Embark on a transformative journey with us as we unravel the conventional wisdom on stretching. Joined by Aaron, the yoga guru turned wellness pioneer, we take a deep dive into Muscle Activation Technique and its unexpected connection to yoga. Experience a paradigm shift in your fitness routine as we challenge the traditional stretching dogma and open your eyes to a dynamic, stability-focused approach that puts the brain-muscle connection at the forefront of your movement practice.
In a landscape cluttered with static stretches and misconceptions, we stand with Aaron to champion a balanced yoga methodology that marries Eastern traditions with scientific rigor. Discover the physiological wonders of diaphragmatic breathing, the neurological benefits of stress management, and the importance of hydration in muscle health. Forget the esoteric – we're peeling back the layers to reveal the tangible impacts of a mindful practice on your body and mind.
As we close this chapter, we part with an invitation to join us on a mission to alleviate pain and foster a community grounded in wellness. Aaron's insights from Blue Osea Yoga Retreat and Spa have not only enlightened us but also promised a beacon of hope for those seeking reprieve from discomfort. We're honored to guide you through these revelations and urge you to subscribe and share your thoughts, as together we navigate the vast waters of health, one episode at a time.
Embark on a transformative journey with us as we unravel the conventional wisdom on stretching. Joined by Aaron, the yoga guru turned wellness pioneer, we take a deep dive into Muscle Activation Technique and its unexpected connection to yoga. Experience a paradigm shift in your fitness routine as we challenge the traditional stretching dogma and open your eyes to a dynamic, stability-focused approach that puts the brain-muscle connection at the forefront of your movement practice.
In a landscape cluttered with static stretches and misconceptions, we stand with Aaron to champion a balanced yoga methodology that marries Eastern traditions with scientific rigor. Discover the physiological wonders of diaphragmatic breathing, the neurological benefits of stress management, and the importance of hydration in muscle health. Forget the esoteric – we're peeling back the layers to reveal the tangible impacts of a mindful practice on your body and mind.
As we close this chapter, we part with an invitation to join us on a mission to alleviate pain and foster a community grounded in wellness. Aaron's insights from Blue Osea Yoga Retreat and Spa have not only enlightened us but also promised a beacon of hope for those seeking reprieve from discomfort. We're honored to guide you through these revelations and urge you to subscribe and share your thoughts, as together we navigate the vast waters of health, one episode at a time.
Hello and welcome to Health Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony. Amen, and welcome to another great episode. You guys love that short intro, don't you? It's so much quicker and I'm talking and already taking up time. No, but seriously, for all of those that are currently listening, this year we're really excited. We have changed up, we changed up our graphics, we changed up our intro, we changed up our outro and this could be the first episode ever where I'm pulling ads, so no more fun ads than me reading. I want to give you guys straight content and I know that, based upon listeners, are the most streamed episodes of last year. For all quick tip episodes meaning all ones I did solo we were digestible 15, 20 minutes, so we will be getting a lot more. Check out that New Year's episode if you haven't already. It was a doozy. Some would say Hope we don't get banned. Anyway, for today's show, let's welcome to the show, yokey, aaron, aaron, it's a pleasure to have you on today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me on, Anthony. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:We were talking pre-show. For those that don't know, aaron lives out and down in Costa Rica and it is very cold currently in New York, so I am extremely jealous and that's all I can think about right now.
Speaker 2:Screw talking about health and fitness. I want to talk about how beautiful Costa Rica is. And all the amazing waterfalls and animals, and you're going to see, as well as margaritas. You're going to drink on the beach.
Speaker 1:I can't wait, but, seriously, let's have an episode. So, aaron, before we get started, just tell listeners a little bit about yourself and how you ended up in Costa Rica in the first place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I'm a yoga teacher. I started practicing and teaching around the age of 18. And then this is the very fast version, so I'm happy to elaborate later. But I ended up in New York about 10 years later and I opened up a yoga studio there.
Speaker 2:I started to develop a name and started actually traveling all over the world teaching yoga to different yoga studios as well as leading yoga retreats, and on one of those retreats led me to Costa Rica, and as this retreat center that I was going to was at the end of this long and dusty road and on the way, there was a Century 21 sign outside this property and immediately caught my attention, because, as I was driving by, there was this tunnel of Bogan, velia's and Hibiscus flowers, and as I looked down the tunnel, at the end of the tunnel was this beautiful turquoise ocean and everything inside of me just said home. So I thought, okay, let's do something here. So we did, and my business partner and I teamed up and we created Blue Osea Yoga Retreat and Spa, which is where I'm located now.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah, one day we're going to have a redefined fitness in Costa Rica and that will be my home base.
Speaker 2:Yes, I would be honored if Blue Osea could become your redefined fitness home base of operations for your tropical base.
Speaker 1:I'm excited we're going to have to talk about that. But today's episode, just to be more specific and I want to get your personal backstory about why you mentioned this and why you mentioned this you said stop stretching. Yes, don't stretch what. What does that mean and where did that concept come from?
Speaker 2:So I got into yoga because I was, you know, very I was as a young kid, teenager, I was very athletic, you know. I grow, grew up in Canada, so I was into dog sledding, snowshoeing, canoeing, cross-country running, you know, fitness training, all kinds of sports, football, hockey. So one of the things I started to notice was my body was tightening up on me, and the solution I thought was to stretch, and so that's why I got into yoga was to start stretching. The interesting thing is, shortly after I started stretching, one day my back gave out on me, and I was 18 years old at the time and I thought this is not a good sign. So what did I do to fix it? I stretched more, and so I ended up spending the following 25 years really stretching, doing deep. You know hip opening programs, you know intense back stretches, long holds, short holds, movement base, everything in the whole yoga gambit, hot yoga, going into those kind of yoga classes where you just put your bathing suit on and sweat 20 pounds out of you and I. So I've done everything, and after about 25 years of that, I ended up in the emergency room of a hospital with an orthopedic surgeon telling me I was going to need a spinal fusion in my lower back.
Speaker 2:And that was kind of my wake-up moment where I, you know, I had a kind of a come-to-jesus moment where you I kind of realized Maybe what I'm doing isn't, you know, the best thing. There's got to be another answer why is this happening? And that kind of question took me into the realm of muscle activation technique, which was developed by Greg Raskoff, and you know Greg spent so much of it, has spent most of his life, asking that question, especially in his younger years why are muscles tightening up? And the answer that he came to was instability. Instability comes from muscles not working properly. So when muscles aren't working properly, the central nervous system of the body sends out an SOS, basically saying to everything tighten up, tighten up, tighten up. And so I started studying muscle activation technique, quickly realized that nobody in that sort of lane Was translating this into yoga, and so I took it upon myself to take it into the yoga world.
Speaker 2:The reason why I tell people to stop stretching is because when we stretch, we basically cut that neuromuscular connection between the brain and the muscles, and so your, your central nervous system basically knows where your muscles are in space, the space meaning your body. But when we stretch we cut that neuromuscular connection. So then all of a sudden, the central nervous system doesn't know what muscles to tell to contract when it needs to contract. So that's why you shouldn't stretch. What we should be focusing on is improving muscle function, improving a muscles ability to contract and contract on demand, and when we have that happening, the tightness disappears.
Speaker 2:Greg often refers to it is like melting the ice, because when we step on ice, what does our body do is a protective mechanism it tightens up. So what we want to do is thaw that tightness. We want to melt that tightness. How do we do that? By creating stability, and we do that by getting muscles to work properly. So in in the yoga world, I know it's the complete opposite. A lot of people think of yoga as Well. I got a stretch and I would say that that's very much sort of like a Western, you know a modern, you know last 30 years ish kind of Western idea about what yoga is. But that's not at all what, what yoga is supposed to be about. So I'm telling yoga people stop stretching, start activating.
Speaker 1:No, I mean Totally transparent. When I first took out into this room, I have no freaking idea what yoga was.
Speaker 2:Yes, I go yoga and I'm like stretching.
Speaker 1:But after really diving into muscle techniques and Yoga in and of itself, I actually came to the exact opposite conclusion. I said, wow, yoga is not stretching. Yes, yeah, I don't get it's way more dynamic movements than it is Sitting there in a static stretch and holding the post. Yeah, yeah which, well, a lot of.
Speaker 2:I mean this is I don't know if this is off topic or not, but the yoga, the yoga postures that we see are very much Misinterpreted.
Speaker 2:The idea behind the yoga postures is to begin to shift energy in the body and so we can actually trace it to a biomechanical, physiological response to and I'll give you a quick example if we do a lot of forward bends, you know, if we come into forward flexion, we're going to have a very calming effect.
Speaker 2:You know the idea of forward bends is to create an energy of Calming down. If we do a back bend if you, if, if your listeners right now are listening and open their arms up and just kind of lift the chest you come into a back bend. All of a sudden you feel more energy, blood is flowing. So the postures start to have this very interesting energetic effect in the body, and so the Ancients kind of did these postures to change our energetic momentum. So if you're kind of a person who's sluggish In life, then maybe doing a few more back bends is going to help you feel more Energetic. If you're kind of a person who's not able to focus, maybe do a few more forward folds. So we know that the postures start to shift our energetic momentum, both, you know, energetically in the woo-woo land, but also in a physiological, biomechanical way as well, and that's the gift of of yoga postures, if we do them correctly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's definitely a different feel then, not something I'm Like totally understand. Yeah, sure, better way to put it, I'm way more biomechanical. A does be Brain functioning 24-7 yeah right. When I do business, it's not about watching culture or flow, it's all right. Here's a number. Now let's work backwards of that number to figure out again to another number.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of that same sense. Yeah, I guess I First of all, I kind of break down, because that was a lot is different types of stretches and the two most common ones are Dynamic and static stretching. Sure does this relate to both and what's the difference? So you do want me to explain. Totally up to you so well.
Speaker 2:No, static stretching is basically when you're holding a stretch and You're kind of using an outside force to push a muscle beyond its end range of motion, so like a typical static stretch that you see a lot of runners doing is Lifting. You know they'll be standing and then they'll lift their leg up and put their foot on some sort of park bench or something and then they'll fold over that leg. That would be a good example of a static stretch, and they might hold it for 10 seconds, 15 seconds, you know, 30 seconds, whatever. A dynamic stretch is different. A dynamic stretch is when maybe you're standing by that park bench and you put one hand at the top to kind of steady yourself and then you just lift, using, using your muscles. You would lift one leg up as high as you could and hold it there, you know, for a few seconds and then maybe lower it back down and then just keep repeating that a few more times. So what static stretching tends to do is Stretch or elongate a muscle. In this case, if you're doing that, that static stretch, you're elongating the hamstring.
Speaker 2:What we actually know and and you know you being very analytical, I'm also as, especially as I'm getting older, becoming more and more and more Analytical myself. And this one thing I really love about muscle activation that Greg developed is because not only is it based in science, it's also you can go and test things afterwards. You can see, you know, is this making my, my body stronger, is it making it weaker? And that's a really cool thing. And so if we're actually doing a dynamic stretch, using that example of lifting your leg up as high as you can, you're now exercising the quads, you're engaging the quads, getting them to start firing properly, which then is going to have a reciprocal effect on the hamstring and the hamstring will actually start to release and let go is in the you know, the pairs of opposites, agonist and antagonistic relationship.
Speaker 2:So a lot of in muscle activation, especially in the a yama approach, the applied yoga anatomy and muscle activation approach they teach, all of it is based on this kind of dynamic quality, if you will, and there's a few little you know other little things that we do in there, but the bottom line is that it's it's really kind of bringing this dynamic quality to movement. I tend to try and avoid the word stretching because I think it's not really. It's not really doing what it's doing justice, like it kind of puts the wrong idea because what we're actually doing is exercising the quads to start working properly. So it has a has an effect of like melting tightness in the body.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot really good examples. You did break up for like 20 seconds, but I think we got the main just to. I think the cold in New York is affecting my white back Really bad joke. But no, I couldn't agree more and I want to just pin that like one little specific point. Just talk about like different sides. So you guys can hear from my opinion too.
Speaker 1:A lot of times in like the 80s, in the 90s and I remember Even me being in elementary school we always used to stretch before gym class. It was a very common thing to hold a pose, do this for about 10 minutes, hold it close to 15, 20 seconds, and the more I've learned, the more research that actually shows that that is actually making Things worse for you, because now you're really extending out those muscle fibers. I mean even output perspectives. If you're trying to lift weight, holding a static stretch can actually decrease your output by 15 to 20 percent, which is Crazy. Like you're in the gym trying to put up, let's say, a hundred pounds now. Now suddenly can't you down to 85 just because your static stretch and you really can't give your muscle that much more output of it. So I I don't like static stretching, especially pre-workout whatsoever. I mean, if someone's like just simply putting so, we're taught as kids but Health and fitness changes literally like every hour it feels like. So let's move past the static stretching pre.
Speaker 1:When you watch professional sports You'll even see like those baseball players they do do static stretching, but they're doing it hours like three to four hours before the game, pregoing into a game. They're doing a dynamic movements or dynamic stretching where you're adding blood flow to the area and you putting your body Through a range of motion. If you're not driving, please don't do this right now. If you're traveling, please. Just you're not driving. You can stand up and just try to touch your toes and come back up and then try to touch your toes again and come back up and try to touch your toes again. But the fifth time you're gonna realize which further you got from the first time. That's dynamic stretching. You're inducing movement by warming the muscle up and then, after a muscle is pre-warmed, there is, I guess, counterintuitive evidence. I don't really know if it's one with the other, but I've always learned to static switch after exercise when your muscles are already super warm and you already broke it down. Then you can go into a static hold.
Speaker 2:If I have to answer this, yeah, I mean, when you use the word warming up from a muscle activation standpoint, what you're really doing, what you're biomechanically doing, is increasing proprioception. You know, when I used to work out in the 80s, when I was in my teen years and I was starting to learn how to use the gym, one of the best pieces of advice that I was given and I never really followed it after that was take some light, light weights and just go really slow. So you're starting to. They use the word warming up, but now I understand what you're actually doing is building that proprioception, literally between the brain and the muscle, and so with that proprioception comes increasing the muscles ability to contract properly and getting all of those muscle spindles to be able to shorten to their most coiled up degree, if you will. So that's the one thing I'd say absolutely. And as far as stretching afterwards, I mean, here's the thing. So when you and you also just enunciate at this point like when you stretch, you decrease the force output of the muscles. So my big question is then is why would you want to do that? Like if I leave my workout and I'm like completely, you know my muscles are completely engaged, they're working properly. The last thing I want to do at the end of my workout is make myself weak. So a lot of people often go Well, you know, we need to elongate muscles. Here's the thing Again muscle tightness is the response, the body's response, to instability. So our job then is to go in and go. Well, where is the source of that instability?
Speaker 2:I got into yoga because my hamstrings were really tight. I mean, at the end of the day, that's, that's what it was really about. My hamstrings were tight, right. Not once, anthony, in 25 years, did any yoga teacher ever come up to me and say your hamstrings are tight because your hip flexors aren't firing properly, they're not engaging. And so you know, if my hamstrings are tight now and they do tighten up obviously they tighten up sometimes, especially if I've been sitting a lot and then start moving around.
Speaker 2:But if my hamstrings tighten up, I go oh well, now I know that it's my hip flexors not working properly. So I do a quick muscle activation, get them working, the tightness disappears. So that's kind of my response to the stretching thing. There's a lot of people that want, if we let me say that like this if we open up a range of motion, and great, you have a range of motion, but if the muscles aren't contracting and supporting that joint in that range of motion, then you're just left with instability. And if you have instability you're going to become vulnerable to injury. So I always kind of go back to let's just get the muscles working. And once they get working now we have stability. And once we have stability we have all the mobility that we ever want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I must go. I kind of liked the point you mentioned about your hip flexors on firing and then almost in your hamstrings are going to tighten up and even look at injuries as an example. Yeah, you have any. My neck, for example. Just because certain muscles in my neck are on firing, I'm getting a lot of pain and tightness in my traps Because my CNS is like this isn't working, can't get there, so where?
Speaker 2:are we going to?
Speaker 1:go. We're going to go into the easiest muscle and it's going to be like tighten, tighten, tighten to pull the neck away, which isn't fun for me whatsoever. But, point being, it doesn't matter how much I stretch it or anything like that, it really doesn't matter. It's just. What actually works is just working the muscles around the traps. That are going to pull the traps down, like if I can get my lats engaged and tell my lats wakey, wakey, wakey and they're going to start pulling.
Speaker 1:This is so scientific and they're going to pull the traps down, away from the body, your body's going to be like oh shit, stop tightening those traps, let's release them, because those lats are really pulling hard on them. And then they get to release. From that my neck no longer hurts.
Speaker 2:So, absolutely, you get the. So, if the, if the neck, if the upper traps are the agonist, sorry, are the antagonist. What is the agonist to that Like? What are the opposite muscles to that? Well, the lats, for sure. And here's another one the lower traps. If the lower traps are not working, and in so many people their lower traps just are not firing properly, I mean, why is that? Well, we sit hunched over computer all the time, right? So that's going to have a negative effect on the lower traps, which then the upper traps start tightening up to compensate as well. So it's a great example. I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's talk about this in like a specific yoga perspective that you do. So how have you taken that technique and added it to yoga?
Speaker 2:I have. So, first of all, we've taken flexibility and and stretching out of the equation. So in my classes I don't teach stretching. It's not about how far you can go into a pose. That's number one. One of the principles also is like, if you, if you are kind of doing a pose where it might mimic a quote unquote stretch, I set it up so people can't go more than 30% into it. So, for example, if it's a standing forward fold, normally I would just have people coming and instead of folding forward as far as they can, maybe only fold forward halfway or a third of the way and instead focus more on engaging the core, like what muscles are actually contracting.
Speaker 2:Another way that I do it is when I'm coming into certain poses. If it's like a side bending pose, instead of focusing on the side that's stretching, focus on the side that's actually engaging. One of the things that we try to reinforce is this idea that muscles move bones and in order to do that they have to shorten. So if we're coming into a pose, what muscles are shortening, how do we activate them first, and then, if we're going to explore that pose, how do we go into it so that we're honoring our body's own range of motion. Range of motion is always depicted upon a muscle's ability to shorten properly. And then I do a lot of dynamic movement. There's a lot of movement moving in and out of poses and then building towards something. So it still looks like yoga. People when they come to my classes will tell you it still feels like yoga is just done from a different perspective. And, quite honestly, if you didn't know me and just kind of popped into my class, you wouldn't even know that I was doing it to you.
Speaker 1:That makes it better, though. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I know how to sneak it in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it makes it so much better. Yes, and I kind of like the I don't know how to word this, but that's coming off mean. So I'm just going to say it and I don't mean this in a mean way to you whatsoever, just in general. There's a lot of people, like you said, get into yoga to do the stretching and then they get into yoga and it's really realized. It's about finding your third eye and it's all floofy doofy and people like me really don't want that in their lives, like they're not into that kind of extra side of yoga and it's nothing wrong with wanting it. But then I get discouraged for doing yoga because I'm like I don't want to sit here and think about this.
Speaker 2:I just want to do it, so I feel better.
Speaker 1:So having it flipped the other way, where you're taking a central concept of yoga and bringing it back away from that kind of feels like and more into we're really moving the muscles to really make you feel better. Work on dynamic flow and movement. I like that a lot more Like that's see. To me that sounds way more appealing than let's light candles and have a blue sky view.
Speaker 2:That's not for me.
Speaker 1:It's nothing wrong with it? Nothing wrong with it. It's just not for me. So someone like me would much prefer. Hey, we're doing this to activate this muscle and move this muscle this way, Like, yeah, I'm in.
Speaker 2:Yes, your attention is captured Well. And here's the thing too, like a lot of good yoga teachers out there will know, like you don't have to focus, bring all of the woo-woo stuff in there. One of the things that I love about yoga is there's kind of two sides of it, but there's definitely the strong biomechanical side and, as science, you know, the science of it just keeps getting better and better. So we know, if we breathe diaphragmatically it's gonna have a very positive effect on our nervous system, it's gonna affect our vagus nerve, et cetera, et cetera. And if we get people to focus on those things and do them well, you know, the spiritual side will just start to happen.
Speaker 2:You know, and I got into yoga because I wanted to stretch and that was the main driver. But very quickly, one of the side benefits of me doing yoga was that I was able to start to flip the script. You know, as a kid I suffer deeply from ADD and it still follows. Well, not as much now, of course, but you know, one of the biggest side effects was that the ADD just started going down in my level of focus and my ability to harness the you know, my inner energy and direct it towards manifesting things in my life just increase, and so we don't need to get into the woo-woo stuff. All we need to do is teach people how to move safely, how to engage their muscles, and then how to breathe, and the rest of it will come all on its own.
Speaker 1:I will say this like meditation, no woo-woo stuff, you wanna calm yourself down in about 30 seconds, focus on breathing. Like meditation, like focus on breathing, and I think of it that way. When I do it and no joke you feel just your cortisol levels go boop boop. So there's a lot to it right.
Speaker 1:And I do think Absolutely You're always gonna have people that think differently. So if you market something to one end and then market something to the other end, and it's still the same product, it's just I'm showing you differently, it's all the same. We can capture more people into it.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, well, and also, too, my personal ambition is to get more education about biomechanics into the yoga world, because there's so many yoga teachers that I mean there's this one yoga teacher I see on Facebook all the time now and she kinda pops up in my feeds and she's like your hips are tight because your sacral chakra is blocked, and I'm just like but people buy into that, people buy into this idea that emotions are stored into the hips and you have tight hips because you're dealing with trauma from your childhood. It's like, oh my God, okay, so just trying to teach some basic biomechanics to yoga teachers and that's my big thing so that we can start to teach to a larger group of people and also teach movement more safely, yeah, and I'll even add to it if you got tightness, not only will movement help.
Speaker 1:I gotta say about half of the population with chronic tightness is just plain dehydrated. Yes, like talk about something that makes your muscles like tighten up and hurt and lock. You're just a hydrant. And it doesn't just mean water. Let me make this very clear. Hydration means electrolytes, sodium, it's potassium. You know a big one that no one gets enough of. Magnesium. Yeah, huge. You wanna feel relaxed? Take some magnesium. I will warn you, you will poop the next day. It's definitely gonna come, but it's a life saver. I take magnesium almost every night because I have slight restless leg syndrome and I get nerve pain. So magnesium takes it away more than I don't Like. It's a life saver. I did a whole episode on magnesium about a year and a half ago, so really go listen to that's. Love it, elizabeth Glenn. Guys of science, see, only follow drugs to Eastern medicine. There's a middle ground and that's where we're gonna be.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. There's wisdom to be gleaned in both, and but I also think that both don't really invite room for pseudoscience, Like just make it up as you go along, and especially like in the yoga world I can speak to this that there's just a lot of, there's too much making it up as you go along.
Speaker 1:Yes, All right, I'm gonna wrap this up and ask you the final two questions. I ask everybody so first question if you were in a summer episode and one or two sentences, what would be your take on message?
Speaker 2:Fun and really informing. I mean it's nice to talk with somebody who knows a little something about the body, so I really that just tickles me, Thank you.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. I just get the second question how can people find you and get a hold of you and learn more about your retreat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. So I asked you to before the show if you could put a link in the show notes. Just go there, it's the yogiclub forward slash, anthony, amen, and they can go there and get. I have a free gift for everybody. They can try it. One of my biggest jams is to help people get out of pain. So people can go there, choose their pain pathway and get a solution to their pain and learn a lot more about me. Also, you can go visit my website, yogiarancom.
Speaker 1:That's easy to remember, yogiarancom.
Speaker 2:I'll remember that.
Speaker 1:Yes, when I'm across to Riki I'm gonna be like oh there's an inner retreat locally. You know it's, like you said, five hours away. Please do. I appreciate it. Aaron, thank you so much for coming on and thank you guys for listening to this week's episode of Health and Fitness for Define. Please don't forget, hit that subscribe button and please drop us a review. And don't forget, fitness is medicine. Until next time. I'll see you guys next time.