The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
Stretching Vs Range of Motion work. Interview with Yogi Aaron (again)
In January 2023 I released an interview I did with Yogi Aaron and I did not expect the blowback I received for this one (hahaha)!!
This is one of those interviews where you have to actually listen past the few few minutes as the headline does not contain all the relevant information. But when you do, it all makes complete sense and you might even save yourself some valuable time and effort!
Aaron is the Co-Owner of Blue Osa Yoga Retreat & Spa in Costa Rica where he leads The Yogi Club Yoga Teacher Training Immersions year-round for students from all across the globe. He's also a podcast host and author.
More importantly, he's a great podcast guest who explains his ideas very clearly and talks a lot of sense! You're going to LOVE this episode.
Amongst the many things we're covering are;
What the function of muscles actually is and why stretching goes against it.
Why stretching is killing your gains and potentially causing your injuries.
Why stretching, and most warm-ups, before training simply does NOT make sense.
Why we should ban saying "Listen to your body".
And much, MUCH more.
Get your copy of Yogi Aaron's book, "Stop Stretching! A New Yogic Approach To Master Your Body and Live Pain-Free."
Visit Aaron's excellent YouTube channel
Follow him on Instagram or Facebook
As always; HPNB still only has 5 billing cycles.
So this means that you not only get 3 months FREE access, no obligation!
BUT, if you decide you want to do the rest of the program, after only 5 months of paying $10/£8 a month you now get FREE LIFE TIME ACCESS! That's $50 max spend, in case you were wondering.
Though I'm not terribly active on Instagram and Facebook you can follow us there. I am however active on Threads so find me there!
And, of course, you can always find us on our YouTube channel if you like your podcast in video form :)
Visit healthypostnatalbody.com and get 3 months completely FREE access. No sales, no commitment, no BS.
Email peter@healthypostnatalbody.com if you have any questions, comments or want to suggest a guest.
Playing us out; "Let Love" by Emorie
Hey, welcome to the Healthy Postnatal Body Podcast with your postnatal expert, peter Lap. That, as always, will be me. This is the podcast for the 20th of July 2025. And from the vault, I bring you one of my favorite episodes. I did an interview with Aaron Yogi Aaron. He's a co-owner of a yoga retreat and spa in Costa Rica and he does yoga teacher training and all that type of stuff.
Peter:And we did one in January 2023 or we recorded it in December 22 and talking about how, the importance of stretching versus range of motion, and we called the episode stop stretching, because that's what this book is called stop stretching, a new yogic approach. And people lost their mind over this because they did, they caught the headline and they didn't get the message. So that's. I'm going to re-release this one now. You're gonna love this. Like I said, listen to the message. Stretching versus range of motion and all that type of stuff what is the difference and why you're doing the wrong thing when you're stretching and focusing on that only right. Without further ado, here we go. So we're talking stretching today Now. Loads of people stretch quotes before a run, before exercise and after, and most of the time we get told at least I get told, as a middle-aged guy, we don't stretch enough. You know, considering your book is called Stop Stretching, I'm guessing you don't agree with that premise.
Aaron:Absolutely not, the more and more I disagree wholeheartedly.
Peter:So why is that?
Aaron:So why is that? Well, because at the end of the day it boils down to this one I think, kind of truism, if you will fact about muscles. And you know there's a lot of, I think, erroneous kind of suggestions about what muscles do and don't do. But at the end of the day, muscles do two things they move bones, they have to move bones, and they move the body. They move the skeleton, you know, in all kinds of direction, thank God. And they also stabilize joints. And so how they do that is by shortening. They need to shorten in order for them to do that.
Aaron:And so then people go well, you know it feels so good to lengthen them. Well, yeah, I mean, we could have a whole discussion about that and why it feels good and sort of the effects on the nervous system. And of course I have a unique perspective because I teach yoga. That's my kind of lane, if you will. But you know the way a muscle really relaxes at the end of the day, the way a muscle truly relaxes, which I think we need to talk more and more and more about, is making sure that the opposite muscle is actually contracting properly. And so you know when I again I'm going to speak more in my lane, but I am also going to speak generally now a little bit.
Aaron:I think that, and especially you as a fitness instructor, like a physical therapist like we don't often ask enough why are muscles tight? To begin with, you know? And so if I go, if I, if I have a tight shoulder, for example, or I have pain in my shoulder and I go to a yoga teacher, their immediate response is like, oh, we need to lengthen the muscles. Well, the pain is like the check engine light of the, you know, in the engine. It's like, you know, there's a problem, there's a problem, there's a problem, and all we're doing, by stretching it is kind of temporarily making it feel better, and you know why we're making it feel better is really kind of distracting ourselves from the actual problem of the pain. So we're literally putting a bandaid on it, having mommy kiss us, and you know, and it distracts us. It distracts us from the pain long enough that we can kind of forget about it, but it doesn't really deal with the actual problem, which is instability. So there's pain.
Aaron:Pain is usually the result of inflammation. There's inflammation in the joint. Now, inflammation could be small, it could be big, but there's inflammation there. That inflammation is the result of, like, something becoming stressed out, or there's something that's become traumatized and so to stretch it out is actually like the worst thing that we could do. What we want to do is actually go okay, well, you know, if it's like in the shoulder joint, for example, what are the muscles, what are the key muscles, the big muscles that should be supporting the muscle, the shoulder joint, and let's address those big muscles.
Aaron:Just as a side note and I'm saying this to you because I've worked with physical therapists a lot in my life for my own body and my own, you know issues and I've had many issues and a lot of tissues and what I think I think that from my limited experience, that a lot of the therapists that I've worked with have made the mistake of treating the smaller muscles. You know. Address bigger muscles. Never once have I had anybody ever teach me that, and until I started studying muscle function on a deeper level, and so I, you know we.
Aaron:To go back to your question is there ever a place for stretching? I have to say more and more and more the answer is no. I think that there's like a point zero, zero, zero. One percent exception, but I usually don't like talking. That's the blanket rule, and and and then we forget like, yeah, we need to get the muscles working. So, again, they stabilize joints. And and they stabilize joints by shortening, by pulling the joints inward, not, like you know, opening them up, and they also move bones yeah, no, you're, you're, you're buying I.
Peter:I basically couldn't agree more with that, because what you're basically saying for I have quite a few physical therapists listening to this who I'm sure are now angrily if they're not driving angrily starting to type up type, type, type little emails it is it is one of the things that is most often ignored. Yeah, is that pain is almost as I said on previous podcasts with regards to back pain, and it kind of goes for other pain as well. It's almost never actually in the area where you feel the pain, so it's almost always deferred in a different place.
Peter:So it's so back pain, we know, and shoulder pain, but you're bang on. I mean, that is almost inevitably. That is because a lot of people listening to this are not physical therapists, so I'll just use normal phrasing. You know, your, your lat muscles, the big muscles in your back, and they really are the big muscles in your back. Uh, the muscles underneath your shoulder blade, uh, your trapezoid muscle, which is the what I call the stress muscle in your neck. You know, when you, when my wife says, can I get a shoulder massage, she never means her shoulders, she means that that's big. You know, when the guys get really big, that, that, that bull like muscle in their neck, yes, those are the ones. And short pecs, right, uh, short pectoral muscles leading into the shoulders.
Peter:That is almost inevitably, in my experience, where shoulder pain comes from, uh, or where shoulder dysfunction comes from. It has very little to do with the shoulder other than the muscles in in one of the areas, either to the front or the back, are not strong enough. So you have the muscular imbalance, um, that physios love to talk about. Uh, muscular imbalance is almost always a problem. And the muscles in the joint or certain bigger muscles are just not strong enough compared to the muscles on on the other side and so before physical therapy.
Peter:Start start writing in. That's essentially what you're saying, isn't it? As in we need to function much more focus sorry, much more on strength than we should be doing, on strengthening on, on lengthening the muscle and on stretching that muscle continuously.
Aaron:Yeah, I mean. So there's a few things to unpack in what you said, at least from my perspective. But one is, yeah, absolutely Like, let's not worry about the lengthening of the muscle. I mean, everybody listening to this podcast, pretty much everybody, understands this kind of agonist antagonist relationship and so when the agonist is working properly, the antagonist, the opposite muscle, will start to relax. Classic example you get the hamstrings people tight hamstrings. Why are the hamstrings? People tight hamstrings? Why are the hamstrings tight to begin with?
Aaron:Well, this is this is going back to a question I asked earlier is like why are muscles tight? We need to ask that question and it's usually more than likely a protective mechanism in the body. The body is sensing instability and so it just sends out like a nationwide Amber alert that you get on your phone. You know, you know, tighten up, tighten up, tighten up. Because we are unstable. And you know two examples of the body tightening up is like you know, in the first days of of winter, when you have that first ice on the ground, you, you step out on that ice. What does your body do? It tightens up. It's a protective mechanism. Or if you're like me in a scary movie and somebody jumps out and I go, my whole body just tightens up. So it's a natural protective mechanism and I think like I don't know if you have yoga people listening to this podcast that much, but in yoga we talk a lot about healing, about respecting the body, about honoring the body, about listening to the body. The absolute wrong thing to do is to stretch, because it's violating and I'm going to repeat that word one more time it's violating your body's own natural protective mechanism and I think it's really important to you know to hear that now is there a time and place to stretch again?
Aaron:Yeah, there's exceptions. You know, I broke my leg and, um, and they had to put a pin in just above the knee and, and they had to put a pin in just above the knee and they put actually two just above the knee and one at the hip joint and of course, you know there was so much inflammation, there was so much tightness that you know I I mean it's it'd be interesting to have a wider conversation and experiment around this. But you know I needed somebody to start moving my leg because you know you didn't want it to stay. But you know I needed somebody to start moving my leg because you know you didn't want it to stay stuck, you know. So I think that there is time and place for it. But again, it's the exception, it's not the rule, and it's like a very small exception.
Aaron:And so we're coming into this whole idea of agonist and antagonist relationship, like coming to the hamstrings. The hamstrings are tight. Well, let's actually get the quads working. I have suffered all my life from tight hamstrings. Even today I suffer from tight hamstrings. And now I have the wisdom to know, oh, my hamstrings are tight, it's because my quadsads, more specifically rectus femoris, isn't firing properly. You know, it's not connected. And and so that's what I want to kind of, just just kind of impact into this conversation before we continue that, what I'm, what I'm referring to when I talk about muscle activation. It's not like let's go do some weights or let's go do even bands per se. It's more like let's do some short, specific, very specific, as specific as possible isometric contractions to reinforce this connection between the brain and the muscle.
Aaron:And so why the?
Aaron:Why the brain is sending out this amber alert like tighten up, tighten up, tighten up. We don't have stability. It's because the brain isn't connecting to key muscles. You know, in my case a lot of the times is hip flexors. Like I have little to no connection and I've done a lot of things to mess up that connection. I've done a lot of things to cause stress, trauma to those muscles. You know the hip flexors, the rectus femoris, the iliacus, the psoas, and so none of those muscles have worked most of my life and as a result of that, I've had tight hamstrings, I've had tight, you know, abdominals, I've had you know a range of issues that have exacerbated my pain and disc herniation in my lower back, because I've had none of the stability to really support my structure and I didn't know that.
Aaron:You know so what we're talking about in terms of like connection. It's not like we're trying to like, oh, let's go do some lats or downs or something like that. That's actually sometimes even going to cause more problems because if the brain isn't connecting to the muscles that should be doing that exercise, you're going to actually cause more stress, trauma and overuse. So the best thing that we can do, in my opinion and experience, is to start teaching people, you know, eight minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever, even five minutes if you want to of just simple basic muscle activation poses, so that we can start to quote unquote warm up the muscles, but really it's activate the muscles. It's like reinforcing that brain to muscle connection that has been damaged due to stress, trauma and overuse that is absolutely.
Peter:I mean, that is just bang on, because that is exactly my lane right, that is I. I most of my stuff is both part and women, and that is what I.
Peter:I tell everybody this the first the first stage of any postpartum program, of any rehab program, and really by rehab, I class anybody that has anything to repair postpartum. It's a bit of a mess, let me put it that way. Um, yes, it's always muscle activation teaching the body to activate the right muscles at the right time. Teaching the body to activate the right muscles at the right time. Yeah, it is not about you know, you hear a lot of people, uh, online talk about this. Oh, you need to engage your transverse abdominus. Yeah, okay, tell me how right.
Peter:And and tell me how an exercise should feel, because, let's be honest, I'm just a guy. Um, okay, I work, work with the TVA a whole lot, but unless you explain to me in detail how something should feel in my body, I don't know, because until and this goes for most women, but this goes for most people as well I have no idea, or I had no idea, what my body was supposed to feel like. I just knew that a squat was me dropping to the ground and coming back up again yeah and I was told it was a quad dominant exercise.
Peter:Uh, no one spoke about glute engagement on the way up until you get to lifting, say, bigger weights, so you put 100 kilos on your back and now, by the way, also, it's a good idea to engage your glutes.
Peter:Yeah, thanks you already got 100 kg on my back. Which other muscles am I ignoring? Because I'm only thinking about two. I think this is a quad exercise and I think it's a glute exercise, because if I don't engage my glutes, I go all the way to the floor and I'm never getting back up. Yeah, I'm ignoring the core, I'm I'm. I'm ignoring the psoas, I'm ignoring my subscapularis and I'm ignoring all the muscles in my back that give me decent posture, that allow me to hold that bar in place and give me a bit of upper body stability, and all this?
Peter:Yes, because nobody taught me to think about those muscles at the right time throughout the movement, and that is fundamentally what I say. Everybody doing any form of rehab, or anybody who hasn't exercised for a while, or even top-level athletes that want to improve their performance, that is where you start. You start by speaking to someone who understands biomechanics and that says listen as you move in this way, you should be feeling this muscle, do something, that muscle, do something, that muscle do something. Because if you are not, then you're just completing a repetition of a movement. Yeah, and that gets you the rep of the movement. I think I can do 10 squats, no problem at all, and I can do 10 squats with 100 kilos on my back, no problem at all.
Peter:But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm getting a lot of bang for my buck and it could lead to trouble later on because I'm continuously doing that and on the other side, for my hamstrings or the hamstring curls or lunges or something like that Again, not thinking about my hamstrings, I'm just performing the movement and sooner or later one of those two things like you said, agonist, antagonist is going to say ah, you know, just let me engage permanently whilst we perform this exercise and all the other muscles are going oh, I guess I don't need to do anything at all. Then right, one one thing uh takes over. And especially if you're looking at rehab exercise, if you ignore this stage of of of your uh, of your rehab program, you're just going to create problems later on in life. And I'm 48 now and trust me when I tell you, by the time the 4-0 hits. This is why if everybody just did muscle activation in their 20s and 30s whilst they did their strength training, whatever training, they wouldn't have that many problems in their 40s and 50s.
Aaron:No, no, I mean all throughout my 20s. You know, the interesting thing is that when I first started doing yoga I was 18 and I did it because I wanted to stay young, wanted to stay healthy, you know, and if you ask most people why you should stretch, those are, by the way, the two, the two top reasons they might throw in like, oh, I really want to touch my toes. But if you ask why they want to stretch, it's like to stay young and to be healthy, and that's kind of the image that a lot of people have in their brain. And you know it's understandable, because if you look at like older people who act old, they have limited movement and so we want to be having more mobility. But the thing is like, you know, what we don't want is flexibility. We do want mobility, we don't want flexibility.
Aaron:My teacher, greg Roscoff, always says like flexibility always leads to instability, and when there's instability we always have the opportunity for injury. And that's been kind of like seared into my mind and so when I first started doing, I'm too young to be disabled like this, and so my answer was like, let's stretch more, let's do more stretching. And then, you know, I go to my teachers and they'd be like you're not flexible enough, your hamstrings are too tight, they're pulling on your lower back and that's causing all kinds of problems. Okay, I'll go stretch some more lower back. And that's causing all kinds of problems. Okay, I'll go stretch some more. And you know, and and then I was 45 and I ended up in the surgeon's office telling me like, oh, you're going to need a spinal fusion. And that was kind of like what I've been doing isn't right, so I need to find another.
Peter:Cause you're back on? Cause most people I know that don't do yoga and most yoga instructors in in the uk at least, sell yoga as it's a nice way to stay flexible and it's a nice stretchy movement. Don't worry, it's not too intense. That's what hot yoga is for, right, we turn the temperature up so you sweat enough. You don't actually perform difficult uh stuff necessarily, whereas if you, one of my clients, lived in dubai for a long time, um, in dubai they have more, say, indian people coming over to instruct do you be yoga instructors? And all that sort of stuff, and they have a completely different approach to yoga. They say, yeah, yoga is part of of a lifestyle. Of course it is, but yoga is not all woo and let's hug a tree and let's be gentle and let's be stretching and all that.
Peter:Yoga is tough going. If you do it properly, yoga is serious, serious exercise. If you do it properly, and if you don't, indeed, just do the, I'll be the downward facing dog bit of cobra and whatever right. Um, so the temp. I'm thinking a lot of people, maybe some listening to this it'd be a good idea to really. This is why I always think it's always a good idea to think about what you're doing as as a fitness instructor or as a physiotherapist or whatever, and a physical therapist and just ask why am I doing this and does it make sense?
Aaron:Yeah.
Peter:They. They taught me a lot of stuff in in PT school, so to speak, but almost everything that I've been taught I've kind of written off already over the past 10 years because it just doesn't stack up anymore. It just on the fundamental level. I'm not saying it's all wrong. I get why they teach it in that way yeah but it's not really one and one equals two.
Aaron:It's not a holistic approach yeah, but it's not really one and one equals two. It's not a holistic approach. Yeah, I mean, one of the things I think is lacking and and I'm going to stay in my lane just for a second is, in the yoga world is just such a lack of knowledge of muscle function. You know what are muscles doing and and what, what is actually going on in this pose and does that really make sense? Like you know, um, do we really want to be hanging off of our joints? Uh per se, and and and a lot of people don't don't ask that question enough and my one of my best friends she is a senior and I'm doing air quotes for people who are listening to the podcast, not watching it that she's a senior yoga teacher and we got into a big kind of argument just last summer actually, and it was quite a little. It almost got heated and she turned to me and said well, you know, it's about experimenting and feeling your body and learning to listen to your body. Now I think it's important to preface that this individual has had a knee replacement, had a hip replacement and has had shoulder surgery and is now about to go in for some other complications that have arisen. And now she says there's biomechanical reasons for that. Sure, there's biomechanical reasons, but the fact of the matter is is that your bones are literally hanging off of your joints and there's no stability.
Aaron:But one of the comments that she made to me was you know, people have to listen to their bodies. It's all about teaching people to listen to their body, and I'm really kind of of, as a yoga teacher now, almost over this kind of statement. It's something that, you know, we've been saying like it's. It's I call it sometimes the blind leading the blind like somebody said it, then another hundred people said it, then a thousand people said it, and then it becomes true. And you know it's listening to your body. Is most people don't know what they're listening to. It's like you. Well, I'm not going to speak for you, I only speak English and a little bit of Spanish. At best. I can listen to somebody speaking Japanese, but I'm not going to understand what they're talking about. Sure, I'm listening, but I don't understand what I'm hearing. Listening, but I don't understand what I'm hearing, and that's the. That's just the truth. With most people in their bodies. Is that yoga teacher's solution? You know, the quick fix, if you will, is to say, like, listen to your body. But the fact is is like people don't know what they're listening to. How can they reinterpret that pain in their shoulder and go? You know, what I really need to do is get my core engaged. I've started to learn to listen to my body because I now know that pain is the check engine light of my body and it's saying you know, danger, aaron, yogi Aaron, danger, yogi Aaron is going to say Will Robinson, but I'll give you an example of that.
Aaron:Like the other day I was walking I one of the things I do now for my exercise is walking. Um, I usually walk. I try and walk about eight kilometers, you know, four or five times a week. And and I was out walking and my right calf muscles started cramping. And so if I I'm a typical yoga quote unquote person, or even a fitness person, my first inclination is be like, oh, I've got a tight calf, I have to open it up. Well, actually that's the wrong thing to do. The calf is contracting because it's stabilizing, you know, the whole leg structure. And so I kind of went into my brain for a moment. I was like, okay, so what could be going on? Maybe my hip extensors aren't doing their job properly, aka glutes. So I did a quick hack I call it a hack because I was standing on the street, you know, doing this and I couldn't roll out my you know exercise mat and lie down on the ground and do this. So I did a quick hack to activate my right glute. And then I did a quick hack to activate my right quad, my right rectus femoris. Not only did the cramp disappear immediately, it was instantaneous. The pain, the cramp disappeared, but it never came back since then.
Aaron:And I think that's just really kind of fascinating that if we can teach people, you know, the language of the body which, by the way, is not complicated, I don't. I mean, yeah, it takes a little bit of time, but it's not, it's definitely nothing, is definitely not as hard as learning Japanese, true, is definitely not as hard as learning Japanese, true Then we can teach people the language of the body, which is, I think, what you're, you know, endeavoring to do. You're such a great job of it, by the way, because I love listening to your podcast and your ramblings. I love it because it's great and we're teaching people like, yeah, this is how listen to your body, but now, this is how to interpret what your body is saying, and and here's some skills that you can start to do um, I think it's just so valuable for we. We have to stop that listening to your body.
Peter:Okay, this is actually what, how we need to interpret it yeah, and then, because that's an interesting, interesting point you raise, I've been in many meetings with many people smarter than I am, um, and what usually happens is in those meetings, you know, you sit in a meeting with 10 20 people and the next week you sit in another meeting with 10 20 people people Two of the guys are the same but 18 are different. And down the line a year later, you sit in meeting number I don't know 30 or 40, and they're all 20 different people. Something someone said at the first meeting. The smart guy in the room, so to speak, said something that made sense Listen to your body. The first person that said that was probably completely right when he said it. It was, as in, or she said it 100% accurate and he explained what he meant by it and he explained exactly what you were saying. And therefore, listening to your body is so important because you do X, y, z, and this hangs off that and that hangs off that, and it was a whole theory. And then there's a jackass like myself in the room that sits there that going okay, I heard to listen to your body, but if I go to the next meeting and I'm slightly insecure, um, about myself, then I also want to say something clever. Uh, what we really should do is listen to your body, but I don't have any of the knowledge that the other guy had. I don't tell people what the explanation or or a bastardized what the explanation actually is and therefore, as you get down the line, if you get meet more and more people and they're all picking up on this, but they're all getting it's like chinese whispers that it is the only thing that survives is the phrase, the actual intention and anything behind it is completely in the same way that people. Because you know this is going to happen. Right, you've written the whole book stop stretching. You've got the stop stretching podcast and all that sort of stuff some jackass and you know who you are listening to. This is going to come out of this and I this I urge you all not to do. This is going to come out of this. Meet a friend tomorrow for lunch on the day after listening to this and say you know what? I'm going to stop stretching because someone told me stretching was really, really bad for me, without then going into the agonist antagonist and strengthening up the right areas and listening to your body properly and all that sort of stuff, understanding what your body's trying to tell you. It's just.
Peter:We are very much prone to listening for the headlines, and this is why I always tell people that if they choose to work with someone, make sure that it's someone who doesn't just repeat the phrase. Make so sure that someone ask why every single time. So you know, you've got the work with me section on on your website and all that sort of stuff. So the question is then you know you tell people stop stretching. Someone comes in ah, I want to work with aaron, okay, awesome.
Peter:Um, you tell them to stop stretching, why? And if you then can't provide an explanation, like you did, then that is time to move away from these people, because they have, they've only picked up on the headline, they've only read the headline in the newspaper and they're not a genuine expert. They just repeat what someone else has said, which makes them sound big and clever in the moment. But fundamentally, you can't learn from stupid right? It is that, as one of my old mentors used to say, you can only work with what your instructor is working with, and if your instructor doesn't have that much behind them, you're going to end up in trouble at some stage, because you're just picking up uh, incorrect information now, I'm sorry that was my little rant.
Peter:Uh, good people listening to this.
Aaron:I think, peter, it's really important that people, um, you know, like the, the amount of resources that are available to us is astronomical. And before you were talking about your wife and she, you know, has tight shoulders. But, my God, I've got really tight upper traps. Why is that? Well, you know, the traps and pecs do kind of like opposite each other. So maybe my pectoral muscles are not contracting. But also I can look at the Google machine and go what is the antagonist to upper traps? Because if the upper traps are tight, it's compensating for what the opposite muscle, the agonist, should be doing. So what would happen if I actually activated the agonist muscles? What if I? What if I reestablish that brain to a muscle connection? But what is that muscle? Well, hello, google is a fantastic invention. I mean, oh, my God, I remember I'm a huge Star Trek person and I remember in, you know, watching Star Trek New Generation in 1992. And so you just type that in or ask Siri, and then you find out what the opposite muscles are and I've actually had that problem.
Aaron:You know my neck, because I have a herniated disc in my neck and if I don't, if I'm spending too much time on my computer, sometimes my neck can seize up or my upper trap can seize up as a protective mechanism, and so that's a sign like, oh my god, I need to get the synergistic and opposite muscles working. Just by the way, for people that don't know, um, it's, the lower trap is one of the key muscles to upper trap, like it's one of the. That which kind of shocked me actually, um, when I when I learned that, but I do that, and now I don't have like this tight tightness in my neck unless I've been on my computer for a long time yeah, well, that is because the upper traps and I call it like I said I I tend to call it the stress muscles and indeed it's a classic stress out, work muscle, right, it's classic sitting behind your computer, boss, and I can just do it just by performing the action as an example, as in typing an angry email.
Peter:That tightens up massively, and I'm not even flexing the thing. And the problem with your chops is that they're such a powerful muscle. They are so incredibly, insanely powerful. It's the same as with your calves. What you were talking about with your calf, a calf muscle is and there's two of them, uh, for again.
Speaker 3:Bt's listening to this.
Peter:I am aware there's more than one calf but it's, it's yeah, you won't believe the emails I get if I don't specify that I do have some.
Aaron:Oh, I know, I could hear it I kill your pain but it's.
Peter:It tends to be the really big, powerful muscles that freak out on us. Yeah, um that, and like you said when you you your calf was and everybody will know this the calf cramp is horrific.
Peter:It is insanely painful uh almost as painful, as you know, uh, cramp in your foot as in just underneath your foot, and it's been a long time since I've done foot muscles, but you know that that muscle and you feel that your toes curl in and all that sort of stuff that ties up. You know that muscle in your foot, all your toes curling and all that sort of stuff, that type of stuff the upper traps are the same and asking why something is tight which is what you're very much talking about, or at least that's what I'm hearing, or at least that's what I'm hearing Asking why something is tight in proper activation of your lower traps or your lats or whatever. Or is it because you're stressed? Is it because you just did that angry email thing and you just need to take five, ten minutes to just take deep breaths, switch everything off and allow that muscle to just go?
Peter:Okay, because it's almost a fight or flight muscle, uh, the the upper traps, but it's still. It all boils down to awareness, doesn't it? It's, and and that's what you're talking about when you're talking about stop stretching and all that sort of stuff you're talking about get more awareness of how your body's supposed to feel and how your body is responding to whatever situation, what the situation is that you're in, and that will almost inevitably provide you with a better solution to your muscular issue than stretching is going to be.
Aaron:Absolutely, absolutely. As I mentioned earlier that I have suffered chronically from neck pain and it started right around the age of 31. And I didn't have the wisdom at that time, no matter how many professionals I saw, to tell me that I had a slipped disc and an unstable vertebrae. You know C5, c6. You know c5, c6. And it wasn't until I started working with this guy who was doing muscle activation technique massage, who started educating me about my neck and started giving me neck rehab. And then, when I started studying muscle activation technique, I realized that a lot of my problems with my neck was because my, my neckensors were stressed, as you said, and that the muscles that should be supporting my neck, the neck flexors, the sternocleidomastoid I love saying that, by the way, sternocleidomastoid you know a lot of these muscles in the front were just not working properly. And so that once I started doing my neck rehab, aka muscle activation for all of my neck muscles, which it's a game changer, I mean, we can start doing implementing some of these into our daily life. It's such a game changer Because, as you said, we hold so much stress and it puts us into, you know, that fight or flight system that I started to be able to kind of fix a lot of these issues.
Aaron:You know, since we've been talking so much about the traps, I think it's important for people to kind of know like my lane is also muscle activation technique. I studied it with Craig Roscoff. A lot, of, a lot of what we learn is how to actually test the force output of a muscle and one thing that I continuously find about 99 with 99% of people, their traps just do not work. They're just not connected to the brain, their ability to contract and in relationship to, you know, the shoulders and the movement of the arms, and so if those traps are not working properly, it just creates more stress and more trauma eventually and then, of course, ends up leading to injury in that area of the body, which then exacerbates and leads to more inflammation.
Aaron:So the point is like let's get on a mission to get the traps activated as much as possible, and I think that so many people can't even lift their arm up, you know, due to frozen shoulder you name it injuries and of course there's a lot of muscles involved. I know in lifting the arm I mean God, we could go through the list but the big muscle is the trap and it's like one of the major muscles, you know. Then we get into anterior serratum and you know the pecs and blah, blah, blah. But if they're not working, you know, and in what people do what? What? Especially like the guy I call him stiff biff, you know, stiff biff. He like, oh, I can't lift my arm up, and then he goes up to the wall and then he starts to stretch it out, which then even exacerbates all of the underlying problems.
Peter:You know, later on, yeah, because that's an interesting one, because I am personally. There are other than mobility stretches, which I think is a different, uh, different ball game. So, before you go and deadlift, you make sure you have proper range of motion, all you. So you're lying on your back, you pull your knees up, you move side to side. Um, that is muscle activation. Stretching. That is for for me, that is just reminding my body that my obliques need to be doing stuff, that my glutes need to be doing stuff. That's what's coming up. This is what I want you to do, boys and girls. This is why, um, when we're talking about your standard stretching, uh, what's what people like to say is uh, what about dynamic stretching? Because I know I'm going to get an email, and by dynamic stretching, what most people mean is to do a couple of leg swings, as in, you hold on to a wall, you swing your legs backwards and forwards because that's to get you against the old hammies going right, and then you grab your feet and you stretch your uh, stretch your quads out a little bit, make you the that old runner stretch, and then you're still holding on to the wall. Um, you grab your feet and you pull your uh, you pull your leg a little bit to to your bum, um, or they do a warm-up, such as they jump on a cross trainer or something like that, because cross trainers are now popular in gyms because it's low impact and all that sort of stuff. So they jump on the cross trainer, they jump onto an exercise bike and then they go do an upper body workout. Sure, right, that is that, is to go to that. That is the way most physical training instructors and personal trainers have been taught to do it, which is rather old school sort of thinking, because in my opinion and this is just my opinion, but I'm fairly sure I'm right it makes very little sense. It makes a lot more sense to perform the movement you're going to do, especially when it comes to heavy weights. To perform the movement you're going to do with lighter weights first and then you build up that weight. There's no point in me warming up my legs if I'm going to train upper body. I mean, it makes zero sense, other than, yeah, it's nice to sit on an exercise bike for a while, but it has nothing to do with the workout that is coming and therefore, by definition, I'm wasting my time. But that is very much what people are told to do dynamic stretching. When I'm talking about again, that was just for some people listening when I'm talking about dynamic stretching, I'm talking about movement that is going to be useful and telling the muscles I am going to be using you, I'm going to be using you specifically for whatever else is coming up. Uh, that is essential exercise. So when I lie on my back and I do some rotational movement for uh, because there's going to be deadlifts coming, and then I drop an empty bar, I pick that up a couple of times, but the whole time I'm not just performing the movement, I am doing what you were talking about earlier. I'm telling myself, I'm telling my brain to send a signal to the muscle. This is what we're going to be doing.
Peter:I am not a massive fan of listening to music during a workout, unless you can almost blank out the music. Yeah, if you're listening to Pantera and most of the gyms I go to tend to have that level of heavy metal in the background and I love the music. I, just during a warm-up, dude, you're drowning out all oh, this is a tune. I start listening to the music. I, just during a warm-up, dude, you're drowning out all that's. Oh, this is a tune. I start listening to the music. I'm starting to completely ignore the body. I'm starting to do exactly what you're talking about. The problem is, I'm performing the movement without the right muscles being told that they're going to have to use.
Peter:And that is the difference, isn isn't it, that you're including dynamic stretching, so to speak, in your stop stretching. We're not just talking about static lean forward, try to reach your toes, type of stuff.
Aaron:Yeah. So I mean there's a few things to unpack, but one dynamic stretching versus passive stretching. So you know, yes, holding onto the wall, lifting the leg up, Now one little twist or one little addition, if you will I would encourage people to do is move slowly. Yeah, when we talk about muscle stability, we're really talking about strengthening the slow twitch fiber muscles, not the fast twitch fibers, and Greg Roscoff he has a whole talk on it.
Aaron:I'm not going to try and explain what he said because I don't have the knowledge to back up specifically, but the crux of it was that that fast twitch sorry, that slow twitch fibers have started to develop fast twitch characteristics and and so what we want to do is start to slow down the movement.
Aaron:So if you're, instead of, I would say like cause you see this a lot people just kick their leg up and kick their leg up and do five kicks in a second, I would actually say do one kick, you know, and take 10 seconds or five seconds, even you know so slowly starting to move the leg up, and then then you're going, your brain is going to really start to connect to those muscles. So, again, the purpose isn't for strengthening per se, the purpose is reconnect the brain, uh, to the muscle, um. So that was one thing I wanted to say. A second thing is yeah, so dynamic is with no, um, outside forces being used. So one of the things that you said was like grabbing your foot and bringing your foot to your buttocks of course it's passive.
Aaron:I would actually remove the hand and see how much you can start to now. Now you're using the hamstring and the glute to bring that foot towards. You know the glute and now your brain is going oh yeah, there's a hamstring there, contract, contract, contract. I love what you said too.
Aaron:Like, I think, as, as people in our industry, as trainers or I'm going to come back to my lane yoga teachers if we're going to teach a certain pose and let's say like triangle pose, you know you come over to the side it's a side bending pose start to ask ourselves, what muscles are we using? And that's kind of one of the aspects of the kind of Yama philosophy, if you will, that I try to teach people is start to ask if I'm going to go for a walk, what muscles am I going to use? If I'm going to do a squat, what muscles am I going to use? And I actually love that you're saying squats, squat. What muscles am I going to use? And I actually I love that you're saying squats, because I actually did squats today as my practice. Um, I love going to the gym. I've been starting to get back into that and creating more time for myself since I'm, you know not working on my podcast, right, but one of the questions I have because I've hurt my back a lot in squats and you know I have because I've hurt my back a lot in squats and you know it's not just about like thinking about the muscle. That's a huge part of it and, yes, you know work on that.
Aaron:But sometimes we can think about a muscle but the brain isn't connecting to the muscle.
Aaron:We need to work on that neuromuscular connection. It's not a conscious thing, it's working in the autonomic nervous system, and so one of the things that I did today is I did some bridge poses. So you know, and the magic number for muscle activation, the way that I've been taught by Greg Roscoff and MAT, is six seconds, six times. So you know, you come up into bridge and you hold it there and, yes, I squeeze my glutes and I do that six seconds and then I come down, I take a breath, I'm Yogi, and then I come back up for six times. I actually I was watching, I saw this really cool exercise. I'll tell you really quickly. You know, like those, you know like those, you know those machines where you can um, it's on a I don't know what they call them, sorry, but it's like on a rope and you can pick it up and you can do all of these things like like a jungle gym sort of thing.
Aaron:Uh, they're called, yeah, like a cable machine, yeah cables cables, that's the word and so I hooked it up to my feet. I was lying on my back and I I had very small weight, like 20 or 30 pounds. It wasn't a lot of weight and I I had it hooked up to both of my feet, I was lying on my back and I pulled my knees to the chest. Again, it was very little weight. And it's really important that if people want to start applying kind of a muscle activation technique, if you will, to this using weights, use the least amount of weights possible. We move slow and we hold it, because if we start to add too much weight then we start recruiting other muscles, we're no longer targeting the key muscles.
Aaron:So, anyways, I did that and I did a few other things as well, but it was just really, you know, when I went over and did the squat, it was just. It was an amazing experience. And by doing those muscle activations beforehand and then then, of course, the very first squat I just did, I did it with just the bar my brain was all literally not not figuratively my brain was literally connected already to those muscles, and now I'm actually able to feel it on a whole different level because, yes, those muscles are actually contracting on demand as I'm going through this range of motion that I've prepared myself for in a, you know, a healthy way exactly, and that is exactly what it's about.
Peter:It is I I tell everybody I train with, so every for people on the healthy postnatal body program they'll already know this but for people not, every postpartum exercise routine that we start starts with the core breath, repeated 10 times in my case, and that is just because you're going to tell your body this is how I want you to breathe throughout. Whatever exercise is coming up next and it could well be a kettlebell routine, it could be well be high intensity kettlebell swings and, uh, cleaner presses, doesn't matter. I need your, your body, on the exhale, uh, so as you exhale, on the effort, as as I call it I need your muscles to automatically do exactly what you're talking about to automatically contract in a certain way. I don't need you thinking about contracting, uh, the muscles in a certain way whilst you're performing an exercise.
Peter:I need that to be automatic, and this is why, when I work with and I've worked with one or two football players, soccer players and one or two tennis players and that is what we're talking about when they want to get quicker or more powerful, we never do that with big weights. We do that by teaching their body to function better and by having that automated response when they're turning. And tennis players for tennis players is huge. That rotational movement that these guys create, whether that is because they're sprinting in opposite direction or backwards and forwards, or whether they're hitting the ball, that rotational movement if your muscles contract in the correct order yeah you generate significantly more power and for you know, normal plebs like myself, if you go to the gym and your muscles are working properly, you get more bang for your buck from your exercise.
Peter:And this is what I always talk about when uh was a bodybuilder that I used to work with and I only helped him out with some of his posing. I know nothing about bodybuilding, uh right, but if you asked him how much he benched he couldn't tell you. He's like I have no interest in knowing how much I bench. Yeah, I build my body. Weightlifters care how much weight they get from a to b. He said I have no interest in this. I want to look a certain way and for that I need to squeeze a certain muscle as hard as I can, because I only care about working a certain muscle.
Peter:When that guy works chest, he works chest and all associated muscles. So I know most people that go to the gym to do a standard, say push, pull legs routine, right, one day you do all your pull motions back and biceps they call it and then chest and triceps, some military presses, and then you have a leg day. That is the standard split. You hit everything once in a week and that's your three days in the gym Wasted. Complete and close waste of time.
Peter:The train that way. But but you know those programs sell well, uh. But what this guy said, he hits absolutely everything but it's only minor weights. This guy is a successful bodybuilder. It's not like a guy who wants to be a bodybuilder in walking around uh, walking around a gym in edinburgh or anything like that. This is a muscle beach.
Peter:I am performing at a high level sort of bodybuilder. He doesn't know how much he benches because he doesn't care. All we care about, or all I care about, I'm 48, right. All I care about is functioning at as high a level as I can be, and that doesn't mean I'm an endurance athlete. It doesn't mean I'm going to compete at the World Cup. It doesn't mean I'll run a marathon or whatever. It means I am injury-free. I feel pretty solid within myself. I am confident that if someone asks me to pick up a fridge or a sofa, I'm not going to do my back in and all that sort of stuff. I mean fit for life and I like to look half decent when I'm out on the beach, as in I'm not.
Peter:My posture isn't terrific, but your Mediterranean body.
Peter:Yeah, but that is why most people train and it's very tempting for us to compare ourselves to top level athletes and all that sort of stuff. But, yeah, you should only really do that in the way that ask yourself why they train a certain way and if that is really healthy for them. I see a lot of top level athletes selling programs and all that sort of stuff and I I know, like you mentioned about your friend, they're not healthy people, because most top-level athletes are not healthy people. When you push your body that hard, that often and you win Olympic gold, oh man, you're always injured.
Aaron:Yeah, a lot of people like to compare themselves, like they look at these kids. You know, let's talk about Simone Biles for a moment. I hope I pronounced her name right. Yeah, she did, um, but but you know, very, very famous um, american, uh, olympian, incredible Olympian. I mean the things that she can do with her body and and I think that what happened to her in the last olympics is a testament to what happens um, of course, hers was more mental issues, but definitely there's physiological stuff going on and we compare ourselves to these people and go well, they can do it. You know, I should be able to do it. No, you're a 55 year old person with desk job. You can't go to the gym. That's the first point. The second point is taking again Simone, using her as an example.
Aaron:If you look at the starting lineup of all of those athletes, all of them are wearing ice bandages. So their stability because of their forced range of motion. Nobody taught them muscle activation. A lot of these kids went to stretching clinics because that's the old paradigm that still is prevalent today. But you don't want the muscles to be in an elongated state. You actually want the muscles in a contracted state to protect the joints and because they don't have that stability, they now have to rely on ace bandages, on knee braces, on back braces. And you know you're talking about getting older and I'm a little bit ahead of you. I'm 51 at this moment. I'm a little bit ahead of you, I'm 51. And at this moment and I used to, when I was 30, up until really the age of 45. If I went hiking I had to wear a knee brace. And I can tell you, now I don't wear a knee brace anymore because I know how to get the muscles working that should be stabilizing that knee joint when I'm going hiking. And just for people listening, by the way, I think two of the key muscles again is glutes, rectus femoris, hip flexors, and I know that I suffered from knee problems. Now, looking back, because all of my hip flexors were not working properly, they weren't stabilizing, you know, that knee joint, if you look at like it was.
Aaron:One day I had this kind of big light bulb moment. I was looking at the rectus moris one day when I started studying MAT and I saw like yeah, it actually covers the whole kneecap, you know, and I was like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Do you think that might be an important muscle yoga area like to get working. And so then I right then, and there I was like, okay, and you know, now I don't wear knee braces anymore, I don't have to worry about my back when I'm working out, because I know, like, what muscles need to be working. And so you know, all of these compensation things are fine. I'm not judging people like as a bad person, please don't take it like that but it is a compensation. And so if we are intelligent which I'm hoping that we are and we go, what is the compensating? Why isn't my muscle doing that? Let's get the muscle function working and and use that information to like say, okay, what do I need to do to get stronger?
Peter:uh, in my body and the nice thing about that is uh, because that's an important point the nice thing about that stuff and I talk about this with regards to postpartum stuff a lot you are never too old to start that process and to improve. And I have seen people I have trained. I trained one person who's 83 years old at the moment um, I, but I used to train someone who's 80 who kept falling whilst walking in the park, which is why his daughter, who also trained with me, said can you help my dad out a bit? And all we had to work on was indeed muscle stability, muscle activation, that is all he needed.
Peter:There was no need for that guy to fall and this is flat surface, walking in a park, right, this was just a shuffle, shuffle. I can't stand straight anymore. And as one of my friends who's a PT in New York, as he was saying, he only trains over 75. He's not interested in anybody younger than that and he said his job is to keep people out of the old people's home. That is his only job. He came to me with the amazing statistic and I'm not sure, 100% sure, whether this is true or not, because I haven't seen the study he so 70% of Americans that end up in an old people home, old person's home, end up there not because of illness, not because of terrible tragedies or anything like that. They end up there because they can't make it off the toilet anymore. He said they cannot physically, they cannot be stable during a half squat. He said that is it.
Peter:They can't get out of that position, and he used a stability a lot for that as well. He said that's not a strength function, it's not a range of motion function, it is a stability of the muscle function so it's exactly like what you are saying it is. It is bang on. Stretching doesn't help those people yeah, at all. But, like I said, he works only with the over 75 and if he can work with the over 75 and I can work with older people and and you're never too old to start- this ever, and and that's why I think you know when, when, when, um, when we discussed you coming on to, to the podcast, this is the sort of thing that we need to talk about.
Aaron:Yeah.
Peter:Because this is a genuine solution to a genuine problem.
Aaron:Most people are not even aware that they're having yeah, well, and again, greg Roscoff always says that age in the body is really a symptom of a depleted or not a depleted or stressed out neuromuscular system, like the fact that they can't. You know, people do child's pose and, um, the very normal pose, by the way, for for just people who are new to me, child's pose I'm on a huge anti-child's pose campaign, like it's, like it's it's. There's a podcast of mine, um, which is like the number one yoga pose. To avoid that's the number one yoga pose is child's pose, the worst pose you can do for so many reasons.
Aaron:But you come into, like that passive pose and you stay there for 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, and I can't tell you how many yoga classes that I I've been in as a student where I started off, you know I get I set my mat up early. I come in and I get my child pose in and my Zen and the teacher says stand up, let's start with sun salutation A. I can barely, you know, I'm like pushing myself up to standing because none of my muscles are connected to my brain. And then I come into, you know, sun salutation A and my back seizes up because none of the core muscles. So it doesn't surprise me, like when, when elderly people, you know their muscles are not working properly and they start to fall down.
Peter:And so that's like you know, greg says we can flip that around at a neuromuscular level just by connecting the brain, uh, to the muscles and and starting to activate them and and and that's sorry to interrupt, but that's fascinating, because doing the thing like a child's pose is exactly the opposite of what you should be doing before an exercise sort of thing. You're just relaxing everything, you're telling everything.
Peter:Yeah, chill, which is great if you're going to sit on the sofa watch netflix all afternoon, but it's terrible if you're going to do any sort of actual activity yes, yeah, I mean.
Aaron:People always say you know you raise a really good point. You know, some of my students are like you know, yogi aaron is. Is there any time we can stretch? You know, if we're going to stretch, when should we do it? And I always say, before you're what you just said, before you sit on the couch and watch Netflix, or preferably even before you go to bed, because you're now not in a compromised position per se. You're, you're lying down, you're relaxing, and so if you must stretch, if you absolutely like, I have to stretch, because that's what I think a good person should do Okay, namaste, um, but do it before you go to bed, so that way you can go to bed. Because as soon as you open up a range of motion there without accountability and accountability means strength, motion they're without accountability and accountability means strength as soon as you open up a range of motion without accountability, you are always going to be open to and vulnerable to injury. I want to give you one example of this. Um, there's actually about 10 I could give, but one of them.
Aaron:It's kind of comical because I was leading one of my very first yoga teacher trainings at blue osa, my retreat in Costa Rica and it was going back now like 12 years and I was demonstrating this pose one day and this was like towards the end of the training, so it was like day 26. And I was actually about to leave for vacation. Like the next week I go and demonstrate this pose. It was actually side crow. I just I wasn't warmed up, I was, you know, stressed out because of so many reasons. I was leaving vacation leading this training. It was one of my first. I just go into this pose and my neck kind of tweaked a little bit and I was like okay, and then I just kind of shrugged it off literally. And then the next morning I'm in the shower and I reach up and I grabbed the shampoo bottle and my whole neck seized up, like really seized up, um, right down, right on, like the whole thoracic spine, and that's was my welcome to my vacation.
Aaron:But but it's like so important that we, you know, address muscle function on a continuous basis, especially as we get older, and you know, and ask ourselves how are we actually reinforcing that neuromuscular connection and understand that it doesn't matter who you are, life is going to beat you up at a neuromuscular level. That's a fact for every single person, and you know, especially for your postpartum women. You know I mean what. There is almost no greater stress than that that we put on the body. And you know, as a man, I just want to say I honor women at such a deep level what you go through with having children my mother reminds me of it all the time, but it's just so important to we have to put ourselves back together neuromuscularly and if we, as you said earlier, like if we know, and you know, when we were in our twenties and even thirties, then what we know now, we would be that much you know further ahead.
Peter:No, yeah, you're definitely ahead of the game. If you, if you spend some time, if you're listening to this and you're like I'm in my 20s, this is the time to start with this stuff it'll make. If you're, yeah, various, various uh prenatal people uh listening to this, you know women are thinking about getting pregnant, looking looking into, researching all this sort of gump.
Peter:People who've just fallen pregnant, scared out of their minds because their body's going to looking into, researching, all this sort of gump. Yeah, people who've just fallen pregnant, scared out of their minds because their body's going to change, and all that sort of stuff. And you know, if you start with this stuff before you've given birth, you make your recovery so much easier.
Aaron:Yeah.
Peter:The single best thing, because I get a lot of emails, or bigger emails, from people saying okay, I'm, I'm three months pregnant, I'm scared I'll get diastasis recti. What can I do to mitigate that? No, absolutely nothing, as in, the baby is going to go where the baby is going to go, right, that thing is going to grow. That is just the way it is. Think, if you're alien, you know you only have you can't, you can't make a balloon smaller, so to speak, if you keep pumping air into it and and that is what happens with the stomach as well, and that's completely normal.
Peter:But muscle activation if you keep that up during your pregnancy, muscle activation and muscle maintenance. So not even strength training, just keep moving the muscles, thinking about the muscles, making sure you're aware of the muscles that is going to be key postpartum, because that way you don't have that whole long stage of trying to engage the muscles again, trying to fire up a muscle that's been switched off for three to four months. And especially when it comes to the glutes, we spend a lot of time on the glutes postpartum because those things, because you're shifting center of gravity and all that sort of stuff, they can easily become a bit dysfunctional. And if you just do what you're talking about, what you're talking about in the book and all that sort of stuff, if you keep that up, you're miles ahead of where you otherwise would be. It is the single most important thing to do in my mind is is that muscle activation of my muscle connection?
Aaron:Yeah, absolutely.
Peter:Cool. On that happy note, I think we covered an awful lot. Was there anything else you wanted to touch on?
Aaron:I would just encourage people or invite people to just check out, you know, to take advantage of the things there. A lot of um, what I've been putting out here is very applicable to all people, not just yoga people, uh, physical therapists, um, uh, um, people that are doing personal training. You know all of these sorts of things. Um, you know all of these sort of things. You know, we were talking earlier about the transverse abdominus. I have this great video that my teacher taught me about the Palloff press and how to start using that kind of technology and applying it in a muscle activation way to get the transverse abdominus working.
Aaron:You know, one of the things that you said earlier is that a lot of people are. You know, we tend to think of, like, if I have a frozen shoulder, there's something wrong with the shoulder. Greg tells a story about how he worked with this golf pro and this golf pro was had a frozen shoulder and Greg didn't even address like the shoulder. He addressed the shoulder and Greg didn't even address like the shoulder. He addressed the obliques, the transverse abdominis, the trunk rotators, and once they got the trunk rotators working, guess what? The frozen shoulder.
Aaron:Just like started appearing um, and so you know there's a lot of of um tools that we've been putting out there, of course, in the book book, to start trying to open up people's minds to going okay, where is the actual problem and how do we start to get all of the muscles working more efficiently in the body again at a neuromuscular level? So I would just invite people just check out my website, yogiarancom, and there's also a free, pain-free series in there that people can access and start to learn about their body. I'm one of the things that really excites me more than anything is just, you know people just sharing knowledge about the body and and empowering people with that knowledge. We talk this big buzzword these days. You know empowerment and I think empowerment, in my opinion, comes from knowledge. You know knowledge of myself, and the more I can have knowledge of myself, the more I'm empowered. Yeah, it is.
Peter:I mean, that is that is how I view it.
Peter:I mean, it is very much the you know. Know, some people ask me what I'm reading. I've got four books beside my bed at the moment that I have no time to finish, but they're still there. Um, and you know, I have a feeling your book will be number five at one stage once I get, once I get through this. Uh, it is on amazon, of course it is. I'm also going to link to everything in the podcast description. Anyways, right, so people listening to this, you don't need to remember any of this sort of stuff. There will be a transcript and I will link to the thing. But the book gets excellent reviews. It's five stars everywhere that I could see, and it's five stars from people that kind of know what they're talking about. It's not just five stars from people that have bought the book and go well, he writes very well.
Peter:It's five stars from people that say I'm a yoga instructor. This makes sense. This is you know. For me, and this is why I like having experts on the podcast. If you can talk about a subject with sense for an hour and a bit, then at least you know what you're talking about. Do you know what I mean? I've met too many people that said something and they ask him and five minutes later the knowledge dries up and you know, we've been at this for an hour hour, 10 minutes or something like that, and, to be honest, I could continue this for ages, but we've absolutely crushed it and that was superb. So, uh, I'm not happy. Not, I will press stop record here, and press stop record is exactly what I did. Thanks very much to aaron for coming, coming on. I had a blast talking to him. That was great fun.
Peter:His book Stop Stretching what is it called? The full title is a long title Stop Stretching A New Yogic Approach to Master your Body and Live Pain-Free. If you Amazon search Stop Stretching, you will come across it there. The book is available on Amazon, of course it is. It's available absolutely everywhere. I'm definitely going to get a copy. I think it'll be an interesting read and it makes sense, right, what he's talking about makes an awful lot of sense. I'm not saying you should definitely not stretch at all, but it makes a lot more sense to focus on range of movement than it does on flexibility, as he was mentioning. You know I will link to absolutely everything. I will link to his website, the book, where you can get the book, and all that sort of fun stuff, podcasts and all that sort of thing it's worth listening to. That's what I'm saying. I like people that challenge ideas that have become slightly ingrained and that, you know, even for fitness professionals it's worth thinking about that sort of stuff, as in has everything I've been taught in PT school? Has that not been debunked by now? I find an awful lot of stuff has definitely gone out the window in the past 10 years that I've been doing this job.
Peter:Anyways, thanks again to Aaron for coming on. I can, like I said I could, talk to this guy for hours. That was great fun and you know if you'd like to come on or you have any questions or suggestions after listening to this, peter at healthypostnatalbodycom is how you can get in touch with me as well. That's it for this week, because we already ran a little bit over because you know we had too much fun talking um, so I'm not going to do an in the news this week. Like I said, this is I'm recording this in advance because I'm actually on the ball. I'm doing this in december. Yeah, I know, it's impressive um.
Peter:Next week is the 15th and next week we're doing postpartum back pain, which is an interview with physical therapist David Jeter, which is an awesome, awesome chat. I've already got that one in the bank as well, so definitely come back for that one. You're going to love that one. I'm telling you, everybody suffering from postpartum back pain and back pain in general, you're going to want to listen to this one, right? So with that little hook, you know there we go. It's me signing off for another week. You take care of yourself. All right, bye now.
Speaker 3:Everything's finally right. The dark made peace with the light. I'm gonna love you tonight like the land meets the dawn. Lay down our demons and rest in this midnight. Holiness, something so honest and raw, would you come be my only one? All I want is a promise. Lay it down All I've come to. Want to live. Take down all the crowns. I want to let love be our legacy. I want to let love be the enemy. Let it come fire or flood. I want to let love be our legacy. I want to let fear to the dust and let it unfold how it wants. Bring out the trouble in us till all of it is gone. Lay down our demons and rest in this low light. Holiness, something so honest and raw, come and be my only one. All I know is promise. I love you. Let it come Fire or flood, I want to let love be our legacy. I'm going to let your love be the enemy. Hold in love to the night. Bring peace to my mind. Is beside me. Lay it down all our crowns. I want to let love be our legacy. I want to let your love be the enemy. Lay it down all our crowns. I want to let love be our legacy. I want to let your love be the end of me.
Speaker 3:Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh you.