Chronic Shoulder Pain Is NOT a Prerequisite of Dance

Chronic shoulder pain is NOT a prerequisite of dance.

Far too many dancers are living with shoulder pain, instability, tightness, clicking, weakness, or even recovering from surgery and assuming it’s just “part of the lifestyle.” It’s not.

In this podcast, I break down why shoulder pain develops in dancers, the biggest mistakes I see being made in both training and rehab, and what we can actually do to prevent injuries before they happen.

Whether you currently have shoulder pain, have already undergone shoulder surgery, are trying to avoid surgery altogether, or simply want to keep your body healthy long term while continuing to dance at a high level, this episode is for you.

I also explain my 5 Pillar Concept:
• Movement
• Mobility
• Strength
• Flexibility
• Lifestyle

Because true recovery and injury prevention isn’t about one magic exercise or one treatment. It’s about understanding how the entire system works together.

The goal is simple:
Dance more. Hurt less. Perform better.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, welcome back to the Unbreakable Dancer Podcast. Today we're going to talk about shoulder surgery, shoulder pain, and prevention and rehab from both or back from both. And I think it's good timing because tomorrow I go to the salsa conference in Cologne. And I know Jacobo, I dude, I hope I'm saying your name right, uh did something to his shoulder because he had a pretty crazy brace on it. And even though he was able to move and dance, I think he had a pretty serious uh shoulder surgery. And also, when I was in the Salsa Kings Festival in Kos a few years ago, no, last year, I guess, Margarita, uh another professional dancer from Greece, uh dislocated her shoulder during a social dance. And I don't believe that was the first time she would she dislocated it. So between those two salsa uh dancers, and also in my case, just working uh and interning for professional volleyball, professional tennis, professional American football, professional soccer, and multiple other sports, I've seen tons of shoulder injuries, rehab tons of shoulder surgeries, and got to see the difference between, you know, working with people like moms and dads versus actual multimillion dollar uh gold medal world champions and how it differs and how actually, in a lot of cases, it really should be exactly the same. So I'm gonna go over that along with my concept of movement, mobility, strength, flexibility, and lifestyle, and how we can use that paradigm, if you will, or those five pillars in order to understand how we can, yeah, not have a shoulder. That hurts. It's as easy as that. So, first, let's kind of start with that paradigm, and then I'll use some stories uh in between to give some examples. So, again, movement, mobility, strength, flexibility, and lifestyle. Let's talk about movement. So, movement in the body, but now the shoulder joint is pretty important. And what is even more important, well, I guess it's all actually important, is A, we want to be able to move it correctly. So, are we doing push-ups correctly? Are we hanging correctly? Are we doing pull-ups correctly? And actually, to dancers, are you even doing that stuff? Again, I created the Unbreakable Dancer for the fact that we have got to start training like athletes when we're dancers. So many of the, so many of them and us are dancing all the time, which is fantastic, but it's not enough. So, as a little caveat, if you're not doing those movements, you need to start doing them now because we don't know if you're doing them right or if you're doing them wrong, or if you can't even do them at all if you're not doing it. So, push-ups, pull-ups, hanging, general arm movements, are you doing them correctly? And if not, we need to fix that because movement is always the root, really, of everything. So, are you moving correctly? And then are you moving enough? You know, in our world of everything being like right in front of us. So if you're watching this on Instagram, you're gonna see what I'm talking about. If you're listening to it, I'll explain. Think about like when you're driving a car, where you're where your hands are. Think about when you're eating, where your hands are, when you're writing, where your hands are, when you're typing on a computer, same thing. When basically you do anything in life, our arms are locked in this very small uh range of motion. How do I want to say it? It's they're very they're locked in one place, basically. We're not extending, we're not flexing, we're not going above our head, we're not going way back into a tricep position. When we were kids, we did this a bit, you know, when you're running and jumping and climbing trees, your arms are expressing, that's the word I was looking for, full range of motion quite often. And now we're locked in this like 90 degree position almost all day long. And then interestingly enough, then we go into our activity. So if it's CrossFit, if it's uh tennis, if it's anything, volleyball, in this case, dancers, when they're doing their afro steps, when they're doing their choreos, often we're going into these extreme ranges of position, ranges of motion, I'm sorry, in our shoulders, and we aren't even, we're not prepared. Yeah, of course you've done a warm-up, sure. But the thing is, is if you've done a warm-up where you're rolling your shoulders around or you're throwing some balls if you're an athlete, if you're, you know, bringing your arm above your head and in into extension, sure, that's better than smoking crack on the couch, of course. The problem is, is then if we go into dance or if we go into our sport and we go from this slight warm-up to using our arms like with 200% speed, hitting a volleyball, hitting a serve, hitting a forehand, throwing a ball, going into an afro movement or a salsa corio where the song is faster than most techno songs and we're moving at that speed. That's a pretty big difference. That would be like you taking your car out of the garage, driving down the road at like 20 kilometers an hour, turning around the corner, and then going 300 right off the bat. Maybe your car can do it, but over the long term, that would probably not be the best for your engine. And I would say the same thing for your shoulder or any joint in that case. So we've got movement. Are you doing it enough? And do you have the right technique when you're doing it? Mobility. Again, I use mobility, the term, as basically soft tissue work with an inanimate object. So something that is not you. So a foam roller, a tennis ball, a scraping tool, uh cupping, uh, tennis balls, mobility balls, whatever. And honestly, you can even, I would say it doesn't have to be an inanimate object, because if you're massaging yourself, if you're doing some type of manual therapy on yourself, that also counts. That's mobility work. So what are we looking at in mobility? Well, Margarita, I don't want to call you out here because you are not the only one. This is like across the board for everyone. But the shoulder, the muscle behind your shoulder blade, if you will, what connects your shoulder blade to your spine are your rhomboids. And if I see any of you, and you listen to this and you see me live in some salsa conference, ask me to do the this massage on you. But basically, I take your shoulder and I start working my thumb underneath the shoulder blade. So many people, including Margarita, after she dislocated her shoulder, and I'll explain why that's a bit different, but the muscle was a complete rock. I could get my thumb through a concrete wall before I can usually get it under most of your guys' shoulder blades. Now, in Margarita's case, this was because her muscles were guarding the shoulder because she had an injury. So a lot of times when you sublux, meaning your shoulder goes out and then it goes back in, your shoulder, so sublux your shoulder, the muscles, the rotator cuff, will go into this guarding mechanism where it almost acts like a brace for your shoulder. All the muscles get super tight because they want to make sure that your shoulder doesn't sublux or pop out again. Now that's kind of good because obviously we don't want you to get injured again. However, that's also kind of bad because when all those muscles go into a spasm, you feel the spasm and it's incredibly painful. And every single time your shoulder is trying to move, those muscles are gonna basically prevent that. The problem is, is then when you say, okay, then I don't move and you don't move your shoulder, then your muscles go into a spasm because they're pissed that they're not moving. So it's kind of a double-edged sword. So what do we need to do? We need to like reset the nervous system and let it know that it doesn't need to guard the area for further injury because we are going to treat it. So in my garita's case, when I was trying to work under her shoulder blade, those muscles were like a rock because they're doing, so to speak, their job. But it's my job as the therapist to let those muscles know they can relax because we got everything under control. Now, for everybody else that hasn't subluxed their shoulder and just are like going throughout their life, that's a disaster because you probably wonder why you have all that neck tension, why your thoracic spine, so the spine where your chest basically is, either doesn't move during your salsa body isolations, or you just kind of feel like it's stiff and tight and or painful? Well, there you go. When all those muscles are like absolute stone, then how in the world are you supposed to move? Put your parking brake up on your car and try to drive it. It's not gonna go anywhere. And that is the same thing in your body. These are all parking brakes we need to release. So, how can we release them? Well, basically through manual therapy and massage. How can you do manual therapy and massage on your own? That, boys and girls, is called mobility. It's super simple, and we just need to know the right exercises and do them somewhat consistently. Now, everyone's probably like, yeah, you know, but I have a foam roll, I have some tennis balls, I've done that before. Yeah, good. But my mom has a computer, and so does Elon Musk. And I guarantee if we gave them one hour to create a project, Elon Musk's would be much different. My mom would have probably sent me an email. I don't even want to know what Elon Musk would have done. So that's the point. The foam roll, the tennis ball, whatever. It's just a tool. Just because you have the tool doesn't mean you know how to use it. And just because you're using it doesn't necessarily mean you're using it the most optimal way or the exercise makes sense for you. Number one. Number two, how many times? Oh man, if I had a dollar for every time I heard this, or I should say euro since I'm in uh Europe now. If I had a euro for every single time someone was like, oh yeah, so I had those exercises or I did those exercises, and uh yeah, they they it worked or it didn't work, but then I stopped them. But then my shoulder pain comes back. Yeah, that's what happens. If you fill your car up with gas and you drive a lot, your gas is going to be eliminated. It's gonna be used. You got to fill your car back up. If you change your oil and then you decide to start driving 5,000 kilometers a goddamn week versus like five, you're gonna need to change your oil sooner. So if you're sitting at the office, if you're sitting behind a car, if you're flying all the time, if you're not using your body like it should be used, then you're gonna lose everything you gained and you got to do it again. Another example I often use is if someone's like, yo, I'm gonna get like crazy fit for the summer and I'm gonna look amazing. And then once they reach that like amazing fit point, it's not like, cool, I got it. Now McDonald's five times a day. I don't need to do anything anymore. Everybody laughs because that makes no sense. But that is exactly what so many of us do when we get rid of our pain, and then we think, oh, but our my pain came back. So those exercises must have not worked. No, the exercises when you lost all that weight worked great, but the pounding the McDonald's five times a day undid everything that you did because you stopped doing the exercise and you started eating a bunch of bullshit. Does that make sense? Because we so often do the same when it comes to the work that helps us get better and feel better. And we need to make it a lifestyle. Now, it doesn't mean you have to do hours a day and you have to become like some pro athlete. No. But you need to do something, just like if you wanted to lose a little bit of weight, you gotta either increase your activity or eat less bullshit. It's as simple as that. If you don't do anything, nothing's gonna change. And in that case, if you keep doing the same thing, you're probably just gonna get more out of shape. The same thing applies to the body. So we've got to learn how to work smarter, if you will, not necessarily harder, and sometimes a little bit of both. So let's recap here. We got movement. You either don't know how to do it, in a lot of the dancers' cases, sorry to call you out, you're not even doing it, and are you doing it enough? And I would also say coordination. Can you do the same movement on both sides? That's also very important. So movement, mobility, we're talking about soft tissue work, and also balance. Are you able to, let's say, take a foam roll exercise, go onto your hip? So I call it the hip deltoid, kind of the butt area around your um hip. Are you roll if you do some foam rolling work on that or whatever mobility work and one side feels amazing, does the other side feel absolutely terrible? Well, then I would say if that's the case, you should probably work on that side that feels painful. And I would also put $10,000 or Euros, whatever, on the fact that that side that's a little bit more painful, if you're suffering from lower back or hip pain, it's probably that side that's more painful, which hurts more. Again, your body speaks a language, it's called pain. The problem is, is we need like the Rosetta stone to understand what it's trying to tell us. Or another analogy would be, you know, our why, this isn't not even an analogy. This is just simple fact. The human body is one of the most sophisticated machines built to date. And as a very famous physical therapist used to always joke and say, the problem was we never got the owner's manual. This is a huge issue that we have such an amazing piece of machinery, but we don't either A, know how to use it, or B, we know how to use it and we're just not using it correctly. If you treated your body like you did your car, let's do that the other way around. If you treated your car the same way you treat your body, your car would probably have fucking be on fire and blown up by now. So we gotta realize that we just can't abuse ourselves and then wonder why everything falls apart. So we got movement, we got mobility, now we go into strength. This is where it gets a bit interesting because I'll start with a story of Victoria Azarenka. She was number one in the world, and I was working with her when she was, I think, around 10, 15 in the world. Didn't work out because that, boys and girls, was when I realized at that level, yo, it is all about politics. And if anyone knows me personally, I do not do well with politics. I tell too many people to F off way too fast when I find them rude. Now, Vika was totally cool. She had no issues with her, but it was everything else. So that's a whole nother story for a different time. But when she had some shoulder pain, I was like, okay, that's cool. So she was going to some physical therapy at the time. So I asked her, All right, what are you doing with the physical therapist? And she showed me the external rotation exercises, the empty can exercises, what we do on the basic level of like shoulder rehab. And it was the same thing as my mom. Now, mom, I love you, and no offense against to my any mother, or mine especially. But I would argue that someone like Victoria Azarenka, who's making millions of dollars playing tennis, and my mom that is worth millions of dollars as an amazing mom, should probably not have the same rehab because either that means Vika is not Victoria Azarenka, her name nickname was Vika, Vika is not doing enough, or my mom is like doing way too much in life. And that's not the case. So the point here is the rehab should be different. They can be the same exercises, but they should be implemented differently. And a great example for people watching this, I'll make sure to turn this into a YouTube uh Insta short or whatever. We have external rotation. So we have one, I'm gonna back up here a little bit. Hopefully, I'm still in the camera. Yeah, there we go. See me perfectly. Like this. The external rotation would be like this. So, for example, the band would be like connected to the microphone, and I do it like this. Many people have their elbow like against their uh body and they're moving like this. This doesn't really make much sense because you're technically cutting off the blood flow from your axillary, from your, you're just basically cutting off the blood flow in your arm, in theory. But the bigger problem is your ribs actually block your movement. So then often we have like a towel that we put under our arm. I don't use a towel because when in life do you have a fucking towel under your arm? Never. So here, I like to use something called proprioception. It's your body's like coordination and awareness to make sure that you're able to do this exercise and your arm doesn't look like some drunk fish all over the place. So Vika was told to do this, take a break, do the other side, and then we have one called at 90 degrees, and we move like this. And again, the band would be tied like against the microphone, and I would be in this direction on the camera, whatever. And I'm pulling it like this. A lot of times people cheat, or their arm looks again like a drunk starfish. We want good technique. And then so basically Vika did here, here, sorry, no, sorry, even worse. Left, right, left, right. Yeah, it's fine, the same thing my mom was doing. However, there's something called time under tension. And time under tension means the time, the muscle is under tension. And so I would argue that a professional athlete should probably have more time under tension because it makes the rehab harder, it makes the exercise harder, and it makes the muscular endurance train more, if you could say that, of the muscle. So another way you can do it is you can go, let's say, higher reps, so not 10 to 12, but maybe 20, and then directly go into the next exercise here. So you get now, let's say, 20 and 20. So you have a total of 40 with this time under tension versus 20 break, 20 break. And the interesting thing is my mom had the other version where she was doing the left and then the right and then the left and the right. And she did like 12 and 12. Vika also had 12 and 12. That's insane. So A, I increase her reps and B, I increase the time of detention. So I decrease the break time in between as an example. You also have the empty can exercise where you come up nice and slow at 30 degrees of scaption, we call this. Basically, your thumbs just will hit your quads. And then from here, you can also go to zero degrees up like this. And you go very slow, because if you go super fast, your body's just gonna recruit the larger muscles, and that doesn't do anything. Well, it doesn't do what we want. So we need to fire the superspinatus. We call them the empty can because if you had cans in your hands, see, uh, you can't really see me. I, ah, whatever, I'll do it like this. Imagine if my arm was straight, because we turn the uh thumbs down. So if you had a can in your hand and you turned it upside down, it'd be an empty can. So maybe you can see me. Yeah, you can see me rotate my arms here. And that is how we would do the exercise for the superspinatus. Now, that being said, these are basic exercises. So God forbid Margarita or Yuckoppo or anybody else out there that's listening, this is like level one. This is like beginner-level salsa class for you guys. This is just where you need to start. Once things are better, you should be doing handstands either free or I would just say against the wall, because then you can focus more on the strength versus the balance of the beginning. You should be doing handstands against the wall. You should be able to do bear crawls and inchworms and uh lizard walks or dragon walks, whatever you want to call them, chest press, push-ups, hanging, pull-ups. This is crucial if A, you really want to, and I'm not speaking specifically when I say you, but everybody wants to get their shoulder strength back. And B, you don't want to get back to where you were before because that is where you got injured. You need to get back to a higher level. And in order to get back to a higher level, we need to do more with you that you did before you got injured. And we do it on both sides so we can prevent the other side from being injured. It is simple as that. We can use the injury as a time to get you back healthier and stronger. So, ah, yes, and before I move on from strength, we also have the balance. Because if you're able to do everything with one arm really well, strength is perfect, but the other one not, that is a disaster. Anytime we have any imbalance in strength, flexibility, mobility, anything, movements. It is like a tug of war between Team Navy SEALs and team toddlers. It is no fun for anybody. So we need to bring the balance always back in the body. Now, you've got your dominant side, of course. That's fine. It doesn't need to be one to one, but the ratio should not be like completely handicapped on one side and completely a beast on the other side. We need to make it as similar as possible. So we've got movement, we've got mobility, we've got strength, flexibility. This is another great example because I did a presentation for the International Tennis Federation like a decade ago now, called Don't Smoke the Moneymaker. So many pro tennis players, when it comes to, I'll just say tennis because they're basically playing dominantly with one hand, right? If they're hitting four hands, they usually use the same one. But this applies to everybody across the board. However, tennis is an easy example. So let's say I am left-handed in tennis. And as I'm playing, I'm a professional and I'm amazing, and my shoulder hurts. So then, or maybe it doesn't even hurt yet, but we can use this as a test to see what is coming down the road. So, for example, let's say I go into the typical internal rotation stretch where it's as if you're like undoing your bra strap as a woman, or a dude just trying to scratch the middle of your back where your shoulder blades are. You get the arm behind your back. The question is, how high can you get the dominant shoulder and your non-dominant one? And the reason I called this don't smoke the moneymaker is usually the range of motion was better in the shoulder they don't use. That is insane because at the end of the day, any medical, physical therapy, common sense textbook will tell you that injury comes usually from an imbalance of a lack of strength, a lack of flexibility, an over amount of flexibility, an over amount of strength, something on the extremes. And when we need to use something uh well, then it needs to be in balance. So point I'm getting to here is for example, internal rotation, we should have if you lie in your back and you get your arm at like 90 degrees, so your hand's kind of in the And someone in a therapist, because you can't really do this to yourself, would then internally rotate your arm. So try to get your hand, so to speak, on the floor. And keep in mind you're lying on your back. Your arm is like at a 90 degree angle. So your hand is kind of raised up. We would then rotate your hand, shoulder, whatever, down to the ground, and your shoulder can't like pop out completely. So a lot of times what I would do is I would hold it down with my hands. We would then see, does it go to the floor? That would be 90 degrees of internal rotation. The goal is to get you at least to 70. You don't necessarily have to be to 90, but you should be at least at 70. And if you're not, we know through the textbooks that the chances of impingement, chronic shoulder pain, tendinitis increase. So I would argue if you're making millions of dollars as a professional athlete, or in this case, if you're a professional dancer, and I also hope you're making millions of dollars, but if you're a professional, anything, or you just want to optimize your shoulder, you should be more towards the 90 degrees of range of motion versus the 70, because you are using your shoulder more than the average person. Just like you should have better strength, a stronger rotator cuff than the average person, it is the same thing with the range of motion. And also remember that whole balance thing, like keeping everything in balance, the teen Navy SEALs, teen toddlers thing. Well, the balance goes also across the spectrum. If your strength is unbelievable and your flexibility sucks, that is a ticket to shoulder pain, shoulder injury, chronic pain, or just unhappiness. Yeah. So we need to make sure that the balances across the board also make sense. So I call it don't smoke the moneymaker because so many times these million-dollar athletes, also when I worked pro volleyball, pro-baseballs, the pitchers, their the shoulder they didn't need had better range of motion than the shoulder they needed. Now, one could argue the fact that they're using that shoulder so much, that they're developing so much muscle that if you don't do the right of soft tissue work on that muscle, then it can be that it actually loses the range of motion. I always said that as we build muscle, at least with me genetically, I find myself always quite tight and I need to open up and stretch that muscle, if you will, to get it to have the range of motion I want it to. So we don't want to smoke the money maker and yuckabo, for example, or uh yes, use let's use yuckobo, sorry to throw you out there, man. I don't know you and this is nothing bad, but just because I know you had shoulder surgery, only because I saw the Instagram, it's gonna be very important when he's able to move his shoulder, like he he, when he's able to move his shoulder and there's no more surgical limitations, so to speak, that he gets his full range of motion back andor even better, and it balances or matches his other shoulder. So if his other shoulder sucks too, then he's gotta work on that. If his other shoulder is good, then we need to make sure that that surgical one that was worked on gets to be the same, if not even a little bit better, than his other shoulder, because then we've got the balance back. And we also know that we've gotten the range of motion back because after immobili, like after a surgery where you're not able to move something, I had my knee, uh seven screws and a plate from an e-scooter accident, and I wasn't allowed to walk for six weeks. And then actually six weeks and two days later, I have videos of me dancing salsa. So this is what happens when you do things correctly. Then you're able to get that range of motion back. And if the range of motion is back, then you can start working on the strength. But if you're not able to like, so I don't know in Yakapo's example, because I don't know what he did. I know that when he was out and about on Instagram, he always had his brace on, uh, or his brace. It was more like a cast, but we say brace. But in at home, I would imagine he probably had some physical therapy and some uh a protocol from the doctor that said what type of range of motion they wanted him to get to. And this is important because while he's probably not able to do much strength stuff, we can get the range of motion. So then when he's cleared by his doctor, the range of motion is already there. Therefore, getting the strength is not hard. Because at the end of the day, what example was I just getting ready to use? Uh okay, that one just left my head. Uh, what was ah, yes, of course. If your car runs out of gas, or batteries in this case, then it doesn't go anymore. It's done. But the problem is, or the question is, what if we run out of range of motion? What if I don't have the range of motion to go like above my head and grab like the sugar for my coffee or whatever? Well, then if I can only go kind of so high, I always joke, say I got to be careful doing this one in Germany. But if I'm only going so high and I need to go higher, I then use the extension in my spine to get there. So sometimes people, you might have been to a physical therapist at one point and he was like, Oh yeah, so your shoulder hurts. Oh, okay, you lack range of motion. Do you also have pain in the middle of your back? And you're like, oh my God, who is this magician? He's like the injury whisperer. Yeah, it could be. Or we just understand mechanics and realize that if you're missing range of motion in one point, you have to make up for it somewhere else. The problem is there is no free lunch and the tax man will eventually come. So if your shoulder range of motion sucks and you're moving like this all the time to get above your head, eventually you're either gonna have chronic back pain or down the road, you're gonna have a fractured spine. Actually, you could have, yeah, okay, maybe not a sponidolithesis with that, but you could definitely have a ruptured or a bulging disc from that. And then we just get told when that happens by the doctors, it's because we're old. It's not because we're old, it's because we've been driving around with a fucking parking brake up on our car everywhere. And so we need to understand these things so that doesn't happen. So going back through the four that have we been through, three, let's see. Movement, mobility, strength. Yeah, I can't. So we've been through three. Flexibility. No, we were, we are, we were on flexibility, right? Oh man, I tell you, I think I'm already mentally in cologne for tomorrow dancing. So flexibility, we've already gone through flexibility because we were talking about not smoking the moneymaker. So we also want to make sure, exactly, we have the balance between the two, hence not smoking the moneymaker, the internal rotation example I gave. But for you dancers out there, hypermobility. If you have crazy amounts of range of motion, you can do like the, what is it? The not hyper splits. What do they call that? The splits where you go beyond the splits, uh, überspigat, I think as they say in German, going blank on the name. But you know what I'm talking about. Over splits. Why am I going totally blank on the name? Whatever. But if you have mobility, flexibility, whatever you want to call it, like that, that would be flexibility because we're talking about range of motion. That's not bad. I mean, that's just genetically how it is. It's a fact. I would say it's actually sometimes a benefit because in rehab, we end up having the most trouble with getting the range of motion back, and those people will never have that problem. However, we need to make sure that we then protect the joints, usually by building the muscle around them, so they have control during that range of motion, if you will, because they've got too much, which is great for artistic dances. However, we got to be careful because you don't want to keep dislocating your shoulder, in this case, shoulder, you don't want to dislocate anything. And if you've got excess range of motion, that's putting more stress on the joints because they're usually moving farther than we need them to, and we also want them to. So hypermobility is not a problem. I actually think at the end of the day, sometimes it's kind of a gift because we're so sedentary throughout the entire, our entire lives now that if you don't lose range of motion just because you're hypermobile, that can be a good thing. But we have to understand with everything, there's pros and cons, there's positive and negatives. So with the hypermobility people, we just need to really make sure that we focus on the strength of the muscles and also the stabilizing muscles. So in this case, the rotator cuff. So there we go. That's movement, mobility, movement, mobility, strength, flexibility. And now lifestyle. I threw lifestyle on just because it sounds nice. And then I have five pillars. Well, I mean, I guess actually four pillars would make more sense, but whatever. Lifestyle is important and lifestyle is a big one for me. Many people know that I basically don't drink anymore. I did that one podcast about that, and I had some guy on YouTube be like, no, you know what, man? I think you're just an alcoholic. You couldn't handle it. And I was like, yeah, I mean, I was talking about like two apple ball spritz or maybe three, like during an evening when I was dancing. I was just talking about like alcohol being toxic. It goes from what, ethanol to acetaaldehyde? And acetaaldehyde is toxic for our body, like literally a poison. And so, uh, yeah, not that I'm an alcoholic here or anything, but just lifestyle, the less alcohol we drink is always better. And also the less caffeine we drink, because it's horrible what the um odinocene does to the brain and to the sleep pressure and then to our cortisol and dopamine and uh serotonin and all that jazz. But lifestyle is also gonna be sleep. And in this case, I like to talk about pain medication because if I don't want to keep using yuccup as an example here, so let's just say anybody. Ah, let's use margarita. Okay, I don't want to use margarita either. I feel bad. But the point is, yuccable has a surgery that hundreds of thousands of people have had. And same thing with Margarita in her subluxing shoulder. So we don't have to specifically use them, but just imagine if you are out there dancing and you know, you know what? I'm gonna, you know, let's take shoulder pain, for example. I know the guys are gonna be cranking on me tonight and I'm gonna be, you know, doing multiple spins, and that always hurts my shoulder. So I'm gonna take some medication and mask that pain. That would be like your check engine light coming on in your car and you choosing to go to the mechanic. Well, you choose to go to the mechanic, sorry. You go to the mechanic and he would choose to just unplug the light and let you on your merry way. And that's the disaster. Because then, like 10 kilometers down the road, when your engine catches on fire and it explodes. Oh, like that car in the financial district in New York the other day. I don't know if you guys saw that or not. If not, Google a car explosion financial district, New York. That was wild. But you don't want that to happen to your car, and you don't want that to happen to your shoulder in this case or anything on your body. And that is what pain medication is basically doing. It's allowing you to do the same thing that is destroying your shoulder. It just decides to take the pain away. So you can go ahead and just keep doing it. So that is one, a horrible idea. And number two, it's also destroying your gut microbiome. And your gut microbiome is like your immune system. I think is it like 70% or even more? Like I forget the statistic, I'm sorry, but it is your immune system. So if your gut is destroyed, your microbiome is not functioning, so gut, microbiome, same thing, then how is it supposed to fix you? Because that's just supposed to make sure that you're maintaining health. And if it's not even able to do its job, and then you put injury on top, how in the world is it supposed to optimize your recovery when it can't even recover itself? So there's no need to master the pain so you can destroy your shoulder more, only to then destroy your gut microbiome at the same time. Now, I'm not saying you should never drink caffeinated coffee, you should never drink alcohol, you should never take an ibuprofen. I mean, in theory, that would be amazing, but that's just not reality. So if you've got to go dance and you want to take something just so you can enjoy the weekend, yeah, sure, that's fine. But just realize you're just masking the pain and you really need to make sure that you are doing what you need to do so it gets better. A great example is when doctors use cortisone. And I always said, okay, well, you know what? You can tell if the doctor is using the cortisone correctly or not, right? Because A, if he, I have a client right now, for example, online, uh, she broke her knee like I did, and she's one of my clients that I'm working with her, and she has arthritis in her toe. So a lot of times when we're going into these exercises to get her knee moving, that has a lot of toe extension, it's caught her toe on fire. So she told me her orthopedic surgeon can give her a shot of cortisone. And I said, okay, that's fine. Because even though that's gonna mask the pain, excuse me, that's gonna mask the pain and allow her to do exactly what she's doing that's causing her pain. That's actually okay in this case because what's causing her pain is us trying to move it again. So sometimes it's okay to cheat a little bit, actually, and use something like that to help decrease the pain so we can make sure that we can continue doing what we need to do to fix the problem. So, back to the how if you tell if a doctor's good or not, if the orthopedic surgeon is like, yeah, I can give you an injection of cortisone, that's not a problem. But then you need to do X, Y, and Z, or you're already doing X, Y, and Z, but it's too painful to really do it or continue with it at the level that you need to or want to. So then we use that to kind of bring the inflammation down, mask the pain, so you can continue. So then when the cortisone wears off, it's not bothering you anymore. Cortisone. Why do I feel like I'm saying cortisone wrong the whole time? Whatever. Sometimes, you know, switching between uh German and English and I don't know, and not saying these words very often in English, I think I just, I think I have like brain rot. But whatever, that's a whole different story. So we've got movement, mobility, flexibility, movement, mobility, strength, flexibility, and lifestyle. Those are the five pillars, and that is exactly how we can use this to address our shoulder injuries, pain, and surgeries. And believe it or not, which is kind of wild, and this is probably why, you know, physical therapists and athletic trainers can fix, basically learn how to fix everything, is because it's usually all scalable. If someone had a shoulder surgery, so Yuckobo out there, in someone like uh who has subluxing shoulders, it I don't know that you can say it like that, who subluxed her shoulder a few times, so Margarita, in someone that has maybe chronic shoulder pain, I don't know, any of you, that rehab is actually very similar because the shoulder joint at the end of the day is the shoulder joint. And again, that's why, you know, a professional athletic trainer or physical therapist can go from a baseball team to a tennis club to uh professional dancers, because I would say like 70 to 90% of the mechanics are always the same. We just need to learn the sport specific stuff along with it to make us better therapists. But that's how therapists can jump from sport to sport, because at the end of the day, the movement of the shoulder, the knee, the hip, the body is always very, very, very similar. And so is the rehab. So if you haven't broken shoulder, if you haven't sublexed, so dislocated your shoulder, and if you hadn't had any shoulder injury, but you've got chronic pain, well, most likely the exercises you are gonna do are gonna be the same. You just have a different starting point because someone like uh Chuckabull, when he's able to finally start doing his stuff, he's gonna realize his shoulder is quite weak, A, because he had surgery, and B, because he hasn't used it a while, versus someone that has just chronic shoulder pain. You're gonna recognize, oh, okay, when I do these external rotation exercises, they burn, but I'm able to use do them and I'm able to start with maybe a little bit heavier of a band than someone that just had shoulder surgery. So that's kind of how I like to go into looking at, yeah, pain. So again, chronic pain, uh subluxing shoulders in this case, or surgeries and rehab and also prehab, because if we know someone's gonna get surgery and it's already broken, so to speak, we don't really have to worry about tearing anything else. So people can start with the exercises if it's like physically possible and start making sure that they gain some of that strength because then after the surgery, they're gonna have that sedentary period. And if we're able to gain some of the strength, then we have an optimized joint going into surgery. And therefore, that means that what they we gain a little bit more knowing that they're gonna lose some too. So we kind of come out maybe a little bit ahead or not as far behind when it comes to muscle and range of motion loss. So that is, yeah, that's it, folks. That's basically what I want to talk about, especially with cologne coming up. Jacobo, if you hear this or if I see you, oh high five. Hopefully your your surgical hand, because then I or surgical arm, because then I know it's doing well. And uh, Margarita, I hope to see you soon too. I don't know where, but um I'm sure we will cross paths again. And anyone else with any shoulder pain or any shoulder issues, or if you know anybody that has anything, contact me. You've got that little unbreakable dancer podcast thing here, maybe a few times in the in the Instagram reels. Well, it will always say in the description where you can get a hold of me. But this is why I've created the Unbreakable Dancer program. And I'm also creating the Unbreakable Body, which is going to be the same thing as the dancer program, but not dancer specific. So if you're a dancer, your program's already done. It's already there. You get one month for free, and then it's a 50 year old from then on. You have a group where you can contact me all the time, and we have coaching calls every single week. So that's pretty cool. We've got private coach, I've got private coaching options where you can work one-to-one with me too for like a fraction of the price that you probably think it is. It's not going to be one of those, like, I'll sell you a three-month program for 1500 euros. That's an option, but there's also ones that are like a hundred times cheaper. And uh, and for everybody else, you can either also jump into the Unbreakable Dancer because it's an awesome program for anyone, or wait a few weeks, maybe a month, and the unbreakable body will be done. So, with that being said, what have we been? It's about a 30-minute podcast. Awesome. I always try to keep it under about 40, 45 minutes. I was supposed to have Luis Vasquez today, but I don't think he's feeling well. So we're gonna do that again later. And uh yeah, until next time. I love you all. I hope to see you in Cologne this weekend. And by the time you're hearing this, it's probably already past this weekend. So I well, no, not if you're listening to it, then it will be you could be hearing this on your way to the festival. So if you see me there, come by, give me a high five, tell me about your pain, and we get you fixed there. And if you ever want to be in an Instagram video while you're there, let me know. Because usually I film a few while I'm there, and I'm always looking for fun people for good content. God damn it. So on that note, I will see all of you next week and have a very merry weekend, if you can say it like that.