You want to work on your abs, you want to work on your core, maybe the best thing you can do is actually something about your breathing instead of things like crunches or whatever else you do for your abs. We're going to find out more about that on today's episode of the movement movement, the podcast for people who like to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body. We usually say starting with your feet because they're your foundation, but breathing is kind of your foundation as well. So this will be really interesting.
This is also the podcast where we get rid of the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright lies you've been told about what it takes to run, walk, hike, play, to yoga, cross it, whatever it is you like to do. And to do that, enjoyably, efficiently, effectively. I say enjoy the trick question. I know I did because I always say that because if you're not having fun, you're not going to keep it up.
So find a way to have fun with what you're doing. I'm Stephen Sashan from Zero Shoes.com, your host of the movement movement podcast. And we call it that because we and that includes you and everyone else who's listening to this and more about that in a second. We're creating a movement about natural movement about letting your body do what bodies are made to do and the movement part where you participate is really easy.
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Tell people who the hell you are and what you're doing here. Well, am I supposed to know that? Oh, no, you can make something up for all I care. So I'm Aaron McGuire.
I am a physical therapist for now more than 25 years. And my journey kind of took a not a typical physical therapy twist right off the bat. And I kind of was introduced to a different approach that had to do with developmental kinesiology. So talking about kind of what we're supposed to do naturally is the whole approach is based on how we develop and how that teaches us how we're supposed to move.
So I'm here because my career path led me I had a private practice in Los Angeles for many years that I just closed and I'm now in actually Colorado. Yes, long months, very close to you. Literally up the street. Congratulations on escaping.
But I will say for those of us who've been in Colorado for a long time, I'm about 30 years getting all those Californians, you know, just makes us a little twitchy. I know, I understand. But so a long my career path, one of the things is, you know, when you mentioned both the feet and our breathing and our diaphragm are our foundation is the when we develop the first thing that we have to have is core stability, which comes from life. Wait, I've got to pause because for people watching you just put air quotes around core stability.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's a term that is just used so much and it can mean so many different things to so many different people. So my hunches will be diving into that a little more with a little more detail in just my list. I hope so. Hey, it's all for you.
I'm just fine. I'm going for the ride. Yeah, so you know, the first thing we have to do when we develop is babies is our diaphragm starts out is teaching us how like is a breathing muscle. But by six weeks, we start to have a partial function of our diaphragm, which is what gives us, I won't use the quotes, but gives us trunk or core stability.
And it isn't until that point that we can start to lift our arms and legs off of the surface. And so it teaches us about how important that stability is in order for us to have good, fixed, solid base to move off of. And so through my practice and studying this approach that I study that I study that has to do with this developmental kinesiology, I have really become obsessed with the diaphragm and breathing and teaching people the proper way to activate it for both breathing and their core function, because it has such huge implications for our whole movement system throughout the chain. So I can't think of anywhere I would want to go next other than, oh gosh, say more, like, you know, can we is there something we can get our rep our hands and diaphragm around something to experience based on this?
And then we'll dive in a little more. Sorry, experience based on it? Yeah, well, here's the simple thing since it's a movement movement, do you want to start with something movement that you can so people can get a feel for what you just described? Yes, so with respect to have the diaphragm functions, is that?
Well, we can talk about that, but also like literally a something that people can do whether they're watching this, listening to this, having an airplane in a balloon. So, you know, one of the things is kind of a, I think, still out there a little bit is people kind of consider diaphragm, belly breathing, right? And what happens is your diaphragm when it sits as a dome all the way around your trunk. And when it comes down, if you imagine a water balloon as your abdominal wall is it comes down and compresses all of those contents in your trunk.
Well, like it's going to move those organs down. So now your entire trunk wall is going to expand in 360 degrees all the way around. So one of the things you can do to just check how you're breathing is to just place your hands around your trunk, right? And you just make sure that your thumbs wrap around that posterior part in the back.
And when you inhale, you want to feel that your thumbs and your fingers are moving away from each other in all directions. And quite commonly, what we'll see is the chest lifting or just movement in the front. And so that's kind of a quick, easy way to start to, you know, learn how to or just assess like, can you even breathe into your back? That back half is generally the hardest part for people to get.
Should people be feeling that back half or the whole thing moving simultaneously or is there sort of rhythm like, you know, sort of front goes around in the sides, goes around the back or some other pattern? Yeah, it should be pretty simultaneous and symmetrical. Right. So it's much easier, like our abdominal wall tends to be kind of the softest part of us, right?
Hence, these are as much as etc, etc. Right. So it's usually easier for us to go that direction, but it should be pretty symmetrical with just a little bit more expansion around the front half. But timing should be right at the same time when we have it right.
So I'm testing. Yeah. Interesting. I don't know how much has changed from like the first breath I took to now, but on the first breath I took, there was less movement in my back now granted.
The other day I did some weird twisty thing and I'm sitting here with a bunch of tiger bomb on my lower back on the right side because I don't know what the hell I did. But I know I'm being a little protective. But for people who find that they're not getting that expansion, especially to the sides and back, but I don't know, it might be more important. What's next?
How does one move from there? Yeah. So, you know, it's a lot of times you almost have to take a couple steps because from most people, the chest is dominant. And so it's like this, when they inhale, they're using these muscles that we call the accessory muscles, which are basically cheater muscles and the diaphragm isn't working as well.
And so now when you inhale, it's literally coming up and that's what can get you all kinds of, you know, not just inefficient breathing, but also you start to get overuse of muscles in your neck and chest and that can cause issues. Right. So sometimes people just have to work on, actually do like to be able to get their stomach to move forward without their chest. So sometimes that can be the first step.
But then they need to start to just work on being able to feel that 360 expansion. So one is you can sit against the back of a chair, try to feel, you know, that as you breathe, you're getting both that kind of pressure into the back of the chair as well as your hands. I also actually, because this is such an issue and such a problem created the core 360 belt, which actually also cues you. Right.
So it's got these little points that go around the back to give you some input into your central nervous system to go like, Hey, this is where we need to expand. But you can work on it by putting your hands in your thumbs there. That's how I used to train people in the clinic prior to having the belt. And the belt is just a little bit of a extra cueing so that you can work on it when you don't have your hands available.
Well, what I love about the core 360 belt is it is basically in one way, this may be inadvertent designed to correct and misunderstanding people have about weightlifting belts where most people think that the whole idea is that you're supposed to tighten the belt and it's providing that that's providing stability instead of thinking that it's a cue and into the belt. And that's really, do you want to say any more about that than what I just didn't kind of pull the rug out from underneath you? Yeah, no, I mean, absolutely. So we talked about in the beginning how breathing and core stability are one and the same because the diaphragm has to work for both.
So if you can't use the diaphragm to breathe, which when it comes down, it creates that pressure inside that we talked about swashing that balloon, well, core stability is really about that pressure inside your abdomen. It's called inter abdominal pressure. And so when you are able to use the diaphragm for that postural strength, then you are creating that stability by using all the muscles in the right coordination, right? So if you have a stiff weight belt on and you're just butting up against it, you're actually not using your abdominal wall quite the way you're supposed to, whereas this belt, because it's elastic, it's teaching you how to actively create that, right?
And that's what we need is we need that expansion of the abdominal wall and then the muscles hold as you lift or as you're doing whatever activity you're doing for that stability, for that stabilization function. What I also find really interesting about what you said with either using something like the core 360 belt or your hands down and feeling it or leaning against the chair and trying to feel yourself pushing against the chair when you're breathing. The number one, the obviously the common factor in all that is awareness, is just bringing your attention to something that you might not have noticed or can't notice or some version of that. How much do you find that it really is just the kind of repeated balance of awareness that make the change versus any additional something you need to do?
So our movement is driven by our brains, right? So there are patterns of movement that we have so that we don't have to think about, oh, contract this muscle, contract this muscle, it's all in our nervous system and it's a pattern, right? And when you have a good pattern, you don't have to think about it as much, but it's just like any habit, that habit that we form. So for many reasons, we start out like when you develop, most babies develop the correct way and we have the right movement and that teaches us then we have these patterns that support our joints that are efficient, that are balanced, but then through our life, things happen that kind of interrupt that.
And so now the habit becomes a poor habit, right? And so now that's the wiring in our brain. So that just if I say no use your diaphragm or no expand out, don't pull in. If you're wiring in your brain only knows how to coordinate it that other way, you need some queuing and something to help you recognize how to do it properly, right?
And so over time as you repeat that, then it starts to become more normal. It's just like learning any new skill. We need repetition of the right coordination over time and then it starts to become a little bit more normal. The weird example that I give about this, I have a fondness for noticing when I'm doing something habitually and then trying to set up.
So my last experiment that's been going on for a few months is I noticed that I always put on my pants left leg first. So I spent a couple months trying to only go right leg first and forget. And then it got to the point where if I use my left leg, I felt like I was cheating on my right leg, which is fine. And now I'm doing it.
It's like, I'm just aware of which one I start with, but I can do both equally as well. I'm just interested to find out what happens when I'm totally not thinking about it. What's the difference when I use my left leg on my right leg? And it's fascinating watching how these patterns do shift over time.
And it takes a little bit of time. Was it physically awkward to coordinate it first to not just? It was more it was less than it was difficult or awkward than it was that the initial pattern the left leg first was so instantaneous, right, to really work to think whoa, hold on and then switch. And there's just, yeah, they're equal.
I'm facile with either, but it just feels weird when I'm doing my left and I feel like, Oh, wait, am I just relying on a habit again? So I'm still kind of figuring out where that goes when I cross my arms, this is one of the first ones I did. Now I can kind of do both and I switch all the time. And I'm not even sure which one was the original one that I did.
I can't tell anymore. And I don't feel the same kind of issue about switching my arms. If I'm starting my right arm above my left and then I switch the other way around, because I switch off them. But with pants, you know, switch your pants very often during day.
Yeah, that's an interesting one for sure. So I've had a different experience about that. And I'm sure there's, oh, and eating, there's a whole thing. I don't know if you've noticed this, maybe I'm just crazy about it.
But there've been more British shows, more British TV shows and movies showing up. And so the way British people use their knife and fork is different than the way Americans typically do. So I've been playing with that too. And I think in many ways the Brits are, and this is a technical term completely wrong.
So the idea that you use the back of your fork as the thing to hold something when it's pointed down, right? That just doesn't make any sense to me. Right. It's not just habit.
That's just wrong. Yeah, I mean, it's not a cultural thing. It's not a it's just undeniably wrong. And I'll I'll die with that one.
I'm staying to it. Now that's it. I still play with it. But more what I'm doing is I'm playing around with not being attached to any particular way, which is up or down and vice versa.
Just to on thing. Right. And those are just such great examples of how like our movement is very automatic. Yeah, there's so much that we do that we don't have to think about.
And so when you develop something that's about habit, like putting that fork down, it does require some conscious kind of effort to change it. But also even for performance enhancement, right? Yeah. Like so not just changing initially, but the more you improve these things, then the more efficient you are with running with stabilization with breathing, you know, you just get less.
Same word about that. Actually, there's two things I want to ask you about. And I have to do them both or I'll forget at least one. One is just say more about when people start making this change and breathing better, getting this 360 degree effect.
What are the effects that they might see? What are the things they might see? The second one I'm going to do this one. So I don't forget.
Have you noticed any pattern about why it is that some people are just just breathing, they're not using their diaphragm, whether it's something traumatic or something just habitual for some other reason or anything they've noticed about the cause? Yeah. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of things. So some people just have an abnormal development and it can just be that they were actually accelerated too quickly.
They skipped crawling, right? So it can be things like that. What we don't go through the automatic process is that like start to shape our bones and bring our joints into the neutral position that allow us to use the muscles properly. That's one key thing.
Another thing is if you were a child and had a really bad respiratory infection, after a while of having to breathe differently and compensate, it starts to become the normal and that can persist. So you see that with kids who are asthmatic, for example? Yes, because once we start developing a compensatory pattern or a pattern to help us breathe, that we can't do the normal thing, right? If we can't breathe in the normal way, it starts to now become that normal in our pattern in our brain.
And so we don't get an email saying, hey, just want to let you know you got to now work on your pattern because it just becomes the normal and you just keep doing it. Injuries like you were talking about your back, right? That can elicit a protective response. Yeah.
So now you're going to start breathing with the wrong muscles. And probably one of the biggest ones is societal influence. You know, people are taught to hold your stomach in, right? That actually blocks the diaphragm.
And so now you're forced to use the compensatory muscles. So there's... Sorry, I got to interrupt this one. I don't have to but I did.
Please do. The thing that I think about with chest breathing is what it also does to your blood chemistry. And I think about this because I have a video of my dad from the last 12 hours of his life. And he's super fast, only like really high in his chest.
And I know that that basically just does a whole wacky thing with CO2 in his blood. And I turn to the nurse and said, he keeps doing that. He's got 12 hours to live. And she goes, yeah.
And 12 hours later, that's when he died. And he's unconscious during the whole thing, which is fascinating. He's unconscious. And you know, breathing really high really fast.
Right. Right. No, for sure. It changes everything.
And if you're breathing with your chest, there's no way that you can be completely utilizing your full lung capacity, right? So like if you just imagine that on a daily basis, if you have an increased respiratory rate and it's more shallow, just the impacts on your overall wellbeing and health, right? There's definitely also those those pieces to it. You know, when you talk about what you might start to feel as you start to breathe, and there's two pieces, right?
There's the 360 breathing, and then there's also the 360 degree kind of core activation, which they look the same. So there's the inhalation, which is just the 360 breathing that's more of that natural breathing. And then there's the core activation that happens prior to doing a movement or resisting a load. Right.
So, you know, some of the things that people start to notice right away are that they have less strain in their neck. So I got to back up. So what we're talking about is once we start to feel this 360 breathing from breathing, yeah, of engaging those muscles 360 degrees worth, about pulling it in. But again, if we think about using the course 360 belt or even weightlifting belt or anything, it's like that you're doing this.
Is it really how much of it is an expansion versus something more isometric? So that's a great question. So the initial phase of this is that the diaphragm kind of, it's kind of the leader of this whole coordination, right? And so when whether you're breathing or whether you're activating your core, the muscle does the same thing.
It's just that one is more for kind of strength function. And one is more for respiration. And so we're breathing. And so now when it comes down and it starts to move those organs towards your pelvic floor, like right, they're pushing all of it down, the initial piece of this needs to be the eccentric or lengthening of the muscles of the abdominal wall.
Then as the load is added, now we get an isometric contraction. Got it. So it's kind of an initial expansion and then pulled. And that's what kind of connects our upper and lower bodies so that now when we're talking about that foot being that foundation, that support, we're getting that movement and that power integrated and transferred up through our whole chain, right?
Like that's the connection. Is that getting that expansion piece of it? It's funny. I just had a flashback as you said that to thinking about when I started figuring this out and playing with this and deadlifting when I was doing a lot of heavy deadlifting, which annoyingly I don't do any longer because I've got to compromise spine.
And I say knowingly because I like lifting really heavy things, especially because I'm a small guy. So there's something really funny about going to a gym where there's some guy who's got 300 pounds and he's got like 400 pounds on a bar and he starts to unload. No, no, you can just leave it like that. I'm good.
Yeah. I can work in on that. But it was very interesting to feel how other parts of my body, I mean, I think about my arms, my shoulders really did less work. I wasn't as tight in other parts of my body when my core was really engaged that way.
Right. I mean, one of the things that when I first created the belt, I kind of just was doing it to replace people's hands. Because we would try to progress them. And what would happen was they'd be like, well, I can't feel if I'm doing it right because I can't use my hands.
So I thought, okay, you know, but as I started to watch what happened to people's movement and how it makes sense, but I just wasn't thinking it would this simple product would do such a big thing, probably like how you felt about yours, right? Like both of our products. No, I knew this was a big thing because of my own experience. I was surprised.
Right. Then, you know, yeah. Yeah. So until you, yeah, so until you feel it, right?
Yeah. But I would see how the difference of when people would get that expansion, whether it was breathing or the core activation, how their movement pattern would completely change in an instant. So it wasn't that they got stronger. It was just that because they got the correct activation, it helped to, you know, improve the quality of motion throughout the whole chain.
And there's just instant tansing and people would be like, Oh, I don't have any pain. Oh, it's easier. You know, and so I started to see these changes. And it was just so incredibly powerful that, you know, it's what made me fall in love with it.
I must say I'm disappointed that you didn't design it to just be hands on a belt. I think that would have been just by some mannequin hands. I think I'll work on one for you. That would be that guy.
That may be two things that are related. One, so have they're, have you worked with any athletes who use the course 360 belt while they are competing? Yes. I've worked with some that were while they're competing runners.
Yeah, because that's probably the easiest application. It gets a little tougher. There's a lot of the major league baseball teams have used the belt for their training part of it. Pictures and then also just during the gym.
There's like some hockey players use it. They primarily use it during training. And then what you do is you kind of have a sensory awareness of what that feeling is. And so then you try to implement it in practice.
And then, you know, when you're competing that way, you just are going with the motion. You're not thinking at that point. But I think it might get in the way of like those kinds of sports. But golf, I haven't had a professional golf or do it, but some other people who golf regularly use it and running.
It's really nice to have on to keep that performance aspect of it going so that you don't go into your compensatory pattern. Yeah, I was imagining as being as a sprinter using belt, but then realizing during 100 meters, I breathe four times. So, yeah, right, right. Not a lot of opportunity.
Yeah. It's still fun to try though. We should go out and just like play around with it. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm trying to get into my neighbor. That's right. Definitely make that happen.
The I want to ask a question. And if you have an answer, you're going to have to define the term that I will use in the question. Ready? Okay.
How does what we're talking about relate to or not relate to the Val salva maneuver? Yes. So the Val salva maneuver is not only creating pressure in the... Well, you have to do that.
So you said, and of course anything with the word maneuver in it. I mean, how big? Right. Right.
Well, the Val salva maneuver is something that when you're maxing out and lifting a max load, that's usually what they teach people to do. Right? So it's kind of like an isometric blocking down where you close your glottis and you just have this big isometric contraction to stabilize to lift the max load. Is that a good word?
Yeah, that word works for me. Okay. So, I don't really do a lot of math. The point you made that's the interesting point is it's not just a core thing.
It's really starting from the throat down. Yes. And because what happens is you're actually you're creating pressure in the thoracic area as well as the intrabdominal area. And so that can cause big issues when you let go in terms of fluctuations in blood pressure.
Yeah. Right. I think Elvis for all of us older. Oh my God.
That's hysterical. I never put those two things together until right now and that's going to ruin my lunch. So for anyone who didn't get it, Elvis died on the toilet, ostensibly after straining very hard, which is similar to the Val salva maneuver. And then blood pressure dropped when he stopped passed out fell over point.
And that was the end. Yeah. Well, he's still alive. But anyway, that's all.
He's like 102 now or something. But yeah. So here's the thing is that most of the stuff that I work on with the core 360 and trying to train and help people understand the importance of breathing properly and integrating this into our movement and how much it impacts our movement. Most of it is not talking about a max weightlifting.
There are definitely there are people many people that I've seen online that use the belt as now their weight belts for their lifting. But what happens is with a diaphragm in all of our functions is we need to be able to use it for both breathing and core stabilization at the same time. We're doing the same things like whether we're walking, we don't need as much for the core, but we need more for breathing or running. We need a little bit more for breathing.
But if we're like carrying something heavy, we need a little bit more of that for the stabilization function. But we still then need to be able to breathe diaphragmatically and get the ribs and the abdominal wall to open up. So that's where it's different from just a big kind of isometric lockdown holding your breath. Like we need to be able to have core stabilization and still breathe, even if it's not to the same degree, right, if we're carrying something heavy.
In sprinting, and this is not something that I really work on or think about, but they think about the belt salamuver during just out of the block start, those first few steps. And it really is akin to heavy squats in many ways. And there's some debates about the effectiveness of it, but it's become one of those things. Anytime in highly competitive athletics, where someone has something where another person claims that made them better, then everyone starts doing it no matter what, because they're terrified that if in fact it is something that is performance enhancing and they're not doing it.
So that's a... But they're going to miss out on that benefit. Yeah. It's a bit of a vicious cycle.
I've watched people do all these ridiculous things that have clearly no value, because some crazy famous person did that thing and they think it's going to impact them as well. And it was never really the limiting factor. Right. Yeah.
And what it does for them and their body based on their kinesthetic awareness, based on their overall movement system, could be totally different than when you try to implement it, depending on where you are, right? Yeah. It's one of those things where a coach will hear about it, he'll start to teach it, and then there's usually bad cues. So people misinterpret whatever it is, and then they start sharing that and so on and so on.
I remember one of my best friends, we became best friends, we were working with the same sprinting coach, and I noticed he wasn't doing some of the warm-up drills that I also wasn't doing, because I knew they were ridiculous and bullshit. And I said to him, why aren't you doing these drills ago? And he's pretty just, oh, they're bollocks. So this coach was a well-known coach, was just getting all these people to do some drills that clearly had no benefit whatsoever.
Right. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of one of my... One of the things I love about the belt and why I'm kind of shifting towards trying to get more information out about it is because there is so much, in my opinion, based on this...
I studied a coach called Dynamic Nerma-Sular Stabilization that's based out of Czech Republic, and there's just so much misunderstanding about what movement is, and that it's really driven by our central nervous system, and that we don't just move by training one joint, or... So it's kind of a passionate mind to get a little bit of that out there. I wonder if this makes your head explode. Not what I'm about to say specifically, but the thing I'm going to reference.
So Boulder is a town... I joke about Boulder, I go, it's a town where you can't throw a tantrum without heading a therapist, and it's... And among the kinds of therapists, I will include people who do Pilates because there's a Pilates studio every five feet. It seems that way sometimes.
Yeah. And of course, in Pilates, which I played with, oh my god, this is an embarrassing number to say 40 years ago, Joe Pilates was one of these guys, big barrel chest guy, and when Pilates take a breathe and then hold, you know, pull your stomach in as you're inhaling. And I say, what? So I'm imagining you get people who've been doing Pilates who show up with you, and it's almost a religious thing when you suggest that maybe that's a little upside down.
Yeah. I mean, I've had people cry before. You know, when I start to talk about who were... I'm not kidding.
Well, it cried because... Well, so not because so much there Pilates instructor told me, but because they really felt like aesthetically and just it was such a powerful thing. And yeah, when I get those people who have been taught to really draw in, it is a tough cell. But one of the greatest things about this approach is, and what I was talking about, when you just change the coordination, it changes how it feels, is that as soon as you get someone to feel inside themselves, the difference, and they just are like, oh, that's so much different.
It's easier. I don't have strain. Then you can get the buy-in. It's kind of one of the things that makes it a little tougher too, because just to hear about it and for me to tell you yes, do it this way, I'm sure you may be experienced some of that with the shoes as well.
Like what you're supposed to run in these? It's all about the experience. I mean, our number one goal is just getting people to get them on their feet and feel the difference, because until then there's just a lot of cognitive, whatever going on. But in fact, what it really is, this may be interesting, or maybe not, because people believe things about footwear because of what they've been told for 50 years.
The only thing, the best thing we can do is give them an experience that undermines what they believe, because that puts them in a state of cognitive dissonance where they have to reconcile it one way or the other. And some people go, wow, what I just experienced, and actually this reminds me of something from the past, seems better than what I've been told. And some people just latch on even more firmly to the thing they were told, because it's part of their identity in some way. I have an idea that many of the beliefs we hold that are not about anything we can physically test are held neurologically the same way we hold our very sense of self, which is why when you challenge something like that in someone, they act like you're trying to kill them, their children, their grandchildren, and all their future descendants.
It's a weird phenomenon. It is. And it's been, because my career has always been this kind of different path. And again, I think you've probably experienced a lot of same.
It's like, this is the part of it that's the challenge. It is getting someone to just question it enough to go, okay, yeah, I feel that. And usually, there is something about breathing that's so innate. And people do seem to get disturbed when they realize that they're doing it wrong.
So even beyond the feeling that when you show them, like, no, you should be able to breathe here. And they can't do it. They can just keep doing this. It kind of disturbs them a little bit, which is a good thing.
Well, it's a really interesting point. I'm just imagining someone who is discovering that they've just been breathing in one way and they can't do it another way. Again, I can really see how that could mess with their very sense of who they are. And a whole bunch of things about shame or about accomplishment or I mean, I can't even imagine the list of things about for someone.
Yeah, and identity like you were talking about too, like I'm an athlete, or I've always been able to do things without having to work at them that hard, you know, like I do things naturally well. So, yeah, good point. Well, and to your point about this whole idea of people learning to suck it in, and that's the thing to do and the aesthetic of that, I wish I remember where I saw this video. But in my YouTube feed, where it's recommending things, there's a lot of stuff from people who like to debunk stuff about fitness, not so much.
And I wish I remember whose video it was where Mark Wahlberg was with somebody else and was showing just how he was really lean and just out of six pack in the whole thing. And then for some reason, he said, and if I relax and his belly went out and he looked like normal people, then like, hold it in again to show off to show off. And the guy went, see, this is the thing about Hollywood that when he's not working, it looks normal. He's like, you know, 10% body fat, he doesn't have a six pack, he can tell he's kind of lean, but he's not doing this thing that looks like when he was doing Calvin finance.
And everyone thinks he should look like him when he's doing the Calvin finance. And it was, which is actually dysfunctional. Right, but it was just, it was such a one of those moments where my hunch was that he didn't even it was kind of like maybe he was a little tired, maybe, but or maybe he was doing it just kind of just not thinking, because not the kind of thing you would want people to see given, or as a Mark Wahlberg. But it's one of those things that every other human needs to see.
So they stop thinking that they should use this idealized version as a goal. Right. Yeah. And like, to me, actually, like, this is what we should look like, we describe what you're holding up for people.
It's a little silly. It's a round cylinder, right? Like, if this is our trunk, we should just look evenly rounded and distributed all the way throughout like there shouldn't be indentations and phones sticking out. And like, that's not good function.
And now, it's not attractive. Well, you know, your cylinder may have different dimensions. Yes. So, I get very cylindrical.
Like, I did it this weekend a couple times when I ate a pound and a half of grapes, because I just, you were really good. Well, they were, I mean, I just couldn't stop eating them the next thing I knew I had, you know, and a pound and a half of grapes is a large volume. And it was pretty comical. I had to loosen my belt after that.
As long as your cylinder is like distributed evenly all the way around and not bulging in one direction. Yeah, that was kind of a bulgy cylinder. And actually, we did something else. It was, I think it was last weekend, where for some reason it was like a bunch of parties.
And that was a bulging cylinder. But, but, but, but given that, I mean, I knew that that was a temporary thing. It was not a big deal. It's kind of entertaining.
It's like, hey, look what just happened. So, is there anyone, any other groups of people that, and I'm thinking of physical therapists when I say this, to be candid, that you come up against where you're really sort of, you know, going uphill to get people to understand what you're talking about? Yeah, you know, at this point, I've seen a little bit of a shift in some of the queuing to pull the belly in, like over the years since I first created this in 2014. So it's been a little bit of time, but it's, I think it's still a little bit dominant in the kind of normal physical therapy.
I did again, the normal physical therapy world. Okay, I use air quotes way too many times for today. So you're secret to say for me. Okay, so I mean, the, you know, the group that, and the, the DNS approach that I study, the dynamic neuromuscular stabilization approach, which is the one that is based on the developmental kinesiology, it is spreading.
So it is growing. And so people, and so that's available to physical therapists, chiropractors, trainers, kind of both movement professionals and healthcare practitioners. And that is growing. And so those people who have taken those courses are now kind of more aware of how important it is to even include breathing in the rehab and training.
And that it should be more of this eccentric expansion, this 360 degree expansion in the realm of the physical therapy and chiropractor world who hasn't been exposed to that. It's, I think it's still a large percentage. And that's kind of who I'm trying to now get out and target a little bit more. Are you finding is the most or least effective ways of getting sort of spreading the word and getting people to have the experience?
Yeah, you know, again, I feel like it's, it is getting them to a course and trying to get them because again, when you feel it on yourself too, right, it's not just the client feeling it, but when you can feel inside yourself how like most of them when they come to the courses are not doing it correctly either. And so when they can feel the difference, it's, it's pretty powerful. And then you get them again in so that they'll want to come back for more and to continue to kind of learn this approach. I wonder if you have an experience that I've seen Dr.
Irene Davis who part of me, I was always on Irene was Harvard now she's in Florida and she and two other research docs, Brian Hidershite and my gosh, I was right at the third guy's name. Anyway, people go out the signs of running medicine. It's a course done for physical therapists to get continuing education units. And Irene does the most linear, logical, lucid, brilliant demonstration and explanation of here's how modern footwear causes the problems they claim to cure and just getting people out of that is 80% of your work.
And then there's some gay training to, you know, activate some muscles they have been using, et cetera. And I said to Irene, after one of these, you know, you've got 150 people in a room, after your presentation where you're basically saying they should be wearing something like zero shoes, in fact, you often have to say exactly that. Those people, they should come and tackle me and like steal all my product. But only half the room comes to check me out at all.
And only half of those people, typically the younger physical therapists really get engaged. And I said, why do you think that is? And we were playing with this idea, like some of it is that these people, they believe they made rational choices to put the shoes they're wearing on their feet and recommend them. And they've been telling their patients for years, here's what I recommend.
And to go ahead and say, no, I'm mistaken, is too much for them to do. And there's probably, you know, and the simple thing is that you just typically can't convince people with data. That's just not how human beliefs change with information, as we may have noticed in the last couple of years. So, you know, but the thing with footwear, there's so much more connected to that.
And like those three things that I've described, where you might not have to run into all of those. But do you see similar kinds of response when you're dealing with a group of physical therapists, where there's some of them for whatever reasons, like, I just can't go there. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know, my first nine years of my career, before I was introduced to this other approach and the way I then kind of took my practice, I taught all the Australian research was saying pull the belly in.
Interesting. Well, that's because they're on Australia and everything's upside down. Exactly. That's a good point.
And so like, I was really good at it. Like, I mean, I did it from whatever, I teach people's what I put into practice. And so, nine years of that, where I would write on people's home exercise program, pull your belly in towards your spine. So, the first time that I went to Prague to start to listen to this man, Pavel Kola, she was the creator of DNS, and he started talking about this expanding out and pushing out.
And I was like, this is nonsense. Why did I come all this way? You know, and I was just like, because I didn't want to believe after nine years of teaching people something that I was wrong. Right.
And so, but then he kept talking. And he was like, when you look at a baby, no one has taught this baby to do anything. No one has said for this baby to do anything. Their bellies are completely expanded.
That's how they get the strength. And that's just like, it just made so much sense that you couldn't deny it. So I get the impetus for when you're at these courses for these for PTs, chiro's to be not want to believe that they've you know, taught people incorrectly for so long. But I just said to my clients, I said, you know what, you know, I had to be open to this and I can feel the difference on myself.
And then the difference in how people progressed was just completely. Yeah, that's the significant difference. It's sort of like a half a joke that I make. It's actually not a joke at all.
But I try to do it in a somewhat comical way is with the footwear brands, who every X number of years they have some magic new cushioning technology. Right. And they never say, Hey, sorry about that crap we've been selling for the last five years. Right.
It's always, Hey, it's magic and new. And the amazing part to me is it's like the boy who tried well, if it's this shoe company, the crowd cushioning, were arch support. And in the original story, the villagers stop coming when the boy cries wolf, but amazingly for the last five years, every time the shoe company boys cry new cushioning, we just run to the store. It's incredible that people haven't noticed some obvious thing.
Like, you know, running injuries have not gotten any better in the last five years. And you would think that if they had something that was actually better, showed demonstrable improvement. We should be seeing incremental improvements. And yeah, no, it doesn't happen.
It's funny. I have a video script. I'm working on about this. And I was actually talking to Irene just recently, and she said she met some guys who were runners in the late 60s or early 70s before padded elevated motion control.
And she said, you know, what did you guys do about running injuries? And they said, what are you talking about? We weren't getting injured. We had legs of steel.
And people just don't have enough history, enough memory to be able to compare. So that's where this tricking my universe. But enough about me back to you for the win. No, no, I mean, it's very much the same, right?
Like, we're both kind of fighting the same battle. But to me, with Irene with you, with me, each time we get, if I have 20 people at a course and I get seven of them into it, and now they're now passing that on to their clients, that's going to be how it has to build. I think that there's a combination, I think of that grassroots groundswell component, which is really big and huge for us. But there's also that top-down thing and finding the people who have real influence for whatever reason, we had a really fun thing.
I'm trying to give them a lot to say this again. There was a picture in the daily Sun, UK paper, whatever it's called, and blank on it. Two weeks ago, we barely got on our shoes. Really?
That was great. We were super excited. We were trying to get through to her. If someone like Billy came out and said, Oh my God, you got to wear these, and other, having them on her feet, where people are what they are, you know, that would make a huge difference in the number of people that could have the experience.
And then just like you said, they tell two friends, they tell two friends. And then there's like the critical mass point where there's just enough visibility about the idea or the experience or the product, where then the doubters have seen it around enough that they go, Hey, let's give it a shot. And again, because the experience is so consistent and so sells it, that's where ideas like what we're talking about can really take off. We'll see a change before we die.
Right. Or at least some, right? I mean, we're already seeing some, and I've seen we with both of us. But I mean, I would, people have asked me, they go, What if one of the big shoe companies rips off what you're doing?
I went, Great. Then we won. I mean, I'm not trying to beat them up. I'm trying to change the world.
And that means everybody comes along for the ride in some way, not everybody, but more people. Absolutely. Well, like you said, someone like Billy Eilish, that's a normal, right? So that's not someone who's like a crazy runner or a crazy physical therapist, or you know, so it's, it's easier to relate to what you just implying that either both of us were crazy.
No, no, I'm not talking about that. Those other crazy runners and crazy. Yes, that's right. Just wanted to just want to see if that was a little backhanded.
Well, is there anything that we left out of this other than telling people how to find you and what you're up to? No, I mean, there's, you know, we could, there's so much to do. But I think if we can just get people to just open their minds to the possibilities and just understand that, you know, these are like, you talk about the natural way we're supposed to do things with the feet. This is when we watch a baby develop how we should be, you've stopped saying how you should be because I'm in a face.
I want to ask you a question about that, because it often comes up that someone will show pictures of babies feet and say, this is what our feet are supposed to be like. It's like, no, baby's head compared to its body. That's not the way we're supposed to be when we get older. So there are changes, morphological changes as we mature, as we go through puberty, etc.
So is there anything similar to that on the breathing side that we need to be? Yeah. So when you don't have, like when you look at a baby, their chest is very short on the top and their ribs are kind of lifted up and their bellies are long. And that's because their diaphragm hasn't developed the postural function yet, the core strength function.
And as that develops, it starts to pull the rib cage down. Interesting. And into the shape that it is eventually what like how we want it to be in normal posture. Right.
And so sometimes you'll see someone with that short chest and that's because they didn't have a normal development. So muscle pull as we develop is what helps us shape our bones, and that's included in the foot, right? The arch isn't fully formed for many years until looking seven, right? Yeah.
I love the developmental aspect of muscles moving bones. Yeah. Movement aspect of muscles moving bones. People don't think about a whole lot.
Joe Rogan had one of my favorite lines ever about that. He described fighting as the act of using your muscles to throw your bones at people, which I thought was brilliant. Yeah. So I love that developmental component about what your muscles are doing to your bones.
That's super interesting. Yeah. Cool. Well, on that note, and yes, we could go on forever.
Yes. But I've got a P. So tell people how they can find out more about you and what you're up to. Yeah, you can see me on Instagram at core 360 belt and Erin McGuire physical PT.
I'm on there and the website is core 360 belt.com. And then also we're I have a YouTube core 360 belt channel, and that's going to be we're going to be kind of starting to roll out a little bit more of the educational videos there coming up. So it's a good one to tune into. Quite so for everyone else, please do tune in and let me know what you discover when you start experimenting with this.
That'll be really, really fun. And yeah, and we'll have to find a time to run if it was somewhere between where we are to be able to be. Yes, I would love to play around with that for sure. That's a good thing to do.
So please, my player, of course. So for everyone else, thank you for being here and spread the word. Feel free again, go to join the movement movement.com to find out the social channels, there's links to all of that as well. And of course, if you have any questions or feedback or requests for someone who you think would make a great guest on the show, including someone who might think that I have cranial retinal reorientation syndrome, they could head up my butt.
I'm always up for a conversation, even with people who just read. There's a guy who I've been having this conversation with on YouTube where I got it to share this. I was showing him all the research back and everything that I was saying, both pro natural movement and against modern footwear. And he's a footwear designer in Europe.
And he said, oh, would be something I'm paraphrasing. Basically, he accused me of being an American and trying to use science to prove a point. Oh my God. I thought it was too brilliant.
So I've invited him to be on the podcast. He just refuses, which I think is equally hysterical. So I'm not for the conversation. This is the best thing I can say.
You can drop me an email, move, m-o-v-e-app, join the movement movement dot com. But as always, most importantly, just go out and have fun and live life feet first.