0 (1s):
Coming up on the get lean, eat clean podcast.
1 (4s):
Wait a second. You're telling me I'm going to lose more body fat by laying on my back and doing this tiny little movement for a single joint without a significant load at high reps. So you're basically telling me to burn as little calories as possible while I sit here and do this little fricking exercise, and somehow that's going to get me better. So there's a more efficient way to do this stuff. And that stuff drives me nuts, right? That that is anybody who markets, that stuff is selling somebody, a bill of goods that is setting them up for failure and they should feel horrible about themselves.
1 (47s):
I'm sorry, like you're selling snake oil.
0 (51s):
Hello and welcome to the get clean eat clean podcast. I'm Brian grin. And I'm here to give you actionable tips to get your body back to what it once was five, 10, even 15 years ago each week. I'll give you an in-depth interview with a health expert from around the world to cut through the fluff and get you long-term sustainable results. This week I interviewed the CEO and founder of Brooke Bush Institute of human movement, science, Brent, Brooke Bush. We discussed how to self-assess for better movement, common postural dysfunctions. What's wrong in the health field, along with why you shouldn't stretch your hamstrings, the importance of glutes, how to play basketball in your forties and fifties, and is one tip to get your body back to what it once was.
0 (1m 36s):
This was a great interview with Brent. We talked a lot about how human movement and how to feel better in your forties and fifties and beyond it a little bit different than most of my other podcasts, where we talk a lot about nutrition. This one is more about movement, so enjoy and thanks so much for listening. All right, welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. My name is Brian grin, and I have a special guest, Brent, Brooke Bush on the line. Welcome to the show.
1 (2m 3s):
Thank you. Thank you. Glad to be here.
0 (2m 6s):
Yeah. I've known Brent for a bunch of years now and he is the president founder of Brooke book, Brooke Bush Institute of human movement science. And you've been in health and wellness since what, 1998. I have written here. Is that right? Yep.
1 (2m 24s):
A little over 20 years now, now all
0 (2m 26s):
The time. And I found Brent actually through a lot of his YouTube videos. He definitely has a good presence on YouTube. And now he's converted a lot onto his website where he has a bunch of certifications. Like I did his hu human movement specialist certification. And, and then you have two other certifications, right?
1 (2m 48s):
Yeah. We launched the certified personal trainer certification. So you can do that through our membership platform. And we have another advanced credential for manual therapists called the integrated manual therapists. We thought that important to bring to, to that area of, of the rehab, to performance sports medicine, spectrum the idea that, you know, we can integrate all of these various techniques to be more outcome or to get better outcomes. And of course being evidence-based too around that, that manual therapy and integrated manual therapy is huge as well.
0 (3m 25s):
Yeah. And, and the reason I, I want, I wanted to have Brent on is just a different angle. We talk a lot about nutrition, but today we're gonna talking about, you know, how you can, you know, how you can do some things, simple things to everyday things to help your body move better, because if you don't move right then as you get older, it's just going to get worse and worse. And we know all about dysfunction and whether it's, you know, in your hips or wherever shoulders. And so I wanted to bring Brent on and he's definitely an expert in this field. And so I figured we would start with assessment, right. I think that's probably the first step in, in understanding, you know, how your body can move.
0 (4m 8s):
Right. And how do you, how do you go about assessing individuals and how can they self-assess themselves?
1 (4m 16s):
Oh, good question. So, you know, as a physical therapist, you know, that's one bar where you have these levels of diagnostic assessments and then movement assessment, and then more detailed movement assessments that are driving towards something like an intervention then should plan that's specific to addressing pain. And then of course we kind of move down the spectrum and go, okay, well, do we need these diagnostic assessments? If we're just looking at movement and chances are a lot of times we don't, you know, we can use something like the overhead squat assessment and just look at trying to help people move better. And then we have this other group of individuals to absolutely deserve the right to try to assess and treat themselves and kind of a DIY sort of fashion, right.
1 (5m 6s):
To do it yourself sort of fashion. And I think, you know, everybody, you know, going one of my friends, Kelly stare at right, he has the ready state and it's more or less a coaching platform. And he talks about how everybody has the right to try and fix themselves. And I think that's very true. It does create some very hard challenges though, because how do you teach somebody how to assess themselves without also having to package in all of this anatomy knowledge, right? And maybe even beyond that, what is an assessment? Because it sounds real easy to say assessment, but we lose learn assessments in school, man, we're talking about reliability, sensitivity, specificity. We're talking about math, right?
1 (5m 47s):
We're talking about what are the probabilities attached to these assessments? So you got to realize there's a, there's a spectrum of assessment is kind of what I'm trying to lay out. Right? We have all the way, I'm a doctor. I'm going to do this sort of assessment too. I'm more in sports coaching training. I'm going to do this level of assessment for movement. And then we have the DIY guys. So what can you do? Well, you can do an overhead squat assessment. I think that's a good place to start. I think that's a great general assessment. It is reliable. It is sensitive and it gives us some good quality information that we can use to dial in your intervention plan, your corrective exercise plan, your warmup plan, your movement, prep plan, whatever you want to call it.
1 (6m 30s):
And that might take a little bit to learn if you're trying to learn this on your own, right. Or you could probably what's ideal. And I know this is not everybody has access to this. You probably should reach out to a professional to have an evaluation done for you. Even if you do a zoom session, right. That's become really popular. Now, I think it's still worth having a zoom session to go, okay. I did my overhead squat assessment in front of a professional. Who's used to using this assessment and he recommended that I go after this sign and then this sign next, right? So I have my top two signs. I have this one first and this one next, and these are the movement prep strategies for each one of them.
1 (7m 15s):
Right? So it doesn't have to be this, like I'm going to be with a personal trainer forever, or I'm going to be with a physical therapist forever. But I can't honestly say that getting past the DIY stuff, getting past that assessment step is, is helpful. If you can do it because if you got to learn assessment on your own is going to be a little frustrating. It's going to be a little bit of a challenge.
0 (7m 39s):
Yeah. And, and I, I learned a lot from you specifically overhead squat assessment, and then what you take from that and how you can apply that. But I agree. I think it helps to have a third party who has some experience to do that and then give you just sort of a program to, to move better. And because, you know, if you want to start a lot of my clients, you know, obviously want to start lifting weights and putting load on, we all know that you don't really want to load when you have a certain dysfunction, what are some of the common dysfunctions that people have? I know it's not a one size fit all thing, but what are the most common things that you see with, with your, with your clients and just in the industry?
1 (8m 26s):
Yeah. So this kind of goes back to what we were talking about with the overhead squat assessment. And then how could we potentially address this DIY thing, which I think is really interesting and who knows might be the next business. I, I work on building, I know I've talked to Kelly stared about it, who has this coaching platform. So if you remember from our courses and especially the human movement specialist certification, we have these predictive models of impairment, right. Where we basically used research to go, okay, this is a, this is the common compensation pattern that is going to be affiliated with these symptom clusters.
1 (9m 8s):
And the interesting thing is, is we can predict a lot of the dysfunction that people are going to fall into. Right. Right. It's not like for example, feet turnout, right. We see people speak turnout when they walk or their feet, try to turn out when they squat. Well, guess what they don't do turn it. It's actually like you're going to be neutral or you're going to be featuring out. And the only times we really see the turn in is when we have neurological issues, which are fairly rare. Okay. So there are times when featured in, but this is not that that's not common population stuff. So we have feature now. Okay. Well, if we know that feat turnout is fairly common, can we do the next step and go, do we know why feet turn out?
1 (9m 55s):
Most of the time? The truth of the matter is yes, we can say with certain amount of circuit, right? Like that most cases could probably be addressed with things. Like if I release my calf and my biceps femoris, if I stretch my calf and then I do some tibialis, anterior tibialis, posterior reactivation would show up for even remember those, those words. But we taught you those exercises. Let's say those are four or five exercises. We can probably address about 60% of all of that stuff. Of all of that feed turnout right now that you might be going well, that's not a hundred percent, no nothing in life is we all have a, a, a probability of things working or not working.
1 (10m 49s):
So, but if I can capture 60% of the turnout with four or five exercises, great. And then we can just kind of move up all the different signs. What are the signs that we see most common? So after feed turned out, maybe it's feet flat, maybe it's knees. But when after that, maybe it's an asymmetrical weight shift. After that, we create programs for that. We could potentially create a screening of sorts where if you kind of think you see certain things in yourself, you give these movement prep, exercise, interventions to try and see if they work. Then you gotta be prepared to fail because even 60%, that means 40% of people.
1 (11m 31s):
Aren't going to see a difference. But if we're just talking about doing DIY for super low cost, right then yeah, it's worth try. And are you going to hurt yourself with home exercise? Probably not. Right? Like the chance of you hurting yourself with home exercise, if you're not already experiencing pain is probably slim. So if you think you have featured out and stand, you have feet flatten, or you think you have featured out and actually you have like knee valgus is doing the feet turnout program I'm going to kill you. No, it just may not work as well as the Debo in program, which eventually you will get to through trial and error.
1 (12m 12s):
I think that is definitely on the way. I don't know if we'll end up doing it, obviously with being an educator for my colleagues. Like there's a huge amount of work to be done there, but I think there are guys out there who are really trying to get into this coaching thing. They're really trying to make that offer available to everybody. And I would hope that my academic work being these predictive models of impairment can somehow link up with one of these guys trying to do coaching and we can create a, a really great DIY platform.
0 (12m 53s):
Yeah. And yeah, I mean, you bring up a good point in the sense that you got to do a little education, but you know, like CA cat care calves being tight probably leads to a lot of dysfunction. Like you mentioned, maybe 60% also probably people who lack like what's called Dorsa flection rights. So they can't necessarily, their knees don't track correctly, but you can find that out about yourself simply by doing it. And, and Brent's referring to doing like your own overhead squat assessment where just so people understand you re you hear, have your hand straight up, right. Toes facing straight ahead, and you could do it in front of a mirror and, and at least get an idea, like what kind of movements?
0 (13m 37s):
And do I have any dysfunction when I go down into a squat? Correct?
1 (13m 41s):
Yeah. I mean, you could just do a body weight, squat. It doesn't even have to be with your arms over your head. If we're just looking at lower extremity stuff, we're just looking at your legs. Right. You know, you could just look down and be like, can I squat with my feet straight? And if you have to turn your feet out, or you have to put your feet on heel rises to get a squat to look decent, we can pretty much guess that you're lacking some Dorsey. Fluxion okay. Let's create a little program for that. That's that's not too bad now, is it going to be effective again? If this is DIY maybe, maybe not, but you know, it's worth a try. I think most people would be like 60%. Don't think when I say most, I mean, nine out of 10.
1 (14m 21s):
So if you're one of the people who doesn't work for it, don't freak out. But, you know, I think we can handle a lot of it just by going, okay. Yeah. This is how you do a release technique for your calves. This is how you do a stretch for your calf. We could even try to show you an ankle mobilization, and here's how to do some quick tibialis, anterior activation exercises, right? You're going to work on some standing dorsi, flection, and some heel walks and stuff like that. To try to get those, those other muscles that have gotten a little weak on you, right? The ones that you're not using as much as you should, we're going to try to get those guys active. And that's just going to become part of your warmup. Why spend five minutes on a treadmill when you can spend five minutes, like actually trying to improve your alignment.
1 (15m 4s):
So your workout feels better.
0 (15m 6s):
Yeah, I totally agree. And actually I, to this day, I still use like somebody for your upper body releases before I do are like stress re releases and stretches before I do, you know, some of my upper body workouts, you know, some external rotation and things like that. Let's talk a little bit about pox, postural dysfunction. I think this is like something I'm always working on and trying to improve in myself and with, you know, with clients, what are some of the big telltale signs of postural dysfunction and maybe some things that people can do to help with that.
1 (15m 44s):
Yeah. So this gets a little interesting. We gotta be careful how we define posture, right? So when I talk about posture, I'm not talking about the same thing that I think a lot of, of normal individuals are talking. When I'm talking about posture, I'm really just talking about a good analogy, a good synonym, a good word for, okay, is my body aligned optimally for what I'm doing, right. We're just kind of talking about good alignment overall. I think people get scared a little bit when we start throwing around the word postural dysfunction and as professionals they think, oh, because I happen to be slouching for a second, I've screwed myself up.
1 (16m 27s):
No, that's, that's not the case, but there can be some interesting adaptations the body chooses to make. When we get stuck in a position, or we get to a point where we've lost so much range of motion, we've gotten so quote unquote tight in certain areas that we can't get back to optimal postures. And that starts affecting our function. And of course, that can lead to pain and then you have to come and see it again, a guy like me, a doctor doctor's physical therapy, right? And that costs money and time. And it's inconvenient who wants to be in pain. So a couple of things to consider with this postural dysfunction thing is it is ubiquitous.
1 (17m 10s):
It happens to everybody, nobody escapes this one. When we started looking at the statistics, the, the prevalence statistics, he realized like 85% of the population is going to have, or has had low back pain. And you go, wow, that's pretty high. But 15% made it. And I go, no, they didn't because you still have something like 30% of the population will suffer from neck pain. 20 something percent will suffer from shoulder pain. And then you start adding knees and ankles and Achilles tendonitis and plantar fasciitis in there. And before you know, it, none of us really escape, but most of us end up with multiple things throughout the, of our lifetime.
0 (17m 51s):
It's normal quick question. Would you attribute that to something like, is there something you can point your finger to? Is it just the fact that we're sitting probably like 80% of the day?
1 (18m 3s):
Oh no. That's not. It, it kinda comes down to how nerdy do you want to get? So I do have a theory and I think it's my theory. I think it's a pretty smart theory. I haven't read it anywhere else, but my guess is, is that everybody falls into these postural dysfunctions because we need backup motor plants. This is a little complicated. I'm going to try to explain this in the simplest terms I can. Okay. So when you're moving your brain recruits a bunch of muscles and within each muscle, we have motor units, right?
1 (18m 45s):
So motor units are the individual units within a muscle that get recruited, right? Cause you don't recruit your entire Peck all at once or what I do this, I don't recruit my entire shoulder all at once. I recruit enough motor units to get that done. So we probably have an optimal set of motor units that does activity X perfectly. But then we have a problem. We have injury, we have fatigue and we have the slow maladaptation of tissues from being in weird positions that might make those optimal motor units, not so accessible, right?
1 (19m 29s):
If I'm running and I'm running and I'm running, you guys have all felt this, that you're running and your form looks great. And then you start getting tired and you start kind of falling apart a little bit and you're like, start flopping your white feet, turn out like an Easter bone in. And you're like hunched over. Right. That's a perfect example of, I started with all these optimal motor units and then they fatigue. And I started switching to my backup mode. Well, my backup mode. Yeah, it doesn't look the same way. And my backup mode being not optimal, probably puts a lot more stress on my passive structures. That that backup load is, is probably half reliant on things like the elasticity of your ligaments, as opposed to the strength and power of your muscles, that's going to cause damage.
1 (20m 18s):
Now there's things in the brain that kind of lead me to believe that this is the case, right? Like we have, your cerebellum has its own. What is it called? I'm forgetting the word. But essentially you have a map of your, of your body in your sensory and motor units. And then you have one that's kind of the same in the older part of your brain, but it kind of looks like a lizard. It's weird. Anyway, you look at some of the stuff like that and you go, oh, that's interesting. Is that part of that backup system that was maybe like our primary system that we've now built on top of with evolution. Right? And you also look at, at our secondary system of motor units, which is what these postural dysfunctions are.
1 (21m 5s):
And they all kind of lean into quadrupedal motion. Right? So not by PETA like us, but quadrupedal and you start just thinking to yourself like, okay, why is this so ubiquitous? Well, it makes a lot of sense to me that we try to use our primary motor units until we can't access them, access them. And then we switch to our back and our backup places, more stress on our past tissues or places, more stress on tissues that have a propensity to break down. And the rub is probably this. We switch from primary to backup really easily, right? That's what allows us to continue doing things for longer than our primary motor units would let us do that.
1 (21m 49s):
Unfortunately, the body does not seem to be as good at switching back. In fact, as you start relying more and more on your backup system, you actually start writing some of the programming in here, which is going to be a problem. That's why it takes so much. That's why, like you guys have probably seen this with corrective exercise or physical therapy where like in a session you can feel better. And then after a couple of days, you start to feel like you did before the session, unless you reinforce it somehow. Right. Part of that has to do with the fact that you, yeah, you did fix the problem, but now you have to reinforce it that start rewriting this program again,
0 (22m 28s):
Pattern. Right. And you go back to that. Yeah.
1 (22m 31s):
Yeah. Your body is the kid who learned how to cheat. Right. But you can tell them not to cheat. Once they got a cheat, they're gonna try to cheat. Right. They're gonna try and do your body is your body's bad kid. So that is my guess on, on what's happening with postural function. Why it's so ubiquitous, the reason I think it gets a little silly to say, well, we're sitting eight hours a day. It's like, what did you think we were doing before? Like, we don't have great evidence to suggest that we were walking around for 12 hours a day. I don't think that was the case either. And you see people who are doing manual labor and they have the same problems, right?
1 (23m 14s):
Like it doesn't, it's not fit. Athletes have all sorts of crazy issues. But the funny thing is, is they're the same issues that the people sitting down and the people doing manual labor are, they just happen either at a, they either take a higher amount of velocity to trigger. For example, the athlete who blew out the NBA athlete, who blew out his ACL playing, you know, competitive NBA, basketball might not have had any pain walking around, you know, whereas somebody who's a little bit more, a little less conditioned and a little less genetically gifted, right. For them to have an ACL tear when they were out jogging, they might've had knee pain the whole time that they never fixed.
1 (23m 59s):
Right. So, yeah, man, it's pretty, it's pretty ubiquitous. Anyway, I'm going off on a rant about my theory on postural dysfunction. I ha I've maybe I'm right. That would be, that'd be kind of cool.
0 (24m 14s):
You've been in this game for a while, so I'll, I'll take your word. What would you say? Some of the biggest myths out there as far as just like for stretching and for, you know, correct. You know, I guess correct body movement. Like for example, I remember with you, you talked about, you know, people that you shouldn't be stretching your hamstrings, what are some of those low-hanging fruits that that's out there in the, as the norm in the fitness industry, but that is completely wrong,
1 (24m 46s):
Completely wrong
0 (24m 47s):
Or somewhat wrong, or, you know, like for hamstrings, for example, right. You teach obviously more to, you know, there are, there are long muscle, right? So you should be releasing them and are stretching and not stretching. Right. Anything else out there that, you know, like for example, like some certain AB exercises that you don't like, like, what are some of the types of things out there that you don't like that's done in the mainstream?
1 (25m 12s):
So, so many things, and it just depends on, again, like it's all about this level of nuance and complication that you want to get into. So I mean, things that I absolutely hate to see spot reduction, lower abs Toni, like all of that stuff is garbage. You know, there's no such thing as spot reduction. There's no such thing as lower abs. You can't target your inner Peck. You can't target you lower ad. You can't target you lower, but you can't target your outer thighs. Like none of that stuff exists. And of course, when we talk about toning, the same thing, like you can't have long lean muscles, your muscles either grow or shrink, and you're going to either gain body fat or lose body fat. And when we advertise that people can do these things, like they can spot, reduce their lower abs with this exercise, doing higher reps by lying on the floor and doing X, you start going, wait a second.
1 (26m 5s):
You're telling me I'm going to lose more body fat by laying on my back and doing this tiny little movement for a single joint, without a significant load at high reps. So you're basically telling me to burn as little calories as possible while I sit here and do this little fricking exercise. And somehow that's going to get me better. No, there's a more efficient way to do this stuff. And that stuff drives me nuts, right? That, that is anybody who markets, that stuff is selling somebody, a billable that is setting them up for failure and they should feel horrible about themselves.
1 (26m 47s):
I'm sorry, like you're selling snake oil. So stop because the truth of the matter is, is with that stuff. There is a cost people forget that motivation is not unlimited. People forget that time is not unlimited. People forget that energy is not, that is not unlimited. And when you have a client come in and you give them something like a lower AB workout that is almost guaranteed to fail, you have cost them motivation. You have cost and time. And the worst thing that we want to see, or the worst thing that we could see is somebody going. I just don't think this workout thing is for me.
1 (27m 30s):
Right. Well, they didn't just sign off that exercise. They're saying I tried working out and I failed and they're right, because they don't know what we know. They didn't try and exercise and failed. They hired a personal trainer who taught them some wrong stuff. And as far as they're concerned, they tried the exercise thing and it didn't help them. Right. That stuffs like irks me on a level that I can't either. And yeah, I mean, then we get into stuff like we were just talking about it and it seems almost like small potatoes because w what are we talking about now?
1 (28m 14s):
We're talking about optimizing good practice. Right? So like one of the big things with the Brooke Bush Institute that I hope is very apparent, very different is we use the scientific method. Like that is what we are. The Brooke Bush Institute is not Brent Brook bushes opinion on movement. Right. It's all evidence-based right. It is all about it got number one. The company got named after me by accident. I think I've, I've said that in several podcasts, like I started trying to build a business off of like my Facebook page. So my name kind of got attached to this thing I was trying to do, but my employees, my, my, my team, like everybody knows that, like, it's not Brent's opinion.
1 (29m 1s):
It's like, no, no, no. We're going to base every course on a comprehensive review of all of the research and make sure that we take a second to filter the practical application of that research and make sure that it matches what we're seeing in clinic. So it all makes sense, right? Because research can be a little bit vague sometimes, right. But it's all outcomes and it's all outcomes and evidence, right. To get to the most accurate thing possible. What we were just talking about with, with the toning and the spot reduction. These two things are very related in the sense that, you know, me just trying to bring my colleagues along to be truly evidence-based is very hard because the truth of the matter is, is to be that level of accurate takes a mind numbing amount of work, right?
1 (29m 55s):
It is. I have been at this for almost 10 years of writing lit review after lit review, after lit review, after lit review. And we are not at a comprehensive body of content for the education platform that I visualize it. I've been at this for 10 years. Right. So you can imagine what it's like for my colleagues. We're just trying to practice, right. They're just trying to show up to clinic every day and do a good job. Like they have time to be doing lit reviews, they're time consuming. And then you go down to the general public and you go, oh, by the way, you should be doing it this way, because it's scientific. Well, they, they don't even have the skillset to do a lit review.
1 (30m 38s):
And just learning that it's hard. And then doing it is really hard. And then finding the time for all of this stuff is almost ridiculous. Unless you have to be to be doing it because you're running an education platform. So where am I going with this? It drives me nuts that these myths happen, that people hold onto them. And I think here's the mistake. And we see this across everything right now, right. Is because something is hard to understand. People will interject their opinion and belief as more substantial than the science, maybe because they don't understand the science, maybe because they don't know how to look up the science.
1 (31m 28s):
Maybe they think something ridiculous, like science is its own religion, which it is not, it is fundamentally different, right? These are two totally different things.
0 (31m 41s):
So like, Jen, not to cut you off. So like the myth of let's let's, let's go back to what I mentioned, stretching your hamstrings. Cause I think you see people all over the place doing it. What you're the evidence-based behind not stretching them and releasing them. Can you just explain that? So people understand.
1 (32m 2s):
Sure. So now we're getting pretty new, right? We're we're higher level, right? So we're not even just talking about is stretching good or bad. Right. We're talking about is stretching this one particular muscle good or not. Right. Okay. And we have to get pretty sophisticated even about what we're talking about. So our particular recommendation is you have various categories of techniques. You know, you have releases for muscles, you have mobilizations for joints and you have lengthening techniques for muscles. And I guess soft tissues are lengthened in those stretching techniques. And you kind of go, okay, which one of these, or which combination of these should I be using for a particular dysfunction?
1 (32m 48s):
Well, what we base that on is, okay, what do we see in the EMG research for muscles? Cause we know that release techniques reduce EMG active, right? So we know those two things, well EMG activity for the biceps tomorrows, which is one of your hamstring muscles shows that it has a propensity to get overactive. When we have neatest function, hip dysfunction, low back dysfunction, or even ankle and foot dysfunction. So we know this muscle has a propensity to go in Europe. So that implies to me that these release techniques would be a really good idea. Now, why not stretching?
1 (33m 28s):
Well, that's a little bit more complicated. It ends up then a lot of these signs that are very common, like knees bow in, or an anterior pelvic tilt or an excessive forward lean. Like if somebody like leans way too far when they squat, like the muscles are already really long in those positions. So I don't know that I want to link that at further, right? Because I'm gonna, I'm gonna allow that to happen more. It doesn't quite add up and sure enough, you'll find that nine times out of 10 in practice, if you release by biases for more S you get most of your hamstring extensibility back, you don't really need the stretch.
1 (34m 11s):
So when you take the, some of the research that I was just talking about and you match it to outcomes, you get this better recommendation of maybe we shouldn't stretch the hamstrings. Maybe we should release them and we should be working on stretching. Some other things like, you know, release and stretch the hip flexors, mobilizing the hip joint, activating the glutes will actually help with hamstring extensibility quite a bit. So, you know, again, that's, that's getting pretty nuanced, but that is also a great example of where you have to read a ton of research. Hundreds of citations go into making a recommendation like that at all, for this little tiny that'll get me another 1%, 2% of increase in performance there.
1 (34m 59s):
Of course the re-up on that stuff. And this is where personal trainers, physical therapists, chiropractors, and even some, some recreational athletes get frustrated or they forget is yo those little, right? Those little out, those little 1% increases they add up. Right? So if I don't stretch my hamstrings, I've learned how to stretch my hip flexors. I get really good at activating my glutes. I learned how to mobilize my, my tailless, my, my, wow. It's getting a little late. My transverse tarsal joints. I learned how to mobilize my transverse tarsal joints. Like I learned these tricks.
1 (35m 40s):
Yeah. Any one of them might make you feel just a little bit better. Yeah. The truth is, is you're building a repertoire. So you keep at this for long enough. And all of a sudden, all those little tweaks and they start adding up and you know, me and my training partner still hitting the gym. You know, we're usually the oldest guys on the basketball court, right. 41 years old and 42 years old.
0 (36m 8s):
Yeah. You're still playing ball
1 (36m 10s):
All and a heart. Wow. We're still, we're still hustling. Like we don't lose often. And everybody knows us to be like the most active players out there. And it's like, why aren't we able to do that? Well, my training partner, who's like a brother to me. Right? We've been friends for almost 20 years. He had a double microdiscectomy, right? He had two lumbar spine surgeries. I've had knee surgery. I've had shoulder surgery. I've had shots in my neck for cervical herniations and a ridiculous right. We've had our injuries, but we keep at learning all of these little things to keep us as aligned as possible.
1 (36m 52s):
We do our corrective work. We do our prehab work when we need it. We do our rehab work. I have a physical therapist. I go see if I can solve my own problems. He has me lucky guy. I always joke that he has a better physical therapist than I do. It's really hard to treat yourself. So, but
0 (37m 14s):
I think you bring up a good point. I mean, more people for some people are living longer. And I think quality of life is obviously at the forefront and everyone wants a long quality of life. And we always look towards, you know, nutrition, which is a huge piece to the puzzle. But, you know, I see so many people, like I'm a big golfer who, you know, they're sitting all day, they're in their cars. They just go out and start playing 18 holes, jumping in a golf cart, get out, swing jumping a golf cart. And it's like, there's no prep. There's no warmup. There's nothing to it. And I'm thinking to myself, eventually it's probably going to add up and there's going to be some type of injury.
0 (37m 55s):
You know, they have no upper upper spine mobility T spine mobility, things like that, that little things that they could do perhaps before hip mobility, before they play golf. Right.
1 (38m 7s):
Yeah. I mean, we just saw that the articles on tiger right after he came back from his surgery and he was doing glute activation on the feet, like that was actually written in an article. And I was like, hallelujah. Yeah. Like some of this stuff is actually finally starting to hit and that's, I mean, professional athletes have been on top of a lot of this stuff. I mean, you do have some sports that are like still in the stone age and you still have the contrarians who don't want to pick this stuff up even in professional sports. But when you look at tiger and Tiger's career and you know, and I know he's had a hard time with his comebacks, but like he has come back to some level, he has been able to get himself back to professional golf level play.
1 (38m 52s):
Even after a lot of low back surgeries, he hasn't just had one.
0 (38m 57s):
Right. And he works at it. Like he's literally working three hours, you know, I'm not saying someone has to do three hours of pre, you know, pre-round work. But you know, he puts that time in. And I remember they were talking about, I remember when he came back, one of his comebacks, he's had a few where like, he just, he talked about, he couldn't activate its glutes and people were like semi making fun of him. But he he's, it's, there's a lot of truth behind that. Let's talk about the glutes for a bit biggest muscle we have right
1 (39m 29s):
By by volume. Yes.
0 (39m 31s):
Yeah. Right. I tell people that, yeah. I don't think everyone realizes that. How important would you say is doing, you know, glute work and activation and things like that.
1 (39m 42s):
It ends up, you know, I talk about this a lot. We have, we actually had shirts for awhile. That's, I've got glutes, you know, and it's gotten kind of popular to have really big glutes and I'm all for it. I'm assuming that you're actually doing it by working out, not injecting stuff into your buttock. Don't do that. But it ends up, you look at the research and your glutes are like your primary stabilizer for your hip and strong gluteus medius leads to better side to side stability, frontal plane stabilization. Your glute max has a lot to do with like stabilization of the lumbar spine and sacroiliac joints for you. These various FASA CLEs that cross these joints and intersect with these fascial sheets.
1 (40m 26s):
Right. Which is connected tissue sheets. They have a propensity to become underactive. Like your glutes are a little bit premadonnas right. Like if we're gonna like give them a personality, they're kind of like, well, shit, ain't perfect. I'm out. Right? Like that's, that's the goal. As soon as there's any dysfunction from low back down, including like, if you stub your big toe, like your glute medius and glue max, like start inhibiting, right. They started like turning down. So to get in the habit of like constantly trying to turn them on and make your glutes stronger is probably really good practice for injury prevention. You know, it's probably really good practice for, I mean, better performance.
1 (41m 8s):
We could talk about it all day. I mean, your glutes are your primary propulsive mechanism for running, jumping, lifting, you know? So yeah. They just ended up being like in this weird spot in the human body where like better glutes helps almost everything. So
0 (41m 33s):
Like bridges and clam shells and things like that.
1 (41m 36s):
Well, we have that quick glute activation circuit video on YouTube. I still use that circuit to warm up every day. In fact, I've now gotten to the point where my, where I use a, I don't have one immediately around me, but I use a crazy thick band that I get from serious steel. They're these 12 inch bands that look like the pull-up assist bands, like they're thick. And I'm like, I'm going to get my glutes there because you know what I need knee pain is kind of my Achilles heel. It's weird referring to my field and my knee at the same time I teach anatomy anyway. But you know, I know that like if I keep my glutes strong, my knees hurt less.
1 (42m 20s):
So, you know, I do that quick blood activation circuit, anytime I'm going to do lower body, anything, anytime I'm going to do basketball, you know, drills, whatever, get that quick glued activation circuit, get them going. And then of course, contrary to the stereotypical male in the gym, we a little sexist here. I spent a lot of time working lower body. Yeah. If I'm going to skip a workout, it's not leg day, right. I'll skip upper body day because when it comes to your long-term function and when it comes to sports, performance, legs are king. How much you can curl is not going to have a huge impact on you as a 70 year old.
1 (43m 3s):
Right? The fact that you can still do lunges at 60 65, that's going to have a huge impact on your long-term function.
0 (43m 14s):
And so sir, your glute activation circuit that you do, you do that you don't necessarily do. Do, do you do that every day? Or you just do that before you're going to play basketball or do lower body workouts?
1 (43m 24s):
Is that right? Yeah. Now if I have pain, then I might do it every day. Okay. Maybe with a little lower weight than I do on leg days. Right. Cause if I'm doing it twice a week, I can get away with doing a lot more weight challenged by it. But you know, like the first day we were allowed to play full court basketball. Yeah. I couldn't play full court basketball for a long time. I was basically allowed to work out with my training partner during COVID and that was it. Right. Which is rough first, first game back, second game back. I tweaked my hamstring a little bit, right. Playing full court. I had run up and down the court. So for two weeks I did glued activation every day.
1 (44m 4s):
I think because as we kind of mentioned at the beginning of this call, like if you get your glutes stronger, it actually reduces tone on your hamstrings, which means there's less stress on your hamstrings. So my hamstring could heal. I can go back to normal function. So occasionally glutes get mixed in there a little bit more often, but generally speaking, when I'm healthy and strong and I'm not trying to fight back from something I did to myself on the basketball court, it's, it's written for lower days and right before a basketball.
0 (44m 34s):
And do you that, that glute activation circuit, do you do your re do you do your releases too? Like, like lateral hamstring releases and things like that before you do the activation?
1 (44m 46s):
Yeah. So I always start with mobility and then I do all my activity. Right? So release, mobilize, LinkedIn. I have are my routines set out? I have, I was going to say our routine, me and my training partners routine, it's all laid out ankle mobility. You know, I got to work on some stuff around my knees, my hip mobility. Of course we do some core and low back stuff because of his history. And then, then we'll go into our activation stuff, which is going to for us, obviously we get much more deeper in the weeds. Cause we're still very serious about being competitive on the basketball court, at least as serious as you can get as two guys playing pickup ball, maybe some leagues. But with that being said, like, you know, we'll do the glute activation work, maybe some inverter activation, tibialis, anterior tibialis poster, then we'll do our core work and then we'll do a little stability.
1 (45m 39s):
Then we'll do a little reactivity. Then we'll do our full body movement. Now we're nice and warm. We've turned on all the stuff that has a propensity to turn off. Then we do our resistance training and then we go and do basketball drills. It's totally full court and beat up on the youngins.
0 (45m 58s):
Yeah. So if you're listening, you want to play basketball in your forties and fifties, it's going to take some work, right?
1 (46m 5s):
It does. Unfortunately I wish I could say I could just jump on the court without a warmup. Right. And it's like, I, I can't even think about it anymore. Like it makes, it makes my knees hurt. Just thinking about jumping on the court without a warmup. And I wish I had started earlier because I definitely, you know, I had a knee surgery and I kind of wonder, like if I had started earlier, you know, I used to be able to dunk all the way up into my early thirties. And then after that knee surgery and like school trying to stay in shape and letting myself go for a couple of years, like, I definitely am still athletic, but not, I don't quite have the first step.
1 (46m 50s):
I don't find out the vertical. I use that. Right.
0 (46m 54s):
One question I like to ask, most of the people I interview is if you were going to give one tip to an individual, like, you know, we're both in our forties or I wouldn't say we're middle-aged, I don't consider myself middle aged yet, but middle-aged, you know, let's say forties, fifties, sixties, that they're looking to get their body back to like what it once was 5, 10, 15 years ago. What, what one tip would you give them
1 (47m 27s):
One tip? I mean, I say you go into it with building in mind, I think. And what I mean by that is like start slow, you know, start with some stuff you can work back into realize that you're trying to set up a habit. You know, I think at the beginning of COVID I'm back in the best shape I've been in probably a decade. And part of it was with COVID. I picked up a couple of things that I hadn't been doing. I had skipped a lot of upper body workouts because I was playing in leagues and I was getting really beat up if you've never played in league play, like you get beat up a little bit.
1 (48m 11s):
And it's funny, cause it's not like your arms are sore. Like you're bruised from taking elbows and like getting body to body contact. Right. So all of a sudden I'm at home. And so I buy some home gym equipment, me and my training partner, who I mentioned buy some home gym equipment. And all of a sudden I'm doing a body two, three days a week because I can literally stop. And sometimes, you know, I have, as an educator, you can imagine, like I write a lot, I edit a lot. And after a couple hours, your brain just kind of like those rare and turns into like mush. So I would like turn on one of my audio books. I listened to a lot of stuff on business.
1 (48m 52s):
I would get, I would turn on one of these audio books that maybe I wanted the staff to read and I would start my release techniques. And an hour later I've listened to an hour of my audio book and I've knocked out an upper body workout and I feel good again. And I'm ready to go. And I'm like son of a bug. I should have been doing this the whole time. Yeah. I got a couple more pieces of equipment. I just have a set of the DVR teabags here at home. Right. The ones you can fill with sand or water. And I got some bands, of course I do have a giant repertoire of exercises that I'm good at coming up with after being a personal trainer for 20 plus years. But it's funny how, you know, taking this back to what you just said.
1 (49m 36s):
I mean, shit, this working out at home thing, like my upper body is stronger than it's been in years. Like I'm ready to go. Yeah. And then I also did the same thing with, I went, you know, I was I'm six, three, not a short guy and my whole life, I've been about 220 pounds. And I went on to find, these would feel better at two 10. Right? And so during COVID I couldn't quite play ball as much. So taking on that caloric restriction restriction, wasn't so painful, but I started just little a time. Everybody's like, are you going to do keto? That shit works stopped with the fricking fat diets. There's no science behind any of that shit, unless you're going to take in less calories than you burn per day.
1 (50m 20s):
It's not a diet. So what did I do? I just started replacing, I started looking for foods that I like, and we're lower in calories, right? Like at the end of the day, that's what she needed. Right. So like I eat like at night, like I like vegetables, you know, eat a lot more vegetables now, you know, Brussels sprouts, for example, you can eat a ton of Brussels sprouts and they're fairly low in calories and sure enough, you find things like, oh, I can do this brussel sprout thing. Especially if I put them in the air fry, the inner front are pretty freaking good. So, you know, again, think about what I said, like build like, did I say shit, I'm gonna, I'm gonna cut 1500 calories out of my diet tomorrow.
1 (51m 4s):
No, I went, man, you know, a piece of fish and a freaking pound of Brussels sprouts, maybe the tomato, right. If this is a good dinner and all of a sudden I just cut out four or 500 calories out of my dinner and I like it better. Right. And then you start doing that to your lunch. You start doing that to your breakfast. And now two years into this, right. Cause COVID started almost two years ago. So I guess it's a little short of two years, maybe 23 months where into this I'm leaner than I've ever been. Right. Have lost 20, 27 pounds. Well, upper body stronger than it's been in years.
1 (51m 44s):
My legs, little hard to tell if they're stronger or weaker than they've ever been, because I was already playing league basketball before. Right. My legs were already pretty strong. Right. So, but overall my knees don't seem to be hurting as bad. No, I think that with the moral of the story being just like, all I did was just like, okay, we'll pick this up, let them go pick this up. And then I'm gonna pick this
0 (52m 8s):
Up small steps. Right? Yeah.
1 (52m 11s):
And to tell you the truth, man, I don't love the cork restrictions and I've definitely pushed myself to get leaner and leaner and leaner, which the last couple weeks of breaking records, there's always a little, a little trying. You got to get your calories way down right now that we're not where I'm at now, but overall I eat better now than I did before. I like my food more now than I ever have, because I've actually thought about cooking. I've actually thought about how to make things taste better. I've actually thought about what could I possibly have if I didn't have XYZ thing. Right. Like, and really need to be having fricking sauce smothered.
1 (52m 51s):
Right.
0 (52m 52s):
And if you're eating like, you know, and if you're eating nutrient dense foods, you know, you don't need as much of those because you know, you're gonna, you're more, they're more satiating. You know, fish is a satiating food with a lot of protein and things like that. A lot of fat.
1 (53m 7s):
Yeah. It's satiating. People get scared of that. You shouldn't be scared of that. I agree. It takes bad out of your diet and you're always hungry. That's, that's one of the tricks that it's a little thing, right? Like people are like, how do you, how do you have a smoothie in the morning? And you're hungry. You're not hungry an hour later because I put funds in it. There's a lot of fat almonds. Right? Like I, you learned these little tricks, you know it's so yeah. If I was going to give advice to anybody, just like, think you're in this for the long haul, this is your body. This is your life. Right. So start thinking about it that way and think about how can you make your life better and reach this goal.
1 (53m 51s):
There's win-wins there is definitely win-wins out there.
0 (53m 56s):
Excellent. Well, Brian, we could probably talk for hours on end, but
1 (54m 1s):
I can certainly talk for hours. I've been told such. I think I've been paid to do such so yeah. You end this when you need to.
0 (54m 10s):
No, no, we're good. We're coming up on an hour and I think we've hit a lot of great topics and I appreciate you coming on and dropping some knowledge on us and you're on the east coast and it's late for you anyway. So thanks for coming on. And where's the best place for people to find you?
1 (54m 29s):
Yeah. So Brooke Bush institute.com. That's B R O K B U S H. And you know, look, if you don't want to pay for our membership, which is 1999 a month, this is one of the big things we're trying to do in education is make things more affordable and make things more accessible. And we basically copied Netflix and gone, no forget the $800 certification. We're going to try this 1999 a month. So I think we just cut the cost by 40 times.
0 (54m 55s):
It's definitely worth. Yeah,
1 (54m 57s):
You can definitely get on there and do that. But if that's not what you want to do, that's okay too. We do also have a very unique perspective on marketing and feel that marketing is another chance to repackage our education. So if you get on our social media channels event, occasionally you will see advertising, Hey, we gotta pay for creating this, this education platform that we wish existed. Right. But I think even if you just follow us on social media for free, we give away more content than most education companies provide period.
0 (55m 36s):
So just on your YouTube channel, I mean, that would be a good place to check out as well.
1 (55m 41s):
We have more than we have 500 videos on the website. About a hundred of them are open on YouTube. Right?
0 (55m 48s):
Yeah. Excellent. All right, Brent, thanks for the knowledge. I appreciate you coming on.
1 (55m 55s):
You got it, man. Anytime.
0 (55m 58s):
Hey, get lean equally nation. Are you a man between the ages of 40 and 60 years old looking to lose inches around your waist have significantly more energy throughout the day and gain muscle all while minimizing the risk of injuries? Well, I'm looking for three to five people to work one-on-one with in my fat burner blueprint signature program, which I've developed by utilizing my 15 years experience in the health and fitness space. This program is designed specifically for those committed, to making serious progress towards our health goals. Over the next six months, we will focus on sleep stress, nutrition, meal, timing, and building lean muscle.
0 (56m 40s):
If this sounds like a fit for you, email me@brianatbriangrin.com with the subject line blueprint. That's brian@briangrin.com with the subject line blueprint. Thanks for listening to the get lean eat clean podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine. And I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member. That's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again, and have a great day.
