How gut health, breathing and aerobic fitness affect pain and mobility

I was really frustrated for a long time. So I would, for years, assess people for free, because I just wanted to learn stuff. And I would write out the corrective exercise and all these other things. And it's like, why are you not getting better? Like, you're supposed to get better. Like, you're doing a Turkish getup. You should have more mobility now. I was told you would. You're listening to the Restoring Human Movement podcast, where movement experts discuss the latest evidence-based practices to help you and your clients move with mastery. And now, your host, Dr. Sebastian Gonzales. All right. So that was an intro right there with Michael Band. It's Coach Michael Band.

He, did I say Band? Band. B-A-N-N. That's double N. You're going to learn a lot from this podcast today. And if you are a clinician, a PT, a DC, an athletic trainer, a coach, or an athlete, who wants to know more than just the basics of, like, lifting mechanics and movement and things like that, you're going to get a ton from this. Michael Band is, he's an interesting dude. I actually, I sat across from him at dinner one time at a conference. And we were there at dinner probably for like three hours or so. And like, I was like the after part of these conferences where you go out and like mingle and stuff. And I feel like you get a lot more information that's not always in presentations, but also figure out what other people are doing.

So Michael came up with, he literally blew my mind like three times that night. And I thought, I got to have him on and talk to him. And that was months ago. And he does not disappoint me in this. So we go into quite a few different topics today. Number one is he is big on checking the microbiome with people to check out performance, um, or things that will suck the performance out of your sport or your lifting or whatever it might be all, but also things that can decrease your overall wellbeing. Um, microbiome has been, or the, uh, microbiome has been, uh, attributed to systemic disease, cancers, things of this nature as well. Um, but, uh, also to pain. So I think it's interesting that he goes into that people who have, um, great movements, uh, don't always get hurt.

And people who have bad movements, um, I'm sorry, that people with bad movements don't always get hurt and people with good movements sometimes get hurt. So what's the correlating factor here? What's the difference here? So if you're a clinician, you're going to like that in regards to, uh, just kind of, um, making you think a little bit more. He definitely made me think, uh, we go into, uh, feces and what basically you're going number two can tell you about your microbiome. We're going to Dragon Ball Z Disney and a bunch of variety of different things. So this was a fun one to go into today. By the way, you're listening to the restoring human movement podcast. If you've listened to all my other podcasts before number 91, actually before number, what was that number that we started in the new thing? It was, uh, it was 91. So this one is actually number 95. So if you're looking for the show notes on this, uh, go to p2sportscare.com. We have a pretty elaborate search function there. You can just type up Michael band with two ends or a podcast 95. It'll probably show up, but, um, all the show notes, we're going to transcribe it as well. So if there's anything that you didn't get because you're out walking your dog or working out right now, go through there and you just have it all after.

That's why I get it for you guys. Um, now before we go into the actual interview, I, I've been trying to make it a point to, uh, short, share some short stories about my life just so you can get a better idea of who your host is. Um, the one thing that if you hang out with me or another thing, if you hang out with me, you'll, you'll realize that I absolutely love pistachios. And, um, actually this last year for Christmas, I got, let's see, five, three pound bags. I think it's what they sell. It a Costco, three pound, five, three pound bags of pistachios. So I got 15 pounds of pistachios for Christmas. And my, this, my sister thought it was a joke. She's, she's like, you can't like, she's like, what do you want for Christmas? And I sent her a picture of a bag of pistachios. Um, she thought it was a joke. So she just got a bunch of pistachios. My parents got me pistachios. Um, but those things I put in the car. And if you watch one of the YouTube videos I did on how to lift objects, I was lifting a bag of pistachios because it was what I found in my car. Um, my car is just littered with pistachio, uh, not only say shavings, they have that skin on them, but it's, it's always there. I have a red solo cup in the center console and I just eat these pistachios, uh, on my drives. And it makes driving fun, honestly. And I don't know if you've been on long drives or not. And, uh, if you have sunflower seeds seem to work, pistachios seem to work, but they're great. I love pistachios. And I would, I would probably say out of anyone I know I've eaten more pistachios over the last month than probably that you have in two years. Um, I go through about a three pound bag of pistachios about probably once every two to three weeks. Um, depends on how much I drive really. Cause I don't eat them anywhere else because they, uh, they get a little bit too messy. So I do get my car cleaned every once in a while on the inside, just because the pistachios mainly without any further chit chat from me or storytelling, we're going to go into the interview with coach Michael Band. And I want to thank you guys again for sharing this podcast with someone else who you think will get benefit from this information. Here we go. All right, everyone. We have on, uh, Michael Band. I almost said Dr. Michael Band actually. Hey, Michael.

Hello. How's it going? Not a doctor yet, but we'll be one day. Are you going to be, what are you going to be? I'm going to be me. The, the doctor, the PhD, the PhD or the, uh, so I will start my prereqs next year for, uh, basically med school where I'll be going off to Southwestern Southwest college of naturopathic medicine, ideally, but I'm also looking at Bastyr. Um, but yeah, naturopathic medical doctor. So I finished my graduate degree this year in kinesiology and then I'm off to study medicine afterwards and then maybe a PhD. We'll see how burnt out I am. So do you anticipate being burnt out immediately or just, are you going to take, take some time off in the middle? I know, I know that you have a, you have a great ability to tune people out and just keep working.

Yeah. Um, I think for me, I'll eventually get more curious and I'll be like, all right, why is this working? And then I'll have to go get a PhD or something to investigate it. So I think it won't be a waiting, like, because I'm burned out. I think it'll be like, all right, I learned all this. I'm going to go figure out how to apply it. And then I'm going to get a bunch of questions and then it's going to be like, wait, why does that work? And then no one is going to have the answer potentially. So I'll just try and figure it out. And that's my nature, but I could see myself going to school to get a PhD after I have my medical degree.

You never thought just investigating things that you kind of already assume are true. Like the sky is blue for X, Y, and Z reasons. And just kind of, that's the end of it. And just, you know, not have to think much or. That's just not how I work, man. I'm like a, I'm like a toddler. I'm a professional toddler. Well, so, um, just for everyone listening, by the way, so I've been trying to do a better job of framing this for people, um, or framing it for the audience. I'm anticipating, so I think, uh, the audience is mainly, uh, uh, chiropractic students, PT students, ATCs, and of that nature. Um, there, there are some lay public, they get ahold of these, which is fine. Um, so I might clarify a couple of common terms, but for the most part, I feel like you got a lot of value to give the clinical professional. Sound good?

Yeah, sounds great. Okay. So you brought up the idea of talking about, um, microbiomes and performance versus pain presentation. Sound right? Yeah, that sounds like something I would say. That sounds like, I should just go back on that tech, on that text on Instagram thread. Yeah, no, I mean, uh, well, my thoughts when we were chatting at that time was just thinking about like, Hey, you know, we, we tend to be very binary with our thoughts where it's like, Hey, you know, performance is movement. And there's obviously a huge component to performance with biomechanics because there's optimal levels of biomechanics.

But what else goes into that? Right. So where my brain was just going when we were chatting on that one was like, Hey, if people are too sympathetically toned up and they're just like walking around like giant, you know, power lifters, like, and they're just tight like this all day long. I don't know if the audience will see me or not. I know this, this, this, this will be a YouTube based too later. Okay, cool. So, so they'll be able to see me eventually. They'll be able to see you. Yeah. So like you think about people who get super sympathetically toned up, they can't calm down and they're just super tight and that changes biomechanics.

But how about we change the autonomic nervous system through all of its various potential inputs and people get better. So like, I just got done with the consult with the client right before you and I hopped on and she's like, I can't touch my toes. Can you give me some flexibility drills so I can touch my toes? And I was like, Hey, go lay on the ground and breathe for a few minutes and then try and touch your toes. And she was like, she had to recheck it. She was like, wait, I can touch the ground. And she's like, you can see her. She gets up and she's like, no way. And she does it again. And you could see like, there was a, there was a little bit of disbelief because we're taught as strength coaches, like mobility, what this and yoga, this and Pilates, this and all these stretches and mobility drills. And it's great. But where my brain goes with it was like, well, why, what are we really impacting? Like what, what system in the body are we truly changing? And then how can we do that in other ways? Because not everybody is going to go spend 30 minutes a day doing mobility one. And that's fine.

Like some people don't want to do that. Some people need to chew their food more and then they get more mobile or they have more flexibility because they chewed their broccoli. I knew you were going to bring up that chewing thing really quickly here. I'm a huge proponent of it. You got to chew 25 times per bite. You don't chew, like how are you going to absorb stuff? You know, like it's just a stressor on the system. So rather than having to like count your chews, is there like a song that you would hum to completion in your head and that would be enough chews? Hmm. No, I would just tell people to put their fork down every bite.

Oh, I like that too. Yeah. So then just going back a little bit to that lady then, how come, do you notice that people just inherently want to go back to some type of mechanical correction? Or is it, I mean, it's not that far fetched at this point, you know, I feel like, uh, most clinicians kind of recognize it, but does the public just kind of not get it or they just not want to believe it? Um, I don't, well, I think it's a mix of both, to be honest. Uh, I think from a mechanic's point of view, like, it's just like Occam's razor, like the simplest explanation tends to be right. And so when we think about like, Oh, my hamstrings feel tight, so I just need to stretch them and elongate them. But we forget that it's not such an easy system. Um, so sometimes people just don't want to believe it. Sometimes people are so bought into a certain like dogma.

I think sometimes it's also even tribal people are like, I'm going to be a PRI guy. I'm going to be a DNS guy. And it's because we want to belong. We want to wear the shirt that says like PRI and we want to be like left AIC. Everybody's a left AIC unless they're a vital obesity. And it's just like, Oh no, but would they have superior T4 syndrome or it's not, they just, they don't ever sit down to eat and chew their food and smell and sleep. So I wish I would actually had a video of it because we ate, we ate dinner across from each other in Colorado where we met. Um, I think you had a, you had like a dumpling soup or something like that and a burger. I wish I would have, I wish I would have videotaped you chewing.

Yeah. And I had like four beers or something like that. Yeah. I think so. You didn't chew your beer. Do you got to chew your beer? No, not at all. You sip it, you enjoy it. You don't chew it. This is not undergrad. Yeah. You know, by how, by how many times I've, I've, I've, uh, after listening to your stuff so far, I've heard you talk about chewing. You should just on your Instagram, just only do chewing of you. Just me chewing and tasting. Just selfies chewing. Yeah. Um, if I do that, I'm going to tag you for sure. I want it. I want it bad. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's where you'll see over the next 15 to 20 years, people are going to start recognizing, you know, how important the stuff outside of the clinic or outside of the gym really is. Cause you know, when you do the math, let's say like for performance, cause that's really where I live. I live in the world of trying to improve performance, but I also deal with a lot of chronic pain. So in the performance world, you're spending maybe 10% of your week training, maybe at least in my world with performance. And so 90% of your, of your week is spent sleeping, breathing, chewing, not chewing, eating, whatever, like family time, et cetera. So we've got to focus more on the majority of things. And I think, uh, because we tend to feel like we have, you know, big educations, master's degrees, doctorates, we tend to place ourselves kind of high up in like the importance list. But in reality, uh, it's tough, especially for new clinicians and new coaches, but we, we tend to think that we're more important. And so we think that our program designs are actually that important or our specific, our corrective exercises or our systems are more important when we just got to realize that it's got to make the client feel good or the patient feel good, but we got to make sure that they take care of everything outside of the clinic or outside of the gym. And then when it comes to pain, pain being so incredibly complex, you know, it's, it's too complex to assume that a simple, you know, seven month oblique is the reason why you have back pain. Because you don't do seven month obliques, you have back pain. It's like, I don't think back pain is because of a seven month oblique deficiency. Do you, so do you usually, when you get, when you get someone like a fresh client, do you, do you usually start with a biomechanical approach or do you think about that 90% first? So, I mean, honestly, I think of the nervous system always, I think of specifically the peripheral nervous system. Um, I think there's a lot of people out there that are talking about the CNS and there's merit to that, but every single person I work with, whether they're chronic pain or whether they're performance, I think of the peripheral nervous system, which also improves the autonomics. So I think of that and I think of what implicates that or not implicates, but what, um, impacts that. And so if we're doing back squats and we have horrible biomechanics, you know, suboptimal biomechanics for back squatting, that's a stressor. You know, I'm a horrible deadlifter, but I'm a great squatter. And so I could squat four or five for three, four or five reps, get up metabolically. I'm tired, but my brain wasn't rattled, but trying to deadlift three 15 for a few reps that rattled my brain. So I would need like five minutes of rest versus two minutes of rest.

And so when I look at biomechanics, I think that's massively important for performance just because physics, but when it comes to, you know, actually allowing the nervous system to do and be balanced, if we're doing a ton of movements that are not biomechanically efficient for us, that does take more energy. And I think there's a time and place for that. But if we're dealing with people that are in pain or anything like that, that could be what sets, you know, off somebody's pain levels. So, I mean, I just did it the other week to a guy and I didn't need you, but he did some front squats and he's all sorts of direct right now. So to me, I'm like, all right, like mechanically it was great. He didn't move in a way that would make me think he hurt anything, but whatever it was, it stressed his system and threw him overboard. And now he's like, bro, I feel horrible right now. So you don't do front squats anymore. We're going to do box squats because he's actually more comfortable doing back squats and box squats. So I do look at biomechanics.

I think they're incredibly important, but I also don't think they're the end all be all. Yeah. So when you differentiate it into a sense of risk peripheral, are you, so are you talking about then, uh, like peripheral neurology in regards to like to say the, uh, the divisions after they come out of the IVF? Are you talking about like just autonomic, um, sympathetic, parasympathetic, is that actually peripheral? It is peripheral. It's outside the spine, huh? Yep. That's, that's how I would, that's how I explained it at least. Um, yes, I do look at the autonomics. I don't check HRV with every single person, but just trying to keep them in the back of my head of, Hey, if you're doing back squats and you squat like a dog trying to go outside, you know, maybe that's not the best movement for you. And maybe that's a stressor or, you know, maybe your femur length is the wrong length for that type of squat. So we've got to find something else to not stress the system too much. Um, but then I also think of like, Hey, you are limited in this specific movement because you actually have some adverse neural tension. So I was dealing with somebody today. It was like, I just can't seem to get like my shoulder in the right place. It feels really weird. So I put them on the table and I was like, Oh yeah, your ulnar nerve is like screaming because your neck let's do this. And then we took care of, you know, proximal stuff, neck surgical stuff. And then she was like, wow, I feel like I have more mobility. And then she was able to do the movement and she felt great. Yeah. I think watching you on YouTube is going to be entertaining for people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You get the movements going on. I'm kind of limited by this microphone by me. I've, I've made a mistake in hitting it quite a few times before. Um, so, uh, just tangent question on that is then that, so you went into a little, the peripheral neurology, non-sympathetic or parasympathetic. When you have someone who doesn't have any of those restrictions with, um, say the ulnar nerve or the sciatic nerve or any of that stuff, neural tension, then, so if you have them just being gassed out by deadlifts, like what you would, is there a way to mitigate that risk or fatigue of the, of the, uh, autonomic system while they're actually lifting? Yeah, there is. Well, yes, there is, but it depends on their goals, right? So everything that I do at least is outcome-based. So it's whatever they're looking for. Let's say you want to be an Olympic lifter, snatch deadlifts are in your program. I don't know what to tell you, but you have to be able to snatch if you want to compete. And if you're not good at that deadlift and it crushes you too bad, pick another goal. So there's one of those where it's like, Hey, that's part of your job. Um, it's, but if it's not like, let's say you're just trying to play, you know, football, maybe I pick a different deadlift. Maybe I go with a chop bar deadlift.

Maybe we pull from the blocks. Maybe we just do RDLs. Maybe we do single leg stuff. I've seen a dude do 315 pounds, single leg deadlifts for 10. So I know we can do the bilateral deficit to our advantage as well without inherently overloading the system. So I mean, it, it's going to come back down to the outcome. If you're a power lifter, you have to deadlift, even if they hurt. Have you ever told anyone then that if, if their system just doesn't like that movement and they pick that sport, just tell them, I strongly suggest you just change sports and passions. No, that doesn't go over too well. Um, that's like, uh, that's like telling an endurance runner that's 230 pounds. Like, Hey, maybe you shouldn't be an endurance runner. Maybe you should be a sprinter. Like, but I love endurance running. All right, that's fine. Like, I'm not going to tell them not to, but I will give them good expectations. Like, Hey, based on the last 10 years of doing this, having seen this so many times, you're probably just not going to be a great deadlifter.

Well, let's make your squat super strong. So your total is fine. So, you know, you have to have realistic conversations. You can't sugarcoat it, but you can't be a dick, you know, like, you know, it's a human profession. Like we're people, like it's a people profession. You can't just be like, you're not, you're not five foot three. You're not meant to be an Olympic lifter. You're not Chinese. Sorry. You can't do that. You know, people want to do stuff and you got to find a way to make it work. Yeah. But I always wonder the two, like with their, like, what are their end all goals with it? Like, like for all we know, like some of these people, they get into like, um, they get in lifting sports, but it was really just because they wanted a six pack and couldn't you just transition them? Right. Yeah. That's a tough one to do because most of the time that's a subconscious value structure that they're not aware that they have. So I've had this conversation countless times with clients in my office where they come in and they're like, well, I want to lose weight. Why do you want to lose weight? Well, because I need to, why do you need to? And then lo and behold, they're like, I want to be crossfit because I want to lose weight. Because if I don't lose weight, I can't get a boyfriend.

And if I can't get a boyfriend, I can't get married or have kids. So I really want to have kids. So I want to lose weight. And you can't just throw that at them on day one. I've made that mistake where I was like, you don't want to lose weight. You just want to get married. And that's on day one. And they're like, no, I can't know. And it's a relationship building thing, which I think is where coaches arguably in some cases have the ability to do that better than clinicians. Cause at the end of the day, like if you have the same patient for four years for knee pain, not too sure you're really helping them. So coaches, you know, like Jeff Barron, for example, Dr. Barron, he's a physical therapist that is about five minutes from me. He'll send people to me when he's done with them. And that's, you know, how it works. Like it's continuation. And when people are out of my scope, I send to him, but I have the capacity to talk to these people every single day because they're in the gym, whereas they may not be in the clinic every single day for two hours. Right. So as you know, the relationship deepens and trust is earned, not just given, but earned clients eventually open up and they're like, Hey, yeah, actually, um, kind of, you know, don't want to do this CrossFit thing. I kind of thought you were going to be upset at me if I chose not to do CrossFit and just do Olympic lifting. And then, you know, as the coach or whoever, the clinician coach, whatever, you got to be able to not judge that. And that has to be transparent that they can come to you like that. And then you can be like, yeah, awesome. You want to do just weightlifting and some curls and calf raises. Let's go.

Yeah. Calf raises and curls. I'm pretty sure we can get away with a lot less injuries like that, right? Yeah. You can superset them. I'm telling you right now, it saves a lot of time while you're doing the calf raise, you can do the bicep curl and then you'll, yeah, it works. Yeah. But it almost looks like you're just trying to be a Dragon Ball Z character right now. You're just like ramping up like that, dude. Um, well, I'm not going to take 47 episodes to go super saiyan. I'll do it a lot. Wait, is that how, is that how long that took? Wait, I want, was there actually that many episodes of Dragon Ball Z?

Wait, first of all, all the episodes now, cause Dragon Ball Z is the best thing ever for cartoons. Um, yeah, dude, there's, there's hundreds of episodes and they just finished up Dragon Ball Super, which is the new, uh, series as well. I'm a huge nerd. Yeah. Well, what is this about? What I, so I've only seen that I've seen pictures of it and a couple of small animations and I've seen that kid in a park on that YouTube video. Who's just losing his mind? Have you seen that? You haven't seen that later today. Yeah. It's, it's great. Like just the passion. And this kid's like 10 years old. Just like, he's ramping up like three different times, like losing his shit. Um, but no, I've never actually seen it.

I've never seen it. Um, yeah, you need to, you need to see it. Like you'll lose your mind. Um, I love it. I love Dragon Ball Z. I grew up on that stuff. So what, wait, so what is the backstory of Dragon Ball Z? I'm curious. Well, Dragon Ball Z is based on the cartoon Dragon Ball. So Dragon Ball Goku, he's basically this alien kid with a tail who was a Saiyan. And then he grows up and does all these cool things. And then the next series, Dragon Ball Z happens and Dragon Ball Z is basically a continuation of Dragon Ball throughout Dragon Ball Z. He like completely changes his power levels. Like he powers up. And every time he comes across a new challenge, he basically overcomes it and he's excited for every challenge. And he'll even say it in the series. He's like, I don't know why I'm excited to fight you die, but I really want to fight you. And then he powers up and he constantly wins except for one fight where his son actually won Gohan. But then after that, it went back to Goku being the hero.

And then in Dragon Ball Super, it's like 15 something years after Dragon Ball's team move on. It's great, dude. You got to watch it. Wait, so is this really a cartoon that has a monologue in the middle? Like he's, he's, he's thinking to himself or speaking to himself in the corner before he beats people up? He's so deep. I mean, that's a really oversimplified way of looking at it. Um, yeah, but yeah, that's kind of it, I guess. Yeah, totally. Okay. I will watch a couple Dragon Ball Zs and get back to you. Great. Everyone is going to know how nerdy I am now. Fantastic. Wait, so besides Dragon Ball Z, what is the other type of t-shirt that you would wear?

The other type of t-shirt? Yeah, because I know you got a Dragon Ball Z t-shirt probably. No, I don't have a Dragon Ball t-shirt, actually. I should have one. Yeah, why not? Because I've never thought to buy one, I guess. I don't know. If I said the words up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, A, B, start, what would you think? It's A, B, A, select start. Oh. I get really lives. Is that contra? Yeah. Yeah, man, but you got to hit select start because you'd mess that up. You're right. There was actually, so actually recently last year I went to, I was staying somewhere and someone's Netflix was already on the TV, so I wanted to put my Netflix on and it was in Spanish and I can't read Spanish.

I'm like, how the hell do I log out of this thing, right? So I go on to Google and check it out and literally to get out of it was you take the little thing and you do up, down, up, down, left, right. And I'm like, you got to be shitting me. So that's what it was. It logs you out. It worked. That's awesome. Yeah. So tangent back a little bit. So I remember we were eating, I asked you about this and you actually blew my mind with it. I was thinking about it later. So we were talking about the dynamic systems theory. So dynamic systems theory is external stimulus to create a change in movement that's not necessarily wrong in so many words, right?

And you brought up the internal stimulus. Yeah. Would be that, would that be the biome that you want to lead into? Yeah. So I still think that's external to the central nervous system. So I mean, when I think of dynamical systems theory, I think of we don't inherently have a pre-programmed concept of motor learning. We're like, if I was to tell you to pick up your coffee mug and you had no thumb, you would still figure out a way to do it because the environment has now changed because you have no thumb. But if I also gave you a thumb, you could change the movement again. So that's one way of looking at it.

I also think of what influences movement could be tightness, pain, whatever. So if I have an injury and I have pain that can change motor control. But if I have no injury, but I still have pain, that can change motor control as well. Well, we know that digestive stuff can cause joint pain. That's inflammation. So let's say you have some form of microbiome assault or insult to the microbiome. Let's say like for me, for example, I went to Egypt in January to teach and I ate some of the local food and I definitely got a little sick and I did a stool analysis and there's some stuff in my gut and it's not healthy for it to be there.

And I did have some level of pain and so by changing that or basically killing it, quote unquote, pain levels went away and now I can move in a comfortable way again. So it isn't inherently going to be just about an external cues or external environment. You know, it could be RNT, like reactive neuromuscular training. That could be the external environment that changes movement. It could be how I might word something when I'm thinking about how to change movement. I might tell you, hey, do your high knees like you're at the beach trying to step out of the water. That gives context to the person so they know what I'm trying to accomplish versus just, hey, get your knees up.

But at the same time, maybe your hip hurts inflection because you have inflammation and by getting rid of inflammation, your hip no longer hurts. And now you can do high knees without me having to coach you, you know, all up and down the turf. So when I think of like movement and systems, I don't think of it as in, you know, isolation. Like I don't think in very binary terms like that. I don't think just this or that, but I'm trying to think always in the gray. And I think the immune system really does in a way play a role with movement. I don't have any like peer-reviewed studies to say like, hey, your TH cells are here.

So your back squat is going to look like this. I don't have studies to show that, but I have seen people change their white blood cell levels and their body feels better and then they move better. I've seen that quite a bit. So again, I don't have the, you know, literature to back that, but from the anecdotal, which of course is not synonymous with evidence, but I've seen it enough times to know something is there, like something. I don't know what it is yet, but I can tell you that if you get a better immune system, we tend to recover better from training. We tend to see more improved mobility and when we have more improved mobility, we tend to naturally just find a good groove or a good pattern to work with them.

So I actually first heard that from Anna Hartman three something years ago when I went to Craig Liebenson's, you know, conference that's out here in Arizona at Exos. And I remember talking to Eric Dannenberg, who's a phenomenal strength coach with Exos. He's their performance manager at the Phoenix center here. And we had been chatting back and forth and I was like, yeah, there's something to do with the gut. And Eric was obviously at the conference because it's Exos and Anna said it. And then Eric was like, yo, like that's kind of what you were saying, right? I was like, yeah, man, like that's cool that other people are starting to see that.

So from like the enteric nervous system, how it also is implicated in movement, I'm, I'm still not 100% on the why or the how, but I've seen it enough times to know that there's that there's some sort of connection there and it's so complex per person that I don't think we can ever say it's this because for me, my parasite for someone else, it could be that they have celiac and they don't know it. And then that causes pain and then they just don't want to move a certain way, et cetera. So I know something is there, but I can't tell you exactly how it's there yet, which is where again, after I finished med school, maybe down the road, I'll get really curious and just go get a PhD to figure something out.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, actually, that would probably be a good route for that. Either, either that or, either that or we can all just trust your observations because you're a Dragon Ball Z fan. You can't go wrong with a Dragon Ball Z fan. That's like a scientific fact. Yeah. There's a study out there on that. I'll get a PhD in that. Yeah. Was there a correlation between people thinking the immune system health and lifting was in correlation with their fanatic nature of Dragon Ball Z? I don't know. Now the word is out. I am like, I have a Dragon Ball Z coffee mug that as I pour my hot coffee into it, it like changes colors and it gets all like powered up.

It's great. I thought you were going to say you had a costume. It's this one, coffee mug and costume. I was like, yes, he's going to have a costume. I can't wait. Maybe next Halloween. Maybe I'll go keto and get super lean. I'm just kidding. I wouldn't go keto. I would eat a lot of carbs. You would dominate the carbs, I'm sure. Yeah. You would chew the shit out of those carbs. 100%. So then how would a coach or clinician really be able to identify a possible correlation between those two? Well, if they have someone sitting in front of them, if they have hip pain, how would they know to look? Well, I think you have to run through your own, you know, your process, your, you know, checklist.

So you got to rule out the red flags, obviously. And again, I'm not a clinician yet, at least I'm a strength coach. So my checklist will be a little bit different than like what yours would be or like what Jeff Barron's would be or what Dr. Snell, you know, anything like Dr. Ramos, any of those guys. My checklist is slightly different, but I will ask questions that probed. Like I'll ask about sleep. Like, hey, how many hours of sleep do you get a night? Awesome. When do you go to bed? When do you wake up? How many times a night do you wake up? Why do you wake up? You know, if you're waking up at 2 a.m. every day, that's not normal.

Something's there. Do I know what it is? No, I don't. When your blood pressure is high, I don't know why it's high. I just know it's high. It's like the FMS. I have no idea why you move that way. I just know that you're presenting like this based on some guy telling me on a napkin that I'm supposed to move this way. Napkin. I'm pretty sure that's what he told me when I asked him like years ago when I went through the FMS because he, him and Lee Burton taught my FMS. You know, 23 or something like that. And I asked him and I'm pretty sure they said that they like figured it out on a napkin, which is pretty cool.

I think that was the mobility stability thing, I think. Or, oh no, I think maybe, I thought it was, yeah, like the alternating joint system, I think. Yeah, regional interdependence. Yeah. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I just think like in terms, I don't know where I was going with that one because then I got sidetracked as soon as I said napkin. Yeah. Oh, gosh. You were going to. There's something wrong there. You woke up at two in the morning. There's something wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, I don't know why, but I just know that you shouldn't be doing that. So that's something that I put in the back of my mind or I write it down as a note.

And I just hold on to that for now because I can't just dig into just that. So it's similar to blood pressure. I know it's high. I don't know why. I just know that at some point I'm going to either have to refer that out or I'm going to have to like give you nutritional guidance that might help you with your blood pressure or whatever. So that's one of the things that I do is I ask a ton of probing questions. I also go into bowel movements with every single client. Like together, like in neighboring stalls? No. That's called over delivering. I'm absolutely not going to over deliver that much. I've had clients, though.

One of my clients, when we ordered a stool test, he actually sent me a photo of his stool. And I was like, dude, I didn't need photos of your stool, man. You just have to send me the – just send the report in and let me see what's in there. Maybe you wanted to see – he thought you'd want to see the stool in its natural environment. I have no idea. To this day, he's like, I don't know. I don't know. He's in the military. So you know how like sometimes they're just like, here you go. But I still have him as a client. He's a great client. He's a great dude. And every chance I have, I'll make fun of him for it.

Do you still have the picture? No, absolutely. No, I don't. You don't put them on your refrigerator into the magnets? No, no, no, no. I don't put magnets on my refrigerator. That's weird. Really? Yeah. I don't have kids or anything. Like, well, I don't have to like put a homework or A pluses on my fridge. Well, what do you do with the magnets when you get them? Someone sends you magnets. No. No one sends you any magnets. Really? Yeah. Somebody sends me magnets. Who does that? Like bottle openers. No one sent you a bottle opener magnet or something like that. Why would I get a bottle opener magnet?

People get, I have them. I have a bunch of magnets all over my thing. They're not from like places I visited. They're like, like someone will send out like a wedding invite or sorry, not the invite to save the date. And then it's a magnet. Yeah. Well, apparently I don't get invited to enough weddings. Nobody likes me. So yeah. I'll go into stool testing or like, I'll ask them questions like, Hey, how many bowel movements today? One, two, what time of day? Let's look at the Bristol stool chart. What number are you? Are you a smooth criminal or are you clumpy and kind of dehydrated? How many wipes does it take?

Are you taking 10 wipes? That could mean some form of biliary dyskinesis, which means now you're not getting enough bile flow, which means you're not emulsifying fats, which means now you're smearing your stool. When you have backed up gallbladder, that could mean something. So there's a lot that I ask that gives me some tells to where I can be like, all right, maybe I got to refer that out to that person because that's their expertise or specialty. Or maybe that's something I can address on my own by telling them to chew their food more or take some apple cider vinegar or an enzyme support or whatever.

So the questions, you know, are probing. I think that that always helps. I don't know if you're taught that when you're in PT school or chiro school, because I'm obviously not a PT or chiro, but those kinds of questions can tell a lot. You know, I've had people tell me, yeah, I take 10 wipes. And a lot of these are like military folks that I work with where they're either special forces or special operations. And they'll come back and say, yeah, I take about 10 to 12 wipes. And I always have knee pain, so I don't like to squat. And then we go after the cause of the wipes issue. And then my knee feels great.

Like I haven't had knee pain in three months and I had knee pain for seven years. So I see a lot of that. Do you ever have, what would you think if someone said they clogged toilets? I'd want to know what they mean by that. Like that would, my first thought would be like, are you like trying to flush everything at once or is it because it is a giant tool? Like what's going on? Maybe there's some irritation in the gut that makes them actually go too much. Maybe they eat a lot of food. So I was just curious because I mean, I would imagine it would be, I'm trying to think of all the types of questions that you'd probably get, you know, like, or type of statements you'd probably get.

Um, if somebody tells me that they clogged their toilet, you know, I'm going to ask them like, well, what do you mean? Is it because you poop and then you throw all your toilet paper in the same one and you try to flush it all at once to conserve water? Cause I have seen that. Like sometimes people are not fully aware that like, maybe that's not the best way to go about that. And I get it. They want to conserve water, but I have seen that. And then it's like, why don't you just give a courtesy flush? Right. And so, but those are like legit things that you'll hear back. Um, but then again, if it's like, Hey, yeah, I do actually have quite a bit and it's very runny.

It's kind of diarrhea. That's a sign right there. Like, and as a PT or a chiro, maybe that's not within your scope or that's not within your comfort zone. And so you're like, you know what? I got this great functional medicine guy. This doc's right across the hall. I'm going to send you over there. Um, you know, but those are all things that I think people should be looking at more. And I think they will because people are like physicians in medicine is starting to realize that again, like it's not just one system, but it's a system of systems that interact with each other. Yeah. I know that with, um, at least when I was in school, it was about 10 years ago.

So we didn't really go, I mean, I don't think we went over stool samples at all. Um, we went over like basic, like what is the digestive system, but like if their schooling is anything like how mine was, we don't know crap about it. That's a, that's a, uh, play on words. Um, well, like really we don't like you, well, you learn about neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, right? The vagus nerve and all the cranial nerves and all that. I mean, you learn about that in undergrad, the vagus nerve, pretty important, right? Like, I think we can all agree that we kind of need that to live like 85 ish, 90 ish percent afferent.

So what does that tell us? Like it goes right to the gut and you know, that's why the gut's considered like the second brain. Um, and that's why there's so, it's, it's an exploding science now because people are starting to realize that. And so research is looking at it. I don't, I don't think we know enough yet to be like, yes, your gut should look like this. Cause I think it's just as individualized as a thumbprint, but I think we know enough now to know like, Hey, there's something about that that does impact a lot of other stuff. So maybe it's tough. So when, um, I was looking up a couple of things before we went on, uh, uh, based upon what you told me to look up and, uh, I saw that there was, um, there was, there was one article which kind of just like narrowed it to a very simple, like, I think we need to take probiotics.

What are your thoughts on that? Um, I believe we need diversity. So, um, when it comes to diversity, adding probiotics might actually not be good. And I used to think, you know, maybe a few years back, it's like, yeah, probiotics, everybody should be on them. I can think about one client right now. You know, the whole argument against antibiotics is that it kills off everything in the gut and it's bad for you, blah, blah, blah. I had a client, uh, about a year ago or so he had to have surgery and then he, he always had like kind of weirdish bowel movements. Um, but he ended up going on antibiotics and it's like, you're going to have to, you're having surgery.

And so it is what it is. Everything improved with the antibiotics. He like killed off something in his gut is what I would hypothesize and his bowel movements improved like drastically. He was like, dude, I haven't had a solid poop like this in years. And I took antibiotics. Aren't I supposed to have diarrhea? And I was like, I kind of thought you were, um, and I went to a few conferences and there was a lot of presentation on microbiology from various researchers and physicians. And it was really interesting to hear them say that it's diversity, not just a lot of lactobacillus. Like you can have too much of a good thing.

So I think where we're at right now is we know it should be diverse and it's independent and individualized per person as to what it should look like, which is why I think, you know, we look at something like, um, you biome or whatever it is. And it's like, Oh, this is your gut bacteria, but you should be over here. Well, for who, you know, like where's your data coming from? If we take probiotics, we could find ourselves getting more backed up. I've seen that where people like they start to feel worse and then you take the probiotics away and you just say, Hey, have some kimchi or some sauerkraut.

And then, you know, just do that. And then they feel better without having to take a probiotic. So I've seen that quite a bit. So I would say not everyone should be on probiotics, but a giant majority of people could definitely benefit from it. Okay. I think you said earlier too, that the, so everyone's gut profile is, uh, unique as a thumbprint. Is that what you said? Or did I hear that somewhere else? No, yeah. It's like, it's a fingerprint, right? It's super, super unique. Like what you have in your gut is going to be based on how you were born, um, how you were fed, were you breastfed, were you formula fed, were you a cesarean section, were you a vaginal birth, were you given antibiotics right away at birth?

You know, there's so many factors that go into that. Your biome will be individualized. Um, where you're overly sanitizing things. Um, you know, do you wipe everything down with like sanitary wipes in the house to make your living room as clean as an operating room? Maybe that's not the best thing for a child and their microbiome will be different because of it, you know? So it's individualized. Can they, if, if they grew up in a, like say a sterile environment like that, can they, can someone change it, change their microbiome or is it kind of, they're stuck with that? Um, from my reading and my understanding, you can maybe change it with a fecal transplant, but you're not going to take it.

You're not going to change it by taking a probiotic. So we did talk about this. Well, fecal transplant. Yeah. I think we were talking about it at one point. Yeah, we were. Um, so again, like even that is beyond my scope. Like I would never tell somebody to do that, but I've had clients actually do it. Uh, and it was incredible for them. And that was one of the first clues in my brain where I was like, Hey, you have not had any success with any of the mobility work we've done. I've done a million to one pretzels with you. I've done all the mobility while it's smashing and mashing and flossing and all that stuff.

And you haven't gotten any better. And I've, I've been working with you three times a week for a year and a half. And then it turns out they got C diff, people transplant, things get better. And it's like, Whoa, you just improved all of your movement and you had a fecal transplant. You had stool put up there and you're squatting cleanly now. Um, so I I've seen it really work well for a lot of folks. Um, I was at a toxicology conference, uh, earlier in the spring, last spring, whatever. And there was a lot of good data out there showing how it could be used for people that are on the spectrum and how they've shown that by doing that, like their symptoms basically dropped quite a bit.

So I, I'm not, that's not my expertise. I just know enough to be like, yeah, I know that there's something going on there. Um, so as, as for how a fecal transplant is done, I'm not, that's not where I, that's not where I reside within my job, but I do know I've seen it work with my clients in the past. So, well, how to, how to make you feel when, uh, all of the work that you guys have tried was improved mainly with a fecal transplant at that point with those people. Oh, pump me up, man. One, they got better. Like, I don't care. Like if, if I'm not the cup of tea for somebody to get better and they get better with something else, cool.

Like as long as you got better, cause that's what I'm here for. Two, uh, I mean, it was exciting for me because I was like, Oh crap, I've been wrong. And I get really excited when I'm wrong. Like if I'm wrong about something and it's shown to me like, Hey, you're wrong. Like this is, you didn't think about it this way to me. Like I get really pumped. I'll go buy books on books on books and read about it for hours on end. And, um, so for me, I was pretty excited because it opened up a whole new world to me and it led me down the path that I'm in now. So I tend not to get upset when I'm wrong. I tend to kind of be like, yeah, awesome.

I figured something out and I learned. Yeah. I think, uh, do you remember me talking about, uh, getting, getting, uh, water from the air in, in Colorado? You, you slept, you slept on the answer. I was telling, I was telling Cody this, uh, like a couple of weeks back, I was like, man, I was trying to stump ban there at the table for a while. And finally, I thought I got you the very, I got it. I got you at the very end because we were talking about, we had a couple of beers, right? And I was like, man, we got to be hydrated in the morning. Got to drink some water. You're like, you'll never beat ADH.

And, uh, you said something about osmolarity, I think. And, uh, I said, well, what if I eat a bunch of salts and then my osmolarity is higher than the surrounding environment and actually suck water in at night? And then you had to think about it. How many beers in were we, man? Um, uh, I think good three, maybe four. We're having a good time. That's for sure. I remember me being like, you're not being ADH. Like you're just going to like alcohol in that pituitary gland, man. Yeah. That's yeah. But I don't remember pulling air or water from the air. I was really, I was, uh, I remember it was the first time that you finally stopped and you didn't have an answer.

So you woke up the next morning, right before you talked to Brennan. Um, and, uh, you said, you told me the answer is no, it's not possible. You can't beat ADH. I remember going home and getting on my, uh, library. And I remember like pulling up PubMed real quick and then like pulling something into my library. Yeah. My, I can get whatever I want, like the full studies. I can get any full study I want from my library from grad school. So I remember pulling something up and being like, yeah, I didn't think that was possible. Yeah. You can get anything you want. Damn. You're lucky. Just about, man.

I only had like two or three studies so far where I can't get it. Um, I, it's not always immediately available, but I can put in a request and my librarian will actually, whoever that is, I've never met them, but they go out and we find it and they send it to me. Wow. Journals from like 1957, like scanned in and like the little spiral thing is scan, like it's scan and then they email me the scan pages. Wow. Can't highlight anything like on the laptop. I can't use the highlight function cause it's just a scan, but it's still cool. Like, yeah, the library is great, man. I get almost anything. Yeah.

You should almost like send them a Christmas card. Like they, they got, they got up, took that out of the spiral bound book. Xerox sent it in. Grad school cost me a lot of cash. So they don't. Um, so tangenting back to the microbiome, just to kind of reiterate, for people, um, other than just like squatting improvements or knees feeling better. Is there any other systemic or common things that people think, holy crap, maybe I should actually think about doing this. Yeah. The aerobic system. So I think one, whenever we think about improving movement, if we ever want to improve performance, we have to improve the aerobic system.

I think one of the best ways, if not the best way to improve your range of motion is by improving your aerobic system. Now, when I think of the aerobic system, I don't think of just your lungs and VO two max. Like I'm thinking cardiovascular. Yes. Cardio pulmonary. Yes. Uh, oxidative capacity of your muscles. Absolutely. But I'm also thinking mitochondrial function. So if I can essentially, whatever, improve your mitochondrial function or actually not improve the function, they're not necessarily going to repair the damaged ones, but rather protect them, you know, through gut health stuff, better digestion, more antioxidants, like from vegetables and all the phytochemicals you get from that, um, anything that kind of helps support those systems that improves mobility in many, many, many cases.

Now, again, it's not, that's very binary of me to say there's black and white. I'm trying to always live in the gray and there's a million and one shades of gray. There's a lot more than just 50. There's a million and ones. So, well, I think there's fit. What was the second movie called? 52, 51. I don't know. I never saw the first one. I never read the books. I never saw the second one. How was the first one? Did you like the movie? No, you're not going to get me in this. Yeah. I'm quicker than that. No, I've never seen that. Um, actually I think I'm pretty sure I'm the last person on the planet who has not seen Frozen and I'm damn proud of it.

I've never seen Frozen. Good. We're a brotherhood. We should start a clan. Be part of something. Not, not Frozen tribe. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Nope. We'll just call it melted. Yeah. Well, does it have in the same font and everything walking around Disneyland like that? I do. I love Disneyland. I'd do that. I'd walk around like that. Really? You like Disneyland? Which part of the structure do you usually park in? Goofy? Uh, I usually just take an Uber because I don't stay at the resort. I don't have to deal with the parking, but yeah, I love Disneyland, dude. Who doesn't love Disneyland? I don't like Disneyland, actually.

I'm not a fan. That's because you're in California, right? Uh, well, yeah. So, yeah. But the, so they used to have the California pass, which was kind of like, hey, you're around here. You might as well just come. And then now there's actually no California discount. Um, but besides that, I think the last time I went was probably 10 plus years ago. And my goal was to go on Soarin' over California. That was such a good ride. Right. I've never been on it because I went there and there was a four hour wait because I could still not get that fast tracks because I was too late to get the fast tracks.

I'm like, it's bullshit. Like, why don't they just make it like you go into a carnival, you don't have to pay to get in, but you pay for each ride or something. Like, I don't want to pay to get in and realize I can't go on a stupid ride. That's a good point, but that wouldn't make them as much money and there's enough people out there that want to go. So you're S.O.L. I know. I, I'm, I'm totally about boycotting things like that and you boycott it and they'll change. Just don't just, just strangle, hold their money. That's it. Yeah. Everyone has to boycott it. All the millions per day have to boycott it.

I know. Let's start the movement. I'm telling you the melted movement. We're down. Awesome. Yeah. Wait, where were we before we went on that? Uh, you're, you're talking about the aerobic system and how, uh, there's more than 50 something because we talked about 50 shades of gray. Yeah. I was just saying that, like, I know that, you know, when I say mitochondrial health, boom, mobility, that's very binary. That's very like this or that. Um, and that's not by any means what I mean by that. There's a million and one shades of gray that we have to live within. But if we improve aerobic capacity, we can essentially improve the autonomics and that can improve a ton of mobility and ranges of motion.

So when I think of the aerobic capacity, again, I don't just think of cardiopulmonary or cardiovascular. I think of oxidative capacity of muscles. So, you know, slow twitch and all that. And then as well as mitochondrial protection. So how efficient is our electron transport chain, how efficient is the Krebs cycle, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot that kind of can go into that. But when we seem, when I, from what I've seen, when those things kind of improve, I see ranges of motion improve. So why do you, why do you think I'm trying to think of the mechanical, cause I heard energy system and then motion change.

Yeah. So I think one, when, and again, this is just what I'm thinking. I don't have evidence. And if there's any listener out there that can shoot me the data or show me where I'm not correcting my thinking, I'd absolutely love that. But if we are in a fight or flight, constant state of fight or flight, we tend to get a little bit more toned up. And so by getting us to get out of fight or flight, we tend to get a little bit less toned up. That would be my best guess on like yoga, for example, yoga is just relaxing and you breathe and all of a sudden you have more mobility and you do a bunch of like namaste and woosa and, you know, just chilling and you calm down in our day and age.

We're bombarded by technology and all this stuff that we're never able to calm down. Well, if we can't use sugars or fuel sources in general, in the presence of oxygen, think about how less efficient energy production becomes. So now all of a sudden we're burning sugars without the presence of oxygen. Now we have lactate and lactate has implications on the nervous system. And now all of a sudden we're in fight or flight simply because we can't use oxygen. Even if you have great CO2 and you're still jacked up under the hood for whatever reason. And I think that's where like medicine can use medically supervised hypoxic training to actually improve states of disease because you're forcing somebody into a position that they have to make new mitochondria, which means they can make more ATP, which means they can essentially become more sensitive to insulin or whatever.

And that can help with disease processes and stuff like that. I think of everything in terms of adaptation. So I don't think of it as in like high carb diabetes. I don't think of it as in like hyper, you know, lipidemia diabetes. I think of it as in the cell is responding to an environment and it's adapting. And I think by us getting people to adapt to being more aerobic, whatever that might be for them, then we help out their mobility. So it could be, Hey dude, stop doing five rounds for time of X, Y, Z exercises. And why don't you just go for a 45 minute walk today and see how you feel. And a lot of the times those people that are five rounds for time, it's really, really tough for them to do the walk.

So I'm working with the CrossFitter right now who lives in England. So my clients live all over the world. This, this CrossFitter, she was a runner as well. And she had some stuff that we had to back off training when she hired me, she was going to have elbow surgery because she had bilateral, you know, elbow pain and getting her to walk 45 minutes was tough. And it was an interesting conversation because it's kind of like, Hey, you usually can run for an hour or two straight. I told you to walk for 45 minutes and that was hard. So there's, you see that. So by getting her to walk more and just calming her system down, you know, allowing her to stop being like in a fight or flight, then her digestion can improve.

And if we improve digestion, we can improve inflammation or optimize inflammation because you don't want to remove inflammation. You need inflammation, but you don't want too much. So again, I think it's all about finding balance. I guess that's where like, there's no answer per client because humans are complex as all shit. So you have to, you know, look at them from an individual and equals one. And I think also side tangent, I think that's where research is super limited is research tells us like, this was the average, this is the mean, and this is the median and blah, blah, blah. I want to see the individual differences between every single subject between, between subject one and two.

I want to know the difference between one and three. I want to know the difference between one and four. I want to know the difference two and four. I want that difference. You're never going to get that. It's like that costs way too much cash. So I think that's a limiting factor is that clinicians tend to be like, show me the evidence. And it's kind of like, ah, we see it enough. Like the first pilot didn't have a pilot, you know, like if we're going to wait around for the FAA to be created, we'd never have pilots. I think that's where, again, side tangent. We may not know every little bit of why, but if we just see it enough times and know that that kind of thing works, like why not use it?

So again, coming back to the whole aerobic system, I can't tell you exactly why my client, Alex, for example, he lives in Mexico. We really didn't do a ton of mobility work with him, but we did a lot of lifestyle work where he was like, Hey man, like we're going to do a lot of stuff. That's going to optimize your systems, nutrition, training, we're going to make you more aerobic. I'm going to make sure that the program specifically makes you more aerobic, but not just the program, all the other stuff, how you think about things, et cetera. We're going to change your mindset and he's hitting deeper squats, no pain, full depth, whereas he never could hit full depth and he's hitting PDRs, but it wasn't because we stretched them.

And again, I think that also came back down to, and it's by no means, I'm not trying to like, you know, shoot anyone down, but like mobility wide, you know, Kelly did a great job, like showing people like, Hey, you need to own your own shit. You need to take care of yourself. Don't wait to where you're hurt to go to a doctor. So Kelly, I think did a brilliant job at bringing that to market and showing people they can take care of themselves with simple tools, no less, but also watching people do mobility wide for two, three, four years and not actually have noticeable, sustainable, permanent changes that also had my wheels turning.

And then, I mean, I did, I kind of shot at FMS earlier, but I did FMS and I did over 12,000 of them. And I saw a lot of people score high scores, no asymmetries, no ones, you know, 15 to 21, not even just 14, but like higher, higher numbers. They were getting hurt and having pain yet. People that are scoring under 14 or had asymmetries, they were getting fitter or more fit, stronger, whatever, no pain or injury. But the thing that I saw that was in common with them, like CrossFitters, for example, because that's really where I did a lot of the FMS is I would do a lot of them at a CrossFit gym, was they are super typically dialed in with food, right?

Whether it's some, you know, macro template or whatever, they typically are a little bit more conscious of, hey, I've got to have vegetables. Hey, I've got to be off inflammatory foods that are typically inflammatory for me, etc. They tend to just have higher quality food, whereas, you know, other athletes didn't always. And I think it's coming back to like Exos has done a great job with that where, you know, the chefs in their kitchen, it's all organic grass fed, stuff like that. So I think it's coming around. But at the time, you know, the 2008, 2009 mark, CrossFitters were super good at eating clean.

They were moving like crap. They weren't getting pain. They weren't getting hurt. And it also made me think like, wow, like your FMS score is horrible, but you're getting better and you're eating clean and you're focusing on your recovery and your sleep. It wasn't until probably three years ago that I started to like study the nervous system and realize like, wow, actually all of that impacts the nervous system. That might be why they didn't have injuries or get hurt. So I think that's where I would define that as they just improved aerobically because you have instead of five mitochondria, this is just a number, but five mitochondria to take on five pyruvate molecules or 10 pyruvate molecules for the five glucose.

Now you have 20 mitochondria and you can take on more glucose, which means you can be more aerobic, which means you're not going to be so stressed. You're not sitting there breathing being anaerobic because you're constantly unable to use sugar in the presence of oxygen or fat in the presence of oxygen or whatever. So that's where my brain at least went with the idea of aerobic. So during that period of time when you're actually done on those FMSs and kind of before you got into the nervous system, I can only imagine what type of mental torment you put yourself through just to try to find the answers to this.

Yeah. So because that's a big, that's a big statement of like, or it's a big observation to realize that people that are, should be getting hurt, aren't getting hurt. And why? Yeah, I, my face met the wall quite a bit. It's like head, meat, wall, bam. And I don't know, or face, meat, palm. I was really frustrated for a long time. So I would, uh, for years assess people for free. Cause I just wanted to learn stuff and I would write out their corrective exercise and all these other things. And it's like, why are you not getting better? Like you're supposed to get better. Like you're doing a Turkish getup and you should have more mobility.

Now I was told you would. And I kept seeing that and I kept being proved wrong. And, you know, over time, as I learned more and more, I went to DNS and I did the DNS stuff and that was great. And then I went and did the PRI stuff and that was awesome. And then I went and did other stuff and I did the SFMA and, um, I started to kind of see like the, the, the, I guess you call it the principles and what did all of these systems do that was the same. And then Poloquin a while back actually told me, look for the common successes. Don't look for the uniqueness. Don't look at what Russia is doing different than China for Olympic lifting.

What are they doing the same that you can replicate to make your people better? And that's when I took a step back. Cause at that moment in time, I was like, mind blown. And I took a step back and I was like, all right, what is DNS doing? What is PRI doing? What is SFMA doing? What is FMS doing? What is everyone doing? What is Mike Boyle doing? And I think what everyone is doing is they're managing the nervous system, the amount of stress they put on it. When you do a seven month oblique, that's not a 400 pound deadlift. That's not taxing on the system as much as a deadlift is. So you're deloading it.

But also the first thing that they typically go after is like, Hey, how are they breathing? PRI talks about it right out the gate. DNS talks about it right out the gate. FMS talked about it. SFMA talked about it. Everyone talked about it. And what does breathing do? Well, breathing is going to impact your nervous system. And that's where I started thinking, Hey, that impacts the nervous system. And that makes people more mobile. I get you to breathe and your hips stop pinching. Interesting. Was it the breathing or was it like the calming down then what else can calm down is calming down going to come from improving, you know, your aerobic capacity, taking you from a 47 minute, five mile run to a 40 minute, five mile run.

Maybe, maybe it's going to come from giving you more selenium, manganese, copper, iron, you know, et cetera. And all those are involved in like Krebs and all that. So, you know, making things more, making things more efficient, maybe that impacts the nervous system. So again, I don't think I know the answer. So like, Hey, this is how it has to be done. But that's where my mind is at right now with what I'm reading and the research I'm doing in grad school and what I'm saying anecdotally is just, if you make people to come full circle more aerobic, they get better. So with, I think you summed that up actually pretty good there.

So, um, I'm actually kind of curious so that you said that, so you brought it back to breathing again, cause I do have a lot of people that like comment on breathing on this, on this show. And, um, the, I know the DNS one, they talk about the secondary stabilization as being, um, primary to movement of extremities. But what I'm hearing you say is the nervous system or the, the calming of the nervous system might be the, the breathing component that's important, not the secondary. Does that sound, what do you think about that? Can you elaborate a little bit? I'm actually not following. So, so I heard you say the breathing component, it's calming, right?

So it helps people be more aerobic, move a little bit better and so on. Um, the DNS model is, so they talk about the depression, the negative pressure of the, uh, of the, of the, of the, uh, uh, uh, thoracic cavity, right? It's a thoracic pressure versus intra-abdominal pressure. Correct. And the intra-abdominal pressure is secondary because of the depression of the diaphragm. So with that being, with that being said, do you think it's the secondary pressure that's, that's improving how people feel with those? Or is it actually the mechanics of getting, uh, the nervous system to calm? I think it could also be lymphatic drainage.

That's something that people haven't really thought about. I think, I think people are overlooking how important the lymphatic system is. Um, this is something that a mentor of mine, Dr. Tom, um, brought up with me a few years ago, uh, basically just made mention of the lymph and I was like, huh? Um, basically sister in a Kylie is down there and by doing breathing, you create intra-abdominal pressure and negative pressure up top. So things squish up, right? And then we change, I think lymph actually has a lot to do with, you know, how we're feeling as well. Um, like ask anyone that's done like a lymph massage and if they get sick the next day, right?

Or ask people like, if they have a massage, do they just feel ill the next day? Um, and then look at, and again, I'm not an autoimmune expert, but multiple scroll, uh, can never say the word MS. We'll just use that MS and blood brain barrier permeability and lactate in the lymph. Um, I've read some research on that. And so I, I think, and again, uh, some of this also comes from Dr. Drobot, who is, uh, somebody that taught me a lot of stuff as well. Um, but the lymph system is huge. And I think also by breathing, we get that movement. So I think there's something in there as well that we may be overlooking.

Um, and again, that's, I'll figure that one out in med school or after med school, maybe boy, that's, I think something could be in there. I can tell you right now that breathing will help you. Um, I think the calming down of the system can cause you to have less tension. So if we go back to like the diaphragm and how it impacts like just by breathing, you calm the nervous system down, you know, you take that deep breath and then you exhale and you do that for two minutes. And all of a sudden you're like, wow, I can squat better. It's probably because you relaxed and you tone down the nervous system.

So that's something that like Mike Robertson out of, uh, I fast, you know, he's out in Indianapolis, Indiana. Yeah. So he's big on like the release and then like the reset and exos does the same thing. They talk about, you know, you got to do your active myofascial release and then you do your myofascial stretching or whatever. That's the release stage. And then you basically reactivate what needs to be reactivated. And I think that's where the breathing comes into play first. So I'll have you do your breathing, get you to relax, and then I'll have you do seven month oblique to get you to activate that thing.

So I think that's where like Reese, what was it from SFMA? It was re release, reset, restore, something like that, where it's like the three hours. I thought it was recycle, reduce, reuse, and close the loop. Yeah. Okay. Captain Planet. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Well, we'll, we'll lower pollution, which will also reduce total body toxic load. And that can help with time too. Which is a whole other thing. Like Dr. Kroenian has a lot of cool data out there in terms of him because he's an environmental medicine doctor. He's got a lot of cool stuff out there with chronic pain and environmental toxins and stuff like that.

Anyways, I thought we were close. I thought we were close system. We don't, we don't get to deal with that. We don't get to deal with that external stimulus stuff. No. Are you, are you being sarcastic? Yeah. I don't pick up on social cues as you know, because we talked about why. So, right. Right. Well, that's why I got us on video to make sure that you saw my eyebrows raised. My client, Josh Furman, he created a rule where he's got to wave his hands if he's being sarcastic so I can know he's being sarcastic. And then I have another client, Meg, who lives in Alaska. And Meg, she'll send me a little GIF or GIF, the GIF.

She'll send me the rainbow one where it's like somebody like holding a rainbow and when she's being sarcastic so I can tell. Well, good. I should have established that in the beginning. You should have. One of these. Yes. Yeah. So, I, where were we at again? External, environmental. External news. Well, there was an environmental doctor, internal medicine doctor. Yeah. Dr. Crinion. Yeah. I don't know what we were talking about with him though. Oh, no. We were just talking about, no, because you said reduce, reuse, recycle. Oh, right, right. And we talked about that. I was like, oh, Dr. Crinion has like cool data on chronic pain and like fibromyalgia and toxicity.

Right. Recycle, reduce, reuse. Yeah. We were talking about like release, reset, reinforce. Oh, yeah. There we go. I'm so sorry to whoever is listening to this. I'm terrible. So, I think of like breathing is like the release, right? You're releasing the tension and then I'm going to go ahead and reset the tension of where I want it to be set. And then I'm going to load it. I'm going to use load to save. So, maybe it looks like crocodile breathing for two or three minutes, get you to calm down, get you to be like woosah and namaste and all that. And then you go and do side point clamshells or seven month oblique or whatever.

And then we go and do some single leg deadlifts to really load it and save it. Right. Now the brain is like, all right, that range of motion is good to go. Awesome. We're going to keep it. And I think that's where mobility wide could be quite beneficial. And maybe that's where people are missing the boat is they just do the stretches and then they go about their day. But something Kelly Stratt did, which was brilliant, was test, treat or mobility, mobilize, whatever, and then retest. And the retest was loading, right? Do a back squat. How does it feel? Tough? Do this drill. Okay. Now go back squatting.

How does it feel? Better? Great. Keep back squatting. Boom. That's the load. Maybe that was why it worked for so many people. So I think that was absolutely brilliant and so masterfully simplified that people were like, oh yeah, that makes sense. But it was like this, this, that. I think that's where like DNS doing the breathing relaxes you and then you do something else where it's like you're in nine month position or whatever. And then you all of a sudden are loaded. Yeah. Is, does Kelly still, um, does he, he must still update all that stuff? I don't know. I haven't looked at mobility wad in like three years.

Yeah. I feel like, uh, I feel like I haven't heard much from him for a while, but, uh, his website looks good. And it's a membership site now, I think. Good for him. Um, is there anything else that you would like to cover before we, uh, stop here? Oh, I mean, I think we went on some rants. And talked about Dragon Ball Z quite a bit. Uh, I'm very, I'm not linear in my thoughts as anyone that ever listens to me speak. Um, I don't ever speak linearly. My brain doesn't work that way. I think of many different connections and I like to connect the dots like that. Um, but if anyone ever has data or insight or anything that can show me where I might be flawed in my thinking, um, just email me.

Uh, I absolutely open to dialogue and conversation and learning cause I don't know it all. Um, definitely, I definitely have a lot of questions and if there's ever something that can help me answer more questions, I'm 100% open to being wrong and, and figuring more things out and just trying to improve how I think. So, well, is, if someone is going to email you, I guess, number one, what is your email? And second, what is the sign that they're being sarcastic or not that they should put in there? Rainbow. Cause that would be like the most sarcastic emoji you can give. I think the dancing girl in red is pretty damn sarcastic.

The dancing girl? Yeah. She goes like this, like, she's like this, like dancing. I don't know what it means. Fiesta? Oh, to me, that just means that she's doing a salsa dance or, you know, merengue or bachata or something like that. She's definitely bachatating. Maybe. I studied the dance. So to me, like my brain was like, oh yeah, we would just be doing salsa. Um, no, my email is, yeah, uh, michaelban at OPEX fit. So OPEX fit as in fitness.com. So michaelban at OPEX fit.com. Okay. What's your Instagram? I know you're pretty active on there. Oh yeah. Uh, it's coach underscore Michael underscore fan.

Pretty simple. Okay. And, uh, or if, if people wanted to be coached by you, what's the process on that? Um, they could email me and when they email me, I'll put them in touch with my assistant who basically handles my consultation schedules and all that. He would talk to them for like five quick minutes just to get their information. And then he would send them a link, which lets them auto schedule into my calendar. So they'll have access to my schedule and they can schedule at their convenience after they talk to angel for about five minutes. So they just have to email me. Is it angel or on hill?

Uh, it's angel because I, I would not know how to pronounce the other one. I like you didn't even try. Okay. Well, cool. Well, this was fun. I'm glad we, uh, we got it rolling. So are you going to be out at a Dr. Snell's, uh, thing next month? Yeah. In LA, I'm going to go. Um, sweet. I'll be there. Oh, good. Yeah. Um, I wonder who else is going to be there that, uh, Jeff Barron better be there. If Jeff's not, I'm going to yell at him and make him go. I think Snell's going to be there. Uh, hopefully. Yeah. I think, uh, Cody's going to be there. Um, I thought he just moved. He did move, but, uh, like we, yeah.

So before he left, cause, cause I was, uh, I was within a, like a mile of his, have his house really. So, uh, I was like, okay, so we're not going to see each other much. So let's, uh, yeah, we need to coordinate, uh, seminars. So yeah, I think he, I'm pretty sure he was going to do that one. So, um, but yeah, so the good, I'll see you out there then June 20. Well, this will be, this podcast will not be up. I think this is going to go up in mid July. Sweet. I'll be in, uh, I'll be in Bozeman, Montana for a conference. Yeehaw. Yeah. Right on. So that was coach Michael band. You can reach him at, um, mainly he goes on Instagram.

So it's at coach underscore Michael, um, uh, underscore band with two N's. Uh, I didn't know. I always wondered how the correct way of spelling Michael is the A before the E or the E before the A and it's, uh, H A E L. So, um, um, I always spell it wrong. Sounds different to me. Uh, anyways, uh, if you're looking for the show notes on this, go to P two sports care.com, look up Michael band, and you'll find those in the search function. So just go through page one and just go through and find the actual correlated thing that pops up. We have a pretty comprehensive search function and that is because we have probably over, it's over 250 pages on the site right now.

So rather than having them listed, I think we got to go to the search function. If you're a clinician and you've wondered how the hell I put out all this content, which I get, uh, it's really common for people to ask me that. Um, I'm planning on creating some, uh, ways for you guys to implement this stuff in your practice because I, I was thinking about it recently, um, as I did a presentation at one of the local schools for chiropractic is, uh, there's really great clinicians that are going to come out of there, but it's, it's challenging to get the public to understand what we know and don't know.

Um, so to get them to go to the right, right place for the right thing that they're experiencing, we need to better educate them. And the only way to do that is to get our students as well as young doctors and you probably seasoned ones too, to develop content. It all starts with content. And if you search random topics, like if you look up sports hernia, uh, where you're at on Google, I'll probably pop up top five. And it's because we created content first, um, text, video, uh, and audio. So if you guys are looking to, uh, learn how to do that, I do have, uh, something I've been, uh, working on, which is not a hundred percent done yet, but it's going to be done soon.

Uh, is kind of a progression of how I create my content for everyone to see in the process. And it's not overwhelming, just let you know, when you put the right systems in place and you enjoy what you're actually doing, um, and are interested in what you're writing, it's actually really fun. And, uh, I've had some friends that said, well, I didn't, I don't have time to write. Sure. Great. So you can transcribe it. No problem with that. Just speak to the microphone. You're on your phone anyways, right? So if you're looking, uh, the current URL to get onto an email list where you're going to get information about creating content as well as some products or digital instructional products, products that I'm going to have for you, go on to p2sportscare.com slash students.

That's plural. Um, so p2sportscare.com slash students will take you to an email drip of the things that I get asked the most from people under one year of, um, of, or under one year of practice. Uh, so that we'll go into things like pricing, sales, how to present yourself, how to not get stuck in unethical situations, how to do YouTube, how to write content, how to do podcasts, things like that. So it's a ton of stuff that, um, I, I always attempt to not, I don't want to apologize for putting people on drip campaigns with this because it automates it. It makes it easy for me because I literally wake up and have two emails, um, uh, sometimes every day, uh, at least five emails a week from people asking questions of not just these topics, but different ones.

I just can't answer them all. Um, so I'd rather just put the best content forward, have everyone go through that drip. If you have further questions, feel free to contact me. I do want to answer questions. Um, but some of those basic things I would love for you guys to get them through the best forum for everybody possible, not just me. So, um, lastly, if you have not gone to review this, I would love for you to do that. It helps me provide you guys the content that you want to hear about. If you have a topic that you want me to interview someone about, tell me, tell me their name, tell me how to contact them.

Uh, and, uh, if you want me to create some content for a common question that you get from your patients, uh, why does the neck pain relate to hand numbness? You know, why does the back correlate to sciatica? Why is the foot, uh, why does the hip correlate to knee pain? You know, things of this nature, like they're things that I get all the time. So I would love to create content that we can all share. Uh, thanks for listening in and I will speak with you guys next week.