Evidence-Based Practice Beyond the Research Papers

You know, I'm a scientist, I'm a PhD, my job is research, so people tend to think I am, like if it's not clinically proven, if there's no RCT being done that don't use it, but it's actually quite the opposite. It goes back to what I said a second ago. Evidence-based practice is not just science in terms of published peer-reviewed research. That's only a third of evidence-based practice. 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.

Hey guys, it's Dr. Sebastian Gonzales. Thank you for being part of the Restoring Human Movement podcast with me. That was a snippet of the interview today with the great guest from Cal State Fullerton. He's a researcher at Cal State Fullerton in California, as well as a co-host of the Body of Knowledge podcast, which if you haven't heard, you really should. I think it's one of the best ones out there. Most informative, most non-biased, and extremely thought-provoking. So, it's Dr. Andy Galpin, who's going to join me on the podcast today through an interview. I really wanted to have this as, how can Andy from the research lab help us as clinicians to improve our current treatment?

Just to make sure we're following what the actual science is dictating. And surprisingly, through this interview process, we kind of took a couple turns there. So, we didn't go over exactly the things that we should be doing, but more so just some logic surrounding validating what we could be trying and what we could be doing. So, there's a lot of storytelling in this. It's more profound than the actual step-by-step of what we should be doing again. So, listen to it. You're going to get a ton from it if you're a clinician, if you're a DC, a PT, an ATC, probably a researcher too, as well as a strength coach or an exercise science major. Now, before we actually get into it, let me tell you a real quick story about myself that reveals that I am not a fan of ET at all. And this came up recently because ET was kind of starting on the TV. I don't know why it was coming on. I don't think I've seen ET on the TV in a while. But either way, ET was coming on and I started realizing that ET is the worst idea to have a children's movie about an alien that screams, has glowing fingers, and follows you up the stairs to steal your candy. It's a terrible idea for kids. So, I was about probably six or so, I think, when ET came around. I mean, my parents bought me this little ET doll and he was probably about the size of, I'm looking at my laptop right now. It's probably as tall as my MacBook Pro.

So, it wasn't very tall, but it had these little beady eyes and it was green, I think. I'm colorblind. And it was in my room at first and I just couldn't tolerate it there. I was like, hey, you got to get this thing out of my room. I can't sleep with it. It's staring at me. So, they put it in the closet and then I thought, it's in my closet. And you think about a monster being in the closet and it's the worst place to put your ET doll. So, finally, I took it away and I think it went into the room and I haven't seen it for years and years and years. And just recently, I heard that ET doll is still around. But either way, ET, it's a bad idea. Bad idea for a children's movie. Let's get on to our interview with Dr. Andy Galpin. All right, everyone. Welcome on Dr. Andy Galpin. Galpin? Galpin.

Yeah. Wow. You know, you guys do multiple takes to your show, don't you? Which one? Of your, the Body Knowledge, the podcast. Yeah. We, we, it's, that's extensively edited and retried and redone. So, how long are you actually in the studio when you're doing that? You know, I get this question all the time and it's, it's tough to say. Some of the episodes we've recorded six times. Dang. Some of them, it's, it's kind of like one or two takes. Generally, when we have a guest, it's one take, but we'll record maybe like three hours and then that'll get condensed down to 45 minutes. But some of the episodes that we spend a lot of time writing, it's, you know, who knows? I wouldn't even be able to put out how many hours go into the writing of the show.

Well, it's, it's a really good show. And I think you guys do actually a really good job of, um, I think taking a good broad look at things and not being bashing like they saw on some podcasts and all that kind of jazz. So it's really good. Commend you for it. Thanks, man. That's generally what I tell people. Uh, it does very little to complain. Solutions are far more effective. And I also just do not believe even those that are trying to quote unquote, make a name for themselves. Uh, you might get there quickly by burning other people down, but you don't stay around very long. So, I mean, certainly don't let people get away with murder. If you feel like people are spreading things that are harmful, but generally, if the approach is instead of talking bad about other people, you just simply talk about all the good some other people do, that's, that's a better approach. And I could tell, if you will, as well as just life, man, I don't want that negative energy. I don't want that shit around me.

Yeah. Yeah. I could tell empathetic you are too, because of that dual camera thing we talked about earlier off air. You're looking at the camera when you're talking to me, not looking at my picture. Trying to do my best, man. Yeah. Um, so I want to have you on today mainly to help educate clinicians, young clinicians. Um, and, and I'm going to qualify them as not necessarily, not necessarily being, uh, primary care physicians and whatnot. I like to think of them as trench doctors, the ones that are in the gyms and doing movement therapy and so on. Based upon what you kind of see with research, is all that kind of stuff passing through to us? Or are there certain things that you'd like to educate us on to help our clients better?

Well, the, before we even get into that, what I want to say is how cool is the fact that we get to even do this? I know, right? In terms of the fact that you're saying, Hey, I'm talking to all those thousands of people who are clinicians in strength and conditioning facilities or whatever. Just the fact that that's even there still just gives me goosebumps. Mm-hmm. Technology. For little strength and conditioning junkies like me, it's like, man, this is some of the things that we dreamed of. And we always complained that the athletic trainers were out of touch and the strength and conditioning coaches were just meatheads and physical therapists. Well, they were just completely out the left field as well. And now the fact that we have so many people that are, you know, a chiropractor and also a strength coach and a speed coach and also a physical therapist. It's just so awesome. We just didn't have that in excess for a long time. And so now that we get there, it's like, man, you've really got to take a step back before you start criticizing people now because you just don't know. Some people are really talented.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, to answer your question, I think what you're really getting at is, I mean, yes and no. It's difficult because of the expansion of knowledge. You know, we went through this kind of golden area and research probably five to 10 years ago where the amount of master's degrees and PhDs just exploded in the exercise science field. So because of that, the amount of knowledge and science available has, it's not a linear increase. It's an exponential increase. So it's, I mean, it's, it's beyond impossible for the average clinician to keep up with science, if you will. And so, yeah, you're going to miss a whole bunch of stuff. But having said that, kind of like what I started saying, the integration of these fields, interdisciplinary approach has really solved a tremendous amount of that. So I really feel like as long as the clinicians are being involved in the field, in a combination of things. So listening to podcasts, attending professional conferences, getting out to seminars and clinics, and reading occasional research, I honestly feel like that is by far the best way to get in touch with the bulk of the research that's relevant to you. So we can certainly talk about how science is misinterpreted sometimes in these fields.

But on, that's my general answer to the question is, I think it is getting there. And, and if you balance out, you know, say research that I published out of my lab, and what somebody like Kelly Starrett did, which is quote, unquote, not science at all, right, no publications ever. Well, I don't think, you know, as arrogant as I am, I don't think I can remotely say that I moved the field one millionth of as much as Kelly did. So, you know, it's a combination evidence based practice is not just science. It's multiple things, including your professional expertise or the expertise of others. So I do feel like the evident the field is definitely moving forward in terms of its evidence based practice. But whether or not that's science per se, yes and no. And honestly, I just don't think it matters that much. I think the field's doing great.

Yeah. So as, so as I'm, as I'm catching this right, then you feel that being out in the field and interacting with the other professionals, as well as athletes, is helping more than actually getting into the minor nuances of what the research says? I think that's a, that's one piece of it. Most definitely, interacting with other professionals, you know, so not just going to your job at your practice, talking to your people that are in your practice and talking to your athletes, that's how you can be in trouble. Most definitely. And so that is a good thing to do. Of course, putting those hours in the trenches is, is critical. But then also poking your nose into the other things. The internet is good and bad, but having some grip on it is really good. And picking up a book or two, going to a clinic, going to a national conference.

I think if you do all of those things, you'll be in a very, very good spot. You brought up the Kelly Starrett thing. And actually, um, earlier I was, I was speaking to a couple of people on Facebook about something that I was, uh, or it was a topic of lower cross syndrome. And they were saying that there's, there's no validating evidence for some of the things that we're using, but we're using them in clinical practice is, I see you nodding your head. So you might as well just, just, you can say something right now if you'd like. Yeah. I mean, I don't know where you're going with this, but I actually, this is where I kind of trip people up a lot. Uh, you know, I'm a scientist, I'm a PhD. My job is research. So people tend to think I am like, if it's not clinically proven, if there's no RCT being done that don't use it, but it's, it's actually quite the opposite. It goes back to what I said a second ago. Evidence-based practice is not just science in terms of published peer reviewed research. That's only a third of evidence-based practice. And this is a classic error. I think I just posted a few weeks ago about this, but the cliche or the funny saying is the absence of evidence, which is what you just described is not in fact evidence of absence. So what I mean by that is a lower cross syndrome. Okay, great. Just because there's no science on it, that doesn't mean there's science showing it's bullshit. Those are two entirely different things. And if anyone has done any time practicing in the real world, the vast majority of the decisions you make are going to be from the first former, not the latter. Almost everything you actually do has never been actually scientifically tested. Now, if you're doing something that has been tested rigorously and continually shown to have low efficacy or effectiveness, then I'd say, Hey, you're, you better have a real strong reason here, but it appears like you're going against the grain and that's not a smart idea.

But the reality of it is individuals are so unique. And we've started looking at even large subsets of say, high school volleyball players, female high school volleyball players. There's been virtually no research on that. So what are you supposed to do with any of your treatments? Do none of them? Because what works for a high school volleyball player, female is not necessarily true for how you would treat a college volleyball playing female. It wouldn't be a hundred percent crossover and it certainly wouldn't be a crossover for a professional male rugby player. And I promise you, there haven't been that many studies that have vetted how should we best treat, you know, inversion ankle injuries across every gender, age group, sport, weight, training background. So because of that, almost every situation you're ever in in a clinic is absence of evidence. There's just nothing. So that is kind of what I was alluding to when we first started when I said, we can, if you want to talk about how science is misused.

And that is a classic example of that. Just because it's not been shown, it doesn't mean it's wrong. So I think in this case, this is when we can take a Mike Boyle and or whoever else is in these fields and a Charmin and you're like, you know what, maybe some of the stuff isn't based on peer reviewed research, but hey, it's not going to hardly ever be. And there's some things like chiropractic in particular. It's, you have two issues with chiropractic in terms of science. Number one, it's going to be virtually impossible to ever show chiropractic work will help just because of the nature of pain. The ideology is not the same. So the reason you're in pain isn't the same. So there's almost no way you could ever show that the same treatment will reduce the pain. So you can put this through a thousand clinical trials if you want, and it's never going to show to work. But I promise you the first time your back is thrown out and a chiropractor pops it back in, you're going to be like, well, that shit worked. It really worked, which is different than just saying like, okay, all I do is show up and they pop my back and that cures my cancer. That's, that's, that's the nonsense. And, um, and the other more tip, really difficult part about it is chiropractic in particular. I mean, if you're showing up and all they're doing is popping your neck, it's probably not going to do much, but generally in the chiropractic practices, uh, they're doing soft tissue stuff. They're doing, uh, joint stuff. They're doing movement stuff. They're doing a combination of treatment modalities. So they're not just popping your back or popping your neck. Um, therapists could be pointed to the same thing. Therapists can now do manual adjustments.

So it really depends. So when you boil it down to this, um, it gets to be as individual as the person treating you. So a good physical therapist or a good chiropractor is all the difference in the world. And there's too much variation in the practices. There's too much variation in methodologies. And there's way too much variation in the people that you're treating to almost ever be able to put science behind it. So you have to just be a little bit careful there. Mm-hmm. That's interesting. Um, yeah, you actually went exactly into the question there. So you read me, read me well on that. Um, my, I guess my question too with that is that with, I keep thinking about syndromes, like your IT band syndrome, your facet syndrome, and, and people like coming in talking about these syndromes and they, they feel very strongly that's what they have. And then they seem to look at it under a microscope is I know there's multiple factors that can create things like this. When there's a multifactorial experience, is there any way to really prove or disprove that there's any? No, I mean, I think if, if there was, then we would have a lot higher efficacy and effectiveness of treatment. Yeah. Uh, but the problem is you don't. So we also have to think about, uh, I'm a junkie for logic. Uh, I just find it completely fascinating. And this is another primary example of a logical fallacy, which is fallacy of black and white. Right. And so we tend to, as humans think better when issues are compartmentalized. So we'd like to think about a year being 12 months. And then we'd like to think about a month being 30 days and a week, seven days when we break it down. And then that way I can organize my life such that Mondays I do this and Tuesdays I do that.

But there is no thing in the universe as a Monday. There is no Tuesdays. This is an arbitrary thing we called a Monday. Right. So the same thing with it band or any other syndrome, it's shin splints is a classic example from our heyday. Right. And it's like, Hey, that is no such thing. There is no such thing as it band syndrome. There's no such thing as any of the other stuff that we call it. It's just a category of symptomology that we tend to help group together because people have found that, hey, generally, if they have this many symptoms, we generally treat it this way. We're getting more benefit. We're getting more treatments being more effective. So that's all it is. So when someone comes in self-diagnosed from God knows where as a certain syndrome, but even you as the clinician shouldn't be diagnosing those things as an absolute. So yes, it's okay to say, Hey, I think this is IT syndrome generally. So I'm going to treat it how I generally treat it, which is to do A, B, C, and D.

That's fine. But you still have to think outside of that because again, there is no such thing as those syndromes. It's just a category we arbitrarily put onto things to help us triage. It's really what it is. I mean, I was fortunate enough to spend a part of my PhD in med school actually. And I promise you, all they're learning is algorithms and it's triaging. If you have this, this, and this, do that. If you have this, this, this, that, do this. And it's just different things. And all that's nonsense. My professor, I was lucky because he was a PhD, not an MD. And so I'm in a room with 30 other to-be MDs and I'm the only PhD and I'm being taught by a PhD. And he continually hammered on them to not just memorize the algorithms. You have to fucking think.

You really, really have to think because physiology is too complex. These algorithms are there to help you triage and give you what's most likely to work for most people most of the time. But you still have to think outside of that because there's no guarantee. And if you think hard enough, you're probably more likely to get to the right answer and save people time and save yourself time. But if you just run the algorithms, if an algorithm is correct 90% of the time, that still leaves 10% of your patients screwed. Well, if you treat a thousand people a year, that's a hundred people you just screwed because you were lazy. Yeah. So that comes down, I guess, to the N is one. But then how do you get the, how many of those, it was MD school? Is that what it was? Med school, yeah. Med school.

How many of those came out actually with that mindset of considering the entire system and not just the algorithm, would you say? Oh, probably none of them. Oh, really? Well, in their defense, they get hammered through a barrage of school and you're not going to get through unless you learn to think like that because of the pace and the amount of information that they put on those kids. You're going to have to think that. Now, hopefully after they get out and have a couple of years to get into practice, they'll revert back. But when you're in school, the honest answer is you have to play the algorithm game or you're dead. Yeah. Yeah. So you have an interesting way of thinking of things that I've noticed. Are you, are you just, are you just one person from a group of people that we usually don't experience or are you, do you go to bed thinking of these odd things and you wake up with the answer and stuff? Can you, can you, I'm not sure what that question even means. Could you try to try that one again? I think I've, so I've been listening to you. I've been binge listening to your podcast and the, um, you talk about how you, how you, I've done like probably, I don't even know several hundred podcasts and interviews and stuff. Nobody's ever asked that ever or anything like that. So good job of asking me a question I've never heard before. Oh yeah. Well, I actually don't, I love doing, I love doing these things mainly to interact with the people and like learn, I learn a little bit from them too. I mean, I learned a lot from you and your body of knowledge, but, um, I, I really think that the people want to hear a little bit more entertainment.

Definitely. Um, but so I hear you talking about how you interact with your wife and how she likes to be communicated a certain way, but you don't really communicate that way, but you blend it to communicate with her. So you're almost translating and digesting things down. So I'm just thinking about what's going on in your head. Like when you're sitting in situations like that, where it's like, you're thinking outside the box and I just find it interesting. Yeah. I'd say a couple of reactions to that. Number one, there's almost always two conversations happening in people's heads. Uh, some of us are conscious of that second one. Some of us are not.

And so even right now, as I sit here, I'm having the conversation with you, trying to answer your question in the most entertaining and insightful and honest way possible. But I'm also in my head having a conversation about, or thinking about the listener and thinking about, am I being insensitive to something else? Am I considering all possible options? Am I being as truthful as I am? Am I, am I being genuine? Could I have answered something better? Uh, those are all going on in people's heads. And so the more you can be conscious of both of those things, I think communication can be dramatically improved.

How do you think someone can improve their ability to tune into that since clinicians are doing this all the time and they should be? Yeah. Just like anything else, it's practice. It's practice and being mindful and aware. Right. And it's just going through that time of when you're speaking to your patients, uh, the way that I put it is, um, if you've ever watched, I'm a big MMA fan. I work with a lot of fighters in the UFC. And if you've ever watched the UFC interview where, you know, after the fight, they interview the winner. And so the winner stands in the cage with Joe Rogan and Joe Rogan asks the winner, you know, him or her some questions. And if the person is not English speaking native, they have a translator there. And so what's always funny is you see Joe asks a question and the athlete takes four minutes and they're spouting off something in Portuguese or Japanese or whatever. And four minutes go by of him or her talking. And then the translator turns back to Joe and says, Oh, he's really thankful. And, uh, well, thank you, Chicago.

So what's happening there is that the translator was having two conversations and in his or her head, it's what did the athlete say? And then what do I need to say to get the point across? And so you take all that four minutes information and he distills it down to what Joe Rogan and the audience really wants to hear. That's exactly what I'm talking about. So in this particular case, you are your own translator. And so I always like to say, don't kill motivation with information. So make sure you're giving your clinicians or your clinicians, your patients, the information they need to know to get better. Not all the information that you want to show them you have so you feel smarter. And that's something you have to be very, very careful of. Effective communication doesn't mean telling them everything you know. My effective communication might be, I want you to do this stretch. Why? Because I fucking said so. And that might be a fantastic answer for one person.

And then table over, you might have the exact same prescription and have to go do this stretch. And they say, why? And then you have to go into a three minute detail about how the hip is articulated and, you know, what the research shows on connective tissue and changing range of motion. And that might be perfect for that person. And so that's really what you have to do is you have to, number one, have the conversation in the head, which is thinking about the information, thinking about the answer. But then you need to have a second conversation, which is how do I effectively communicate this with that person? So that's really what I'm talking about. And again, that all just comes down to practicing that.

Mm-hmm. It's going back to that syndrome idea then. Is it better for our future to debunk that syndrome or that false belief that they have or just keep letting them believe it and just tell them what to do? So that's a really good question. And the story I can give you is everybody in my family is obese. Mm-hmm. And, you know, I've tried for decades to help everybody and I've tried a whole bunch of things and it's never worked. With the exception of my brother, the rest of them have never, ever lost a pound. They've just gained weight over time. Well, just last year, my dad got excited about, you know, diet again. And he said, hey, I read this book on Atkins. And I'm like, great. And traditionally, I would have been interjected about what's the research show on carbohydrate and et cetera. And basically that you don't have to stop eating carbohydrates to lose fat.

But for the first time in my life of, you know, eight months ago, I just decided to shut up. And I knew that a lot of information he's telling me was just scientifically wrong. It failed basic logic. It failed evolutionary biology. It failed teleology. It just failed logic on every level. But I was wrong. And this is typically what a lot of people refer to as a metaphorical truth. So this is something that is wrong in principle, but ends up causing the right action. Mm-hmm. And so I just shut up and I said, oh yeah, those carbs, they're, they're terrible for you. They're going to kill you. And I didn't do anything. And he just, all of a sudden got way more conscious about his diet.

He started reading other things. He was just really excited every day. He was excited about his dietary changes and it wasn't the best diet ever. It was not great actually, but he was excited about it. And so I just let him get excited for a while. And I started sending him books and stuff and he would read them and he would read other things. And he was really, really motivated. And prior to that, every single time I had killed his motivation by giving him information and for paying a negative Nancy basically. And just putting him in a spot where he would be excited about something and then I would crush it. And he'd be excited and I would crush it. And I just decided to stop and I let him have some success. And all of a sudden he lost 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 40 pounds.

And then things go by and he was so excited. And all of a sudden for a guy who's been on extensive acid reflux prescriptions his entire life, started coming down way down on that. He's taking Advil or painkillers every day for I don't even know how many years. Started coming off of that. He went completely off his blood pressure medication simply because he was losing so much weight. And then he would get really excited and would say, hey, you know what we should really do is maybe you should start adding some, because basically what he would do is eat steak and eggs in the morning. You'd get a hamburger at lunch or a protein shake and then you'd have some other sort of meat in the afternoon and then have like some canned beans or some canned carrots or something, which is far from ideal. But then I would say, okay, great. So that protein shake you're doing, what if we put some cantaloupe in it and some flax seeds? Okay, I think I can do that. And then that's it. And he did that for a month and all of a sudden, boom, he's like, I can't believe how much energy I have.

I feel unbelievable. It's most energy I've had in 20 years. And another month go by and I started saying, well, why don't we start replacing these canned vegetables with some frozen ones? Okay, I can do that because there's no more prep time and I'll have to learn to cook. And then just slowly after months or so, I would give him a few more and more things. And we're still not even close to where I think he should be in terms of a nice, well-balanced diet. But symptomology-wise, it's, he's so much better and he's still super excited about it and he continues to lose weight. And so the reason I tell this story is to go back to exactly what you're saying.

I think sometimes it's very hard. You really have to, to try. And I generally think education is better. So getting people the right information is where we want to go. But sometimes you do have to just be like, you know what, you can keep believing in this wrong thing, but you're doing the right thing. And so for now I'm going to let that roll. And I don't know where that line falls between his letting the wrong information out there and correcting it. But all I know is when I finally shut up for a minute after 15 years, he finally started making changes. So I think it's a very difficult thing to, to, um, to broach, but you know, I, I say this, um, a lot now that I was, I was with the Marie Spano, who's the nutrition or dietitian for the Atlanta Hawks and, um, the Falcons and maybe another professional team, Atlanta. But she said a couple of years ago at a conference, she said, look, when an athlete walks into my office and he is very excited about making a nutrition change, I want to keep that momentum. And so even if she doesn't think he's on a great diet, she says like, I'm on his team. I'm not here to show him how much smarter I am than him.

I'm here to help him get better at what he wants to do. And so she's like, I will always support the diet as long as it's even remotely reasonable. And I'll just help him do it better because I want him to succeed. I don't want him to fail and then come back to me, which is another major, major, major mistake early practitioners make. Um, you don't, you just shouldn't want them to fail so that they can come crawling back to you and they can tell you how much smarter you were. You should take what, be able to take what they're doing and have them succeed in spite of that. If you do that, they're going to get much more blind and they'll come back to you and say, Hey, this was, this was a great idea. Thanks for helping me here. What do you think I should do next?

Or how should I, how can I make this even better? And according to Marie, she always says like, if you do that, eventually a couple of months go by or may take a year. You can get them on a diet or plan or program, whatever that you think is best, but you probably can't do that initially. So again, a long answer to that question, but it's, it's a really, really difficult one. I don't think you can just have a straight answer, which is do this or that. Um, it kind of reminds me of when, uh, you guys interviewed Brett Bartholomew with conscious coaching is there's totally you get a, you just picking kind of what the person will accept and what will make them better. And then just kind of interject little parts along, on the, along the, along the way.

It's a very similar thing to what he tries to do with his, his coaching language. Um, and then people have been doing this stuff for, for as long as I think we've been working with people, but it's just now acknowledging the fact that, and especially when you get out of school, when you first graduate, you're so excited to show people how much smart, how smart you are, because you spent this 10 years and $300,000 in school. Like you, you want to share this damn information with somebody, but it may not be the most effective way. Right. Um, hopefully this is a question you haven't been asked yet either. Uh, what's the most effective way to kill fruit flies? Cause I really do want to know this right now.

Most effective way to kill fruit flies? Yeah. Well, how come they don't get attracted to actual light beer? They get attracted to stouts. I have absolutely no idea. I drink my beer way too fast for that to be a problem. Well, I try to empty out a little bit, just like pour some out for the homies. Cause I, I recognize if I'm, if I'm going to do a stout, I need to kill some fruit flies. Ah, I own, I, I'm only going to pour out malt. That's the only way you're going to pour some for the homies. It's going to have to be malt. Colt 45. Well, that'll work. Have you done an MD or have you done a King Cobra before?

Probably. Um, I try to bury as many of those memories out of my head. One of the worst ones ever, man. So in college I went to did my undergrad in a small school in Western Oregon, about an hour and a half or so South of Portland. And every Friday were what they call the dock sales. And so you could drive up to the docks and they would have these huge pallets of cases of beer that they would sell for like $5 a case or less, but you never know what was going to be there. And so often on Fridays, we would go up there with as many cars as we could. We'd drive separately and we would literally, and I mean, literally fill our car with beer. We would just take as many cases as we could get. And then we would actually have a house parties where the whole house was just cases of beer and we would charge like $5 all you could drink. And no one generally on average can drink a full case of beer. How'd you refrigerate it? So some, we would just keep it, you know, we had several fridges going. And then once we noticed when going out, you just kind of rotate them back in. And after that many beers, people don't really care. Right. Didn't go that much. All the furniture was cases of beer. We would make like chairs and sofas with beer cases and put pillows and stuff over it. We do all that. And one time on the major, uh, we went up there and there was, I think only two beers that they had up there. One of them was called Nirvana and it was kind of like a Smirnoff kind of thing. Oh, gross. Oh, horrendous. And the other one was called, I think something like Big Bear. And it was like imitation Colt 45 or old English or something.

That must've been a theme party you had this time then. Oh my God. No, but it was just, I mean, you're up there thinking like, what am I going to do? Drink imitation malt liquor or Smirnoff? Oh, well you probably, you probably were happy, but you didn't hide them around Oregon and, uh, start to ice people just randomly. There's probably still bottles of Nirvana sitting around. No, I think I'm sure. I'm probably sure they all got drank real fast. Yeah. I don't know, but that's just, yeah. I don't, they don't have anything like that down here. Oh, I don't even know if we do. We probably do, but I wouldn't know. That's, I don't miss those days at all. Yeah. They're not coming back anytime soon.

Uh, can you tell everyone about your, your podcast you guys put on? Cause I do, I think do think it's extremely well formatted and I, I, I've shared it with quite a few, a few of my clinician friends and I think we learn a lot from it. Can you tell us about the body knowledge? Yeah, sure. Thank you. And I appreciate the opportunity. So that's, um, you know, I, I had the opportunity and sort of been asked to do a podcast, my own show for quite a long time. And I just didn't want to do it because I don't want to contribute to the noise, you know, no offense, but you're doing that, but this is so many people have podcasts and I don't think they really have anything original to say and et cetera. And it kind of clouds everything.

And so finally I got talking to it with my friend, Kenny Kane, who's a former professional standup comedian. So he used to tour country headline kind of guy played with all the names you can think of. He played with, and he's also been a strength conditioning coach for about 20 years, was a division one athlete himself. So, uh, along with our other person, Josh Embry, who's a PhD in statistics and human behavior. So I thought it was actually sort of a nice combination of the three of us because we can, Kenny can really speak to, to really training people. He's trained professional athletes and a whole bunch of general population folks. And now I'm a scientist and Josh is a scientist, but in a whole different realm of human behavior. And, and so we thought, well, well, we can do this, but the format I want to be different. And as you can sort of tell, I'm a storyteller. So I wanted to be able to tell stories and not just have to be like, it's Tuesday and we got to get our show up on Tuesday and we got to get three up a week. So let's just go and talk about some bullshit. So we spend an exorbitant amount of time on those. We've, we've had the show for a couple of years now and we've only put out two seasons. And I think we haven't put an episode out in nine months or something and we don't have anyone in the works, but really it's, it's been two seasons so far. The first season was centered around change. So what we do is each season is a eight or so episodes. And we, we tell a story that runs central through every single episode. And in the first season, the theme was change. And we started with the smallest change possible. And so the first episode was really about all the molecular and cellular changes that can happen with exercise and muscle.

We worked our way up to the human organism, to the coaching scale and all the way up to the national scale about how do we make long-term changes in policy across the nation, across 350 million people. And so sometimes we bring in guests that can speak authoritatively on topics. And sometimes it's just ourselves. And we don't put out content just to put out another post. We, we spend a lot of time writing every episode. They're heavily edited and we make sure that they are doing exactly what we want what we want to do. All the stuff that goes behind the scenes to writing a TV show or something, but just takes way too much time. So that first season is out. The second season was about Sherpas. So these are people that lead you to change. So people that lead you up the mountain, tell you that, Hey, maybe this is not the right mountain for you. Maybe today's not the day to climb. And those also that help you come back down from the mountains. So those two episodes, those two seasons are out and, uh, we are in discussions, if you will, to potentially do a third season. What would the third one even be?

You think? Well, Oh, no, we know. Um, we know actually. So before we even put down the first episode, we sketched out all nine seasons, nine seasons. Wow. So we have a nine season arc. And again, we, we wanted this whole thing to make a tremendous amount of sense. Um, we did the whole nine season thing thinking that we may only do one season. We may do two, six, I don't know. But if we do this the right way and we do it, well, I want it to just be something that was thought of ahead of time and constructed and not just making up as where we go. So we have a very clear path for all nine and all nine seasons will make sense on top of each other.

There'll be a thread that runs through all of them, but we know season three, I'm just not going to release it yet. Fair, fair enough. Cause we have to, the honest answer is we have to build the whole season. We write the whole season, every episode, all of it before we record anything. Yeah. To make sure it all lines up and syncs the way we want it to be. So I know it takes an incredible amount of planning. There was, there was at one point I tried to do four of the same topic related podcasts in the same month as well as same videos. And that lasted about two months. I just could not do it. It was, I got distracted. I'm like, this is, this is not going to happen here.

It's very difficult. Yeah. I actually enjoyed the recent one with Lee Brown. That was a very inspiring individual. He's the man. Um, you know, I just actually just exchanged some comms with him this morning too. I still love the guy to death. What's actually sort of funny. One of the funny things about our show is we've had an eclectic group of people. So, you know, Kenny and myself, we know a lot of celebrities and big name folks, and we have intentionally not reached out to many of them because we didn't know, just want it to be a show. It's like, look how many famous people we know kind of thing. Uh, and so we wanted to like, for example, with the Sherpa season, if we wanted to talk about leadership. And so I didn't want to just bring in, you know, the most high profile leaders that we know, but really we wanted to talk about it from a 360 degree perspective, which is there's leadership in many forms and facets of life.

And so in that season, I think we talked to Lee Brown, who is, uh, if you're not familiar with the name, he's arguably one of the most productive sports scientists of all time. But we also had a high school teachers on there and we had, um, you know, a couple of celebrities, uh, and we just had some other things. So we wanted to really show people what leadership looks like in all forms and facets of life, some military folks, some other things. So we did the same thing with season one and we had Jack Osborne on, we had Brett Bartholomew before he was, you know, Brett Bartholomew. And, you know, we also had some people that Mike, Michael Blevins, who you've never heard of before. And, and most people never have or never will. So, um, we have some people line up for season three, but I, I can't, I can't announce those yet either. Well, I, I definitely enjoyed the, going into the Sherpa one right now. I'm actually partway through the, uh, the sex ed one. Didn't finish yet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was, it was, I had a couple of teachers come in as patients and I was, I was asking, cause the school you're starting right now. And they were so excited to be able to take these kids through this journey. And I kind of took a step back and like, look at the people that I work with here at the clinic and we kind of have jumpers sometimes. You might not see them more than twice or, so we don't really have the opportunity to plan things out nor see the development of them, but it's a very one way relationship. And I was like, I'm really jealous of you guys. You got them, you got them held up for like three months. So good, good thing.

Yeah. I mean, I have the same issues. Sometimes, uh, most of the kids that I interact with, I get for one class and even my grad students, I only get for two years and I don't have PhD students or anything like that where I could really mold. And, uh, but the same thing happened with my athletes too. You know, even if I've had them for a long time, they they'll check out for months at a time cause they go out of camp or whatever. Like, all right, hard for me to make these longterm changes when I, you know, only time I hear from you is six weeks before a fight. Okay. It's tough. Well, I think that actually does go to the, uh, I wrote down one of you guys' quotes in there. Evidence plus humans equals fitness. Yeah. And I think, uh, is that the human part right there? They just, uh, they're in control of their own destiny.

Well, that's a big part of it. It's a very expensive thing, but that is a huge part of it. It's, it's everything though. It's, um, you know, it's the social interaction. It's the, it's the environment. It's the language that you shape. It's the culture. It's, it's all of those things that go into be these really complex beings that we call human. So the, the joke, uh, or the way I always say is Sam Harris got pretty famous for saying and many others have now echoed that, that, you know, they're confused of why we got people, we sent people to the moon 50 years ago. You know, we had the technology and the science to land people on the moon 50 years ago, but somehow we haven't figured out what's healthy or not healthy to eat. And my answer is, you know, Sam, look, it's actually makes complete sense because human beings are far, far, far, far more complicated than space. The variables are constant in space. There is no wind, there is no air, nothing changes. I can, there's only a handful of things I have to know and there's no difference. If I only had to count for four variables in a human being, like that'd be the easiest day of my life.

So interacting and making change in people is, I mean, you've already heard some snippets of it as we've gone along. It's not just about knowing what, how many calories to eat or what stretch to do or, or how to activate a glute like that. That's just a very small portion of what you actually have to do to make a change in somebody. So it's a very complex thing. And anyone who's an expert in safe physical therapy might be using the wrong cues or they might be talking to the person poorly because they're not a sports psychologist. And maybe a highly trained sports psychologist isn't affecting performance because they actually don't know how to train a person. They don't know how much to do. And a highly trained strength addition coach could be terrible at both those other things. So you can't be an expert in all of them. And so it's just a challenge we all have to battle. But I think at least recognizing those other disciplines are critical. Um, and as you, you generally see the arc of most coaches is they come into say strength and conditioning coaching, being very excited about the periodization and rep ranges and intensities. And they almost all leave talking about sports psychology. That's almost always how it works out. Yeah. That makes complete sense. We, we kind of see the same thing in ours too. I think it's all, uh, back to the end is one thing and it's all individualistic. Who's going to take what cues and what, who won't, you know? Um, I want to be respectful of your time. I think we're hitting about 45 minutes here. Is, is there anything you'd like to cover still or tell us ways to contact you? Uh, no, I mean, um, I'm out there. It's pretty easy to find. You can certainly check out my website, which is just my name, mandygalpin.com. So the podcast is up there. The podcast is all on iTunes and everything else that's available. You know, the social media, um, you know, I'm up on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, and that's pretty easy to find all of those things. But with the website, what I do is take as many of my classroom lectures, uh, speaking gigs, things like that. And I put them all up on my website for free. So I've got three different things. I've got what I call five minute physiology, which is the condensed version, 25 minute or 55 minute things. And so, uh, I tend to look at, and I teach things differently. So for example, in my classes, I don't teach, uh, you'll, you won't see a syllabus that says, uh, neuromuscular system and cartorrespiratory system and skeletal muscle. I don't teach that way at all. I teach, uh, systems based things. So you'll see a section on hypertrophy and they'll talk about all the things in the body necessary from immune to muscle to performance, to hydration, et cetera. I'll go to the next outcome. So I teach an outcome based, uh, criteria of material rather than a systems based. Cause I actually think that makes people worse. I think it does people a huge disservice to teach the system by system approach, um, because the body doesn't work like that. Cool. Oh, I do see it. The body of knowledge, the five minute, 25 minute, 55 minute physiology. Yeah. Dig it. Cool. I did see a YouTube video recently.

So you can just subscribe to the YouTube page or whatever that's up there, but those videos are free. They're always free. There is a Patreon account attached to that. If, um, if you want to contribute a buck or two and what I do there is, um, I actually have some students that helped me with, uh, writing out the notes for it. And what I want to do is all those videos. I want them to turn into like really short written version of it for people that don't want to watch the whole video or there as well as study questions. If anyone wants to use it in their classes and stuff. And so all the money that is donated every single penny on the Patreon account, I give to my students to help them put that stuff up there. Cool. I don't, I don't, I haven't taken, never will take a penny from that stuff. So, um, if you see some value there and you want to contribute to the Patreon page, that's great.

But if not, um, yeah, these kids will just keep eating for a couple bucks. Well, you got, you got amazing work. So, um, thanks for sharing everything and thanks for being on. Um, but I don't know how everyone's going to recognize you without your facial hair actually. Well, it just depends, man. It's, it's all over the board depending on the day, depending on how many days Natasha has let me grow it out. Your, your beard is in a, in a constensative adaptation. Yeah, it is really. She let me get away with a full beard a couple of times once because I try to pull it like this. I'm like, Hey, it's a, it's a winter time. I need to get a winter beard. And then she'll usually let that slide for a few weeks. And then I'm like, well, it's springtime. So I got to get a spring beard and then it's summer beard. And then I was on sabbatical one time and then I got to have a beard for hunting season. So each one of those usually gives me about a week or two and it takes me about seven months to grow a beard.

So two or three weeks in, it looks pretty just ridiculous and kind of like a 12 year old boy trying to grow a beard that has missing half his facial hair or something. So it gets pretty gnarly. That's why they make colored marker. You're okay. Yeah, I just don't care. Well, right on. Well, thank you so much for being on. That was a, it was great. I think a lot of people are going to learn a ton from this. I hope so. It was my pleasure to be here. Yeah, man. Nice. Okay. Thanks so much, Andy, for being on everyone. That was Dr. Andy Galpin. If you're looking to contact him or find his content, go on to his website, andygalpin.com. That's A-N-D-Y-G-A-L-P-I-N.com. That's where you can find the Body Knowledge Podcast if you're not already looking on iTunes, as well as 5, 25, and 55-minute physiology, which I started into a little bit and I thought it was really nice the way he's putting it together. So very easy to follow. I felt like I was back in school again. It was amazing. So thanks so much, Andy. I know you're a busy, busy guy, so that was amazing to actually be on too. Now, if you guys are looking for the show notes on this, go to p2sportscare.com. You can type up Andy Galpin or just go on to the show number, which I think this one is going to be 106. So just go into the search bar on the first page. Type up 106 or Andy Galpin. You'll find the show notes. And anything that we spoke about in this podcast that is link-related or if you're looking for some things you just couldn't catch, there's a written form in there too. So just like always, review the podcast. Tell me what I need to get better at. Tell me what people you want me to interview. Tell me what words and ums and pauses I need to stop using because I'm really working on that this year still. So I'll talk to you guys soon. Remember, lead people better than how you found them and date in Eagle Scout. Talk to you later.