Latest / FitMitTuro Fitness Podcast / Why Pain Doesn’t Mean You Should Stop Moving with Eileen Kopsaftis

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Why Pain Doesn’t Mean You Should Stop Moving with Eileen Kopsaftis · FitMitTuro Fitness Podcast

• 1:06
  Turo Virta: In today's conversation is something I hear all the time. My knees hurt, so I can't train. My back is stiff, so I should probably avoid exercise. My shoulders hurt, so maybe strength training is not for me anymore. I'm getting older, so maybe pain and stiffness are just part of life.
• 1:25
  Turo Virta: And I understand why people think that way. When something hurts, the natural reaction is to stop, but sometimes stopping completely is not the solution.
• 1:34
  Turo Virta: Sometimes the better question is not what can't I do. The better question is, what can I do safely. That's exactly why I'm so excited for today's guest, Eileen Kopp Safdies. Eileen has over 30 years of experience as a physical therapist and movement expert. She has worked in acute hospital care, outpatient rehab, home care, and nursing home settings, and she's also owner of the Half Lifelong Wellbeing and other of pain culprits and aging culprits. Her work focuses on helping people move better, reduce pain, stay independent, and understand that aging does not have to mean constant decline. In this episode, we talk about pain, mobility, joint function, strength, nutrition, and how to keep moving in a smart way as we age. So, if you have ever felt like your body is holding you back, you are, or you are afraid to exercise because something hurts, this conversation is for you. So, let's get into it. Welcome to show, Eileen. I hope I pronounce your name correctly.
• 2:52
  Unknown: Yes, you did fine. You did fine. I'm used to it, you know, being a challenge. As a matter of fact, after I married my husband, I was working in a hospital setting at the time, and they would have to page me all the time, and my maiden name was Shepard, which was very easy to point, and so they would say Eileen Shepherd, call 251 Eileen Shepherd, call 348 you know, whatever I had to call about, and so when I got married, I knew they were just gonna massacre trying to say that name, so I didn't even change my name for five years until I had our first child, so yeah,
• 3:26
  Turo Virta: yeah, so could you share before we go into practical tools? Could you share a little bit about who you are and what led you into physical therapy and movement work? Sure, so
• 3:40
  Unknown: well, the Cliff Notes are when I was very little, I wanted to be a doctor, and then when I was old enough to start school in a college, I realized I disagreed with the medical model, and I have nothing against doctors. Anybody who goes to school for that number of years to help people is a good person, but I don't agree with the medical model, which is treating symptoms and not really resolving the cause of the problem. And so I decided, well, I'll go into nutrition. I'd always been fascinated by food and how it impacts the body, and when I got the catalog from the college that actually had a nutrition program right near me, I realized I disagreed with a lot of what they were teaching, and back then they were teaching the four food groups, which we know is completely outdated at this point, and if you disagree with your professors, you're not going to get past, so they did have the physical therapy program in that catalog, and I've always been fascinated by the human body, and I knew I would be able to work one on one with people, I would be able to make a difference in their lives, and so that's how I became a PT. The interesting thing is, right out of the gate, I was different than most what I call conventional PTs, because my training, I was exposed to someone who, or introduced to someone who had a phenomenal skill at helping people get better, because of her manual expertise and all of the coursework she'd taken, and she came and spoke at our college, and so I reached out to her when I graduated, and I asked her to please aim me toward the work that would help me to help people and keep me away from stuff that was useless and to waste my time and resources, and she and I quickly became friends. She was my mentor for years. I took so many courses the first five years after I graduated, it, I invested more in that than I did in earning my degree. So I was very passionate about knowing the more I knew, the more I could help people.
• 5:36
  Unknown: And so I've.. I'm not what you would consider a conventional PT. I, I look at the whole body, I don't see a person as a knee who walks through the door or a shoulder who walks through the door, because in my training over the past 30 years I have learned very much how everything is connected, and 99% of the time the problem is not where the pain is experienced, and that is. Why most of the time people are chasing their tail and not able to resolve the issue, so that you know, the last, oh my gosh, seven eight years I've been focused on informing the public, getting this information out there as much as I can. That's why I wrote my books. That's why I have online programs. I've got a YouTube channel, I've done 39 online free events since August of 2020 I want people to know what is not mainstream knowledge, but should be about their own body, and you know you're teaching a person to fish. It's, it's, it's quite, it's quite, it's rewarding. Yes.
• 6:48
  Turo Virta: No, I believe, and I, I, I'm curious, like, because you're like, what I hear. I do live in Italy, and, and here, like, if my clients, they are telling, like, they have a knee pain or back pain or something, and if you go, like, a normal doctor who is not the specialist or physio physiotherapist, they just treat the pain in your knee or back, and, but, like you said, over 90% of cases, that is not like if you have a back pain, it's not the cause, it's not that you lifted something heavy, it's coming from somewhere else, and that is so interesting. So, you, you have worked in many different settings, in hospitals, rehab, home care, nursing homes. What has that taught you about aging and movement?
• 7:46
  Unknown: Yeah, so I like to say that I don't feel that I know everything, but I think I've seen everything because of the different settings I've worked with teenage athletes up to people over 100 years old, and and it's shocking. I learned when I worked in acute care in the hospital how many people in our area were over 100 years old, living independently, like still doing their own shopping and cooking and cleaning and driving and finances, and not needing assistance, they might have ended up in the hospital because a cold turned into pneumonia, but they recovered, and they went home and resumed their independent life. So that taught me at an early age that, oh my goodness, you know, this whole thing we think about when you get older, you're supposed to lose your independence, you know. I often joke and say nobody ever set a goal to go to a nursing home, but, but it happens by default, and a lot of it, in the first chapter in my book, Aging Culprits, I talk about this. If you believe you're supposed to decline, if you believe the mainstream narrative that the human body is designed to just lose its abilities over time, then that's going to influence your choices, your activity levels, your lifestyle, and it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It will happen, but if you reject that narrative and you continue to train your body in a healthy way to nourish your body in a healthy way, and keep active, and do the things you love to do. Decline isn't imminent. It, I have people in my academy who are, you know, most of them are 50 plus, but a lot of them are 70s and 80s, and they're very active, they're they're hiking and doing things, and they've learned how to address any pain issues, and how to age well. We don't have to decline, and I'll
• 9:34
  finish it with this: the human body is is not designed on a cellular level to decline, and the theories about aging are just theories. They still don't know why people decline, and I feel like I do. It's because they stop doing what they need to be doing.
• 9:54
  Turo Virta: Yeah, but this is..
• 9:54
  Turo Virta: it's something like, really, like I.. I.. when I work with the people, and I see, like, we have.. I do also group workouts with the local people, which is.
• 10:06
  Turo Virta: I have youngest ones are children of participants, which are like seven eight year old children, and when they come, of course, they are still playing, they, they do some exercises, they are crawling, and then I said, so if you want to have a good workout, just follow your kids, and you know, goes everybody, or most of us, we have done it at some point in our life, and then, for a reason or another, you are stopping, like crawling, and that kind of exercises, and then you say,"Oh, no, this is nothing anymore for me, but it's always when you, if you try to do what children are doing, it's, it's, of course, it might be a challenge, if, especially if you haven't done it for, for years, but those, I think, those basic movements, what every human have been doing at some point, but then we just, for some reason.
• 11:04
  Turo Virta: And we stop because we think that, oh, this is stuff for what kids are doing, and I'm now 60 plus, that I don't know why I should be crawling, that is not anymore for me, but if I believe that it's everyone should be doing, then if you are not able to do anymore, it's you can still relearn it, because if you at some point of your life, if you have been able to do something, you can still, it's relatively easy to get at least a bit better, even it's not going to look like some active child is doing same crawling exercise, but you are improving very quickly.
• 11:47
  Unknown: Yes, yeah, and that's why range of motion and mobility decreases, because we stopped doing those activities, and we don't realize that it kind of sneaks up on people, they don't realize that they've lost full shoulder range of motion, because they've stopped doing things that require full shoulder range of motion, and then before they know it, they go to use, and they're like, oh, wow, I can't lift it beyond such and such, but the human body adapts to what you ask it to do, and if you stop asking it to do things,
• 12:15
  Turo Virta: yeah, it thinks you
• 12:15
  Unknown: don't need to do it anymore. So,
• 12:18
  Turo Virta: yeah, that's true.
• 12:18
  Turo Virta: So, this comes again, I say, because many people think that if they have a pain, it means that they should stop moving when it, when is that true, and when it is not true, in your opinion.
• 12:35
  Unknown: Yes, yes. So, a lot of that, you know, there's kind of a caveat with that. It depends on how the extent of the injury.
• 12:42
  Unknown: If someone has injured themselves, that's a different story, you know. If something's broken or torn or whatever, but the majority of the time, from what I've observed, is the pain is the body warning you that something is not right, and typically what's not right is away from the area where the pain is being experienced, and I'll give a couple of examples.
• 13:06
  Unknown: The knee is a perfect example now. Yes, there can be structural damage, there could be bone on bone, the joint could be shot completely, but rarely is that the case. A lot of the times, when someone gets an image, it's like mild arthritis.
• 13:20
  Unknown: Well, that's not going to cause knee pain. What causes knee pain is the fact the ankle is not performing properly, because a massive number of people have a history of an ankle sprain or some other injury or something that went on below the knee, and or the hip is not functioning properly, because the knee is a very simple hinge joint, it's, you know, just bends one way.
• 13:41
  Unknown: Now, yes, there's a little bit of other motion going on, but for the most part, it's a very simple joint, and it's counting on the hip above and the ankle below, so if those aren't doing their job, the knee is going to start to complain, but it's actually the victim and not the culprit. So you can keep treating the knee, you can ice it and heat it and stretch it and exercise it and do everything you want to it, inject it, but if the problem is because the ankle has lost dorsiflexion or Eversion or some other issue, the knee is going to not get better, and so you know people have to stop being seen as a body part, and my, oh, I always recommend to people, if you see someone and you have pain and they see you as that one body part that walks through the door, that person is going to be limited in how much they can help you. They have to understand the connection of the human body,
• 14:32
  Turo Virta: absolutely. And this is it. It's, it's not only Knee, it's basically every everybody part, like, and like you said, that usually the problem is somewhere else, and it's like that, that sick knee is a perfect example, it's basically one joint below or above, it's those are the most common issues,
• 14:55
  Unknown: and the low back, since you mentioned the back, yeah, the low back, it's, and most people have no clue about this, so it's very important that I share this information, the lumbar spine, between the trunk and the pelvis, it's its job as, as the bone structure, its strength is to bend forward and back, that's what it's designed to do. It's, it can be the strongest link in the body when you train it right from above or below, and I'll explain that in a minute, but the lumbar spine, it's its strength is bending forward and backward, it can also do some side bending, but it has very limited ability to rotate, very limited, seven to 13 degrees. So many years ago, the mainstream knowledge was telling everybody, don't twist when you exercise, because that's how somebody must have gotten a hold of, in college we had these Kapanji books on the biomechanics of the joints, so somebody must have gotten a hold of one of those books and learned that the lumbar spine doesn't rotate, and so they thought that's how people are injuring themselves. No, no, no, no, no. The lumbar spine's job, the low back's job is to translate the rotation, and what I mean by that is if I'm standing here like this and I turn to look. Behind me, my trunk has just rotated, and so now my low back's job is to translate that rotation and send it into my hips. So now my hips are rotated, the lumbar spine itself doesn't have to rotate, it just sends that rotation below, and it's the same if I'm in the kitchen and I go from the stove to the fridge, and I turn with my foot. Now, my hips just rotated from below, and my spine- my lumbar spine's job is to send that rotation up into my trunk. Now, here's the thing: a lot of people lack rotation in one or both hips. A lot of people lack rotation in their trunk. So, what happens? The spine is trying to send it, and it can't go anywhere. So, now the spine is getting tweaked every time, being asked to do something it's not designed to do anatomically, but it's not the back that's the problem.
• 17:02
  Turo Virta: Yeah,
• 17:02
  Unknown: it's above or below.
• 17:04
  Turo Virta: Yeah,
• 17:04
  Unknown: and most people have no clue about that. That's set of people diagnosed with low back pain is of unknown cause, so it goes to show the medical profession really fails at understanding back pain.
• 17:18
  Turo Virta: Yeah, no, and this is this is by far, at least in the people I work with, it's a lower back pain, and then when you tell people that how we should check your hip mobility range of motion, how it is if you start there, and that no, I think I lifted something heavy, now my back is hurting, or I got some cold, or whatever. Of course, that could be the case too, but most cases, like you said, it's it's coming from somewhere else, and by far is most common, or one of the most common is his hip mobility.
• 17:55
  Unknown: Yeah, and if they get injured from lifting, it's because their power source is weak, and that's the glutes, the back hip.
• 18:01
  Turo Virta: The
• 18:01
  Unknown: back hip is the power source, and when you go to lift, you've got to be able to - it's a physics thing, for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. So, when you go to lift something heavy, you have to push through the floor with the same amount of power required to lift that weight, and you're, when you're pushing through the floor, it's your power source designed to do that. It's Max Gluteus Maximus, and a lot of people have been sitting on Max for 20
• 18:25
  Turo Virta: years. Yeah,
• 18:25
  Unknown: and then they wonder why he doesn't work.
• 18:27
  Turo Virta: Yeah, so was this.
• 18:27
  Turo Virta: It's a good point. Like, if someone who has now pain, let's say it's a lower back pain or something, how someone can know the difference if it means that you should be careful, and what is the difference then with the pain, that means stop and get checked,
• 18:51
  Unknown: right? So, if they've got ridiculous pain, if they've got pain shooting down a leg, and God forbid they're tripping on their toes, now it's time to run to a neurosurgeon, because you're probably going to end up with foot drop and have permanent nerve damage. So, there are some times you do need to seek out an expert, but the majority of the time, even with disc issues, the Mackenzie program is phenomenally successful at resolving those disc issues. I've used that many times for people, and they've been able to prevent surgery, but for the most part, gentle movement, gentle movement. No matter what they're feeling. I teach something called a hip matrix, because the human body moves in three planes of motion.
• 19:35
  Unknown: So, a matrix is when you're doing three planes. We move forward and back, we move side to side, and we rotate. And so I teach them just stand there and very gently ease your hips forward and ease your hips back, and just do that motion for a while, and then go side to side, kind of like you're tapping parallel bars, just sideways, and then gently rotate, and I've, I've known some people who said that they were able to ease their pain just from doing that for a few minutes, because motion is lotion, it gets things unlocked, it just eases the stiffness, and you're doing it gently, and the goal is to not do a motion that causes pain.
• 20:09
  Unknown: So, for instance, if they go to bring their hips forward and they feel a pull in their low back, it's usually because their front hip has locked tight and it's pulling on the spine. And so, just don't do that motion, just go back and come to neutral. And after a while, you know, they keep going back. It's sort of like if a drawer gets stuck and you can't pull it out, you're pushing it all the way back in to get it on track, and then it'll come out. So, it's phenomenal how the human body responds to movement when you're not forcing something, you're doing it gently, you're including all three planes of motion, the body just starts to respond in phenomenal ways and restores motion that wasn't there.
• 20:53
  Turo Virta: And then, what is, what is your recommendation, or what happens to people when you see, like, people who are who stop moving completely because they are afraid of pain, or study? I'm sure you see a lot of things that you hear, like people you know. Oh, my back is a little bit hurt. I doctor told me to just don't do anything.
• 21:20
  Unknown: Well, complete rest is usually not helpful, so you've got the body needs to move, you just need to make sure the movement is is comfortable, that the movement is successful, which means it's not causing pain, and there's almost always a movement that you can do, and you can modify things, I mean, in my private online private club, I show how to do three plane motion, and I teach how to modify. Sometimes someone just needs to turn one foot out because that hip doesn't like that motion, but if they turn the foot out, the hip's okay with that motion, so they're modifying it, but it's temporary, and eventually they'll be able to have the foot be straight, and they won't need to turn it out, so there's a lot of ways to modify motions where you're not causing pain, but you're moving.
• 22:17
  Turo Virta: Yeah, that is so important, like that. It's if it's what I like to teach, is that everything, like for example, mobility exercises, you can do as much as until you don't feel any pain. You should be doing, and goal would be always like increasing your range of motion all the time, because it's often like you see significant improvements already with a very little movement, but the keys here just do not stop moving completely, and that is unfortunately like you mentioned, it's at least here I, it's, it's for many doctors, it's obviously it's the easiest advice to keep for someone who is coming and telling that I have a lower back pain, then here is some couple pills, and take a rest, don't do sport or anything, and that is, I, I have to say that I disagree with that advice in most cases,
• 23:23
  Unknown: I do too, and you know it's actually kind of disturbing, because the majority of physicians really have no idea what to do with pain, and in my country, I don't know about yours, but in my country, 93% of the people who go to the doctor with a complaint of pain are not sent to a physical therapist, they're prescribed pain meds, they're sent to an orthopedist, they're sent to pain management, they're sent for imaging, and while, yes, a PT, you know their skills, it depends on who you see, there are some that are very skilled and some that really don't know much, so it depends on the luck of the draw who you get as a PT, but, but to not even go there is crazy, because at least they're trained in looking at you and seeing your movement and getting you doing things. It's, yeah, it's, it's kind of nuts.
• 24:18
  Turo Virta: And what is then, of course, if you, if I often tell my clients that if you can't use your leg, maybe you can still train upper body or core safely.
• 24:28
  Turo Virta: How do you think about training around pain?
• 24:36
  Unknown: Yes, absolutely. If you have a body part that maybe you're post-surgical or you're recovering from an injury and it can't be used or you're non-weight bearing or whatever, there's always things that you can do, always never just sit and wait for the time to pass, that is, that is not going to benefit you at all,
• 24:55
  Turo Virta: that's that's so true. What are then some common examples, like where people quit too quickly, but could actually access the movement? You have anything in your mind,
• 25:10
  Unknown: I'm sorry, I didn't quite get, what
• 25:12
  Turo Virta: are some common examples where people tweet you quickly, but could that actually engages that they could actually access the movement, like you mentioned, yeah, so you can,
• 25:26
  Unknown: well, for instance, a lot of the times people will start training, as you had said, you know, they get older and they're like, okay, I'm going to start training my body because I'm out of shape and I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to get going, and they'll start right away with weights and they'll be doing movements and their core isn't ready, I mean, you know, for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, so if I, if I'm lifting a weight, there's another part of my body that has to stabilize me in order for that to happen, and if that body part is weak because the person's been sitting and doing nothing and their trunk really doesn't have any strength, it, they're at risk of injury. The same thing with if you're, if you're going to do anything overhead for shoulders and that kind of thing, if your pelvis is. Week, you're going to risk injuring your shoulders. So, I think I think a lot of what people might want to pay attention to is seeking out an expert. It's kind of like you would never go down the Amazon without a guide, because you don't want to get lost in the Amazon. Well, get a good guide, somebody who knows what they're doing when it comes to training the human body, so that you don't injure yourself, so that you're doing the right things the right way, and you're starting in the right way, and not, and your risk of injury is going to radically decrease,
• 26:41
  Turo Virta: absolutely, and this is so valuable, like you mentioned to Austerity, like if so many beginners, or who are restarting after a long period of time, if you start to do wrong things or things, because there are, I think, there are not like many, like there's, you can do basically any exercises, but it just depends on your fitness level, where you are at the at the moment, so there are not dangers. Some exercises are more challenging than the others, but you can learn absolutely. I believe everything, but it just have to be in a right order and a right time for each person.
• 27:25
  Unknown: Yeah, the human body is amazingly resilient in how it can overcome issues and improve in strength, and the data shows, and I know there's a lot of conflict around this, that age-related lean muscle loss. I did a deep dive into that data, and it's not accurate that we call it age-related, because every study that I read, and I'm not saying I read every study, because it would probably take me 10 years, but every study that I looked at that called it age-related lean muscle loss stated that the subjects were sedentary, so they studied, you know, they took a sample of their muscle, like a literal biopsy of their muscle, and then 12 years later they had lost muscle, but they were sedentary.
• 28:11
  Unknown: Anybody who does nothing for 12 years is going to lose muscle. I also found studies that showed that I think it was they were average age of 86 who had been active and stayed exercising, and they had not lost muscle, so you know we call this age-related lean muscle loss, but it's not, it's activity-related lean muscle loss.
• 28:39
  Turo Virta: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, but it's, it's obviously it's speed, it gets faster, that, but it's not, it's not going to happen for everyone, but of course, if you, if you are there, is I believe, correct me, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that if you, if you are someone who doesn't train from 20 to 30, you were in, you had a lot of muscle in your 20s, then you don't train your sedentary until 30 you won't have a lot of left and the same thing happens later, it says that then to get everything back when you restart in age of 30 it comes back lot quicker than for someone who has been from 50 to 60 without doing anything or just the sedentary lifestyle and then to get back to the point where you were in your 50, so in that
• 29:31
  Unknown: longer you've been sedentary, the harder it is.
• 29:34
  Unknown: Yes, the more work was required.
• 29:36
  Turo Virta: Yeah, but this comes good. I want to talk a little bit about aging and independence, so a lot of people think that stiffness, pain, and weakness are just normal aging.
• 29:49
  Turo Virta: What is, in your opinion, normal, and what can we influence?
• 29:54
  Unknown: Well, there is a difference between normal and common. So, because we see something is common, we assume it's normal, but when you look at disease, and it's very common for people to have cardiovascular disease. It's very common for people to have type two diabetes, but when you look at the definition of disease, it says that it's abnormal functioning. So, disease is not normal, but it's common.
• 30:26
  Turo Virta: Yeah,
• 30:27
  Unknown: so it's the same thing with what we see when people get older. It's common that people lose their independence and get weaker and lose their balance and have to wear disposable underwear and all of those other things, but it's not normal.
• 30:43
  Unknown: It's not a normal part of aging.
• 30:43
  Unknown: It's what we're not doing, and what we're doing, that causes those things to happen, and we can have a massive influence on our future when we know this, when we understand that I don't have to end up in a nursing home, I don't have to end up wearing disposable underwear.
• 31:06
  Unknown: Just because I'm older, I don't, I don't have to lose my balance, I don't have to become unstable, and it's.. I, I was at an event recently, a family event, and one of the family members, who's just a few years older than me, I'm 68 she's 72 and when we were leaving this arena from a graduation event, she was holding on to things, and she was, she was touching the wall as she was walking, and we call that furniture walking. You're feeling unstable, you lack confidence in your stability, and so you have to touch things.
• 31:39
  Unknown: And it was interesting, because I mentioned it to another family member, because I was concerned about this person, and the family members said, "Oh, this person had mentioned that they were feeling like they needed to start strength training. They were feeling weak. Exactly, that's why balance and instability happens.
• 31:59
  Turo Virta: Yeah,
• 32:00
  Unknown: and data shows that if somebody has poor balance, they've lost up to 30% of the strength of their calf muscles, and your ankles and your calves are what stabilize you when you're standing up, yeah. So, so it's it's not age that's causing these things to happen,
• 32:20
  Turo Virta: yeah, yeah. No, that is, and I, I, my personal unfortunate example, but on the other hand, it's my biggest motivator nowadays, is my dad.
• 32:27
  Turo Virta: My dad, you probably don't know, he passed away at the age of 17, and seeing him, he was struggling with his health last decade of his life, wasn't able to walk, and seeing that close, how quickly he lost his muscle mass, and for him it started that he, he knew he should be doing something, but he never got himself. He didn't want to.
• 33:00
  Turo Virta: He would, he knew that he would need to walk more, simply walk more, but he would need, at some point he would need to use, go for like using some help, and then he was selected to know he's not that old yet, that he's using some like sticks or or something, and going for walk with them. That was for him, how I knew him was to show some weakness for somebody else, and that he didn't, so he decided to not do anything, and then, of course, everything he lost very quickly, muscle mass ability to move at all, so it went very quickly, and it was very for me, even like, you know, you can do anything you want, if he didn't have own motivation to do it, but seeing it myself, and I was like that, if you are like you are mid 60s and not able to take be independent anymore, I was like that, this is this pain was for me, it was a lot greater than the pain when I tell, like, when I have a days that I don't feel like doing my strength training, but then I said, no, this is that pain, seeing my dad going through that, it's that pain was greater than actually pain to get my workout in, so it's, it's for me that was pain to seeing it and losing it, and I said, if I think that I'm now I'm 44 I think that if I have 20 years left with ability to move or 15, said hell no, I'm gonna do everything now when it's not still too late to be able to live independently and not be in a nurse home, that somebody have to change my diapers.
• 34:54
  Unknown: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, age also, when it comes to strengthening, there was a man, Cy Perlis, who broke the world record in his 80s. He didn't start strength training until his 60s, and he broke a world record in his 80s. He bench pressed, and I'm trying to remember, I think it was like 182 pounds or something. And I was at a conference, and I was sharing this information, and I asked if there was any, anybody in the audience who could bench press 182 pounds. There were a lot of men there, nobody raised their hand, and you know, and so I was in his 80s when he did this, so, so you don't have to stop strength training just because you're in your 60s.
• 35:32
  Turo Virta: Oh no, absolutely not. But why is then that strength so important for independence, as we get older?
• 35:41
  Unknown: Yeah, well, it's what causes us to do everything, to be able to get out of a car without help, to be able to squat down and scoop a grandchild up off the floor to be able to get down on your hands and knees and weed your garden, you know, to lift that bag of garden mulch to hike to, to do anything we need our muscles, they're very important, I mean, bones of. Slave of muscle, our skeleton would just fall on the floor without muscles to move them, so it's, it's how we live.
• 36:14
  Turo Virta: Yeah. What is then like, I like to keep it practical, like, you know, we could talk about fitness language, but, but I assume there are not all listeners, are not some fitness coaches when we talk about mobility and strength, what are then some daily tasks that tell you a lot about someone's strength and mobility?
• 36:39
  Unknown: Yeah, so, well, there are some actual very simple tests you can do, like how many times can someone go from sit to stand without using their arms in 30 seconds, and that can tell a lot about their fitness level.
• 36:50
  Unknown: Just that simple test, that 32nd test. Now, the interesting part is because the mainstream mantra wants to tell us we're supposed to decline as we get older. The chart with that objective test is, you know, at a young age, you should be able to do it 1718, times, or whatever. As you get older, you know, you should be able to do it 11 times. Now, why am I only supposed to be able to do it 11 times? Because I'm 68 that means I've declined.
• 37:20
  Turo Virta: Yeah,
• 37:21
  Unknown: and the interesting thing is, is I, I, you know, like I said, I do a lot of online events, and one of my events was about, you know, aging power, aging, and, and I was teaching people that they could, you know, gain muscle and get their strength back, and all, no matter their age, and I had everybody who was attending the event, and I have anywhere from four to 800 people on these events, and the majority of the people who were 60 plus could do 17, 1819, repetitions, and they were doing what the younger people were supposed to be able to do, so you know, even those objective tests, when we look at them, I want to caution people, you know, if it says if you can do what your age group says you should be able to do, don't feel confident in that, you want to be able to do what the younger age group can do, oh yeah, because that means you haven't declined,
• 38:10
  Turo Virta: yeah, absolutely.
• 38:10
  Turo Virta: And is there things like getting off the floor or carrying groceries, climbing stairs, walking up here,
• 38:20
  Unknown: like those are unable to get on and off the floor?
• 38:22
  Unknown: That's huge. That's huge. And I tell people, you know, not even just once, I actually, when I do events, sometimes I'll say, can you get on and off the floor 10 times in a row without having to rest. Now that's a challenge.
• 38:39
  Turo Virta: Yeah,
• 38:39
  Unknown: and you might be a little tired by the time you're done, but can you do it? And it there were quite a few people who were older who could do it, and there were those who couldn't.
• 38:48
  Turo Virta: Yeah,
• 38:49
  Unknown: you know, and, and then, and that's of course, without help, without using the furniture to pull yourself up.
• 38:57
  Unknown: So, it's there's there are things that, like I said, the human body is not meant to decline, we just expect
• 39:07
  Turo Virta: it to. Yeah, and this is like funny, funny thing, like that for me, like, of course, when you lift weights or something, you look how much weight you are lifting, or whatever, but that is not even that important for me, like the biggest satisfaction, what I, as a coach, get, I don't get somebody, somebody is getting new personal best with the squat or some regular gym exercise, but things like what I heard from my clients is that they were able to carry their groceries, like usually they went to with some women in their 50s went to buy groceries, and usually it was her husband who was carrying all groceries, and now she was like, "No, let me carry it, that I'm strong enough now, or somebody else were like having a small luggage with her when she was flying, and able to earlier, she was always asking someone to help to put it on the top self overhead, and now say that I don't need to ask anyone's help, I'm able to do it now alone. So there are many like real life examples how that strength benefits or opening temps or like a puddle. What you usually you need a help from someone else, and now all of a sudden you are able to open it alone, because you have improved your strength, and those are for me are the biggest examples in real life. How it, how you, when someone can say that you know you are seeing some real life independence, like it's not about all about like having big muscles or visible look, how you are looking. It's just a normal daily task, what you are maybe at the moment not able to do, but then at some point maybe you are able to do it.
• 41:04
  Unknown: Yes, you've restored their independence. It's, you know, it's interesting, because when I'm on, I was just traveling, and, and when I'm on an airplane, I think, because I'm, I'm small, you know, I'm five foot four, I weigh about 110 pounds, so I don't look like I can do much, and because I'm older, and I look around me before I go to lift it up, because I don't want to hit somebody with my luggage, as I put it in the overhead, you know, because it's tight on the plane, people are right there, and inevitably somebody will offer to help me. I'm like, I'm okay, you know, get it up, and then I'll go to take it down, and someone will be offering to help me. I'm like, I'm okay, I just want to make sure I don't hit anybody, because you've got to, you know, get it down, and, and, but it's interesting, because they kind of just expect if you're older, you, you need help. Yeah, yeah.
• 41:47
  Turo Virta: What is like question about normal, like common pain areas, like we talked about knee pain. What are most common reasons? We do, we talked about little bit about back, for where especially lower back pain is coming from, how to treat it, or where most common reasons are what about then shoulder pain. What mistakes do you see in shoulder, because that is, I think, third. If you say that, nice, back, shoulder, those are most common areas.
• 42:21
  Unknown: Absolutely, absolutely in shoulder. So, in my book, Pain Culpris, I have a chapter on each of these body parts, by the way, and explain things, but the shoulder, now it's interesting, because the trunk, the thoracic spine, it's kind of like Ginsu knives, it does it all, I mean, it bends forward and backward inside and rotates, and and the interesting part about it is a lot of the times it's lost mobility, especially as people get older, because they're doing less and less, like you said, they're not doing things that you know kids would do, they're not crawling, they're not doing full range of motion with their body parts, and everything just starts to shrink, and they don't know it, and so a lot of older people struggle to turn and look behind them to back up their car in the driveway, and it's because the trunk has has lost mobility, and so a lot of times they'll feel back pain when that happens.
• 43:12
  Unknown: Well, the trunk also intimately impacts the shoulder complex, and the shoulder, because it's the most mobile joint in the body, is also unstable, which is why the rotator cuff is there to stabilize the joint. Now, this is what I found, and, and the majority of the mainstream understanding of shoulder function is, is inaccurate, because most people want to blame the rotator cuff for everything, and if a torn rotator cuff shows up on imaging, everybody believes, oh, it's the rotator cuff, and until you get surgery, you know you're not going to be better. Now, if it's an.. if it's an incomplete tear, it will heal. The issue is the rotator cuffs' job is to keep the joint stable. The other 14 muscles that directly impact the function of the shoulder are what are required for pushing and pulling and lifting, and all of the power moves, and the strength, you know, push-ups and planks, and all of those things that we do that require shoulder strength, and a lot of people have lost that, and so, you know, that everybody wants to say it's the rotator cuff, and they get that Thera band out and they start doing this, but if the rotator cuffs job isn't to provide strength, why do we focus on making it stronger? It doesn't make sense. So, the what really impacts the shoulders is the pelvis. How strong is the pelvis, do you have max? Do you have a power source, and is your trunk working properly? Because the shoulder complex has a lot of joints, I mean, you've got the glenohumeral joint, you've got the joint proper, you've also got your clavicle here, so you've got the acromio clavicular joint, the sternoclavicular joint, so there's two more joints. The clavicle actually moves when you move your arm, and then you've got the scapulo thoracic joint, but that's not technically a joint, because the shoulder blade just glides on the rib wall. So, and I know I'm getting a little technical, and some people might get their eyes glaze over, but there's a point to me saying this: if your trunk is not mobile, it will impact how your shoulder functions, especially because of the shoulder blade, because if it's not able to move, because the trunk's not moving right, it's going to impact the shoulder joint, and so it's very important. I teach some motions, even on my YouTube channel. It's called Type One and Type Two, because the thoracic spine, it either rotates and side bends to the same direction or to the opposite direction, and if you train it in both of those, Type One, Type Two, it'll resolve a lot. Of issues, shoulder problems, neck problems. I mean, neck pain - it's almost never the neck, it's always what's below. I've resolved people's neck pain by mobilizing their ankles, because they didn't have enough dorsiflexion, and when they walked, they end up with neck pain, and we restored ankle motion, and the neck pain was gone, so such a great example.
• 46:26
  Unknown: The connection,
• 46:31
  Turo Virta: yeah, such a great example. Why? Because it's, it really needs someone like you, or who understands, like that.
• 46:38
  Turo Virta: If you, if you have a neck pain, it's not the first guess that you, you start to say that, oh, this is it's coming from your ankle, like that. What?
• 46:49
  Unknown: Yeah. Well, what happened was this guy came into the clinic, and he had been seen about eight or nine times by another therapist who had gone on vacation, and I'm looking at his notes, and they were doing the conventional - I don't want to be disrespectful, but kind of garbage - they were doing ultrasound and hot packs and range of motion, and he wasn't any better. It hadn't done anything, and I asked him, "When do you get your neck pain? And he said, "When I take my morning walk. And so I said, "All right, well, how are your ankles? Oh, I sprained him constantly in college, and when I looked at his ankles, he didn't have any dorsiflexion, which is when the heel stays down and the toes come up toward the ceiling. He had zero on one side and minus five on the other, it was actually kind of locked in plantar flexion, and so I mobilized them. I showed him a way to get the calf muscles to lengthen again, because they hadn't in decades, and he never came back. And we spoke on the phone, and he said his neck pain was gone, he could walk all he wanted with no more neck pain.
• 47:43
  Unknown: So, you know, it's.. I had a football quarterback who came in, who couldn't do a three hour, three man practice because of shoulder pain, and the diagnosis on the prescription was shoulder tendonitis, elbow tendinitis. I assess his arm, there was nothing wrong with it, full range of motion, full strength. So I said, "Show me how you throw a football, and he did, and I immediately saw how unstable his ankle was, and I said, 'You know, how long have you had an unstable ankle? And he said, 'Oh, well, I roll off.
• 48:14
  Unknown: You know, I roll over on it in practice. I have to walk off the pain. And I said, 'It's because your ankle is unstable, so that whenever you release the football, the ankle is not stopping the motion in time, the shoulders getting yanked every time you release it. So, after an hour or so, the shoulder says, "Enough, I've had enough.
• 48:36
  Unknown: And so, because he was young, he was 22 rock solid muscle from his nose to his toes. Three or four sessions to stabilize that ankle, and he could do three hour practice with no more shoulder pain. I never touched his shoulder.
• 48:49
  Turo Virta: Wow, so we
• 48:50
  Unknown: have to understand the connection
• 48:53
  Turo Virta: that is so, so good examples in a real, real life.
• 48:58
  Turo Virta: So, within which people often talk like that, there is some, like obviously, most people don't even know what is the difference between flexibility and mobility. Could you explain it quickly?
• 49:14
  Unknown: Well, mobility is how much range of motion a joint has, and flexibility is, do the muscles allow full motion? Now, I like to teach dynamic loading, and what I mean by that is, when you load a muscle, it's getting longer under tension. It's called an eccentric contraction.
• 49:36
  Unknown: So, if I go to lift a, if I go to train my bicep, and I lift a weight up, this is a con center contraction, I'm shortening the muscle to lift the weight, but when I lower the weight, that's an eccentric contraction, and that muscle is is getting longer, but it's tensing itself to get ready for the next time you need to lift the weight, and so the human body is really designed more for lengthening under tension to control movement, so once you start moving, everything is controlling that motion, but most muscles are getting longer under tension, some are getting shorter, but so it's the best way to improve flexibility is to do what I call dynamic loading, you go into certain movements causing those muscles to get longer under tension, and then you come out of the motion, and you go, you load it, and you unload it, and when you load a muscle, it kind of creates this tensional energy, sort of like a slingshot, you know, that the more you pull the slingshot back, the more energy is going to be created in that rubber band, so that when you release it, it's going to go further if you created more tension. Well, your muscles are kind of the same way when you get them longer under tension, it creates this ability to load more and unload more. It's, it's pretty powerful how the human body's.
• 51:06
  Unknown: Designed itself, it's
• 51:07
  Turo Virta: so well said, very, very good practical way. How to bring it, and hopefully it makes sense, because for me at least it makes so much sense. So, if someone like what I hear often is that you know someone is feeling stiff every morning, what, where they should start.
• 51:26
  Unknown: Yeah, so stiffness is lack of motion. Sometimes it's lack of good hydration. There are a lot of people out there who are not well hydrated, they are not drinking enough water.
• 51:38
  Unknown: Muscles are 78% water,
• 51:41
  Turo Virta: so if
• 51:42
  Unknown: you're dehydrated, your muscles are not going to function well. There are times muscles will spasm because they're screaming for water, so it's important that you're well hydrated, and a lot of people are living on energy drinks, and all of the, you know, the caffeine or alcohol that causes you to lose fluid. It's, it's, it's just a big bag of wrong, really. So, you've got to be well hydrated for your body to move properly, your joints, everything, and so, but movement, movement is key. So, if you wake up really stiff, like I said, even just that gentle hip matrix, forward and back, side to side, people are shocked at how much that helps them to to get moving again. I mean, I've had people in their 80s and 90s who were amazed at just how that simple movement could get them going, and then you progress from there, and you start adding arm motions and leg motions, and, and it's just, and it's a really good idea for people to make sure they have a healthy range of motion before they attempt to get stronger, because if you lack motion, if you're stiff and you don't have much mobility, trying to strengthen is not a good idea, because you're going to risk injuring yourself, you're lacking mobility, and it doesn't mean you have to stretch for 40 years, it just means you've got to be able to get that motion in those joints before you start trying to strengthen the muscles around them.
• 53:12
  Turo Virta: Yeah, that makes so much sense, because it's, it's like often you see, like, especially if someone has been at the gym and seeing some body builder, they often, or like biggest guys, they don't have a lot of range of motion, they know, but then, then they might have a surprisingly some injuries, so it's, it's there's definitely, and obviously it's for many people, it's especially this, not often with the women, what I see, but men, it's that kind of echo lifting, like you know, you have to use heavier weights, and, and instead of aiming for that full range of motion,
• 53:57
  Unknown: and there's also surprisingly a prevalence of use of steroids, which a lot of people aren't aware of, but there are a lot more people using those in the gym than than is well known. Yeah,
• 54:09
  Turo Virta: so you also, you mentioned a little bit about water and lack of hydration. Is there some other nutrition mistakes that can make recovery or information burst?
• 54:25
  Unknown: So the data reports that when you're attempting to increase muscle, and I know the whole world talks about protein like it's the only thing that matters. Unfortunately, that's not accurate. It's actually the amount of complex carbohydrates that you're consuming, and I'm talking complex carbohydrates, you know, not cookies and cake and white flour and all of that complex carbs because that's the the major energy provision for the human body and a lot of people are so focused on getting protein in before they work out and protein in after they work out that they haven't consumed enough carbohydrates to give them the energy to perform the workout, so now they've depleted any carbs that they might have consumed, and their body has to use the protein for energy, so it's not being used the way you want it to be used, because you have not consumed enough carbohydrates, and also the data shows that when you, when you ingest complex carbs after a workout, it will reduce that do ms, that delayed onset muscle soreness. So, I tell people, lots of water, lots of complex carbs, and you won't have as much muscle soreness after your workout.
• 55:46
  Turo Virta: That is, that is a very good advice, actually, and, like, you said, yeah, it's whole world is talking about protein, and I'm sure every listener knows that protein is also important, but often, like carbs, you hear often that avoid carbs are to enemy, and but it.
• 56:03
  Turo Virta: Especially for workouts, they are full for your workouts.
• 56:08
  Turo Virta: Yeah,
• 56:10
  Unknown: they're critical. Yes, yes, they're not our enemy.
• 56:13
  Turo Virta: Yeah, absolutely.
• 56:13
  Turo Virta: This time flew. I would love to have you have a lot of more questions, but there are few closing questions I still want to ask. So, what is, in your opinion, one thing you wish every adult over 40 understood about pain?
• 56:38
  Unknown: That it's not normal.
• 56:38
  Unknown: It might be common, but it's not normal. Don't accept it. Don't just take an over-the-counter pain med to manage it, and wait until something becomes unmanageable, and now you can't do the things you want to do in life. A lot of people ignore pain because it doesn't stop them, but if they ignore it long enough, something's going to happen that ends up stopping them, and then it's a lot harder to resolve, because it has snowballed. Lots of compensatory mechanisms have happened, and lots of other areas have been affected and impacted, and so pain is not normal. Don't accept it. Figure out what's causing it, and treat the cause, not the symptom,
• 57:29
  Turo Virta: well said. What is then one thing you wish every woman over 50 knew about strength and independence?
• 57:38
  Unknown: So we want to stay strong, and it's a given that a lot of women over 50 end up living alone, and they get very concerned they're going to lose their independence. You don't have to lose your independence.
• 57:51
  Unknown: Make sure you keep your stairs.
• 57:55
  Unknown: The real estate industry right now is promoting aging in place with homes that don't have any stairs, and I have seen that to be the biggest mistake people ever make I have seen so many people who sell their home with stairs and end up without stairs, and they weaken, they decline, and I even saw one person within three weeks, they declined, or three months they declined so much they ended up needing a an electronic lift chair because they couldn't stand up without assistance, those stairs are critical. We need the stairs. Don't let people tell you, "Oh, as you get older, you know, you won't be able to navigate those stairs. I have somebody in my academy who's in her 80s. She lives in an apartment building, and she climbs 13 flights of stairs every day to stay in shape,
• 58:47
  Turo Virta: yeah, that is a very practical way to get your strength training. Your
• 58:51
  Unknown: absolutely, we need the stairs, and just keep moving, don't don't allow yourself to get weaker because you think you're supposed to, that is a lie from the pit of hell.
• 59:05
  Turo Virta: And what if someone asked question, what is that? If someone feels frustrated with their body right now, what would you want them to hear?
• 59:16
  Unknown: I want them to know that the human body is very resilient, and when you start doing the right things the right way, the body will improve. I've had people over 100 years old get stronger doing squats and parallel bars. Wow, so it doesn't matter your age, it doesn't matter your current condition, there is always something you can do to make things better.
• 59:41
  Turo Virta: Wow, and where people can learn more about your books and your work
• 59:48
  Unknown: well, probably the best is my main website, because there's a very simple five question quiz on there, because I do have content all over the place, between YouTube and I've got different programs and different courses, and so if they answer those five questions, which takes less than two minutes, it will provide a page filled with information about what content addresses their concern, so in other words, if their concern is incontinence, or if their concern is arthritic joint pain, or if their concern is balance issues, it will aim them at whatever content I have that addresses those concerns, so that's probably the easiest, because then they won't get lost in the sauce with all the stuff I offer.
• 1:00:34
  Turo Virta: So I will put a link to my so notes, and please do yourself as you probably heard, as me will. I learned a lot, and I hope you too, if you listen to this, go to check out Eileen's page, do the quiz, and learn from her work, because she's definitely one of those coaches who knows what they are doing.
• 1:00:57
  Turo Virta: So, thank you so much for this conversation. I really, really enjoyed it.
• 1:01:03
  Unknown: Yes, I did too. Thank you for having me.
• 1:01:06
  Unknown: Thank you. Thank.