Episode 190: Don't Build Core Strength

It's important to have a strong core, right? Well, what if that's the worst thing you could possibly have? That's what we're going to be diving into today on today's episode of the movement movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body. Starting people's first, because those things are your foundation.

We explore the propaganda, the mythology, often the lies you can tell about what it takes to run to walk the hike, to the yoga, to cross the lift, whatever it is you like to do and do it enjoyably and efficiently and dimensionally because you're not having fun, do something different to you are. I'm Stephen Sashan, your host from zero shoes.com and we call this the movement movement podcast because we're creating a movement about natural movement. What I mean by natural movement is letting your feet bend and flex and move and feel the way they're supposed to and the movement part is getting people to rediscover the fun and benefits of that, to rediscover that natural movement is the obvious, better, healthy choice the way we currently think natural food is. Since it's a movement that involves you and all you need to do is it's really simple, experience it if you can, but also just share a word.

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So, let's do it. If you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. So, let us jump in. Jay, you gave us a hell of a set up for how, of course ability is really, really bad.

But first, before we jump in and hear what you think about that, Jay, who the hell are you doing here? So, my name is Jay Grunkey and I'm the founder of The Balanced Runner. I've been helping runners from Beginner to Olympian improve their form since 2003. And I'm a, I'm a Feldenkrais practitioner, so I use the Feldenkrais method of movement education to help runners improve their form, improve their motor control, we could say.

And so, I'm not a coach, it's just form is what I do. So, before we jump in to talk about course ability and the problems thereof, a couple of things. So, I'm going to put you on the spot. So, since this is the movement podcast and since you are a Feldenkrais person, and by the way, we have a bunch of talk about there, especially since you're in Miriam, I just realized, can you think of a movement thing that you want to share with the human beings who are watching or listening or getting carrier pigeon podcast, some movement, something that they could experience that might give some little shift about whatever they're doing or not doing?

Maybe they're sitting, maybe they're standing, maybe they're taking a walk, maybe they're in their car, doesn't really matter. So, anything you can think of that would be a fun little movement, something. Well, yes, but let's see, it's hard to have something that would work in all those situations. Yeah, don't worry about the situations, but I just want to say that way, you might be able to pick one of those or just something that pops in your head that you like, doesn't really matter.

Yeah. Well, let's see, everybody's got tight shoulders, right? And this will work if you're, whether you're standing or sitting, you can probably do it in a car. It's just not going to work if you're cooking dinner probably.

We should make it Dr. Soussich. You can do it in a boat, you can do it while you float. I like it.

You can do it in a car, you can do it near and far. Yeah. There's a blog post there somewhere. I'm always looking for those.

So, okay, so let's see. So just whether you're sitting or standing, just sit or standing quietly for a moment and just get a sense of the level of tension in your shoulders, your neck and how you're breathing. Where do you feel that you move when the air comes in and when it goes out? And get a sense, do you feel like your head is straight up or is tipped to one side or the other?

This can be really tricky to tell because if it's a habit for you to tip your head, then it feels natural and it feels straight. But still, we saw them pause to think about this. So see what you noticed and what you guessed. And now if you think you feel your head tipping to one side, tip it a little more to that side.

If you don't feel your head tipping to a side, then just pick a side at random. So just tip it a little bit so your ear gets closer to your shoulder and then come back up again. We're going to follow the ground rules of felt increase lessons here, which is you're going to avoid any feeling of discomfort. So absolutely no pain, but any feeling of discomfort.

So if a movement is not comfortable for you, make it smaller. You're going to avoid any feeling that you have to push to make a movement happen. If you feel like you have to push, make it smaller. You can just imagine the movement.

If you feel like it's causing a stretch, make it smaller so you're not feeling a stretch. It's stretching maybe fine unto itself, but we don't do it in a felt or crisis lesson. All right. So tip your head to that side a few times and see if you can feel where do you bend when you do that?

Do you bend somewhere in your neck? Is the bending right below your skull? Or do you feel like it's lower down? Or do you feel like you can't tell, which is also fine?

Do you feel like the shoulder that you're tipping your head towards comes up towards the ear or goes down away from the ear or doesn't move stays still. Yeah. And then just bring your head back to the center and we'll just pause a moment. We take a little moment to give your brain a chance to process what you felt.

And now a few times lift that shoulder that you were tipping your head towards, just lift it up just gently so not so you feel like you're really clenching your shoulder muscles and then lower it back down again. So feel how can you feel that your shoulder blade slides as a sliding sensation on your ribcage up towards your ear and how close to your ear can you bring it without feeling any effort or stretch or discomfort. And what happens to your head when you bring your shoulder closer to your ear? Does it move or does it stay still?

And then let that go and just pause a moment. And now a couple times bring your shoulder and your ear towards each other. So you can go back to tipping your head, but the shoulder and the ear will come closer and then farther away. And for people who are watching the video, you don't need to make them move at the same size or the same way as what you're seeing.

You just go by what you feel inside. And so as you bring your ear and your shoulder together and apart, where do you feel you're bending? Is it the same place that you felt like you were bending when you just were tipping your head? And then let that go and just pause a moment.

And now a few times just tip your head without lifting your shoulder that same way and see does something feel different. Is it possible you're tipping your head farther without any stretch or without having intended to do anything differently? Is it possible that something else is happening? Is it possible the other shoulder is actually moving?

And now we have to do the other side because it's against my religion to leave people lopsided. You don't have any clothes. Many sometimes telling us practitioners will do that because it's so interesting as you go about your day to feel wow, this whole side still feels different. But because I work with runners who are handling a lot of forces in their body, I don't want to create any disparity between the two sides that I wasn't there to begin with.

And I'm guessing that people listening to this are pretty active people. So let's once you try tipping your head the other way now and see how does it feel to tip it that way? It's not going to be like it would have been if we hadn't done the other side because your brain has already learned something and is transferring it. But you may feel it's really different on this side.

And then pause. And now a couple of times try lifting that shoulder towards the ear. So you leave your head. You don't intend to tip your head.

But you just let the shoulder and see does the shoulder slide as easily upwards as the other one did or is it easier even? Does it feel different in some way or just the same? And is there a sensation in the side of your neck when you lift your shoulder? Some sort of little shift in your head?

And then pause and let that go. And now try tipping your head and your shoulder towards each other or rather the head tips in the shoulder lifts. Now I couldn't help but do it a few times myself on the other side. So now I want to do it on this side too.

It's hard to say without doing it. Yep. The challenge of the practitioner. I don't want people copying me, right?

And now let that go. Pause the moment. Something they already be feeling different in their shoulders. And then just try tipping your head towards that second shoulder again and see how do you do that now?

Is the bending in a different place? You tip it at a different amount. Does the opposite shoulder actually follow the head a little bit? And then let that go and just sit now or stand whatever you were doing and compare your two sides and see what the sensations are in the tops of your shoulders.

Maybe even though you were working in those muscles, you were lifting them a bit. You may feel like they're more relaxed and your shoulders are in fact a little lower. And you may feel... Go ahead.

Yeah. Awesome. And then just check. Do you feel like your head is in the middle?

Do you have a different sense of that? And that was an extremely short felt and grace lesson. That was delightful. My favorite thing for people who don't know about felt and grace, I think you just have a great introduction because it's something that's something that's so here's the part that I was going to say once you said felt and grace and we're in.

So what year is this? This is 2020. So last year was 19. So whenever that was 30 years ago, I was on my way to China and I stopped off in Marin County to do some work with Thomas Hannah.

Oh, wow. I had a hunt. She would say that. When I say that in Feldenkrais people, they were like, oh my gosh.

And Thomas Hannah wrote a book called Sematics or those of you who want to dive into some of his version of Feldenkrais, the things that he did with that. He brought Feldenkrais to America and wonderful book has been a print for Jesus since about then. But what I love and your intro was so good is there's two things that really differentiate and I'd love for you to elaborate on this. One is the not trying to move into or through the pain.

The other is maybe there's three things. The other is focusing on the good side. And then the third is just that phenomenon. You know, people think that the change happens or the learning happens when you're forcing something, not realizing that it's the integration during the resting and relaxing that actually does that.

So that phenomenon of doing something on one side and then suddenly feeling the other side change even though you haven't done anything on that other side. I just totally adore. And it's almost like it sneaks up on you. It's a fake out.

You're doing something. I think that you weren't paying attention to has changed. And there's often for me at least there's this feeling of like almost giggly release as your body figures out what to do next or how to do it. And I love the instruction you give about feeling where your neck was moving because it was for me it was impossible to not play with that.

It made me feel like I was in India. Like let's see if I can move just from the axis just from the top of my head versus lower down exactly and all those different ways. And so it reminded me of my first barefoot run where I could be exploring all the different ways I could move. Running faster, running slower, moving my legs faster without running faster, moving my legs slower without running faster, landing on different parts of my feet.

And that's the other thing that I love about Feldenkrais is that it's more people love to say it's about the journey, not the goal, but it's one of the few modalities that I've experienced where that's really the case. It really is about experimenting and exploring not about getting to some imagined future thing. So a thanks. Yeah, you're welcome.

And I just want to call out something that you said because it's when I do interviews and I'm trying to explain what Feldenkrais says. It's like first knowing everything's to ask me for a lesson or very rarely because they've never heard of it before. But then also the response that you had that I was impossible not to want to start to play with it and explore all the different ways I could do it. You might have, you know, having a sense of your personality, you might have always been like that.

But one thing that we know that is an outcome of doing a lot of Feldenkrais lessons, which clearly you've had a lot of experience with this, is that you develop a much larger repertoire of movement possibilities. And I never really, there was even a study done, you know, fair while ago, I just can't even remember this. I heard about it so long ago in my own professional training program, but the just, the upshot was that people who had done a lot of Feldenkrais lessons could think of more different ways to follow an instruction than the people who hadn't. And this is a tremendous resource, you know, for a physically active person, who's especially in a natural environment where it's your versatility, your versatility, and then your ability to quickly choose one of the options for the most effective and or safe one that, you know, is what it's all about.

But it's also an enormous life skill. And you know, because movement is what your brain is for. And everything else that your brain does is built on top of that. When you develop that capacity through movement, exploration, it becomes generalized in your life.

Well, for me, there's, I don't want to put it. This is not going to be surprising to you. I think my natural inclination is to be somewhat contrary and counterfactual. And so when I hear something, especially in instruction, I'm always looking for the edge case for, you know, what's the thing that someone hasn't thought to try in that regard.

I'm trying to think of a specific example that I'm remembering something that involved like all, you know, I mean, some group were in some hotel room somewhere, whatever the instruction was. It was very obvious to me that everyone else had the idea that they had to stay in the room. And so as soon as the instruction was done, I just bolted out of the room. It was an appropriate response at the time.

It was just like, but I'm always, but that, what you said, developing that skill or that habit or that openness to finding something that's out of the groove, out of the normal thing that we would typically do without thinking, it becomes pretty easy. And when it comes to natural movement, this is a big thing. In fact, you might have something else and we'll dive into this, I'm sure. But when people talk to me about running form issues where they're typically overstriting, I'll often say to them if they say they want to learn how to run better, I go, we'll just exaggerate what you're doing.

Stick your foot further out front. Do something that really highlights the other edge of where you're trying to go because then you become aware of where you really were. The number of people who, gosh, I worked with a couple of runners who thought they were midfoot landing people who were getting their feet underneath their body when they landed and it could have been further from the case. And by giving them instructions to try to move them in the direction you wanted them to go, it had no impact.

And so I said, try and go the other way. And suddenly it felt so wrong that they had no choice but come back into what was the direction you were trying to go to begin with. Exactly. As Moshe Feldenkrais said, when you know what you're doing, then you can do what you want.

But if you don't already, so your first step is to develop the ability to do the thing that you spontaneously do all the time and don't even know you're doing, the ability to choose to do it, then that's the same as the ability to choose not to do it. I like it. So let's dive back into what we started at the top of this. So let's talk about core stability and you had a line that I just adored.

So I'm going to let you say that and jump into your thoughts about core stability, which is something of course, everyone thinks they need to have great tight core. They need to have rock hard abs. They need to do whatever it is they do. So I'm going to let you take it over from here because you had to really align it.

I wanted to hear it again. Yeah. Well, it is a core stability is like orthotics for your torso. I just want to pause on that because for many people, they're going to think, well, that sounds good because of orthotic is about stability and I want things that are stable and so why don't I get an orthotic for my torso?

So please elaborate, Jay. Yeah. Well, and then there, I mean, always when I say stuff like this, then people come back, it would be like the most sophisticated people who understand core muscle function come back and you're like, that's not core stability is it all. And so when I say this, what I really mean is core stability as it is popularly thought of and frequently taught.

So scientifically, there's a thing and we'll talk about that. But it is not what's being taught and it's not the thing that runners are being told that they need. So what's being taught? What are people typically being told?

And then what's this alternative perspective? Right. So so people are being told, so okay, orthotics, feet, spines, okay, feet and spines 26 bones. Isn't that interesting?

So it's not a isn't it? Well, you know, look, for all I know, it's the giant coincidence, but it's really a fun one even if it is. So let's just let's just let's just let us in the English alphabet and then there's going to be other things that we find in 26 and it's conspiracy is what it is. It's the only one.

That's kind of what it is. I like where this interview is going. So you know, these are not evolutionary mistakes, right? That you have a lot of bones and therefore even more joints, right?

Those are meant to be mobile adaptable areas. They're not meant. Well, sorry because something just occurred to me when you said that, but for all the years that I've been saying similar things I never thought of, if the bones and joints in your foot were not so mobile, we wouldn't be able to walk at all because the bones in our feet are super, super fragile compared to almost any other than like your inner ear. I mean, you know, these things are not big, thick, strong things and yet they support whatever size your body is when allowed to.

So that's an amazing thing that the whole structure of these tiny little bones that on their own can do squat, semi-punting, put all together in the right way, create this amazing ability to support us when we're walking, running, et cetera, et cetera. Yep, absolutely. And then, you know, for the spine, then that's, you know, the lumbar vertebrae are quite big and strong, then gets more delicate as you go up. But still, you know, these are, you know, are most adaptable.

They are places with the most bones, the places that were meant to be able to meet and interact with the world in the most flexible of ways. And it's interesting, it's like, it's the hands and the feet, but then the spine as well. And in fact, you know, it can feel like kind of the middle of the spine, your T12, L1, so your last thoracic vertebrae, which is the area of your rib cage and your first lumbar vertebrae where they mean that's actually quite a mobile area. You know, to the extent that if a person has a fall, that's the most easily, the most frequently like a bad fall or that's the most frequently fractured area because it's most mobile.

So, so this idea that you would clench or brace, that you would try and restrict and maybe even even aim to prevent altogether a movement there. Like, it's not right. And, you know, as a folding-price practitioner learning about gait, you know, I learned developmentally how movement through the spine is fundamental to walking, to moving through space at all. So your pelvis makes this sort of figure eight motion and your rib cage.

We have a counter rotation, that counter rotation, that turning one way of the pelvis, or any other way of the rib cage, you know, meets right at that T12 L1, which is also where your diaphragm is, and which needs to be not restricted but able to move. And you are very fragile feet, or potentially fragile feet. And by themselves, handle the load and moving across the foot and then the push off of a completely rigid torso. And in fact, when someone tells me that they suffer from chronic tight calves or when a runner tells me that they've had a metatarsal stress fracture, you know, I know that that is, I know that their trunk is too stiff.

And when we fix that, the stresses are changed, the calves relax or the calves no longer accumulate chronic tension, and they change the movement pattern that led to the stress. So, two things. First, I need to apologize. I have the cool background of books that I want to try and figure out what they are.

And I got kicked out of the spot in my office where I have shoes behind me, it looked really cool, and now I've just got this empty court court. That's the apology that I should have done way earlier. But secondly, so the thing that people are being taught now is a lot of anti-rotational movement, basically trying to, quote, stabilize the court and make things immobile. Now David Wecht, the guy who invented the Bosew all that had.

I know David Wecht, David Wecht, David Wecht, and I went to college together. Oh, we did have a talk. And building Christ's training program together. We have a starly parallel lives.

So David is, of course, the other person, or one of the few other people who talks about having a mobile court, if you will, rather than a rigid one. He and I have had a lot of conversations about this. So you would then, of course, suggest that things like planks, paleofcress, all this anti-rotational stuff, all these things to try to keep things not moving, not the recommended course action. No.

No. I've been putting it to the test for 18 years. So I want to ask you a question about that and see how you deal with this. Because one of the things that I noticed, there's a very early blog post that I did that had to do with Glenn Mills, who's Usain Bolt's coach.

And what Glenn said is what got Usain to become the Fast Savannah World and turned him from being a very good 400 meter runner to the Fast Savannah World. Was that they spent a year working on his, mostly on course ability, on his abdominal strength. And I see a silly runners who, they are like a bad slinky that when they hit the ground, everything, you know, from their rib cage down to their, you know, like, like, nipples and nuts, basically, if we're going to do it that way, just collapses. And not in a way that looks like there's anything strong there.

It looks like it's just weak. So talk about this phenomenon of how one has an appropriately flexible, strong moving thing that is not hypermobile or just getting in the way of being able to apply force into the ground properly, which is what allows you to run fast. Right. So, and so many things I want to say about that.

But first, let me say that, you know, how you organize yourself to handle the stresses of running is what really matters and not your strength. So, you know, it's like, how do you organize yourself to pick up a box? Well, if you, let me see, if you don't bend your, really heavy boxes on the floor, you don't bend your knees, you just lean over from your hips, you grab it from the top and you throw, throw yourself backwards, you know, like, it doesn't really, I mean, you could, you could, you could, so that's a terrible way to pick up a box. You're probably going to hurt your back.

Right? You could fix that by just getting really, really strong. You could fix that by just getting a lot of dead lifts, right? Right.

But really, it would be better to learn the proper technique for handling the load of picking up the box because you probably already had enough strength. Right. Okay. So, right.

And really, especially when I, you know, working with elite athletes and seeing how strong they are and how frequently that force is utterly misdirected, you know, all these muscles creating forces and directions that are not propelling them forward. Right. So, then the task there is not to try and persuade them to have less strength. It's, you know, it's like, how can we channel this?

So, it all goes into forward motion. So, there's that. Like, the second thing I do want to clarify, it's not that the core does nothing but it's which muscles are we talking about, right? And what are we trying to make them do?

So I've just been doing a, just coming to the end of a year-long project and looking at breathing and the world between breathing and my actual course ability because you do have to do something to handle impact and have some control of your mid-section, you know, between your ribs and your pelvis. Right. And that's done by your diaphragm, your deepest layer of abdominal muscle, your transverseus abdominis, and your pelvic floor. And they contract fraction of a second before impact so that it's like having air in your tire to create a little bit, to increase the pressure, your inter-abdominal pressure, and that stabilizes you.

Good. Yeah. Well, let's just say that. So, you're more, okay, you go then I'll go.

Okay. So, all the more superficial abdominal muscles are not involved in that job. Right. And when you enlist them, and when you enlist them in that job, one of the things they do is recurability to breathe, probably, and get enough air because they pull down, if you are, start to use your rectus abdominis and your internal and external obliques to do this bracing thing that really is supposed to be done by the transverse and is not regulated consciously because you can't regulate anything consciously in that small window of time, not any less printers.

Then you have just destroyed your ability, or at least significantly interfered with your ability to perform this counter-rotational motion, which running depends on. And when you interfere with that, then you are putting energy into interfering with something your body needs to do. And you're not trying to do that thing anyway. And the waste of energy is tremendous.

And the misdirected force and the stress at your joints, the injury risk, it all goes down the toilet. And again, you're also preventing your ribs from being able to make the movement and your abdomen from being able to make the movements that allow your diaphragm to work well so that you can actually breathe. So that's, I think, covers, and just because elite runners do it doesn't mean it's right. Well, I can tell you that.

The number of times where someone has said, well, so-and-so, and they name some elite Kenyan marathoner does X, Y, and Z, and I go, I don't want to be the one to point it out to you, but you're not 105 pound Kenyan running at almost 13 miles an hour for two hours. So why you're comparing yourself to that person is a mystery to me. Backing up a little bit, you remind me there's an interesting thing in weightlifting where people put on a weightlifting belt and most non, I don't want to put it, most novice lifters or people who aren't really smart about lifting, they think that the whole point of that is that you're supposed to tighten the belt up as much as you can, that the belt is giving you support. And not realizing that the proper use of a lifting belt is to give you something to push your abdominal muscles out into.

So you want to really push your transverse abdominis as much as you can, which is kind of a weird statement. But the idea is that you want to brace by pushing, not braced by just having this thing be a crutch, be another orthotic, if you will. And people don't get that. Or they see these power lifters, they have these big bellies.

Like, yeah, part of that is because they're training their muscles to be pushing out, because that's the thing, if they do it right, gives them the support when they're deadlifting or even bench pressing. So talk about, now, essentially, one of the things that I've done with people, and you're going to think it's horrible, and I'm not saying that you're wrong, is I'll say to people, you know, if they have this really kind of loose, bad, slinky spring thing going on is, I'll walk up and I'll just poke them or I'll say, just pretend I'm about to punch you, just do something, just to get them to find any sort of tension at all because they just typically don't know where that is. And then I'll kind of guide them into how to tighten up or how to work with the transverse abdominis because that really is, that is our course, if you will, and does allow the rest of the reading. So talking about, especially from a Feldenkrais perspective, this is really interesting about what you're doing with people to create that proper tension at the right time or help them create that proper tension at the right time.

And the, while still having the flexibility, openness, relaxation that you need to do, you know, this crazy thing called breathing, and I'm going to call it crazy because like in the hundred, I think I breathe three times just kind of barely. That's a whole different game for sprinting. And of course, in sprinting, there's this whole argument about at the start, how you breathe, which is basically like the salamunuver, various other things, to generate more tension that arguably is going to help you be putting more force in the ground, just like a weight lifter because those first few steps is really like doing a super heavy squat or super heavy partial squat. Yeah, super interesting.

You know, so my work is with distance runners and my ability to comment on sprinting is very limited, which is very good at that. Very good to understand sprinters. There's not a lot of us and we're very hard to study. And so, you know, people ignore it.

Very fun to work with though for me and actually something I'd love to learn more about because you know, distance runners tune out to have everything's in bulk, right? Yeah, you know, the miles, the effort and the few sprinters I had the opportunity to work with, you know, it's a different nervous system completely, you know, and it's so finely tuned and so sensitive, you know, the sprinters can feel what they're doing and distance runners try not to. Here's my thing with sprinters. Like at the end of a race, someone would come up and say, how'd you do?

And my now, the answer that I give would be the last time I did at the end of a race, do you want just a number or do you want the excuse first? Because the thing with sprinting is it's like bowling or archery or target shooting or it's very precise and you can never get it perfect, which is why it's so addicting, is that there's you know, like that one tiny little step that you screwed up on the third step, is like, you know, that's the end of it. The fact that you leaned a little too soon, it's like all these tiny little things and my, I'll stop ranting about sprinting in a second. There's two other parts.

One is that my favorite moment in a race is between set and the gun going off because it's just all you can do is wait and that waiting, it's the most empty my mind ever is in just that moment. And then the reaction is just instantaneous and super, super fun. And then during the course of race, you get like three thoughts, you get three breaths and three thoughts. It's like drive, there's some weird thought that's kind of like take off, you don't want to just stand up, you want to move into the maximum acceleration phase and then it's sort of going to step over and then just hold the fuck on until you get to the end.

So, because I mean, as crazy as it sounds, those last 20 meters is just trying not to slow down. So, it's like all the thoughts you get and everything else is meaningless. So, it's yeah, it's all very concentrated. Anyway, so back up to my plan for my 80s is to become a sprinter.

Well, I got to tell you, when you go to master track meets, it's super, super fun finding the really old sprinters. The first time I went to the senior games after I turned 50, some of the 60 year olds were coming up and saying, you know, enjoy it while you have it because once you turn 60, things start to slow down really fast and a bunch of the 80 year olds overheard came up and went, you guys have no idea what you're talking about. And I'm turning 58 this week. So, I was like, you know, I'm crossing my fingers like a couple more good years in me.

And then the other thing that happens at meets is sure, you know, the distance runners are all great. It's a lot of fun. But when you see the 95 year olds and 100 meters, everybody wants to beat those guys and those women, it is, it's, and this sprinters are the craziest people on the track by a long shot. They're the most fun to hang out with.

So, I highly, I highly encourage you to become an old age sprinter. It's a great gig. Awesome. Awesome.

So, you had some serious, oh yes, kindness in the apps, right. How do we do this thing? So, like again, so what your transverse abdominis is going to do is like not subject your conscious control. Right.

So, you are not, and there's no benefit that's been shown from just holding it tight all the time. Like it has, it has, it has, it's times that is, you know, well, okay, thank you, back to, you know, like it's, it's just regulated by your nervous system subconsciously and you can't cause you, you and a sprinter can't intervene in time. No, it's just something, it's something though, I'm going to move away from transverse abdominis, which we need to perhaps define for people. But the other thing, I'm thinking of is like, there's people who they've never used their glutes in their life.

Right. And so, the only way to get their glutes to start firing in a natural function is to highlight the fact that they haven't used them by getting them to fire at all under their conscious control. Just so they, just kind of, it kind of wakes, seems to wake up some nervous system pathway that had been shut down because they figured out a way to run or walk or whatever it is without using their butt to begin with. And so, the brain just went, oh, you're not going to do that.

All right, well, I'm not paying attention. And so, I've often seen, and I think I mean, Davis and Harvard does this, we're still just like, poke people in the glute and go tighten that up. Okay. And now that you know that that's there, you know, now start running.

So, I wonder if there's some similar thing transverse abdominis wise. Yeah, well, yeah, see, again, I would just leave it at least. So, here's the thing is, if you were totally out of shape, you were like on dead rest or whatever, and everything was equally weak, and you got up and you started walking around, then the movement of walking would strengthen the muscles that you need for walking. And if any of those muscles didn't get strong from you getting up and walking around, it's because you didn't know how to use them when you were walking.

And similarly with running, running strengthens the muscles needed for running. If any of them are not, you're not using them, or you know, there's an imbalance, a strength imbalance is because you don't know how. So, movement coordination comes before strength and produces strength. And even conscious activation of muscles is still begs the question, like, what is it about how you're moving that doesn't just use those muscles, that doesn't make it inevitable that they turn on.

And a lot of that has to do with how we just organize ourselves in space and time relative to gravity and the force is involved in running. And that is definitely true with the glutes. How does that relate to, how does that relate to, how does that relate to, sort of just building strength in general? And the research that has shown that strength training for runners is highly beneficial.

And for sprinters as well, but there's a lot of debate about this for sprinters. But what I keep thinking is the advantage, there's one friend who, as I'm Eric out of the UK, his take on weightlifting is it's really just designed to get back into balance the things that you've knocked out of whack when you were sprinting. And that's the primary function. There are other people who say, well, you basically when you're sprinting, you're only able to apply a certain amount of force at a certain amount of time without some sort of extra load, whether you're adding weight or doing a sled push or pull or something.

So the other advantage for doing certain kinds of training, not just going into doing squats for example, but certain kinds of training is just because you're not going to be overloading your muscular system when you're sprinting because you can't, there isn't some natural way to be applying more force. You have to run hills or stairs or do something to apply an external load. And getting stronger, having that extra strength and knowing how to apply it is a self, a virtuous cycle. So if you're already knowing how to apply it and you get stronger, that's great to a certain extent.

But I don't know where that thought began. Oh, something about, you know, yes, you can, you'll strengthen a certain amount from just doing it. But what's your take on just getting some supplemental strength once you're knowing how to apply it correctly? Sure.

I mean, you know, and again, all of the lead athletes that they work with, you know, they strength train. So you know, I've got no disagreement whatsoever with, you know, strength training for performance. You know, that's a piece of the puzzle. But that assumes that you know how to use that, you had to bring that strength from your squats or whatever, you know, into your running and not everybody does.

And so, and it's a completely different thing than corrective exercise, right? What you get when you go to physical therapist because you have plantar fasciitis and the PT says when you don't have any glutes, your glutes are just totally weak, but your quads are like rocks. What's going, you know, we got to, we got to fix that strength imbalance. And then you're doing a million clam shells, which by the way, is I hate those terrible exercise and like bridges.

I feel awkward and really inappropriate. Yeah. Yeah, but it's also, it's a bad movement by ignoring that right little pebble on the road here. Let's say, but yeah, so, but then do you, are you going to know how to use your glutes in running from doing clam shells?

Or are you just going to be now toting some more actual meat on your mind that is just added weight frankly? Right. You know, maybe it has a weak learning effect, but not a strong one. Whereas the very following Christ lesson in one hour, you could be living in a completely different world in terms of knowing how to use your glutes.

And a lot about glutes is people don't really understand, but especially for distance running again, different in sprinting because it's basically you're just trying to accelerate more like this. But, you know, your glutes main job is not, is not to push. It's to hold your head up. And so if you were not.

Hold on, hold on. Your glutes main job is to hold your head up. We can open with that line. Yeah.

So, so, so you need to lean forward when you run. And so what that means is that when you're in mid stance means your weight is fully on your foot. You're at your most compressed moment in running. You're experiencing 2.5, 2.7 times your body weight and compression downward compression.

Like, have another you sitting on your head pushing you down. So if you're leaning forward as you should be, your head is not over your foot. It's in front of your foot. And that downward force will cause you to face plant.

If not for your glutes. I love it. Right? That is their main job in distance running.

They are used to some extent. I mean, maybe slightly towards toe office or various running style, I think. It's used more if you're running uphill. There's more if you're accelerating.

But then the use decreases again once you've established or you speak. Well, let's refill. It's sort of like from, so the glutes primary function, there's a couple, but let's say the primary function is hit extension, which is good. Things can happen after mid stance.

And whether you're depending on how you're running, you may really need that or you may need a little less of that. You don't need none. But the flip side, the proximal side of that, if you will, is then the part of holding your head up. So it's sort of doing this.

It's kind of like a hamstrings has, you know, the insertion of the insertion of the hip. In a way, what we're talking about is kind of like a glute doing, you know, the part that goes from the glute down to the part from the glute up. And that's, but I never really thought about the glute up part, which is fascinating. Yeah.

It's because, you know, your glutes and maximus attaches to that whole top of your pelvis. Yeah. And so when it's contracted, it, you know, so it works isometrically in that moment in order to keep your whole body from just tipping forward. And so if you are not leaning forward, you will not use your glutes when you run.

That's so unique. Yeah. So you can put those glutes, you can say fire fire fire. Yeah.

But there's no reason for them to work if you're not leaning forward. And then if you instead, you just get this idea that I should be using my glutes all the time when I run, then you're clenching them all the time, both of them. So anything you do on both sides of your body at once while running interferes with your core action with this counter rotation of your upper and lower body. So now you're shutting down your core action and you've just made running harder and potentially more stressful to your body.

Has anyone done EMG studies on some of these things on muscle firing, especially like pre and post some Feldenkrais activation? As far as I know there are no EMG studies pre and post Feldenkrais. That's too bad. I know it really would be.

So yeah, I mean a direction that I want to be moving more of the next decade is using research. But there's been too little research on Feldenkrais. But I know my clients develop butts. And that's all that matters really.

Yeah. I mean, I have a wild or clinical experience here. It's anecdotal, but nice ass. So backing up, we took a bit of a detour from.

So what does one do since we've established that using your core appropriately is a valuable thing? How do you work with people to do that? And what can you share with people who are listening, watching this so they can start to get a flavor of that before they would just blindly go and find some Feldenkrais person. And by the way, as you know, just because someone is a Feldkrais practitioner doesn't mean they're hip to what you know about applying this to running.

We'll talk about that in a second. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, you can feel how the fundamental nature of how your core is supposed to work on when running. If you just sit down on the ground with your legs out in front of you, your knees can be bent, you know, they don't like straight-ish, but don't kill your hamstrings and just walk forward on your butt.

Right? So that's what you're, you know, if you do that a few times, the first time is going to feel awkward, your head's going to tip side to side. If you do it a few times to where you feel like, oh, no, I'm walking here, use your arms. That's what your core needs to do.

And so again, if you want strengthening exercise, that facilitates that. I mean, there are any number of, there's both, there's movement of transverse planes, so there's the counter rotation of pelvis and thorax, but then there's also movement in the frontal plane, which means that I decide to tip the pelvis side to the side. And you know, in this wonderful, you know, the area that is the center of your running gate, the most important part to be mobile is that T12L1, you know, moves actually side to side in addition to their being, well, I mean, the rotation isn't just there, it's distributed through the spine. That's just where turning one way meets, turning the other way.

And so, you know, doing activities like that pre-run are very helpful. It's a great warm-up. I have created a ton of resources, so if I can do a wee plug, I have a free one week to sit in and do this. Yeah, we'll get there in a second.

I can just hold it. Okay. But, you know, as a Feldenkrais practitioner, the first lesson I give practically every runner is lying on your side, learning how to allow and create and control this movement. And so, we're not talking about total loosey gooseiness.

There is such a thing as too much, and that is called salsa dancing. Wonderful, wonderful activity. And by the way, by the way, I think Latin dance and Latin dance fitness is wonderful cross-tour. It's because it's tremendous.

It's so strengthening for your core, but through a range of motion. And simultaneously, it's all being, because you're on your feet, as opposed to lying down on the ground, and your hip joints are having to also, all the muscles around, your hip joints are also being strengthened by that. And in coordination with the core and with your weight in a way that is incredibly applicable to running. That's really interesting.

Yeah. And even as a sprinter, I think a little bit of salsa in those hips, you can probably spread it. There's a debate about this with sprinting as well. And part of it is that the challenge of sprinting is that the ground contact time is so short that any motion that you're going to have is so constrained just because there's no time for it.

I mean, typical ground contact time for sprinters is 800th of a second. Or no, yeah, 800th of a second. A little less than 800th of a second. That's what it's less than a 10th.

And that's a very tiny bit. But there is a little bit of this sort of left and right thing. There's Joel Smith, who's a different, has a whole thing about arm motion. And what you want to do is as your arm is coming behind you, and this is an argument that you would have David, all he loves a lot of David stuff, is that if you try to describe, if your hands behind you instead of your thumb pointing up, rotate it so your thumb kind of comes towards your body is almost pointing backwards.

Because that shoulder rotation will actually help with just that little bit of extra twist in your torso, which also that little bit of extra extension in your hip. So if you can rotate your shoulders that tiny bit, then that's actually giving you a little more extension as well. Again, big debates about this. The thing about sprinting pillar is that you see these little idiosyncratic patterns, whether someone has their feet pointed out or one foot pointed out out of a former world champion, ran with one foot pointed practically at 90 degrees.

People say, God, if you only get that foot in line, it's like, dude, he was a world champion. Leave him alone. So that's the big thing. Everyone has opinions about sprinters.

But no one's, I've never met anyone who's taken a sprinter and dramatically changed their form with a simultaneous dramatic improvement of performance. There's so much of what's happening so fast that actually, you and I need to talk about this because I actually have some theories about how that could be different because I think fundamentally people aren't teaching sprinting mechanics the right way based on what it takes to learn a new movement pattern. And this is a combination of Feldenkrais things and biofeedback things and just basic motor scale acquisition things, which is my undergraduate research, cognitive aspects of motor scale acquisition. I'm willing to do this offline, frankly, because I don't want to share the info because I want to patent this stuff.

But I think there's a there, therefore, that no one's really gotten into. But I love the walk and under butt. I think that's, because this is something similar to what we, a sprinting thing, we're actually just using the arms to get used to what the arm motion is, which then involves walking on the butt because you can't avoid it when you're doing that. The other thing, sorry, I stopped ranting in a second.

As you were talking just about this, these counter movements between the pelvis and the torso, I keep thinking of taking like a dress and putting on a hanger and just twisting the hanger back and forth and noticing where the dress doesn't move, which is right basically at that spot where your diaphragm would be. It rotates above that and below that, but that spot right in the middle just doesn't move, which is, and which is a similar analogy, I think Danny Dryer from She Running might use a similar analogy. I'm not sure if I, where that image of my mind came from of just how there are these counter moves and people are either doing, not doing those at all because everything's so sloppy or trying to restrict it too much because everything's too tight and that happy medium is the interesting place. Yeah, I mean, the thing, again, so much in there and we definitely must talk more, but the thing to bear in mind, I mean, the most important thing out of all that is that counter rotation, like I say, there's also movement in the front of the plane.

And the way the human spine is built, rotation and side bending occur together and all this at each other. So unlike on the, the, the dress mannequin thing, that midpoint where the counter rotation occurring is or should also be moving side to side and this gets us back to feet because if it's not, if it's not at all, then people are going to try and stick orthotics underneath your feet because you're going to overpronate your weight and you shift laterally over the weight bearing surfaces of your feet. And if, yeah, so, and this is how, you know, like my clients stop meeting ortho, like I've gotten basically everybody who's ever come to me out of orthotics, not by trying to, they just think about it, start getting annoying because they don't mean them anymore. Well, the whole, the whole idea about orthotics that there's some particular way to post your foot and that you can do that while it's in motion is of course flawed to begin with.

In Bill Sands Lab, when he had one out here at the, what used to be, with now Colorado Mesa University, what he would show, he would have you trying every different sheet you had and see how you were running. And what he would show is that you're, for most people, especially recreational runners, their gate would change dramatically based on what she's there wearing. And of course, how well that she was broken in or not or how overused that she is. And I said him, this is the real joke about orthotics is what you're showing is that you would need a different orthotic for every shoe and then have to change it out pretty much every 50 miles based on how that she was wearing out.

And yeah, and I had a guy try to prescribe orthotics to me like a three quarter orthotic. And I said, how is this in any way useful? Because I never touched any part of that part of my foot. I mean, that my foot doesn't move like that when I'm sprinting.

I mean, I literally would never, there's nothing there. And he said, well, well, well, I think you still need one. It's like, once again, man, you're supporting something that isn't ever being used in the way that you think or there's a God, I don't, I'm trying to think about how much I want to bad mouth another company. There's a company that makes a, let's call it an orthotic.

And they're basically promoting it as if it's a spring. And I go, well, that's really cool. Except that the way your body moves, you would never load the spring that way and then get the rebounding effect from it. And of course, you can't get more energy out of it than you put into it.

And even more, if it did what you think, you'd see that on a force plate, you'd be able to see a change in how force is applied and to show me the force plate data. And then I'm all yours, otherwise it's just a bunch of hand waving and they don't like that. No. Okay.

Who would I? I don't know why. I'm fond of finding out things that are true. I'm not sure if you're not going to be able to make a living office saying things that aren't not so much.

Yeah. So, well, I want to, I cut you off when you were about to say how people could find some of the things that you've done to help people learn this and we need to jump into that. If for no other reason, then I got to be, I got to get to things are super busy over here. So, I mean, first of all, once again, thank you.

This is long overdue and it's such a pleasure. And we have so much more to talk about and maybe we'll do part two of this. And secondly, Jay, tell people how they can discover what you've been up to and how you can be helpful whether they're seeing you in person or not, because of course, this is our goal is to help people move better. Awesome.

So, you can find me. I've done it. I've been doing a ton of YouTube videos. So, YouTube.com slash balance runner, you'll find tons of things you can see there, which is always helpful with running form.

I have a free one week challenge called the mind your running challenge, which you'll find on my website or you can go to, chief's. Never mind. If you find on my website, it's not so professional at that moment, but I really need a simple link. I mean, I think it's bitly.com slash my.

Anyway, anyway, free 10 minutes a day. You don't have to put on running clothes, but it's going to help you feel this. How this core action actually works because just feel your head full of ideas. It doesn't work so well to be able to feel things with your body, then you can start to learn them.

So, that'll just start you being able to get things working right. And this is the other thing that I really like about the spelling crisis approach. And it's the same thing that we say about just running barefoot or in zero shoes. The goal is for you to be able to feel and understand and listen, whatever, listen to your body needs to hit that phrase, but to be attentive to what's happening with your body and the different options that are available so that you become your own coach so that you can tell what's going on, so that you can be the experimental, your own guinea pig, if you will.

And that's the value. I mean, we for whatever reason, especially in America and perhaps in Europe a little bit as much, I'm not sure if this is much, we've become very attached to a instant product-based solution without realizing that it's really the best thing is figuring it out internally. I mean, what we like to say about zero shoes is we're not doing anything. We're getting out of the way so you can figure out how to do you best.

And it just happens that there's cool shoes that go along with that. And then there's more to it about sort of just short cutting the process of learning that you would do on your own. You'd figure it out on your own given enough time, enough patience. But there's of course ways of helping people accelerate that process as well.

So that's sort of our goal. So cool. Well, please do go to Balance Runner.com and enjoy and discover what Jay's been doing. And let's hear your feedback about that.

Leave it here. Obviously, leave it with Jay. And Jay, once again, we have a lot more to talk about. So we will probably do that.

But while we sign off, let's be watching. Listen, thank you. Thank you again. Go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com.

That's where you'll find all the previous episodes and all the ways that you can interact with us. Again, like and share and subscribe and thumbs up and hit the bell and all those things you know how to do. Like I said, if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. But most importantly, go out, have fun and live life.