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Your Muscles Are Talking… Are You Listening? · Making Muscle Memories

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your muscles are talking, but are you listening?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, I'm going to talk about how muscles intercommunicate constantly, oftentimes to their detriment, making up for muscles that are not currently doing their job.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about why this happens and how we can pay better attention to what our body is telling us.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: After 40 years of work in the fitness industry, I have learned that real strength isn't just built through exercise, but through experience.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I will share with you some of the science as well as the stories that have shaped my work.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: We are all building muscle memories.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: One rep, one story, and one day at a time.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Making Muscle Memories Podcast.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Lauren Urk and I will be your host.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is what I love to call your muscles are talking, but are you listening?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I once had a friend that used to call herself the muscle whisperer because she really works a lot on muscle activation techniques and she claimed with her clients that that's what she does.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I always love that title because really it is very, very true that our body is constantly telling us things whether we want to listen to them or not.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Many times, clients that I've worked with over the years they seem to think that the time that they're feeling pain, that is the only signal that they need to come in to see me.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: When in reality, the pain that they were feeling is sort of like the end of the chapter.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: My father was in the car business for many, many years, and one of the biggest pet peeves that he had was that many times people would bring their car in when all the check engine lights were on.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: There was a huge problem, and they have neglected this basic maintenance of their car for many years, and then they get upset when the mechanic tells them they need all these things because their car has basically been worn out.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I definitely think there is something to be said for paying attention to what our body is telling us.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before I dive into this episode, I want to tell you about a quick client story that I had.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually an online client, and this was a gentleman in his 50s that joined my platform because he was looking for a joint safe program to help him to avoid knee surgery.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the first time that we met, because I do do some live coaching inside of my platform, and we were doing a one-on-one call.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: I asked him some of the same questions that I ask any one of my clients.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And these are questions that are designed to really help him think back about why this injury may be happening in the first place.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, what they always do is they start off with the problem saying that this is the only thing that's bothering me today, and that they have nothing else that could potentially have anything to do with it.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: But as we were talking, what we started learning was that there are lots of things that led up to this that he wasn't paying attention to.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, he had had a bad ankle sprain when he was in college playing rugby.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: This ankle sprain sat him out for a whole semester, so much so that he had to wear his leg, had put his leg into a cast and wasn't allowed to use it.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he didn't really do a lot of rehabilitation when the cast came off.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: He just sort of over time the pain went away and he just kind of continued on.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, the next step was that he started developing some discomfort at his knee.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: He would notice it was a little bit stiff in the morning when he would wake up.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, as he would exercise, he noticed that he couldn't kneel very much.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was affecting how he kneeled at church or how he kneeled on a mat with his personal trainer in his in his therapy sessions.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: After that, he noticed that his gait was a little bit more altered.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was having a hard time straightening his knee.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And this is problematic when he would try to walk quickly because it affected how well he heel striked.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you think about it, in the in the normal gait cycle, when we swing that leg through, the step of dorsiflexion, that heel strike, is what allows us to then come over the top of our foot as the weight of our body crashes into the foot, we do we move into a pronated position, which sort of allows the elastic energy to be absorbed through the foot so that we can now move into the supination phase of gait using that big toe as our rigid lever to transform us.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this wasn't happening in his body because his knee did not allow him to fully flex his ankle.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Dorsey flexed his ankle.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: He was basically going into a foot slap, and the way that we found this out was I asked him to step away from the camera and walk towards me as we were on the Zoom meeting, and I noticed right away that that's in fact what he was doing.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: He was very afraid of fully straightening his knee because it hurt.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: So he got in this habit of putting his whole foot flat on the ground like a foot slap so that he wouldn't have to actually straighten his knee properly.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Why was that happening?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: His body was no longer giving him strength to fully extend his knee because he wasn't visiting that, right?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: After a while, he started noticing that there was stiffness in bending his knee as well.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this was very much affecting how he did normal activities like climbing stairs, getting out of a chair, squatting, even stepping into his pants in the morning.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: He was having a hard time standing on one leg, and over many, many years, he was having to sit in a chair.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I was prompting him through all these questions because I kind of knew where we needed to go.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: By the end of the of the call, what do you realize?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: He was like, wow, so my knee has been problematic for a really long time.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yeah, it has.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And like all people, we don't want to listen to it, right?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to listen to it because if we did, we would have to slow down, we would have to alter things, we would have to pay attention, and we would have to address the weaknesses.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's so much easier just to sort of not pay attention to them.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you're asking yourself, why does the body do this?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why does the body heal this way?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in all the years that I studied science in the science of biomechanics, and by the way, it's a huge field of study.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, I think I'll study this the rest of my life and I'll never learn it all.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the way that I would explain it to you is that muscles are always communicating.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is really important.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Our central nervous system has one job.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Don't die.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Don't die.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: We want to try to mitigate pain as much as possible, and our body always wants to keep us safe.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the things that it does to us, it's not doing this because it's trying to punish us.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's doing this to try to really help to keep us surviving, to keep us out of pain.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's to protect us, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So when we think about when we were out in the world, and this is not even involved exercise.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: We're always coming up against challenges.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: We pick up heavy things, we have to climb upstairs, we have to navigate our body weight.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: When we have pain, when a joint is dysfunctional, and probably I should say that backwards, a lot of times the joint is dysfunctional, so the body gives us more pain.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: The muscles that are supposed to oppose these challenges in our environment, we call them prime muscles because they are directly in line to being able to pick up the luggage or climb up the steps.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: They are sitting right on top of the joint and they're designed to do the most work.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say that that area has either suffered a trauma itself or it's become overused from another area that's had a trauma, the central nervous system will not fully recruit it.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, it may recruit it to a point.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: But then, like in this guy's case with his knee, when it gets to a really shortened position, so like straightening his knee fully, his central nervous system stopped recruiting that tissue.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because we were vulnerable there.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're not strong there.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: The body is weak.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: This may have initially happened from what's called inhibition.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: We have a trauma, we sprain the ankle, immediately the ankle has all this weakness, substitution, compensation happening because of the inflammation.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, the knee is having to overwork, and now that's becoming weaker.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens is when we go to that full knee extension, his body would not allow him to fully straighten his knee because maybe if he did, he would feel that swollen joint synovium or that lack of cartilage.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the body dialed back the contraction.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: But yet we're still able to climb the steps.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: How do we do it?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the body just shifted into the synergists, which are sitting on the outside of that knee.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: They could be on, you know, the above it, below it, left it, to the right of it, whatever, and that those muscles get sort of picking up the stress.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a lot of the reasons why you see people compensate and move in an awkward way.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like I always love the idea of like when someone tries to raise their arm over their head, but they just kind of do some kind of a some kind of a circumduction, a little motion like this before they bring their arm over their head so they don't have to feel pain.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the synergists are picking up the inhibition, the weakness from the prime muscle that isn't doing its job.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this might go along for a while, like you know, we just clump along, we just don't fully straighten the knee, whatever.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens over time?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Those tissues get mad.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: They get overworked because they're doing the work of the job they're supposed to be doing, but now they're also picking up the job of muscles that are also not doing their job.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like if you're moving a big couch with four people and one person just slowly starts to let go of the couch.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Have you heard that happen?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're walking up the steps, you're like, oh my gosh, right?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: You have to pick up more work.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing happened in our body.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: But the whole time your body is telling you because pain is there, dysfunction is there, swelling is there, tightness, stiffness, all of this are signs.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's saying, pay attention to me, I've got some problems here, right?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when the sinergets wear out, we might shift it to a completely different area.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's in the spine, something that's totally unrelated to that actual joint.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then the real compensation starts to happen and people develop chronic pain where it starts to turn into some of these inflammatory process diseases like fibromyalgia.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that this story is exactly going to end up at fibromyalgia, but some of these things can start with other injuries that weren't actually taken care of in the first place.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think about the idea of compensation and substitution, although it's perfect and we our body does it on purpose, it all stems from the fact that we were not paying attention, or when we were paying attention, we wouldn't slow down enough to listen and to take those necessary steps.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I I when I was once in teacher training, I had this woman for yoga.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: A woman was teaching the class and she um she told us in the beginning of the class, it was a it was Psalm 46, verse 10.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it is, be still and know that I am God.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it was all about meditation.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: But over the years, that psalm has made so much to me because it is it is in the silence that we hear God's voice.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: It is in the times that we listen to our body that we hear what our body is telling us.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: There is an intelligence that our body has.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever gone out with someone on a date and you knew on the first date something went wonky and you were like, danger, danger, real wobbin, real Wobbinson, danger.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Remember back in the 70s from Lost in Space, but you ignored it because you wanted to be in a relationship and you didn't want to be alone.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you're like, nah, I'm gonna let it go and see how it goes.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then what happened?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: The relationships kept going.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you even married that person, and now you're regretting it because you didn't listen to that inner voice.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: The exact same thing happens in our body.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: We need to take that time to be still, and we are always in such a rush.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: This happens so much in prayer.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever I stop praying and I listen, I actually have to pray, and then I have to sit there and go, okay, what is God trying to tell me?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because he always tells me something.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: But when I'm in a hurry and I just pray and then I keep going, I don't hear it.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I have learned through my practice of prayer and through my practice of exercise, which to me are very, very connected, I have to take some time to go slow and truly listen to my body.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I love giving people isometrics, because isometrics make people slow down.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's no movement.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I have to sit there and breathe and focus and listen to my body and watch when I feel pain, compensation, cramping, soreness, whatever, because if I do that, that's my body saying that I'm pushing too hard, I'm moving too far into the range, I'm using too much force, and the next day I'm gonna have pain.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So isometrics can teach us, exercise can teach us so much about our body.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're never gonna get bored if you really take, if you decide you're gonna exercise for life, because there's always gonna be something that your body is going to be telling you.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if your goal is that you want to stay in the exercise life for the rest of your life, you've got to start paying attention to what your body is telling you.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always a bad thing.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Slowing down and listening and altering your path is a smart thing.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you want to keep going down a path avoiding pain or oh it hurts to run, so I think I'll go swim.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: You really think that that's gonna last?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: The swimming eventually is gonna cause problems.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: There is an interrelationship of all the joints.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I could have a problem with my big toe, and it actually can correlate all the way up into my cervical spine.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was once in a MAT lecture of the very first time that I met my mentor, uh, Greg Roskoff, and he was treating some guy's toe, literally, and the guy couldn't turn his head, and this he didn't realize this was gonna happen, but it was a it was a lower, it was a foot and ankle class, and he treated his big toe, and the guy cuts off the kiss off the table and says, Oh my gosh, I can actually turn my neck.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the first time I went, whoa.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the everything in the body is talking to each other.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, your muscles are organs, they are sensory organs, they talk to every part of your body.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: They've even found out that muscles are directly related to age-related brain changes.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we better take time to listen to what our body is telling us.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Be still and know that I am God.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as I close out this segment, and I really I hope that this has helped you.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: The main thing was not necessarily to tell you that this is something that I'm gonna fix in this episode.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was first to make you aware.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: But secondly, I want to tell you that when we are training, we have to really think about how we're training.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Are we training in a way that allows us to work out again tomorrow?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: In my platform, FIS On Demand, I talk a lot about prehab work.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: We want to prevent things from happening before they happen.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I always take my clients through a myriad of isometrics, integrated isometrics, isolated isometrics, body weight training, and very progressive weight training to get to where they are.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I've heard a lot of people say to me, you're kind of sneaky tough, because every time I start a workout with you, I don't think it's gonna be anything, and then towards the end it was a lot, or I didn't think I did anything, and actually the next day I realized how much I had done.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the big thing is I want you to work out in a way that you're not gonna get injured and you're not gonna get sore.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: That is the best way.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you work out because you're trying to get sore, or you're trying to re achieve some goal all the time, you are going to shorten the lifespan of your ability to work out over time.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to pay attention to what our body is telling you.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So at the close of the episode, the muscle memory of the day.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Pain is rarely the beginning of the story, it is commonly the last chapter.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope that this episode helped you.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you know, of anyone that you know needs to hear this, please forward them this episode.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: As always, if you have any questions or comments and you're looking at this in YouTube, feel free to leave it below.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Give me a thumbs up, make sure to follow, and also give me a rating if you liked it.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And also, I will look forward to seeing you on food future episodes.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that this is not the only time that we're going to be talking about this, but the moral to the story again you don't have to be in pain if you exercise the right way.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for watching.