85. The Truth About Chronic Pain No One Told You—And How to Reverse It Naturally

What if the pain you’ve been told to “live with” isn’t inevitable at all?

In this powerful episode of Joy of the Hang, Sharon sits down with Bruce Phelps—creator of the Stretch n’ Release Technique, founder of The Muscle Repair Shop, and author of Stretch n’ Release—to challenge everything we think we know about chronic pain, aging, and healing.

With a background in Aging Sciences and over two decades of hands-on experience, Bruce has helped thousands of people move beyond pain without relying on prescriptions, injections, or surgery. But what makes his story even more compelling is that his breakthrough didn’t begin in a lab—it began in his own body. While carrying an extra 135 pounds and battling severe back pain, Bruce set out to solve a problem most people are told to accept.

Together, Sharon and Bruce explore:

• Why pain is often misunderstood—and misdiagnosed
• The difference between managing pain and actually fixing it
• What your body is trying to tell you (and why most people miss it)
• How the Stretch n’ Release Technique works in real life
• What it really takes to reclaim mobility, strength, and confidence at any age

This conversation isn’t just about physical pain—it’s about reclaiming ownership of your body, challenging limiting beliefs, and realizing that what you’ve accepted as “normal” may not be normal at all.

If you’ve ever been told, “that’s just part of getting older,” this episode may change everything.

https://a.co/d/0gS8fdAS

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Joy the Hang. I'm your host, Sharon Stevenson. We talk a lot about resilience on this show, about what it takes to keep going when life gets hard. But today's conversation challenges something even more fundamental. What if the pain so many people are living with every day isn't something they have to accept at all? Most people believe aches, stiffness, and chronic pain are just part of getting older, something to manage, something to live with. But today's guest has spent over 20 years proving that idea completely wrong. I'm joined by Butch Phelps, creator of the stretch and release technique. He wrote a book by the same name, which those of you are listening cannot see, but you can purchase. He's founder of the muscle repair shop and author of Stretch and Release. But here's what makes the story so compelling. This didn't start in a lab or a clinic. It started in his own body. At one point, Butch was carrying an extra 135 pounds and dealing with severe back pain. When conventional approaches weren't working, he did something most people don't. He got curious. He got disciplined and he started experimenting. What he discovered didn't just change his life. It became a method that's now helping thousands of people rethink pain, movement, and what's actually possible as we age. This is a conversation about taking your power back, physically, mentally, and personally. So if you've ever been told that's just part of getting older, you're gonna want to hear this. Let's hang today with Butch Phelps. Welcome to you.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Thank you, Sharon. It's good to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yeah. So take us back to the moment you realize what I'm being told is not working. What was happening in your body and your life?

SPEAKER_02 1:36

I I was actually working, as we were talking about earlier, working in in corporate America, and I was 37 years old.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

I went to my doctor, my GP. I had been with her several times. And she ran a blood test and she said to me, Come to my office, let's talk about this. So we did for a little bit. And she said to me, At 37 years old with a background history or medical history of heart disease and blood pressure, high blood pressure. She, I would be willing to bet $100 you'll have a stroke by 40 every day.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Yikes. Which is a real wake-up call. That's a wake-up call.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

And I was like, What? What? That can't be true.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

And so lucky for me, she'd gone back to school and studied nutrition. So she was very um well educated on that. But she said to me, I'm not going to give you a diet. I'm going to play with your mind. I'm going to change how you think about food. I'm going to change your whole relationship to food. I'm going to teach you how not only to lose a weight, but how to keep it off once you get to that point. So in 1997, she worked with me pretty much on a weekly basis for like 18 months. And I lost 105 pounds at that point, um, just by following her advice. So most people they get on the diet and they learn how to cut my calories here and cut my calories there, calories in, calories out kind of thing. What she did was she said, you know, you look at your plate, you want 75% of your plate to be vegetables, 20% of your plate to be protein, and 5% of your plate to be your sweet potatoes, your white potatoes and carbs, your simple carbs kind of thing. So, but she said, here's the secret to it eat the vegetables first because it'll load your body with the fiber so that when you get into the protein and you get into the simple carbs, what will happen there is that you'll reduce the glucose spike, which reduces the insulin spike, which causes you to gain weight. So I did. And then she started talking to me about I used to drink soft drinks and snacks and all kinds of crazy things. And she said, I won't even have to talk to you about that because after you start learning about how it's affecting your body, now what you'll do, you'll stop even thinking about that. So she said, What I want you to start with is think about food as fuel, not an emotional thing. I was an emotional eater. You know, I ate something my mom had cooked or my grandmother had cooked. And I was like, ah, this is great, you know. And when I started looking at it in the same way I did with my car, right as fuel, things clicked. And when they did, that's when I started losing the weight. But it took me about 18 months with exercise to lose that weight. And I did. And then from 1998 to 2020, I maintained that weight, didn't gain a pound during that time. And then at 2020, I went to see a new GP because the one I had had retired. And she was talking to me about the BMI scale. I was about, I'm 6'4. I was about 2'10 at the time. And she said, Well, based on the BMI scale, you're a little overweight. You need to lose some weight. And I said, Well, how much do you think I should lose? And she said, Oh, probably about 30 pounds based on the BMI scale.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

But that sounds like a lot.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

It sounds like a lot. So COVID was happening. My office was closed. And I said to my wife, I'm gonna teach her, I'm gonna teach her what that looks like. I'm gonna teach her a lesson here. So I went home, did the same thing I learned before, dropped 30 more pounds. Wow. Went down to 180. So I went back as a follow-up. And when I walked in, she was like, Oh my god, you've lost way too much weight. And I said, This is where you said I was supposed to be. And of course I gained back about 15 pounds. But yeah, anyway, that was a story in that. But that's how I did that.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

180 at 6'4 is what is way low. Low, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

But that's what the BMI skill had said. Because it doesn't account for muscle mass, and I never really bought into it, but I'd had several doctors talk about it, and I said, I'm gonna show her this time what that looks like.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

So I love the story, and I love that you're talking about this happened in 1997. Yeah. So this is way before Ozempic control. Oh, yeah, and all of that started to become uh mainstream. So you basically just did it with diet and exercise. Diet and exercise, yeah. Slow and steady, 18 months.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

But but the key to that is when you look at food, instead of looking about, oh god, grandma always made lasagna, I love that. You know, I always had the apple pie. When I look at food, it's like I go to the gas pump. So my car runs on unleaded fuel.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

And so the this was an example the doctor gave me. She said, So if you pull up to the first pump, there's three pumps. The first one is kerosene. Do you put it in your car? And I'm like, no. She said, but it's the cheapest and most convenient. How about the second one? It's diesel fuel. I said, no, she goes, well, it's a little bit more expensive, but it's still convenient. My car runs on unleaded. And she said, yes, so does your body.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

I love that analogy.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Which is perfect. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

I know. I used to say the same thing, like feed your body fuel as though you would a car, right? Same kind of thing. If you want your car to last longer, you're going to give it its oil changes and take care of it and maintain it.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

Exactly right. It's amazing how much longer they last.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

It's amazing how much longer a car will last if you actually maintain it. And you will too. And you will too. I know. It's so true. So what did that teach you? I mean, you went through that long journey. Was there and let's talk about the lasagna and the pie? Because we all now and then we're at an event, Thanksgiving, a holiday party, whatever. Right. And that's what your guest is uh your host is serving. And how do you manage those?

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Yeah, which is an interesting thing.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

So those events.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

I'm I'm not a I'm not a rigid person. Sometimes you'll see like uh a an older former smoker becomes very rigid with smoking. That's not my thing. And it's like so when I go out with my friends, or we go to their house for dinner, they'll serve different foods and I'll eat some of whatever they serve. But typically when I'm eating there, if they do the salad, I'm gonna do the salad first. And and I'm gonna do the vegetables first. If there's something like lasagna there, I'll do a smaller amount of that, you know. And where a lot of times, especially during the holidays, you may see four or five different cakes, and most people they want to have a slice of each of those cakes. I may take a small slice of one of those cakes, you know what I'm saying? Just to get the taste of it. And the thing is, is it's okay to have that once in a while. But you understand that your your body needs to stay on track. You know, it's like my car requires premium uh unleaded gas. But if I had to put in unleaded gas once, I could get away with it. If I did it every day, it would start pinging on the motor and be bad on the motor. Right. So I know that I have to put the premium in every time I fill it up. Well, it's the same thing for the body. So I know that 99% of the time when I'm eating, I'm gonna be eating premium fuel or food. And so that 1% doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

So when you say you're eating premium food, are you eating organic mostly?

SPEAKER_02 7:49

Yeah. Actually, I raise, we my wife and I, we raise probably 90% of the vegetables we eat in our backyard. When we're looking for beef, I'm looking for grass-fed, grass-finished beef, pasture-raised pork and chicken. But I don't, you know, there was a time in my life when I was younger, I could do a 22-ounce steak on all the fixings, you know. Now my wife and I, if we get a one-pound steak, we split it. Which I think for me is kind of funny because when I look back in my life, it's like, I wouldn't even have gotten up out of my chair for that.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

So it's funny you say that because now you've met my husband. Yeah, yeah. Last night I grilled some steaks for dinner with a salad. And anyway, I had, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna eat my four-ounce portion, but I had an eight-ounce. Yeah, he ate the eight-ounce plus one.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

It's so true. I'm still hungry, and if you're not eating that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

That was me, and it was like I can remember it's when I was a teenager, for instance, my grandmother lived with us and she did a lot of the cooking. And so there was five of us in the family where she would cook one chicken for the five, and then she would cook one and a half chicken just for me, you know.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Yeah. Do you eat three times a day?

SPEAKER_02 8:53

I do eat three times a day. I typically have a a protein smoothie in the morning to start my day with. Then I uh have a lunch. Most of my meals are having a salad involved in somehow or vegetables involved somehow. I do not eat a lot of bread. Uh I do it once in a while just because I like the taste of bread very often. Because what I've what I've learned is bread will tend to turn into sugars. And as they turn into sugars. And people think it's the sugar that makes them fat, but really and truly the sugar spikes that glucose. And when you spike that glucose, now the pancreas has to have an insulin spike. And the insulin is a hormone that says to the brain, let's just store that over on your sides over there. Let's just store that on the bellow. And once you start to lower those glucose spikes, where you lower the insulin spikes, that's where the weight starts to come off.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Well, it's interesting that we're talking about this because I was actually listening to another podcast, and they were just talking about bread in particular and saying, or the Americ I should rephrase that, the American diet, and how because we are an a a nation filled with immigrants and multi very multicultural, we don't really have American food.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Right?

SPEAKER_03 9:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

I mean it's just a melting pot of it.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

Hodge podge everything.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

The hodgepodge of everything, right? So for example, we spent 10 weeks in France and we would eat bread every day and not have a problem at all.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

It is different bread, right? They make it with different what flour. Is it semolina they use it?

SPEAKER_02 10:12

I think it is. And my wife and we were in Paris a few years ago, and she is gluten intolerant, but she could eat the bread in France.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

So every diet has its different. But American bread or what we get here is not as it's almost like eating a chocolate candy bar.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

It's not far from the bad, huh? It's that bad.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

So three meals a day, snacks.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

Very rarely. If I do have a snack, it's typically an apple, or I may eat some grapes. Not a lot of grapes. Grapes can be uh pretty high in sweetness, but I do like to eat apples and sometimes oranges for a snack, but that's about it.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

So what about alcohol?

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Alcohol. Alcohol is something that can we have every day.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Can we have a glass of wine? Actually, or a chin and tonic.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

Actually, I mean, for me, it's like I've never been a person who drank a lot of alcohol. So um I don't really drink during the week. I'll have a glass of wine or something on the weekend. Yeah. Um that's about it. It may be a couple days on the weekends. Sometimes my wife was scheduling where we have people coming over on a Friday or Saturday. Some may have a glass of wine on Friday and Saturday. The one thing I noticed for me with alcohol, besides the fact that it can put weight on you, is I just don't like the way it makes me feel the next day. If I eat more than a glass of wine, so I just don't.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

And when you eat that clean, your body really does recognize the toxins when you put, you know, your body reacts to it big time. Do you drink coffee or tea?

SPEAKER_02 11:31

I do drink coffee, yeah. And I like coffee a lot. Tea, not so much. Um I do do tea to be hot tea.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

But I do like coffee.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Um Have you ever smoked? We ever smoked?

SPEAKER_02 11:42

That's good. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Well, something never, never really appealed to me ever.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Same. I just couldn't. And you know what my turn you're gonna actually laugh. My turn up to smoking when I was young and all the kids were trying in the, you know, hiding in the woods and trying to smoke. I used to waitress. And back in the 70s, you could smoke in restaurants. It was not a problem. And my grandparents owned a diner and I would waitress and I would have to clean the ashtrays. And I thought it was the most ex disgusting thing in the world.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

At the same time, they let you smoke on airplanes too. Think about that lighting a match as you're sitting on 2,000 gallons of jet fuel 30,000 feet in the air.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Imagine that. Yeah, right. I wonder why they took that away. So you did say when you were carrying the extra 135 pounds, you were in severe pain. Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

So what happened with that was when I was at 315, I was not in pain. But it but what happened was when I lost the first hundred and five pounds, I'd been an athlete most of my life. And I knew how to get in shape. So I knew once I lost the weight, I had to really get my muscles back in shape because of my skin was saggy and so forth. When I started getting back in shape, I noticed that my back started hurting more and more. And I got to a point, I was 38, 39 years old, that I could remember crawling out of my car on my hands and then grabbing the door handle to pull myself back up. And I was like, man, I'm not even 40. If this is the rest of my life, this is not good.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:00

And I went to doctors like everybody else, and they would do x-rays, they didn't really see anything. They do MRIs, they didn't really see anything. They could offer me injections, they could offer to send me to PT. One guy said, you know, if anything develops worse, we might get into surgeries or whatever. But he said, at this point, we don't I don't really see anything, you know. And I kept thinking, well, something's wrong because I can barely stand up here. That's where I started thinking about doing something different in my life. And I I took an early retirement from the newspaper business and I thought it said to my wife, I think what I want to do is go into massage therapy. I guess I thought it would be easier on my body. So I did. And the weird part was was when I got there and I started going working on my degree in neuromuscular massage and sports massage, she would always say to me, What did you learn today? And I said, You know, I know things that I don't know how I know things. I had never really studied the human body other than just working out and being a trainer. But there were things that just came to me, and it was like in my mind, I could visualize you without your skin. I could see the muscles. And including even the teachers that I had in my breaks through my first semester, two semesters. And I'm thinking, I don't really know anything. But they would say, I need you to work on my neck, I need you to work on my arm or whatever. And I was like, But I don't know anything. And then finally in my last year, the dean of the school came to me, wondering if I knew anything about fibromyalgia. And I said, I don't, but I can reach do some research and learn about it. And he said, Do that. I want you to work on my wife. And I did, and she started getting better. And so then he he and two of my teachers introduced me to a guy named Aaron Mattis. And Aaron Mattis created what was called active isolated stretching, which is a lot of my stretching is based on what I did was I I wanted the to the stretching to be where somebody could go home and duplicate what we did in the office. And the way he was teaching it, it would be hard for them to do that. So I changed it around some to make that happen. And as I started learning about the muscles and started learning about how to free up my body, that's when I started to free up my back pain. Wasn't quite gone yet. So then I met a neurosurgeon who from the University of Washington who had studied the brain working with dementia patients. And he started talking about how the brain controls the muscles and how emotional the muscles are. And I was like, wait, wait. I got a question here. You know how emotional the muscles are? How emotional the muscles are.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

No, I have not heard that before. Exactly right. Explain.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

I had not either. Okay. So we started talking and back and forth for about six months. What happens is that when you think about your brain and you think about the muscles in your body, you can get angry with somebody, or you can be working on a computer and get frustrated. Think about how tight your body gets. Right. Um, then you think about your clinch of jaw. Exactly, exactly. So you have coffee with a friend and you're laughing and talking, think how relaxed you are.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

All that changed was your state of mind. You get deep in thought, all of a sudden you're working on computers and the shoulders start to rise. All of those things can set off things, nerves getting tensed, coming down to your hands, can lead into things like bowsing discs and herniated discs. And then you start watching people and how they move and how they think it what you'll find is that their body will start to change based on their mindset. So think of a person in your brain who you would think of as depressed. And think of them walking across the room. How would they walk?

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Slumped a little bit, slumpy, right? Head down.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

Think of a person who just got a pay raise and a promotion. How would they walk?

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Straight up and big smile, and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

So so when you look at that mindset and you change the way the body is standing, you change the way the body walks, what happens now is things that are gight in your calves and in your feet can affect your neck. Things get tight in the front of your thighs will affect your back. And so what the bones, the bones that we can't mess up with the bones because we we think of the bones as the first thing when we have pain, but the bones are just there to give you shape and to give you protection. What moves the bones are the muscles around it. So whenever you want to move, and you can see this when you watch any any baby when they stand up, once they get started getting strength in their legs, when they start to stand, the brain then is working with the 29 muscles in there trying to figure out how to balance and their calves to figure out how to balance. And then once they do, they lock in a neural pathway so that for the rest of your life you know how to stand up and not fall down. You see. And then when you walk, the brain again has to come back and lay down another neural pathway to know which muscles to engage so that when you take that step, you don't fall down. But if you watch that baby when they're taking that first step, they'll fall down. Then they'll get up, they'll try again, they'll fall down. Next thing you know, they take two or three steps and they fall down. That's their brain laying down that neural pathway. We call that muscle memory. And I had a doctor one time, he said, So I don't think you think you don't think about muscle memory. And I said, Well, you're a cardiologist, you deal with stroke patients, right? And he said, Yeah. And I said, So let's say your arms and your legs have muscle memory. Okay. Person has a stroke, ischemic or hemorrhagic, they damage your brain, right?

SPEAKER_03 17:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

Did they damage the muscles? No. And I said, well, then why won't the muscle continue to work if they have memory? It has to have a brain to have a memory, you see. Your muscles don't have that. So what happens is that every move you make, including like me moving my hand, the brain has done that before and it has a neural pathway to know exactly which muscles to recall on to make that movement happen.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

So in the case of a stroke, that neural pathway has been cut off.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Been cut off.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

And there's no way to re-re recreate that. Sometimes you can't.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

You know, I'd work with stroke patients in the past where let's say their left hand didn't work, and I would use a right hand with a mirror therapy. So I'd set up a mirror on the desk and have them to work this hand as they were thinking about using the left hand. And over time it would start to come back to some degree. So some of that can come back if you get on early with the right people. But for what happens is it's like the brain from the damage forgets how to use that hand.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

So from what you just described when you were back feeling your back pain, was it because you were depressed? Was there a depression component to that?

SPEAKER_02 18:46

The depression component for me came into gaining the weight.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

You had gained the weight before that.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

For that, before that. What was happening there?

SPEAKER_00 18:52

What caused you to gain the weight in the first place?

SPEAKER_02 18:54

So I'd gone through a divorce, and my wife had taken my two daughters and she moved out to North Carolina with her parents. And I remember waking up one day thinking, man, I went from a nice house to a single one-bedroom apartment deserved by myself. And I just sort of stayed in my cave and I would order things and buy things and come home and eat them. You know, I can remember having dinner when I'd have two large pizzas and about two-liter of Pepsi for dinner. When you eat like that, it doesn't take long to put 300 pounds on your body in a heartbeat, you know?

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

And so I sort of ate my emotions, is what I did.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Well, don't feel bad because when I went through my divorce, yeah, my I used to say to my girlfriends, don't worry, I'm dating two guys at the same time. And they're like, Oh, good for you. Who are they? And I'm like, Ben and Jerry. Exactly. Jerry and I get in bed together and good. So I totally understand that's what it I discovered the gym.

SPEAKER_03 19:44

So Jim was always better than Jim and Jerry.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Yeah, I did get I did feel better.

SPEAKER_03 19:49

I have a new boyfriend. His name is Jim.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

His name is Jim. That's right. I had three. Jim, Ben, and Jerry. Hey, I was doing pretty well. You're doing really well. But anyway, I didn't have that luck. It's okay. You went with pizza, you had Papa John.

SPEAKER_02 20:01

Poppy John's and Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken. I was set. So anyway, what happened with the back pain was that as I got back into working out, I thought that I had a back issue. And what I had done, I had overworked my thighs. And so the quads, which are the front of the thighs, had gotten larger because I had larger thighs when I was younger. And I thought this is a thing to do, not realizing that I should stretch with that to some level. And what happened, the muscles got tight enough that it literally started to shift the pelvis forward, which increased the curve in the small of my back so that whenever I would stand up, the muscles across the small of my back had to go into a constant contracted state to keep me upright because my thighs were pulling me forward.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

You know, I really love this conversation. It's so timely because I broke my arm eight weeks ago. So now I'm in physical therapy for that. But I said to them, I'm starting to get active again. I had given up the exercise for a little while. So now I'm walking more. And then I said to the physical therapist the other day, I said, now I'm walking more, and now my hips and my back are killing me. Is that normal?

SPEAKER_02 21:01

That is normal because now here's the thing about walking, and it's kind of funny. If you watch most people walk, and I used to spend hours watching people walk when I was learning all this stuff. Most people walk heel to toe. What and I found out from Daniel Lieberman, who is a professor from Harvard, and he was saying that the reason we walk heel to toe is because of our shoes. Any shoes with a thicker sole or a heel on it, you'll automatically walk heel to toe. So anytime like a woman wears a high heel, you always hear her heel hit the floor first.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Yeah, looking at my high heel. I know, I know, exactly, exactly. I didn't walk in these though. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

So the thing is that when most people walk, if they walk heel to toe, they'll lead with their nose and not their belly button. Well, when you lead with your nose, your head comes out in front of your chest, which causes your whole whole torso to go forward. So the muscles on the front of your hips and the front of your thighs will tighten in that position and it forces the back then to have to try to contract to get your body back up straight.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Interesting. And that's what happens. So I'm walking wrong or I have the wrong period. Most people.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Most people do. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Well, see, I mean, most people think about shoes, most people think that I want a shoe that has a thick sole with arch supports and heel supports and and cute. What I find with that combination is that the foot is is perfectly built. It has 29 muscles with 33 joints and 26 bones in it. It's perfectly built. The calf muscles control the foot vertically, laterally, and rotationally. And so what happens is that two things. Number one, we don't know how to stretch our calves. But number two, we put these shoes on because doctors say this is what we should wear. And what you find out when you study the muscles of the feet, that what we're doing with these shoes is we're atrophying the arches of our feet because when the cute ones with the tapered toes are pulling our toes closer together. So when we get older, it's going to affect our balance. And then the thicker sole doesn't allow the ankle to bend when you walk to that you can push off with your toes, which sets off problems in your knees. So, like with runners, they'll always say runners, running's bad for your knees. Running's not bad for your knees. Just the shoes that they're wearing are bad for their knees.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

That's fascinating because there are so many types of shoes, right? Every year they get upgraded and better and newer and better. So why do you believe so many people have accepted pain as a normal part of aging?

SPEAKER_02 23:10

Because our friends tell us. I mean, it's like part of getting older.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

I mean, and sit around and listen to your friends. And it's like when I turned 50, I wasn't getting ready to turn 50 uh 16 years ago. My friends would say to me, Oh, you wait till you turn 50. You're gonna start having all kinds of pain. And I said, Really? And after about two or three times of doing it, I said, you know, maybe I should just commit suicide. If I knew what that doesn't sound like fun at all. But I just sort of laughed it off. So when I turned 50, I called them up and I said, I don't feel any different than I did at 49. Oh, you just wait, wait till you're 55, you know? And after then they did the same thing at 60. And I'm like, I'm not waiting for the pain. That's insane. So what happens is that as we age, we're told we should slow down, we should, we should take our time. You're 50 years old, you're 55 years old. Or you go to a doctor and they'll go, Well, you know, what do you expect? You're 62 years old, you know?

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

And it's like, no, no, no. What you should expect is what a woman said to me one time at senior friendship. She was 83, and the doctor said that to her. And he said, What do you expect? She goes, I expect everything. And I've always loved that. And it's like, so when you take care of your body, you're feeding it well, you're keeping the joints lubricated through proper stretching, you're keeping your muscles strong so that you can get up and move around. You will find that you'll have far less pain. No matter if you're 80 years old, 90 years old, doesn't matter. And I won't have people in those age groups. The biggest problem with older people is number one, their muscle mass is too low, their flexibility is horrible, and they get a terrible diet. So you've got inflammation, you've got stiffness, and you've got weakness.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Well, and as far as diet going back to that, first of all, I hate that word.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

I love that you, instead of just dieting, adopted a new lifestyle and a new approach and a new mindset towards food. Yeah. Which is really what we all need to do. Exactly. Because these I mean, I'm a wellness coach too, so I've got my health and nutrition certification. And as I was doing my research, I'm like, man, there are hundreds of so-called diets, you know. But what we really need to do is reset our mind towards what is going to fuel our bodies, right? The best. So what do you do for exercise besides? I mean, what would you? I know obviously stretching is important, um, which is something I don't do enough of. I go to the gym and just get started. And then I leave it.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

So for me, I I do uh weight training. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I'm using the gym at 5 a.m. and I'll work on my bigger muscles. I work on chest, legs, I work on abdominals, of course, every day. And then Tuesday, Thursday, I'll work on the smaller muscles, the biceps, triceps, shoulders. Usually in my office, I have weights in my office. I work there as well. And then I'm walking every day. And you know, when I well, even when I go places like to the mall or whatever, I park away from the mall, which my wife always hates. But I park away from the mall and and I walk in.

unknown 25:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

So what I did to compromise whether I drop her off the door, then I park away outside and walk in.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Do you track your steps when you're walking?

SPEAKER_02 26:02

I don't.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

You just try to walk as much as you can.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

Well, when I was when I was 18 years old, I was in a head-home collision and broke my pelvis in seven places in my left arm. And I was in a wheelchair for like six months. And I made a deal with with God or the universe, whatever you want to call it, that if I ever got out of that chair, I was gonna walk everywhere I needed to go. And for most of my life I did that. And so once I got myself back together, it was like, I'm not gonna stop walking, I'm just gonna walk in.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Yeah, we take that for granted, don't we? We don't realize we're in a wheelchair. Lucky we are.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Once it's just taken away from you, it's like it's like, whoa, wait, I didn't realize that could happen.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Exactly. So that sounds like you have a really good exercise routine. And so you go in at five in the morning, how long do you work out?

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Because you work out for about an hour, hour and 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Good for you. So, what is mainstream advice getting wrong when it comes to chronic pain?

SPEAKER_02 26:48

I think the biggest thing with mainstream advice is that we're we're training people in school in healthcare schools to be for the mechanical side. So, in other words, they clearly know how your leg works, how your knee works, how your hip works. And the thing that you have to understand when it comes to chronic pain versus acute pain, uh and just so it's clear for everybody, acute pain is you break an arm or you you cut yourself or you tear something. You can go, we know how to fix that. We've been trained how to fix that. When it comes to chronic pain, chronic pain is something that's lasted for two to three months. I mean, some people will say a month. I usually the official definition is two to three months down the road. So you've been dealing with this for a while. And so what happens is that the brain then starts to recalibrate how you stand, how you walk, how you sit based on how comfortable you feel with the pain. Then once when you, even if you correct it, let's say somebody has a knee replacement, you know, nobody goes to the doctor this morning and says, Doc, my knee's hurting. He says, Come back at noon and I'll replace your knee. Right. It's usually a several months-long thing, sometimes it's up to a year. And that's giving the brain time to set in those new ways of standing, new ways of walking, new ways of sitting. And so what happens in the chronic pain is that the brain then starts to anticipate it. And when this goes, okay, he's gonna stand up, contract, contract, contract. Now the muscles become even stiffer around those joints, around those areas. And then that pain just seems to lag on. So sometimes I'll hear people with chronic pain, they'll say, you know, I've been taking painkillers, I've been getting injections and so forth. Worked in the beginning, but they stopped. Well, what happened is even though they worked in the beginning, the brain just kept cranking down on those muscles, creating a problem.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Now you say that pain can be reversible.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

It can be, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

So what do people misunderstand about that?

SPEAKER_02 28:28

So the misunderstanding is about stretching. And uh, you were talking about, you know, you don't really stretch a whole lot. Most people don't really stretch a whole lot. I know when I was an athlete, the coaches would say, You boys go ahead and stretch. I'm gonna go inside. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Well, as soon as he left the field, so did we. Okay. We don't really put a lot of emphasis on that. So I would say to people, because I put it in terms of cars because everybody loves their car. When you think about strength training, strength training is about putting power in your body. So that's like putting gasoline in your car for power. So to get up and run. The stretching is like putting oil in the engine for lubrication. When you're stretching properly, and the word properly is key here, okay? When you're stretching properly, what you're doing is you're freeing the tension and the muscles around the joints so that the joints can run through their full range of motion and get relubricated with what's called synovial fluid. Best way to think of that is like a WD-40. So each joint has synovial fluid in it, just little tiny ones like on your fingers up to your knees and hips. And that synovial fluid works as a cushioning agent so that the bones don't clank and it works as a lubricant so that it smoothly runs through without tearing up the cartilage in your joint. Where people make a mistake is that they're not understanding that by not stretching, and then you add 50, 60, or 100 pounds to your body, and you're not strength training, so you don't have to strengthen it up and down, you're squeezing that synovial fluid out, which is damaging the joints, is damaging the ver the disc in your spine. It's it's exacerbating the problems that they're having in their body every day. Stretching is an everyday thing. Everything that you think, every state of mind that you have, every movement that you make will cause your muscles to tighten. The mistake people make from the professional side is when I talk about stretching, we're gonna lengthen the muscles like I'm pulling taffy. Your muscles are never gonna get long enough for a seven-foot basketball player. They're attached on both ends. But what happens, the best way to think about it is if you took a rubber band between your fingers and you twist that rubber band, every time you have a thought, after a while it gets shorter and shorter. And then to try to pull that rubber band back out takes a lot of strength. But stretching, we're unwinding the rubber band so that when I pull it out, it works really easy. So when I have to teach someone how to stretch, they never hold it more than five seconds at a time. And the reason for that is every muscle has a stretch reflex. Once you go beyond five or six minutes, the brain starts to go, well, wait a minute, somebody's affecting hurting us here. If you're creating pain, it's gonna contract. The second thing is they pull as hard as they can, which turns in the strength training. I'm gonna use the resistance of this arm to build my bicep on that side, you see. And so what I do is I teach people how to use their breath to relax the mind. Once you relax the mind, the muscles relax and they start to let go.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

So you just said that we should be stretching every day.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

So here's a question for you. If I am going to the gym today and I'm gonna work legs, yes, do I just stretch my leg muscles before my workout or do I do a total body stretch?

SPEAKER_02 31:17

That's a great question. So you don't have to stretch before. In fact, there's studies out now that have shown that if you do static stretching before an event or you work out, your workout will be less. Because with static stretching, people are holding for long periods of time and pulling hard. So they've already gotten into strength training before they ever started, which fatigues the bottom.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:39

You see. So what I do is I get up first thing in the morning, I stretch when I get out of bed, and then I stretch before I go to bed at night, not before or after I work out.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

All right, give me an idea of the stretches that you do first thing in the morning.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Perfect. Yes. So what I think about is I think about what I did the last 12 hours. Well, number one, I'm always using my calf muscles. So when people think of stretching their calves, they lean against the wall, they step on a slant board, they drop their heel off of a step. That's an Achilles tendon stretch. You never stretch your calves in your life. Your calf muscles run up the leg and actually attach above the knee. There's four of them in there. You've got the two in the middle that control vertically with your shin muscles so that you can walk. You've got one on each side that controls laterally this way so that you can balance. And then you have two bones in that lower leg with muscles in between, along with these calf muscles that for rotation this way so that you don't hurt your back. So when most people, when they're rotating, you play sport like tennis or golf or or uh baseball, pickleball, the rotation we think of it as from our hips, but the rotation starts at your ankles. Okay. So I always do my always do my calves. I'll always do my quads here. Now, most people when they do a quad stretch, they stand on one foot and grab their heel and they think if I put my heel to my butt, I'm stretching my quads. You're not. You're not. You're you're just standing there doing. So with the calf stretch, I teach you laying on your side. And what I want to be able to do is I don't care if your heel ever touches your hip because we're not we're not stretching the knee. We're stretching on the upper part of the quads up here to take the pressure off the pelvis so the pelvis can come back straight and your spine will get back into alignment. So the knee wants you want your knee to come behind the torso.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Okay. And then the other one is the outside chest muscles. Most people will get neck pain in here, they'll get tightness between their shoulder blades. Everybody they go to will beat the heck out of their back, they'll beat the heck out of the back of their neck because that's what they're trained to do. That pain that you feel back there is coming from the pec minor muscles on the outside of your chest. So if you're doing butterflies, if you've been doing bench presses or whatever, you're picking stuff up, you're driving your car, these muscles will tighten. And when these muscles tighten, it causes a shoulders around but causes the head to go forward. Okay. So I always open those up and I don't do two arms in a door frame because the human body, your your shoulder blades cannot disconnect and come on top of each other. So you have a limited range of motion. I do one arm at a time in a door frame.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

And I rotate my body so that I can do one side at a time to open those back up. And then the last thing that but the ones I do typically every day is the front of my neck. 99% of what we do, we look downward. When we do, we're working on the computers or driving a car, whatever. These muscles will get a little tighter. As these muscles get tighter, it pulls the head forward. Your head weighs about 10 to 12 pounds. Every inch your head goes forward out in front of your chest, the pressure back here increases by 10 pounds per inch. Takes the pressure out of here. And then finally, I've used a tennis ball on a sock, throw it over my shoulder, lean against a wall, and I soften the muscles in my back.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

How long does that all take you?

SPEAKER_02 34:41

About 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

20 minutes? Then you do the same at night, or depending on you.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

Usually usually the same at night. Now, sometimes I may shift up depending on what I did during the day. I may may work on my inner thighs, I may work on my hamstrings, depending on what I did during the day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Do you um also have to drink a lot of water?

SPEAKER_02 34:57

Well, I drink I drink enough water to keep me from from not dehydrating. So, and I always say to people, that depends on how much you sweat during the day.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

The the eight glasses of water every day was created by the water companies. There was a myth.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

It's a myth.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

There wasn't a scientific study to prove that if you are doing things where you sweat a lot, like on the days when I'm working in my yard, I may drink two gallons of water.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

On on days that I'm just working out and going to uh my office or whatever, I may drink one gallon of water.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

So I saw my PT yesterday and I told her I was um it was in the morning and I was having a lot of dizzy spells in the morning. And she said, You're probably dehydrated. Could be drink more water. I I was like, I think I need some electrolytes. That's usually what it is for me.

SPEAKER_02 35:39

Yeah. And and and that could be true too. Um there's several things that can happen there. Dehydration, the kneading of sodium into into your uh your body, yeah, could cause that. The pillow, uh the pillow in your bed could cause that. We just got a new mattress about a month ago. And luckily I had bought pillows last year where it came with extra foam where you can change the height of the pillow. So the mattress we had was a little softer. And so of course your body, your shoulder, your pain, your pain point, not your pain points, but your your pressure points on your shoulders and your hips will go down into the mattress. Well, you want a st smaller pillow so that your spine stays level. Well, the mattress we got was in was a medium firm mattress. Well, now my shoulders are up. So I had to thicken the pillow up to keep my head. So sometimes that can cause that as well.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

So, how is your stretch and release technique different from physical therapy?

SPEAKER_02 36:28

Oh, that's a great question. Yes. So from physical therapy, most of them will do what's called static stretching. This is where they hold it for long periods of time and they and they pull really, really hard. A lot of times they will do groups of muscles, and um they're looking at I've got a set platform that I'm doing, and they don't really talk about the brain's relationship with the muscles. So whenever you are doing those static stretches and you're just pulling, pulling, pulling, pulling, a lot of times people talking to somebody or they're listening to something on their headphones or whatever. For the muscle to release, the brain has to relax. Um, I mean, if you think about if the brain was tied to the muscles 100% of the time and we're sitting here and the alarm goes off, there's a fire, and my brain is like, we got to get out of here. My legs are we're not leaving today, I'd be in a lot of trouble. So the brain then has to relax so those muscles can relax. And once they do, the tension leaves the muscle.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

It's funny you say that because yesterday when she was trying to stretch my arm a little bit, she kept saying, You need to relax. I didn't even realize I was tense. She's like, No, you have to, you have to relax so I can get in there. And it was funny because you sometimes you don't make the connection.

SPEAKER_02 37:34

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

Because you don't even realize you're in a state of tension, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:37

Well, so you think about your arm, you broke your arm, so somebody gets to move your arm, and your brain is like, this could hurt.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

And all of a sudden you clamp down.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

And it does hurt.

unknown 37:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

And so the thing is, is that if your PT is working with you and you're feeling the muscles here, as your arm comes out, you see, this they can feel through the muscles when the brain, like, no, I don't think so. And it'll just tighten down.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

And I can feel when I'm working on somebody's body, their muscles, and I teach them how to do the same thing to where when the brain finally lets go, the muscle just goes soft.

SPEAKER_00 38:07

But it's interesting though that I'm able to even take that cue and change my state of mind that quickly.

SPEAKER_02 38:15

Yeah, because like you said, you didn't realize you automatically did that.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

No. And then when she said in the last conscious, it wasn't a conscious reaction.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

It made you aware.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

Yeah, and then she yeah, right. And so I find it very fascinating. It's really interesting. So how what do you think about yoga and Pilates? And I I think of those as stretching exercises as well.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

I always say yoga is great for flexible people.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

I can't do it either. I have tried.

SPEAKER_02 38:39

It's like, you know, a lot of times I'll have uh couples who come down, they're retired. The wife has been doing yoga for 10 or 15 years, she's flexible, and her husband's now retired, so she wants him to go to her yoga class with her. And for him, that's like going to torture. You know, he can't even sit on the floor, like, and she's can't she's trying to force him into these pretzel-like positions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and Pilates, Pilates is, I mean, the biggest thing that I see with other types of stretching is we just don't include the brain. We you've got the brain has got to be a part of it. You want to be able, in other words, people say to me, I don't feel the stretch. And what they're saying is, I don't feel the pain of my muscles pulling.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

Okay. And they're not they're not going to feel that. What they're going to feel is the relaxation, relaxation of the muscle because the brain relaxed and the decrease in the pain as they pull the muscle.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

So, how do you get into a state where you have that brain-body connection?

SPEAKER_02 39:33

Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's a great question. And I get that often. What I do with with people, some people their brains are like kind of all over the place, especially if they're like type A people. And so I say to them, let's just practice the breathing part of this. Breathing, okay. And then to get them to a point where they can just start to just slow the thoughts down. So that they kind of think it's like with meditation, because people always ask me, How do you meditate? And it's like, I don't not have thoughts, but where the problem comes in for most of us is that if we have thoughts running through our heads and we're judging those thoughts, oh, you were so stupid, why didn't you turn off the lights? Oh God, you should have done this. Why didn't I ask so-and-so that? That's where the tension comes into our body. If it's just a thought of the lights were left on, the lights were left on, so what, the lights were left on, there's no reaction. And so, so it's okay to look at your thoughts like on a TV screen, let them just go by with little to no with no reaction. And when you have that and you have the breath to come into it, now you can quiet the mind. And a lot of times what will happen, they'll start to fall asleep because their their body is so tired. Yeah, they're so tired from just doing that.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

So, since you brought meditation up, do you meditate before you stretch in the morning?

SPEAKER_02 40:40

No, I usually meditate midday a lot of times. Usually, but I have like four or five patients who come in in the morning and then four or five in the afternoon. And so my my lunchtime is usually around 12 to 2. So I'll usually meditate in the morning time.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

So where do you see patients?

SPEAKER_02 40:54

I see them over at the Bidtown Medical Plaza over here off of right across from Michael's own East Restaurant off of East Avenue. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

Very nice. Here in Sarasota. Here in Sarasota. What do you think about the new stretch labs that are opening up? Are you familiar with it? I am familiar with those. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

So so one of the things you'll notice when you go there is they will strap you to the table. And that was one of the things my mentor did. And my first thought with that was so if people need to do this every day, who's going to strap themselves to the bed? Okay. Yeah. So that's one problem. And the second problem is that you go there, especially the first few times, you don't know how good this person is. And what I've heard from many of my clients is that's been there, is they rotate the people around. So you have no idea how good that person is. So you're laying there, there's a strap across your stomach, there's a strap across your leg, and this guy's got your leg and he's trying to stretch out your hamstrings, and you don't know if he knows where to stop or not. Right. And that causes tension from the brain to the body. And so anytime that that you're strapped out, and especially for a woman, if you go to a place that you know there's nobody else around and they've got you strapped to the bed, that's an uncomfortable place to be.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

You don't want to be restrained by a stranger. No, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

And and so then they start pulling your body, especially if you're stiff and you're anticipating pain, that's a bad place to do.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Yeah, yeah. I know. I worry about those places too that are popping up. I'm just like, how do you know that they're certified to do the work, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:16

Well, exactly. And the thing is, is that you know, you're not fighting with the muscle. And that and if you watch most people working with stretching and even some PTs, the thing I always want to say to them, you're not fighting with the muscles, you're fighting with the person's brain. Because if you turn the brain off, in other words, if if you put them in a general anesthesia and took the brain offline, you could put them in sweats and splits and spreads and do whatever you wanted because the brain's not there to stop you.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

So I'm just trying to figure out how I could incorporate this into my day into my day. So if I started in the morning like you do, I'd have to kind of quiet my mind, even if maybe I'm not meditating, but at least quiet my mind.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Quiet your mind, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:50

And like I even do, and I guess when I'm working out, if I'm doing glutes or whatever, I try to focus on the muscle with my brain because it works the muscle harder better if I'm if there's that connection, right? Instead of just going through the motion of up and down or whatever I'm doing.

SPEAKER_02 43:06

Which you see a lot of people doing, did you?

SPEAKER_00 43:08

Yeah. Oh yeah. They're just check, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:10

And I always I always say to people they ask me about working out, and I said, you know, when if you're working your glutes, if the machine said this is a glute machine, when you work your glutes, you need to make sure you're feeling it in your glutes. If you feel it in your calves, you're on the wrong machine or you do the wrong thing. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

Or your back, if you realize you're on a squat rack and all of a sudden your back is yeah, something's wrong there.

SPEAKER_02 43:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

Something's wrong with the form, right? So, how does muscle tightness actually accelerate the aging process in the body?

SPEAKER_02 43:37

That's a very good, that's a great question. Watch any most people walk around who are 55, 65 plus. And typically it's the men you'll see walking and their shoulders are rounded and the head's kind of forward, and they're just sort of lumbering along. In fact, you'll see some people just like they're falling forward all the time. And so it it becomes tiring and and their body becomes tired. And again, Is a loser muscle strength because we start losing muscle mass at age four from that point to the rest of our lives. So if they start losing muscle mass, they have less and less strength to make those same movements. And so I always say to people and look at your grandmother and grandfather when they walk across the room and you think, man, I get to be so tired, but they're so stiff and they're so weak that it's almost like you put a child hanging on each ankle as they walk across the room. It doesn't have to be that way. And we've done it, we've done older people a real disservice by not really stressing to them the importance of building their strength. That they don't have to look like Arnold Schwartz at that. You're going to have to be like a bodybuilder, but you want enough strength that you can get up down out of a chair. You want enough flexibility, you can get up off the floor if you happen to fall down. And it's like so one that I saw on Facebook the other day, she put out, she goes, Why is it that when I was 22 and I fell down, everybody laughed? And at 72, when I fall down, everybody goes crazy.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

They don't want to call nine one. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 44:54

And she said, you know, at 25, if I forgot something, everybody's laughed. At 72 and I forget something, they think I'm starting dementia, you know. Right. But the but the truth of the matter is, is for most people as they age, their bodies are so weak, their bodies are so stiff that if they do fall, typically they break something or tear something. And you really want to have that give so that you can get down on the floor and play with your grandkids, or you can get down on your knees and work in the garden or whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_00 45:19

Can that strength and mobility be achieved just through stretching?

SPEAKER_02 45:23

Or do they have to do Yeah, they have to do strength training. But I always think of the stretching as lubricating and building flexibility, but you need the muscles to be able to pick your body up.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

So I always f or often find going to a gym can be intimidating for a lot of women, especially on the weight floor in the weight room. A lot of women find it easy to go to a class or they might stay on cardio equipment. What would you say to that woman who really hears you and says, I know I need to I need to, you know, do some squats so I can get up out of that chair, or I need to do some bicep curls so I can carry in my groceries. What would you say to that woman that feels really intimidated about walking into that gym?

SPEAKER_02 46:02

And I get it. When I first went in and I was 300 pounds, it was like, who am I to be here? And I'm thinking, you were an athlete. Come on, for God's sake. As a woman, you belong there just as much as anybody else. And understanding that your muscles work just like mine. You may be smaller than me, yeah, but your muscles work just like mine. And and nobody says that, you know, some women will say, Well, I don't really feel comfortable because I feel like that I just don't know enough about that. Right. Hire a trainer. Spend spend sometime, at least one visit with a trainer to get familiar with the equipment.

SPEAKER_01 46:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:35

Uh start with the equipment first. And then as you start to build some confidence and you build some strength, then get back with a trainer and get them to show you how to do the freeways and and the cable weights. And then once you do that, you'll build enough confidence back that you don't care what anybody says it.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

Well, I love that you said that because one of my my quotes was said, you know, you're either going to invest in your wellness or you're going to invest in your illness. Absolutely. Which do you want to invest in?

SPEAKER_03 47:00

One way or the other.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

Which one do you want on investment?

SPEAKER_03 47:02

Wellness is way cheaper.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

Wellness is way cheaper. So get that trainer for the first time. That's what I did the first after my divorce when I went to a gym for the first time. I was like, I need to get a trainer because that equipment all looks like a torture chamber. I mean, I don't know how to use any of it.

SPEAKER_02 47:16

When I got back in the gym after losing all that weight, I actually hired a trainer. Not because I didn't know how to lift weights, I just wanted to make sure that when I'm beginning going back to my form was right. Which is key. Which is key because you can hurt yourself if your form's not right.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

I even even when I had the trainer and I was doing some exercises, she's like, your form's not right, and you're gonna get hurt. If your form's not right, you're gonna get hurt. And you can't increase weight until you absolutely correct form.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

That's a massive mistake. And you see men especially make that. They go in the gym, they're 55, 60 years old, they think they're gonna pick up at 60 where they left off at 18. And you know, I watch a guy at my gym every morning. I know he's gonna tear something in his body. I know it's gonna happen. And I'd love to be able to warn him, but I'm sure he won't listen. But anyway, the the the point is that go in, realize you're 50, 55, 60, 65 years old. You if you haven't lifted weights at ever in your life, or you haven't lifted weights in 20, 30, 40 years, start low. The first thing you want to get is get your form right. Then as you get your form right, now you can start building some other weight.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

So you walked back into a gym when you were at the 300-pound mark?

SPEAKER_02 48:24

I did.

SPEAKER_00 48:24

And by yourself, it was a scary it was a scary thing. What'd you start with? What'd you do?

SPEAKER_02 48:30

Well, I I walked in and I went over to the bench press, and like most guys, I when I was in high school, I mean, I I was a football player, basketball player, and baseball player. I can remember, you know, uh squat pressing six, seven hundred pounds. And I and I can remember bench pressing three, three fifty. So I get in there and I'm thinking, well, I haven't done it in a while, so I'm gonna just put 200 on here. And I got again another. Holy cow, I can't even lift it 200. So I sorry to say that I had to go all the way back down to something like 75 pounds to be able to start lifting again. But I did, and it was embarrassing at first, and then I thought, you know what? I gotta do this to get back. And that's what I would say to anybody, start where you it fits you. And the same thing when it comes to dieting and eating, you know, I give tell people what I did. Not everything that I did may work for you, but but start with what works for you and then build off of that.

SPEAKER_00 49:24

Was there I know you had a goal in mind, and I know you were like, I need to do this, but was there ever a moment where you're like, screw this, it's too hard. I want to eat that chocolate cake or whatever it is that you're going for. I don't want to go to the gym today.

SPEAKER_02 49:38

I mean, did you ever have a moment where you fell off the wagon and I I I did a couple I did a couple of times for like a day. And I remember when she told me that I would probably die at 40. I had two daughters, and I sat there that day and I'm like, you gotta start stop feeling sorry for yourself. You've got two daughters that are counting on you, and you gotta get up off here and get moving. And there were there were plenty of times like I would get up in the morning and I made the mistake that a lot of people made. They go in the living room after they get up, they set on the sofa and they go, ah, should I go to the gym? Should I not? Should I go? So I made a deal with myself that I would lay my clothes out, the alarm would go off, I get up, I'm dressed, I'm out the door in 10 minutes in my car, and using the gym with by 15 minutes so that I have no ability to turn back. I'm just yeah, yeah. In fact, the funny thing, I got up one morning early, really early. I got up, I didn't realize I thought it was 4 30 when I got up. And I get in my car, I go to the gym. Luckily, my gym is an all-night gym. I go to my gym, I'm sitting there, and I have a look at the clock on my car, and I'm like, it's one o'clock.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

One o'clock in the morning? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 50:44

So I'm thinking, I can't go back home because I'd wake up my wife, I'm not gonna go back home for a couple hours and then come back. Oh my god. So I just woke out at one o'clock and then went back home and took a nap.

SPEAKER_00 50:53

Wow, good for you. You know, and that's the key, right? Constancy and just showing up for yourself every single day. And if you have a bad day, like you said, 24 hours, you start back up the next day. You don't just throw the throw it out.

SPEAKER_02 51:04

But you get back on the horse and ride.

SPEAKER_00 51:07

I have to tell you though, I've been going through the last 10 days because of the arm. I mean, it's so freaking frustrating. I'm just like, how many days am I gonna do legs? You know, because I can't do back and I can't do biceps. So lately I've been getting up and going for a walk, which is the weather's been so beautiful. I get the vitamin D and I get to spend some time.

SPEAKER_02 51:24

But your legs are your power source, and that's what I say to everybody, even athletes, because you'll see a lot of athletes, baseball pitchers and golfers and tennis players who will hurt their shoulders because they're trying to power through with their arms. Your legs are your power source. And I don't care who you are, athlete or not, you can be 85 years old. If you had strong legs, you'll be in good shape.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

All right. Here's a question. What's happening in people's bodies that they're not aware of until it becomes pain?

SPEAKER_02 51:48

Typically misalignment. And when I say misalignment, I'm not just talking about from a chiropractic standpoint. Bodies will get misaligned because muscles get weak. And so, like I said earlier, the head starts to lean forward. As it leans forward, it flattens out the curve in the back of your neck. Pelvis starts to maybe the hamstrings get tight, that flattens out the curve, or the quads on the front get tight, increases the curve. It's like a it's like a slow burning thing. You don't really feel it a lot for the first six, seven years. And then all of a sudden you get up and you go, back's a little stiff every time I stand up, but you know, walk around, I'm all right. And of course your buddies will say to you, Well, you know, you're 42, what do you expect? Um and then all of a sudden you're 52, 53, just like, oh God, I can't really breathe. It's a slow burning thing. And so with the muscles, that's what's happening. They're slowly, you're slowly getting into these positions that are affecting your bones, that are affecting your nerves, and then that that affects your digestive system, heart, and all that. Once you can keep your posture well, I know most people when they think they hear posture, they think of chiropractors and they talk about it a lot, and that's a great thing. Once your posture starts to deteriorate due to weak muscles or stiffness, that's when you start to see other things start to fall apart.

SPEAKER_00 52:54

And you said earlier you do ab work every day. How important is your core?

SPEAKER_02 52:58

Course, super important because when you think about the human body, from the bottom of your ribcage to your pelvis, there's nothing but your spine there. So I always say to my clients, think about your spine as a flagpole. There's a flag on it, when it's blowing like crazy. You're standing on one side, let's call you the back, I'm standing on the other side to help you hold that up because it's not stuck in the ground, and I'm the stomach. Everything is great as long as we're both there holding our carrying our weight. But if I decide to go get a sandwich and sit over on the side leave you with the flag, you're gonna fatigue out really fast. So when you have very weak core muscles, what you're doing is you're putting a lot of pressure on the back of your spine from the back muscles, and you're also causing the rib cage to tilt forward. Now that tilting forward, of course, brings the head forward, which now for the whole length of the spine, you're creating a problem, but you're also putting pressure on the digestive system. Remember, your intestines are muscular contractions. It's smooth muscle, but it's muscular contractions.

SPEAKER_00 53:53

Your stomach is contracting as well, and then that shifts and puts pressure on your digestive system, which can cause I know I can't get over how um how much the gut microbiome affects everything. It's just new research that's being done all the time, and it fascinates me. I'm like, oh my gosh, I had no idea that it's like a trillion or trillions.

SPEAKER_02 54:12

43 trillion types of bacteria in your gut the other day. Your gut is your second brain. There's actually more serotonin and dopamine created in your gut than in your brain.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

Which is why they encourage you to eat fermented foods. Yes. Yeah, I know, which I hate. I don't like fermented foods. I admin once in a while.

SPEAKER_03 54:32

It's not one of my favorite, but I do it a me once in a while. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

You do have it. That's good. So we have a lot to think about as we're getting old here.

SPEAKER_02 54:39

There's a lot to think about. Well, think of ourselves as an old antique car. I mean, when we were brand new in Ferraris, there weren't much to do. Well, when that Ferrari gets to be like 30 years old, there's a lot of tinkering to do.

SPEAKER_00 54:49

Some wear and tear, right? Wear and tear, yes. So what about somebody that has like they've been told they have degenerative degenerative arthritis in their spine? Yeah, yeah. Can that be reversed or is that something like that?

SPEAKER_02 55:00

It can be helped. I have people who tell me that all the time from their MRIs, and I'm like, well, welcome to the rest of the world. As long as we stand on two feet, you're gonna have that because gravity is pulling you through the earth so that you don't float away. That's pressure. And then when you think about your head, your head's like a 12-pound bowling ball setting up here. I always think of my body as like a base for this bowling ball that can move around. And so my body has to stay in balance so that my head will stay here. Once my head gets out of balance, now I start to shift everything around and it starts to compress on my vertebrae. And so as you compress on that again, you're draining out that synovial fluid from the disc. And so as you do it over time, it just dries right out. You can leave the honiation, which is a cutting of the disc. But that degenerative disc disease and degenerative arthritis and so forth, think of that as rust.

SPEAKER_01 55:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 55:50

And I know I always kind of I tease my clients because I always blame the recliner for that. This one guy says to me, What are you sitting? You don't have a recliner. And I go, No, and he goes, What are you sitting in? I go, a chair.

SPEAKER_00 56:00

A regular chair. You don't recline back.

SPEAKER_02 56:02

No, I don't recline back. Because we recline at home, we recline in the cars. And when you look at somebody who does that, they almost always have to add poor posture.

SPEAKER_00 56:09

So that it's interesting because people are trying to live longer, right? And they're not doing these key things that are so important to make them live longer, especially the food. The food part is I still go back to that. Our diet is our diet, most chronic illnesses are caused by poor diet.

SPEAKER_02 56:25

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 56:26

Absolutely and can be controlled by good nutrition.

SPEAKER_02 56:29

If you eat really well and you stay out, it's like you watch people in blue zones. Dan Butner's done a lot of things on blue zones around the country. And these are people who live into their hundreds. There's several things they do. Now, I've been lucky enough, I've worked with several people in their 90s and mid-90s. And I always asked him that, so what are what are the key things that you do? They're always learning, they're always active, they're doing something, they're working out on a regular basis. Some of them play tennis, some of them play pickleball. There, I got one guy who started a five-acre cattle ranch at the age of 87. Okay. At 96, he's still working the cattle ranch by himself with his wife. Uh, they always are eating healthy, but they always have social community around them. And when you have those things into play, you can live a much healthier life. We've done a great job at extending people's lives where we're up to like 79 years of age on average. The problem is the healthy years of lifespan is getting smaller. We used to be 49 years, and since 1960, it's dropped back to about 48 years. So we got about 30 years.

SPEAKER_00 57:29

And the podcast I was listening to, they said don't focus on longevity. Right. Focus on living well as long as you can. How sad?

SPEAKER_02 57:36

48. 48 is your healthy lifespan.

SPEAKER_00 57:39

Uh, that shocks me when you're going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02 57:40

Yeah, that's yeah. When I saw that, I was like, what? So what's that mean?

SPEAKER_00 57:44

Out of 48, your health is just declining.

SPEAKER_02 57:45

If you don't take care of yourself, it's just declining. Yeah. And doctors are telling me they see more and more people in their 50s with things they used to see people in their 60s and 70s.

SPEAKER_00 57:54

Diabetes and that kind of thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:55

Diabetes, point replacements, cancer, yeah. Cancer, young. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:59

Well, you're lucky you had a doctor, though, that also understood nutrition because most doctors do not.

SPEAKER_02 58:05

No, they do not. They get about the ones I've talked to said they get about one to two semesters of nutrition maximum.

SPEAKER_00 58:10

Well, and normally that the pharmaceutical companies are so um strong, I guess. I don't know what the right word is, but they're so influential, which is maybe better. And let's face it, they're one of the biggest lobbyists in DC. Yeah, they have a lot to do with what's going on in the medical world.

SPEAKER_02 58:27

So if we and insurance companies. So if we're not training our physicians about wellness, it's really hard for people to learn.

SPEAKER_00 58:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:35

And it's when we've got tons of information. I mean, not all of it is correct. So you want to be very cautious about who you listen to and what you do. But if you understand the basics of what you need to do in your life, and and again, it's not going to be a single bullet. I'm not going to sell you a pill and say, take this pill, and you'll be like, Great, you'll look 25 again. No, no, no. You you you've got to have the movement. You you need to have your brain working where you're learning things every day. You need to have the socialness of being with people every day. You want to eat the right food so that you're putting things in your body so your body can produce a healthier body. You've got to have the flexibility to keep your joints healthy. When you do that, that doesn't mean that you'll never have anything to go wrong. But what I've seen with people who are 75 and above, when things do arise, they bounce back like somebody who's 25 or 30 years old. A friend of mine who is 85 two years ago fell and broke her hip. For most people, 85 years old, a broken hip is almost a death sentence. She bounced back, she's back up living her life and doing everything she was doing before. You see, the guy that I was telling you about the farmer that's at 96 years old, he's had a few things along the way, a surgery here, a surgery there, but it's like he's bouncing back like somebody half his age. And so what happens is that as you keep your body in a good space, and even if you get to a point that you need a joint replacement, the one thing I've seen is that by getting people in, stretching their muscles, getting their muscles prepared for that, that joint replacement, whether it's a hip or a knee or whatever, their recovery time is far less than when they don't have that. Because from a PT standpoint, if you come in and your muscles are weak and your muscles are stiff, you're starting way behind where the just a joint replacement is. Yeah. They've got to get you strong enough to get you up to that point.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:19

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:19

And so you're way behind the eight ball adapter. So if you come in and you're in good shape, that PT's job is much easier and your rehab would be much easier.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:27

And I don't want to get off topic. However, you did say you can't just give people a pill and expect everything to be okay. So what's your feeling then about Ozempic and trisepatite and people using that now as a quick fix for weight loss?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:40

A couple things. I mean, number one, we've had no longitudinal studies over a long period of time, so we don't really know what the long-term effect may be. I think that we really got to focus on short-term what I see. It can be a good thing to get somebody started in the right path. But we really got to teach people how to eat food correctly. And I and I know some people say, well, we need to have lobbies who come in and we change it. We're not gonna do that. But if we as people start changing our choices, the grocery store doesn't care what we buy as long as we buy. So if we change our choices and we start buying healthier foods and things that are more organic, then what you'll see grocery stores start to carry will be that.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:21

Yeah, I think the challenge though with that, and I think you would agree, being in a media profession like I was, I think what happens is almost every ad you see on TV, Pringles, have you can never have just one, right? And then there's a pharmaceutical ad. There's like all these we're being bombarded with eat ultra-processed foods. We're not advertising the apples. They're not advertising broccoli. So I think people are confused, and now you know, you'll see low fat or keto-friendly, and they look at the labels and think they're eating health. Yes, yes. And so it's they think they've gotten the education to make good choices, but ultimately, I mean, the truth of the matter is you want to you want to eat the food on the outside of the grocery store that is not in a package, not have a label with ingredients you can't pronounce.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:11

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:11

Right. I mean, these chemicals are in there so that people will the product will last longer on the shelf, right? And they're made in factories. So you want to try to eat food that's not made in a factory, exactly. Right. I mean, those those are kind of the key little takeaways. It's like just, you know, it's not that complicated.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:30

Um if you pick up an apple and you look at the ingredients, it should say apple.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:33

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:34

If it says anything else with OSC on the end or whatever, yeah, put it back.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:38

I don't think it has a label on it. Do apples have labels on it?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:41

Well, what they have is that little QR code which tells them, tells a grocer where it came from and all those things. But it's no agree, but um, my point is, and I'm being facetious. You pick up a package of apples, it should say apples immediately.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:53

Yeah, exactly. And that's the other thing they said too. They're starting to package them because people are more likely to buy them in a bag than they are to buy them fresh off the show. I wonder why that is psychologically. It's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:04

It's like a little party thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:06

What is that all about?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:07

I mean, if you think I know when I was in college before I I took a class in business and we're talking about grocery stores and the psychology of the grocery store. If you always notice, we almost always go to the right, and there's always the bakery and there's the deli, and they have these smells going. Right. That's intentional. Yeah. And if you notice that the milk is on the back corner, yeah, that's intentional. And so you're right.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:28

Why is that intentional?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:29

So, number one, you come in and you smell the fried chicken, you smell the bakery, you're gonna want to buy it by that fresh bread that just came out of the bridge. There you go. There you go. And so that forces the people who just came in to get milk. You got to go buy all of that to get to the milk. Chances are you may buy one of these.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:45

And don't ever go as a man. That's that's dangerous. You know, I don't know if you ever go to Dettweilers down here, but that's another place. Actually, down there they have it set up differently. So you do go to the produce first and you end up at the bakery, but it's hard for me to walk by those little donuts. Donuts, I'm not gonna lie. I've been uh swayed once or twice.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:05

I've been at it long enough that when I look at those little donuts and I go, you are not getting me.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:10

Well, the thing that's actually probably good though for me is that I will buy the box of donuts and I'll eat one and go, I don't know what I was thinking. I just wasted five dollars because I'm not gonna eat this entire box of donuts.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:22

And I have done that in the past where I've gotten something, why did I buy that?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:26

Yeah, not good, not good. So, what's one transformation story that really sticks with you?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:31

The biggest one, the biggest one I had was uh a guy who came into my office and when I walked out to the waiting room, he was on the floor on his knees with his head in the seat, and he had severe back pain. And he we brought him into my office. He couldn't lay on his stomach and he couldn't lay on his back. And so literally started working on him laying across the bed, and we got him straightened out. Took me probably about four visits, maybe five visits, and he was able to get up and walk around. And was he overweight? He was not overweight, he had just he had tightened up the muscles here and his thighs, hamstrings and the quads on the front of his thighs, and he couldn't move either way. And he was nearly in tears by the time he came in. And to see him walk out was pretty fun. And then he came back the next day and he had a box for me, and I didn't realize his family had owned a big tea company, so he said, You don't because he asked me when he left the first time, did you like tea? And I said, Yeah, I like hot tea. And she comes back with these boxes of great tea, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:29

Life.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:30

But he said, You you changed my life. And I go, No, no, no, no, we changed your life because he had to do the work when he went home.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:36

And that's the thing I always remember. There's no magic in my hands. I just I show people what to do. I send them home with videos that they can follow. I give them all the tools that they need to be able to do the work, because the ultimate goal is you being able to do the work and understanding what's happening because you're the person that's got to let go.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:52

So when would someone come to you? Somebody would come to you, uh are they referred by another doctor, or how does this work?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:58

100% of my people are referred to. By my by my patients, client. So usually I'll get somebody, if they're older, they've got a nagging neck pain or back pain or elbow pain. Sometimes I get referrals from doctors as well. I've got one doctor in town that uh his wife had an elbow tendinitis, and which is a very simple thing to solve. She came in and swooshed for an hour, and the next morning she she woke up and her elbow tendonitis wasn't hurting her anymore. And he called me up, wouldn't know what I had done. He said, I've worked on her for three months. I couldn't get her to stop. And so he sends me all of his elbow tendonitis people. And then I've got two or three doctors who uh they'll send patients to me who have like stiff hips or knees, and they may be facing a joint replacement like it does sometimes. But most of it's coming from my clients and physics.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

So this is an alternative to physical.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:43

Yeah, yes, an alternative to that. It doesn't replace it. I've worked with physical therapists. I had a gentleman who broke his hip, was an average average bike rider, cyclist, and he broke his hip riding his bike. He had the hip replaced like in October of that year. And by January, we had him back on the bike and between the PT and myself by January of the next year.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:03

So what's the most common thing people say after they try your technique for the first time?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:07

Most of the time, what I get from them is they feel more clarity about what's happening with their body. They feel hopeful, which is the key, that they're their pain's gonna stop. And usually when somebody comes in and talks to me, I've got about a 99% success rate of getting them to come back and do it. But the whole idea is to be clear, let them be clear on what's happening and to give them the hope that this can be solved.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:30

And so generally for it to be solved, it's four to five sessions, or it could be any, every case is different.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:35

Every case is different. Um I typically say with somebody new, you know, at least give me three sessions because it's gonna be a real mindset shift about muscles from what we're always taught.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:44

Um and after that three sessions, you can come as often as you want. But the whole key here, the whole point here is to get you to do it yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:52

For someone listening right now who's in pain, where do they start?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:56

Well, there's a couple of things. What I would say to them is go to my YouTube channel. I have over 200 videos there. They can get a real feel for what I'm doing because in the YouTube channels I'll talk about various aches and pains, what typically happens, and then uh give some uh demonstrations on some stretching that they can do at home. Obviously, buy my book. It's on Amazon.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:14

What's the name of your YouTube channel?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:16

YouTube channel is called the Muscle Repair Shop. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:18

Okay, you're welcome.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:19

My book stretching release on Amazon. And then if here in Sarasota, you're always welcome to come with a free consultation. We'll spend a half an hour to an hour with you, answer your questions, and then you get a feel for what I do.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:30

Okay. Speaking of YouTube, you have over 150 free videos.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:35

Almost 200 now, but yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:36

Wow. What which one should someone try first? Should they start at number one or two?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:40

No, well, it's kind of set up to where you can pick and choose what part of your body is hurting, and you can do that. If you're looking for back, there's back videos on there, there's uh knee videos on there, there's shoulder neck videos, and just pick and choose what you what fits you.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:54

Okay. How long does it typically take for someone to feel a difference?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:57

Typically, the first time you start moving uh and doing the movements, it's not unusual to hear somebody say it, you know, I feel at least 50% better than when I came in.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:06

And how important is it that they do what you've taught them at home?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:11

It's very important. In fact, it won't be successful at all if you don't.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:14

So it's not gonna happen in a 60 minutes with you until the next time they're exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:18

I mean, once in a while I'm lucky enough to somebody call the next day and go, Oh my god, my planar fashion is totally gone. That happens, but that's a rarity. Um, and and if you're not careful, it'll bounce back. And so as a society, we're used to people doing things to us. We go to a doctor, they give us an injection, we go to a PT, they do this, or we go to massage therapists, they give us a massage. We need to get more used to doing things with somebody. And so again, I work as a guide with that.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:43

Yeah. It's hard though to get I know to get in the time to do the exercise after you spend an hour with them and then they're like, okay, go home. And yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:51

Well, I mean, the the simple thing is, is like, like, you know, I was I always talk to them about what I do. So, like, if I get in my car, my neck feels a little stiff. At each stoplight, while it's red, I will actually stretch my neck in a different way.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:04

Or I'll work on my arm or whatever. So I want them to learn so that they can do these things throughout the day, not have to just set up a specific time.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:12

You know what I wish my PT would do though? And I don't know if you've ever thought of this, but for me, this would be helpful. I wish they would videotape, have a little tripod in the office and videotape the exercises I'm supposed to be doing. I do that all the time. Because we'll be talking about it. And then the minute I leave the office, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing when I get home.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:29

So when somebody comes to my office, what I do is I usually teach them each each of the first three visits, three stretches. And I send them home with videos of those three stretches. And in the videos, I go back through the explanation of what to do, how to do it, just like I did when I was sitting in your office. Good. So I've got all those on filed in. Because some people say, But don't you like write it down? And I said, Well, no, because each of these are individual stretches uh based on everybody had can everybody can have back pain, but it can come from various things.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:59

Well, and not only that, I mean, first of all, I'm a visual learner, it's hard sometimes to translate what you read on a piece of paper into the physical movement. At least I'm like, okay, what is it, what does this mean? And so even when I was working with a trainer, there would be oftentimes when if I wasn't with them one-on-one, I'd look up a YouTube video. How do I I don't know what he called this exercise. I don't know what it is. So I'd have to look and see what it was.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:23

So what what I did with the videos is like like a calf stretch. You'll sit on the floor with your back against the wall, you got a yoga strap around your foot working on a calf stretch. And not only will I go through how do you breathe, what are you thinking about, how to what kind of pressure you want to put on your foot, but also follow that up with these are the common things people make mistakes on. Don't put that strap around their foot and then they grab it like they're wrestling a bull and they pull as hard as they can that their foot comes up off the ground. And I always laugh when I go, if you're doing this, you're doing a bicep curl, you're not stretching your calves, you're using your leg as resistance.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:55

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:55

And so I try to put those into those videos as well so that when they see that it helps them.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:00

That's awesome. All right, we're up to the last word. I'm ready.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:04

That's it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:05

All right, just one sentence for each. Pain is trying to tell us something's wrong. Something's wrong. Aging well really means living well. What's living well?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:14

Living well is eating a healthy diet, exercise, having friends, and and strength training.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:20

I like that. The biggest lie people believe about their bodies is they have little control over their pain. Okay. That's a good one. Healing work requires blank. Requires commitment and dedication. I like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:33

If someone feels stuck in their body today, I want them to remember Your body is fluid and it can change whenever you change your mind.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:42

I love it. Thanks, Butch. This conversation is a powerful reminder that sometimes the limits we accept aren't actually limits. They're just beliefs we haven't questioned yet. If today's episode shifted your perspective even a little, share it with someone who needs it, needs to hear it because you never know who's silently living with pain they think they have to accept. You can learn more about Butch's work through the muscle repair shop or his book, Stretch and Release, which again is right here. That's what it looks like on Amazon. And his library of free videos designed to help you take your body back one small step at a time. And if you haven't already, be sure to follow Joy of the Hang on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube so you never miss a conversation that just might change the way you see your life. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and take one small step towards something that makes you feel better because it matters. Thank you for being with us, but thank you for having me. It's been fun. Yeah, this is very informative. All right. Bye all.