EP. 29 - Dr. Tyler Kallasy - Bridging The Gap Between Rehab, Training, and Real Life

This week Bryce sits down with Dr. Tyler Kallasy! Tyler is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, strength and conditioning specialist, and instructor of the Pain-Free Performance Specialist Certification.
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Transcript

@therealbrycesmith (00:07.087)
Project today's guest is on a quest to help people live pain -free He's on a journey to bridge the gap between rehab training and real fucking life He's here today to help people Beyond pain and get back to a thriving life none other than then dr. Tyler Kalei see what's up, man?

Tyler Kallasy (00:31.582)
What's up, man? How's it going? Yeah, it was a really nice intro. Thank you for that.

@therealbrycesmith (00:37.743)
I just really like the part where you're bridging the gap between rehab, training and life. Like those things are very relatable. They're very cool. And nobody wants a program that just rehab because it's kind of boring. It kind of just doesn't hit the nuts and bolts of like enhancing body composition and performance. And so I love that you're like integrating all of those things and putting it into a nice digestible smoothie that relates to activities of daily living. So thanks for joining us today, man.

Tyler Kallasy (01:06.686)
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to like get into some good stuff, talk about all that, all that good pain and movement and how it kind of all fits together.

@therealbrycesmith (01:15.951)
Totally, man. Before we jump into all of your story and whatnot, I'm curious just from the tip of the iceberg, when you think about pain, how do you define that?

Tyler Kallasy (01:30.622)
Yeah, I mean to say a simple definition about pain would not do it justice, right? But I would say pain is an experience and it is an experience that prevents people from accessing life to the fullest degree. So that would be the simplest definition I can give would be a prevention from accessing life to the fullest degree.

You know, the problem is that pain often comes with actual tissue damage, right? Like I rolled my ankle, but more often it comes with potential tissue damage. Like I hurt my back a few months ago and now every time I do the same thing that hurt me a few months ago, I have this pain experience because my body's trying to protect me. And that's, that's the more common, I would say, and more influential.

way of viewing it because that's the thing that affects most of us. That's preventing us from doing the thing.

@therealbrycesmith (02:33.871)
Dude, I actually really like the way you described that. Like the experience component is really piquing my interest a little bit in the sense of, you're correct, there is tissue damage on many occasions. However, there's also a psychosomatic component. There's also a historical reference where the mind knows, whoa, this particular patterning is where I got hurt last time. Now I need to be relatively careful as I practice this same patterning.

Where do you start when it comes to addressing pain with a client and where does that conversation begin as far as your collection of data?

Tyler Kallasy (03:16.03)
Yeah, so I mean, it starts with a lot of questions, right? I want to understand that person's movement journey and, you know, kind of non -movement journey as well to really gain a context of not just what happened to them, but how they've been dealing with it since that, both how they've been addressing it with like remedies, but also just how they've been navigating life as they experience that pain.

And I also want to understand like what their perception of their pain experience is, right? Cause all of those things help me understand how they're explaining it, how they perceive that experience. And then I will move into a more movement based understanding of their pain. Ultimately, you know, I try to ask a lot of questions that are unbiased cause I don't want to affect their, you know, their story.

But ultimately it's like you are doing with me right now. It's like I'm trying to help them create a story that I can then unpack a little bit more as I need to.

@therealbrycesmith (04:09.008)
Yeah, that's smart.

@therealbrycesmith (04:19.215)
Yeah, for sure. Obviously, everyone in life is going to go through some sort of pain, whether they just left it, they're approaching it, or they're in it. It's going to exist in some capacity. Where did your relationship with pain start?

Tyler Kallasy (04:35.678)
Oh man, I went through about a four to five year journey with lower back pain. Um, somewhere around 2018, 2019, I just started getting pretty low level lower back pain and hip pain. And I'm not really sure which came first, uh, to be quite honest, this far out, it doesn't really matter. Uh, but it was a thing that was occurring pretty much on a daily basis. And I was kind of ignoring it right as a young.

Young former athlete I thought I could kind of warm up my way around it or just like ignore it and kind of work through it and It eventually peaked to the point where I was you know, I was unable to stand up straight for some some time I would walk through my actual physical therapy clinic right the clinic I was working and treating other people in stomping my foot on the ground because I had numbness and tingling going down one leg And I was pretty much unable to do

really any form of fitness. I am also a former CrossFitter, CrossFit athlete, right? I mixed that stuff in. By no means was I competitive to the nature that you were, but I loved it and I did quite a bit of it. And I got to the point where I couldn't do, you know, couldn't do any of it. Couldn't hike, couldn't run, could quite honestly could barely put my socks on. And I cycled through quite a bit of, you know, depression, denial, anxiety.

self -doubt imposter syndrome, right? I have a clinical doctorate in physical therapy, which means like I'm supposed to be pretty good at addressing pain. Uh, but for myself, I wasn't. So it took me seeking out the formal help from other professionals, whether it be in person or online, it took me really a bunch of times of like actually doing some self -reflection and, and some hard self -talk of like, Hey man, you're not, uh,

you're not acknowledging this in the right way. You're not giving yourself the time or the adjustments needed. But eventually I did kind of do those things and addressed it responsibly. And I don't have that type of back pain anymore. I live life normally and I'm good now.

@therealbrycesmith (06:50.863)
What's so cool to me is...

I'm picking up on a softness in your voice that something tells me didn't exist before. This process took some identity and ego deconstruction for you to look yourself in the mirror and surrender to the process. And in a moment, I'd love to unpack your amazing post about the five seasons of grief. But first and foremost, like what caused that level of disruption?

where you were willing to surrender? Was it so much pain that you had to sit with yourself and think, okay, what I'm doing is not working. I can't be the only one on the planet going through something like this. How do I overcome this level of discomfort, this rut, this stuckness to then get to the other side? And maybe if I'm curious and explorative enough, on the other side,

A part of this is going to unlock me getting outside of the cocoon, blossoming into a butterfly, and then sharing that with others who are potentially, if not for sure, going through something similar.

Tyler Kallasy (08:10.622)
Yeah, you know, the motivation to solve this issue so that I could solve other people's issue is was certainly a factor here. But I'll be honest, it was a very selfish journey. You know, when you're in that type of pain, you don't care about about anyone else. Ironically, the effect that my pain experience was having on other people in my life was really the the

straw that broke the camel's back. Nope. No pun intended. You know, as an athlete and I reckon a lot of people that are listening to this can, can attest to this when you have a thing that's wrong from a physical standpoint, something that hurts, something that's restricted, we're really good at working around that kind of stepping over it, maybe ignoring it, but, but more so just kind of working through that, right? Like we've, we've learned that skill. So being unable to clean or deadlift.

or squat until I warmed up for 30 minutes was a non -issue. Fine. I can ignore that all day long. I can do that. But when it started affecting my ability to hike and get out of bed and I could see the concern on my at that time girlfriend now fiance's face, you know, I could see how it was affecting my personal life, but I could also start to see...

my own reflection in my clients, the things that they were saying. I felt like I was saying those same things to my own mentors and loved ones, the things that they were doing, I felt like I was doing. So my own wrongdoings, my own ignorances around my pain experience were starting to be shown to me by my clients. And they say that happens, right? Your clients are often a reflection of you. And it got to a point where I was like,

You know, this is this, I can't be like this anymore if I want to be a champion for moving, moving beyond pain. Um, but also, also, yeah, it just got to the point where I literally couldn't ignore it. I mean, I remember building a kind of fire pit patio in my in -laws backyard and all was good. I went to the gym. I ran three miles, went through a workout by the end of that process. I just described, um, you know, I was unable to stand up without help. Um, and that was.

Tyler Kallasy (10:29.534)
That was a moment when I was like, this is, you know, this is not good. And that was like the third or fourth time that it had happened. I got home, I was laid up for about seven days. Even if even a sneeze would put me back in bed, right. And at 27, let alone at 27 with a clinical doctor and physical therapy, like you shouldn't be experiencing that. Uh, so that was one of the bigger wake up calls.

@therealbrycesmith (10:42.639)
Yeah.

@therealbrycesmith (10:53.295)
It's so interesting as high performing individuals, I can definitely attest to this too. Pain seems to be the only thing that gets me to change. I'm a great compensator. I'm great at masking things. I'm great at fighting through different levels of discomfort. And that's what I really appreciated when I crossed paths with your social media and then we connected a little bit via DMs, was just your willingness to be like, you know what? I do have a doctorate.

but I'm also human. And I was trying my best to navigate these different levels of emotions, which I mean, let's be honest, pain is emotional. It is associated with your identity when you're used to performing at a high level, you're used to representing yourself in the world in some capacity. And when those physical prowesses then are stripped away, you're left with you. And...

It's a challenging journey. And I mean, I'm so proud of you for getting to the point where you did raise your hand and ask for help because that's not easy, man. And I mean, I definitely got to the same point where I'm like, okay, like something's got to change because my quality of life is decreasing. I'm moody. I have brain fog. I'm not able to do the things that I want. And I feel like I'm trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. And you've done a really good job.

At least for myself, I can't speak for everybody, but like granting me the permission to be more vulnerable. And I very much have appreciated the way you communicate around pain. So first of all, thank you for that. Second of all, I'd love to dive in to your really cool post about your journey with pain and the five seasons of grief. And I'll kind of mention those in order and then we'll go back and unpack them.

Tyler Kallasy (12:23.934)
Mm.

Tyler Kallasy (12:46.526)
Yeah.

@therealbrycesmith (12:47.695)
The first one is, I am in straight up denial, which is most of us. And then you eventually maneuver towards, I am controlled by anger. And then season three becomes, I begin to bargain my way out. I'm kind of negotiating with myself. I'm playing this push and pull game. And then you're like, all right, what I'm doing isn't working and you are overcome by depression. You can't live life according to your own expectations.

Tyler Kallasy (12:53.566)
Yep.

@therealbrycesmith (13:17.903)
And then season five, I'm leaning into acceptance. I've finally gotten to the point where what I'm doing isn't working. And so to reiterate those and then we'll unpack them, season one, denial. Season two, anger. Season three, bargaining. Season four, depression. And season five, acceptance. That was one of the first posts I've seen of yours. And I was like, this dude is spot on.

Tyler Kallasy (13:43.23)
Okay.

@therealbrycesmith (13:45.839)
That is spot on. So let's jump in. Where did these five seasons of grief land on your lap? And then let's jump into the component of denial.

Tyler Kallasy (13:56.766)
Yeah, so these five seasons of grief, I think these come from a pretty standard understanding of grief, but I saw them in a book called Rebound by Kerry Jackson -Sheedle and Cindy Kuzma. They both wrote this book called Rebound. It's about, you know, rebounding from injury. They also have a group called the Injured Athletes Club.

And actually one of my clients is friends with these two women or at least one of these women. And she was like, Oh, you got to read this book. And I was like, this is literally my life. So of course I'm going to. Uh, and when I read it, I was like, it's so simple. And I try to look for simplicity when I'm, I'm making content. Cause ultimately that's what people understand the best and can kind of hold onto. But it also hit me hard, right? Like some of these seasons.

you can kind of be like, oh yeah, of course, but some of them you're like, whew, I remember that feeling for sure. So that's kind of how it landed in my lap and I've been trying to feed that into the way I talk about stuff with my clients ever since.

@therealbrycesmith (15:02.991)
I like that man. I also think it's cool that you're reaching out. You're referencing things and you're seeing the relatability to your own personal life and then relating that to your clients. And something I wanted to say before is as a coach or a doctor, often you're giving others the advice that you also need. And so you get to practice it because to teach is to learn twice.

Tyler Kallasy (15:26.91)
Yeah, I mean, you definitely know, right? Like with the amount of people that you've coached, that stuff just kind of rings in your head. And I tell a lot of folks, like, most of the stuff I'm putting online is either because I just told it to someone or I've been telling it to myself. So we're no different than each other.

@therealbrycesmith (15:45.839)
Yeah, that's cool, man. Let's jump into phase one denial.

Tyler Kallasy (15:50.206)
Yeah, I think this is, this is human nature, right? It's a survival tactic. We're trying to tell ourselves, you know, things aren't as bad as they really are so that we can kind of keep going. It's often somewhat correct because you haven't had enough time to really experience the thing to really prove that it's actually a bad thing. Um, and I think it's, it's a nice place to be for some folks because it doesn't allow you to like freak out every time something, some little thing happens.

But ultimately, if it's there for too long, if you have true denial for too long, it's going to prevent you from really starting that recovery process sooner than later.

@therealbrycesmith (16:29.199)
for sure. It's also kind of a paradox, which I hate thinking about, but it's so true in the sense of like, man, if the pain's not that bad, and it's like a three out of 10, you're like, ah, I'll warm up a little more. I'll work through it. I'll get on a lacrosse ball. I'll use a band or a foam roller. I'll pop a little bit of Tylenol. No big deal. It takes a level of pain for you to be like, no, I need to change. This is unbearable now. And I think many humans are kind of that way, or at least

many former athletes and that pain tolerance definitely plays a role and it's this this negotiation with yourself like maybe it's not that bad but it's like it could be better but we're unwilling to change until it's bad enough and that's all relative to the individual.

Tyler Kallasy (17:14.59)
Yeah. You know, the irony of, of denial, right? Is it's this, it's this first stage of grief of dealing with injury, but the way that these people in this season of grief are dealing with pain is something that I try to teach my clients to get back to. I don't want you to ignore it by denying it, but I want you to see it as something that potentially might not be as bad as you think. That's one of those.

spirals that folks get into when they're dealing with persistent pain or chronic pain is that everything starts to seem like the world is ending, right? Any bit of discomfort, they're like, alarms are on, everything is bad. But one of the skills you have to relearn is knowing when it's just a little bit of a lax ball type of situation or like, you know, a little bit of a Tylenol situation, cause that's like part of life. But when you are doing that irresponsibly and you're saying, Oh, this three is just a random three.

even though it's been popping up for four months and it has gone up to a seven random times, that's when you're like truly in denial and you're not just kind of brushing something off because it's small.

@therealbrycesmith (18:23.119)
Yeah, that's very well said. As a little bit of a tangent here.

I feel like the best athletes are incredible compensators and there's this unique psychology that we're supposed to be perfectly symmetrical, left to right, upper to lower, front to back. The organs aren't. Our relationship to the nerve endings and our strong side versus our weak side, unless we're ambidextrous, is typically a little bit swayed one way versus the other.

There's going to be certain tissues that are a little tighter on one side versus the other. I mean, look at driving. You're going to have one foot pressing the gas and hitting the brake. The other foot's kind of chilling. Many people are hanging out in the center console or hanging on the window side. You got one arm forward, maybe two. Life really isn't symmetrical. When somebody has that original signal of pain and then they start playing with the various compensation strategies, a part of that is good.

because they're learning to manage it. They're still having positive self -talk. They have a growth mindset of like, ah, I'm going to work through this. But where is the line? Right? Like I struggle with that personally of like, man, like I'm great at compensating. I can fight through this. The pain's not that bad. I can work through it. Maybe my left foot's a little in front of my right when I squat, or maybe there's a little bit of rotation. Maybe the bar is a little bit upper or lower based on tightness of an oblique or a...

Tyler Kallasy (19:33.598)
Mm.

@therealbrycesmith (19:51.439)
QL or the quadratus laborum is kind of difficult for some people, at least myself, to figure out where is that line and how much pain is too much versus not enough. How do you educate people on that a little bit where, you know, they are compensating? I would say I'm a great compensator. How do you kind of tinker with that?

Tyler Kallasy (20:13.022)
Yeah, I think one of the major parts of the definition of an athlete is their skill or ability to quickly create compensations or movement solutions, right? The other one would be like your ability to learn something very quickly. And I often refer to compensations as solutions because ultimately that's what they are, right? You've created a movement solution to work around a limitation or restriction. It's no different than running in hot weather.

your heart rate increases, right? Your breath rate increases. It's a compensation that is needed. This is a healthy compensation. When compensations become problems is when you can't get out of them or there's no other option to do the thing. Right? And there is pain. Now I wouldn't call a slight shift in your stance necessarily a compensation. You are embracing the normal anatomical structure of your body, whether that's

from birth or because you jumped off the left foot for a layup a thousand times, right? You are embracing what your body is giving you. A compensation is when you try to avoid restriction or pain and it gets to the point where you have no other options than that compensation, right? It's no longer an option on the trail. It is the only trail you can take and there is also pain. That's when it becomes a problem.

@therealbrycesmith (21:38.959)
Yeah, I like the way you said that. That's very cool to understand how to define where that line is. That's very helpful. And so once denial stops working, people typically funnel themselves towards anger. They're missing a lift consistently. They can't do what they once did without extreme pain. They're voodoo flossing to the max or they're getting smaller knee sleeves to compensate for the knee pain.

More Advil, more caffeine. I don't know, there's probably other things that people do, but those are the ones that come to the top of mind.

Tyler Kallasy (22:16.094)
Yeah, I think anger is the first true season of recognition when you have now somewhat accepted what you're experiencing, right? And the fate of what you have to now go through in terms of like the recovery process or the rest process or the avoidance process. And you're upset. Often you're upset and you blame it on one thing, but really you're upset because of what's ahead. Most people say I should have never done that or why is this happening to me?

But that's a slippery slope when you start asking why me, right? It's not a fun place to be. But yeah, I think anger is ultimately a needed part of the process because it's that first part of when people actually start accepting what's going on with them.

@therealbrycesmith (23:00.143)
Unfortunately for you, I feel like that's when people probably reach out when they're probably angry They feel like their freedoms have been taken away and now they're either emailing you texting you or trying to get on your roster sheet to create time to connect with you in the midst of like What I'm doing isn't working. I want to get back to doing the things I love Fix me that's the big phrase right fix me fix it

And sometimes that's a process, sometimes that's a journey. Like, what's that like when you typically get people that arrive that are in that anger state? And then correct me if I'm wrong, if they don't arrive at that state.

Tyler Kallasy (23:40.158)
Yeah, interestingly enough, I would say most of the people that I end up talking to from like a, Hey, maybe this is going to work type of situation. They reach out is more towards that acceptance stage, right? Cause they're actually willing to like be vulnerable about what they're going through. Um, but the more that I've been vulnerable with my content, yeah, I would say that there I'm getting more people in that like anger stage or even depressive stage and.

When that happens, I really need to just give that person space, right? And I don't mean like, hey, come back to me in two weeks. But I mean, create a space where they can lean further into those emotions and those actual feelings in their body. And we can, we can kind of unpack what's going on there, right? Because like I said before, often the anger is not actually what they think they're angry about, right? They're kind of projecting that anger onto something else. That's a little bit.

easier to think about or talk about. And when you need to ask for help, you have to get past that anger stage. So it's ultimately my job to kind of create a space or an environment where people can do that.

@therealbrycesmith (24:54.223)
That's cool. Do you have any like, what are your top three, maybe open ended questions to allow them to recognize where maybe that anger is coming from or to better understand where they're at in the journey.

Tyler Kallasy (25:09.118)
Yeah, so one of the big questions I'll ask folks is like, you know, what have you been doing to try to solve this, this problem? And they'll tell me their, their, you know, potential solutions. And then I'll say, okay, like how long has that been going on for? And again, they'll, they'll give me their timeline. And sometimes I have to unpack that a little bit more and kind of get more truth, right? Cause me, if you asked me at a certain point in my journey, I'd be like, Oh, it's been going on for three months, but.

At that point, it probably had been going on for three years, but that current flare up was three months. So I had a very short minded kind of idea of what was happening. But eventually I'll get to the point where I'll say like, okay, how has that had an effect on you? Right. And sometimes I'll clarify and say like, personally, emotionally, and a lot of times that's all people need. They've already taken a vulnerable step by reaching out to talk to me, filling out an application.

hopping on a call. But the next thing that people often need is that that invitation. And once they get that, now they can talk about it. And it's ironic because these emotions are in our head, but we often don't recognize them until they come out of our mouth and we rehear ourselves saying them. And it kind of solidifies some of the things that we're feeling or thinking.

@therealbrycesmith (26:31.439)
That's so interesting. The spoken word is powerful. It's one of the things I like to teach in mindset coaching, which is writing fills the gaps within our thinking. And then I actually spoke with a language specialist and they talked about the word abracadabra. And that phrase is Aramaic and it basically means with my word I create. With our thoughts, they're almost like playing ping pong in between our ears. They're dancing around, there's psychosomatic components, there's...

the raising of the eyebrows and anxiety, there's depression, there's denial, bargaining, anger, all the things that we talked about with the seasons of grief. But what's so fascinating is with our word we create. Now we create a relationship, we create a trust, we create buy -in. Once people get into that bargaining state, what are some of the observations that you see in that season three of grief?

Tyler Kallasy (27:29.918)
Yeah, the bargaining state is probably the longest season out of the entire grieving process from injury or having pain. The bargaining state is tricky, right? Ultimately, you are lying to yourself, right? This is when people say, I'll take a few days off or it's pretty bad, but it feels better when I do this or that, right? There's a lot of like rest and really low threshold.

passive recovery modalities that are used, which are great, but they're not great alone. What happens is people bargain with themselves that a little bit of rest is okay. They take that time off from that movement or just moving in general. And instead of revisiting movement at a lower threshold, kind of rebuilding themselves back up, they revisit movement previously where they were before. And that cycle kind of starts over. So this is,

Yeah, this is a place where a lot of people hang out and ultimately, this is often a place two, three, four months into working with someone, I have to bring it to their attention and be like, hey, this is the place that you started to do some weird stuff often when you were going through those cycles, right? Things start to feel good. You try to send it a little bit. You go a little too hard. You bring those flare ups back. You bring the pain back.

and then you start resting because you think that's the solution and then you go back to 100 % and we're back there, right? So things are feeling good, let's chill, right? Because people start to bargain when things are good as well. But yeah, the bargaining season is like the toughest one to get out of, especially as an athlete, a former athlete.

@therealbrycesmith (29:14.831)
It's so interesting because you're totally correct. But it's also like case determinant on one's pain threshold. How much pain am I willing to accept before I need to change? Because for some people it's like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I've done it this way for this long. I've been successful doing it. Why should I change? Why should I listen to this guy?

my resume is better than theirs. You know what I mean? It becomes this comparative like ego thing, which is tough. And if somebody is so connected with pain, it almost feels like just they're normal. And they just assume that that's what my life is like now. I've gotten older, right? Or, you know, all the different phrases that people like to use to justify the season of life that they're in. And as they matriculate towards depression,

Now the hats that you wear shift a little bit. You're not just a physical therapist. You're not just a pain expert. You're not just co -piloting their journey. But emotionally, you might need to be compassionate. You might need to have a guard up and be able to recognize when they're being combative or disrespectful on some occasion. You might need to play the therapist hat on some cases. What's it like when people arrive?

in season four of depression and how do you manage that situation?

Tyler Kallasy (30:43.87)
Hmm.

Again, I like to create space for those people to express or recognize themselves that they're in that kind of place first. I would say one of the bigger ways to help pull people out of that place is to teach them the skill or reteach them that skill of recognizing little wins. You know,

@therealbrycesmith (31:12.079)
I like that.

Tyler Kallasy (31:13.342)
As an athlete or a former athlete, we often have this like seasonal approach to our fitness. When we were in grade school and high school and college, we have a, a beacon, right? Those, that season of games or that one big tournament or that one big race. So we have this kind of thing constantly pulling us forward and it helps to quiet the small wins. We don't have to care as much about them because we know we're moving towards that thing.

And a W or an L is going to be the proof of how we did or not. When we leave organized athletics, we now have to fabricate our own wins and losses. We have to fabricate our own season. And that's a skill, right? That's a skill that we didn't really have to have because we had, because we had teammates and staff and coaches that were doing that for us. When people get into this non organized athletic season of life, that can automatically be depressing.

on its own because you're feeling a little lost. You feel like you want to get stronger, but you also feel like maybe you want to lose weight and you're like, don't know where you want to be. You don't have a physical pursuit anymore. And then pain comes in and now you're really lost because not only have you lost the beacon of light of a season, but you've lost the ability to express your emotions in the one outlet that you used to use.

be it powerlifting or basketball or crossfit or trail running. That was the thing that you used to deal with your anger or depression or envy. You would go out and hit a run. You would go hit an imam like it was the thing you did. And now you don't even have that. So what I try to do is kind of relight that fire by giving people a different perspective on where they can find little wins and where they are in their season. What phase of rehab are we in?

And what are we chasing to get to that next season?

@therealbrycesmith (33:12.975)
That's cool. I really like that. I'm letting that kind of sink in a little bit. And something that comes to mind is we don't rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. And so people basically, you know, have these goals or the law of finite versus infinite rules. Finite rules would be, hey, I'm training for this thing. Like you said, this race or this event or this tournament. And then infinite rules are like, hey, I'm playing so I can keep playing.

That's kind of the law of entrepreneurship, right? Like we're trying to stay in business. We're trying to keep this, this thing cooking. And what's interesting to me is like, you're absolutely right. Like you lose the rules. You lose the parameters. You're like, where do I even start? How do I create structure here? And it ends up being a little bit of unorganized chaos. But you, you mentioned being able to create micro wins for people. And that might be in the form of low hanging fruit in pursuit of the higher hanging fruit.

Tyler Kallasy (33:45.502)
Oh.

@therealbrycesmith (34:12.399)
And then those micro -winds create momentum. That momentum creates a little bit of a dopamine hit so that people are experiencing growth and progression, which leads to fulfillment. And then people want to continue to play. And I'm curious, like how do you create those micro -winds? I'm sure it's very specific to the individual, but do you maybe have some small examples of some of the patients that you've worked with of some of those winds and what they look like?

Tyler Kallasy (34:42.014)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the benefits of being a coach, especially in the remote setting is that I get to look at data, right? I get to look at numbers, the weight you did, the reps you did, your pain rating from zero to 10. And I get to have that objective look at the data with little to no emotion about it, right? Now, of course, I'm emotional. I'm not a sociopath, but like where the client is looking at themselves,

their performance, their function, their pain with heavy amounts of emotion. And that can kind of skew like how you judge the data. So what I like to do is collect a lot of data. One of those things would be a pre and post training pain level. So before you get into your home exercise program or your training program, what's your pain zero to 10. At the end, what's your pain zero to 10. It's a simple way.

to track progress across the week, but also across the session. And it's a really nice way to point out little wins. For example, when you get into pain and you've been in pain for long enough, you often don't recognize the difference in pain levels across the day or across the week or the month. You're just pain is pain. And when people start going through a recovery process four weeks down the road,

Their pain is gone from a nine out of 10 to a seven out of 10 to them. I'm still in pain, but when we can apply objectivity to it and say, Hey, look, Tyler, your pain has gone down two points. Oh, and by the way, we've been able to do 30 more reps of squats and you have two points less in pain. Right. So it's about showing them even while experiencing pain.

how much more life they've been able to access, even if it's minuscule, right? Even if it's this most minutia thing, because then it starts to prove to them the resiliency of their body, right? Their body's ability to kind of work through the issue and change, because when you're in pain for long enough, you start to doubt the capabilities of this meat suit that you're in, and you think you're just gonna kind of be doomed to having pain, and anything that you do is going to damage you further.

Tyler Kallasy (37:05.47)
So that's like one of the examples of kind of grabbing those little wins or at least just making them aware.

@therealbrycesmith (37:11.727)
That's so cool, man. I like the...

the zooming out a little bit. And sometimes it's difficult as a client or a patient of a coach or a practitioner to deliver progress. And people are like, oh, why should I continue this? I'm not seeing the progress. I'm not feeling the progress. The weight on the bar is not going up. I'm not PRing or I'm not doing more reps. Or when I look in the mirror, I'm not seeing the six pack or whatever the intrinsic motivation is or was. But I really like the...

the measurable component of a zero to 10 rating associated with pain. And then like you said, hey, look how much life you've unlocked. Now you're able to have sex with your partner and not be in pain. You're able to get out of bed and take a piss and not be in pain. You're able to carry the groceries from your car to the kitchen and not be in pain. You're able to play with your kids and not be in pain. It may not be.

this huge gym win, it may not be this, I'm documenting this lift for social media, but the measurement of life is huge, man. And when you measure the micro moments of life, that encompasses like special memories that you're probably gonna remember when you're laying in your death bed. You're probably not gonna remember all the PRs. You might remember a couple of them, especially if the vibes were there and you're rallying with the crew.

But it's more so that, like, the depth of relationships, the unlocking of the more meaningful moments that light our hearts on fire. And I really appreciate the way you saw that. That's rad.

Tyler Kallasy (38:53.118)
Yeah, I like the the additional explanation about the life stuff. Because again, that's like, that is typically the thing that is more potent for people from an emotional level. Like I said earlier, we can ignore stuff that's that's limiting in movement often. But when it starts affecting like life, and we can bring up the reverse, right, the wins in life. Yeah, it's it's really motivating for folks.

@therealbrycesmith (39:22.447)
That's so cool. And finally, man, we've got season five, which is acceptance. And based on our conversation this far, it's proof of concept that it takes a while to get there. You've got to kind of go through the journey. It's not skipping steps like an algebraic equation, you know, in sixth or seventh grade. Like you kind of have to go through the process and then you eventually land on acceptance. What's been your experience with season five?

Tyler Kallasy (39:51.582)
Man, this one is different for quite a bit. For a lot of folks, I would say acceptance for most of my population comes after enough proof that their body is capable of doing more than they think. A lot of the folks that I work with have been dealing with some level of persistent pain for quite a while, right? Chronic pain.

is misunderstood term chronic pain literally only means like a greater than I think it's six weeks, right? So it just means you have pain for a long time. And that really changes what you think your body is capable of. So people eventually move into the acceptance phase of like, Oh, I'm actually in pain when they either have told enough people. And that's why I create space where they can talk. Or they get to the point where

they've tried enough things and it's like proven to them like I literally cannot do this. There's not an easy way around this. I literally have to accept that, you know, pain is, is restricting me from, from accessing life. So that's, that's a place that, like I said, most people are already entering by the time we have a lot of our pre working together, you know, conversations. But there are times when I kind of have to help people get there a little bit more.

@therealbrycesmith (41:18.351)
sure. Do you have any leading questions that kind of helps steer them in that direction or what are some of the tools that you have in your toolbox to help people see things with a little bit more clarity?

Tyler Kallasy (41:30.878)
Yeah, I think it's helping people move past generality. There's no, there's no question that when folks are working with me, there's a bit of a sales process. That's what happens when you want to work with a coach, right? You're, you're trying to feel them out. They're trying to feel you out and people become a little protective and reserved about what they tell you. And that's okay. That's a survival mechanism.

@therealbrycesmith (41:47.631)
No, of course.

Tyler Kallasy (41:59.262)
But what also happens is they kind of revisit that denial season a little bit to kind of downplay what's going on. So I don't have specific leading questions. A lot of it comes around re -asking, hey, what can't you do? Hey, how long has that been going on for? Hey, how does that make you feel? Like what feelings are coming up for you? And just slowly trying to scrape away that hard surface that they've developed, rightfully so, over the three, six,

36 months that they've been in pain not necessarily to like make a sale but more so like I need you to be in a good place to actually accept the recovery process that's about to occur rather than continuing to be resistant because of that resistance that you've learned

@therealbrycesmith (42:46.447)
It's like the line from Jerry Maguire, help me, help you. Right. And the other thing that I really appreciate about your approach, Tyler, is you allow people to feel seen, heard, and understood. And the sales process, I mean, that's part of anything, right? Chris Voss talks about it in his book, Never Split the Difference, around the power of negotiation. And we're negotiating with ourselves. We're negotiating with others. Maybe there is a version of a sales process, but...

Tyler Kallasy (42:49.182)
Yeah, yeah.

@therealbrycesmith (43:14.255)
In your case, like you're not selling something that's like a scam or fabricated or like, Hey, I've been, I've been there before. It's not exactly the same. I'm not saying I'm going to fix you, but I am saying I can co -pilot your journey. And at the very least help shift your perspective, maybe give you a couple of new tools because clearly you came to me because what you're doing isn't working. And I think that's a big one that like, you can hear my tone of voice change a little bit there in the sense of like,

Okay, if what you were doing was working, you'd be out of pain. We wouldn't be having this conversation right now. So it's like looking ourselves in the mirror and accepting responsibility for where we are. And then being like, you know what? I'm going to make an investment of time, energy, finances, resources to try to have a positive change on my world. And at the very least,

I'm going to have an experience and I'm going to meet somebody cool who genuinely cares about me and wants to be with me so I'm not alone, isolated, separate from the group. Cause that's a whole other onslaught of the depressive component where you're like, man, I can't take class anymore. I can't do the things I once did. Now I'm isolated. Now I feel like I want to retreat and that's, that sucks, man. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Have you seen that quite a bit where people feel very alone?

and misunderstood through their injury process.

Tyler Kallasy (44:41.054)
Oh, oh, there's no doubt, right? Your, your reasoning, your level of quality reasoning when you're dealing with pain kind of goes out the window, right? I don't think there's a better representation of sympathetic drive, fight or flight drive of the nervous system than being in pain, right? There is no better definition of anti -survival than pain. Pain often represents damage. And at some point in

evolution of homo sapiens, pain often represented potential death. So it is the thing that fires up our nervous system the most, which does not often allow us to think clearly. And when we can't think clearly, we start feeling like we're the only person in this situation. We're the only one dealing with it. Our friends, our family, our teammates don't understand what we're going through. And again, we develop this hard shell and lock down. We also,

tend to develop unrealistic expectations of the efforts that we're putting forth trying to recover or rehab or heal, right? We think that we're gonna have this magical manifestation of life where there is no more pain and we're all good. And this was a taxable reason why I started to use the term beyond pain because in my own experience, I went through that four years of lower back pain, but there are still times when some of that stuff kind of,

comes up once in a while, right? Really low level, takes a little bit of extra care or a little bit of extra like downtime, but like, I don't know if folks are ever going to be painless in life, right? Pain is a part of life, but if you've dealt with something for a long time, you don't actually wanna be pain free. You wanna be able to access life without the hesitation or fear of that pain. It's a question that comes up a lot. This is one of the leading questions. I'll say, hey,

You know, do you want to not have back pain or is it that you want to be able to get out of bed and pick up your kid and go work out without the back pain, having any significance on your decision making? And often it's the latter, right? That's what people really want when they want to be pain free. Now I'm not saying you have to accept pain as part of your life, but there's some level of reality here, like realistic thinking in that.

Tyler Kallasy (47:06.718)
The first step is to just have the ability to move beyond that pain and access life without hesitation or limitation. And then once you access enough life at enough intensity and enough frequency, then it's most likely that you'll be able to fully have zero pain.

@therealbrycesmith (47:25.807)
Interesting. What I'm hearing too is a lot of it is nervous system regulation and the ability to understand that pain's going to exist. It's how you kind of deal with it, how you manage it because escaping pain and numbing everything and seeking an alternate source of consciousness, whether that's alcohol, drugs, overusing, rehab type things. Like I read something the other day from a buddy of mine who's

a high level strength and conditioning coach, what it's like. If everything you do is rehab, you're never actually training. You're not actually creating hypertrophy of the muscle fiber. There's not a shift in energy systems. You're just sitting there in a very sympathetic state doing dumbbell external rotations and light backwards lead drags to try to really just get activation and blood flow.

And I'm sure you've seen that a lot and we're seeing that being marketed really well. And that's not to knock these people because I'm sure they're on a quest to help people and they've seen great benefit from this. But it's like at the end of the day, as you mentioned earlier, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Squatting, hinging, pushing, pulling, monostructural stuff, a little bit of rotation, some functional bodybuilding. Like those things are going to create.

some sort of progressive overload, the appropriate amount of stress on the system to generate change and adaptation where you can be strong, resilient, and capable of doing all the different modalities that life requires. If your entire program is rehab, that's great. That's one of the three pillars that you mentioned. But there's also training and then there's life. And so what are your thoughts on this concept of like obsessing around

activation and you know, core and all these different things, they should play great roles. But sometimes I feel like they're so overly emphasized and it's typically by people that have gone through what we just described, the five stages of grief. They've been through pain, another hesitant to re -embarque on a journey because they're scared to go back to the person they were and the experience that they went through.

Tyler Kallasy (49:43.966)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the concept you had mentioned, right? The concepts of like increasing blood flow, activation, dialing in your core or your pillar, all that stuff is great. Uh, what happens though, is people start to feel safe in that place where they've now taken up most of their movement practice time, right? Their workout time with rehab stuff, lower threshold things. And there are great corrective exercises. Activation is wonderful. Mobility is wonderful.

corrective exercises are wonderful, right? But a lot of times when people experience a decrease in pain, it's not just because of the things that they've added, but it's because they've now made an equal relationship between the work and the recovery that they're doing. Their body is just able to handle the amount of work that they're doing because they took some work away. So people get stuck doing a lot of rehabby stuff because they think that that's the thing that's working.

And maybe it has worked, but now they're afraid to take a step into the more intense or complex realm of movement. And now they move from acceptance back into denial, right? You are, you are not okay yet. You do not know how your body is responding to the stressors that you used to put it through. So you don't have full proof that things are fine. Yes, you've achieved consistently low pain levels.

but now we need to test the resiliency of your body and continue to expose it to stress so that the body can adapt to that stress. And it's done, you know, in a tactful way. And that's one of the keystones of the way that I do things is reintroducing people to previously irritating patterns in non irritating ways, right? The way that we load it, the way that we set them up, the constraints we put on the movement. I want to put people in a position.

to express the highest level of intensity with the lowest potential for pain or dysfunction.

@therealbrycesmith (51:51.887)
I like the concept of the constraints that you mentioned because something that comes to mind is we've talked briefly about this, this phrasing of proof of concept. And let's say somebody had an extensive injury, let's say a labrum tear in the hip. They have imaging. That's not only what they're experiencing and feeling, but it's also living rent free between their ears. And so now every time they do.

a lunge, a squat pattern, or a bullion split squat, they associate that with pain. So that inevitably they become avoidant of those activities. And then they need this 30 to 50 minute warmup protocol. And then maybe they have one main event for that day that's maybe some sort of hinge pattern that sort of hits the lower extremity, but misses knee flexion and some of these other things. So now they're limited on all the things that they can experience.

But every time they sit down to take a shit, they're gonna have to go through knee flexion. Every time they sit to a chair or get in their car, they're gonna have to go through aversion of that. So exposure to that is actually really good because it's part of the activities of daily living. How do you increase that level of confidence for somebody if they're like, okay, I know that when I do a 50 minute warmup and then I go through a hinge pattern, I'm safe, I feel good, I'm getting stronger, my body composition is good. Every time,

I do a knee flexion or some sort of squat pattern, I experience pain. Do you think it's healthy to just scrap certain exercises or how do you reintroduce them over the course of time? Do you play with a step up? Do you play with some sort of other modality or do you allow those movements to be scrapped forever? I feel like it's a little bit of a sticky line, but I've seen it across various case studies and I'm genuinely very curious.

Tyler Kallasy (53:46.174)
Yeah, so there's a few things to unpack here, right? First, there's a bit of a give and take when we're dealing with the recovery process, right? So if someone comes to me previously having done 50 minute warmups, well, I'm going to give them a bit of that 50 minute warmup process. Now it's not going to look the same and may kind of slowly trickle into a little bit more of a training environment over time, but at first,

I'm going to give them what they have been doing because they have some autonomy over that process. It allows them to feel some ownership and, and some control, right? Control is a big thing. And eventually I will slowly introduce more. And once I get to a level of reintroduction of previously irritating things, I will start to slowly take away that warmup situation. Now, often when people start to get a little bit of a taste of that,

you know, normal training environment again, and this could simply just be like a squat to a box, but like they start to feel that again, they are often asking for more, which they're really saying, Hey, can I have less of this soft stuff? And the soft stuff is needed at some point, but I try to put them in a mental and physical environment where they're starting to ask for it without even really understanding that they're trying to push away from that excessive warmup place they used to be in, right? The other,

thing we need to do here is give people parameters and expectations. So for anyone who's dealing with pain and trying to re -achieve a certain type of movement pattern, you should keep yourself at a four out of 10 or below of pain, right? And this is what I tell my clients, hey, listen, four out of 10 or below, that's a pretty good place to be. If it starts to peak above that, we need to change something. You need to reduce the number of reps in each set for that day and we'll address the following week.

Once they have that ceiling, they feel more comfortable playing in that one, two, three, four realm. And they're not just fearful of any type of pain, you know, popping up. The last, the last part here is thinking in terms of patterns, right? I don't think in terms of exercises, squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, carry. Not every exercise needs to be included in a quality training program, but it's.

Tyler Kallasy (56:08.126)
You're damn sure every movement pattern needs to be included in a quality training program. And when we're trying to re -achieve access to life, we need to have access to a squat, a hinge, a lunge, a push, a pull, and then yes, carry your core and aerobic endurance. So when I'm trying to give someone the initiation of that rehab or recovery process, I just think in terms of lunge. Now,

Most people don't truly understand the difference between a split squat or a reverse lunge. If you start getting them to work on one leg, they're pretty happy. And that's something I can lean into. It's like, hey, a squat hurts you, but what about a goblet squat to a box? Does that allow you to work below that four out of 10 pain level and express a decently high level of intensity relative to your own abilities? And can we just get you...

relearning the skill of working hard at that situation. And then we'll revisit a full depth squat down the road, but like, let's just get you kind of fueling that fire again with those constraints, which would be the type of loading like a goblet or the box squat, which reduces the depth.

@therealbrycesmith (57:21.487)
Man, I like your approach a lot. It's explorative. But the other thing that I think is a major takeaway for people to hear today is you create a generalized blueprint with specific intangibles that gives the patient or the client agency where they feel like their opinion matters. It's not like, hey, man, here's this thing that you can just go execute and let me know how it goes. You're definitely taking into consideration the feedback.

Tyler Kallasy (57:46.27)
Yeah.

@therealbrycesmith (57:51.023)
and the pain response or the numerical value that they associate with their pain. And you're giving them a structure of like, hey, we need it to be under four. And I think because people feel like they're a part of the process, now they're enrolled. They're not just blanketly like trying to just be compliant because they paid for some sort of service. They're a part of it. They're also an artist in the canvas that the two of you guys are putting together to hopefully create a masterpiece, which then becomes their life.

Tyler Kallasy (58:19.838)
Hmm.

@therealbrycesmith (58:21.679)
And I really appreciate the fact that you're taking all of these inputs and the outputs aren't just you. They're explorative with the patient to then be like, hey, let's try to go into a box. Okay, if that doesn't feel good, let's try this. And I also really appreciated your approach. Like, hey, if a goblet squat doesn't feel great, let's tinker with the Zerger squat. It's a little different. And I've also seen you tinker with some of the specialty bars, like a safety squat bar and like granting people the permission and be like, hey, if that doesn't feel good,

Let's try this and maybe this is a little bit similar but it's not quite the same thing. My question for you next Tyler is.

Tyler Kallasy (58:52.542)
Yeah.

@therealbrycesmith (59:01.551)
The challenge that I see a lot, and I don't think this is in every gym. I think it's specific to community -based gyms, things that we see locally in San Diego. We see a lot of like F45s, we see CrossFit gyms, we see functional fitness facilities that do operate on time and community -based things where everybody's kind of doing the same thing. In the CrossFit space, we see the phrasing RX and scaled. I prefer the term customized because it's all case determined on the individual.

But what do you think when it's like you're in a group, everybody's doing this one thing, and now you feel like you're off in the corner doing this other thing, and you're almost this psychological perception of less than. And I think it takes some emotional maturity to graduate to the point of, hey, we're all working hard towards a common goal of self -improvement.

But there is this comparative analysis associated with the human experience where you feel like you're different. How do you manage that with some of your patients?

Tyler Kallasy (01:00:08.254)
Yeah, I again, you know, this comparison nature of human beings is somewhat unavoidable, right? As a, an experienced mover and athlete myself, a physical therapist, I still find myself comparing. I dropped in to my buddy's gym a couple of weeks ago and I didn't do the same like reps as he did. And I still find myself like trying to chase him. And you know, I think it's unavoidable.

the way I help folks navigate that is, okay, fine. If you want to be doing the prescribed stuff, the RX stuff, if you want to be doing the quote unquote higher level stuff that's on the board or that your friends are doing, let's hypothetically think about doing that for a minute. What kind of feelings is that bringing up? Oh man, it would be so great. Okay, cool. But right now, in this environment, this kind of pain experience that you're having,

What's that going to look like tomorrow night, right? Or the next day. And I don't do it as a scare tactic, but I want to invite them to be realistic and look at things from all angles. I, my, I, I'm trying not to tell them yes or no, cause it's never going to work, right? I need to put them in an environment to make that choice themselves. So if you find yourself in a place of, of envy or

wishing that you could do something else and you're currently experiencing pain, you know, remind yourself of the last time you went through this cycle of trying to revisit things before it was appropriate and how that went. Cause I guarantee it's happened at least once for you, you know, in the past. So that's kind of what I try to do for folks in those scenarios. And then of course I got to give them a little fire, right? So if it's a lower body thing, I'll try to give them a little bit more intensity or work.

at the upper body and tell them like, hey, listen, I'm going to work with you here. We're going to do some extra arm stuff, some shoulder stuff, get a little pump. But right now we got to like chill. We can't like snatch from the ground. It's just, you're not going to, you know, we're not going to be able to do the thing. Eventually we will, but like right now let's try to just lean into the stuff that feels good.

@therealbrycesmith (01:02:23.503)
That's really smart. It sounds to me that you give people the paintbrush, you ask some questions and basically ask, what do you see? How'd this go last time? And then Jesse Itzler talks about this a lot, which I very much appreciate, which is the concept of tomorrow. If you quit, how are you going to feel tomorrow? If you make the poor choice, how are you going to feel tomorrow? If you do the wrong thing or you do the bad thing, how are you going to feel tomorrow?

I think it's just really good perspective and I like the psychosomatic component that you integrate into your coaching and your teaching because most people are resistant when you tell them what to do or what they can't do. But if you give perspective and you just allow them to sit with their thoughts for a moment, it's almost like a psychological journaling exercise where people are then, they have the agency to make their own decisions.

And then they realize that you truly have their back and you're not like just the guy that's like, no, no, no, no. And I think that builds like trust and rapport for sure. Something that you posted that I really much resonated with is I've tried everything, which is a common thing that you hear in the rehab world. And you mentioned that your response, which is very blunt and some people won't like it is let's be honest here.

Tyler Kallasy (01:03:23.838)
Yeah.

@therealbrycesmith (01:03:46.383)
You probably haven't tried everything. And if you had, then you probably need to try them again. And if it's not that much of a medical anomaly, that nothing can work for you. And I think it's reopening the wound a little bit, where people probably want to like punch you in the face right off the bat. But then it's like, you've tried everything to your level of capacity. Maybe,

doing some of those things in an improper fashion. Let's revisit those things at the very least to ensure that every stone we turn over to try to make sure that we've dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's. And if all those things do add up to you trying everything, let's see if there's something else. And I think that really just comes down to two words, growth mindset.

Tyler Kallasy (01:04:46.366)
Yeah, give me one moment here. The dogs are a little excited.

@therealbrycesmith (01:04:52.655)
What's up, pup?

Tyler Kallasy (01:05:06.942)
So.

@therealbrycesmith (01:05:08.079)
I got the dog fired up with talking about this one. That's great.

Tyler Kallasy (01:05:10.334)
Yeah, I guess so. She is like, she's just gets all fired up. She does get fired up when I'm like, animated talking to a client, she can like tell and she comes over and tries the nuzzle. But yeah, this is, this is a hot topic, man, because, you know, as a coach, and I'm sure you experienced this, like our job is to try to make transitions, evolutions, challenges, you know, learning experiences as seamless as possible for folks, right? I want to try to.

@therealbrycesmith (01:05:22.063)
That's awesome.

Tyler Kallasy (01:05:39.806)
kind of deliver this learning process to you slowly so that you don't balk and so that you can really achieve it well. But sometimes I need to put my coaching hat on and be kind of blunt. And you're ultimately paying me to like be this unbiased, limited emotional opinion. And that's what needs to happen. The problem is, again, when people are in pain for a long time, or even it's just a high level pain for a short time, they become less

reasonable, right? They're not thinking as as reen is reasonably. And that means that once you try something a little bit, you assume okay, boxes checked, I tried that thing, it didn't work. I went to rehab for six months, it didn't work. Or I iced for a day, it didn't work. And there's just so many variables, right? It could be the person that you worked with, it could be

@therealbrycesmith (01:06:23.215)
Yeah, man, that's a great point.

Tyler Kallasy (01:06:36.19)
the emotional state you were in at that moment that didn't allow it to really work that well. It could have been the dosage, right? We all know that term like dosage makes the poison. Well, dosage also makes the medicine. If you take one milligram of Advil, it's probably not going to do anything for you. Just like if you go through rehab with the right person that fits for you at the right amount of time, well, then it might actually work. So before you assume it's over or.

I need to get under the knife or whatever you're telling yourself, maybe consider like revisiting or learning more about other options or the combination of options. Maybe that's the thing too.

@therealbrycesmith (01:07:21.135)
What comes to mind when you say this is like, let's say there's a spill on a countertop and I just took a sponge and just dabbed it real quick. I could say to you, hey man, I used the sponge, but it didn't work. It's like, but if I take the sponge over there and I allow it to absorb and soak into the spill and I kind of move it a little bit, it might work a little bit. And then it's like, okay, now I probably need a paper towel to then kind of go over it and absorb a little bit more. And the combination, like you mentioned between the sponge and the paper towel.

the time, the attention to detail, the pressure that was applied, the maneuvering across broad space, then allowed for these tools to operate at their highest frequency as opposed to going in with maybe a pessimistic, checking the box mindset of like, oh, I did the thing, it didn't work. That's a way different frequency than like, you know what? I'm gonna be open -minded.

At the very least through this, as you said, which I love, through this experience, I'm going to learn something. I'm going to meet somebody cool. I'm going to acquire tools from my toolbox. I'm going to sharpen the sword in my game of life. And there's something throughout this moment in time that's going to enhance my world.

And I think that just that analogy hopefully metaphorically lands for people because we're all gonna spill something at some point and maybe that relates to the injury world.

Tyler Kallasy (01:08:53.278)
Yeah, yeah, that was a really, you know, really good analogy. And again, I think if we revisit like that anger season, this is where people often do that is like, Oh, it didn't work, right? Like, I just want to be angry. So I'm just going to try to make as many reasons as I can to, to be angry. And it's unfortunate, because a lot of people never get there. Right? I think of this photo, or this drawing of two miners.

I don't know if you've seen this, there's like one guy in a tunnel, he's mining a tunnel. And then below him, there's another guy mining a tunnel. And they're obviously both going for like diamonds, we'll say. And the one guy is like three inches from the diamonds. And the guy who's three inches from the diamonds is like, Oh, I've never going to get there. I'm quitting. And he the picture shows him walking the other way. And then the guy below him is like three feet from the diamonds and he's still going right. So you never really know how close you are. Just keep

@therealbrycesmith (01:09:31.919)
I have seen this. This is cool.

Tyler Kallasy (01:09:50.494)
going and if you're getting those little wins, then that's proof that you're on the right direction. If you're not, maybe you just need to like change your glasses so you can see the wins differently or see some different types of wins.

@therealbrycesmith (01:10:02.735)
Yeah, I like the way you said that. It's also, sometimes you just gotta keep going, man. Like, find something that works and do more of it. That's some of the best advice that I've ever received. And sometimes you're not sure if it works, so it's tough. But there is something to the game of just, rather than winning, it shifts to like, outlasting. Can I keep finding ways?

to work over, under, and around with joy, right? That famous quote, nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm. And then in the pursuit of trying to keep going, maybe we seek a little help in the process, we gain some additional knowledge, we get some new tools, but just that concept of like, I quit, I'm gonna accept this pain, I'm gonna turn around, you never really find the diamond, which means you never really get that joy of life, that intrinsic,

because I really do believe that there's something to the human experience that you can't quite see it's like something you need to you kind of need to feel and That's something that I gather from what some of your Instagram posts are and the one that is Number one on my list man, and I'm sorry it took me so long to get to it Was was a post that you put up right at the beginning of March? which is being strong and in pain and

is better than being weak and in pain. Agreed, sort of. But if the pain prevents you from accessing that strength in your daily life, then what good is it? And I'm the poster boy for this. I mean, back in 2018, I was squatting 475, snatching close to 300, like 270, 275. My elbow hurt to the point where I couldn't drink a cup of coffee.

If I went for a hike or to walk my dog, I was limping. It's like, what's the point at that point? Like a couple months ago, five years removed from some of that pain and relinquishing my ego and asking for help, I was like bouldering a little bit in Joshua tree and coming down the boulders, I was like, oh, I'm significantly weaker than what I once was as far as the weight on the bar, but I can climb down these rocks pain -free.

@therealbrycesmith (01:12:25.647)
I can now book a last minute flight on Spirit or Frontier Airlines and my knee is not exploding the entire flight. Hopefully somebody listening relates to that because that's the worst experience when you're sitting on one of those flights, especially if you're over six feet.

Tyler Kallasy (01:12:37.694)
Oh, it's brutal. Yeah, it's brutal. Yeah. Yeah, man, I this is one of those opportunities where I needed to tell myself something and I knew again, right, like I knew someone else was going to benefit from being told that and having that kind of bluntness, you know, barbell movements are kind of a thing for me, especially lower body, like I can I'm really strong relative to even like the fitness population with

with squats and deadlifts and whatever. But it takes me a lot of prep work to feel good with conventional deadlifting and standard back squatting. But it's always been like kind of staying around for me just because I was good at it. And it was like, Oh, well, I'm really good at this. So I need to make it not her. And it's like, for what? Like, for what other than myself, the person I love the most in my life, who's probably coming home soon doesn't give a crap how much I can squat or deadlift like my mom doesn't care.

So like, who is this really for? Because my clients also don't care, right? So yeah, it's just like, hey, be proud of what you're good at, but also recognize like, there's a mismatch here, right? You don't have to be continuing to do stuff just because you're good at that. And that's tough for folks because you're letting go of your identity sometimes.

@therealbrycesmith (01:14:02.767)
Totally, and I'm also curious. I don't think this way anymore, but just to be the contrarian and play devil's advocate, what about the thought process of like, man, the pain of regret is way worse than the pain of failure. What if I just go for that next lift? It's gonna satisfy my ego that I'm not leaving potential on the table.

That's how I used to negotiate with myself for a very long time of like, man, I'm young, I'm healthy. I want to see what I'm capable of. I want to squeeze every ounce of juice out of this orange. And I do think there is some value to that. And there was for me for a very long time until it wasn't. And for me, I had to go through it to learn that experience. We could talk about it all day. I can listen to podcasts, read self -help books. I could do journaling, meditation, and therapy.

Tyler Kallasy (01:14:47.358)
Mm.

@therealbrycesmith (01:14:58.031)
maybe come to some sort of conclusion. But I had to go through it to feel it and understand it. And also, I'm also looking back without regrets. I'm happy that I did it. So I'm curious, like just for you and potentially for others that maybe relate to that concept, what are your thoughts?

Tyler Kallasy (01:15:16.446)
I mean, that's a valid way of thinking, right? Like we don't want to regret. I used to guide a lot of my decisions based on trying not to regret stuff. And I think that's a slippery slope, but let's be frank here, right? I'm sure there's a lot of athletes. There's a lot of fitness people listening to this. Does it really matter if you regret that you didn't end up going for that 405 back squat when you're 70? Does it really matter? Probably not.

Like truly honest with yourself, it doesn't matter.

@therealbrycesmith (01:15:50.575)
That's a phenomenal way to phrase it man, well said.

Tyler Kallasy (01:15:52.414)
Like I think there's time and place where it's worth it, right? For you, should you had been a few points from the podium, but your elbow was hurting really bad, I'd be like, I don't blame you for pushing through it. Like that's kind of a big thing. And let's flip the script here and say, if you do go for it, you push through the pain, you ultimately make the pain worse. You get that W you accomplish that PR. Your brain is hardwired to take.

the positive parts of that and kind of and cherish that and take the negative stuff and make a spin on it, just like you did with talking about your elbow. So even if you make the bad choice of pushing through and you get more pain, going through the seasons of grief, going through the recovery process, which is physical, but also very much so mental, you're going to make positive light of it. So it's going to end up being good, right? Either way, I've helped hundreds of people because I

@therealbrycesmith (01:16:29.455)
Yeah, that's true.

Tyler Kallasy (01:16:51.582)
kept ignoring my own lower back pain. But we're talking about fitness a lot of times and like weight training. And if we're being frank, none of it really matters. You do that stuff so you can access more of your own mental health, so you can access more life, so you can access more enjoyment with your family or your job or your peers. It's not about the squat. It's about what that squat does for you, right?

@therealbrycesmith (01:17:16.847)
Yeah. Yeah. That to me is like a really healthy, like fireside chat for people is just like really diving into that. And just like, I mean, the title of that podcast episode when I slowly convince you to come visit me in San Diego is going to be, it's not about the squat. And we're going to get a bunch of people out here and we can rap about that for a little bit.

I can't find it. I was scrolling through your Instagram right now, but there is a specific post where you reference like, hey man, you turning out your left foot a little bit more than your right is okay. Like we gently touched on the compensation strategies, but there's this unique ideology that like the left is supposed to be the same as the right. And we're always trying to find symmetry. It's not always going to work that way.

But it is difficult to try to convince people that like it's okay that the left side looks different than the right. And I mean, I watch people handstand walk all the time and maybe one wrist is a little tighter. So that hand turns out a little bit more or squat patterning in an overhead squat where they need a vertical torso and one foot's turned out a little bit more than the other. And maybe one scab isn't as stable. So you see a little bit of a bent elbow in the pursuit of trying to find stability in the overhead squat.

How do you create knowledge, understanding, buy -in, rehab strategies, and just address these types of issues when to the human eye, when something's a little bit off, it raises a red flag and you're like, no, that's off. And you just want to like go attack it. But then the other part of that is like you said, giving it some space, seeking to understand, and then maybe trying to create some micro wins in the pursuit of perfection.

Tyler Kallasy (01:19:09.054)
Yeah, so if we're talking about these, these like arbitrary rules, and how I address that, right, like, oh, your feet need to be even, let alone people think sometimes your feet need to be pointing forward when you squat, or you're not allowed to rotate at all. At the bottom of the squat or shift at all, right, like, or whatever it may be, right, you need to have equal head, neck rotation from side to side, I try to put it in perspective using the example of another human being.

For example, if someone came into a gym, right, and they had cerebral palsy, right, if those of you don't know what cerebral palsy is, there's a list of things that occur when you're born with CP, but some of those can be like limb deformities, right? You come in with a little bit less range of motion, one limb is a little shorter. If you had that person go through a fitness routine, you would be okay with adjusting the way that they squat, the way that they press overhead, the way that they run.

You would be okay with it because they have very noticeable bodily changes, anatomical anomalies about them. But when it comes to you have a slightly different shaped hip on the right side versus the left, or you developed a labral tear over the last 10 years, people want to be like this self -righteous, oh, I can do it normal. It's not okay to accept limitation. It doesn't make sense. Why do we accept limitation for that person, but...

when someone's perceivably normal, we have to try to force things on a body that doesn't want it. So there's no difference, right? The other thing is when people have been dealing with pain for long enough and you're telling them to move their foot three inches forward and it takes their pain down from a seven to a four, it's pretty potent. Like they're not, they're not like, they're not going to argue that to some degree. Now, if you have an ant, a difference in your squat, right? Your one toe has turned out.

@therealbrycesmith (01:20:43.631)
Hmm.

@therealbrycesmith (01:20:57.487)
Oh yeah.

Tyler Kallasy (01:21:05.437)
or you shift your shoulder when you press overhead or you have a little funkiness in your running pattern. It ultimately doesn't matter unless you have pain consistently enough or it's affecting your performance because you're at that level, right? For you, if you rotate at the top of a snatch, it doesn't matter at 200 pounds. But when you're trying to podium in the games, it matters because that extra three pounds that you do in front of a

crowd of people that rotation might make you have to bail. But for most of us, a little bit of rotation is fine.

@therealbrycesmith (01:21:44.079)
That's a really interesting point and really well said I Really really like your mindset man. Like you definitely attack all of these things from in my opinion a Very humanistic approach you meet people where they're at. You're not coming from this like holy grail I'm sitting up higher than you because I'm a doctor to physical therapy and this is the way it's supposed to be like you're very much like

approaching it with a very well -versed and digestible set of language and knowledge that I think is very much going to resonate with our community and also give people the opportunity to just drop their shoulders a little bit of like, we're human, we're not perfect. And just because we granted people the permission to say it's okay to have some discrepancies, that doesn't grant you the permission to be like, I'm never going to work on that. If you are turning out, maybe your ankle mobility is a little limited.

and we add in a little bit of banded ankle mobility in the pursuit of trying to get better and maybe a little bit more symmetrical because the asymmetries are data points that are giving us more things to play with within our training protocols. Is that something that you kind of align with?

Tyler Kallasy (01:22:56.798)
Yeah, absolutely. Right. If you have a discrepancy, whether it's strength from side to side or your positioning is slightly off, you rotate a little bit by all means, dig deeper, whether yourself or have someone help you try to find limitations or discrepancies in strength and mobility and stability. But at some point there is going to be potentially an anatomical reason.

that you have a difference from side to side or a slight shift or a slight rotation. And it may never be uncovered like, oh, you have this, but it may just mean you've been trying to address it for however many months, you've tried a bunch of different avenues. Instead of just continuing to create frustration and additional pain, why don't we just like accept it for a little while and revisit later or like just accept it, right? My mom, for example, was getting all this hip pain.

And she was just trying to keep one foot forward. And I was like, mom, just turn it out. Right? Like just who cares? Um, because it didn't create any additional discomfort with her foot turned out. If anything, it allowed her to squat with more comfort and more joy. So let's just do that for awhile.

@therealbrycesmith (01:24:11.247)
I really liked that. I also liked the idea of just, it's a customized mindset, right? Rather than just like a customized movement exercise selection. It's communicating with people and allowing them to understand that we all have trauma, injuries, movement patterns, and maybe reasons because the body really does keep the score. And rather than the ideation,

trying to match our expectations of what it should be or what maybe, you know, an expert online said, this is the way it's supposed to be created this relationship in our pursuit of perfection. It's allowing people to realize like, yeah, I'm continually trying to get better, but this is where I'm at right now. And when I move this way, I'm pain -free, I have a higher quality of life. And that ultimately is what matters.

But it takes a healthy conversation to give people that level of confidence because I do think people are gently looking over their shoulder like, am I doing this right? I'm not really sure. And then once they realize that they are, now they can move forward with a little bit more intensity. And you talked about intensity. I know great glassmen in CrossFit talk about the magic is in the intensity. Well, if you're not in pain,

your intensity is probably going to be better. Your consistency is also going to be better. So maybe that movement modality that is customized to your anatomy or appropriate to your injury history is actually providing you more benefit than negativity because of the consistency and the intensity applied, which then means more fun, more joy, enhanced body composition, better health biomarkers, probably longevity.

associated with your life. That sounds like a winning scenario for me. What do you think?

Tyler Kallasy (01:26:11.454)
Yeah, I would agree. Like, I mean, to put it simply, sometimes the best way to get out of pain is like to just stop doing stuff that hurts for a while and do more of what feels good. Um, because often we are in that like space of denial, trying to just like make things work, make things work. And we're just kind of through that cycle, just pissing things off more and more. Yeah. And then it affects our psyche. It affects the way we look at life. And why don't we just like, take a break from the painful stuff for a minute and like,

maybe we'll try to solve some stuff with corrective exercises and whatever, but like, hey, let's just create a little bit of an open window for a brighter light and more life for a little while, because maybe just doing intensity better and like doing stuff harder and getting stronger could be quite a big needle mover in the first place. And then we can clean some stuff up with more nuanced correctives and rehab stuff down the road.

@therealbrycesmith (01:27:07.887)
I like that a lot. Rocks before sand, right? Before we wrap things up, man, something I loved that I see you emphasize quite a bit, the world knows it as an apple a day keeps the doctor away. And I like your play on it, which was a little rotation a day keeps the doctor away. And for me being a basketball athlete, rotation was huge, right? Constantly trying to maneuver and utilize.

Tyler Kallasy (01:27:10.174)
Yeah.

@therealbrycesmith (01:27:36.975)
different forms of movement to get past the defender. But in the world of fitness, it's quite linear. There's a lot of flexion and extension, but there's not as much rotation. Not to mention, it's difficult to put pen to paper with rotation because it's a little bit more complex in its movement description. And you oftentimes need a video analysis, especially in the form of like landmine stuff, med ball stuff.

What are your thoughts on this element of rotation and how do you think we can integrate it where it's a more emphasized and popular portion of fitness?

Tyler Kallasy (01:28:14.238)
Hmm. Yeah. Rotation is.

@therealbrycesmith (01:28:19.215)
She likes rotation because she likes chasing the tennis ball.

Tyler Kallasy (01:28:21.438)
Yeah, I guess so. Rotation is a funky thing.

@therealbrycesmith (01:28:31.823)
She saw you get animated.

@therealbrycesmith (01:28:36.942)
I love it.

Tyler Kallasy (01:28:42.366)
Rotation is a funky thing because it's not ultimately a foundational movement pattern that we think of like the squat or the hinge or pressing and pulling, but it's like an inevitable part of life.

Tyler Kallasy (01:29:13.118)
Even though it's not addressed in fitness as much, right? Like formally, like you said, we're very linear creatures. Our fitness is very linear or sagittal. We like to move forward, back, side to side, and that's kind of it. But as humans, we are inherently rotational creatures, right? Everything we do to some degree involves rotation. Even a squat, which is up and down.

right, very kind of like straight line. There's so much rotation happening at our shins, our feet are falling in, right, even those higher level movers. I'm sure when you were catching really heavy snatches and standing up, your knees were whipping in and whipping back out, right, like rotation is needed. It's often avoided because it's misunderstood or not controlled for very well, right, people can't like kind of control their torso or their joints through rotation, but the irony is.

It's needed so much for happy joints, especially joints that are very mobile, like shoulders and hips. They love rotation. Now it's not something I like to introduce right away because it does take some higher level coordination and control. But it is something that we kind of add in as like a spice, right? Or something I add in when people are.

struggling to like address pain issues with all of this like bracing and just kind of making things stiffer and making things work harder. And if that's not working, like, let's try to make things looser and more fluid and movie and rotationally. And, and that often helps to kind of clean up some of that, that last stitch stiffness and pain issues that people are experiencing.

@therealbrycesmith (01:31:00.623)
I like the way you said that. It's funny because I often joke about this. If you're in pain, you often want to create stiffness naturally. That's kind of like the default. So it's like your use of duct tape. If you don't want something to move, use duct tape. But if you want something to move, use WD -40.

It sounds to me like your version of WD -40 is kind of integrating a little bit of rotation and rotation's funny to me because I think it's a great analogy for life in the sense of most people want to scale businesses and grow and evolve and add more. It's easier to add things that can be comprehended by the mind that are black and white and scalable like hinging, flexion, extension, things that are so simple to the human eye, but rotation is complex.

It's not as easy to put pen to paper or for the mind to understand because there's malleability, there's angles, there's things that are slightly misunderstood. As soon as a by -product, I would categorize rotations a little bit in the gray area, which is mostly where life is spent, but people want things to be easily understood. And what I really love about what you're doing, Tyler, is you're creating simplicity around complexity. You're helping people understand their levels of pain.

You're co -piloting their journeys and you're not this I have the answer kind of guy. You're like, yeah, I've been through this. I might have a general understanding. Let's get a better analysis of what you're going through. Let's try a couple of things. All that I ask is that you're open -minded and you're malleable to trying to be that sponge and absorb a level of knowledge and information in the pursuit. And if something's not working, communicate that to me. We'll tinker with your program. But at the end of the day,

we're trying to have your systems align with your goals. Because it's easy to look backwards and see that the dots align, but it's harder to look forward and understand that there's light at the end of the tunnel. And I think through your language, through your compassion, your empathy, your understanding of emotional intelligence, which I observed today, there's moments where there is a softness to your voice. And then I press a couple of buttons and I see you sit upright and I see the eyebrows raise and you get incredibly passionate about things.

Tyler Kallasy (01:33:00.478)
Oof.

truth.

Tyler Kallasy (01:33:16.254)
Yeah. Yeah.

@therealbrycesmith (01:33:20.591)
That's great, right? Because there needs to be levels to the game. It can't all be this mundane frequency. There needs to be peaks and valleys. And I see that through your social media. I really appreciate connecting with you today. One of my favorite questions to ask, man, like, is there something that's floating within your head space that you'd love to share with people around your world? The concept of pain that maybe I didn't ask today that you think is really prominent.

within the world of health and wellness.

Tyler Kallasy (01:33:52.286)
Yeah.

One simple piece of advice when you're dealing with pain, restriction, limitation, when you're unable to access life, when you're in that bad place, and quite honestly, at any point in life is a reminder to be kind to yourself. When you lose your identity, when you lose so much of your life, whether it's from a fitness aspect or just like literally from a life aspect,

It's really easy to get down on yourself and start only acknowledging the losses and the negative parts of who you are and what you can do. And I think there's inevitably some good parts within that. You're just having trouble seeing that. So continue to be kind to yourself and a lot of other better things will unfold when you start being more successful with that.

@therealbrycesmith (01:34:49.007)
That's beautiful, man. I really love that. Where can people find you, man? How can people get in contact with you?

Tyler Kallasy (01:34:55.006)
Yeah, the easiest way would be through Instagram. That's where I do a lot of connecting and content creation. So it's my full name, Tyler Kolesi dot dpt. Uh, you can also find me on my website, right? Which kind of goes into more about what I do, uh, from a client facing perspective, which is Tyler Kolesi .com. It's also a great way to access my email list, which gives you, um, kind of longer.

developments on some of my thought processes that I share through Instagram and things like that.

@therealbrycesmith (01:35:28.399)
That's awesome, man. I hope that a lot of our community can connect with you and learn from some of your expertise. I really appreciated unpacking your story, your vulnerability and your knowledge in all things pain to help people live a pain free life and get back to doing the things they love. Thanks, man. Today was dope. I enjoyed our conversation.

Tyler Kallasy (01:35:49.63)
I really, really enjoyed it. You know, this is a passion of mine. So it's nice when someone asks a bunch of questions like this and really allows me to do that eyebrow lifting and excitement. So I appreciate it, man.

@therealbrycesmith (01:36:02.767)
That's cool, dude. We'll have to do it again. For those of you listening or watching on YouTube, if you enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Tyler Kaleci, please rate, review, subscribe. Don't hesitate to reach out to him. Shoot me some DMs if you have any feedback on today's episode. And as always, stay on the hunt for who you've not yet become. Till next time, guys.

@therealbrycesmith (01:36:29.103)
That was fun man. Thank you so much for joining me today. That was...