Training Smarter, Not Louder: A Better Way to Make Decisions - with Dr. Jason Silvernail

If you’ve been training for years but still feel like you're not sure how to keep progress going, have random aches hanging around, and every new “must-do” tip online is somehow making it worse. Then this episode is for you!

Jarlo sits down with Dr. Jason Silvernail (DPT, DSc, U.S. Army Colonel, strength coach) to talk about the problem most people don’t realize they have: it’s not a lack of information… it’s a lack of a way to sort it. They unpack why modern fitness advice swings between two extremes, either a vague “wellness philosophy” or an aggressive “one weird trick” fear based, and what to use instead: a practical framework for making smart training decisions that actually match your real-life goals.

You’ll hear how Jason shifted his own training in his 40s (without giving up being strong), why “masters athlete” training is not resigning yourself to being less. It's a  mindset upgrade, and how the best results come from combining the right inputs (movement, recovery, stress, sleep, context) rather than chasing the next magic bullet.

Come for the training insights and leave with a clearer filter for everything you hear about health, fitness, and longevity.

*Opinions expressed by Dr. Jason Silvernail are his own and do not represent the official policy or position of the United States Army, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government*

Learn more from Dr. Silvernail here http://Linktr.ee/jasonsilvernail

Transcript

Jarlo: Hey, this is Jarlo welcome to the GMB Fitness Podcast. So I am one of the co-founders of GMB Fitness but I'm also a physical therapist, so that's mostly what I identify with. I've been a PT for coming up on 28 years now. I've been in a variety of settings and, I still love it. I was talking to Jason a little bit before we're recording and we're like, we just love being PTs and everything about it. And so this is interesting. I've known Jason. Through the internet, through the magic of the internet. For probably 10, 15 years. And we never really, got in touch in real life, but hopefully we can do that a little bit later. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. 

Jarlo: One of the things about being a physical therapist, a good one in any profession, any good profession, is that you take continuing education. You keep working on, always learning, never stop learning. And with that, I was taking a course a couple months ago and came across Jason's paper.

Jarlo: First of all, Dr. Jason Silvernail also Colonel Jason Silvernail. I gotta put the credentials out there. It is important. He was writing, he wrote a paper with a bunch of other various esteemed colleagues and it was thinking about it and we were talking, it seems a little inside baseball, a little bit nerdy to talk about a paper from a PT journal, but I really do believe there's a lot to take away good takeaways for everyone looking to improve their physical capabilities, their general health, their lifespan. Let's start by having Jason introduce tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you want us to know about yourself? 

Jason Silvernail: Hey, thanks, Jarlo. I'm really happy to be here. I'm a big GMB fan. I'm also a customer of one or more programs and I just love watching what you guys have been doing the last few years. 

Jarlo: Really appreciate it. 

Jason Silvernail: It's been awesome. It just, it resonates with a lot of what I'm doing. My name is Jason Silvernail. I'm a doctor of physical therapy and have been so since, I've been a PT since 1997. I am board certified in orthopedics. I'm fellowship trained in hands-on manual therapy and. I'm a certified strength and conditioning specialist a long while ago, and I'm also in the United States Army on active duty, and I have been for the last 34 years, if you can believe that. And I'm a colonel in the US Army, and I have a senior executive position in Army Medicine.

And because I'm in the Army, one of the things I have to say when I speak on events like this is everything I talk about with you today. The podcast is my personal opinion and commentary. It does not have anything to do with the official policy or position of the US Army, the Department of Defense of the United States government.

Jason Silvernail: Other than giving disclaimers I tend to be a little bit, to be a little bit interesting, at least I hope I'm excited to talk about our paper and, there’s, It's funny there, there are a lot of different healthcare professions out there and one of the interesting things about physical therapy in my view, and one of the reasons I think it's the best job in medicine is that we have one foot in the medical healthcare hospital space and we have one foot in like the fitness and performance and human function space and that, and there's not a whole lot of people doing that.

Jason Silvernail: There's a lot of people who are a real clinical hospital and there's a lot of people who are real fitness. But there's hardly anybody in the middle with a liminal space. And we really are in pt and it's, it is a super fun job. And so one of the things that you and I had talked about was, the reason this paper is relevant is this paper gives people who are fellowship trained.

Jason Silvernail: So you come out of physical therapy school and you're a DPT and then you go to residency training for a specialty. Like I went and I went to one for orthopedics. So I like bone and muscle and joint problems. Then you can go on to fellowship training, which is like a subspecialty of training, right?

Jason Silvernail: And I did that for hands-on manual and manipulative therapy, like twisting backs and joints and helping people move better and all that kind of stuff, right? And so my physician colleagues might come outta medical school and get their MD and then they might go to residency and be an internal medicine physician and then do a fellowship training and become a cardiologist. So if you look at that same kind of stepwise training, that's how we do it in all medical professions. So you come out, you can do a residency, and then you can do a fellowship. That kind of gives you your training pathway. So that's the pathway I followed and I've really enjoyed it and I, we really get to do a lot of really cool stuff in, in, in army medicine that gives us a lot more flexibility to help people better than a lot of our colleagues in the civilian sector are allowed to do, which is really cool and exciting.

Jason Silvernail: One of the things that I noticed about coming up through that process is when I went to, when I went to fellowship training, I thought I was just gonna go to learn how to be a better PT about some things and help my patients better and be a better colleague for the nurses and physicians and all the other people that I work with.

Jason Silvernail: And I discovered something. I discovered that fellowship training for me and what they were teaching me. It was a way to organize my mind. To think with a very specific framework and approach problems in a very organized, critical manner. And that led to me making much better decisions for people than I had been able to make before.

Jason Silvernail: And as I went through the training, because it's a few years, I got to the point where I started noticing that I was making better decisions in other areas of my life too.

Jason Silvernail: Using that same kind of framework. So I think the framework that we have set up and that we have done for this paper where we're defining what it means to be an orthopedic manual physical therapist.

Jason Silvernail: And so somebody who, who is trained in that method of care, highly skilled pt, who's trained in that method of care. What is it about? That makes their practice different than a PT or a physician or a chiropractor or a nurse practitioner or a PA or somebody like that, right? And so we've de we've established this framework that we think that we're using and.

Jason Silvernail: It's in one of the most highly cited papers in a major physical therapy journal, and it got a lot of positive attention, and I'm always happy to talk about it and see how it connects to all these other things that I know you are a good thinker and you see a lot of connections between things that a lot of other people don't too.

Jason Silvernail: And that's why I'm just excited to be able to talk to you tonight about it. 

Jarlo: Yeah. So it's just a little bit of a background for it. Again. If you just kinda look at it at face value, you're like, how is redefining, you know what? Orthopedic, manual physical therapy, right as a profession mean to just someone that's, trying to improve their health, and get a little bit stronger, right?

Not, not get a heart attack in their, in their fifties and really. The thing that really stuck out to me, and I wrote this in our private community forum for GMB, I was like, it really fit the idea of the real authentic idea of holistic medicine, right? So I contrasted this to, you’re gonna see it, social media has dominated our lives and our politics, right? For it's true for how long now. And one of the things that you need to do, or really actually you actually really need to do is to differentiate yourself from everyone else, right? There's so many thousands of tens of thousands of voices out there, and one of the tricks to do it is that thing that we're talking about here's the one trick that you need. Here's the one thing that's gonna change your life. It's this exercise that no one ever thought of before in their life. Or this supplement, or this diet. 

Jason Silvernail: Don't make this mistake by doing this exercise wrong.

Jarlo: Exactly right. You're gonna kill yourself. If you do this wrong, 

Jason Silvernail: you'll explode your hamstring. 

Jarlo: And you know what? It drives views. It drives clicks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It drives all this stuff, but it's inherently wrong. It's absolutely wrong. 

Jason Silvernail: yeah. 

Jarlo: You just think about it for just a couple minutes and you look at it you get away from all of this stuff that's bombarding you and you just have to think about it. Is it really that I should never eat any plants. Is it really necessary for me to only eat meat?

Jason Silvernail: are eggs good for me? Are they bad for me? Is it with the yolk? Is it without the yolk? Is it free wage? Is it not free? I don't how, what?

Jason Silvernail: How do know what decision to make? 

Jarlo: It's really bad. So that's one of our things that we've been trying to do with our company for, the last 15 years is. Give people this information and actually I love how you said framework, like a process to really think through things. And one of the things for our physical fitness, our capabilities is.

Jarlo: Having those initial foundations of the premise of what you want. Is it that you really want, are you being swayed by someone you know by a bodybuilder? Again, nothing wrong with that. I've been a meathead since I was 15. I love, I had all those magazines, everything, right?

Jason Silvernail: yeah.

Jarlo: But you can get swayed, right? Do you really need to put on 40, 50 pounds of muscle to be healthy? Is that what you really need? Yeah. The same thing is like people get caught up with body image. Okay, do I need to be at 5% bodyfat? Really crazy things when really comes down to it. Most of us just wanna stay healthy for a very long time so we can be with our family.

Jarlo: Do things feel capable. Just live our lives. So that's really what came out of it for when I was reading your paper, because it was in contrast to a lot of the other stuff really that's been around in research. Oh, yeah.I get it, when you're doing research, you have to isolate a variable compared to something else.

Jarlo: Get published, do something that's a little, a little flashy. Yeah, in a 

Jason Silvernail: clinical trial. Yeah, absolutely. 

Jarlo: And a clinical trial where you're like, okay, I, if I'm gonna get the gold standard and, get a control group and prove that this, again, prove that this exercise is better than this one.

Jarlo: Which is again that's small rocks, right? We need the big rocks. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. Yeah, 

Jarlo: that's true. And I really like. Your framework of thinking. So I think I wanna go into that a little bit more. Like when you talk about a framework and you talk about processes, where do you start with that? And again, not just for, pt, but for, yeah, for everyone.

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I found was most helpful, one of the things I started noticing over time is that there really are two extremes when we think about this. On the one side, we got people who love to talk about the big picture ideas, and it's all, it's all real philosophical. And it's amorphous and it's hard to get your hands around what does that mean?

Jason Silvernail: What does that mean? I should do? And it's hard for people to translate that kind of general principles into, okay, no kidding, I'm gonna wake up Monday morning. What do I need to do to be healthy? What do I need to do to be fit? What do I need to do? How do I, as I, how do I approach my patient? As a doctor for physical therapy to get them feeling better.

Jason Silvernail: What is, what do you want me to do? And that's on one set side is the too much big picture principles. And on the other side, we've got that one weird trick we've got, don't make this mistake or do it this way, not that way. So we've got too many big picture principles and we've got too many down in the weeds details that are disconnected from each other.

Jason Silvernail: And one of the things that I found that was most helpful in my fellowship training was that they provided me a middle way. They provided me a framework and approach, an organized way, a way to enter into a situation, to gather data, to organize my thoughts and to make a better decision based on some of those principles.

Jason Silvernail: And I think that if we look at that, if we look at, it's not so much about learning a bag of tricks, and it's not so much about talking about like big picture philosophy. It's what is my framework, what is my approach to. Fitness to health, to care, all that stuff. And so you mentioned bodybuilding before, and so for many years I was a barbell guy, right?

Jason Silvernail: And I'm tall and thin. I am never gonna be a I'm never gonna be a fitness competitor. I'm never going to be a, a body. I'm never gonna be on the stage as a body builder. I just don't have those genetics. And I also have a big nose and hound dog eyes, but we can talk about that another time.

Jason Silvernail: But I was pretty strong for a tall, thin guy. And one of the things I noticed is I woke up and I think probably in my mid to late forties, and I just felt a little stiff. 

Jason Silvernail: And then I was like. And I felt my hip, and I'm like, I'm starting to get hip arthritis because I under, I can recognize that in myself when it happens and I thought, man I need to change the framework that I use to stay healthy if I'm going to achieve the goals that I wanna achieve in a later life.

Jason Silvernail: And my, my grandfather lived well into his nineties and I'm thinking that if I play my cards if I'm in my nineties. What do I want life to look like for me? I don't want it to look like sitting in a wheelchair, right? I don't want it to look like sitting on a recliner, not being able to move.

Jason Silvernail: If I wanna move well at 90, what should I be doing differently now? 

Jarlo: Right

Jason Silvernail: And all that strength was good, but it was not, there were gaps in my game. There were gaps in my framework. And so I sold all my, I sold my power rack in my bar and my barbell to, to a friend of mine. He got it for a steal, by the way.

Jason Silvernail: And I bought a set of kettlebells and I started doing like calisthenic mobility type stuff. And everybody's different. Some people are really flexible. Some people are really stiff. I'm in the middle of the road, but I'm closer to the stiff joint side, so I'm not very flexible.

Jason Silvernail: And so I realized I had to stop playing to my strengths. So I'm 6 2, 200 pounds. So I get to the point where I could deadlift quite a lot of weight. You got long femurs like you can do that. I got long arms, I can do that. But then how is that helping me be what I wanna do, what I want to do? When I was 90 and the answer was, it probably wasn't.

Jason Silvernail: It's not that it's bad or wrong, it's just that it wasn't good for the framework that I needed. So changing that framework in my fitness and making every day the things that I do for fitness require more mobility for me. 

Jarlo: Yeah. 

Jason Silvernail: So I don't sit down and stretch. I do things that require me to have more mobility and over time my mobility isn't right.

Jarlo: Man, you can have a better advertisement for the stuff that we like. We like to do. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it. 

Jason Silvernail: Exactly. 

Jarlo: You. And one of the things that, you said that just. Rams home for us is the assessment, right? You have your framework, you have your assessment. Sometimes there is a strong enough, and it's so hard for me to say that too.

Jarlo: 'cause I love strength, everything. It was just strength for so long. Because I actually had, a pretty good, mobility and flexibility just because I did martial arts for so long. 

Jarlo: And I did, do targeted, stretch, all that kind of stuff.

Jarlo: Just because, that's what you do, as a martial artist and doing all that stuff. But it's something actually I could take for granted. Like as long as I was keeping up my practice, I'm pretty good. So I was like I'm gonna strong. I love it, love the loved everything about it.

Jarlo: But at some point you're like, I think we all have that, where you're like, you get it, you're doing it, and at some point you're like what is this really giving to me after all? 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. 

Jarlo: And a lot of it was just. For me it was just, it was psychological. Like I just realized that I was only doing it just 'cause I didn't wanna let it go.

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. Yeah. I talked to a lot of people who get older and I say you're a master's athlete now. If you're over 40 or so you're a master's athlete, so that means we have to train differently. We can still race against the new race cars. We have to do more maintenance and we need more time between races.

Jason Silvernail: And if you do, if you still wanna race with it, with the new race cars, you can absolutely do that. But you just have to be smarter about it. 

Jarlo: See, that's perfect too because a lot of times, again, it's this sort of extreme thing where people think I can't do anymore, so now I'm just not gonna do it.

Jarlo: So that's not what we're saying. We're not saying give up strength. Yeah, give up stuff. Yeah. It's actually. Changing the borderlines, right? Changing the goalposts a little bit and not beating your head, beating your head against the wall because you're not 25 anymore and can squat like four oh pounds, right?

If you're always gonna try and chase that and you're, 45, 50, so you're gonna have a bad time. How's that? 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. And I think we make these decisions about our life all the time. And it's not just in health and fitness, like how much money is enough for me to make at my job?

Jason Silvernail: How hard, how many hours a week is enough for me to put into my job, to meet my financial goals and for me to run my household with my husband or wife. And so I think that's the case all the time. We talked about goals. Early and I realized that I was not achieving some of mine in my routine.

Jason Silvernail: One of the things I think about is that, so I'm 51 while we're talking, and if you put me in a cage with a hundred, with 99 other 51 year olds, I guarantee I'm one of the last five walking out 

Jarlo: right 

Jason Silvernail: now. I might invite the last guy. I might not be the toughest guy at 51. But I guarantee I'm in the top five and that's how I wanna see it, is I look out, I'm like, I wanna be 95 years old.

Jason Silvernail: At some point knowing that if you shut me in a cage with 99 other 95 year olds, that I'm gonna be the one of the last five guys walking out. 

Jarlo: That's 

Jason Silvernail: awesome. That is, that's my goal. And

Jarlo: yeah, 

Jason Silvernail: so what do I, how much stuff do I need? How strong do I need to be able to do? How, I've I'm a level one and level two Army combatives graduate.

Jason Silvernail: Do I really need a black belt and Brazilian jiujitsu? Do I need to go to Thailand to do Muay Thai? I probably don't. Do I need to be golden gloves? I probably don't. I need to be skilled enough. To get after what's important to me. And so I don't there's just, there's a limited time in how much you have, how much time we have on Earth.

Jason Silvernail: Exactly. You've gotta make good decisions. And having that framework helps you decide how much investment do I need to make in any given thing to achieve the goals I wanna achieve? And how do I approach, how I, how do I approach this smartly so I can meet my goals? 

Jarlo: I love that. I forget who said this, but there was a reading something or someone said something where say, okay average.

Jarlo: You are a bell curve. You can say, 

Jason Silvernail: yeah, 

Jarlo: you're right in that 50% mark. And nobody wants to be average. No. Nobody wants to do that. Yeah. So he's let's look at 50% of the world records in like the deadlift, or whatever he said. Yeah. So in the deadlift, the world record, what is it?

Jarlo: Like a thousand pounds? 1100 pounds. Okay. 50% of that. 50% of that's 500 pounds. So if you are a 50%, if you are an average weightlifter according to the world record, right? You're still lifting 500 pounds. And 

Jason Silvernail: yeah. 

Jarlo: That really brings into a perspective of okay, average maybe isn't that bad.

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. 

Jarlo: And so when you're talking, like you said, when you're talking about being strong enough. Or enough running a marathon or doing all these things, can you spread yourself out a little bit and you're not world class or maybe you're not even, middle range.

Jarlo: But you are amazing. You really are gonna be amazing for your age group, and maybe even you're the cohorts that are like 10, 20 years younger. Reframing things like that can be super helpful to getting us out of that sort of stuck mindset, I think. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. And that framework really tells you how much you should invest in and what, I had somebody ask me like, what, what is in the army combatives, like program? Like what kind of stuff do you guys do? And it's it's a mix of things. I, if you put me in a gi, in a in a. Jujitsu competition against a blue belt, I'm gonna lose you. Put that blue belt in regular clothes in a combatives cage with me.

Jason Silvernail: I don't like his chances.

Jarlo: I think that's, and it's

Jason Silvernail: it's, and that's just different.

Jarlo: And that's what it is. It's just different environment, different expectations. Different skillset sets, different goals. And you'll see that, you'll see that. That's why it's really hard to, it can be hard to fight against a lot of the things we're hearing because we're.

Jarlo: By necessity, by design we're only hearing from these outliers, right? Yeah. I had a patient last week, he's great. He's doing super good in, into his late sixties and he's, he actually said that I gotta get off the Instagram because it's just showing me people doing things and I'm feeling bad and Yeah, you shouldn't be feeling bad. You're killing it at 67. I'm not even exaggerating. He's like doing amazing.

Jason Silvernail: yeah. 

Jarlo: So you have to be careful. A lot of times social media can have inspiration, it can have all of these things. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. 

Jarlo: I use it. I like it. I get a lot of information. It's great.

Jarlo: But you have to be really, you should be informed. You gotta be looking at it with a critical eye. And so that's really why I love talking on podcasts. I love writing articles 'cause we're, you and me both were trying to help people to have that capability of looking at things. With a critical eye.

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. No and I think, I understand where you're coming from about like misinformation and too much info with social media, but I don't know. I've got a little bit of a different perspective on that. I wonder if, is this a good time for that or should, oh, 

Jarlo: yeah, lets go

Jason Silvernail: So I think people worry too much about that.

Jason Silvernail: I think people worry too much about misinformation. 'cause here's basically the problem. We've come from a world in which most people only knew about 120 to 150 people in their community. And the information came to them from just a few people. They were the arbiters of truth, right? And sometimes they had things right.

Jason Silvernail: And. Had good expertise and were correct and sometimes they were wrong. And then as society got more complicated, we eventually ended up where we were getting our information from basically three big media channels. 

Jason Silvernail: And they were right about a lot of stuff and they were middle of the road.

Jason Silvernail: And for the most part it was correct. But you know what we found out? They were wrong about a lot of stuff too. They were hiding a lot of stuff. They were telling us half truths about a lot of things. And that is not a conspiracy theory. That is just a fact. 

Jason Silvernail: And so what happens when the info when the information revolution hit is now instead of just a few people who are.

Jason Silvernail: Who were unchallenged. Now we have a thousand flowers that bloom and no one knows who to listen to. But human beings haven't changed our evolution has got us to where we are now. Our physiology and psychology hasn't changed. What we're, what people are looking for is an example of someone who is saying and do thi doing things that resonate with them and they think, you know what?

Jason Silvernail: I can see myself doing that stuff. I can see the value in what that person is seeing and doing, and I'm gonna f I'm gonna listen to and follow them. So I think that instead of worrying about misinformation, we ought to do, I think what you guys are doing a good job of at GMB, which is saying, here's an example of us.

Jason Silvernail: Here's how we think, here's what we think is important and why. Here's how we're gonna present information to you, that over time we have a track record of being caring, thoughtful, reasonable people. We can help you meet your goals and. That's why people end up paying attention, and I think instead of us worrying too much about all the different voices out there, we're never gonna stop those people.

Jason Silvernail: The alternative to having that misinformation is going back to two or three sources of received truth, which even if they got, 80% of things right, we know that they, 20% of things were just wrong. They were not representing fairly.

Jarlo: I like that perspective actually. It's absolutely right in that context.

Jarlo: We only had what NBC ABC, right? Yeah. We only had 60 minutes or whatever. 

Jason Silvernail: Exactly. 

Jarlo: And now we have all of this out there, and. I get I totally see what you're saying because now along with it, we're seeing people of different representations, right? Yes. And we can see 

Jason Silvernail: yes 

Jarlo: ourselves a little bit more.

Jarlo: Yes. And that's absolutely right. 

Jason Silvernail: Yes. We needed that diversity of voices. And not just diversity of demographics, although that's important too. There's way more to life than the sort of refined. I'm a middle class white person in America perspective, like we, it's the world's much more diverse than that.

Jason Silvernail: Our country's much more diverse than that. 

Jarlo: There's so much more to learn. 

Jason Silvernail: Exactly. And I think that not only are we not going back to that, I say good riddance I say. Let people develop the sense of, let people be convincing through the ways that human beings know how to be convincing. I think so. So instead of us worrying about people, we don't agree with doing that, let's do it better ourselves.

Jarlo: Yeah, I like that a lot. That's a very positive kind of growth mindset. And it's also not even like you said within the demographic because what you look like. It's really interesting, right? What you look. What's what you're perceived as until you know the words start coming outta your mouth and like your actions.

Jason Silvernail: Oh yeah, I've experienced that before. Oh my gosh. 

Jarlo: Yeah. So there's a lot to learn from some, like we do need to keep our, you're absolutely right. We do have to our minds open.

Jason Silvernail: Diversity, it's the most important kind of diversity. It's the most important kind. 

Jarlo: I think you hit the head 'cause I was gonna ask you that question about, how do we sort through what's something real and useful? And really what we have to do is go beyond that ten second clip. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. 

Jarlo: Really, 

Jason Silvernail: That's what I'm trying to do on my social media now. I teach people soft skills, communication and leadership. Yeah, and I'm really trying to give people that kind of framework to help them cut through the muck and make good decisions and hopefully present myself as somebody who, when people hear me talk enough times, they're like, I think that guy makes a lot of sense. Maybe I'll try some of the things he suggested. 

Jarlo: Yeah. I think that's the key. You have to go a little bit deeper into it and, hopefully, right? Don't get caught up in, again, you have a framework. You have people that you can trust or you have sources you can trust and go, okay, how can I compare that to what I know, or, you know what I think?

Jason Silvernail: I think it takes some effort, for sure. But I think that's all what a really good life entails is like we have to put in an effort to everything we're doing. 

Jason Silvernail: I think that's what people's legacy should be. Not only interpersonally, but what the. What the, what are the papers that we write?

Jason Silvernail: What are the videos that we make? What are the impacts that we have on other human beings in our lives? I think that kind of misinformation stuff that people are most concerned about, the fear-based stuff, the anger, negativity based stuff, 

Jarlo: right? 

Jason Silvernail: That stuff's got an expiration date.

Jason Silvernail: People can only be fearful and angry so long before they run outta steam and they need something else. Positivity and a inconsistency wins in the end. Every time. 

Jarlo: From your mouth to God's ears, 

Jason Silvernail: hopefully. I guess the way I see it, I'm expressing it. I'm expressing things as they already are.

Jarlo: Right. No, I'm very hopeful that you're right and I think it, I'm probably in a bit of a time where I'm like, oh my God, here I'm looking at the news like, what is this anti science? Yeah. Because. At my heart, I'm an, I know I'm an intellectual. I've been a nerd since I could read since I was like four years old.

Jarlo: And so it really hurts my heart, right? That real experts are being pushed aside by, by anger and fear and all of that stuff. And really. It takes a lot of, I think it takes a lot of good people, like you're saying, to push, push against that and right. Weather the storm. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. I agree. And I, but also I think it's also important to realize, and I think that this is a hard thing for those of us that, that sort of really identify with science and medicine. It is hard for us to look back and reflect on things that we could have done better on, things that we did.

Jason Silvernail: That contributed to the loss of faith and confidence people have. And I see a lot of blame that we like to shovel against people pedaling some nonsense stuff. Guys, I did a video a while back. It's always a window. It's never a mirror. We're always looking out the window pointing at somebody else, 

Jarlo: right?

Jason Silvernail: But we don't have a lot of people in the science-based medical world looking at ourselves in the mirror and saying, there's some things we said, some things that we did. That hurt our credibility. And people find us less credible in some part because of things that we did. And until we take stock of that, and until we repair that and make it, and make things different for ourselves, complaining about other people just isn't gonna work.

Jason Silvernail: We have to change ourselves internally. 

Jarlo: Absolutely. And that's why you can always say it's all this kind of bombardment of, soundbites and memes and all that. But a lot of it is because people are looking for things Yes. They're missing.

Jarlo: They're missing information or they're feeling like, oh I want to do some, I think it. In the most positive way, people are looking for ways to improve themselves, improve their lives, so whether they're, and they come across some information. That's, I think at the heart of it, they just want to improve themselves.

Jarlo: So they're gonna look at this thing that, you and I might laugh at oh man, but they don't have the experience really, or they don't have the kind of background to really parse that out within five seconds, right? 

Jarlo: Yeah. You and me can look at a thing like

Jason Silvernail: yeah.

Jarlo: At its face validity, at its face value, that's just wrong. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. 

Jarlo: But, we can't expect everyone to do that. That's ridiculous. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. So I, that comes up to my next thing, so you said 1997, right? You've been a pt? I've been to one since 98. I think that was like six months after you and I told you in the email, it's funny I was at Tripler Army Medical in Honolulu for two months when my ortho rotation.

Jason Silvernail: Awesome. 

Jarlo: Back then, I don't know how it is now, but in the Army back then, patients came with their records. They visited you, you had to write it all in. You had 30 minutes. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jarlo: So I learned 

Jason Silvernail: And they carried their records out.

Jarlo: And they carried their record out. I learned a lot. That more than just what I'm gonna say, but I also learned how to just be quick and dirty and just get right to the heart of it.

Jarlo: Yeah. And get them going. And I knew the second and third visit would be great, but that first visit, you just gotta get down to brass tacks and you're like, what does this person really need? And so that's actually what I wanted to. To ask you a lot about is because, being an army PT is more than just, treating soldiers and all that.

Jarlo: You've got everything, you're treating dependent, you're treating their spouses, you're treating, the kids. Yep. 

Jason Silvernail: Family members. We're doing human performance optimization too. 

Jason Silvernail: We're doing, long-term health. We're working in the Army's program called Holistic Health and Fitness, or H to F that is designed to help soldiers perform their best.

Jason Silvernail: We're doing all that stuff. Yeah. 

Jarlo: Yeah. From just living life. Yeah. To these higher performance things. So I know it's a big question, but for 30 years of this and seeing all the different initiatives and seeing all these patients what do you see? What are the patterns you've seen in terms of I want, I wanna say preventable issues, I wanna say like getting out of some problems.

Jarlo: What are some of the patterns you've seen? 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah, I would say, I think first of all, my patients aren't different than anybody else's. People don't stop being people when they put a uniform on. 

Jarlo: Right? 

Jason Silvernail: And I think that in every, any civilian organization, they have rank in those places too.

Jason Silvernail: They just wear it on the inside. And for us it's a little bit more obvious 'cause we have it on our shirt. But I would say that I have found that I, we are able to make the biggest difference with people when we have a long-term mindset that is centered on what the patient wants to do in the long run. I can help them with their shoulder and get their shoulder a little bit better so that they could do pushups again and go back to doing what they wanna do six weeks from now.

Jason Silvernail: But what is their shoulder gonna be like in 20 years? What is their overall health gonna be like in 20 years? And I think most of what makes people healthy in the long term, it's got nothing to do with me. It's got nothing to do with medical care and I think that we really need to do a better job, I think, of helping our patients understand this, that how healthy people are has very little to do with their doctors and care personnel.

Jason Silvernail: It has everything to do with decisions they make, choices they make, behaviors they engage in, and so I'm trying to help people see the connections to their overall health behaviors have. To the problem that they have that brought them in to see me and how to help them improve their health trajectory and improve the, what people have called their health span, not just their lifespan.

Jason Silvernail: And sometimes that's taking somebody who's got a chronic long-term problem and I can't magically fix those things. I don't have a magic wand. If I did, the world would look much different. But what I can do is I can help people see the connections to those things. So a lot of those times we deal with a lot of chronic difficult problems that are just not easily fixable.

Jason Silvernail: We have a lot of folks with chronic fix. Let's just look at low back pain is the most common. A lot of people have really difficult, chronic low back pain that they struggle with, and they go from one person promising relief to another. And I don't promise those people relief. But at the same time, when we have a more total holistic type look to it, we can often find there's a lot of things that we can work on.

Jason Silvernail: Sleep affects people's pain, so helping people helping, understanding enough about sleep and helping people sleep better. Talking a little bit about diet, talking a little bit about their stress management, talking a little bit about what is their activity level at home and what is their, what are the things they do for fitness and how can they make some different decisions there that can maybe not magically fix their back pain today, but that can put them on a trajectory to feel better in the future and to be healthier for longer.

Jason Silvernail: I think that is a big piece that, that traditional medicine is missing. And we talked about misinformation before and I think there's a lot of people in the like low validity health quackery kind of world that prey on the fact that not enough of us in traditional medical are spending time with our patients, helping them understand some of those things.

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. That's another big advantage of being a pt, having a foot in medicine and having a foot in function, is that I get to be able to cross that line and deliver to my patients what they need. 

Jarlo: Yeah, I think that's huge. That's one of the things that has always. Stood out to me as being a PT for, how many years is we spend time with our patients, we, 

Jason Silvernail: yeah. 

Jarlo: Actually spend time with our patient. It's not, we've all gone to the doctor and there's no disparagement against MDs or, but it's just the system. Yes. They got, they're overloaded. If they can spend 15 minutes with you, that's a lot. 

Jason Silvernail: Yes. Yeah. Like you, I've got nothing but love for my physician colleagues, for nurse practitioners and PAs.

Jason Silvernail: I love those folks. They save lives every day. But they're, they like us, are stuck in the same darn system. 

Jarlo: Right? 

Jason Silvernail: And they would like to spend more time and do those things too. Some people say I went to my doctor, but all she does is gimme a bottle of pills. I'm like there's a complicated, a lot of reasons for that.

Jason Silvernail: But it's not because she doesn't want better for you. Of course she does. 

Jarlo: That's right.

Jason Silvernail: but she's got constraints and also she has, she also knows over time that for a lot of her patients, that is one of the best things she can do for them upfront, 

Jarlo: We have the privilege to spend, that half hour, 45 minutes.

Jarlo: Yes. Maybe even an hour, but also once to twice a week for a month. Yeah. That's huge. And it used to be even more. I remember, 

Jason Silvernail: yeah, I remember. 

Jarlo: Shadowing PTs, before I even went to school. Those are the heydays of three times a week for four months. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jarlo: It's not like that anymore. 

Jason Silvernail: No.

Jason Silvernail: And good riddance to those days.

Jarlo: And that's actually true too, right? Because 

Jason Silvernail: there, that wasn't good utilization, it wasn't good for the patient and all those other things. And so 

Jarlo: that’s right. 

Jason Silvernail: I think that's all part of the big arc. Of necessary medical reform that I think that we're all down.

Jason Silvernail: Absolutely. But but things have been, I, I look back at what, almost 30 years now, like you were saying before that you and I have been in medicine and my gosh, almost all of the changes have been for the better, almost all of them. 

Jarlo: I would agree. I actually would agree. And. It really is, it's like going back to what we were talking about earlier of putting yourself into shoes of the person that maybe has a little bit of low information and they're just looking to get improvement.

Jarlo: They're just looking to help themselves. And they're, they're looking at a, a 32 second IG reel. This person promising them this. Of course, I'm gonna look at that. You know what's, of course it's human nature. And the same thing for your healthcare providers.

Jarlo: A lot of times, man it's tough. You're in your six hour of the day, you have 30 patients behind you. You got 20 or ahead of you, what are you gonna do? So it's tough. 

Jason Silvernail: It's true. 

Jarlo: But I think the holistic thing that we talked about right from the beginning. It's everything, like everything together.

Jarlo: It doesn't mean that you have to be perfect in everything. It doesn't mean you have to have the perfect diet. You have the perfect sleep routine, but it does mean Yeah. A lot of times you need a little bit more of this thing. A little bit more of that. Yep. And that's even drawn out in the research, right?

Jarlo: All of these things with single intervention stuff, whether it's manual therapy, whether it's, moving someone around, giving them a little massage, whether it's exercise itself, whether it's a modality like needles or whatever. 

Jarlo: You need a plus this thing.Plus this thing. Plus this thing. Yeah.  It’s loads better. It's like multiple factors better than just one thing at a time. That is just consistent across the board. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah, I agree. And I think that a big part of it is like getting people's mental buy-in by giving them some early wins is super important.

Jason Silvernail: And it's not just in medicine years ago I went and I sat down with a financial planner to try to figure out how we were gonna do our investments. And I think he knew. That if all we did was see our money go away and have less money in the checking account to some, amorphous account somewhere, that we didn't know what was happening with it.

Jason Silvernail: He needed to give us something that was a plus, show us something that was growing and that was encouraging right away. And I think that's true for us in medicine too. I think that we oftentimes react too strongly against. Some of the salesmanship that's happening in alternative type medicine, 

Jason Silvernail: You need the sizzle along with the steak, and that's coming from the vegetarian, right? Huge. So I'm not afraid of putting some sizzle on my steak. 

Jarlo: Yeah. It's huge. 

Jason Silvernail: Especially if it is scientifically justified. 

Jarlo: And it's not harmful. 

Jason Silvernail: And it serves the patient's goals, not mine.

Jarlo: Exactly. 

Jason Silvernail: It doesn't make me money. It gives the patient the outcome they want. 

Jarlo: I think that's another huge thing. People talk about placebos or here's another thing that's might be interesting for people, and again, it's a little, a little nerdy, a little kind of inside, but there's this talk of contextual effects, right?

Jarlo: We call it contextual effects in the literature. And basically what it means is that. For people listening, basically what it means is if you're getting a treatment from someone, an intervention, whether there's a doctor, chiropractor, physical therapist, nurse or even a personal trainer, right?

Jarlo: The contextual effects are. How does this person feel about what they're providing? How do you feel as a client, as a patient, how do you feel about what they're providing? And actually even how you feel about each other. These are the things, these are the effects that surround.

Jarlo: It doesn't matter whether you're getting a cortisone injection, you're getting, someone's cracking your back. Giving a massage, all of that has effects. Yes. There, the effects are there. But it seems like that the contextual, the environment, everything of that has even more of an effect.

Jarlo: And you can, again, look at this just at the face of it and go that means that nothing matters. And it's all placebo and it's all psychologically, but that's. That's the wrong way of looking at it. It's the wrong way of looking at it. You have to look at it as the whole thing. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah.

Jason Silvernail: You're picking it up by the wrong handle. I think the stoics would say you're trying to carry that by holding it by the wrong handle. 

Jarlo: Yeah. I love that. It's because. We, I think a lot of times, again it's a thing where we only look at a thing very quickly and then move on and that's a human nature.

Jarlo: But I think all of that information, all that research just shows you how important it is to have this kind of relationship that meets the patient's expectations. And also conforms, jives yeah. With what you wanna provide. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. 

Jarlo: Have you heard of the more recent stuff, and I think it's still in progress, where I forget his name, I'm really bad with these researchers name, but they're really trying to think about, can we match providers that have certain belief systems with patients that have certain belief systems? 

Jarlo: And you look at that and you're like, yeah. Yeah, I'll see if I can find it and I'll email you and I'm like yeah, that would be awesome.

Jarlo: But also, like how would you even do that in a trial? How would you even, 

Jason Silvernail: it would be tough in a trial. I will tell you one of the things that we learned about in fellowship training too, was that as you talk to someone, you, I really learned to listen to people. Much better in fellowship training.

Jason Silvernail: And I just discovered going through that, that I wasn't listening to my patients very well, and that when I really just shut my mouth and worked hard to understand where they were coming from and what was important to them, I could immediately start to help them in a way that would be most powerful for them.

Jason Silvernail: So I would use the words and descriptors that they use. I would talk about achieving the goals that they said that they wanted to achieve. And I know some people are listening to this and they're like, oh, everybody does that. I'm here to tell you no, they don't. We interrupt patients. We, the royal we in medicine, right?

Jason Silvernail: We interrupt patients all the time. We tell 'em what we think is better for them, and then we act surprised when they go elsewhere for information. And then we decry misinformation like the hubris some of us have in medicine is just shocking. Right? 

Jason Silvernail: And that includes people like you and me.

Jason Silvernail: We're not immune from that either. And so I really learned to listen closely because I think most people will tell you. What is important to them and how they see things going. And if I spend more time trying to match, trying to do the things that I do in a way that works for them, instead of making them fit the box that I want it to be as a doctor, 

Jarlo: massive 

Jason Silvernail: I don't do that.

Jason Silvernail:  I change to suit them. I don't require them to change to suit me. 

Jarlo: Massive. That. That's a clinical pearl. For real. This just amazing. And I see that born out too with I've been also, I teach martial arts since I was a kid too. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. 

Jarlo: And I though the thing of overteaching is huge. It's real. Oh. And like I've caught myself doing it so many times. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. 

Jarlo: Even when I know better. It's 'cause you, and again, from a place of I wanna help someone. 

Jason Silvernail: Yes. 

Jarlo: Maybe give 'em a shortcut.

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. 

Jarlo: Yeah. You see themselves in you. Your, yourselves in them. So true. Where you're like, oh, if I, someone would've just told me this, I would've gotten a little bit better.

Jarlo: A little bit sooner. But also, no, man, sometimes they gotta fall on their, they gotta fall on their face to really get it. 

Jason Silvernail: I made that mistake so many times. 

Jason Silvernail: We just wanna help them out. That's for me. I know. And I've been that guy and I've made that mistake, that same mistake so many times.

Jason Silvernail: It's so true. Yeah. No I think that's, teaching people is another example of how frameworks are super important. I was saying like my, in my social media, I teach people soft skills, communication and leadership, and I teach them frameworks to use. I don't teach them this one weird trick and I don't talk about these highfalutin ideas.

Jason Silvernail: I give them a framework of how to approach something. Because having that framework and organized way to approach something helps people make decisions when conditions change and in different environments. And I think that it's just really hard to take that 30 minute, that one weird trick from an Instagram reel and translate that to different situations.

Jason Silvernail: But if you've got a framework to use. It, it helps a lot. 

Jarlo: That's, it's massive. That's good coaching, that's good teaching, that's being a good healthcare provider. I think we've also seen that, and coming back to what you said about, the last 30 years and advances in, in medicine, medical care, but there's also been a lot of advances in people, actually different professions like personal trainers, athletic trainers, CrossFit coaches, right?

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. 

Jarlo: Even just throwing out all these other things, massage therapists, chiropractors. Yeah, acupuncturists, all of that. It's really interesting too, right? There's so much turf war, right? There's so much turf war stuff with PTs are better than this, are you really like this chiropractor is this, and that's a scarcity mindset.

Jarlo: That's just wrong. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. Agreed. 

Jarlo: Because some people are gonna resonate with some people better, and if this chiropractor, this acupuncturist, this PT really suits this person better, then they should go to them. 

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. 

Jarlo: They should go to them. And then what the hope or the real thing should be is that provider going to give them the best that they can with the information they have.

Jarlo: So I, I really do believe that, and that's something that I had to get away from. I remember that first five, 10 years never go to a chiropractor, oh my God, 

Jason Silvernail: and never do this, or don't do that. Or, don't ever get an injection or don't get this kind surgery. 

Jarlo: Exactly. That's another thing too.

Jason Silvernail: One of the things that helps me is that, look, we're not, no one's gonna go backward, right? I, if I want somebody to eat, if I want something to eat, delivered to my house, I can pick up this little electronic square that's in my pocket and I can click and I have a choice of whatever I want.

Jason Silvernail: I can get a burrito, I can get Mexican, I can get Italian, I can get Thai, I can get whatever I want, right? And people are not gonna go backward to where you force them to choose or force, or you force them to do things your way. That the world is not going to gonna do that. It just isn't. And so the question for us is, if you really believe in what you're doing, if you really believe that you have something valuable to offer people, what other people say and do is irrelevant.

Jason Silvernail: It's not that it's not that it's not a threat, it's that it's completely irrelevant either way. I like. In my teaching, when I teach people communication and leadership, I know there's a lot of other people doing that. It doesn't matter to me. 

Jarlo: Right? 

Jason Silvernail: They don't have, they don't have the perspective that I have. They don't have the approach. I have. I'm not saying it's better. I'm not saying it's worse. I'm just saying I have that perspective that I'm offering people, and if I really believe in myself, it doesn't matter who else is doing that stuff. 

Jarlo: That's such a healthy mindset. I think that's something, we were talking before the call, explaining how, you know where our company came from. We started, a little bit before 2010 and launched 2010. And we were in a space where there's so much fitness and strength training, all that stuff. There's so many people, but we just did what we did. We did we had what we like people

Jarlo: On our programs we're like this is what we've seen worked for us. This is what we've seen worked for our clients. Yeah. It's been 15 years. We don't have competition. Yeah. That's something we've always said. We don't have competition. 

Jarlo: There's more than enough. Like I. You can go somewhere else, you can totally do it.

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. 

Jarlo: And I'm not saying, bad or good or whatever. I, that's exactly that. What a great mindset, I think for everyone to to have, that's they're trying to provide the service or trying to help people. You're really trying to help people. If that's your goal. 

Jarlo: It really, like you said, doesn't matter what anybody else is doing. You just do yours. 

Jason Silvernail: It's not that it influences you positively, it's not that it influences you negatively. Exactly. It's that it's literally irrelevant. It does not matter. It is not like how other people do things is not a variable in my decision making algorithm at all.

Jason Silvernail: There is no variable in there that reflects what other people are doing, positive or negative. 

Jarlo: This is all. So we had an outline and I had a bunch of stuff. So we got through like me 20 percent.

Jason Silvernail: All the best talk is off the cuffs man.

Jarlo: I really wanna, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Jarlo: So I know you're doing lots of stuff like you, you got your work, you got all that kind of stuff. But where can people, and in the show notes, I'll also add, where would you like people to see what you're doing? Tell us a little bit of what what's the exciting stuff, new stuff that you've been doing?

Jason Silvernail: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm in my last couple years before I retired from the Army, and so I'm looking Yeah, congratulations. Looking, congratulations. Oh, thanks. It'll be 36 by the time I'm done, so I think the boxes are checked.

Jason Silvernail: So I'm just looking around at ways that I can add value to people in a way that they will like and that I'll like, right?

Jason Silvernail: And so I will put my link to my link tree that explains all the different, all the places that I'm at and stuff I'm doing. You can also find me at jasonsilvernail.com. You can also go to pretty much any social media place and put at Jason Silvernail in, and you can find me in where I'm at. I'd look for the guy with the blue check equivalent because that's me.

Jason Silvernail: I think some of the things I'm really excited about is taking, like what you were saying, my knowledge and experience and in PT and the military and in giving people frameworks of thought as a military officer. The military teaches you that too. As you approach military problems, they give you a system to use.

Jason Silvernail: They give you a framework to approach those things. It's not just random. And I started to see the connection between those frameworks and what I was doing in clinical care and what I could do to teach people. Communication, soft skills and leadership. And I started knitting all these things together, right?

Jason Silvernail: And so I'm trying to give, I'm trying to be somebody who gives people actionable frameworks that helps them understand and interact with people better, communicate better and lead better. And I welcome everybody to come see what I'm about and tell me what they would like to hear about, and maybe we'll do something else in the future.

Jarlo: That's awesome, Jason. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. All right, thanks so much. Alright, and that's it for GMB Fitness podcast for this time and hopefully we'll see you guys again later.