019 - Greg Chaplin on What’s Important in the journey from pain to performance

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT helps active adults with alignment, posture, and movement related problems.

Here's a quick overview of our show:
✅ His journey from chronic pain as a professional musician to DPT
✅ How conventional treatment models fell short
✅ Taking clients from pain to performance
✅ Managing work load as part of the overall prescriptoin
✅ High vs low energy states in treatment efficacy
✅ ..and much, much more


To follow Greg on the socials, please visit his instagram @chaplinperformance

Please follow us on instagram @athleticperformancepod for more content and solutions to this podcast.

#athleticperformancepodcast #athleticperformance #athlete #sportsperformance #athleticdevelopment #physicalpreparation #strengthandconditioning #speedpowerstrength #ryanpatrick #sportsperformancecoach #baseball #assessment  #basketball #football #soccer #hockey #running #sprinting #sprinttraining #speedtraining #peakfast #peakfitnessandsportstraining #pain #posture #alignment #chronicpain

Transcript

M-2-peakfast: 0:05

Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.

Ryan Patrick: 0:20

Greg, first of all, I want to just welcome you to the show, man. I'm super excited to have you on. Obviously, I've been following your content for a while. I, myself, as a trainer, I'm always looking to different rehab guys to maybe not find rehab techniques. But maybe things that can help me fill in the gaps of this gray area where, you know, people aren't really injured, uh, but maybe we can help them move better or just, you know, perform better in my case. So, um, before we get too, too far in, you know, can you just start by giving everyone a quick intro to who you are and what you do?

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 0:51

Yeah. Well first of all, thanks for having me on. I'm psyched to do this as well. So, um, I'm known for talking a little long, so if I start rambling, just gimme the eyes. But to keep it sort of brief, I grew up playing music and that was my passion. I went to school for it. I was on track to be a, a professional musician. Uh, and then I had my own injury issues that happened actually while I was playing, and I just could never really get back to the level of performance that I wanted because of chronic pain related issues. So. I went through the traditional channels. You see the PTs, you see the doctors, you get a bunch of diagnoses. And at that point, what I took from all that experience was I don't have enough information and I need to learn more. So that led me to first get my personal trainings, uh, diploma and certification. So I went through like a six month training, uh, program. I don't even know if they have it anymore. It's called national personal training Institute. And they used to be all over the place. And it was like the six month intensive you did. And it was really great, but it was based on, uh, the essentials of strength and conditioning that you'd get to get your NSCA CSCS certification. So after I did that program, I ended up getting my CSCS. Which looking back is kind of funny because I never really worked too much with strength and conditioning per se, did a little bit of it here and there. But my primary demographic was what you would call general population, uh, one on one, you know, private studio, personal training. So I worked in small studios, uh, basically for the first seven years. Of my training career. And it was your typical, you know, high performing individuals that want that individualized attention to stay healthy. Right. And, and a lot of times just to be accountable. And so I got so lucky in the beginning because I had two jobs going at a strength and conditioning job as an entry level strength coach. And then I had this private studio gig where I was seeing people one on one. The head trainer at the one on one studio left abruptly and I walked into about 50 sessions a week as like a 21 year old. So I was a couple months in and I was getting crazy reps, right? Yeah, I barely knew exercise at all theory or practice. I wasn't well trained. I was probably seven months into my own training. Thank God. I was 21 and got crazy newbie gains, you know Yeah, at least looked apart a little bit, but I couldn't even grow facial hair at the time and that was my experience for You know, the next four years or so I trained people, but I was still dealing with my own issues. And so like many people who go into training or rehab, it's this, okay, I have an issue, I'm trying to figure it out and fix it, or I'm passionate about this. I had an injury and I rehabbed it. So that's, I'm getting into it. So at that point, I still thought I don't know enough. I need to get more education. So naturally I was like, well, I get the DPT and I went and I got the DPT and From there, it was kind of interesting because I kept training people, uh, the whole time. And, you know, I almost found that with the more knowledge I had, just the more confusing it was to work with people. Um, and then you come out and you're a new grad physical therapist and it's a whole new field, you know, it's, it's rehab versus training. And I got lucky enough to be at a clinic. In my hometown, which is, um, it's called momentum physical therapy. And they basically teach and all of Shirley Sarman's, um, courses that are based out of WashU. So WashU is maybe the one or number one or number two best physical therapy programs in the country. And Shirley Sarman stuff is probably the foundation of what a lot of us know in rehab and training. Yep. Um, and so I was lucky enough to, to work there for a couple of years, get some great mentorship. And then, you know, at that point, I was like, I've been doing this about 10 years, neither of these venues really suit me all that well, the pandemic hit, and I said, okay, if we can do an online thing, and then here we are, so we've been doing that since.

Ryan Patrick: 5:05

That's crazy. So can you back up a little bit? Because I'm not a musician at all. I mean, I take some guitar lessons with my son now, and I'm really trying to figure this out, which maybe I have to get some tips from you. But when you say that pain pain related issues that impacted performance, is it just like, What did you play? I mean, is it like slouching over in the chair? Like, I don't even know what that, what that looks like.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 5:28

So I was an upright bass player. So upright bass, like a big cello, essentially weighs about 30 pounds. And lugging that thing around is pretty crazy. So, you know, it's, it's always hard to say with any pain related thing, you know, is it the specific event that seems to kick things off or was it all that was happening before that? Right. So in my case, I was on a gig and I just kind of turned my head a little weird. And then blacked out and I just had a bunch of weird symptoms pop up after that. Sudden arm weakness, couldn't really lift my arm, difficulty turning my head, vision changes, balance changes. You know, you look back on it with more knowledge and you go, yeah, maybe I nicked some nerve roots there. Like cervical nerve root strain, something like that. I think it's probably the most likely, uh, diagnosis, if you will. Sure. You know, but like I tell a lot of people, you really can't wait to have a diagnosis to get busy. Working on improving stuff. Right. So, you know, even looking back on it, I can't tell you exactly what happened per se, you know, that's my best guess. Just post hoc kind of analysis of what ended up working. Right. And when you, when you trace it back to the anatomy, it makes the most sense from that standpoint. Um, but yeah, it was, uh, it was just like this shit storm of all sorts of stuff that happened, you know, where it's like one day you're literally, you know, unencumbered in your ability to perform. The next day you're like, I can't really stand up and walk and lift my arm and can't hear right and can't see right. Um, you know, not sleeping well and, you know, just the, that, that period of my life was, was probably the most difficult period. Cause you're simultaneously losing an identity while trying to figure out this thing that, you know, even the best doctors can't help you figure out. Right. And so I think. Lucky for the people I work with now that led me to like, try to know everything possible, but unlucky for me is I thought that the knowledge was the rate limiter on being able to return to performance. Like many people who are trying to DIY their own rehab, which happens to be the people I work with a lot who are online and consuming content and trying to figure it out. Uh, when in reality, you know, it's really just trying to get moving, getting back and restoring function. Right. We don't necessarily need to know why. So I would say probably one of the biggest things you hear in my messaging is me just encouraging people to get to work and, you know, stop trying to figure it out as much per se.

Ryan Patrick: 8:02

Yeah. You almost took the words right out of my mouth because that's definitely the direction I wanted to go. So I've only had one episode in my training career of, you know, some serious pain where the only thing I can describe it as is you just get tunnel vision, right? Like everything else ceases to be. Urgent or important. It's like, how do I get out of this situation as quickly as possible? Because it does it, it interrupts everything in your life. Like, you know, I had to decide. I had some probably, you know, I didn't get, I didn't even bother with the diagnosis, but I probably had like a herniated disc and some sciatic pain to the point where I couldn't walk. And I really had, like, had to decide, do I want to sit in this chair? Like, is it worth the pain of like, that I know I'm going to experience when I get up, but you, you almost bestowed upon yourself this curse of knowledge. Right, where you're trying to gather all the facts about the situation, and you kind of ended up at the end of the day, realizing that wasn't the avenue worth pursuing. Because to me, it seems a lot of people almost search for this diagnosis so that they feel that there will be a set of. Uh, you know, almost an algorithmic solution to this issue. And so what it allows you to, to really get to the other side of this. When did you make the decision to start taking action? And what did that look like? And mentally, what kind of, what changed for you in that process?

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 9:24

It was an interesting one because some of the people that I see are in a similar situation where they're highly motivated to take action and they actually will take action for a while. But if you get a, uh, you know, no return on your investment of energy, then you feel like you get burned. Right. And so for me coming out of PT, which I didn't find to be very effective, the message that was bestowed upon me by my therapist is. Listen, you're just weak. You know, that's the problem here. You're weak. Right? And so I was like, all right, I understand the assignment. I'll get strong as fuck. Fuck it. Let's go. Right? And like a 20 to 21 year old, I got in the gym and I was in there, I was in this personal training program and there was a practical element and a theoretical element and I was in the gym six days a week. On Saturday when the class didn't meet, I came in and I got my own lift in. I was training all the other days. So it wasn't that for me, there was ever a lack of action per se. It's just that, and I think this is the mistake that a lot of people make is you take for granted sometimes that there is a level of detail and a level of, um, there's a level of knowledge needed on training variables. And how to strike the right balance to meet you where you're at and progress you training wise. And so a lot of people will feel like, well, I'm doing what I've been told to do, or I'm doing the right thing, but I'm not getting the results. Therefore, now I need to learn something else and go off grid. And I think this is where it's like as rehab and, um, strength professionals, we need to better help people understand that things that we might take for granted, like managing load across. A mesocycle of training, you know, just designing a week that makes sense from a fatigue and stimulus management perspective, selecting exercises that meet the person where they're at, et cetera. Like the things that people consider to be basics are actually super important to do really well, because if you don't do them well, there can be all sorts of Either just failures in progression overall or negative secondary consequences that ended up being interpreted as this didn't work. And now I need to go find something that gives me this alternative explanation as to why what's going on with me. And that's what happened with me is, you know, I got to this point where I was like, wait, I'm strong. Like I'm objectively stronger than 90 percent of the population, but I'm still in pain and maybe even worse pain than I was before. Right. And I think with a lot of trainers and coaches. When you're on let's say the trainer side of the clipboard and you got the person's weights from the last week And you're watching a move in front of you. It's a lot easier to say that that didn't look that good We're gonna drop the weight a little bit for next set Right or you know, you're in this phase of your training and we're gonna do this next But sometimes when it comes to our own training, we go, I know what I'm doing. So I'm just going to jump in and I'm going to train myself like this because I want to feel like I'm moving some weight today or whatever it is. Right. And sometimes it's hard to have that level of, you are both the provider and the client or the provider and the patient with yourself, and sometimes you get lost in that, and so I'll see a lot of, you know, really good coaches and therapists who work with other people. But they start to doubt their own competence because they can't get the same results with themselves that they can get with other people. And that's when you see people going off grid, right? And that's what I, that's what I did, you know? So I went down the PRI rabbit hole, um, specifically that one, but I studied a lot of Shirley Sarman stuff as well. Um, which around the time I was training was kind of in vogue. I mean, if you listen to people like Eric Cressy, Mike Boyle, Mike Reynolds, I mean, you know, great cook. You, I mean, you name them from that time period, Shirley's fingerprints are all over the stuff that those guys were talking about, and then you start reading the books. And when you look at that from the perspective of a patient versus the perspective of a provider, now, all of a sudden the information in there is so consequential. Because, she's talking about a winging scapula, that's what I have, that's why I'm in pain, right? Right. Versus as a provider, you look at someone, you go, ah, scapula moves a little differently than the other one. Let's see what happens when we do some movement. It's more dispassionate, it's more disconnected when it's yourself, and now you're starting to attribute these things to correspond to the experiences you're having, the unwanted experiences you're having, then all of a sudden you start kind of making up this story and this narrative. And that can pull you in a lot of different directions that are not necessarily beneficial and this is like exactly the problem I see right now online. It's a bunch of people who are trying to be their own therapist or their own coach because they have the information. But this is kind of my big thing that I talk about with my clients these days who are in this kind of situation is I call it the Peter Parker, the Peter Parker principle of rehab, which is like with great power comes great responsibility just because you know how to access hip internal rotation or you know what a zone of apposition is. Doesn't mean that's what you should be focusing on right now, because maybe getting down on the floor. And trying to restore some range of motion or doing some tests you learned from a YouTube video might give you that short term dopamine hit of, I got a little bit of control, but what happens when you come back the next time and that change isn't what you want it to be, or it doesn't result in an improvement in symptoms. Then what happens? Well, then what happens is you start second guessing everything you're doing, right? And oftentimes that means creating fear around, well, I'm not going to do things that actually promote adaptation because before I do squats, I need to have adequate hip internal rotation. I know because I saw it on an Instagram post. Well, all right. If you're giving up squats, which is something progressible and scalable, that's going to create an adaptation, a real physiological adaptation for something that is as fleeting as an improvement in range of motion. That's a really bad trade. Right. And if your reason for making that trade is because you overloaded your squats and over fatigued yourself in a program because the application of stimulus across your mesocycle was poor, it's another reason that you might give up the squats and misattribute that that's the problem. And those are two different ends of the spectrum, but it's the same mistake, right? And I've, I've been on both sides of that. And so it was a weird thing for me to go, I'm training maybe too hard in an unintelligent way, and now I'm gonna basically totally pull out of training, and I'm gonna try to go all obsessive in rehab, right? And then I go full rehab, no training. And I got to come back in and kind of heal my relationship with training and say, no, it's not the training that was bad, the training that was messing me up. It was the way I was applying the principles of training time to train myself, like I'm a client, right? Time to actually be a good coach to myself.

Ryan Patrick: 16:46

And that object objectivity can be extremely challenging to define. I always joke that I'm the biggest asshole of a client in my gym because. I'm only going to do the things I want. I'm going to intellectualize my way out of anything I don't like. And so I end up with like deadlifts and arms. Like that's it. That's like all I want to do. Maybe some sprints. But I think to your point, there's a couple of things I want to unpack here. One is that I do think a lot of people are looking for something to hang their hat on. You know, especially when we're self diagnosing. And I don't think any of these rehab practitioners, for the most part, have malintent. That's it. I'm going to assume good intent by by all of these guys, but there are to your point, you know, you talked about some negative secondary consequences. There are negative secondary consequences to some of these. Uh, solution videos, right? So they completely lack context. And we talked about this off air a little bit prior to, you know, for the right person, uh, in the right situation, there might be a YouTube or Instagram real where this specific thing is very, very valuable. But if you're not that person, you're really not a candidate. Maybe that person, this YouTube guru, um, for example, if they saw you in the clinic, they might approach the problem a little differently, but you see this on YouTube. You're searching for a solution. A lot of people in pain are very knowledgeable. They know about PRI because they're trying to figure out anything that they can to solve, but there's, there's a probably horde of people who have tried this and got no result. Or in some cases, Yeah,

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 18:27

and I kind of look at it from the perspective of human beings, like you said, are always going to be drawn towards what's most comfortable or what they prefer the most, right? So you, you, if I put out a piece of content and I talk about, there's a mind body connection. Meditation and mindfulness can be super beneficial when you're dealing with chronic pain to help you recognize and regulate your emotions, right? This is one aspect of rehab that I like to talk about. Invariably, the person who finds that as someone who's already interested in mindfulness and meditation, right? That person oftentimes. In my experience is the person who's not doing enough training and not taking their training seriously enough, right? Now on the flip side I put out a piece of content that's all around training Well, who finds that the people who are already interested in training, right? Maybe their pain is being amplified by psychosocial factors such as poor emotional regulation or recognition And they could really benefit from diving into the mindfulness side. They're never going to hear that content Right? The people who are looking at those solution videos are people who are motivated by the great discomfort of uncertainty. They want certainty more than anything, and they want to be heard. They want the feeling of, this person gets me. Right. The thing that's probably the most beneficial for a lot of those people, though, is being more comfortable with the uncertainty and being able to take action in the face of that uncertainty. Right. So it's just the nature of these algorithms where we promote these pieces of content. They're almost designed to. Land in the hands of the person who is already looking for them, right? And oftentimes that's the hands of the wrong person, right? now specifically when I think about something like a Like a PRI right a couple of things. I use that Treatment model in the clinic for a few years like almost exclusively, right? I'll take I'll give anything a fair shot Right? And I'm obsessed to try to understand it on as deep a level as possible. But I will tell you this, in the clinic PRI and internet PRI are two completely different things. In the clinic PRI is someone coming in, they have no idea that what I'm doing is any different than what they'd be doing if they were just coming to see me. I'm doing an adduction drop test that looks just like an OBRIS test. If they've been to PT before, they've had someone do a similar test on them. I'm moving their arms around, I'm doing range of motion. This is typical standard PT shit. www. ottobock. com Now, when it comes to interventions, I might be getting them in a specific position and talking a little bit about kind of breathing and feeling certain parts of the body, right? So it's more of a neuromuscular kind of approach, but that's not completely foreign and PT either people kind of expect that, right? So they might leave. And I might have applied a PRI technique on them, but they don't need to necessarily know that they don't need the whole steel. Yeah. Humans are asymmetrical. We've got a liver over here, blah, blah, blah. And this is the reason why you have pain, right? They don't need that spiel. They haven't heard it. And it's probably better for them not to hear it because what they really get from the session is they get in touch with their body. They figure out what movements might work a little bit better for them or what positions might be a little bit more tolerable or restore some variability. And most importantly. They establish a beneficial therapeutic alliance with me, the therapist, right? And there's trust and rapport there, right? Because what we're doing in those sessions is we are co creating an experience of rehabilitation together, right? And when you're doing it on your own, there's no co creation of rehabilitation together, right? It's you on your own island, right? And you don't have that objective person there. And When you are tying what you're doing to a narrative, right? That narrative can begin to be a barrier. To what you're doing. Right. And what I see with internet PRI, people come to me and they go, I have a positive adductor drop test on the left side. This means I'm an A IC. Oh shit. What do we do now? Yeah. Did you already do the three exercises that they told you to do? Oh, you did? Oh, okay. How did that go? Oh, oh, it didn't. So that's why we're on the call. Right. So that belief then becomes a barrier. Right. They were never intended to know any of that stuff, right? The whole purpose of a successful program from a PRI perspective is to get someone to connect and feel with their body in positions that are going to help improve their sense of grounding and restore some, uh, access to movements that they might be biased away from. That's kind of the most simple way I can think of it, right? So, when somebody comes, when somebody is trying to do it on their own, right? They are not connecting with their body. They're connecting with the concepts that they've heard in their head. And this is an exercise I do with a lot of people. It's like, if I have my hand, right? I can close my eyes and I can create a visual representation of what a hand is. In my brain from memory, right? It's got skin. There's little creases in here. There's nails, right? There's a shape to it. If I pay really close attention, though, I close my eyes and I pay close attention to the raw data of tingling of temperature, of touch, of pressure. I will notice that that whole mental construction of a hand from memory. That's experienced through concepts. And those other sensations are experienced in a raw experiential way. Right? Just pure sensory, right? And so when I'm in a clinic with someone, I'm applying a PRI technique, I'm allowing that person to have a sensory experience of their body in the most pure way. When they're doing it on their own, they're thinking about all the things that this person just explained to them. And what I often find is the first time they do it, it's something a little bit different. They feel something a little bit different. Oh my God, I figured it out. But what they're really responding to is the novelty of that activity. And what happens is you have a brain that's in a certain pattern. You give it something new, you break that pattern temporarily, and then all the associated shit that goes with it can kind of also relax for a second. But then that person repeats that exposure. They don't have that other person to help them co regulate. They end up getting stressed out because they don't get the same result from it. Am I doing it wrong? Oh my God, there must be something else. Back to YouTube. And what is the whole purpose of that whole loop? Is to decrease the discomfort associated with uncertainty, right? And they go to their favorite YouTube. You know, superstar who has the one story that they just repeat and video after video. It's this, it's this, it's this. That person gets a little bit of that reassurance and it temporarily allows them to feel better, but this is almost like a obsessive compulsive loop. So they're compelled to go online to get the reassurance. They get the reassurance, which lowers the anxiety temporarily, but then strengthens the overall compulsion. Right. And then it goes back around in a loop. And there's some preliminary research on this, uh, online health research, uh, on, yeah, it's called, it's research of online health research. And what they're seeing is some, something that is akin to an OCD like behavior. Right. So, in other words, the whole purpose of the habitual searching online is to reduce uncertainty, right? But the temporary reduction in uncertainty actually strengthens the loop. Right.

Ryan Patrick: 26:24

Interesting.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 26:25

Right. So these people are desperate for answers. Right. And therefore they're in a very low emotional state and that low emotional state creates in a way type orientation to their problem, right? Make the pain go away, make this unwanted experience go away. And unfortunately, a much better approach for them to do is going to be a towards behavior, which is a towards a high emotional state. So instead of trying to walk away from a low emotional state, it's better to encourage people to walk towards a high emotional state. So in other words. Can they focus on not what they're not allowed to do, what they can't do, what can they do to get them out of pain? Try to flip it and say, what can you do right now? What, how can you improve function right now? And how can you progress that over time? And then how can you stack enough good things so that it becomes the tide that raises all ships? Right? Unfortunately, the one thing that you don't give them is the certainty. Temporarily,

Ryan Patrick: 27:31

right? There's a lot of things I want to unpack here. So first of all, I think back to the beginning of the conversation and you're talking about meditation and emotional regulation. And for me, my brain. You know, the thoughts that come when I do meditation is, you know, probably some kind of undiagnosed ADHD, right? And it was learning to not run away from these thoughts, but just acknowledge them. Right? So that's kind of 1 piece of this. When you talk about getting to these high emotional states is understanding the pain. And then, as you were talking, 1 of the things that I think really stood out to me, people are looking for answers. They're looking for certainty. Okay. Thank you. Almost this external locus of control of this pain is something that's affecting me. You're talking about what we need to do, and I'm not a clinician. I'm a, I'm a coach trainer. That's it. But what you're talking about, the state that people need to get in is actually taking back some of this control and identifying these experiences in feeling in the moment, these sensations that are actually happening is that. Am I on the right track with what you're kind of communicating here?

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 28:43

Yeah, absolutely. So, I think Even if I go back, right, I go back to my early interactions with healthcare providers and this is so common and this is, I think, how a lot of us grow up is our idea of interaction with healthcare providers is when I'm sick, I go to the doctor, they do a diagnosis, they prescribe something, I get better, right? Well, that is, by definition, an external locus of control. That person is responsible for diagnosing and treating you. The outcome is you. It's not you doing something, it's you putting the control in that person's hands and trusting them. And so when you get into a chronic pain kind of scenario, and sort of everyone you go to is giving you a different story, and you heard 20 different things, right? It's really hard, because people will go through this habitual cycle of, well I got a new person, and they're the answer. They're going to give me the answer this time, right? And they're still operating within this paradigm of external locus of control. And if the program doesn't work, then it's the provider's fault. And one of the things that helped me get out of this chronic pain loop, more than anything, was beginning to take personal responsibility and realize that I could control the controllables. Along with that, it's important to realize that you can't control the uncontrollables. And until you understand what the controllables are and what the uncontrollables are, then you can't properly apply an internal locus of control. Right. And this is something that's really important because people will think that they can do an exercise and because they are doing the exercise, that it's an internal locus of control with respect to the outcome of that exercise. It's not. What is in your control is not the response of your body to something. It's what you did. And then based on that response, it's how you react to the response, right? So in other words, I get a flare up from something. Okay, now I have a choice how I react to it, right? I didn't have a choice about that flare up, right? I made a decision about what I was going to do. There were all sorts of external random factors coming in that contribute to how my body's going to react on any given day, right? Given historical context, etc. So I chose to apply that exercise technique. Once I've applied it, Which was an internal locus of control. The response of the body is no longer up to me. That's an uncontrollable. Right. I don't get to control that. I do get to control my response to the response. Right? My body's response is out of my control, but my mental response and subsequent actions based on that response are totally within my control. Right? So it could be as simple as, and this is a good place to start for anyone that's in this kind of a situation, Of just realizing what narratives come up when that flare up happens, right? So, a great place to start to even identify if you're in the vicinity of an internal locus of control is, let's say you get an exercise from a rehab provider, you do it, causes a flare up, does your brain automatically go to, oh my god, they gave me the wrong thing? Right? Or what does it go to? Or I'm going to be fucked forever. I'm never going to get better. Right? Like these are the stories that we tell ourselves and often they go unrecognized. Right? And those stories and unrecognized thought patterns, they often are what are leading us to then seek out someone else. To help us. And I think the meditation, starting with just understanding there's a difference between having a thought and being that thought, right? Having thoughts, that's going to be totally normal. It's going to happen the rest of your life. Being identified with those thoughts is typically a source of unnecessary suffering. And the analogy I like to use here is if I'm doing a meditation, imagine I'm sitting on the river bank, right? I'm sitting on the river bank and there's a bunch of boats going by. And these boats are emotions, these boats are thoughts, right, these boats are sensations. And so, if I see these go by and can just notice them, right, I'm not trying to make them go faster down the river, I'm not trying to slow them down, I'm not trying to push them away, I'm just noticing them. Then I am in a place where I've got that internal locus of control, right? I'm not getting, my emotional state is not getting hijacked by the occurrence of these contents. I'm resting in that space that is able to observe those contents. But if that boat comes by, Oh, this is the old story. I tell myself that I'm going to be fucked forever. Right. And then I jump on that boat and I go, I am this boat. That's identification with a thought. And you are no longer in the space that's able to observe these contents without judgment. Now you feel one in the same with that negative thought loop and you say, this is who I am, right? If you let that define your experience either just by lack of recognition or lack of discipline mentally then You are going to feel pretty bad, right? The problem for most people, I think, is we are like, I think Alex Ramos, he said something to this effect at some point that you never questioned the beliefs that are so closely held to you, like your core beliefs, your automatic beliefs. So a lot of people, they don't even know that they have this external locus of control because it's so hardwired in, right? And it's hard to get people to understand. You need to have this internal locus of control, but it doesn't mean you have to blame yourself.

Ryan Patrick: 34:44

And

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 34:46

that's, that's a hard thing. Okay, it's in your control and you're not getting better. Does that mean you're a piece of shit? No, it doesn't. It means you're a human being and shit's complex, man. Have some compassion, right? If it was easy to figure out, somebody would have figured it out for you, but obviously it's not. These are complex issues that we have when we get into these chronic pain syndromes, right? And it really, any, any injury experience, I mean, a herniated disc, it's not straightforward. It like, you know, it sounds straightforward. Oh yeah, my uncle had one. What, you know, like you hear the story and it's like everyone's experience is individual.

Ryan Patrick: 35:30

Yeah, and for some people it just perpetuates, you know, to. Infinity because of perhaps these narratives or other things.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 35:38

Yes. And I

Ryan Patrick: 35:39

go ahead.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 35:40

So sometimes I think one of the, when you're trying to have somebody do something on the training side or on the mindfulness side or on the mindset side, that's a little bit. Outside of what they would have normally done. I think sometimes the knee jerk reaction is, Ah, dude, just give me an exercise to get me better. You know? Why do I have to do all this shit? I would have never had to do this if I didn't have an injury. Right? And the thing is, we need to realize that these are life altering experiences we have that change the very fabric of our experience. Right? And, and we're in a different ballpark when we start to have an injury experience. And that means that the rules of the game have changed. And that is hard for some people to hear. Your life is not the same as it was. It's different now. You might have to do shit that's different than you had to do. You don't get to just turn the clock back. There's no Ferris Bueller odometer in reverse here. It's different. And that's, that's hard to hear, but it's like, this is life. We got to accept this stuff. And the sooner we can accept it, the sooner we can get to work in a, in a meaningful way. Right. And I think sometimes that. Element of reality and tough love is missing from the conversation. Um, because we don't want to freak people out more than they're already freaked out. But I think we do them a disservice by not saying, Hey. Rules of the Game of Change, this is on you. Let's help you develop the skills to understand how to navigate it.

Ryan Patrick: 37:08

Absolutely. So one of the things I enjoy about your content is that, um, you are very pragmatic in your approach. And what we're talking about right now is this expansive idea that, you know, pain is not strictly mechanical. There are other factors that are contributing, contributing to this. And so we have this expansive representation of what might be. Contributing to somebody's symptoms or the perpetuity of these symptoms for, you know, way longer than the tissue might actually be injured. Right? These they're past the healing guidelines, but they're still experiencing pain. And so I'd like, I mean, obviously, we're not just going to sit around and we saw our way back to health and performance. So what's that?

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 37:52

Yeah,

Ryan Patrick: 37:53

what's for you? I would like to maybe transition into how do you start to demystify the noise for people and helping them get on this track? Um, back to feeling moving or performing better, whatever that looks like.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 38:06

Yeah. So I think like controlling the controllables is, uh, I think a really pragmatic place to start, right? And it's honestly what I would look to for anyone either on the mental training or the physical training side, right? Where are you at now? And what might you have to do to improve the probability of having the experience you want to have down the, down the line? And it's that easy, right? And so then you start asking, okay, from an action standpoint, I've identified what that is. Now, from an implementation standpoint, what can I do, right? So you start looking at basic, big rocks, as we might say. Do you get enough physical activity, general physical activity during the day? If the answer to this is no, this should probably be yes. That's a good place to start. Then you start going to things like, are you challenging your body through resistance training? If the answer is no, it should probably be yes. Right? Okay. Resistance training. Are you doing all the main movement patterns? Like, are you squatting? Are you hinging? Are you pressing? Are you pulling both vertical and horizontal? Do you mix it up and have a variety of planes of movement involved? How about some different speeds, right? I mean, it doesn't have to get more complex than that, to be honest, right? For most people, especially

Ryan Patrick: 39:31

for somebody who's not active.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 39:33

Right. And then, you know, uh, one of my, um, what I'm kind of talking about here in a word or two is, is the idea of move more for people who are already moving a whole lot and are trying to work through something. I look at move more in terms of varying the application of stimulus. In some way. So that could be on an exercise selection basis, or that could be on an energy system basis in terms of they're doing ton of moderate intensity work and you know, they're totally gassed out there in season playing a sport and they're trying to train in a moderate rep range and do maybe higher volume than they should given that context, you might, they might come in with an injury and you might say, okay, the big rock here is actually just differentially distributing the Uh, stress through different energy systems. So you have a little bit more of a chance to recover, right? It, I mean, it doesn't have to get more complex than that. And I think on the mindfulness side, again, it's like, if you're not doing any. Doing some would be a good place to start and it doesn't have to be something super fancy or optimized. It can be as simple as you put the timer on for five minutes. You close your eyes, you pay attention to what you're experiencing and whatever happens, happens. The alarm goes off and you say, I did it. That's it, right? I think we check those boxes first and honestly, as far as people like you and I are going to dive in and get the details down to an obsessive level on a lot of things because we cared very deeply about it and I think there is a little bit of a belief in a lot of our minds that like, if we could just be even better, then we could get even better results for the people we work with and with ourselves. And I think that's a great, um, You know, underlying character quality to have, to want to pursue excellence. But let's be honest, the rate limiter on a lot of people's progress is just, are we doing the big things that make the most sense? Just like, could you, do you put it on the schedule? Do you get it done? And if the answer to that is no, which a lot of times it's not, then it's almost like all these other conversations about something more optimal or something different don't really matter because we don't really have a reliable baseline to compare that against. Right? And I think it's an, when I think about this, there's a easy sell for me to make you if I go, Hey, what I'm going to do for you is fast, it's easy, it's totally safe, and the result is huge. So you're going to get on a ground, you're going to breathe a little bit, you're going to do a fancy drill, very specific to you, completely personalized. Right. Not going to get hurt doing it. Zero chance of getting hurt. And then afterwards, you're going to be totally repositioned and you're going to feel amazing because you're, you're now neutral. Well, shit, man, fast, easy, safe, and big. Hell yeah. Right. Versus what I just talked about pragmatically, which is essentially just doing the basic things and putting them on the schedule and making sure your compliance is super high. Well, what is that? Is that fast? Well, no, it's gonna be slow. Is it easy? Well, no, it's gonna be hard. Is it safe? Well, no, your risk of actually, you know, having a few tweaks is probably gonna be much higher here. And is the outcome big? Well, yeah, eventually, but probably not for a while. Right? So it's a much harder sell. You know, a lot of us just, we are sold this idea of like the thing that works faster and better is more valuable. So that's where we're going to invest our time and energy. But the truth is that if we try to do the thing that promises the quick fixed 1000 times, then we end up being five years down the line where if we just did the hard thing for like six months, we probably would have been able to get through that, you know, a lot faster, right? So I think that's, that's the thing. So that's what we're up against, you know, as providers and just in our own health and wellness things. It's like, sometimes it's like just even getting bogged down in those details, it's just a distraction from, from trusting the process.

Ryan Patrick: 43:41

Absolutely. I always joke that fitness is the hardest sell to people because it's like all, all the things that you like to eat, they're gone. Beer, chicken wings, you can, you can just forget about it and you're going to do activity that's. It's gonna wear you out. It's gonna make you sore for a couple of days. And oh, oh, by the way, if you ever stop, this all goes away.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 44:07

Yeah. It's like,

Ryan Patrick: 44:08

are you ready? Are you ready to sign up?

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 44:10

Yeah. Yeah. Give me your money. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Patrick: 44:13

Yeah. But I, I think the point and you hit a couple of big topics. Number 1, you mentioned a few times is this idea of load management, right? We need to make sure that we're not doing too much or too much of the same thing. Yeah. And the other thing, I think, to try to put a neat bow on it that you address is filling these empty buckets for people, right? If you, if you're not getting activity, obviously, that's the starting point. You know, we're having a lot of conversations around an exercise or a quick solution. And really, we're missing the big picture and, you know, I wonder PR is so popular in the fitness industry, and I think it's valuable. I almost wonder. If we just are all so sympathetically driven that the empty bucket for us is just taking a few breaths, chilling the fuck out and learning how to get the parasympathetic nervous system like a little bit more tone so we can just, you know, let go of some of the tension and pain that we probably are dealing with.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 45:12

Yeah, 100%. And, you know, You touched on something very interesting there, which I think is, is worth saying, right? So, like, first of all, somebody who doesn't understand PRI, maybe listens to this and thinks, Ah, Chaplin doesn't like PRI. No, I actually feel like it was one of the most valuable experiences I ever had, was diving into that biomechanical model, more learning how to think. As a result of diving into that, with respect to movement in multiple planes, with respect to understanding how position affects muscle function, with respect to how the autonomic nervous system and stress impacts movement patterns in the body. I think all that stuff is really, really, really valuable. So it's worth acknowledging that there's some real, real benefit from going in and learning. That right. I do think it suffers from the problem that we're talking about before it seems like, well, it's a specific simple, easy solution, right? Cognitively demanding, but physically not at all. Right. And therefore it's special and it's going to work. And there's a nice story attached to it that. You know, help calm down that uncertainty thing, right? So that's, that's good for a lot of us in the short term, but not so great in the long term. Okay. If we look at somebody who's doing a 90 90 hip lift on the wall with a hip shift, maybe that person is somebody who is very cognitively driven. They're a smart individual. And for them, just sitting around and doing meditation. That's not something they're going to do, right? They need a, uh, an explanation. That's a little bit more specific. That's a little bit more, um, covering all the bases, right? They think it's a mechanical thing. They want some element of that sprinkled into the explanation. So they get into the nine 90 hip lift, they get into the position. It's them breathing and connecting with their body and chilling the fuck out and getting their parasympathetic nervous system to come up that ends up giving them the positive benefit that they perceive from it, right? But then they misattribute that to the actual positional work and then they go and they obsess about having their left hip behind their right hip for every hour of their fucking lives, right? And of course, then that It drives them crazy and then drives the sympathetic system up, and then they try to do the exercise again, and it doesn't work, and they wonder why. Well, okay, we're human beings, right? There's a lot of psychology at play here. Now, I think if you could run the experiment, and this is what I did, which was, I had all the special techniques that I was doing, and then I had my meditation practice. And so, I was doing You know, I went out to Nebraska, I got the fancy glasses, did the whole, uh, integration, advanced integration, whatever, uh, treatment, you know, and it was a cool experience, man. Like I, I can't hate on it. Um, I'm not, I'm, I don't want to sit here and be one of those people that didn't get me better. Right, right. Again, that goes back to our previous conversation. It's, it's your responsibility to go on your own journey and people are going to kind of help you to varying levels along the way. And sometimes the insight that you get from something is more along the lines of like what didn't actually pan out. Right. The way that I thought it would maybe panned out a little bit differently. And this was an example of that. I went out there, I got the glasses and I came back and it was cool. I was like, ah, I do feel some benefit here, whatever. And then soon thereafter, you know, it wasn't working. Right. So I ditched the glasses, reached back out and I went hard into my meditation practice, right? So I just started meditating a lot more and I stopped doing any of those activities. I stopped wearing the glasses. I scheduled my consult. I went back out there. Yeah. And I'm like still doing my meditations. I've fucking meditated all the way out, meditated in the morning, my normal routine at that point, when I got there and I walked into the treatment room and wrong, the founder, he goes, Oh shit. He turns to Heidi Weiss at the time who was the optometrist. And he says, he's neutral without the glasses. He tests me. I'm neutral without the glasses. I haven't been doing the program. What had I been doing? I've been meditating. Well, what was that doing? It was regulating my autonomic nervous system into a more parasympathetic state. So that did help the pattern by their definition, but I wasn't doing their interventions. And when I was doing their interventions, I was feeling objectively worse or subjectively worse, right? So to your point, sometimes it could be something as simple. As just hanging out and breathing and relaxing a lot of us, we need that story attached to it. So we have too much resistance to the solution being that simple. Now, I have a whole nother experience here that I think can drive your point about being sympathetically driven home, right? Pandemic hits. Okay, I am in like peak health anxiety mode where it's just like, Oh my God, I got a history of a childhood heart problem. That's, you know, we got an unknown pathogen. Is this going to predispose me towards dying? And my, you know, alert stuff starts going haywire and something about that level of perceived threat triggered in me something where I go, pain no longer matters. What matters is that I am physiologically fit enough to increase the probability that if I get infected with this thing, I am not going to die. And it was like that, that priority ladder shifted where I went, fuck chronic pain. Who cares? I'll take a little bit more pain. I gotta be fit. And so I start doing what I would do with anyone if I was designing a conditioning program, you know, 70 to 80 percent of my volume was probably like steady distance stuff. Um, you know, I was doing a lot of intervals, like tempo interval type things. Um, You know, starting with just like 12 seconds on recover, you know, number of rounds working up to like 30 seconds on recover number of rounds, then working up to like race pace things going five Ks and eventually working up to like 10 Ks. Cause I just went deep. I went all the way deep into, you know, really just doing some, some dedicated energy system development work. Um, and because I had such a fucked up relationship with exercise at that point, I was. You know, supplementing with some like kettlebell circuits, but super nonspecific. And the reason that I kept it nonspecific was I said, I, uh, Peter Parker principle, I can't handle this right now because if I'm in here trying to do something movement wise, I'm going to freak the fuck out. And I'm going to be like, Oh, should I have this here or here or here? Like I knew I was too fragile and from my, my mindset and my relationship with movement to have it be something specific. So I was like, let me choose running. I'll do running. Right. And as I went through, there were aches and pains that came up. There were plenty of times where I'm like, I think I'm feeling my right abductor too much and whatever other things, you know, which were contextually important to me, given my previous experience with PRI, I said, you know what, fuck this, my, my, the importance of me being healthy enough to increase the probability of survival is now more important than the rest. So I kept seeing it through and, and for monitoring purposes, I was wearing my heart rate monitor I would take my resting heart rate frequently. I would take my heart rate variability, uh, score in the morning, and then I'd do it again after exercise to monitor, and um, you know, gradually increase my training volume over the course of that, let's say like three to six months, and by the end of that six months, You know, I was running, you know, six, seven, eight miles at a whack, not particularly fast. I mean, it's not exactly my strong suit, but the thing that was crazy to me was most of my pain was gone, right? And so the combination of mindfulness, general resistance training, and mostly energy system development work was really what took me from 10 years of inexplicable chronic pain to mostly pain free. And it just was like that experience separated the signal and the noise. Because then the movement tendencies that were somewhat, um, let's say stable across time that were asymmetrical between left and right sides now became a lot more apparent where it's like, Oh, okay, I'm much more fit. I'm much stronger. That right hip still kind of always does that thing. But the 10 other things that I was experiencing. Those all got better. Right. So it allowed me to see like, maybe this is something where I go and I look in a little bit more of a, um, isolated sense at looking how that's moving and addressing that through some, you know, corrective type exercises, if you will, or more targeted queuing within the context of my lifting program, whereas everything else, you know, just got better as a result of overall kind of raising that tide, if you will. Right. And so to your point, it's like, what did all that training do? Well, it strengthened the hell out of my parasympathetic nervous system. It helped me recover, helped me manage my fatigue, gave me some variability in my movement. And, it's like, wouldn't you guess, I felt better as a result of doing it. It wasn't the special solution I thought I needed. Right. But thank God that that was what was going on at the time and I was motivated to do it because I don't know if any professional in person that I would go to see could have convinced me to do that.

Ryan Patrick: 54:47

Yeah. So you, so for anyone in pain, you just need bigger problems.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 54:52

Well, yeah, sometimes, you know, it's if you can, it's like anything else, man, like even in business too, I think about the times I've been most motivated to like get after it and create results for myself. And it's always in times of, of relative stress. Like I was living with my parents, rent free, didn't have, you know, any overhead expenses, started my businesses, my business there. And then when I was going to move out, I was like, I don't have enough clients to really move out. I left my clinic job. And so now I'm like moving into this place. That's like expensive to live in. You know, with my girlfriend and I want to have money so I can afford to live, you know, and not have to go back to the clinic, which I hated working in the clinic. So I'm like, okay, what's, what am I going to do? And then it's amazing. The self organization that happens automatically, just your brain goes, we know what has to be done. And it does it right. So I think, you know, if you are that person who's motivated by, um, health and feeling good long term and longevity, one of the most pragmatic things that you can do to give yourself that old kick in the pants is start reading about. All cause mortality risk with people who are not doing their cardio and people who are not doing their resistance training and people who are not adequately controlling their stress and people who have a bad sleep routine and people who are not in on their nutrition, start really looking into that and understand that you, like if your trade is to give that stuff up to focus on fancy rehab exercises, because the story you're telling yourself is I need to get this before I can do this. You are objectively shaving years off your life. Based on that story, you're telling yourself, which might not even be true. It's like, let that sink in for a second. If you're really motivated by the avoidance of negative secondary consequences.

Ryan Patrick: 56:47

Yeah. I think about the, uh, all the people who, um, are inspired to start training after a heart attack, right? Like it's, it becomes very real, right? They have something tangible. Like, wow, I, I narrowly escaped the jaws of death. And. Now, my high cholesterol is an issue. It's something I need to address. My, uh, 50 extra pounds that I'm carrying around is very, uh, it's become a little bit more urgent that I get rid of this. There's 1 other thing that I was thinking about when you were talking about your, your running that I think is worth mentioning to is, um, 1, there's probably a substantial amount of dopamine release associated with that kind of activity, which can be massive in terms of pain reduction. And then the other thing is that, you know, you're trying, we're talking about, uh, mindfulness. We're talking about, you know, moving in new ways and just, uh, the, the learning in the nervous system that has to occur with that. And if anyone's familiar with it, I think, uh, I can't remember the name of the book spark. I can't remember the author, but they talk about, you know, brain derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF and its implications in. You know, wiring new neural pathways, which, you know, people who are in chronic pain can kind of get stuck in these networks. And again, this is not my, not my wheelhouse, but I just think about how much those 2 factors, um, are just kind of at work, you know, on the, the infrastructure of what people are feeling and experiencing as we're kind of working through these symptoms. And just really, I mean, all you're trying to do is build a robust energy system, you know, and that was. Yeah. A potential side effect that was really, really beneficial.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 58:21

Yeah. And I think there's two things here, right? So BDNF is going to be something that the production is upregulated with both aerobic and resistance type exercise, right? So regardless of if we're in an anaerobic energy system or an aerobic energy system, BDNF production is going to spike within the window around that activity. Right. So if what we're trying to do is rewire neural pathways. But if we're taking that approach, right, we want to start to think about, okay, this is probably, you know, for, for as much as we know about it right now, this is probably improving neuroplasticity, our ability to change these networks in the brain, right? So if somebody is interested in kind of like fast tracking their results, let's say. And you were to take somebody who's doing that energy system development work and these positional drills versus someone who's just doing these positional drills. I think if we get down to the physiology of it, there's a strong case to be made for that this person in group A is going to get better results than group B. The kind of mistaken belief that I think holds a lot of people back is, am I going to be made worse by doing this other exercise in combination with this positional stuff? I got to get the positional thing good first and then earn the right to do these other things. And this is language, you know, unfortunately I've heard at these type seminars and it's language that I hear perpetuated by people who are in those sort of camps, let's say, where they go, well, you know, we got to keep you on your back doing the. Stuff on the wall before we can get you up because you know, you haven't earned the right against gravity, whatever. And from my perspective. I look at postural strategies as a way to meet task demands, whatever those tasks are. And if your ability to meet those tasks demands is below the imposition of stress from those tasks, then we're going to run into a problem, right? So it's not the asymmetrical pattern per se. That's the issue. That's just a strategy. But if you have to apply it 100 percent of the time, because you're running on afterburners so much and your ability to actually keep up with that is, Not adequate for whatever reason, even if you're highly trained, right? Like it doesn't matter. It's just a relative equation of what are the demands of your tasks and you know, can you meet them or not? Yes or no. And if the answer to that is no, you're going to lean on whatever strategies you have available to you. And if those happen to be, you're dropping a shoulder one way and rotating the pelvis the other way. And that ends up restricting some mobility. Then the issue is not just the position. The position is actually usually more of a symptom than a cause, and it's your inability to meet the task demands. Now you take someone who's full on, you know, they're, they're pretty well trained, but their task demands are just out of control, right? Now we're talking about adult decisions, right? Do we, do we want to understand what's going on and redline you because you're going to, you know, compete in some way, and then there's going to be a. Kind of a deload period after, and you just get through this. That's an adult decision. Or is it like, Hey, let's recognize that the demands of these tasks, even though you're relatively well trained are just way too fucking high. And right now with our little positional drills, we're just pissing on a wildfire or we're throwing, you know, lawn chairs off the Titanic, like it's not going to make a difference here. So let's be real. We've got to lower the demands of your tasks, right? To our conversation earlier, it's so often that people who. Already don't have a lot of task demand and are not very prepared for even the low level of task demand they have. Those are often the people who are more prone to like, let me get on my back and breathe. And then the people who are like gunning it, you know, like redlining it, like those are the people who are like, want to train harder, like, Oh yeah, let me get more resilient. It's like, dude, you're already pretty fucking resilient, man. It's just like the imposition of stress that you have is completely nonsensical and we need to actually distribute that in a better way. And it's just the wrong person getting the wrong idea. I've been. All of those people, you know, and worked with all those people. And it's like, all of us just need to find some semblance of balance there. You know, it's, it's, it's actually not that deep, but it's often, we need that objective person to come in and say, Oh yeah, that's what you do. Right. Yeah. Like if we can't be that,

Ryan Patrick: 1:02:45

I love solving problems by just using more force.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:02:49

Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So anyways, it's, it's, you know, these postural strategies in and of themselves. From my perspective are not occurring in a vacuum. Right. And we just need to, you know, help these people, you know, back to that example of you have the person who's doing these, you know, cyclical aerobic activities on a bike or something that are triggering off this cascade of, you know, neurotransmitters and growth factors, which is super beneficial and going to help them with neuroplasticity versus the person who's not, we need to make sure that the narrative we're giving to those people is, Hey, you know, Not only is this doing all those great things to potentially create an environment that's more conducive to this healing process or this retraining process, also what we're doing there is we are raising your overall ability to meet task demands, which is the tide that raises all ships. Yep. Right. And sometimes, and this is, this is short term versus longterm thinking, right? Sometimes you need to go on that run or do that bike or do that circuit of exercises and come out of it a little bit tighter, come out of it, maybe given up a little bit mobility, not feeling as good in the moment, right? Because you're playing with that threshold of what your ability is, right? Or you're exposing your body to some movements that maybe it's a little bit fearful of, right? And the response isn't. In the short term, super amazing, if you can do that and then get enough stimulus that you can then progress, that response is going to improve the tolerance to those activities are going to improve well, your capacity to actually meet the demands of your task also improves. And so as all that gets better, the need to even use those asymmetrical postural strategies is going to decrease what we're talking about in a long term timescale versus a short term. So the person who gets on the floor and does the breathing drill, yeah, they have a reduction in the use of that strategy in the short term. But if they're giving up their actual training to do that, that is a horrible trade. Right? Because ultimately they're just in, they're becoming more deconditioned, which is increasing their need to use that strategy in the first place.

Ryan Patrick: 1:04:59

Yeah. I mean, how many people rest? You know, to deal with pain and it simply gets better because there's just a sensation and they're just below the threshold, but maybe they haven't really addressed or change anything. So they start, they go back to resuming activity and then there's, you know, right back to where they started and then they're less in shape. Maybe they've lost some muscle mass and these problems kind of just, you know, exacerbate because they're not really approaching it with the right frame of mind.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:05:27

Yeah. And it's the locus of control again, you know, so if you train and you have a little bit of a flare up, but then you say, okay, that's how my body responded. Now I'm going to respond to that response in a really skillful way and flex my skills of emotional regulation and mindfulness and maybe application of some mobility work or some active recovery work, whatever it might be. Now all of a sudden you get this positive exposure to a flare up where a flare up in and of itself becomes a skill and you go, I can work out despite. Having some discomfort during the workout or after the workout and it's totally fine. I can still get my stimulus in even while I have a little bit of this discomfort. And over time, what that does in a chronic pain situation is it takes that threat detection mechanism that's so keyed up. Right. All that response and it just pulls it down a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time, right? You're triggering it off with the exposure, but then you're just coaxing your brain. Oh, no, we're actually all right here. It's okay to experience this. And the more you normalize experiencing that, the less threatening it is. So I go into a workout after 20 favorable exposures to little mini flare ups like that and I go, I have a flare up doesn't fucking matter. Right. That is supreme internal locus of control, right? That pain is not in control of me. If I do the whole cessation of. Activity when I have pain and I can't go back into activity until I'm pain free. Well, where's the control there? It's with the pain, right? And that means that your threat detection mechanism when you start to re engage in that activity Is now going to be completely toned up. It was already toned up to begin with you didn't need it any more toned, right? in It sucks because you know, sometimes you think you're doing the most skillful thing because it's the conventional wisdom that's been bestowed upon us. You know, Oh honey, you're not feeling good. We need a rest, right? Take it easy. Take it easy. Whatever. And the next thing you know, what you really did is you taught your brain movement isn't safe, right? And then you wonder why you have an increased probability of a flare up the next time you go back into participating in that activity. You know, and this is the vicious cycle that people in pain do. And it's a strange thing. I have a, I have a whole theory on this that, you know, and this is kind of out there, this is, who knows, this is maybe a little bit unbounded, but let's go there anyway. So, um, chronic pain can become an identity, right? It starts to become so much of your everyday experience that it's just what you're used to kind of becomes a little bit of who you are, right? Whether that's on a conscious level or, or an unconscious level, I think it's usually unconscious. You know, on the one hand, it's a really bad experience. You want to get out of it, but on the other hand, it's actually kind of reliable and comfortable. Lisa, this is my experience of it. And so sometimes you get back into training and you already have a high degree of threat detection around movement itself. Having the confirmation of pain within that context is actually in a strange way, a little bit comforting, right? Because if you start to take that personal responsibility, you take that action and you say, you know what, I'm going to keep pushing forward and find that right amount and deal with all these negative emotions like every single day. And I'm just going to keep with it. That's tough. Right. But if you go, I'm going to kind of overshoot it a little bit here. I'm going to get back into activity. I'm going to confirm my preexisting belief about exercise is not safe for me, which will then allow me to withdraw from activity and be able to feel comfortable in my identity of being the person in pain who can't, right? And I think it's hard to, to, to deal with that because. Your ego, which is essentially there for protection, it wants to kind of keep you safe, if you are identified with being the person in pain, and you start taking actions in accordance with being a person who is not in pain, a person who is pain free, which is a complete identity shift, this means that you will have to kill off that old identity, and you'll have to step into this new one. It is a kind of rebirth of sorts that happens, right? You know, same thing, you know, if you're a clinician and you're leaving the clinic gig to go full time remote. It's a whole different. Right. If you are, I imagine, I don't know this, but if you're a non parent and then you become a parent. Right. I think there is a complete identity shift there and there's a lot of anxiety and panic on an existential level. That's associated with those kinds of shifts, those transitions. Right. And unfortunately, like for the pain thing, a lot of times it's actually on us. To make that transition happen. It's not something that life is just going to bring our way. Unlike some of these other things that just kind of happen, right? This is like, usually something that's going to have to be very intentional and going to have to be, I'm making a commitment to myself to continue to take these actions, even though the discomfort of it is almost unbearable, both physically and psychologically. And unfortunately, a lot of us just don't have the tools for that. Right. And going back to my earlier point, we, we, we feel that it's unfair. Well, why do I have to go through all this? Why do I have to struggle this much? Before this happened, it was all totally fine. Can't you just give me the exercise to fix it? Again, we're in a new situation. Your brain is behaving differently, right? We do. If you look at a brain that's not in pain and a brain that's now exhibiting a chronic pain syndrome, you're going to see two very different Uh, brain behaviors, right? And there's fMRI scans on this. And so, when you're dealing with a different brain, that impacts the way you move, think, feel, all your daily functions, your sleep, everything, and it's not fair, right? But it happens, right? And you can either take the approach of, this happened to me, right? Or, maybe this is something that's gonna help me grow, this happened for me. Yeah. You know, and that shift is hard to make and it's hard to empower people to, to take that step and not everyone's ready. And you know, one of my things to, um, rehab providers or strength coaches, personal trainers, anyone that's going to work with people who are in pain, don't tie your identity to getting someone to take that step. Some people just are not ready. Right. And you may be that stepping stone for that person that maybe they want to try, they want to focus on something and you're going to say, Hey, there's other stuff here that I'd like you to do. This is probably going to be more beneficial. Your beliefs are that you want to work on this, which I think is not the best use of time, but I'm happy to guide you through that process. You want to work on positional drills on the floor? Fine. Right. Not what I would choose. You, you hired me. Not what I would choose. I would do this, this, and this, and I'd sprinkle some of that in maybe. But if you think that's what it is for you right now, and that's all you can do, I'll guide you through it the best I can. And if, if, if those results aren't favorable from that, which they're probably not going to be for everything that we've already talked about on the call today, you know that you go, I gave that person the education of what I thought the best plan was. They weren't ready to necessarily make that jump yet. And I did the best I could to meet their expectations while they're under my care. It is not your job. You are not, you know, responsible for their healing. You're just a guide.

Ryan Patrick: 1:12:59

Yeah, I have been in that place many times as a coach, right? You try to essentially put people on your back and carry them across the finish line. And when they don't make it, or they don't reap the result, then, you know, you wear this as a personal badge of failure. And when you're talking about these, these identities, I'm reminded the old quote of, you know, it's not your fault, but it's your responsibility, right? This identity of I'm a chronic pain patient is not something that you invited. or willingly chose, you just kind of handed that. But on the flip side, we have to make a conscious choice. to get out of the situation and start to choose to change our identity. And that's really tough because we've got athletes who get injured and they, they might be former athletes now and they have to contend with that. So definitely, uh, there's just a lot of complexity wrapped up into that. And this is, man, we've been going over an hour. We probably need to get back on and do this again at some point. Cause I feel like we could keep, we could keep going, but, uh, we hit so, we hit such a broad, uh, Scope of topics today, you know, what are, what are some of the just like quick hitting take home messages that you just want to reiterate and really drive the nail home for people that are listening today?

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:14:12

Yeah, um, don't wait to get moving. Number 1, if you're not moving move, if you're moving a bunch. Find different ways to move. Don't make it too complex. If you need help, get help from someone. The most important thing isn't that person's skill set per se. It's the relationship you build with that person. Don't be afraid to get outside of your comfort zone. Fill in the gaps, right? Back to your, what you said about buckets. If you haven't worked on something and you know it could be beneficial, consider diving in. And there's, there's so many other insights, but just show up and do the work, right? And to whatever extent, you know, to whatever level of results you get, just work on being able to accept those results without judgment. Look at it as feedback, iterate on that and improve. And if you keep doing that day in and day out, the outcome will happen as a natural consequence of that process.

Ryan Patrick: 1:15:18

Yeah, that's awesome. All right. So on a, on a lighter level, let's add a little levity to this. What is, what's your training look like? Cause I see you posting. A lot of PRs here and there on the socials.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:15:30

Yeah. So my training is literally for, for no specific goal, um, these days. Um, so what I enjoy doing in the gym is around, you know, I like deadlifts a lot. I like squatting, um, cause I'm reasonably okay at those two things. Um, so I, I enjoy doing those. Um, I would love to. Build those lifts up and get stronger and reap the, the rewards of that from both the hypertrophy and, um, strength, you know, side, I really have found that, um, the gym is like, it's the part of the day I look forward to the most out of anything. Like, I just look at it as, I think I heard Joe Rogan said this at some point, but it's like, if, if, if the hardest thing I, if I know the hardest thing I'm going to do in the day is like my training, everything else seems easier. So I kind of take that approach. Um, but you know, my long term training goals are sort of just to be, uh, fit and strong enough to, you know, someday kind of get back to playing music a little bit more full time. So not that I'm not already, but, um, I'm, I'm optimizing other things in my life to kind of go down that path in terms of my business. So I'm just trying to, you know, Be as prepared as possible on the physical side. Uh, and then my new phase of training, basically I launched my educational product, which is total body restoration. And with it, I designed some strength conditioning programs that are like a team training kind of format. So I'm currently testing those and it's been very interesting. So I'm doing, now I'm switching to a lot of unilateral exercises, a lot of different planes of motion, a lot of full body, a lot of moderate rep ranges. Uh, even, uh, you know, a lot of like aerobic conditioning, baseline stuff, all the shit that I don't like to do, to be frank, that probably will return me a whole lot of benefit, given the fact that I've been doing heavy compounds mostly for the last like six to eight months. So I'm excited to see what changes come as a result of doing kind of some of this work that honestly, like, just feels like it sucks. Like I kind of 12 to 15. On like single leg glute bridges, you know, I just like, who wants to do that? I just, let me lift between, you know, four and six reps or four and 10 reps, like, like 10 and below is, is perfect. But you know, like I have people do all sorts of shit, right. You know, training wise and people have their preferences and whatever. And I just. I think that it's good every once in a while to go through that, that transition of like, okay, I've been doing this for a little bit. Now what happens if I just, let me do a phase where I hit some moderate rep ranges. And like I did a whole, um, I did like a whole mesocycle of like eight weeks where I was doing a ton of density work. And a ton of like mile rep match sets and drop sets and things like that, like highly fatiguing stuff that probably had the worst stimulus to fatigue ratio of all time, to be frank, um, you know, and, and doing a lot of it, right. And got a little banged up doing it, but it was just fun, man, just to fuck around and find out. And, um. Almost in a celebratory manner to be like, man, you know, I used to be the person who avoided the gym because of pain and now I'm the person who's like doing all this crazy stuff, you know, it's going to just tire me out and you know, I'm probably going to want to take a nap later, just not even the stuff I would program for people with just fucking fun stuff, man, you know, and I don't know, and now I'm jealous when I look on, uh, social media, I see all the people doing plyometrics and stuff. So that'll probably be the next phase.

Ryan Patrick: 1:19:06

Yeah, it's fun, man. It's I mean, I don't know how old you are, but like I'm turning the corner to 40 So it's like if I don't do this shit, like yeah, I'm 38. So I'm like if I don't do this shit. I'm gonna be like I ain't going to get it back. So I'm kind of like, hang on for as long as I can.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:19:23

What's your split look like?

Ryan Patrick: 1:19:25

Uh, right now. Um, so my priority is, uh, jujitsu, um, which kind of started by virtue of basically wrecking my back powerlifting. Um, Still love it though. Still love just the heavy, heavy shit, but it was nice to get around and roll around and actually just like feel my body move again. So last year, um, I spent a tremendous amount of time doing the assault bike and I got really, really good at it in terms of just improving my numbers. But when I got to competition, the, the trend, the transfer was like just horribly low. I don't have a moxie or anything, but I suspect that with me being a very concentrically. Oriented just constantly, like, in Batman mode, you know, lifting that the, the bike may not be the best tool because of it's, it's purely concentric action. Like, there's really no eccentric. And so, um, even though I got some central adaptations in terms of, like, heart rate. Great. I'm just not sure that I really got the profusion distally to really improve my endurance because I just felt gassed, you know, and so this year, this year, I'm actually, so I'm still lifting to maintain like, that's fine. Um, it's pretty, pretty steady split of like, 2, 3 days a week of lifting, you know, primary lift is going to be, you know, your bilateral big 3. And then a lot of unilateral work after that, but I'm spending a lot of time doing running this year, um, just because there's a little bit more, uh, eccentric action. And I'm just interested really to see

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:20:59

how

Ryan Patrick: 1:20:59

it improves. And if it, if it transfers to those activities a little bit better. So it's been, it's been an exploration. I'm not, I'm not a runner. I don't love it, but it's gotten tremendously better just in the The like month or two that I've been doing it.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:21:13

Yeah. So when you were doing the, um, salt bike, right. You're saying that it, that didn't carry over into jujitsu performance.

Ryan Patrick: 1:21:22

I didn't feel like it did.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:21:24

Yeah. So even though you're not, I spent the

Ryan Patrick: 1:21:27

most, yeah. I mean, I spent the most time. working on it that I ever had. I mean, it's two, three days a week. I had combination of like, you know, lower intensity, steady state, uh, tempo intervals, some very high intensity stuff would do, uh, you know, kind of medley type stuff where I do, you know, jack my heart rate up and then go into jujitsu moves, whether it's like a sit through or, um, you know, sprawls or. Burpee type exercises. Um, and it just, I just felt like I guessed out really fast and I was probably hitting my best mile time or two mile time on the bike. So we do like either a five minute or two mile test. I mean, I was coming in like sub four 30. So, I mean, I was cooking. You, but it just,

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:22:09

but

Ryan Patrick: 1:22:10

yeah, but I mean, I got on mass and I was gas, you know, I have to, there's other factors involved, right? There's a tremendous adrenaline dump and, you know, it's different moves, but it just, uh, I did not feel like it was, uh. It made a huge impact for me.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:22:25

So what do you, it just, if, if you have an idea of post hoc, like, do you feel like you can narrow it down to certain energy system performance or not?

Ryan Patrick: 1:22:39

I don't know. I think that the way I would really like to test is to get a moxie and see how much. Unloading of oxygen is actually happening happening in certain tissues, right? So guys, we'll stop that that nearest device. Um, you can see, you know, what that's like. And so there's different protocols. I don't know. It's not an area that I've explored in extreme depth. Yeah, I mean, like Evan, Evan Picon stuff would be like the avenue to, to really start investigating that. So I'm just, just trying at like a very, uh, simplistic level of let's try a different modality this year and see what the results are.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:23:14

Cause from my limited understanding of his work, it's like you could have that central pumping and then you have like sort of like the peripheral, like occlusal nature of like, okay, if distally you're super concentric and then you, you can't. Pump essentially. Yeah. So my

Ryan Patrick: 1:23:33

suspicion is you get, uh, just massive venous return because of the concentric action of the bike. So I feel this, my heart rate spike,

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:23:42

but

Ryan Patrick: 1:23:42

I'm just not, but I'm just not sure that it's really profusing deep into the tissue the way that I want because of the nature of activities that I do. And just that I'm always like, you know, super tense.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:23:53

That's so interesting, man, because like when I'm on the way off, I have no idea either, but, um, You know, when I'm on the assault bike, it's just the, if I do like my max output testing and I know my rate limiter is always aerobic foundation. I grew up with a heart condition and I never really made an honest effort at like baseline aerobic conditioning. Even when I was doing a lot of my energy system development, you know, I was trying to do like 70, 80 percent like zone two, but I'd always be on the high side of zone two, just cause it would literally have to be a crawl for me to be running. Like I'm much more like hyper responsive from a heart rate perspective. So I'm like almost always kind of approaching a threshold of glycolytic, you know, dominance, let's say, even if it's on the low end of that. So I could probably give a better like college try at really like developing a robust aerobic system a bit more. And I think just personally, that would probably be my rate limiter. I would, I would just be suspicious about, but I'm noticing on the assault bike. That I'll go to what I would perceive to be like, let's say like my, like max outputs, like 600, you know, Watts for like 15 seconds or something like a totally all out. And if I'm prescribing like on a interval of 20 seconds or something, like I'm going to try to be between 50 and 70 percent output there.

Ryan Patrick: 1:25:14

Yeah,

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:25:15

if I get into that, then for like the remainder of that, like, let's say if it's like a two minute block and then like the remainder of that rest interval, I struggle to bring it down to zone two and if I get to zone two, it's upper end. And then I'm back up at one 60, like right away, but I, you know, I don't know what the corollary to that is running last. Cause it's just like the modalities are obviously like so different, but I've noticed that that spike right now. And I can't, I can't separate the signal from noise and that data yet. Cause I'm. much aerobically less fit than I was the last time I was doing this. So I'm interested to see like, you know, I'm not as strong in terms of my understanding of on the conditioning side as I want to be. And, uh, I'm interested to see from like a heart rate response standpoint, if that normalizes and it gets better, or if it's like there is some modality specific difference there, which could be. Yeah. I'm totally

Ryan Patrick: 1:26:16

curious too. Cause I mean, I would see the outputs go up, but, uh, Um, the peaks and valleys were, were pretty, pretty similar across the board, right? It's just, I could do it at a higher intensity, which I mean, that's our, the running joke is for me is the bike is undefeated. Cause even if you get better at it, it's just, it just gets more wind resistance, right?

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:26:41

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, yeah, it's, it's interesting. I hear, you know, everyone that's an actual endurance athlete. You know, talking about like zone two, zone two, zone two. Then like, I understand it. I've researched it. I've helped other people, you know, implement it or whatever. But for myself, I always just found like, man, like zone two is a hard place to be. Like, I don't know. It's fucking so slow, dude. I feel like I got best, the best zone two, but shape I got in was like. Going down at lunchtime to shoot an hour of basketball shots, where it was mainly shoot, walk, shoot, walk, shoot, jog a little bit, walk, whatever. Because if I'm continuously even jogging at a fairly light pace, I'm going to come up to the top of the zone too. Yeah, it's like

Ryan Patrick: 1:27:29

walking uphill, maybe rucking with an extra 20 pounds. Like it's not, I mean, I feel like it's easy to get there.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:27:37

Yeah, it's too easy. Cleaning the house,

Ryan Patrick: 1:27:39

you know.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:27:40

Um, it's been a pleasure, dude. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Ryan Patrick: 1:27:44

I appreciate it, man. This was this was fun. I, I really enjoyed having you on. I know we've been trying to do this for a little while. So, um, just as a wrap up, you know, where can people find more more about you?

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:27:55

Uh, let's see. So, if you want an inside look into my training. And then you can go chaplain performance, uh, on Instagram, if you want to hear me nerd out a little bit, go to YouTube, I'll post some podcasts there and I'm doing some more of them. Those are going to be more like kind of thought piece things, or I'm just going to pick a topic and rant for 20 minutes. And then if you want to, um, watch some more exercise solution oriented videos, YouTube is a good place for that. Um, hopefully you'll hear this call before you go see some of those. Um, you know, some of those older videos, like I, I have just changed my content, uh, pretty dramatically based on a lot of what we talked about. Uh, uh, And today, and, um, if you want to kind of jump in on some training or some education and, you know, link trees and website and all that good stuff, a lot of big changes coming, uh, within the next year, definitely getting into more mentoring coaches and trainers and therapists who want to improve their skillset and some of this stuff. And, you know, even looking into maybe helping some people, uh, advance in business and do the remote training thing, which is now, I guess what I do full time, that's what I tell people when they ask me at least, so.

Ryan Patrick: 1:29:13

That's awesome. Yeah, I'll make sure I tag both the Instagram and I probably need to jump on the YouTube. I don't know if I've ever seen you share or post that. So I'm going to check that out myself, but man, I appreciate you. I'll make sure I direct people your way and let you know when this this gets posted. But, uh. Folks, that's all I got for you today, man. So thanks so much, man. See you, John, and take care.

Dr. Greg Chaplin, DPT: 1:29:32

Thank you, man.