Shoulder pain relief that starts below the shoulder joint

This is session number 47 of the Performance Place Sports Care podcast. Welcome to the Performance Place Sports Care podcast, where you can learn about sports injury theory, rehab, diagnosis, and how to understand the doctor lingo you didn't understand at your appointment. And now, your host, Dr. Sebastian Gonzales. Hey, everybody. It's Dr. Sebastian Gonzales with the Performance Place Sports Care podcast. And today, we're having a guest on. His name is Max Schenck, and he is a strength coach from San Diego. You know, I haven't actually met him yet, according to this phone call. We've emailed back and forth and so on.

But after looking at what he's doing, how he's training people, how he's coaching them, and even some of the content that he's putting out, it's amazing. It's good stuff. And I'm looking at his YouTube channel right now as we speak, because I want to ask him about some of it on the interview. He's got 13,000 subscribers, as well as he's put out, I think, roughly about 200 videos. And they're great. And they're really, really good content. And we're focusing mainly on, actually, there's lots of points to it, but the ones that I looked at anyways, they were a lot of T-spine rotation, a lot of breathing, a lot of shoulder health.

So what we're going to talk to him about today is actually one of his e-books he put out. It was called Simple Shoulder Corrections. And I looked through it, and I was in the office at the time. I had a couple shoulder patients who were asking, you know, like, what should I do? What should I start with? What exercises can I do at home? So I had it right there on my desktop, and I was looking at it. And he starts out with this. It's a pyramid, basically. Kind of like the food pyramid. You remember that one, which is kind of gone now. But it started out with core and breathing. Then it went to spinal stuff.

Then it went to the shoulder girdle. And then it went to the GH joint, or the glenohumeral joint, which is a lot of times where we start with the shoulders sometimes. And I was like, this is the simplest, easiest way anyone's ever put it. So I looked through some of his exercises, and I'm like, these things are awesome. These things are great. I have to talk to this guy and see what he is a proponent of in regards to shoulders and what else he really has coming. So I think if you have a shoulder condition, this is going to be a great podcast for you. Or if you have a friend who has a shoulder condition.

So remember to subscribe on iTunes if you haven't already. And if you're listening to this on someone else's website, just click on through. Go to iTunes, subscribe, and review. And Max's contact, actually, if you go on YouTube, if you just type in Max Schenk, S-H-A-N-K, you'll find all this stuff. So without any further ado, we are going to talk to Max and learn what he knows. Okay, so as promised, here's Max Schenk, and we're going to let him tell us a little bit about himself, and then we'll go through a little bit of Q&A. So Max, say hey. Hey. So tell me how you got into, actually, tell us a little bit about yourself and most of, because I know everyone's on this podcast, to listen and learn something.

Do you have birds in the background, by the way? Yeah, I'm in the backyard. It's great. Okay. I guess the weather in San Diego is probably better than here. It's overcast. Yeah, no, it's pretty nice down here. It's a little bit cloudy today, but I try to be outside as much as I possibly can. Yeah, just playing with billy clubs, huh? Yep, that's it. Well, tell everyone the reason why they should pay attention to you with shoulder complaints. Oh, man, that's a great question. I've had a lot of success over the past decade. I've had pretty busted-up shoulders myself. I do own a gym in Encinitas, California, called Ambition Athletics.

And we have an extremely strong track record with not only injury rehabilitation, but also prevention. I've taught several seminars all over the world using the simple shoulder solution tactics. And quite frankly, I think it really does simplify the most important or key players to the shoulder puzzle. You see, the mistake that most people make is that they treat the shoulder as if it's just the one joint at the end, you know, the glenohumeral joint, that little ball-and-socket guy. But there are so many other things that, in my opinion, have a higher priority, like breathing and core strength and thoracic mobility and scapular movement and a couple other things there.

And it's very important to address those things in order because you need to have a solid foundation for that ball-and-socket joint on the end to move. And, of course, most people experience the pain in that ball-and-socket joint, but the cause of that pain is usually elsewhere. And unless you have a very systematic approach, you can do all these shoulder stretches in the world, and you're just going to feel more and more pain and have less and less mobility. Yeah. And I've heard you say before, actually, too, that there's a certain part of somebody that when they start to experience pain, they're kind of in their head, they're like, well, I'm not going to do that again.

Of course. Yeah, so that, go ahead. Exactly. No, no, no, no, you're exactly right. And essentially what happens is it's your brain trying to tell you to do something different. So pain and stiffness kind of close in around you like a contracting circle, and it reduces the amount of things you can do without pain. So your range of motion gets worse, your pain goes up. So by the end of it, you know, maybe before you're like, oh, well, I guess I just can't overhead press anymore. Or maybe, oh, you know, dips aren't good for my shoulders specifically. And that's actually something I thought for a long time.

I was like, oh, well, no more dips for me, but everything else is good. But dips were just kind of like a warning flag, like, hey, there's something going wrong with that shoulder. You better do something about it. And what eventually happened to me, and this happens to a lot of people, is the number of exercises they can do without shoulder pain just shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. So what was your actual shoulder condition like? What was the diagnosis that gave you, just out of curiosity? I mean, they just said it was like tendonitis, and they said probably possible rotator cuff tear. I certainly, very likely, they didn't image it, because the pain wasn't bad enough for surgery.

It was just like there were certain movements I couldn't do. And fortunately, the guy that I talked to was like, yeah, you know, I mean, you're still fairly functional. You know, go try PT, that kind of thing. But, yeah, basically just many years of extreme and combat sports, you know, like wakeboarding and Muay Thai and Pankration and Jiu-Jitsu and all that kind of stuff. What was the last one? Jiu-Jitsu. What was the one before that? Muay Thai. Oh, I thought I heard something. Oh, Pankration. What is Pankration? Pankration is like MMA with no punches to the face, only palm strikes. It's what Boss Rootin did, if you're familiar with him.

I'm not, but I just imagine when you first said it, it's kind of like it's martial arts without punching. I thought you were just going to have a staring contest, maybe. Yeah, basically, it's just like five-minute staring contest. Yeah, it's like when Sean Lee and Van Damme, or Frank Dukes, were just staring at each other in the beginning. Oh, yeah, totally. It's a great movie. Oh, it's an amazing movie. Have you seen Lionheart, by the way, too? I have not seen Lionheart. Oh, my God. Lionheart. Well, you've seen Kickboxer. Yeah. Okay, Lionheart is probably the third best. I might say second, but top three Van Damme movies.

Wow, okay. I'm going to venture out and say that. Quite a bold statement. All right, I'll check that out. Considering that a lot of the other Van Damme movies were not that amazing, I think I'm pretty good on this bet. All right, great. So just out of curiosity, too, so they told you this diagnosis with it, but just to kind of let everyone know, there is hope in what things you still do. I mean, what are probably what you consider typically the highest risk that they maybe told you not to do for a little bit of time, but now you can do full force? Well, I mean, my shoulders can do anything now, and they used to be able to do nothing for a while.

Like, there was a point where I couldn't go overhead. There was a point where I couldn't do dips. There was a point where I couldn't do push-ups. It was like, oh, man, okay, so out of the exercises that I want to do, the one I can is incline bench. Lovely. And just incline bench and nothing else but incline bench. To answer the other part of your question, though, about, like, hope, I think it's most important for people to understand that there can be pain without injury, pain with injury, and no pain with injury. Okay. So, you know, once you start, like, looking at 50, being close to 50 years old, the majority, over half of the population has some sort of rotator cuff or disc problem or labral tear.

But only a small percentage of those people actually experience any pain or problems from those injuries. Similarly, I'm sure you've heard of phantom limb pain before. Oh, yeah. That's where someone has pain in a part of their body that is no longer attached to them. So someone with no arm comes to you and says, I have wrist pain, you go, ah, I don't really know what to do, do you? I think you're supposed to put them in front of a mirror, and then you train the brain. Yeah, exactly. The Ramachandran mirror box, right? Yeah. But, you know, if you're just like you and I, you're like, how does that make any sense?

So the point I like to make with that is pain is just a brain thing. You can have an injury but not necessarily have pain. My right hip labrum is torn in three places. I experience no pain. I can do sprints. I can do backflips. I can do heavy squats and deadlifts, and I experience no pain. But that's only because I have a solid foundation of muscular strength and movement, mobility, and coordination that allows the joint to be placed in the ideal position. So it causes the least amount of wear and tear and has the optimal leverages when muscles pull on it. Yeah, makes sense. And you're actually, you're one of the, I interviewed someone recently who had a labral tear, too, and they do perfectly fine.

She was actually hit by a car. I had an acetabular fracture with a small tear. I don't have any issues really either. And it's amazing the things that the body can still do if you train it well and push it well. People tear their biceps all the time and don't get it reattached, and your body finds a way to make it work. I'm pretty sure Popeye was one of the strongest individuals on cartoon form I've ever seen. And he had detachments. There you go. Yeah. You've heard that term Popeye arm, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Just checking, just checking. I want to make sure that the reference didn't go unnoticed.

Oh, no. It was there. Okay. So in regards to shoulder corrections, so break down that pyramid. Sure. What you would start with with someone. Oh, by the way, actually, before we get into that. Do people actually come into your gym and say, my shoulders hurt, or is it just a finding? Like when you ask them to do something, they're like, no, I can't do it. 50-50. It depends on what they're coming for. When people come to see me personally now, it's usually because there's some sort of a problem. People just coming to the gym in general aren't always very forthcoming about what their ailments are.

They're like, oh, you know, I'm fine. And then you poke a little bit deeper. They're like, oh, you know, actually, I'm not fine. You know what I mean? So I think the most important thing is to lay a solid foundation for the shoulder to move from. So it has to start from the inside out. And that's why the very bottom of the simple shoulder pyramid is breathing and core strength. Because if those aren't properly dialed in, then the ball and socket joints don't have any chance to move well. You see what I'm saying? And you probably know better than anybody already, but essentially, if your core and breathing muscles don't hold the appropriate amount of tension to provide a foundation, muscles responsible for moving the ball and socket joints, hips and shoulders, are going to try to be stabilizing muscles.

They're going to try to help stabilize your pelvis and spine. Now, the problem with that is if they're doing that, they can't be bothered to actually move those joints around. So now you're going to start pissing off the neighboring muscles because they're trying to do too many jobs that they weren't designed for. A very common problem is that people can't use their lats anymore because their lats try to provide stability for a sleepy oblique. And, of course, if the lat can't be a lat anymore, you're relying on Tiny Terry's to try to be a lat. Sounds like a bedtime story we're starting here. I know.

See, Larry the lat had to do the job of that lazy oblique, Oscar the oblique. He was such a lazy oblique. And then Larry the lat came in and was like, don't worry, Oscar the oblique. I'll do that job for you. But then poor Tiny Terry's was like, oh, no, how am I going to move this entire upper arm? How am I going to do all these pull-ups? I'm just a tiny little Terry's muscle. For some reason, I'm imagining Hansel and Gretel, I think, is the one where they bait the kid to come in and like, hey, I think you can clean my oven. Go clean my oven. And they eat the kids. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the woman eats the two small children.

Yeah, Tiny Terry's is done. I should make that into a nursery rhyme. That would be Max's fables. You know, no one would forget it. No one would forget the reason why. I might have to actually do that. I still don't know what the Hansel and Gretel moral was. I think it was, you know, don't go out in the woods alone. I don't know. Or you'll get eaten by a woman in a gingerbread house. I thought it was always don't trust strangers, it seemed like, like Red Riding Hood. Yeah, you know what? Don't trust strangers is good advice, I think. Yeah. I can get behind that. Don't take candy from strangers.

You know. Yeah, those are all good advice. Yeah. Just like don't make your lat try to be an oblique. Anyway, wow. We certainly got off on a tangent there. It's okay. You're going to come right back. I can feel it. Yeah. So essentially, you have to lay a solid foundation of core strength and proper tension of the respiratory muscles. You don't want your neck and shoulders to be doing your breathing for you. It's a really common problem. So those things need to be addressed first to lay a solid foundation before we can expand upward and outward toward the glenohumeral joint. The glenohumeral joint, of course, is that small ball and socket on the end, which is already the most mobile and most vulnerable joint in the whole body, and unfortunately, people just stretch and crank on this thing like there's no tomorrow without addressing any of the other key players like breathing and core strength.

From there, you would then move on to adequately mobilizing the spine. This is very important for maintaining the proper tension of the muscles around the neck and mid-back, but also for providing a good foundation for the shoulder blade itself to be both mobile and stable and slide properly along the thorax. And then, of course, the scapula has to be addressed individually as well to make sure that it can actually do those things before you even start worrying about throwing in some like rotator cuff exercises or shoulder stretches or something like that. So it's very important that you go through it sequentially because, as I mentioned, the place where people feel the stiffness, the place where people feel the pain, is that glenohumeral joint, which is already the most mobile joint in the entire body.

Yeah, makes sense. And actually, I was thinking about when you were talking that, so how do you know so much about the shoulder? Because the way I think of like, and I know there's actually, I was telling someone yesterday about that we're going to do the interview today. And I told him I was a little bit jealous of what you're able to do because of your degrees. But you still have a lot of knowledge. And just what we come from, from a medical or sports injury standpoint, is that we're technically supposed to know, you know, about things like cancers and all these systemic diseases. So we have a lot of liability.

Absolutely. So the thing like the simple e-book or the simple shoulder e-book that you put out, it's awesome. It's exactly what I would put out, but I would be scared to death, too. You know, I actually deliberately made a decision to not go in the medical field because of how it's scary out there. People are very litigious. Insurance companies are really, really challenging to deal with. So I made a very conscious decision to not go that route myself. So I'm not, I'm not encumbered with the same kind of things you are. And I guess it's really, it's really nice of you to ask the question, how did you, how did you like know so much?

How did you get so smart kind of thing? It's a little bit disarming, but honestly, I've probably spent, no, not probably. I've definitely spent in the past decade, over a hundred thousand on continuing education outside of university for, um, you know, learning about how things work. I actually presented at the San Diego shoulder conference, uh, last year about, uh, preserving orthopedic health during high intensity exercise specifically for shoulders. Um, and, and really, uh, there, there's a lot of great information. There, there's a lot of great information, you know, read something like simple shoulder solution, which is just my kind of like boiled down distillation of the most essential pieces of the shoulder puzzle.

But, you know, it's a complex joint. I mean, I'm sure I started, um, you know, just because I had my own shoulder problems and I watched the, the other really frustrating thing that, uh, inspired me to spend so much time, uh, reading and learning about this was watching not only myself, but everyone around me was suffering. Uh, and like, oh, you know, I can't, I can't do this that I love to do. And I can't do that that I love to do. And it's like, you know, in, in healthy, active people, shoulder problems seem to be like the number one thing in inactive people. It seems to be back problems, uh, although they have some shoulder problems too, but usually like if you don't use your shoulders that much, they don't really bother you until you're like 80 years old and you're like, oh, I can't get the, you know, soup off the top shelf or something like that.

Who puts soup on the top shelf, by the way? I don't know. I don't, I don't really eat a lot of soup because I live in San Diego. So it's kind of warm here most of the time. Oh, you're a cold weather soup person. Yeah. I like a cold soup. Uh, no, I like a warm, warm soup in the cold weather. Um, yeah. So I, I guess that's really it. It was mostly out of my frustration. And then also all the people that I was working with, you know, I would be like, okay, time to get strong. And they'd be like, I can't do that. My shoulder hurts. I can't do that. My shoulder hurts. I'm like, well, shit. Like, why, why does everyone's, why does everyone's shoulder hurt?

And it's because people aren't taking care of the pieces of the puzzle and they're, they're just not prepared for the exercises that they're trying to do also. Yeah. Hey, and I mean, I like that you took a lot of continued education on it. And I noticed that a lot of coaches and trainers that, that know so much, they, they do spend a lot of time doing that. Um, like I, on the other hand, actually, it's interesting that to hear you say that you thought about doing medical, but you didn't. Um, I actually thought about it after the fact, when I started realizing that, um, I'd actually heard a story about, um, a, it wasn't a friend.

It was just like, you kind of hear this to the great band when you're live, when our liability insurance or malpractice insurance, rather, they sent out these newsletters and apparently a guy was, he was playing basketball with a friend at the gym. Guy turned his ankle and, uh, the guy's like, what, what do I do, doc? And he's like, well, um, just, just rest it for a couple of days. I said, it'll be fine. Right. So lo and behold, the lawsuit ensues from that because he took, he didn't do an exam, but he recommended care. And I keep, I know I keep hearing, keep hearing this stuff. Like, like I'm sure they're very rare, but I mean, there's another one I heard that actually I do this now, if I've had a couple of drinks and someone says, Hey, what do I do for this?

I'm like, you really want me to give you medical advice after two beers, you know, like make an appointment. But because of this, actually, I've thought about, I don't know if I'll do it yet, but I've thought about letting my license lapse, take the nickname of doc, like every other person in the world, and then just know, you can't know what you know, you can, but the liability would decrease. Former doctor. Yeah. Why can't you say that? Can you say that? I don't know, man. I'm not a lawyer and I will not give you legal advice on this matter. See how I avoided litigation right there? I like it.

Very slick move. I like it. Well, it's, but anyway, so I like those people like you do doing that when you like putting all that stuff out there because, because you definitely can, and it's going to help so many people, you know? Yeah. Well, and it, it, you know, if you, if you have like nine rotator cuff tears, shit, you might need to go get surgery, but they've found that surgery and corrective exercise are about equally effective in reducing pain. But if you get surgery, you're more likely to re-injure. And if you don't do the physical therapy, you won't be as strong and you won't move as well.

So just from a like pain and re-injury standpoint, they're pretty equivalent. But if you, uh, choose exercise instead, the end results is actually better because then you're, you know, you have the benefit of having exercise that whole time. You know, there are a lot of benefits to exercise other than just the one pain you're having. Yeah. And I think if you're going to have a procedure done, like a surgical correction, you can always do it later. I mean, it's not like it's a rush. Yeah, exactly. Um, and, and they'll, they're, they're just going to continue getting better with, uh, procedures too.

Yeah, no, I, I completely agree. Um, I actually had a, I had a guest on before that we were talking about the concept of, of earning your surgery. And I really, really liked it. Um, he's like, he's like, you can always do it later, but you owe it to yourself to do X amount of time of corrective exercise to see if it improves. Completely agree. Yeah. Completely agree. That's a great idea. Um, you know, why, why not, why not take responsibility and try to do it yourself first? Yeah, I, I totally agree. There's so much free information out there on this stuff that, I mean, there's no reason to not know anymore.

I, part of the reason I feel so comfortable putting all that stuff out there. Oh my God, a bee just flew right in my eye. That was crazy. I'm just going to pretend like it wasn't a big deal though. Move right on. The bee? Yeah, the bee, it flew like right into my eyeball. It was like craziest frigging thing. At least he's not small enough to actually stay in there. Yeah, seriously. Um, that'll wake you up. Uh, sorry. Where, where was I? Uh, um, God, I don't, I don't know. I don't know. Oh, oh, the reason why you felt so good putting the stuff out there was. Oh, because I believe in teaching people how to take care of themselves.

I don't actually believe in taking care of people. I think it's, um, I think it's lazy. I think, I think the problem is that people are so used to just being catered to and taken care of. And that's actually not the best way. The best way is to give people the tools to better take care of themselves. I think people need to be more self-sufficient, self-reliant, and just be 100% responsible for, you know, who they are and what they do and how well they take care of their bodies. You know, I, I get all these people with pain and, you know, maybe they've been told by a doctor, I'll just rest it, which it can be good advice or it can be horrible advice.

Um, but if you have a problem, why are you not at least trying to move every day, everything that doesn't hurt, you know, like at the very, at the very absolute minimum, if your foot and ankle hurts, you better be moving the shit out of everything else. You better be moving everything else twice as much. And you know what usually happens? Ankle starts to feel better. Oh, well, you know, I've been moving my toes a lot. I've been moving my knee a lot. And it's the weirdest thing. My ankle feels better. Oh, my back hurts. But gosh, you know, all this like neck mobility and core strengthening exercises that I've done.

It's really starting to feel better now. And, and sometimes it really is just that simple. Yeah. There's, there's actually a concept I heard at a, uh, it was, it was a lecture. They were talking about return to play for say someone with an ACL injury, or they were just talking about a structural issue. One that's really torn. It's really, it was more of a traumatic thing. And they're, they're talking about the concept of kind of like what you said, that the tip, there's a tissue healing time or there's a tissue readiness scale. Absolutely. And there's an athlete readiness scale. Yeah. Different.

Yeah. So you're right with moving everything else. It's like, you can't just wait for the tissue to heal because everything else degrades too. Right. Well, it's like, don't you want to move? Like, no bees could fly in your eye, man. You're, you're, you're, you're alive right now. Like one of the main benefits to being alive is that you get to move. One of the, one of the main consequences of being dead is that you don't get to move anymore. So you might as well enjoy the moving part as much as possible while you have a chance. And that's why having a foundation of physical ability is so important.

And that's my whole goal with the simple shoulder solution, with five minute flow, with ultimate athleticism. The whole goal of these programs is to arm someone with physical freedom that will allow them to pursue any athletic endeavor for the rest of their lives. And I think that's the big secret to fitness. You know, if you have a bunch of stuff that's active that you like to do, not like, oh, do I want to go to the gym? It's like, no, I am dying to go play tennis or go play basketball or stand up paddleboard or surf. The key with training should be make it as fun as possible, but make sure that your body is healthy so you can do the more hard.

Oh, so there, you cut out a little bit. Yeah, no, all I was saying is just make sure that your body has a foundation to do the fun stuff that might be a little bit more physically challenging. No, I completely agree. I've always said that like the, and I was actually guilty of this before, like, so when, like, so if you're doing weekend warrior stuff, you only have free time on Saturday and Sunday and Friday. And, but you're like, I'm just going to, whatever injury this is or whatever ailment this is, I'm just going to rest it until Friday and then I'm going to do it full. You know, like it's, I feel like you have responsibility to do your due diligence during the week.

If you're going to be sprinting on the weekend, do some change of direction drills on the weekdays. I mean, get yourself ready for it, you know. So in regards to the e-book, I know we talked about the pyramid. Give us some examples of some exercises. Actually, first off, well, yeah, give me the examples, some exercises of each category and then see, is there a way that, can they access the e-book anywhere? I know that they're going to be, they're going to probably listen to that. So they say, they might think, I don't know what those things are. Or do you have videos on them? There are videos.

Okay. So it's a, it's like a full exercise library actually. So it's videos and a book. Oh, cool. Yeah. And you can find that at simple shoulder solution.com or max shank.com. But it goes through in much greater detail than we've talked about. You know, all the different shoulder exercises and categories and why to do that and what order to do them in and things like that. So with the breathe, with the breathing part, that was your foundation, correct? Just recapping. Breathing's the foundation, has to be the foundation. And if you think about it from a common sense standpoint, that's what your body needs the most to survive.

So it will, it'll push other things down the priority list to make sure that you can breathe because that's one of the most important things to keeping you alive. So it'll sacrifice, you know, some core stability or it'll sacrifice some hip mobility to make sure that you're fully breathing. So that has to be the first priority. Otherwise, the, the chain, everything up the chain or down the chain, depending on how you want to look at it, is compromised. So how does someone know if they're breathing well? You know, you can do a couple exercises. One that I start everybody on is just trying to differentiate between upper chest breathing and lower stomach breathing.

So I like to have people put one hand on their belly, below their belly button, and try to breathe into that area. Another strategy you can use is you can act around your waist and try to do the resistance band. Teaching people how to breathe into their hips, and I don't say belly because people still usually go too high. I say breathe into the hips. And that alone can make a huge difference on their chest and try to make sure that they just move the bottom hand. So the high, low breathing drill. So you try to move the bottom hand or the band, but not the top hand that's resting on your chest.

And if you're able to do this with a nose breathing only and a four-second inhale, eight-second exhale, that usually gets people off to a really good start. I like it. Just a side thing is are you walking around? We're losing slight bits of your – as soon as we talked about breathing, we started cutting out sound. I was in another part of the house, so I'll just stay over here now. Okay, cool. And in regards to spinal stuff, because that was next, is there a couple things you recommend? Or I know that you have stuff on the five-minute flow, which looked like it was kind of targeting that too. Yep, all of that.

So moving on to core strength would be next. And usually there's almost always some version of side planks or crawling in the equation when it comes to dealing with shoulder issues. Being able to stabilize through the lateral oblique, glute medius, things like that, is a skill that a lot of people really lack. And as we talked about before, if the core is not doing its job, then you are going to have to rely on tiny teres at some point. I was hoping you say lazy lat. So once those are taken care of, then it's very important to mobilize the thoracic spine and neck. And it's especially important to do those while you're doing your normal strength exercises.

So you should be able to, while you're doing a push-up, look to the right during the push-up. You should be able to look to the left while you're doing a push-up. You know, just the ability to disassociate your neck from what your shoulders are doing is huge, because a lot of people tend to use their neck for shoulder movements. As far as the thoracic spine is concerned, that one, some standard, like, yoga stuff, like the cat-cow, but also rotation and passive is very important. I worked with a guy once who had shoulder pain. He said it was like a level eight, and the response to him was to hand him a sheet of luminated shoulder exercise and say, go try these for eight weeks.

That made no difference. He came to see me because he watched my free shoulder webinar, and I found out within five minutes that he could rotate his thoracic spine about 45 degrees on side and about 10 degrees to the other side. And that imbalance completely did his ability to move from his shoulder. So once we did some basic thoracic rotations, I think we did some side thoracic rotations and also some quadruped rotations, and his pain went from an eight to a two in about two minutes. So how's he doing right now? He's back in action. Nice. He's back to sport. Yeah, no problems. Good. What was his sport, or what was he wanting to do?

Here's the funny thing. Hockey. The first thing I did was rotation because those guys are twisted to one side all the time mostly. Yeah, hockey. Yeah. Really interesting. You cut out again. I don't know what it is. I don't know. I'm not moving now. The outside was actually really awesome if the cloud of bees is gone. Someone started mowing a lawn out there, so I came inside. Okay. I'll let you know. I'll give you a heads up if it starts cutting too much. I'm still getting majority of what you're saying. So I'd say easily a good 92%. That's better than I ever did in school. Yeah. Okay. So now that they've gone through thoracic spine and neck spine corrections, then where do they go?

Oh, now I'm really losing you. Oh, those birds again. You hear me now? Yeah, I can hear you. Okay. So where do they go after the spinal corrections? The scapula. And I would say this is probably the least commonly utilized strategy when it comes to shoulder corrections. It's kind of incredible how few people understand just how important the shoulder blade really is and what its capabilities are. You know, I always start people with basic protraction and retraction from a quadruped or hands and knees position. But ultimately, you want to be able to draw a full circle with your shoulder blade. If you were looking at it from the side view, it would go kind of like a train wheel with a camshaft on it.

You can get that little picture in your head so it's moving in the circular pattern. But you should be able to do that from a push-up position. You should be able to do that from like a position at the top of a dip. And you should be able to do that position from hanging as well. You know, the scapular muscles are supposed to be extremely strong. But it's incredible to me how few people can hang from a bar and make a shoulder blade circle. It really is kind of incredible because we all have that capability when you were young. You know, you look at like a five-year-old girl like traversing across the monkey bars like it's no big deal.

And then, you know, I can't get a 25-year-old strong man to hang from a bar with one arm for five seconds. Yeah. I wonder how – I wonder when that finally starts to go away for people because, I mean, I've heard like people use the excuse for like, well, they're smaller. They don't weigh anything. I'm like, well, their hand's tiny, you know. It's all relative. Yeah. And relatively, that bar is much thicker. The grip is harder probably for them too. It's a question of if you don't use it, you lose it. Simple as that. You know? And I think it's more comfortable for people to make excuses than to make changes.

And it also takes less time. Yeah. I think they've got to be really creative though. Yeah. We've certainly gotten more creative in our excuses, right? Yeah. I think I'm always going to go to like the third tier one. Like when they give me one excuse, I'm going to say, no, try again. And just like see how deep they get. Right. Well, yeah, that's funny. Good. Have you been to like a mud run or an obstacle course race before? I have. I have done an obstacle course race before. Have you? Like I, I've done a few and I like the, just the overall observation of the fear of people doing monkey bars is astounding.

Yeah. Well, they have no, they have no faith in the ability of their hands. That's, that's, that's long and short of it. Right. Is they just, they just don't have any confidence that their hands can, can do what they need them to do their hands and shoulders and back muscles and all that stuff. Yeah. Is, is, uh, so do you find that grip is, is grip the first thing gives out as the rest of their body when they're hanging from something? Uh, well, it's, they'll often say it's their grip that gives out, but quite frequently the cause is actually something else. Um, like their ability to like hold their shoulder in the ideal position, which would make their grip give out.

If your shoulder is not in a great position, uh, being able to hang from one arm overhead is actually one of the later progressions in my program, because I think it's, ah, God, it's just so important, you know? Um, and I think it's important to have a clear path to a higher level of athleticism and strength that you had before, rather than just be a rehab program. Uh, you know, I think, I think just having, I think having something be just rehab isn't really fair. You know, where, where, where do they go from there? What happens on, you know, day one of training when they've been doing rehab this whole time?

Like, what do they have to aim for to make it really strong from now on? And I think that's, um, that's really another thing that separates what I've put together from the rest of the stuff that I've at least seen so far is there's a path to go from how my shoulder hurts to, wow, now I can press up into a handstand and I can do skin the cats on the rings and things like that. And there's a careful, uh, series of progressions that can lead you there. Yeah. I'm sure like every step of the way up, they, do they like, they get a little bit more success. So the confidence also goes up to, and exactly.

Well, I like to follow what I've been referring to as the three C's, a consistent, comfortable challenge. And I, and I think that's kind of the secret to success with anything is you got to be consistent and you have to challenge yourself, but you don't want to challenge yourself to the point where you're like dying. You know what I mean? You want to challenge yourself, but it's like a comfortable challenge. Like this is hard, but I can do it. I think is the thing you're going for. Yeah. It makes complete sense. Um, I'm going to imagine though that people, especially in the beginning, like, like some of your beginning clients, they, they need to be pushed into the feeling that the sensation they're having right there.

It's still safe, but it's challenging enough, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. No, I mean that think about what our brains crave more than anything. It's safety. Yeah. You know, so they will sacrifice everything else for safety. And so kind of like what you were saying before, you know, you want to practice some multidirectional running and sprinting in a safe environment before you hop on the court, it would be silly not to. Yeah. We have people do side shuffling and skipping and, you know, these are oftentimes adults, uh, upwards of 70 years old sometimes who don't play any sports, but we're still having them move in multiple directions and, uh, at least keep those abilities to move well.

Yeah. I mean, like you think about it too. I mean, I've told my clients that I'm like, sure. They, they might not want to do like some of the stuff I'm recommending or like say skipping and so on, but like, cause it doesn't apply to like the sport they want to do or that's what they say. But I'm like, you know what, if you're, if, if you're in the middle of a street and a bus is coming, you know, like you're gonna, you're gonna skip, you're gonna run, you're gonna sprint, you know, like you might not want to, but it is life, you know, you have to be ready for it. You know what, one of the saddest things I've ever seen in my life was actually at the airport.

This family, uh, at LAX was rushing to get their flight and the lady of the group, the mom had to stop cause she just couldn't run anymore. And it was really sad because everyone else still had energy to run, but they all had to stop because she couldn't make it. And I'm sure they probably missed their flight because of it. Yeah. You know, not being able to move well can make you feel really powerless. And that, that's kind of the real reason that's led me to go in this direction is I just, I hate to see, I hate the feeling myself of feeling powerless physically. And I just see it as almost being commonplace now.

And people just kind of, people kind of just accept it, unfortunately. And that's, uh, you know, that's just not okay. You know, I, I think people have the ability to take great care of their bodies and maintain a level of physical freedom that will allow them long-term fitness and health success. And, uh, you know, it's, it's not a whole lot of effort. You just got to do the right things consistently over time. Yeah, I agree. In regards to feeling helpless, I know that, um, I feel like there's actually a few diagnosis that float around that people think, ah, I'm done. There's nothing left, you know?

Um, osteoarthritis would be one, like a complete tear would be another or a partial tear. Um, I would almost rather. And not the, not even tell them, honestly, like if, if you could, if you can almost not image. Yeah, totally. So you've had clients that have you had clients you haven't been able to actually get them out of a mindset like that. Totally. Um, you know, I've, I've worked with a lot of different people in different cases and, um, you know, I'll, I'll hear someone refer back to the problem that they have, that they've been diagnosed with many, many times. And I know that it's going to be a real struggle to get him to get out of that mindset, you know, be like, Oh, well, what about, you know, this, my, I remember this one guy said, my fibromyalgia.

Oh yeah. I said, my fiber. I'm like, dude, you don't want any part of that. And who the fuck told you, you have fibromyalgia, fibromyalgia, which is like basically a fancy way of saying everywhere pain. And we're not exactly sure why is like one of, one of the most, uh, you know, just like flippantly like, ah, you know, we don't know what's the problem here. You got fibromyalgia now. And it's like, well, wait a second. We, we don't know. We don't know anything because there's not like, there's not like a specific treatment or cure for fibromyalgia other than just exercise. So it's like, why would you even say something like that?

Like, what good does it do? You know what I mean? Yeah. Especially when you start to make an association and say, Oh, my fibromyalgia or Oh, my, my bad, this, or my bad, that's like, no, no, man, you got to change your attitude big time because pain lives in the brain. I was going to say the exact same thing. It's like when they start to own it, when it becomes their identity, it is really, really hard to break them of that. Yeah. Um, oh gosh, I, I feel like I don't, I don't, I was going to guide you on another route here, but then I, we got stuck. That was a good one. I like that. Yeah. Um, in regards to, um, is there still, is there still exercises that you, um, that you would consider the highest risk in regards to shoulder conditions and realize it really, it has to depend on the person, but I can, I can play this game and also try to give you a couple that are like kind of pet peeves of mine.

Um, some of them are, are probably just easy marks, but, but I think the, for most people, the kipping pull up is a pretty horrific idea. The only thing worse would be a kipping muscle up because you're basically flinging your body into extreme shoulder extension that most people don't have. Um, I think upright rows done. Well, you know, here's the problem is like, if you do any exercise incorrectly with bad biomechanics, then it's a bad exercise. If you do a bad exercise with good biomechanics, it's actually not that bad. Do you kind of get what I'm saying? So really the biggest problem is that a person will have a shoddy foundation rather than do the wrong exercise, if that makes sense.

Yeah. So a pushup can be extremely dangerous if your shoulder blades can't be both mobile and stable to allow that movement. But, you know, for someone with healthy shoulders, um, you know, kipping pull ups, kipping muscle ups, all this kind of crazy acrobatic shit can be perfectly healthy for you. So that makes complete sense. It's all how you do it. It, it really is all how you do it. You know, whatever you're doing, just make sure it's on purpose. Mm-hmm. Um, I know what I was going to ask you earlier. So, cause we're getting back to the ebook a little bit more. The, there's a concept of, uh, internal and external queuing.

Oh yeah. Okay. So for everyone else that doesn't know, can you, can you kind of explain that and tell me the success you've had with the book versus in person? Sure. Um, I mean the difference between internal and external queuing is basically, yeah, so basically like external queuing would be like, you have someone like trying to perform a task or, you know, reach for something or touch something. So having some kind of feedback with the world around them is usually better. Um, and that's why, uh, I use that strategy in simple shoulder solution and really all of the stuff that I do. So do you, do you find that, I mean, do you have, do you have, you still have really good success with people on the ebook rather than in person or both?

Uh, I mean, of course I have more success with someone in person. Of course. Um, you know, um, you know, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't even be worth myself if I wasn't better in person, but, um, I've had, from just a pure numbers standpoint, I've had more success with the book online because I've been able to administer it to more people. Yeah. Uh, I get, I get emails all the time. I've had, I've got hundreds of testimonials. Um, and the beauty of it is most of them have been unsolicited. It's usually people just write me an email or post on Facebook and say, wow, I just did these few exercises and it feels so much better.

And the funny thing is most people don't even get to the glenohumeral joint. You know, we went through that whole sequence earlier. A lot of people are like, wow, I did some side planks with breathing and neck rotations and it changed my life. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, it's incredible, right? Like once you have your, uh, once you have your body working optimally, you have all the stuff in the right position, things work really well and the body is awesome. You can do a really cool shit with this thing. Uh, yeah, that's amazing. It's good stuff. Like I like that, that, I mean, you're, you're right.

You can, you can hit so many more people and get more numbers, pure numbers than you can. I mean, you can't, it's, is, is this ebook's basically a way of duplicating yourself is what it sounds like. Yeah. I mean, basically I put together a, essentially five-step approach to enhancing shoulder mobility and increasing strength over the longterm. And, uh, there are a lot of videos that go along with it that break everything down step by step. And a lot of the time that works really well. And sometimes it's, it's something weird. Sometimes the cause of the problem is something weird that no one would really be able to predict without, uh, you know, a full in-person evaluation.

But there, there's really a lot you can do with some self-evaluations, just some, uh, you know, progressive movement. Mm-hmm. Well, cool. So as we start to close the podcast up, is there anything else you want to add? I know that they can get it on, was it simple shoulder solution.com? Yep. That's, uh, where you can get it. You can also get it at maxshank.com. Either one. Uh, I put out a lot of, uh, free information out there too. So what I would recommend you do is just see if, um, you know, if you're listening right now, just see if what I'm saying resonates with you and, you know, peruse the website and it's pretty cheap.

I would just pick it up and, and try it out. I have a money back guarantee and it's, uh, you'll definitely learn something and you'll certainly, uh, enhance the strength and resilience of your shoulders. Yeah. And there, you know, I have, I have a lot of other stuff on there too. It's great and it's all kind of tied to the same, uh, MO, which is try to get back that physical freedom. So life is fun. Yeah. Well, I think even if they look at the first slide, they look at the web, they look at that first page. I think they're going to learn more than they could have with spending like five hours in the internet searching and looking at diagnosis of shoulder impingement and cuff tears and so on just more from that pyramid.

Well, you, you, I, I, I really appreciate that. And I think you're absolutely right. That was the number, that was the number one problem or mistake I saw made over and over and over again, which was people just focusing on the shoulder, the shoulder, the shoulder, instead of looking at the big picture and realizing that, you know, where you're experiencing the problem is likely not the root cause. So just even if it, even if all it does is change the way you think about the shoulder, then it's worth it because then you can figure it out. Nice. Well, cool. So let me, actually, I hear you're driving now.

If you, let me close the podcast up and then I will let everyone know where to find all your stuff. And then if you want to hang on, I want to ask you a couple of questions after. That's cool. Yeah, of course. Absolutely. Okay. Hi, everyone. That was Max Schenck and you can reach him at maxschenck.com. That is M-A-X-S-H-A-N-K.com and simpleshouldersolution.com. I'll put all these links on the p2sportscare.com slash podcast area of the website. So if you want to check it out there, I'll go over a couple of the concepts we talked about and just kind of make some notes to make it so you can kind of remember like some of the stuff we talked about.

So even the rough breakdown on the pyramid, I think I'll put on there as well. So remember, if you guys do have questions for experts like this, feel free to go on and just put a voicemail. I mean, it's right there on the front page of the site. You get about a minute and a half to state your case and just tell me your story. Tell me your plights. Tell me, I mean, tell me everything that's going on. Like the more information you give me about what's going on, the more we can discuss it in a forum like this. And granted, we're not allowed to kind of like I said earlier, we can't really say how to treat it, but we can brainstorm how we would theoretically in a clinic.

You can see I'm stepping on straw here or eggshells. So anyways, but you get the point. So go on to p2sportscare.com and if you haven't already, subscribe to the podcast. You can get it on that one link. Go through iTunes, subscribe there, and please review it. So talk with you guys soon and thanks for listening in.