Geoff Rose | Why Your Body Breaks Down — and the Structural Approach That Actually Fixes It

Geoff Rose started his career as a strength coach at Clemson. He left convinced the problem wasn't the coaches or the methodology — it was the model. Not enough time, not enough specificity, and no framework for building structure before building load.

Today Geoff runs REP Athletics in Larchmont, where he works with elite athletes and chronic pain patients using the same methodology: ELDOA, myofascial stretching, and structural patterning. The thesis is simple and it holds up — structure dictates function. Fix the structure, and both pain and performance move in the right direction.

In this conversation we get into how fascia actually works and why most people have no idea how connected the body really is, why a 60-year-old with back pain and Usain Bolt were dealing with the same root problem, what REP looks for in a new client that a conventional trainer or PT would walk right past, why Westchester youth athletes are showing up with injuries that have no business appearing in a 12-year-old, and why physical therapy often fails — not because of the therapist, but because of the business model forcing them to see eight patients an hour.

If you have done PT, seen doctors, and still are not right — this is the conversation to hear.

Timestamps:

00:00 — From Clemson to a different model 03:15 — Fascia, ELDOA, and structural patterning defined 07:02 — Why elite athletes and chronic pain patients do the same exercises 08:55 — The barefoot running trap and why big changes require small steps 10:44 — Wearables: useful tool or overthinking machine 12:17 — What REP sees in a new client that others miss 14:14 — Westchester trains hard. How do you shift that instinct 17:10 — Youth athletes in Westchester: what is going wrong 19:05 — If PT hasn't worked, what question should you be asking

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Most people most people who do everything right for back pain still end up back where they started. Research tracking recovery outcomes show roughly seven in ten adults experience recurrent back pain within twelve months of initially getting better. We spend more than a hundred billion dollars a year on treatment in this country, and the problem keeps coming well back. So is it the treatment, the follow-through, or the framework itself? That question is what brought me to today's guest. Jeff Rhodes is founder of Rep Athletics, a training and recovery facility on Boston Proad in Larchmont, built around a methodology called ELDOA, developed by a French osteopath, Guy Voyeux. It works at the level of the fascial system and structural patterning rather than muscle-by-muscle model most of us are used to. Rep is the only facility in Westchester County integrating ELDOA into its programming. Jeff started as a strength group coach at Jeff started as a strength coach at Clemson, then spent the better part of a decade asking a question most coaches don't. Why do people keep getting hurt even when they're doing everything right? That question led him to a methodology, a facility, and a clientele ranging from young athletes to adults who have been told surgery is their only option. I want to understand what he's built. Let's get into it. Jeff, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks so much for having me, Jim. So you started as a strength coach at Clemson. You know, at what point did you just decide that the standard model wasn't enough? And kind of what pulled you towards this more structural approach?

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yeah, I I think first and foremost, my experience at Clemson was just fantastic. I was able to study under two phenomenal strength coaches while I was there, and I think they do a great job. I think the problem is not the coaches or the methodology that they are putting out. It's the time. So what you're basically asking these guys to do is all of your athletes show up toward the end of August, and you've got so part of August, September, and then you've got until October 15th to get them ready. And so I bring that up with like, yes, of course, if you're a returning player, you have a strength program for the couple months that you're gone. But there's no time to really do like a true periodization, which like most strength coaches know about the idea of like kind of bringing people through different phases as regards to building a foundation, then going into more maybe mass building. Okay, now let's work on our power. And so the timing, it's just not given to them. And then on top of that, you know, you're working with the best athletes out there, right? But they have two full-time jobs. They have to be a student and then they have to be a professional basketball player, right? Um, which is more so true than ever nowadays. So I don't think it's necessarily an issue with the strength coach of the methodology per se, but I think it's more of an issue of the framework in which they have to work with. And you know, it's funny when you say, okay, like when did you kind of shift? I it wasn't until I became um the head strength coach at Concordia College for men's basketball, where I noticed kind of my first year, I said, Hey, I'm gonna focus on, you know, this basic strength training, I'm gonna focus on uh, you know, getting the glutes firing and this kind of stuff to say like, I don't know, this guy's already like really fast. This guy's already like really strong. But he keeps hurting his ankle. And what's the most important part of ability? Availability, right? So I say to myself, you know, basketball, you know, what are you what are you crushing? Like what are you beating up the most? It's your feet, it's your knees. So then that just poses the question of like, well, okay, how can I best give the proper structure or tension in the foot? How can I, if somebody just has a knee ache, how can I make that feel better so they have way more confidence on pushing off? And what's funny enough, you know, it took me years and years and years of studying and practicing, but when you create a better environment, let's say around the knee, when you create a better environment, let's say around the ankle, not only does like pain go away, but performance happens to increase, interestingly enough. So um you know, uh the kind of big, big takeaway, which we're gonna talk a lot more about, is structure dictates function. You know, if somebody has an immobile ankle because of, I don't know, there was an old fracture in the foot, or because the pelvis is out of whack and that's putting something down the line off off kilter, then you can't get the most out of those joints available.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

You know, some could argue there's three jobs right now with uh the NCAA rule change it as influencers.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Yes, yes, yes, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

And that could probably be the most demanding job.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Right, right, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

So exactly. So let's define some terms for the audience. You know, when you talk uh and correct me if I'm not saying correct, but uh ELDOA, fascia, and structural pattering, what are we actually talking about and why does it matter more than most people realize?

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Yeah. So it sounds like a lot to unpack. It's really not that complex at the end of the day, but they're all interlinked. And it all kind of starts with fascia. And so fascia is definitely like a very trendy word right now. It's it's a connective tissue. And I think as a baseline understanding of it, it's a container. So my muscle is made up of hundreds, thousands of m tiny little muscle fibers, and it sits within a container. That's called the fascia. And it's a pliable container, it can move. But it doesn't really end there. The fascia also encases every bone and every organ in our body. And so if we think of, okay, there's a fascia of the hamstring, okay, and we have three hamstrings by the way, it's not only the container of that, but it has to has an ending somewhere. And that's usually, let's say, on a bone. But guess what? Another piece of fascia also starts or ends on that same bone. And so, in a way, you want to think of it of like a steel link chain. If I pull on one very slowly, the other chain is gonna start to have tension on it, and then the next chain will start to have tension on it, so on and so forth. And so it's this comprehensive spider web, if you will, that essentially, because of those rules, has a connection from your big toe all the way to the back of your eyeballs. Because you can basically just say, well, this piece of fascia then leads up to that piece of fascia, and then it leads up to that piece of fascia. And by the way, some pieces of fascia will attach to a ligament. Some pieces of fascia will attach to things like the spine. So it's it's like managing a puppet. You know, if I move the puppet just on one arm, it doesn't just isolate the arm, it starts to create a movement over the entire puppet. And that is, not to dug a holes too much, but that is really the idea of like tensegrity. So I don't know if you've ever heard that term before, but biotinsegrity. So if you think of a bridge, okay, San Francisco Bridge is a great example, right? The bridge goes this way, but why are there soft cables coming up? It's because if the bridge was just made out of concrete and the winds in San Francisco, that bridge would eventually wear down because it's very stiff. And so they say, why fight those forces? Let's make something that has just a little bit of play. And so that bridge very gently sways. And that's the way things work in our body, right? Not everything is rigid, not everything is made out of bone. Things are meant to be pliable, the ability to move. Um so so that's kind of the the component of fascia is to create tension in the body. So I'll give you one super quick example is think of your heart. If I jumped up and down, does my heart go down to into my pelvis, back up into my throat, and then come back to my chest? I mean it it it doesn't, is the answer. I'm giving that leading question because if we think of like the laws of gravity, that would kind of be what happens, right? But the heart sits in a big piece of fascia that connects from our mid-thoracic spine all the way to our lower cervical and then to our sternum in front. And so that's really important to understand because it has this internal tension that's keeping it in a relative place, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Yeah, no, that definitely makes sense. Uh heart and throat, uh, you know, it's more a metaphor than a reality. So, you know, you know, you work with two very, very different populations, whether it's elite athletes or people in chronic pain, you know, what what's the common thread that makes that methodology applicable to both?

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Um you know, if uh if a strength coach is listening to this, they may not like what I have to say, but a lot of times it's all the same thing. Meaning we're doing a lot of the same exercises. So if I had an elite sprinter and a person in their 60s uh who's suffering from back pain, it's very probable they'd be doing the same exercise. So if you look at someone like Usain Bolt, one of the best sprinters of all time, very early on in his career, he was injury ridden. He had constant hamstring strains and a lot of low back pain. And the reason why that was was his gait was messed up. So he didn't have a lot of good hip mobility, which led him with his leg to overstride. When he overstrides, he loads the hamstring more than it's supposed to be loaded. And then he'd say, Okay, where else can I get mobility from? I'm gonna arch my back a lot to get the mobility. So he's creating a compensatory pattern in order to achieve the steps, if that makes sense. And once they strengthened some things, once they fixed his gait pattern, all of a sudden, not only did pain go away, but he went on to become one of the greatest sprinters of all time. But I would make that argument for that 60-something year old with back pain, the pelvis is the foundation that the spine sits on. So if your pelvis is out of whack, right, if it's out of balance, if something in the pelvis doesn't work or doesn't move, now those forces are gonna go up to your spine. Or you're gonna say, Okay, I'm gonna create my mobility through my back as opposed to my hip. And that's where those lines they totally cross over on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

I wanted to just double-click on the the Hussein Bolt um thing. Uh you know, I I call a real really good friend of mine. I would, you know, say a strong runner, you know, seven minute mile, uh, you know, six and a half minute mile guy. And he he went to that barefoot running change and gate and ended up getting injured in that process. Uh you know, what what what is it, you know, especially when people just kind of take on we read too much, you know, we we see what's good, we see what's working with others, but we don't internalize that. You know, what what happens there? Like, you know, obviously you don't know my friend and what he did specifically wrong, but um you know, why is it so hard to make certain changes?

SPEAKER_00 11:02

If I'm understanding it correctly, your friend went to fully barefoot running. Yes. Okay. That's like going from zero to a hundred would be my best interpretation. That would be like asking um a distance runner to do the high jump. They they just don't correlate. And so, you know, this barefoot movement, I like a lot of it. Like, I actually train like when we train hockey players, we train them barefoot. Why? Because they're stuck in a boot all the time in their sport, like a really confined boot. So we want that kind of pliability in those in those toes. But running is a lot of impact. So running barefoot wouldn't be my first kind of choice, or I would say, okay, we can do a little bit of barefoot running, but like definitely on grass, and we would J just like if you were a brand new runner, you wouldn't go out and run 10 miles, right? You would run a half a mile. Okay, next week I'm gonna run a mile, and then I'm gonna run a mile and a half. You would kind of have to learn how to kind of pace yourself because the soft tissues aren't used to that kind of hard impact that you're creating now on it. Because essentially the sneaker is a shock absorber.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

And hence hoaxes versus you know, airfront runners and the whole the whole whole nine. Right, right. Actually, just out of curiosity, you know, what what is the role of technology coming in in you know, in in your daily life? You know, uh obviously you've got your whoops, your humes, people are tracking their sleeps, their Apple Watches. Um, you know, is that good or bad?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Um I will say this, like I myself have an aura ring, and the biggest thing that I use it for is a reminder not to eat too late. So I get pretty good sleep. I'm really, really good about my diet, but hey, on a Saturday night I get a little bit of a sweet tooth. You know, I notice that like my heart rate is more elevated when I eat late or if I have dessert late, um, and I probably don't get as into too much of deep sleep. But I bring that all up to say I think they're good for those things. I think if you have something like you're very overweight and you're trying to lose weight, it's good to kind of look at some of that stuff as like a constant reminder of, hey, did I get my steps in? So on and so forth. But at the same time, I really think it can get into people's heads. Oh, you know, my rest score is only a 78. Should I work out today? It's like, you gotta move, you know. So I I I think there's good and there's bad uh with it. Um and I just I just get worried about people overthinking it, you know? Like if you don't f if you really don't feel great today, okay, you just have to figure out how to temper your workout or just go for a walk outside as opposed to doing a strength workout. If you feel good, but then your sleep score is bad, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't work out, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Nope. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

So so so walk me through what happens when someone comes into rep for the first time. You know, what are you looking at that a conventional trainer or even physical therapist might not be looking at? And actually, what is the typical rep client? Is it someone like me who just wants to get strong, or is it someone who is, you know, has an injury? You know what who's that client?

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Yeah. Um when people first walk in, we watch and we listen. And I bring that up as in I want to make sure that for one, the client is heard on whatever their goals are. But two, I don't want to say too much. I have the client walk in front of me because I want to see their gait. Right? Meaning like how does their foot strike? Are they shifted to one side, so on and so forth. And so I do a lot of like a postural assessment without actually telling people that I am. Because I want to see you in your natural state without thinking, oh, is Jeff looking to see how tall I'm sitting? Right, so on and so forth. And then we listen. So if someone says to me, which is a very common client, uh, I'm focused on longevity and I want to build bone mineral density, therefore I want to lift really heavy weights. And I say, I think that's a great goal. I think you're accurate on how we should create bone mineral density, but as I'm taking a look at your joints, you're really restricted. You're really beat up, you're really compressed. So I'm gonna write down, yes, that that is your goal. I'm gonna listen, I'm gonna accept that, and we're gonna figure out the best way to get there. Meaning to me, it doesn't make sense just to put you under a barbell 135 pounds and start squatting to build bone mineral density if your structure can't handle it. So as we go on, we do you know more of like a passive assessment where I'm kind of looking at how your pelvis moves, how your spine moves, how your neck moves, how your ankle moves to say, okay, these are the things that are constricting your movement. So let's improve those right now. Then we give you homework, you walk away, we get a plan going, and we start that plan the next time that we see you. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

So, you know, Westchester is high achieving, high pressure, you know, across the county. Uh people want to train hard, they push through, they get results. You know, I I love this county because it's also so many like fads that come up, you know, whether it's um, you know, Iron Man, Triathlon, it's CrossFit, which seems now to be, you know, kind of the the you know kind of passe. Everybody up and down King Street over here is in a weighted vest. You know, how how do you shift someone's relationship with their body when everything in their instinct just says work harder?

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Yeah, um, that's a great question, and it's probably the biggest tug of war that we play. You know, everybody wants us to beat the you know what out of them, right? They want to say, push me hard, I want to bench press heavyweight and squat heavyweight and all this kind of stuff. And and we actually do do a lot of it. You know, if it is safe to do, we you know, we will do it. But what's funny is you talk about like the mind-body connection, and that is kind of like one of our specialties. And I'm not talking about that from a yoga standpoint of closing your eyes and visualize, but we talked about that fascial system before. We do a lot of myofascial stretching with people, which just sounds like, oh, I stretch my hamstring. Well, the reality is that fascial system is the most receptor-rich system in the entire body. Receptors give information back to the brain. And so if I do a myofascial stretching for a muscle or a fascial chain crossing over multiple joints, then I can create more information to the brain on how that piece is supposed to hold itself, what tension it's supposed to have. And so, Jim, you can sit here and argue with me like, is a client gonna really care about rotation of the fibular head? They're not gonna care. But what ends up happening is after they do uh a very specific myofascial stretch with intention, they stand up and say, Whoa. When I put my foot on the ground and I put weight on it, my back doesn't hurt anymore. That's kind of interesting. Or we've had it for athletes, the same thing. After they do a myofascial stretching of a specific muscle like the lateral hamstring, they say, Wow, like I actually feel faster sprinting. And while you're not really supposed to be sprinting after myofascial stretching specifically, it's a great example to see. Maybe they don't say, Oh, because you know, this particular bone rotates more, that's not what they're saying. But they can actually feel the difference of like, whoa, I feel more freedom here, or I feel like I'm more in tune with how my knee functions, how my hip functions. And so I bring that all up to say, you know, we have clients who've come in originally with herniations. Fast forward four years, they're squatting 250 pounds, right? Just because they put in the work early and then it and it's paid off. But the other side of it is even though people come in, they say, Hey, I want you to push me really hard, if they get up and they say, Wow, I feel totally different, you've won them over. And we don't need to fight so much about how much we're gonna squat today or power cleaning or any of that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

So let's talk about kids. You know, youth athlete injury prevention, it's clearly a growing part of what you do. You know, you have all these kids at multiple baseball camps, different coaches, not coordinated, no one's on a pitch count. You know, like what are you seeing in young athletes in Westchester that concerns you and and and what's going wrong in how we're training kids?

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Well, I think I think you just you just hit the nail on the head, you know. Baseball's all year round. You know, it is an all-year-ound sport. Uh unfortunately hockey is all year round here. So is lacrosse, right? People are so competitive lacrosse in Westchester. And so I think it's not that lacrosse is bad or baseball is bad. It's that repetitive motion over and over and over again. And you doing that all year round multiple times, heading off to these tournaments where you're gonna play four games in one weekend, it's just a lot of wear and tear. And to me, I find it bizarre that like we have twelve, fourteen year olds coming in saying, Ah, my neck hurts. It's like why does a twelve year old have neck pain? That's in that's insane. Or my low back hurts. You know, we ha we actually have you know, collegiate lacrosse players who have really bad back problems and that started in high school. But it's because they played all year round as a kid and you're pretty much invincible then. But the wear and tear continues, and as the years go on, you become less and less invincible. You start to wear down. And so I do think that's one thing, and I just have to throw in the other thing, the cell phone. I know it's not part of the question that you asked me, but everybody is having neck problems because they're spending their time like this. And so I would argue through biomechanics, through tin segredy, if we start to lose our awareness and our mobility in our neck, you want to be a pitcher? That's a huge, huge mistake because you're gonna lose your ability to rotate and counter-rotate for for optimal force.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

I've watched too much F1 on uh Apple TV. I want to get one of those head stretching. Oh, yes, yes, on my phone, you know. Totally. Yeah. Maybe not G Force is affecting me, but you know, clearly I'll feel it. Yeah. So if if if someone's listening that's in that frustrating middle place, they they've done PT, they've seen doctors, but but they're still not right. You know, what what should they be asking themselves that they probably aren't?

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Yeah, I think there's two sides of that. I think one, again, uh would never downplay the quality or the ability of physical therapists. I think it goes back to they're handcuffed. So if you go to a normal physical therapy clinic, what do they do? They take insurance. There's not a lot of money in it. So what do you have to do? There's not a lot of money in it, right? So what do you have to do? You have to that physical therapist has to see eight people in one hour. So when a physical therapist actually sees a patient, they're seeing them for ten minutes trying to fix the problem. After that ten minutes is up, you go to an intern, someone who reads from a paper and says, okay, three sets of ten, and it's more so the model than what they're actually doing is the problem. It's very, very hard to fix a problem in ten minutes. So I think that's I think that's one aspect of it. And then I think the other aspect of it is one of the best quotes from my mentor is you are your own best therapist. And I bring that back to homework, which physical therapy clinics do, right? They say, Okay, here's your sheet, and da da da. In full honesty, those exercises, in my opinion, are outdated. They're not very good because they're not specific enough for people. And so the reason why I bring that all up is it would be no different than uh trying to lose weight. If I only eat well two days a week, am I gonna lose weight? Probably not. Right? And so the same would be if I have a back problem, me just seeing a physical therapist twice a week is not enough. And so how serious am I gonna take my homework? How deliberate am I gonna be? How intentional am I gonna be, and how precise can I be? Which is definitely the one thing that we really kind of specialize in is precision exercise. Meaning, if I need to make a muscle longer, how do I do that? In some cases, Jim, you actually need to make a muscle shorter. How would you do that? And that's kind of what we specialize in is figuring out how to create the best synergy in the body.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Well, Jeff, you've definitely given us a lot to think about, and I want to thank you for your time. Obviously, all your contact information will be in the show notes, and uh really, really interesting stuff. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

I want to thank Jeff for his time and his insight and the framing that he brought to this that the body is a system, not a collection of parts to be treated one at a time. And that's the kind of thinking I started the show to surface. The idea that most people are getting help, but not the right kind of help is uncomfortable to sit with, and it's worth sitting with. Today's conversation made you look at your own situation differently or made you think of someone you know who's stuck in that cycle. Look up Reath Athletics in LarchMod. The website is RepAthleticsco.com. And if you want to keep going, we have two ways to stay connected. The Westchester Brief runs Monday through Thursday, local stories, accountability journalism, the things that actually shape the life in the county. Find it wherever you listen to your podcasts. On Friday, we publish the Friday Intel, one data-driven deep dive into what the numbers tell us about Westchester. If you want to understand this place at a deeper level, that's your show. Follow us on Instagram and visit us at ILiveHearmedia dot com. That's where everything lives. I'm Jim. This is I Live Here Westchester. Thanks for being here.