think it's like the big rocks thing. Like I think nutrition and fitness are so similar. So like you would be taking somebody that walked in the door that like for nutrition, that's What do you eat every day? I eat Oreos for breakfast, I eat, you know, cereal for lunch, and I eat a burger from McDonald's at dinner. Okay I need you now to take these 10 supplements, I need you to, you know, cook all of your food every day, I need you to go and get organic things, I need you to go to farms and get this thing you, you skipped a hundred steps, you know, of taking them along that ride. You know, and I think the same thing with fitness, you know, I'll have honest conversations with some of my clients too. I'm like, look, like I can do some manual therapy, but you've got to learn how to bend over or sit down in a chair or squat. Like you're not going to be able to make it through your day pain free, unless you also address all these other pieces. You know, and. those people don't need more low threshold potentially, you know, they need actually to build up some of that tolerance. And I, I think that's important as a coach and that's the best thing you can do for somebody is to be honest with them, recognize where they're truly at. And what's going to make the biggest impact in their life as soon as possible. And again, strength and conditioning is a long term game, you know, it's not a short term. So that's kind of the one switch I've made is like I would work with clients for 10 years. So if their squat wasn't perfect the first month, I don't really give a shit. You know, like we're going to keep chopping wood. We're going to change their squad a little bit. And as they're accepting to that and 10 years, they're like, man, I feel great. You know, with what I do, I try to give myself about six sessions to get people feeling good, moving good. So I'm going to be a lot more detail oriented and try to get as much shift and change happening, I need. To get these results moving real quick versus in the strength conditioning world, like I'm just going to chip away nice and slow to these people and it doesn't have to be a overhaul. But if they're coming in to see me for six sessions, we're going to overhaul some stuff pretty hard, pretty fast. To try to get them feeling better, so they don't need to spend all year working with me and spending a lot more money that way. I'd rather see them for six sessions and hand them off to somebody like you, that then is going to be able to keep chopping wood down the road when they're already feeling better. So, I think that's a big part of it.
Ryan Patrick:For a lot of gen pop to sometimes people associate low intensity with easy low intensity conditioning can be difficult or people can get sweaty doing it and feel like they're actually getting some output, but it's been a huge driver of just overall client success for us because. Tell people it lowers the barrier one for them coming in more days per week. It's not everything. I don't have to Sacrifice you on the altar of exercise every session. That's not the goal. Yes. Yeah, you've got 40 pounds to lose We don't need to be crushing to bottles right now.
James Fryer:Mm
Ryan Patrick:hmm Dude, do this rhythmic stuff in that I found is actually helped a lot of people with their pain management, too I think it's probably like a dopamine gain kind of thing because You It's easy for them to get in. We do the work. It's low intensity. The resting heart rate comes down. They just feel better overall, but yeah, I mean, it's so obvious.
James Fryer:I think people need to earn a little bit more of a right to crush themselves if that's something they want to do long term is like they're earning that right. To go hard eventually if they haven't done it for a long time, there's not really any point and, you know, I have to have that conversation with a lot of people that there's a decent amount of people I get to where people that used to do fitness and always get hurt and then they stopped completely because they always got hurt. And so eventually they're like, ah, I got to get back into this. Like I need to do it again. So what do they do? They go back to what they did before, because that's what they know. They know college strength conditioning and how they did it. And that's all they have in their memory bank of what fitness looks like. So they'll want to go back to doing those things. And I ended up hurting again every time. So I'm like, we're going to take a whole new ride. Like whatever you thought was a way to get in shape. Isn't what we're going to do again. Cause that one doesn't get you anywhere over and over again. So we're going to just find this new pathway of working out and moving and finding a nice place. Barrier for entry, like you're saying that that actually feels good. And you feel engaged and you feel almost relieved that you feel better after sessions than feeling worse. You know, like that's a fatigue based model versus a performance and health based model to me. You know, like people want to feel fatigued and punished sometimes, which. It's a little weird, but you know, if we can get people to move towards feeling good and having goals and focusing on performance increasing, then that model gets people a lot farther in the long run than it does. Just like using a fatigue based model of getting your ass kicked every time you go to the gym.
Ryan Patrick:Thousand percent that the dichotomy you talked about before, I want that in training. So most of what's popular hit high intensity interval training. The reality is that, and I don't know how. Without being offensive. Most of the people like what you're doing is not high intensity. You're just doing something continuous at a pace that you can sustain what I found for for majority of gen pop clients that we work with. Their maximal level of output and their max aerobic speed are basically the same damn thing. They just don't have that extra gear. So it's like the hot, the high threshold stuff is too low. And the low threshold stuff is too high. And I just want to separate those things. Where you can actually see a difference in terms of your output and what you're doing and to your point, I love that the fatigue based model versus the performance based model. It's a massive difference in their approach and their perspective and in their experience of what exercise and training should be.
James Fryer:Yeah, yeah, I don't know where I heard that at, but at some point that really clicked for me. It's just yeah I can make anybody do 1000 squats and they're going to get fatigued. Yeah. You know, in an hour did you make them better? Probably not at all. You know, like you just made their back hurt and their hips pinch, you know, because they, they gave up and they were falling forward the whole time. So I, I really try to use that with clients as like understanding what they're trying to get out of their performance benefits through working with a coach or working with a trainer. If you're going to orange theory, like a cool, there's a lot of places that can be beneficial for periods of time, you know, you can But if you're going there to feel like you just need your ass kicked you could probably just stay home and do a thousand squats on your own and be done with it. You know, what are your goals? What do you want to do? What are you trying to accomplish? Be more specific and nail those things down with somebody, you know, and, and make actual, you know, gains that way.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, I mean, just go fall down the stairs. Do you want me to put a boxing glove on and punch you? It might be equally effective. We've got clients that do orange theory, and I tell them no shade at them. I get it. It's high energy. Sometimes you just want to go in. You don't want to think about anything. You just want to do something. Absolutely. Totally, totally fine. But when it becomes five, six days a week, if that's what you're doing, you're, you're, it's a, it's a zero sum game. It just, it's not going to work Long term, there's just consequences to that. And really, from a, from a progression standpoint, I just feel like people plateau to kind of hit this level. Yeah, this is it. This is it. I can't do anything more. So you have to separate your, the training stimulus.
James Fryer:Yeah, I think those people get hooked in that first four to eight weeks where they see those improvements because it's a new stimulus because they just got started in it. But then when they plateau, they just think they need to go harder. They need to sign up for more days. They need to do some, you know, cut food, you know, like that's their next goal. And then when they start moving backwards after another four to eight weeks, they're like, now what do I do? Like they just get lost in that transition, unfortunately, which like hopefully You know, maybe if Orangetheory was smart, they'd have some kind of coach there that guides them through next steps or nutrition or like you could, you could build off of that somehow, but yeah, it really makes it tough for people because they get hooked off that initial Oh my God, this is working. And then it's not, it's like, why not? You know, like, why am I not still progressing? And that's just really tough for most people to figure out on their own. I think,
Ryan Patrick:yeah, for sure. So I want to backpedal just a minute and, you know, we talked about a lot about the movement models and different things. What is your assessment process look like these days when somebody comes in to see you
James Fryer:typically. I want people to come in, tell me everything they think they know about what's going on. You know, I want people's entire backstory of everything that they think of or comes to their mind with aches, pain, trauma, issues, stuff like that, that's, you know, falling off a ladder, like you name it. Rolled ankles, anything they can come up with. And I like to have people go through a lot of their other physical health issues you know, Digestion and sleep and all these other pieces because if I can start to connect those dots for them down the road as we move through this, like you talked about rest and digest as part of our nervous system. And if people are type A's and they're strung out and they're having low back pain, they're But then they also only shit once a week, you know, then all of a sudden, I can start to help them understand that the breath works and help their digestion. It's going to help them go to the bathroom. It's going to help their pelvic floor, you know, like all of a sudden I can kind of pull their whole health into Why this stuff is impactful is, so the biomechanics of our body allows us to go to the bathroom properly. So it's not just the stress part, like our physical body can be stopping us from those things too. And then they're seeing another gut doctor for why they're not going to the bathroom, and they're not seeing progress. So I try to make sure we rope all of those different pieces into the initial assessment. I like to make them go through the movements that they feel good about and don't feel good about. So if they have pain picking up something off the floor, I want to see what that looks like and how it feels. I'll do basics like rotation, squatting hinging, toe touches like the propulsion on the wall stuff. I just like to see some basic standing motions, strength. If they have issues with their calf, I might make them do calf raises, you know, something that's like more in tune with what. Their problem is then we do some passive table tests just to kind of get a rough estimate of where that's at. Check their ribcage, check their breathing, check their stomach. I kind of palpate through there. And then we kind of identify, I want my clients to understand their body so that they can take care of it long term. They're not going to be seeing me long term, hopefully. And if I can then understand their body, they understand their body, then I'll typically talk to the coaches that they work with or therapists they work with that try to help them all get on the same page. Hopefully, they leave with an understanding of what does my body do? What does my body not do? And where's my path forward to make these changes? And again. Potentially roping in all their other health issues a little bit to help them get a better grasp of how their biomechanics and their stress are maybe impacting those as well. That's kind of the gist of it through the assessment. And then we usually do a couple quick things that give them some big wins, some breathing or some, just some light manual work. And all of a sudden they see, you know, a 30, 40 degree change, maybe on A movement or if they go back to the movement at the very beginning of the session that hurt that they're having a problem with And it doesn't hurt or it's already 50 better Then they're like, oh okay Like I can see how the things that we're doing or is moving me closer to feeling great. Or moving easier so I try to always make sure people have a little bit of that thrown into to understand That what we're doing is going right towards the goals that they want to achieve
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, so what I'm, what I'm hearing you say is it's not purely a mechanical model of the way you're looking and assessing the body and people need quick wins with these things so they can buy in.
James Fryer:Yeah, yeah, buy in's huge. Because again, we need people to believe is a lot of my people have already went and saw three or four people. They're like, yeah, I already saw a PT. I see a Cairo once a month, but it doesn't really change. You know, so they've kind of been sold before they've kind of went through things, but I really don't think most people They give them like what they think is wrong, but they don't really give them The light and the tunnel initially to like here's like here's if we do these things like you can see that it feels different already You and I would say 90 percent of the time I can get that in the first session, you know, with people, so they're feeling and seeing those things. There's a few other ones that I'm like, this might be a little trickier. Like we're gonna have to dig a little deeper. But that's just communicating with them and understanding that that I'll be honest with people and tell them right up front, I was like, look, this is a complicated one. Like I'm going to go and do some reading and some research. I might talk to some other coaches and therapists and see if I can learn some more. And then next time you're in, we'll, we'll talk a little bit more and try some other things. I go every time you're in, like I'm learning about how your body works better. And I'm learning what things don't work as well. Which is getting me closer towards the things that will work. So we're still kind of scratching stuff off and making progress, even if we don't get the answer immediately. And then some of those cases, like it takes me two or three sessions and then all of a sudden ah, like we've got it, like we've kind of nailed out a couple of things that weren't working but those are some of the harder cases, but a lot of times we get people changing right away and they're like, wow I've never actually felt my thing that hurts get better in a session with somebody before. Like they just tell me this is what I need to do, but it doesn't actually feel different afterwards. So I think that's huge for people and they learn that trust and, and I, you know, to kind of with a tiny bit more backstory, I've went through a lot of other blood lab courses. I've went through FDN, which is functional diagnostic nutrition, which talks about stool samples to read and understand those. Dutch hormone testing. I like to be able to help people understand their body. And I think having huge gaps and understanding blood work, understanding hormones, understanding gut health. It really makes it tough for me to connect those dots when people come in with I'm going to the bathroom once a week and I also have low back pain and maybe your low back pain isn't biomechanical. Maybe it's like your digestion and like you need to be getting going to the bathroom more often than that and you're never going to get rid of your low back pain until you can do that. So I like to be able to help people and help them understand those things and or communicate with their doctors and you know. Be educated enough in those areas that I can guide them in the right direction. And not feel just well, good luck. Hopefully somebody else fixes you, you know, see you never. So I've spent a lot of time learning about all that other stuff too.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, I think in the medical world of America, it's just punted people get punted from 1 specialist to another. And get confused, they get multiple diagnoses, they get differing opinions and it's hard to find some something that has a, almost the symbiosis between these different. Spheres of health, right? Hey, this stuff is connected to the pain you're feeling, which you think is maybe a joint or something. It's that is fine. You know, we image the back the back is great. There's nothing wrong. We don't know what's going on. Go see. So and so, but. Your plea is that, okay, these things may be maybe interrelated and you have to address all of this stuff at once just to know what the total perspective of care is going to be for this person.
James Fryer:Yeah, yeah, I think that's just, it's really helped me as a. As a coach and a therapist to be able to help people understand these confusing things that are going on to them. Cause a lot of times that stuff kind of happens together, you know, like all of a sudden they have anxiety and then their shoulders hurt and then they're not going to the bathroom. And to them, there are three different issues. Completely, you know, Oh, I have anxiety. That was one thing. Oh, my back hurts. That's a different thing. Oh, go in the bathroom. That's another different thing. Like I have three new problems that propped up, but they're not three new problems, it's one problem that's tied into it's growing and adapting and it's just causing more of a problem for you, but if we fix the one main problem, sometimes all three of those things go away and they're like, Oh, wow. Like I didn't realize that those were all connected. So I think. Really helping people understand the human body a little bit better with simple analogies and just like talking to them like a real human and spending that time. Like I get six sessions, I get six hours of people, you know? So I have to use that time to educate them as well as try to get them to move better and feel better. And then again, hopefully hand them off potentially to people that can help foster that relationship long term.
Ryan Patrick:That's awesome. There's a lot of layers of this onion to peel back for sure. And to try and keep it with some, I want to circle back and really hone in on some of the manual therapy stuff and more specific to what kind of stuff you're recommending, because I think that's going to be most relevant to a lot of the listeners, right? There are some of our athletes or maybe other coaches that we connect with who are, Using these modalities. So first, what's your thought process when you're doing the soft tissue work? What are you trying to accomplish? I've heard people in the past talk about, well, GTO inhibition, all this other stuff, but what's your perspective on what it's doing? And how can we use some of the popular modalities out there to replicate what we're doing? What, you know, intermittent hands on can do.
James Fryer:Yeah, I think something I've tried to understand a little bit better, and it's a kind of not, it's not really a popular modality, but one of the first offices I worked at in Columbus they did a lot of what's called proprioceptive deep tendon reflex. And then really, What that is, is it's taking all of the little subdivisions, which I didn't realize until later, and it's kind of comes off almost like a knockoff of applied kinesiology as well, but it kind of comes from this overview of M. A. T. You know, like you're saying, the muscle activation technique can help somebody feel like this joint feels better to them, and it feels more stable. And then, you know, You have other people that are doing deep tissue. So that's hitting deep pressure receptors. There's lighter tissue work, which is a lighter pressure receptors. We can use chemical changes, right? Like through I see hot and things that are changing some of the chemical receptors in our skin. So, and RPR and all, you know, on and on and on and on, right? That's a neuro lymphatic system. They're, they're trying to play with like old school Chapman reflexes to get things to change. And if you start to understand what receptors are stimulated and why, you can get a little better idea of what things are going to work. So, and kind of using Bill's model and some other things, if you understand that the joints are supposed to have a certain length tension relationship, and if that relationship is either too far pulled apart or too close together, certain things are going to be constantly stimulated. Receptor and if you can change the receptor, you are by moving bones apart or moving bones closer together, you can automatically get that muscle to feel normal again, but you're you're the body doesn't tell you what it needs. It just says something is wrong. Like I have discomfort. I have the fidget. I have pain. It's not telling you what to do. It's not Oh, like you need to go stretch, which is what most people think, right? Like I feel something, so I have to stretch it. But if that length tension relationship is already too long, that stretching is only going to give it like a real short term stimulus. And then it's going to feel like it comes back even worse potentially. So our body's not communicating what it needs. It's just saying something is wrong. Help me. And, you know, it's up to somebody else a lot of times to help them understand what. What is happening in your body? Is it, you know, too much length so we need to, you know, move those joints closer together, maybe add some strength in those areas or motor control, or is that tissue actually too close together because the bones have migrated as the tissue has gotten tighter and we need to create space in that area. for that length tension relationship to feel normal again. So there's all kinds of things that happen. And you can think of sports too, like getting hit with a baseball in the arm, people rub it, like that changes the pressure receptor a little bit. And they're like, Oh, yeah, it feels a tiny bit better. It still hurts tomorrow. But like in that moment, like you can make something feel better by rubbing it. So there's, Rubbing, you know, our dermoneurosystem, like our skin, like, how does that feed to our brain? Or if somebody doesn't have an arm anymore and their arm still hurts, you know, like that ghost phantom pain stuff, like, how does that work? Well, that's obviously something, you know, coming in here that's saying I don't think this is right. And like our body is nervous or scared or, so there's brain regulation, like there's the afferent efferent communication. We've got skin receptors. We've got lymphatic receptors. We've got muscle tendon. We got relying tension, relationships, stretch, receptor, all these different things are communicating to me when people tell me about it, if I'm like, Oh, yeah what's that feel like? Does that feel like an exact spot pain? Does that feel like a broad pain? Does that feel like you need to stretch it? I try to get people to communicate with me in that way. And then it tries to give me a little bit better understanding from what they feel. Because I, they're the only ones that can feel what they feel. I don't know what they feel in their body. So the more they can communicate to me, the more I can understand about the receptors and stuff that are going on. And, You know, then we can use some of our table tests and other things to actually see the relationships that are happening in the joints and the bones and stuff like that. So that's kind of where I try to use a little bit more of, Those different modalities. Like I've learned a few of them over the years, like some dermal neuro stuff, some RPRs and neuro lymphatics just like basic MIT stuff. Like then you just, again, more modalities, right? Like more and more, but the deep tendon reflex is like an over system. And then they have all of those parts within it, which I didn't actually realize at one point. But they're all part of the bigger nervous system platform and they've just chunked them. Each in the separate classes and courses, because it's a lot easier to digest that way. But if you learn them all. You can essentially affect any of those receptors and parts of the nervous system, but again, you can't, I don't think you can regulate the nervous system properly unless you can breathe and move your ribcage properly and shift in and out of those places.
Ryan Patrick:So if I'm an athlete and what you're describing almost sounds like trying to jump into a Twitter thread that's a million You know, years long of just people communicating back and forth and there's so much conversation and all you feel is ouch. So if I'm an athlete. At home, and I've got this film or I've got these other modalities or I'm a gen pipeline just to put a neat bow on it. What are just some baseline simple recommendations that you have for them in terms of how to start to implement this as an effective tool in their recovery process.
James Fryer:Yeah, I think again, feeling our ribcage and spine and understanding those motions. So like using simple tests like turn left, turn right, film yourself if you want. Can you not turn left? Or can you not turn right? You know, are you not getting almost a 90 degree turn out of those? So we're not able to. Move left rib cage back, right rib cage back. You know, doing like even something simple like a bolt test or a carbon dioxide tolerance test to see how well we are managing our anxiety. So you can Google those things and they'll pop right up as like how to run a test on those. But that's kind of telling us how ramped up we are. And if we. ramp down and pull everything back down. We're going to see our standing twists and turns improved by slowing our breath down, regulating our nervous system. So usually it's going to look like you may be inhale for five, exhale for seven. So we want our exhales to be longer, slightly than our inhales, or, you know, you may have to start even five and five. But just getting a practice of focusing on inhales and exhales, counting those out, finding ratios that feel good, and retesting standing twists and turns, and retesting like wherever your pain is, and if it goes away or improves 50%, that's partially nervous system, that's partially ribcage mechanics. And then again, I think you even have some, probably some good videos on YouTube is lay on a foam roller on your rib cage and just feel your ribs move a little bit, lay on your belly, do some crocodile breathing, lay on your back, do some breathing on your back. Cause if we change our body position relative to gravity and pressure, we're going to fill up the different sections of our rib cage in every different position. So I think people can just. Try them all, especially for breathing, like that might take you 20 minutes to lay on your sides, lay on your back, lay on your belly. Just breathe in each of those positions and just feel what's happening in our body and our ribcage. Retest your twists and turns and I, I would, if I had to pick a random stab, I bet 75 percent of people are going to move better and feel better just from laying and trying each of those positions out and spending a little time there. It's not going to be the most efficient versus having somebody tell you which ones are going to be most useful. It's But you can get a lot of bang for your buck just by picking each position and spending five minutes in each one and you're going to stand up and feel a lot better after.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, I think that's, that's amazing advice. And it definitely circles back on, on where we started with people just having this low threshold gear.
James Fryer:Yeah,
Ryan Patrick:absolutely. All right, man. So a couple of final questions for you. These can be pretty quick, but your chance to prove you're not totally hippy dippy. So what's your training look like these days?
James Fryer:I've been just trying to explore I love stealing other coaches YouTubes and going through and I've, You know, I think after a while of lifting and moving it's, it's, it's fun to try new things again. I, I, I want to feel like a beginner at things again. You know, last year I started playing with a steel mace just for fun. It's I'm like, look, I, I want to learn something new by moving. So I love that couples like YouTube's awesome. So I love going through his, I just picked like six exercises that he has. I'll go through and just start throwing them together. See what my body feels like, you know, explore moving through that. You know, I'm expecting a little girl here in the next week or two. So I'm, I got to work on the being more condensed and efficient with all this stuff too, and, you know, making sure I get in and get some work done. And you know, I, I love just trying new shit that I haven't done. So, I like to just peel and dig into some stuff right now. And I haven't been following any planned playing programs at the moment, but I love just feeling new exercises that I've never tried before in my life and seeing if I can still have enough athlete in me to, to make them happen or not.
Ryan Patrick:No, I totally get it, man. It's just nice to explore and play a little bit. I mean, that's why I do jujitsu. I mean, it's a little bit more combative and intense, but there's, there's times where it's more technical work and I'm moving in ways. My body is not used to, so I totally get that.
James Fryer:Yeah. New movement is just so fun to experience as a former athlete, you know, again, loosely used, but you know, being able to try all those things again and feel like you're a beginner is a lot of fun.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. So you're about to
James Fryer:be a first
Ryan Patrick:time dad.
James Fryer:Yes, sir.
Ryan Patrick:Oh man. Are you, are you getting nervous yet?
James Fryer:I'm excited, man. Yeah, I feel like I'm as prepared as I'm gonna be. I'm getting, you know, getting up there and age a little bit for a first time dad, so I'm ready to get cranking and test it out.
Ryan Patrick:It's gonna be so much fun. You're in for a world of excitement and joy, so I'm pumped for you. I didn't realize you guys were that close, but congratulations on that. Yep,
James Fryer:yep. Thanks,
Ryan Patrick:man. All right. So last thing where can, where can we find out more about you?
James Fryer:Yeah. My website, you know, www. jamesfryerNMT, so neuromusculartherapist. com. My IG is the same, jamesfryerNMT. Yeah. You can reach me through the website or through IG that way. And that's pretty much my main means of communication at this point.
Ryan Patrick:Awesome, brother. I'll tag that in the show notes, but I appreciate you being on, man, this was an amazing conversation. And then. We, for not having anything scripted, I thought we covered a lot of really important ground. So thank you for your time. Thank you for your knowledge. And I'll definitely send listeners your way, man. Thanks so much. Take care.