Latest / The STA Clinician Podcast / Ep.219: 'Anatomy for Soft Tissue Therapists: What Should We Be Learning?' with guest James Earls

Transcript

Ep.219: 'Anatomy for Soft Tissue Therapists: What Should We Be Learning?' with guest James Earls · The STA Clinician Podcast

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Music.
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Hey people, how are you doing? Welcome to the Sports Therapy Association podcast,
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episode 219, entitled Anatomy for Soft Tissue Therapists, What Should We Be Learning?
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With my special guest coming out very shortly, James Earls.
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My name is Matt Phillips, creator of runchatlive.com, and as always,
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this episode is being recorded live at 8pm on a Tuesday evening. Although last week.
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Those of you who did join us will remember that for episode 218,
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we did record it at 12 in the afternoon, because as we pointed out,
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not all of my guests are free to drop everything for me in the evening.
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For example, mothers with little ones to look after. And such was the case for
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my wonderful guest last week, Sonia Fierro, sports therapist,
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osteopath, and new co-host of the Women in Sports Therapy podcast and community.
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If you missed that episode, then it's available as always on popular podcast apps.
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And if you want to watch the video, which I always recommend,
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but then maybe that's just me. I like seeing who's speaking.
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Then you can find that on YouTube and also on the STA website, thesta.co.uk.
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Sonia is going to be speaking at this year's Therapy Expo on day one,
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November the 27th in the STA theatre for a presentation entitled Women in Sports
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Therapy, Building a Stronger Community.
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And Sonia will be joined by WIST podcast co-host Gemma Pouzas and also Christian
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Bird, who is stepping in last minute.
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Thank you, Christian Bird, for Michelle Lyons.
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Christian is going to be a great talk. Christian is co-founder of Menopause Movement.
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And she will incidentally, like I say, have just finished delivering the opening
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session on day one in the STA theatre with her presentation,
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Power the Paws, the Pelvic Floor and More.
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People listening now can write how I spelt that power of the pause.
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If you can see what's going on there, it's a great pun and alliteration.
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So if you are going to Therapy Expo and you work with female population,
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which I imagine applies kind of to everybody, then I would recommend going to
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the STA theatre for the start of day one, where you're going to get both of
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those fascinating talks.
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Right. Enough. Back to tonight's episode.
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Going to bring you another fantastic educator who's going to be at Therapy Expo
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in literally two weeks now. We're talking the 27th and the 28th.
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So without further ado, I should bring up my guest for this episode,
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James Earls of Born to Move and Born to Walk.
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Hey, James, how are you? Good evening. I'm very well. Thank you, Matt. How are you?
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Very well. And as always, you've been on the show numerous times now,
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and you're always very popular, both in person and on this podcast.
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I appreciate you giving up your time.
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I'm very much looking forward to it. Always a pleasure to be here.
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Nikki mansfield so if you are listening to the podcast and you're and you're new
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then thank you for joining us via the podcast we do record this
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live like i say and if you want to join us live and just head along normally eight
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o'clock on tuesday and if you do then you can bring up your questions for
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the guests or your comments and also you get to flash your logo your
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photo on the screen nikki mansfield for example says loving
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this therapy expo build up so far giving us up
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for this year's pilgrimage pilgrimage i like it we're hands on humans
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get hands on for our annual hug fest it's beautiful that
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sums it up nikki you've got a wonderful way for words yeah that's
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great fantastic right steve barr is here as well saying good
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evening talking to people with wonderful way of words steve barr says good
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evening fine people are we grand great thanks for
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joining us steve john w is here as well
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sarah jones from the st school is here as well and
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thank you people for joining us really nice and i always love people joining
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us live i appreciate there's plenty of other things you could be doing on your
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tuesday evening but we love doing this live don't we james
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there's something about live isn't there it is yes special
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and this is obviously you've
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been at therapy expert for quite a few years now how do you feel about it is
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it is it different from other conferences you attend or is it just another one
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you'd notch up it's very different from conferences much a lot more energy a
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lot more buzz a lot more noise but most of that is Is that a good thing?
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It depends on my energy levels. Generally, it's a good thing because most people
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are having a good time and chatting and having fun, exchanging ideas, meeting each other.
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So it's certainly the busiest, the most energetic, the most interactive of all of the conferences.
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Most people tend to be a bit more academic and a bit dull.
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Informative, but a bit dull. That's fantastic. They'll have that.
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That'll chalk us up some brownie points with therapy expo interactive and not
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dull um your mic is cutting out a little bit now it wasn't when we were talking
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earlier on i'm not sure which mic you're using just let me know if in the audience
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some of the words are cutting out but we'll see how that goes.
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Right. So you've been, like I say, you've been on the show quite a few times,
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but I still, we talked about this a bit off air, because I always worry about
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getting my guests to say who they are, where they're from, kind of like Cilla Black style.
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But you in particular, and also other guests, maybe we all are,
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without getting too deep, a product of your journey in life.
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But in particular, for people who don't know you, I
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think to understand where you're coming from when you
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talk it's really useful to have again a look at your list of
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huge selling books i can see by
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the smile that you're thinking here we go again back to
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2000 and when it was 10 you your
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product of your journey is a very polite way of saying you're
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just a bit old i thought so yeah yeah i
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thought it was quite polite that's how we roll isn't it but it is
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yeah 14 years ago since you since well the fascial release
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for structural balance so again i do get
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emails in fact this is what inspired me on
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because when i last did this with you people said i was so good
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to see the actual book covers when you were talking to james it's really useful
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keep that going so i was like okay you said that you wanted it here
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it is so we'll bring them up and give you a chance to
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kind of talk about your journey and if people know all
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about james already which i think people in the room probably do because you're
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kind of the fanboys giving up your tuesday evening for us which is great but
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people who don't then listen to the journey and you will understand mr james
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earls let's bring something up here list here we go here you guys where it all
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starts yeah so that was i think around 2010.
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Well maybe it was released but work started around 2009 2010 i was working with
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thomas myers co-author down at the bottom and i was responsible for teaching
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anatomy trains through europe so i had strains and romatherapy and then that
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oh your mind's done again.
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That wasn't that wasn't happening before when we were i don't want i can edit
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this all out for the podcast and there's plenty of stuff i can talk about but
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is there another okay mike you can play around with maybe without the offense i reckon,
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In the meantime, people who are in the audience, just while James changes Mike,
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which I'm sure we'll do very quickly, I think a few of you maybe have been along
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to James's either face-to-face or online courses and seen him at Therapy Expo.
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So maybe, because I can know the people who are here, if you have attended one
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of James's courses, then drop something in the comments just to let people who
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don't know James what to expect and why they're popular. I know why they're
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great. I know why they're popular.
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I'd like to hear something from the horse's mouth, as it were.
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Back to James. so is this working okay that's
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my idea very nice it's giving a little kind of deep tone as
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well it's nice okay yeah i can put everyone in sleep just like in the workshops
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so i yeah so i'm from belfast just south of belfast and room therapy remedial
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techniques reflexology did the usual kind of oh my god what the hell am i going
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to do with my life i add on all of these extra things.
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Early 90s, training was not of a very high level.
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So it was very much needed to just keep adding the weekend workshops and the short trainings.
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That was the only way to get a decent training. And then I came across Thomas
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Myers, and he was just releasing and working on the Anatomy Trends model.
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I met him even before the Anatomy Trends book came out.
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And he did a a workshop in Dublin and it was the first time I'd heard about
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fascia and so I knew a bit about structural integration and I went to the workshop,
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liked what he was saying,
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seemed to kind of tie in a lot of the ideas that kind of from holistic therapies
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that I had trained in and so I signed up,
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trained with him and then taught with him for probably about 10 years,
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10, 12 years, never added it up and then we realized we didn't have a handbook
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and for the training and that was the part of the the driver for writing the
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the fascial least for structural balance book.
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And that came out so 2012 i was teaching and then i was teaching traveling traveling
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around europe and eventually gary gray's name kept coming up in workshops and
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i thought i've no idea who the old Gary Gray was,
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but I did a little bit of research and decided to then do extra training in
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functional movement with Gary Gray.
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And that was also 2012.
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And that's when I started kind
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of expanding from a very fixed bodywork approach, people on the table,
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to broadening my repertoire, power to understanding much more about movement
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and sort of incorporating movement and understanding of movement and to help
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with that process, I decided to kind of combine.
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Some of Gary Gray's philosophy and thinking about joints and chain reaction
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mechanics and some of what I'd study with Tom and then Meyer Fasher and bring
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those two worlds together by writing the next book was Born to Walk.
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Let me just interrupt a second because that was quite, at the time, did you realise,
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because there were the fascia camp with anatomy trains,
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which still has a massive two huge words, which people will still
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treat pretty much as a Bible still these days yeah
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and then gary gray as well huge name both of those
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groups were probably ahead of their time i think you had
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the gill hedley speech and the fuss speech and all that it was a big
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year around 212 213 yep and then there's you who's decided almost blasphemously
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to kind of mix the two it's almost like an interracial kind of thing and deep
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down south what did you realize at the time that this was kind of frowned upon
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or did you get that feedback that you were mixing or diluting each of them by mixing them?
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Or was it just something you saw naturally as a necessity?
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Initially not so there was an excitement in both the the gary gray school were
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kind of excited to have me there and there were other people that were kind
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of talking about fascia at the time as well wasn't just me and they were they
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were coming across from the i know the old school.
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Kind of old school physiotherapy languaging of
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joints and joints and bones and and muscles
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and i was excited by that
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because i i did not have a good training in
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biomechanics and in the mechanics so that
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was exciting to me and the anatomy
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trains my fascial world was coming from very postural stuck
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and kind of structure mode so initially
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there was an excitement on both sides and i
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was i was kind of in the middle and just
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linking the two and kind of as a conduit
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almost so i helped bring some of
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the myofascial excitement and understanding to
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the gray institute and you know they they're not doing quite a lot in in that
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kind of that that realm and have brought that in and blended into their system
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and initially the anatomy trend school were kind of they were excited by putting
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anatomy trends into a more functional vocabulary and a more functional vision.
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And initially that was an excitement. And then as I discovered,
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there was a little bit of friction because it was almost separating the camp
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in the structural integration field within in that school,
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the traditionalists.
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Closer to the pure structure, posture, model, and those of us that wanted to
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kind of make it a little bit more real world.
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I think it's just, I like to hammer that point home, because I'm sure it's a
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journey you did in 2014, and probably for years afterwards, where you realized you had to,
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change and modify and evolve certain things which you'd
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probably be very fond of and admired and then
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because that's what therapists are having to do today when they're
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told my soft tissue therapists are told actually you know you're not actually doing
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this to the tissue you're not actually doing you know whatever it
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is and that can be met with anger disappointment some people
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even throw away their career sadly but you plowed
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on through i'm i'm changed and adapted
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i also hit a crisis of
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confidence you know whenever the sort of some of the the the
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big name critics kind of came out and and
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you know with some justification but with some
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i would say very negative languaging and
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and deliberately provocative languaging i was hurt by it you know internally
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it's just like oh my god i did have a kind of crisis of what the hell am i doing
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what and what have i been doing with my career so far and that has driven me to to change.
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Much of my language, much of my understanding.
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I had a fantastic day last week with Anna
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Maria and just walking up and down the beach of Vexmas and chatting about the
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newer thinkings and newer vocabularies and the research and how to blend essentially
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all the new languaging around soft tissue work and manual therapy. That was fun.
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So part of the conversation between the grain shoots and anatomy trends that
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was going on in my head then led to the Bont book was trying to kind of.
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Make an accessible text that brought those two worlds together because in my
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career I didn't have any resources that helped me understand or explain or work with movement,
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and the gate cycle is a very standard almost an aspiration for most therapists.
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It's like, I want to understand how to assess or how to view,
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verbalize, appreciate, how to see walking.
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And I think it's a useful starting point to build the vocabulary in order to understand movement.
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So that was my attempt in the first edition of Born to Walk was blending some
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of the Grey Institute's mechanics along with the myofascial model of Myers and
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the anatomy twins. And that was 2014.
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And I'm interested because there was an updated version to the fascial release
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book, which I guess had a certain amount of evolution as well and a few changes in there.
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Yeah, this came up after I extracted myself from the anatomy twin school,
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hence the reversal of the names. So yeah, content...
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So there was a previous revised edition. Yep. So this is like,
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well, it wasn't even previous.
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This is the same revised edition with a new front cover with the Anatomy Train's
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logo and the reversal of the names.
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In the revised edition, I put in a lot of functional assessment and functional
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bodywork to try, in my mind, to update it and bring it a little bit,
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give it a little bit more relevance.
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But as I extracted, the Anepidrin school wanted to kind of up their profile
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and stick their logo on it.
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And I was quite happy to have a reversal because for me, a lot of the techniques
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are still valid, but a lot of the story, a lot of the vocabulary and a lot of
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the explanation is kind of old school.
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So I'm content to be playing second fiddle on the front cover.
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It's very useful to know because they're still looking at the forms,
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looking at the questions, maybe a little bit less, but there's still people
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very much talking about anatomy trains.
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And I think it's still taught in a lot of courses as gospel to explain and assessments.
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And all you're doing here is i think helping listeners realize that you know
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just because you're taught it
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by somebody who rightfully so you kind of held as a little bit of a peer,
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and and your tutor it might be questionable you might
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have to just sit back and criticize it a bit and think about it so
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anyway 2020 came along suddenly before we knew it and that gave you a chance
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to put your new edition of born to walk which had some major updates did it
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yeah it was So the first session was pretty much organized around the anatomy
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trains lines because that was my kind of, I was going to say my bread and butter,
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but it wasn't just the kind of mercenary aspect, it was what I,
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the language that I spoke every weekend.
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In various forms, different workshops, but it was very much the vocabulary that I spoke.
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It was the lens or the filter through which I answered every question.
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And I realized this is not real. Why am I squeezing every question,
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the answer to every question into the anatomy twins model when actually it's
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much more complex and much more interesting than just that?
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So Born to Walk was then second edition, then is more organized around the planes of motion.
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So it was just as a different organizational tool.
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Excellent. And you're still, are we looking at, does that need updating?
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Are you still happy for people to read that and go, that's James Earl's now.
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That is James Earl's version.
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I think a textbook style would say as soon as it's published, it's out of date. Yes.
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Which is why we can go to the primary sources of the research papers,
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but the research papers are not very accessible and they're also not easy to read.
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And also they tend to be so focused on certain aspects.
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So yes, of course, there are things I would like to update.
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It's i'm much happier and much more content
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with that version um and another a
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third edition is not coming anytime soon that's fine that's okay
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but then there's no need for third edition because that kind of opened the door
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to all sorts of different things you also had understanding the human foot which
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i believe was the year after yep what inspired you to spend time on producing
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that locked on locked on and it was the three months of lockdown that we were
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going to have at the beginning,
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I thought three months, three months would nothing do other than I write the
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book I want to write was the functional anatomy of the full human body.
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And so after two years of lockdown, I managed to get as far as the foot.
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So it was, I think I began with the foot because it was just,
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it's, I thought if you do understand the foot, if you understand the principles
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of functional movement,
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the foot is a, is a wonderful place to start exploring those principles.
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And once you understand those principles, then it's easy to kind of jump and
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apply them to almost everywhere else in the body.
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So it's about seeing and understanding the form and the function.
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And if we can understand the form and function, that's it.
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From the foot, you just apply the same thinking, the same principles to the
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shoulder complex or to the spine.
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It's kind of just, you know, take that bit, repeat for every other section,
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if we were to talk about sections.
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But preferably not which is great because that's kind of leading into what this whole.
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Episode and what you're going to be doing at therapy x was about and then because
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this then helped you address the next one which is still an illustrated guide
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but this is now functional anatomy of movement yep okay so now we're jumping
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from the foot to putting everything together and that was your most recent book
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which was what are we talking about now last year two years ago i
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two years ago now time flies yeah 23 yeah
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and is this so this kind of brings us into the
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topic is this what is this getting close
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to how you think anatomy should be taught as opposed
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to how traditionally it has been taught pretty much
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yes there's a lot in there and kind of probably over the bat and the born to
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walk and the and the foot book i i believe anatomy is better taught with explanations
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rather than the rote memorization that we tend to suffer through.
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So I was spent some time this afternoon kind of thinking about,
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okay, so where do we go with this? What's the title?
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Are we taught the anatomy that we need?
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I would kind of reverse that question. What are we teaching anatomy for?
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Or what's the desired result through the teaching of anatomy?
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Why are we teaching it?
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And I think many schools without knowing it or teaching it because it has to
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be taught because we have to know where we're sticking our thumb into or whatever
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area that we're working on.
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But I think it should be much more than that.
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I think as a soft tissue therapist of whatever form, I think we should understand.
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How the body moves in real life.
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Our clients are coming to us in most
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cases to improve their performance in real
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life whether that be in their hobby their sports their their sitting
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their work their home life something
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and i don't think the clinical anatomy
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that we tend to suffer through doesn't prepare
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us for that understanding it doesn't give
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us the vocabulary so if i'm gonna play devil's
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advocate here please don't the kind of especially for people out there who are
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delivering courses and feel the need now to defend it
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so isn't the idea that first
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of all we learn the muscles the origin the insertion to
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help us understand what's going to happen when the muscle shortens or lengthens
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and and then once we've got that map we've
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passed that little bit of the test and how muscles work and
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sliding filament theory and all that stuff then that helps understand movement
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are you saying that that isn't necessarily a
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good follower i would i would counter
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that with i think it gets
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in the way i think i think it inhibits
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a lot of the vision that we need to
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understand movement i think that's that's that we've fallen into the trap of
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teaching the anatomy because we have really good tools to teach the anatomy
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from it's like we've got fantastic texts because it's so easy to present the picture of the bicep.
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The picture of the hamstring, so easy to list out the very precise attachments
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and replicate the actions and.
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But that's not how the hamstrings work, or that's not how the biceps work.
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So I think for me, I make this argument for many, many topics that we start
24:12
in the wrong place, and we travel in the wrong direction.
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We're trying to understand human movement and the complexity of human movement
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by starting looking at the bits with the aspiration that if we keep adding the
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bits and collect all of the,
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if we know that 640 or whatever muscles,
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somehow we miraculously understand movement, it doesn't work.
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Because there's so much missing from the clinical anatomy story.
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It only gives us a certain vocabulary.
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And to me, I'm just thinking earlier, one of the topics or one of the subjects
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I loved in school, one of the few, was geography.
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I was like, what's the difference in geography?
24:59
Physical geography you look at a mountain and you go oh look,
25:02
there's a big, can you see the big circular scoop that's kind of being driven
25:07
out of the side of the mountain?
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You go yeah, I can see that. It's like do you know why that's there?
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No, no bloody clue. It's like, oh yeah, it's not because somebody came along
25:18
and dug it out, it's because of the glaciers and because of glacial action.
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And so you start physical geography
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starts with something that you can observe it's like I can
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see that and then I have the question why
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and then I can go down into the
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detail because I know where I'm
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trying to get to I'm trying to understand how that thing was there and so by
25:43
going top down I get a I start from something that I can see and something I
25:48
can recognize as opposed to like day one anatomy class okay, well, this is a bone,
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and let's look at the femur,
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whatever it is, this is the greater trochanter and the lesser trochanter and the bone,
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blah, blah, blah, all the rest of it. Okay, and?
26:07
Well, rather than that, let's look at how you use your lower limb.
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What do you do with your lower limb? How does it work? What kind of movement
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does it make? What's the difference between your thigh and your foot?
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So I never thought about that. Well, what did they do?
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Why do you think your foot is made up of 24 bones and 33 joints and everything
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else that people kind of go on?
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But what's the role of those bones and what's the role of those joints?
26:38
And then how do we control those movements?
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So if I start from the familiar, I can work down to the detail, to the less familiar.
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Because what properties do those things, why do we have a femur?
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Why do we have one big long bone.
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And then two littler bones, but one really chunky one and one outlier.
27:02
And then we got this random collection of rubble at the bottom.
27:06
So why, why are they there?
27:10
And then I can start kind of questioning, it's like, well, they have,
27:12
look at, let's look at the shape that they have. Let's look at what they do.
27:16
Let's look at how your foot responds in movement. We can talk about pronation and supination.
27:20
So we can start from the big movement pictures and then go down into the detail.
27:26
It's like, well, you pronate and you supernate because something.
27:30
It's like you've got a hugely adaptable foot because, well, it has to do a lot of jobs.
27:37
Whereas your thigh, it's really just like stabilizing. And we could talk about leverage.
27:43
We could talk about the knee joints and its alignment.
27:48
We could then talk about the alignment between each of the joints.
27:51
We could look at walking it's like just take a step it's like i know walking
27:55
i could i know about taking a step it's like well now i can take a talk about
27:58
the communication between the joints
28:00
so we can we can do it that way there's so many other ways in which we can approach
28:07
anatomy i think we just we've got stuck in this topographical just learn the
28:13
map if you you don't teach geography by just saying,
28:16
okay, day one, let's look at the map of England.
28:19
It's like, and well, can you see the Pennines? It's like, no.
28:24
Because I don't know anything about contour lines. I don't know the rules of mapping.
28:28
Let's go out and look at some of the area outside the school or whatever.
28:33
Let's look at that. Let's look at the context.
28:36
And then let's look at how the map kind of
28:38
represents that that's how we would
28:41
start map reading but yet
28:44
in anatomy class we go we almost often too
28:47
often we kind of ignore the body and just like okay let's look
28:50
at the pictures it doesn't for me it doesn't doesn't make sense no it used to
28:56
because i i fell into the trap of doing what everyone else did because everyone
29:00
else did it so it must be right it's like it doesn't It doesn't give us as a
29:07
flexible understanding of anatomy by the end.
29:10
It gets us fixed into, and I see this a lot with people coming to the workshops.
29:18
They believe that the hamstrings will only do A, B, and C.
29:23
It's like, well, you know that they can also extend the knee in closed chin.
29:29
It's like, well, what's closed chin? What's the difference between closed chin
29:31
and open chin? you know that, okay, yeah, they rotate the knee whenever it's flexed.
29:36
It's like, yeah, they also, well, they also rotate the hip.
29:41
They also involve this avid adduction of the hip. It's like,
29:45
But the anatomy books never told me that. It's like, yeah, but that's because
29:49
you don't know the rules of the anatomical position.
29:52
You don't know the rules of the way in which clinical anatomy is kind of presented.
29:57
So it's even simple things that way.
30:01
The many of us teaching clinical anatomy don't know the box that is clinical anatomy.
30:10
It's limiting of its own accord. It has those definitions, and then we don't
30:19
make that overt to the students,
30:23
because often, and in my case, I wasn't taught the principles of clinical anatomy,
30:30
because my teacher didn't know the principles of clinical anatomy,
30:32
because their teacher didn't know the principles of clinical anatomy,
30:36
they didn't know the vocabulary.
30:38
Whereas if we start blending, you know, there are lots of richnesses in the
30:44
topographical clinical anatomy.
30:46
But if we blend up with functional anatomy, with evolutionary anatomy,
30:49
with comparative anatomy, with developmental anatomy, all these other different
30:54
vocabularies, we start getting a better picture of why.
30:58
So I, for me, I learn better when I'm told the story.
31:04
I don't learn the qualities of the hamstrings.
31:08
It's like they attach their end there and do A, B, and C.
31:11
It's like, okay, I'll try to remember that for the next three weeks until there's
31:16
the exam, and then I'll forget.
31:17
But if I'm told a story, or if I'm feeling it.
31:21
It kind of starts to make a little bit more sense. It's easier to learn if I've got a story.
31:28
And the stories come from not the clinical anatomy because there's no story.
31:33
It comes from, well, those things are there because of how we developed,
31:39
because of how we evolved.
31:41
And we move in different ways. So we can explore all of those different avenues
31:47
and different vocabularies.
31:48
And suddenly it's like oh my my picture my world gets bigger and i get a much more adaptable,
31:55
approach to interpreting the stories
31:58
that my clients tell me i guess i'm thinking
32:01
i guess the knock-on effect to how you work with your
32:04
patient or client then is huge as well because the traditional
32:08
way is somebody comes in they hurt the
32:10
knee and you just look at the knee and you think oh that does that i'm going
32:13
to do this because it's going to make it more extensible long to
32:16
do this because it's going to do that and and you're not looking at the story
32:19
at all you're not looking at the patient and everything else and all the other
32:22
factors so it's not surprising that if we're taught this form of anatomy then
32:26
our way of thinking of how to help people in pain is quite limited as well becomes
32:31
isolated becomes focused and also our techniques,
32:35
it's like muscle energy technique the passive stretches they're all almost copy
32:42
and paste from clinical anatomy.
32:45
It's like, okay, so the pectoralis meter does this. So therefore,
32:48
in order to give it a stretch and apply NET, we put it in that position.
32:53
But it's much more adaptable than that.
32:58
It has many more potentials of direction, many different potentials of other
33:04
reacting to other parts of the body.
33:07
And I guess when we assess, like what's proudly taught on traditional courses,
33:12
do it and then do no i love the idea of
33:15
don't do any don't do was it a touch without intention
33:18
is a wasted touch or something but if your intention is only
33:21
to make this go from a to b and then you test
33:24
it and it has gone from a to b well well done you've made
33:27
that go from a to b but how does that relate to the person's
33:30
movement in real life so you're you're getting success but for a reason which
33:34
is not really very valuable yeah very i'm not going to kind of attack orthopedic
33:41
assessment There's wonderful richnesses and specificity-ish in most orthopaedic assessments.
33:47
There's a lot of criticism of orthopaedic assessments, but they're still quite
33:51
useful and can all be improved.
33:54
They're reducing the variables.
33:58
Yeah, but they're also limiting my scope, my understanding.
34:04
It's easy to go from clinical anatomy to orthopedic assessment to textbook standards.
34:11
Applied MET or stretches, whether they be passive or active.
34:17
And that's a nice consistency across the literature, but it's totally different
34:23
as soon as you get outside.
34:24
It's why, I don't know about your experience in teaching and running,
34:28
gate analysis but my experience is that many many
34:31
people turn up and and they don't know where to begin
34:34
because of the the blinkers almost
34:37
that some clinical anatomy gives us
34:41
it's very interesting let's uh
34:44
there's been some chatter in the people who joined us live thank you very
34:47
much i'm hoping stephen bar is going to come back to me because earlier on
34:50
at 2027 which was 13 minutes
34:53
ago he said my only question is
34:56
why the need for the word functional now for me personally i
34:59
remember when i didn't like the word functional because there was a lot of
35:02
gurus out there who were proclaiming anything i just said quite
35:05
callously functional normally meant standing on a
35:08
football whilst juggling closing one eye and you know
35:11
something like that and the word became a little bit you know
35:15
another kind of like yep catchphrase thing but now
35:18
i've asked steve whether now he's heard you
35:21
what other word could you use in functional because you
35:24
are kind of i mean it's a good use of the word really i yeah
35:27
i'm i'm with you stephen to why do we need the word functional i would i defend
35:33
my use of functional and and get frustrated by the overuse of functional to
35:39
me functional anatomy is the anatomy that it can describe with reasonable accuracy
35:45
normal everyday function.
35:48
So as opposed to the kind of the functional training or the functional exercises,
35:54
which I think partly kind of came,
35:57
probably came out of the Gary Gray school and many other schools of functional training,
36:03
which was just trying to bring in as much kind of application of three dimensional
36:09
movement and try to get away from single muscle kind of isolated muscle strengthening
36:15
exercises, gym based exercises.
36:18
So the functional, to me, functional movement and functional exercise,
36:23
I struggle with because I don't think that's a correct use of functional.
36:30
To me, my defense of functional movement would be if I have assessed a client
36:37
and think that they could improve their something.
36:42
So thoracic mobility is kind of a classic.
36:46
And if I kind of suggest some exercises,
36:52
some mobility, some whatever, to that client for their homework or to put into
37:00
their exercise routine, I would classify that.
37:02
That is functional exercise, functional movement, because of my understanding of functional anatomy.
37:08
Whereas if I'm just going, okay, so your clam exercise,
37:13
and this is an example in the book, your clam exercise was commonly attacked
37:18
because it's not a functional strengthener of the glutes because it's not working
37:25
in this eccentric kind of functional position. it's just a concentric strengthener.
37:29
To me, that's a perfectly functional exercise if somebody really needs to start
37:35
from almost scratch to strengthen their glutes.
37:38
It's a very safe position and my understanding of it would be that's a functional
37:42
exercise if I need to gradually build up.
37:48
Anything, any exercise to me can be functional if I have deliberately,
37:54
I'm trying to avoid using the word prescribed,
37:57
advised, that that exercise could hopefully, in your case, improve your function
38:04
as opposed to just the random.
38:07
It's like, okay, so I think, yeah, you've got weak loops because that's an epidemic
38:11
at the moment. It's the trendy story of the moment. So I'm going to give you
38:17
a functional exercise that will strengthen your glutes.
38:20
But, well, that's not functional.
38:23
If I haven't given it to that client for their specific need as I see it,
38:31
then, so yes, I agree, our view of function is like,
38:34
yeah, there's a bias in everything, but there's a reason they're coming to us
38:39
and they're coming to us because of our hopefully informed and trained bias
38:44
that you know i'm i'm going to suggest something according to my bias.
38:50
That's the reality of being a therapist i think we have
38:54
to own on that it's very
38:57
good it's a great question steve um i also was celebrating imi because
39:00
before you even mentioned maps imi came up with a map is
39:02
not the terrain um which was exactly what you're
39:05
talking about i did love your analogy of geography i thought
39:08
it was great as well how we learned geography typically like that
39:11
were able to appreciate the mountain maybe you know
39:14
the valley where the glacier once went and then
39:16
later it makes sense when we learn about an oxbow lake or something and
39:19
yeah that's great whereas anatomy totally flicking around yeah
39:22
it's good good stuff well done james else as me congratulations james else being
39:27
a good educator does it get more patronizing not really right so let's have
39:30
a look what we're going to do is we're going to have a look now at people who
39:33
what we can be doing at therapy expo i think we've given people enough reason
39:37
now to go oh I need a bit more James in my life.
39:41
We start off day one is when you are in theatre B, I think it is.
39:48
Yeah, theatre B, 10.20 in the morning.
39:50
And that's where you've got soft tissue therapists. Are we taught the anatomy we need?
39:54
So that will give people a great chance to listen to you about things we've
39:59
talked about tonight and also come up with a few old tones just like we have.
40:04
The exciting thing for us, obviously, is that later on after that talk,
40:09
and we've mentioned this before,
40:10
the STA Theatre this year is very much providing a chance for the speakers from
40:15
the other big theatres to come and have a little bit more of an intimate gathering
40:18
with people sitting around a circle and kind of get a bit more hands-on maybe.
40:24
And that's exactly what we're doing with James, which will be 1.45 on day one.
40:28
And that will be based, you know, they won't have to have gone to your talk.
40:31
It might be useful if they have, it'll be an extension of it,
40:34
but it'll be a Q&A on basically what we're talking about tonight.
40:38
And the questions really helped in there we've talked about this a lot but as
40:41
you as an educator the best way you can help people is by having them give you
40:45
questions yeah yeah it helps me know know what what we need to know is like
40:52
and what we want to know and where the where the black holes are so yeah it's
40:56
much easier to to play jazz when you're given something,
41:00
beautiful what it happens and i guess as well that that you know as well as
41:05
an educator that the amount of information that's going to be retained by people in a Q&A environment.
41:11
Depending on what their goal is, but it's probably more is they're going to
41:15
remember more of that possibly than sitting in a big kind of traditional theater
41:18
with somebody talking at them for 25 minutes, not to put that down, but yeah,
41:23
reflections really where it all kind of comes into play isn't it yeah because it
41:26
comes back to the the why it's not you know giving
41:29
a 30 30 minute kind of presentation was really 25 minutes it's like it's just
41:34
okay i will give to you what i think maybe you want to hear but really it's
41:39
just what i want to say whereas in the in the q a it's like okay you have you
41:44
get the opportunity to voice your need,
41:47
you know, what confusion or frustration I think Stephen had frustration rather
41:53
than a question and we share that and we can explore it and it's much more much
42:00
more personal, much more,
42:03
approachable, understandable, relatable and memorable.
42:08
Of course I'm sitting there thinking yeah, your Q&A is definitely going to be
42:12
that but for some educators who are used to just,
42:17
giving information and kind of standing on a bit of a pedestal when
42:20
it comes to q a it's more tricky if they're not used to
42:22
that environment because you might get caught on your toes a little bit you're
42:26
quite happy to receive questions because you know you encourage people to ask
42:29
questions but i'm wondering i'm not bad-mouthing anybody else i'm just thinking
42:32
the traditional educator might find a q a of being put on the spot a little
42:36
bit more tricky i cannot totally understand that that that's true and it is
42:41
absolutely it's true for me i'm i'm not the I'm the world's quickest thinker,
42:45
and I'm not the world's most extrovert person.
42:49
So being put on a stage with a bloody microphone in front of a crowd of people in a huge auditorium.
42:56
Won't necessarily see me at my best or most creative but i will certainly do my best.
43:02
And we've also got the speakers lounge which i'm sure you'll be delighted with
43:05
where you can stand and just have people run towards you and fire whatever
43:08
they like at you so you'll be hanging around there most of the day i know
43:11
that's like custard pies we've got
43:15
stocks and everything just waiting wonderful now obviously
43:18
the most important part of the evening we should mention that you're also on day two
43:21
in the hands-on hub because we know what would happen to us if we didn't mention
43:24
that a certain animo in Matsieri would be
43:27
hanging our entrails up around the hands-on hub for display
43:30
yes you're going to be on day two which is really exciting as well i'm i
43:33
probably won't be able to get along to hear it but i'm looking forward to what people say
43:37
about it it's at 10 10 in the
43:39
morning at the hands-on hub and that's going to be it's called the shoulder integrating
43:43
touch with functional anatomy for a modern approach to shoulder ability
43:46
and i think that's really useful because everything people
43:49
have picked up maybe and learned they can now apply to
43:52
a particular joint yep so yeah
43:55
we're going to be exploring how to use movements to mobilize
43:59
clients movement as opposed to us doing
44:02
kind of the standard protocols of the the
44:05
passive mobilizations and also
44:08
being creative in thinking what else moves
44:11
the shoulder as opposed to me moving my
44:14
shoulder then by my right arm moving my right
44:17
shoulder i can have my left arm mobilized in the shoulder
44:20
I can have my head mobilized in the shoulder I can have either lower limb mobilized
44:23
in the shoulder I have my breath mobilized in the shoulder we've got so many.
44:26
Other potentials which are much more for many people in many situations applicable.
44:32
To their to their function because it's it's not we don't always move the right
44:38
shoulder to move the right shoulder.
44:39
It's gonna be great I'm already getting not fear of missing out I know I'm gonna
44:44
be missing out because I'm going to be stuck in the STA with amazing other guests. That's fine.
44:49
That's okay. It's not about me, Therapy Expo. I can deal with that.
44:52
No, great. It'd be a wonderful opportunity for people to come and see you.
44:56
Where are we? Oh, nine minutes to go. And also, if people are wanting to see
44:59
if they can't make Therapy Expo, I have to remember, I mean,
45:02
this is great building up to Therapy Expo.
45:03
Some people can't get there or maybe they have to work. They can't get time
45:06
off, which is always a shame. So I'm sorry if we have been just talking about
45:09
Therapy Expo, everybody.
45:11
But there are other ways to see you. And there's a particular one coming up
45:14
again with Anna-Marie at the ST School next.
45:15
I'm sure you've got other things going on, but that's going to be,
45:18
that's kind of like, again, you're kind of bread and butter about functional
45:21
body work and people getting to know what you're about.
45:24
Tell us a little bit about what that is. Part of a series, isn't it?
45:28
Of different exercises. It's the standing one. It's the standing.
45:32
Yeah. So functional bodywork is, I teach over two weekends, one standing.
45:37
So it's kind of exploring the pluripotentiality of tissues and how the reality of how we move,
45:47
how we can apply bodywork in ways that can make functional sense for the client.
45:53
It's not necessarily kind of first treatment kind of work.
45:58
It can be very informative for assessment and getting field clients in the early
46:04
parts of the session or early parts of the therapeutic relationship.
46:09
Excellent for skill building and for relationship building because the client feels heard.
46:16
Because we teach ways in which we can put them into safe, comfortable positions
46:22
and watch how the whole system responds whenever they make a certain movement.
46:28
And it's building up the skills to have the vocabulary to be able to palpate,
46:33
investigate, and hopefully, well, obviously improve their trust to make certain movements.
46:41
And the first weekend is not necessarily an order.
46:46
But the first weekend that's coming up with Anna Maria is in standing.
46:50
So how to access pretty much all of the major muscle areas of the body and being
46:57
creative with how we can work with them in a soft tissue manual therapy kind of fashion.
47:04
So it's a way of, for me, teaching manual therapy, but also for me,
47:11
the more important teaching aspect is feeling the reality of how the body responds to movement.
47:19
So it's a two-day functional, sorry, Stephen, for using that bad word again,
47:25
the F word again, is coming back to the reality of functional anatomy.
47:29
It's like, well, you get to feel what happens in your subtalar joint whenever
47:32
you take your arm up and over your head, what happens in your knee whenever
47:37
you make certain movements with your shoulder, your eyes, your head, anything.
47:43
So you can actually feel the response in real time with a real person.
47:48
I think that'd be really exciting for because again
47:52
a lot of therapists and hopefully you'll have plenty on
47:55
the course who have come from a traditionally taught soft
47:58
tissue therapy course whether it's sports muscle massage and they
48:01
haven't really been given anything which is involved assessing the
48:05
client off the couch a lot of it is lie down on
48:07
the couch lie down let's check the range of motion here
48:10
and so one you're not we've already talked about maybe
48:13
you're not getting as much information as you you can do and
48:16
also the client isn't experiencing sensations
48:20
which they really need to experience in order to help them through that pain
48:23
problem they're having so wonderful experience to get people off the couch and
48:27
not have that fear of oh my god what do i do they're standing up i'm no longer
48:31
in control but you are you should never really be in control anyway you're facilitating
48:35
aren't you so yeah it's a great opportunity yep.
48:39
Very exciting, because it is a struggle. And we touched on it earlier on of
48:44
crisis moments and self-doubt and that.
48:46
But I think one of the things I love about you and a lot of my guests is you
48:51
recognize that you've been through that.
48:53
So you understand what it's like to have your beliefs and things you've either
48:57
paid loads of money for, invested a lot of your time into to be challenged.
49:00
And it's very rarely a case of throwing everything away, isn't it?
49:04
There are elements of truth in all the stories.
49:08
Any kind of therapeutic story that's survived for some years,
49:14
there's obviously some grain of truth and usefulness in it.
49:17
All of the vocabularies that I've learned, all of the skills that I've learned
49:20
over the years, they're still in the tool bag, as many people talk about. They can come out.
49:26
There is a certain vision with anatomy trains that we can talk about the reality
49:32
or not of the communication of force.
49:34
But we can still see a line of strain that goes through the body in certain
49:39
movements in that direction.
49:42
So everything has a potential reuse.
49:47
We still go back to the old albums in 1972.
49:51
Too and you know they there's still a wonderful freshness and
49:55
in there they still have something to to give us some yeah
49:58
very definitely i think it's great to for
50:01
people who are listening that to hear that because it is
50:04
normally met with fear when you hear someone's rocking your boat a
50:07
bit it's fear and then maybe anger and dismiss it
50:09
and that's one of the biggest barriers unfortunately
50:13
but it's up to us and the teacher to bring that down great okay well look at
50:17
it it's four minutes tonight so if people anything else coming up we'd like
50:21
to give a shout out to what else apart from therapy extra and anna maria i think
50:24
that's everything isn't it that's yeah i'm pretty good on after that i'm off
50:28
to i'm teaching in thailand so if anyone wants to come to thailand.
50:32
Shout out we did that last time i think where thailand is it bangkok okay lovely
50:36
so if you've got anybody from bangkok joining us tonight you're going to be
50:39
over in bangkok when's that.
50:41
Is from January 16th, 17th, and I'm teaching Understanding Anatomy of Movement,
50:48
Born to Walk, and both Functional Body Work workshops.
50:52
So it's a full-on seven-day teaching trip.
50:57
Amazing. Amazing. Right, for people who want to follow and connect with you,
51:02
James Earl's Instagram?
51:04
So Instagram, yeah. So Instagram at
51:07
underscore Born to Move or at born
51:11
underscore to underscore walk or the
51:15
website it's old-fashioned the website born to move.com
51:19
fantastic and facebook you're quite active on that still or not really not as
51:24
much that's fine i understand i commend that it's wonderful yeah it's still
51:29
born to move on on facebook okay right we'll put all those notes and links on
51:35
the show note in the show notes as always so thank you very much,
51:39
James, for giving up another hour. Fantastic to talk to you.
51:42
Even one round, Steve, in the end. Nice chat, gents. Cheers.
51:47
Chat, an educational... Wasn't it more than just chat? I don't know.
51:51
That's fine. Thanks, Steve. Thanks for joining us. Thank you,
51:52
everybody who joined us live. Really appreciate it.
51:55
And don't forget the discount. Oh, yes. And if you are interested... You're so good.
52:01
If you are interested in, obviously, the discount, if you're an STM member,
52:05
then there is, as always, a discount for you. And this is one of the reasons.
52:09
It's probably the bottom or the top of the pyramid, depending on where you're
52:12
looking at it, for being a member of the STA.
52:14
But there are discounts for being part of the STA. And there is one.
52:17
I'm not going to say it out now, but if you're interested in the December course
52:21
with Function of Body Work with James Earles, then go to the members area on
52:24
the STA website or contact us, matt at the STA.co.uk or jake at the STA.co.uk,
52:29
and we will give you the code.
52:31
I'm not going to say it here, obviously, but for STA members,
52:34
then yeah, check it out and you can save yourself 15 fantastic right thanks
52:40
for joining us people thanks for the podcast next week.
52:44
We bring you the last chance to have a chat with somebody from TherapyX,
52:48
but there's plenty of speakers I did manage to get on the show,
52:50
and it was not done out of preferential treatment whatsoever, apart from James.
52:53
It was just a case of who was free and that sort of stuff. But we did have one
52:57
week, the first time in my life in about 10 years of broadcasts where I just
53:02
spoke to him for an hour and then went, sorry, none of it recorded.
53:04
So I am thrilled that Tim Stevenson is still talking to me, and he will be with
53:10
us for another hour this time, which you'll be able to see as well as me.
53:14
Um tim stevenson is going to be here from dynamic
53:17
shoulders a fantastic such a great guy when
53:20
it comes to shoulder strength and conditioning great story he's
53:23
going to be at therapy expo as well talking um in the sta
53:26
theater and i do encourage you to come along and
53:29
have a listen to please do come along
53:32
have listened to tim it's the second time i've made him come along for free
53:35
and it'd be great to have somebody here live i really enjoyed the
53:38
hour i was with him it's just unfortunately it didn't record but that's all
53:41
sorted now so that'll be next tuesday at eight
53:44
o'clock as always in the on the sports
53:47
lobby association youtube channel or you perform facebook but for the moment
53:50
just once again thank you to james earls for joining us thank you james thank
53:54
you thank you very much thank you for having me again oh absolute pleasure and
53:57
i look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks at the expo yes man thanks
54:02
everyone who joined us and as always people until next week look after it.
54:05
Music.