What Runners Need To Know About Joint Maintenance

Guest [00:00:06]: I'm doctor Grayson Wickham, and you are listening to the Run to the Top podcast.

Finn Melanson [00:00:13]: Hello, fellow runners. I'm your host, Finn Melanson, and this is the Run to the Top podcast. The podcast cast dedicated to making you a better runner with each and every episode. We are created and produced by the expert team of coaches at Runnersconnect.net where you can find the best running information on the Internet as well as training plans to fit every runner and every budget. When you're dealing with everyday pain in High areas of your body. Your life isn't as good as it could be, and this extends to running. You become more injury prone. Your performance suffers.

Finn Melanson [00:00:51]: You get injured. Movement isn't as enjoyable. And above all else, you don't live up to your potential. If this sounds like something you've been dealing with lately, You'll wanna tune in to this episode with doctor Grayson Wickham, a physical therapy expert and founder of the Movement Vault. Doctor Wickham is on a mission to help runners like you move better, Perform better, decrease pain, and live better lives. In this conversation, we talk about the epidemic of back pain in the running community and why 99% of it is preventable, Why you should differentiate between static and active stretching, and why active stretching is like joint maintenance in the same way that brushing your teeth is like tooth maintenance, How your shoes may be destroying your feet, whether sitting is the new smoking and what to do about it, the best times of day to active stretch, and the top 5 stretches that runners should be doing daily, And much more. Again, if you feel as though you could be doing better when it comes to joint maintenance, establishing range of motion, and staying physically durable Through your most important training blocks, you'll wanna listen in. Beat the stress of the holiday season with Stress Guardian from Bioptimizers.

Finn Melanson [00:02:01]: It's packed with a blend of 14 adaptogenic herbs that helped to regulate your stress response naturally. Learn more at stressguardian.comforward/run to the top. Timeline Nutrition has developed a groundbreaking product called MitoPure that revitalizes your mitochondria which create energy in nearly every cell in your body. Head to timeline nutrition.com to learn more. Doctor Grayson Wickham, it is a pleasure to have you on the show today. How are you doing?

Guest [00:02:34]: I'm doing really well. I'm, excited to chat with you and, Share some great practical tips for your, for your listeners.

Finn Melanson [00:02:42]: Me too. This is gonna be a ton of fun and I have a feeling I'm gonna learn a bunch of myself. I think the 1st topic that I wanna get into, because it's something that, admittedly, I'm dealing with right now is back pain. And I understand that it's It's, it's an epidemic in this country to some extent, but I've heard you either say somewhere or write somewhere that 99% of back pain is preventable. And I guess I should add 1 more note just to provide context. Most of the people listening to this show, They're runners, not necessarily professional, but, like, the weekend warrior types that are racing local five k's, trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon and stuff like that. And, so this can be a major impediment. So, yeah.

Finn Melanson [00:03:26]: Why do you see this problem largely being a preventable thing?

Guest [00:03:31]: Yeah. Well, first of all, I always say any anyone that's dealing with back pain, you know, first of all, sorry to hear that you're dealing with the back pain. And, like you said, it's it's extremely common, way too common and actually it's the top 3 and kind of depending on the study, the top Number one reason that you see your primary care doctor is in the US at least is due to low back pain. And so, like, We have to just take a step back and think about that all the out of all the different things that the human body can deal with, the back pain is the number one thing that's, like, holding this down right now. And so we'll talk about, you know, why does back pain happen and but, yeah, like you said, I'm very, like stat research based. I like to dive into the research and then take that research and kind of connect the dots, the different data points. And, you know, sometimes I'll point to a specific study, sometimes I'll take those different data points and create my own, you know, thesis or hypothesis, etcetera. And so the number 99%, that is just my stat, that's not based of a, you know, a study that's basically just me saying that almost all low back pain is preventable.

Guest [00:04:44]: And so, Okay. So, why do we have this crazy amount of people in the U. S. And really all over the world dealing with low back pain and essentially It's just the way that we're living our lives, you know. We're not really living as human beings are meant to live or have evolved to live over time. And so what does that mean? It means that we're sitting way too much, and we're also not getting in enough varied movement throughout our day regularly. And so I work with, You know, runners, avid runners, whether they're recreational or more on the professional level, I work with you name it. I work with people that have never worked out in their life, Hate working out, love working out, professional, you know, NFL athletes, everyone in between.

Guest [00:05:29]: And even if you say are, a runner, right? And you're like, well, you know, I run an hour a day or I run 5 hours accumulative over the week or whatever it is. Well, that's a lot of movement per se, but that's not a lot of varied movement. And so a lot of these, you know, for your audience, a lot of you guys and Guys and girls out there, you're you're sitting all day because we have to work. Often most jobs don't have the luxury of, you know, having one of those fancy treadmill desks or or standing desks, etcetera. And so we're sitting, you know, it's sedentary non movement during the day and then we kind of get off or maybe we're doing it for work, we're going on a run, that's just in a straightforward motion. And when we break down human movement, we really have 3 main movement planes. We've got straightforward and backwards, we call that the sagittal plane. We've got side to side movement, which is called the frontal plane.

Guest [00:06:26]: And then we have rotational movement which is called the transverse plane. Now running and most actually movements that people are doing in the gym, exercising, etcetera happen in the sagittal plane, so straightforward and straight back. And with running, we're actually only using half of that sagittal plane. We're just going forward most of the time unless you're, you know, incorporating some backwards kind of jogging, walking, etcetera.

Finn Melanson [00:06:51]: Sure.

Guest [00:06:51]: So what it comes down to, this is this is the longest answer ever to start a podcast, but, what it comes down to is, we have basically the sitting and sedentary lifestyle and lack of varied movement, our body is adapting to this. That's leading to tight muscles and tight joints in specific areas of the body kind of depending on, you know, what your lifestyle is. But There are some commonalities just between, you know, human to human these days just because of the typical way that a human is living. And so these tight muscles and tight joints, Then you've got, you know, hips and shoulders and, core musculature and ankles that really don't move like an ankle or a hip or a shoulder should move. But then when you do a movement that demands movement that a shoulder, a hip, or an ankle should be able to do, But it can do that, well, it's not just going to magically, you know, come out of thin air. It's going to come from a different joint that's going to have to compensate for that joint that you're, you know, trying to get a hip to work like a hip and it's not working, it's going to compensate for that hip. So in the case of low back pain, you know, your hips are usually tight. It could be external or internal rotation.

Guest [00:08:05]: It could be, you know, you have tight hamstrings, so you don't have good, you know, hip flexion, etcetera. And so when you have those Tight hips then your back, it's usually the next closest joint to the joint that's tight has to compensate And in this case, it's the low back that compensates. And so, over time that compensation forces your low back or whatever joint it is, a lot of times with runners There's a lot of people too, it's the knees. We can talk about the knees as well. But that's going to cause that joint to move Really how the joint really wasn't supposed to designed to move. And it's okay, you know, the body is super resilient, we can get away with, You know, a little bit extra twisting, a little bit of rotation for a short term, you know, when I say short term, sometimes years. But then, You know, over time that's going to cause joint wear and tear. That joint wear and tear is then going to cause, you know, pain and injury and then we're stuck with low back pain.

Guest [00:09:01]: And so, Yeah. That's that's basically the cascade. It's tight muscles and tight joints leading to joint compensation and leading to joint wear and tear, then leading to pain and injury. And so, All of this can be prevented, A, by obviously, getting in some more varied movement throughout the day, being more aware of postures, we can kind of dive into that a little bit more, but also using an effective active stretching routine to essentially prevent and undo all of these tight muscles that we're, you know, that our body is adapting to because we're sitting so much with, you know, slumped over posture, hips flexed, etcetera.

Finn Melanson [00:09:40]: Yeah. A couple of comments and a couple of questions. I learned a ton there, by the way. I really appreciate the detail. The first thing and I'm gonna I'm gonna Make an analogy and I want you to tell me if this is correct because I thought you said something interesting. In the same way that we want to eat sort of a a varied diet And to be like nutritionally complete, we want this varied movement, right? So what if that's correct, what does like A varied movement day look like. Like, in addition to running, in addition to sitting, in addition to being, you know, horizontal in bed, What what do you advise people can do even in the confines of like a 9 to 5 job where you're on meetings and stuff like that, you're sitting in front of a screen. What are some things you can do to Supplement, movement patterns and stuff like that.

Guest [00:10:26]: Yeah. Great question. So, you know, if somebody is so I guess we'll break it down into a couple different things. You know, if we're at work and most people are gonna be sitting at work, you can do just simple things like, You know, a question is like, that I get up quite often is, what's the best type of posture to be in, you know, throughout the day? And I always tell people that there's no golden or magical Posture per se that the best position is the next position. So the the human body has, again, evolved and, is meant to move in various patterns and all the time. Because here's another, you know, term that's thrown around there a lot. If you don't use it, you lose it. Right? That's that applies to, your muscles and your joints and your connective tissue.

Guest [00:11:12]: Not to say you're just gonna lose your connective tissue, you will lose muscle mass obviously if you're not using it, and, you know, applying that force and, Creating Force, etcetera. But so in in, I guess I'm getting ahead of myself here. So, like, we'll break it down back to the, the sitting. So, basically, if you're if you're working, simple as just like standing up, you know, stand up, every 20 minutes. And it doesn't have to be like you're standing up and you're, you know, you're at a standing desk and you're standing up for 10 minutes. Simply just standing up for 5 seconds, Sitting back down is a great reset. That's a great place to start. And then when it comes to Certain like stretches at your desk.

Guest [00:11:56]: I mean, there's a ton of things you can do. You know, it's it's cool because in the in the Movement Vault stretching app, that's the My app, the the app that I'm a founder of. Yeah. We actually have what's called, work routines. So we have 5 to 7 minute actually routines that are designed for people to to do at their desk. So some examples with that of that would be, I mean, you can simply, you know, put your arms above your head and you can just even do like a, I'm kinda I'm side bending for the people that are just listening to this. So I'm just I'm kinda side bending my body a little bit and just getting in some good movement here. You can do if people are familiar with a cat camel, we could do a, what I like to term as a segmented cat camel.

Guest [00:12:39]: So you're You're kind of extending your entire spine 1 vertebrae at a time and then you're flexing your entire spine 1 vertebrae at a time. We can we can do simple things with the legs even though we're sitting still. We can do, you can think about like marching. Right? While sitting on your chair, except we can just maximally flex 1 hip up as high as we can. Hold that for 5 seconds while we're driving the opposite leg down into the ground. So we're extending 1, 1 hip down while flexing the other and we can hold that for 5 seconds so we can do the opposite on the up other leg. And you don't have to obviously continue to move while you're working the whole time, but just throwing in like 20, 30 seconds of some movement, some movement resets every say 20, 30 minutes It's going to be very beneficial throughout your day. And there's again, there's there's a whole host of different stretches and activations.

Guest [00:13:37]: The key there that we haven't really touched upon, which Will be great for the listeners is the difference between active stretching and static stretching as well as muscle activation. But when it comes to the desk, yeah, those are some good things kind of switching it up. As far as just movement patterns in general, yeah, really getting in Some some more rotation, whether that's, you know, with, weights, whether that's not with weights in your workout. You know, if you are just running, I hope that you're, we're gonna hopefully pound it in, the importance of active stretching by the end of this podcast. But yeah. Getting in all planes of motion is key because, you know, why is that key? We'll we'll think about it. As we've evolved, The human body again is super resilient. We've had to move to live.

Guest [00:14:28]: Right? So I like to look at I like to look at the research but I also look to look at principles as well. You know, today we have so much technology, this AI boom, all these things, we've got lights. I I mean, there's so many things we take for granted, right, as humans, like but we have all these this technology and these machines that can do things for us. Well, at one point in time, most of the A time that we've kind of been around, we haven't had these machines to do things. We had to do them, you know. And so that was just basically a part of our life and we've had so much time that we had to build things, we had to chase things, we had to hunt things, we had to pull things out of the ground, we had to climb things. And these are not all just straightforward, you know. I might have to pick something up down To my left or down to my right or pull something up, you know, in these quote unquote awkward positions, you know.

Guest [00:15:16]: People are are taught a lot that Should never bend down and pick something up as you're rotating because that's really bad for your back. That's an awkward position. Well, if you're picking up, you know, £200, yeah, you shouldn't be doing that. But if you're a resilient human which We're gonna train we're gonna we're gonna teach you how to be resilient human. You should be able to rotate, side bend, bend over Every position, your shoulders should be able to move in full ranges of motion and that's basically what I mean by moving in multiple planes of motion and, varied movement throughout the day.

Finn Melanson [00:15:53]: And I'm I'm very excited to talk about active versus Sort of passive static stretching in a moment, but one thing and maybe you can dispel this, and I'm not sure where I read it or or listened to it, but I had always been under the impression that unless some you you suffered a traumatic injury, most back pain was psychosomatic. So Can you dispel that? Because I and I don't know where I heard it, but I've always thought that, like, it was more like a sign of, like, work stress or Something else in life and not necessarily related to, you know, sitting all day and stuff like

Guest [00:16:27]: that. Great great question. Great point. When it comes to pain science. Like there's there's people that just they spend their whole career, right, studying just what is pain. And And if we think about I'm not going to get too nerdy down that that rabbit hole, but, you know, pain is kind of A made up thing per se. Right? It's not made up. It's really our nervous system, our brain, our spinal cord, and the nerves that come off our spinal cord.

Guest [00:16:54]: That's basically our nervous system and our nervous system is always trying to keep us safe. It also allows us to contract muscles. It allows us to sense things, sense heat, sense objects. And it's it's really the, You know, I want to say backbone. Obviously, it's not the backbone. It's actually contained within your backbone in your spine, your spinal cord. But This pain, yeah, this is basically your nervous system in a way I'm kind of, you know, being broad here. It's your nervous system trying to protect you.

Guest [00:17:27]: And there's sometimes where the nervous system, can kind of be over overcharged per se, right, where There's no longer an injury, there's no longer a need to have pain, but for whatever reason there is, You know, people get stuck in the pain cycle. Now would I say all back pain is that? Definitely not in my case. What I've seen working with, you know, thousands of patients, looking at the research, no. I mean, I've had people that have come in, I would, you know, that had back pain and 100% this is not in their head, you know. We'll do some some some targeted active stretching muscle activation exercises which is activating specific muscles that they might not have activated in quite a long time. And that's really challenging for them, number 1, but I term that as we're having a conversation with their nervous system via muscle contractions and movements. And what that does is that sends a signal to their nervous system to say, Okay. You know, Finn, you had back pain coming in that was a 6 out of 10.

Guest [00:18:37]: You were in pretty rough shape. Well, some of that pain, again, there could be some tissue damage there. It could be a bulging disc. There's Kind of numerous things that could be going on with low back pain. Now we had that conversation with your nervous system via muscle contractions movement And now we're kind of proving to your body that, alright, we are actually kind of stable here. Your hips are working better than when you came in, And all of a sudden that pain will drop down to say like a 2 out of 10, not in every case, but in some cases it's, you know, people it's like They think it's magic, right? Because we're all of a sudden we're contracting these muscles that they haven't even used in quite a long time, to the extent that they're using them. Not to say that, you know, their glutes aren't working or their glutes aren't firing because that's that's a term that you hear a lot with back pain, your glutes aren't working. Well, if your Your glutes aren't working, you actually wouldn't be able to stand up.

Guest [00:19:31]: But, but yeah, just to kinda to pound that one in, Yeah. I would definitely not say that pain is psychosome, low back pain is psychosomatic. Stress definitely plays a role, in a number Is there

Finn Melanson [00:19:44]: a story kind of thing?

Guest [00:19:45]: Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Stress is always stress will make anything, exacerbated. Exacerbated. Yeah. A 100%. If it's not in in the correct dose.

Guest [00:19:55]: Right? Because running, training, all these things, sauna, Cold plunges, those are all stressors, in the correct dose.

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Finn Melanson [00:22:04]: I like how you say that stretching Is joint maintenance just like brushing and flossing your teeth is tooth maintenance? I think that's a great way to to think about how important that practice is and how Routine it should become, but I know that you distinguish between passive and active stretching. So talk about that because and again, I think I need to be converted here because Even if it's bad, I get so much like release from like trying to touch my toes and, you know, doing the thing where it's like me on the ground, foot on the bed and stretching out The TFL muscle and stuff like that, which I'm sure is bad, but I I don't know. It kinda works for me. So talk about why What I'm doing is probably not good and why I should move towards like these more active styles of stretching.

Guest [00:22:48]: Yeah. That's That's kind of, a message that I'm really trying to put out as of recent is, you know, the differences between active stretching and static stretching or passive stretching, if that's what you want to call it. But yeah, before that, the whole like teeth brushing thing, it's, you You know, a lot of people they understand that, we need to brush our teeth. Why do we need to brush our teeth? Well, we don't want cavities. We don't want our teeth to fall out. Maybe we don't want bad breath. And so, most people I would say at this point, get the idea of I need to brush my teeth 1, 2, 3, 4, whatever times of the day you're doing. And teeth, right? I mean, what do they do? They're they're cool for smiling.

Guest [00:23:27]: They're cool for chewing food. But other than that, they don't really do much, you know. When we look at our joints, right, our joints, so many different joints in the body. This is The vessel, your body that's taking you throughout your day, A to B to C, to doing your runs, to playing with your kids, to cleaning the house, doing Everything, right? And the human body, again, going back to the resilient piece, we're so resilient that our body can get away with so much. When I say our body or joints, right? They can get away with a lot until they can't. And so, as many people my goal is To have active stretching as common as brushing your teeth. And that's kind of the the main thing. I'm trying to get people to wrap their heads around that, like, You need to be active stretching 3 times per week, no matter if you hate working out, never worked out.

Guest [00:24:22]: It doesn't matter if you have athletic and Let it go as if you're a runner, if you're, you know, just sitting on the couch, whatever you're doing like, this isn't like a nice to have, this is What you need to do to prevent that low back pain, to prevent joint replacements, to prevent all this pain and injury because Most of this stuff is avoidable as long as we're doing our joint maintenance, just like we're doing our teeth maintenance. Yeah. So that's kind of that piece. And as far as the, yeah, the active stretching versus static stretching. So if we look at the research, static stretching has actually been shown to increase increase injury risk and decrease performance. So I always say that 2 times. I, so static stretching when performed before An athletic endeavor or a workout, has been shown to increase injury risk and decrease performance. And so when I ask most people like, okay, you understand the like you stretch, so you must have connected, Stretching is good, right? Because there's certain people that just don't stretch and there's people that do stretch.

Guest [00:25:28]: So, there's that difference right off the bat. I I always ask people like, so why are you stretching? So, actually, I'll turn that, around to you. So, Finn, why do you, why do you stretch? What are your what are your goals of stretching? What do you?

Finn Melanson [00:25:41]: So it's mostly in reaction to something. So for example, if I feel like a pent up pressure in any given area of my body, I feel like if I do a particular stretch, it'll release and or disperse that stress Across the Body and it's almost like it's almost like, flipping a switch or, Yeah, just like reorganizing like like, just an area of the body. I don't know. I guess release is the best way to describe it.

Guest [00:26:11]: Okay. Yeah, I like that. That's a good answer. That's not what I hear as often, but it's Yeah. So, you almost kind of

Finn Melanson [00:26:16]: In my TFL, for example, there'll be like a ton of Sure. In my in like the TFL area, like deep hip rotator area, and I'll do like a pigeon stretch or something and I'll get this like in after I, You know, release the stretch, I'll get this incredible release and it's almost like that area is back to like a better baseline.

Guest [00:26:35]: Interesting. Yeah. So, so you're doing it kind of more as a reactionary measure once you find something you want You want to kind of fix it. So I would say, A, that's, that's awesome that you're stretching, number 1. I always give people, you know, a huge high five for that. And so, you know, with running per se, there are going to be certain muscles that are going to tend to be tighter, right? Because Your body adapts to the things that you do most often, the positions that you spend the most often. So running, it's basically hip Flexion hip extension in a shortened range of motion just over and over and over and over. Lots of hip flexion, not so much activation of the lateral hips and even the glutes, right, that's why a lot of runners focus on gluteus medius, gluteus maximus, activation.

Guest [00:27:27]: So that was a that was a great answer. And another answer I hear is, you know, I want to, you know, warm up for my workouts, I want to get looser, I want to improve range of motion. Yeah, improve range of motion, improve flexibility. Sometimes I'll hear mobility. Sometimes I hear, like, I want to improve my balance. And so, you know, again, if we look at the research and sometimes I hear, you know, reduce injuries, maybe that's thrown in there. A lot of what those answers are don't actually align up to what the research shows. So that's that's something that I'm, You know, trying to make people aware of it's it's increasing injuries and decreasing performance.

Guest [00:28:09]: So you're actually better off not static stretching at all or doing any stretching if all you were going to do a static stretch before a run, than anything. And so, and then if we even take a step back, we'll define like what static stretching and active stretching is. But if we take a step back, Static stretching, like what is it, right? It's just as you described, you know, you'll be standing up, knees straight, You bend over to touch your toes, you're just relaxing into a stretch. Same thing on the ground, you know, you've got your feet, your legs in front of you, legs Great. You reach down to touch your toes, you just kind of relax, breathe into that. It could be a shoulder stretch where I'm pulling my shoulder across my, across my chest. The most another really common one I see, with runners or just anyone is the classic standing quad stretch where we're reaching down, grabbing the front of the ankle, pulling the leg behind us and we kind of feel that quadhip flexor stretch. Again, that's the static stretch and that's where you're just stretching out muscles and joints and just relaxing, not contracting.

Guest [00:29:19]: That's What I'm saying is not effective and that's what the research is saying. And so, if we take that step back and we're doing something passively which is a static stretch to try to get better at something active, which is basically anything in life outside of sitting and laying down, including running, right? If we're doing something static to get better at something active, that just doesn't make sense. Like, wait a minute, like, what? Like, You know, so I look at the research then I take a step back first principles and that just doesn't pass the common sense test. Why would I do something statically to get something that or something active? So what is active stretching and what should you be doing? So active stretching is Similar, except we're going to add another step in there. So, we're going to stretch out a muscle or a joint to its maximal length and then we're going to contract those muscles while they're maximally stretched out. So, the key point there is activating and contracting muscles while they're stretched out. So an example for that, with a hamstring would be, you can kind of take this, Another classic hamstring stretch is where you would put your, heel on like a bench or a box or a bed and then you'd kind of kick your hips back until you feel a maximal stretch in the back of your hamstrings or glutes. And then most people would just kind of reach down, towards their, you know, foot and just kind of hold that stretch.

Guest [00:30:54]: But instead of doing that, you're actually going to contract your muscles while they're maximally stretched out And, you're gonna contract that muscle. So you're gonna drive your heel down into the ground, or I should say into the box And we can vary the intensities that we do this. We can go with a 50% effort and we would hold that for say 10 to 20 seconds depending on our goals. And we're holding that contraction the entire time versus just passively, you know, relaxing into the stretch. So what we're doing there is we're improving The end range of motion, muscle activation and strength of your joint. Right? And so as you do that, as you go into successive reps, you should be able to get a little bit deeper, just kind of similar to a static stretch, in the fact that, you know, usually if you hold it, you can get a little bit deeper, you can bypass that stretch reflex, but lot different benefits. So, when we're active stretching, I just Touched on those 2, improving end range of motion, strength and stability. We're improving our mobility, we're actually still improving our flexibility as well.

Guest [00:32:03]: We're improving our joint proprioception, which is essentially our body awareness because now instead of just statically stretching and relaxing and kind of breathing, we're actually having to Focus on that muscle that we're stretching out to cause it to contract. So that's improving our body awareness, our proprioception. Touched on joint stability. We're improving balance now because now we're improving our joint stability, we're improving our Joint Proprioception, 2 big pieces that come into balance. And so the benefits are like, you know, 56 to 0. So, yeah, that's kind of the big difference is the active component. And the, Just the the progress that I've seen people make, you know, just let's take out the kind of the common sense, should we be doing something static to active or even the research. Take that away.

Guest [00:33:02]: Just the progress I've seen people make whether they're They've been static stretching for a decade, 2 decades, or they're using this static stretching program or this static stretching app, And then they come over to, Movement Vault, the Movement Vault stretching app, which we just focus on active stretching and muscle activation exercises, They make more progress in a month than they have in years. And this is not just, you know, me talking. This is, you know, we got plenty of reviews, etc. So it's It's it's pretty awesome stuff. So, that's that's really what I'm I'm I'm on this pedestal trying to, tell people like, Stop wasting your time with static stretching. Yeah. So

Finn Melanson [00:33:40]: What what does progress look like? Or I guess, in other words, What are your, you know, key performance indicators for these people that are on the program and they're, you know, going through the motions of the active stretching exercises, stuff like that?

Guest [00:33:53]: Yeah. So a couple different things. The first thing would be like, did you have pain going into this? Okay. So like, did you have going in, pain going in? Have you tried anything else? Like, okay, I've had back pain for a while. I've been doing this program. Maybe it's static stretching, maybe it's just some other exercises. I've made X amount of progress, then I try this methodology and boom, My back pain, my SI joint pain, my knee pain has decreased significantly. But what happens is, Okay.

Guest [00:34:25]: We're really jazzed and we're really excited, you know, when we get these DMs, these emails about people decreasing pain because that's amazing. I mean, when you Literally help someone get out of pain that they've been dealing with for 2 months or 20 years. That's literally life changing, you know, that's that's kind of what drives me and what The reason why I became a doctor physical therapy. But the layer before that, it again goes down to the root cause, right? Like, So it goes back to that kind of pain cycle that we talked about. All of this, most of this, unless you had a traumatic injury, you Now, if you're running and you slip on ice and you just eat it hard, mobility is not going to help you as much in that in that, In case if you're, you know, riding in a car, you get in a car accident and it's an extreme car accident, mobility is not gonna help you as much there. But outside of that, Most of pain, most of back pain, shoulder pain, knee pain just comes down to tight muscles and tight joints and or a lack of joint stability. So if we can restore the way that a joint should be working and it's not causing compensation in another joint and causing that wear and tear, then we actually bypass and get to the root cause of why this whole thing started. And When you restore joint motion, pain just gets fixed by itself per se.

Finn Melanson [00:35:47]: This is maybe a dumb question, but when you think about active stretching and all the parts of the body where this makes sense, hips, knees, you know, ankles, Quads, hamstrings, etcetera, are there any areas of the body that are harder to hit and work on than others or, In your programs, is it all kind of the same?

Guest [00:36:08]: Yeah. So I always tell people. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So it it really depends on, again, like if you're a runner, you're gonna have certain areas that you might need to focus on a little bit more. Yeah, exactly. Hips and ankles and feet. You know, I've worked with how many runners that plantar fasciitis is creeping in, knee pain, versus say, like, if you're a CrossFit Crossfitter or you're Olympic weightlifter or you're a Brazilian jiu jitsu practitioner. Titianer.

Guest [00:36:40]: So everyone's gonna have their little nuances or you don't work out at all, you know. If you're just kind of at a desk, or you're a FedEx driver that Doesn't work out but you're active throughout your day. So everyone's going to have their little bit of nuance that they need to focus on this part a little bit more, this part a little bit more, and Then you can throw in genetics in there as well. But, you know, genetics isn't the driver of not even close to all this stuff. But, You know, as far as like, I always tell people we need to work on everything. And as part of the Moving Forward Stretching App program, we actually do work on All parts of the body throughout a week, throughout a month with our daily active stretching programs. So one day might be the hips and the ankles, the next day might be the upper back and neck. The next day might be full body.

Guest [00:37:28]: So really if you have any weak links in your kinetic chain or any say tight muscles or tight joints that you're just neglecting because you think that you're a runner and you only need to work on your hips, Well, that's gonna that's gonna play out in the end, you know, because again that's a joint's not working as well as it should and that's going to cause that compensation. So you can make the argument, yeah, I'm a runner, that's all I do. I don't really need to work on my shoulder mobility per se. Well, you got something there. But Again, you want to be focused on everything from the neck. So we've got, like I said, certain certain days we work on the neck, as well as the feet, as well as the big toe. We had the saying in Movement Vault that don't skip feet day. So, yeah, there's there's really no, joint that's Hard to Active Stretch.

Guest [00:38:17]: It's just, you know, once you, you know, once you're following, You know, good, techniques and effective techniques and then implementing those consistently, that's where you'll really see, lasting changes.

Finn Melanson [00:38:31]: This whole concept of, you know, working on range of motion and joint mobility And active stretching is is exciting for a couple of reasons. 1, I follow this guy Peter Attia and he has this whole concept, I'm sure you know, of the Centenarian Olympics where it's like There are like 8 to 10 exercises that you want to do when you're age 100 and how do you work backward from that that age 30 to make it so that you're able to do those when the time comes? And with this whole conversation we're having, I'm wondering like if if someone listening is is 35 years old right now and, you know, they're still Somewhat in the prime of their athletic life and they start doing this stuff now, how how much more are they gonna be, you know, increasing their health span and and what's possible from a running standpoint, you know, beyond the age of 40, like into their fifties and sixties. Like, what are we gonna what will a whole generation of people that Has education in this area? What are they gonna be able to do, you know, well into adulthood and, you know, seniority? It's kind of exciting to me. I don't know if you think about that, but, like, this whole conversation has kinda Got my head spinning in that area.

Guest [00:39:38]: Yeah. Yeah. The, you know, when Peter Attia talks about, like you said, the Centenarian Olympics and Yeah. It's cool stuff. I mean, because and, you know, to answer your question directly, I mean, it's exponential, you know. So it's like Whether you're 30 or you're 60 and you're you're dealing with those tight hips all the time, and maybe you're doing a little bit of reactive static stretching, once you feel that that, you know, tightness kick in, and then you switch it and then you start to do some active stretching Hopefully before, your workout or just, you know, consistently, you're actually, you're more in the preventative, you're thinking more longevity, But at the same time, you're thinking of more performance. Right? And so like, how much more performance can you get? How much more, how many more years of say relatively optimal performance can you get if you start to incorporate some of this active stretching, taking care of your joints. You know, I'd just like to say like literally just taking care of your body in an effective way, your joints, per se, It's exponential.

Guest [00:40:51]: I mean, you know, we're seeing people whether they're runners or not getting joint replacements at 40 years old. I mean, It's it's really unfortunate and that's just due to joint wear and tear. And so I can't really, I couldn't put a number per se, like to say that you're gonna be able to maintain, you know, your same mileage at 35 that you are at 75. I would say that, you know, again, just looking at first principles, looking at the research around stretching, muscle activation, you You know, just longevity in general that, you know, there's no doubt in my mind that by getting more people to Buy in and subscribe just like you brushing your teeth. Just imagine that. Like, there was that one point where people didn't we didn't brush our teeth. Right? And so

Finn Melanson [00:41:44]: And they didn't keep their teeth. People didn't have teeth at the end of their lives.

Guest [00:41:49]: Yeah, exactly. And I mean, there's obviously a lot to say with diet and, you know, if you're eating a lot of processed foods. And then, you know, there's a guy, Winston A. Price, looking at like, you know, certain hunter gatherer tribes and, you know, grains, how those, You know, without getting down that rabbit hole but, yeah, you didn't your teeth would fall out and that was a normal part of life. Well, now it's a normal part of life to get joint replacements. It's a normal part of life to have back pain. It's a normal part of life to have knee pain And a lot of people are in your audience, they're running with these things and they're still able to perform at a probably a decently high level. Right? Because they're so mentally strong.

Guest [00:42:29]: Because as you know, part of running is just that mental discipline, you know, that mental grind of Being able to get through the suck, right, and to push yourself even harder, hopefully in a smart way, you know, as you're training. But once you're able to take away that knee pain, take away that Back pain take whatever it is, then all of a sudden you don't have to deal with that. And when you're on mile 2 or mile 20 and your knee doesn't start to, like, flare up, Well, guess what? You're not having to think about that knee anymore. You're not having to compensate with that other leg anymore because your knee's really causing you pain or your foots causing you pain, you're able to focus and you're able to move better and not Not only are you going to feel better, but you're going to perform better.

Finn Melanson [00:43:22]: Yeah. I I can speak to the the whole generation of, joint replacement. My dad just had a Total ankle replacement, which is a pretty exotic procedure, not fun, follows 10 years of no longer having, You know, any, what do you call it, like the the cartilage around his ankles, it's brutal. But, one other thing I want to talk about, and this has been incredibly Informative and instructive to me. I know probably to the audience as well. My understanding is you do have a position sort of on the way The running industry creates shoes and maybe the impact that that has on some of the topics we talked about today. So do you have any Thoughts you can share in that arena that might be instructive to the audience as well?

Guest [00:44:05]: Yeah. So, there's 2 different, I would say I would break it down the shoe category into 2 different, 2 different buckets, right? We've got our shoes that we're wearing during our or even 3 different buckets. We've got our shoes that we're wearing everyday footwear, right? We're just kind of living in, we're going to work in, we're doing our thing in. We've got our shoe wear when we're training. And then, you know, if you're really into running, which I'm sure you have a lot of Folks here listening to the podcast that are, you might have a different pair of shoes for training, I'm sorry, your race day, right? Something a little lighter. Yep. And there's going to be differences in the material, primarily the material, potentially differences in the heel drop, etcetera, Maybe a little bit, toe box. But, what I'm going for, you know, I say that, you know, shoes are basically destroying our feet.

Guest [00:45:02]: And that's mainly geared towards everyday footwear for the most part. And so what does that mean? If we look at the feet, right, if you look at a child when they're 1, 2, 3 years old, they have they don't strike with their heels, number 1. Like, you'll notice that, they have a more kind of mid foot slash, you know, toe strike. That's the way they walk. And so then what happens? All right, we put them in shoes, they start to sit more, all these things, Things start to change, alright, we start to adapt into this heel strike and, you know, in physical therapy school back when I was in school and you know, they still teach this right now. The normal gait cycle is to have a pretty aggressive heel strike, right? And, I'm sure you've had guests that have talked about this. But if you think about the mechanism and there's there's some nuances. Right? There's plenty of studies on, Wait, is heel striking actually is is is midfoot slash, forefoot toe striking actually more beneficial? Well, It's not clear cut, you know, as far as the research goes.

Guest [00:46:13]: There's some that's, yeah, it could be and, yeah, maybe not. So, you know, that's that's the caveat when it comes to actually performance. Right? But when it comes to, you know, taking a step back and looking at how the joint mechanics work. If if the listeners right now, I want you to go ahead and just jump up as high as you can go and then I want you to land just on your heels. Now, alright, we'll give him a second to do it. Boom. Alright, you did it. Now you might have actually not been able to do it because your brain doesn't want to let you do that.

Guest [00:46:48]: But if you were, you would actually feel how much force is coming through your your knees and the rest of your body. Because you didn't have your all of the bones and the joints in your foot and your ankle to accept some of that ground reaction force. Yeah. So, obviously, you know, if you're doing a maximal jump up and down, That could be or could be less or more than the ground reaction force when you're running. And so every time you take a step or every time you're running, you've got that ground reaction Action Force coming in from the ground. It's got to accept up into your body. Now, I'm getting in some nuances here. But, So, if we look at footwear, I am more of a fan of the mid strike, mid foot strike slash, you know, more forefoot strike, toe strike, for those reasons, right, when it comes to running, etc.

Guest [00:47:45]: Obviously, there's nuances depending on your hip mobility, depending on your ankle mobility, you need to ease into things. And so when it comes to shoes, right, most shoes, everyday footwear is going to have way too high of a heel lift. So from a heel lift to a toe, there's gonna be way too much high of a differential. Now if we were only talking, say, 20 20 millimeters in the heel. It doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Well, over time, again, your body compensates for that little bit of lift. Right? Now, if you take that exaggeration and you look at someone wearing high heels, now that's say a 2 inch, 3 inch high heel, right? What does that do now? The ankles are maximal plantar flexion and what you'll see is that the low back is more arched. And that's actually part of the look, you know, that some people go for when they wear high heels.

Guest [00:48:42]: You know, it's got the arched back and then the butt sticks out. So that's kind of the look they're going for. So what I'm saying is sometimes, And this kind of goes into running when you've got more of a heel lift that could cause a little bit more extension in the low back as you're running and could be a factor in your low back pain. It might not be the only factor. So we've got the heel to toe differential in the actual sole of the shoe. Then the biggest piece whether we're talking normal footwear, your training footwear or race footwear, what I see is Usually the toe box is way too narrow. And so, you know, most people when I look at their feet, their feet are shaped Almost like an like the tip of an oval. Right? It's kind of like round, the big toe is kind of squished in a little bit, the ankles, not the ankle, the the pinky toe is just scrunched right in there.

Guest [00:49:43]: It's like, what is this thing even doing? And that's because your foot has adapted to wearing shoes, your entire life over years decades. Most feet should almost be somewhat rectangular shaped. Like when you're not wearing shoes, your toes should be basically straightforward. They shouldn't be jutting in. They shouldn't be kind of rounded. And again, that's just Yeah. No. Yeah.

Guest [00:50:09]: That's that's one of the main things that's that causes bunions, and causes and what it is is the The narrow toe box is squishing the toes together, their foot is adapting to Yeah, adapting to this. You're and that's decreasing Primarily your big toe extension, huge in walking, huge in running, huge in just everything because if you're if you're, What's called locomotion or you're moving using your legs, it all starts at the big toe joint. And if that big toe joint doesn't have enough extension, That means like if you're taking a step forward your back foot, your toe is maximally, not maximally, but it has to have a certain amount of extension. And if it's tight, which I see way too often, with runners specifically, what happens is going to cause a little bit of compensation, because you just don't have that big toe extension in that back big toe. And what happens is the foot's gonna rotate out just slightly to the outside. And now every time you take a step and propel yourself forward on that back foot, You have now pressure on the inside of your big toe joint in the inside of your foot. And like you said, over time, Your body's going to adapt to that and that's where the bunions form. Because basically your big toe doesn't work like it should.

Guest [00:51:33]: And then the whole other piece of this is people don't think about this. Well, your nerves, right? We have sensory nerves, You know, basically everywhere in our body going back to the nervous system and some of the densest areas of sensory nerves are in the palms of our hands in the palms of our feet. And so if we look at the parts of the brain that map out some of these sensory areas called the homunculus, The bottom of the feet and the hands are some of the biggest. And just imagine if you wore gloves 16 hours a day for most of your life. Do you think you're going to still have the same Touch sensitivity that you would if you didn't wear gloves? Exactly. And so when most people are wearing shoes, no matter what kind of shoes they are, We now have this foam or rubber, like a barrier. Yeah, barrier between the ground and our feet. So We're basically dumbing down our nervous system.

Guest [00:52:32]: We're not able to feel as well. That's why I'm a really big proponent for people just staying barefoot as much as possible at home. You You know, if you're the person that, you know, needs to have, house slippers at home, then not a good thing. That's a real big sign that you really need to start working on your foot mobility, because, yeah, you don't want plantar fasciitis down the line. Little plug for the the Movement Fall Out, we have a pain and injury program for plantar fasciitis. But, and so going into the performance side, he had this extreme performance. I think that because someone that's really trying to train and perform at a high level in a sport, that's a lot different than just say some kind of mid intensity, say running or training slash just normal everyday footwear. So I do think that there is a time and place for performance based running shoes.

Guest [00:53:31]: You know, I'm actually I'm a big proponent in minimalist shoes. You know, all the types. I'm not going to name any brands, but, you know, I've been wearing those for, I don't know, over a decade. But with that said, my feet are really adapted to it. I train barefoot. I don't I run often, but I don't do very long runs anymore. I'm more of kind of like a 2 to 4 mile ish, you know, multiple times a week type of deal. But I don't even recommend someone that is running, wear minimalist shoes more than like a 2 mile run for the most part.

Guest [00:54:05]: Yeah, your body can adapt to do it over time. And there's plenty of people that and plenty of cultures that do wear, run barefoot for marathons for Record times and I totally get that, but you're not that person. And you haven't been adapting your tissues and your muscles and joints since you were 4 years old running barefoot. And most humans haven't evolved to run 5, 10, 20 miles on pure Rocks, like a pure stone, you know, because that's what we're running on when we're running on concrete. Different thing if you're running on grass, soft. But, yeah.

Finn Melanson [00:54:44]: Grayson, this has been awesome. Like I said, I've learned a ton, a lot to think about after this conversation around, you know, back pain, around proper footwear, around active stretching, joint mobility, range of motion, etcetera. This has been great. Before we go, I wanna make sure we, give you a chance to talk a little bit about the Movement Vault. I'm intrigued. I'm I'm looking at the website right now, all sorts of classes, daily stuff, injury protocols, Pain management programs. It looks great. But, before we go, talk a little bit about it.

Guest [00:55:17]: Yeah. I appreciate that. So, yeah. It's, it's the Movement Vault app AKA the Movement Falls Stretching app. So it's, you know, it's in the app store. If you have an iPhone, we're working on releasing our Android app. For Android users, we've got our web app, which is essentially go to our website. Anyone can go to the website to learn more about what we do.

Guest [00:55:36]: It's Movement Vault. So it's Movement just like it's spelled vault.com. And essentially what it is, is it's a it's a better way to stretch, fix and prevent pain and injury. So it's all of these things that we just talked about, we focus on active stretching, muscle activation exercises and we also throw in Some specific muscle and fascia release techniques. We've got a new daily stretching class every day, anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes Long, that's how a lot of our users all over the world use it. So they'll log in, they'll do that daily active stretching class and they'll go about their business. But we also have numerous different, wide range of classes. We have over 1500 different classes to choose from.

Guest [00:56:20]: We've got a virtual mobility assessment which is really cool. We take you through 14 different tests just like as if you saw a skilled physical therapist and we'll give you, once you finish the test, you have a total mobility score and we also you have a score for each major joint in your body. So that's really cool because you can get a sense on where you are right now and you can actually track your progress over time. And then that also helps you focus on specific areas of the body with those different mobility scores. And then like you said, we have multi week pain and injury programs such as we've got a 16 week low back pain program. We've got a 8 week plantar fasciitis program and numerous different pain programs that basically progress you along, throughout the weeks. If you're, you know, as if you're working with a skilled physical therapist, this that has this active stretching muscle activation methodology. So, yeah, check us out.

Guest [00:57:15]: It's movementvault.com, again, via u l t dot com or the App Store. So, Yeah. I just want to really hopefully your listeners are, are subscribed to, you know, whether you use Movement Vault or not, I just want you to a, Know the importance from a performance perspective, number 1, but a joint longevity perspective, number 2, you don't have to live in pain. Stretching is a non negotiable. I know I don't have enough time in my day, but trust me, you have 10 minutes 3 times a week. You can do this. It's gonna be it's gonna be the best 10 minutes you can, invest. And then number 2, again, investing that 10 minutes, static stretching, It's an x and active stretching is a huge thumbs up.

Finn Melanson [00:58:16]: Thanks for listening to the run to the top podcast. I'm your host, Finn Melanson. As always, our mission here is to help you become a better runner with every episode. Please consider connecting with me on Instagram at Wasatch Finn and the rest of our team at Runners Connect. Also, consider supporting our show for free with a rating on the Spotify and Apple Podcast players. And lastly, if you love the show and want bonus content, behind the scenes experiences with our guests, and premier access to contests and giveaways. You can subscribe to our newsletter by going to runnersconnect.net backslash podcast. Until next time, happy trading.