Today’s podcast features personal trainer, massage therapist and musician, Charlie Reid.
Living in the San Francisco Bay Area for 8 years of my life brought with it the opportunity to meet and learn from many wonderful and knowledgeable coaches and trainers. One of those that I met was Charlie, who I met at Pat Davidson’s “Rethinking the Big Patterns” seminar. Charlie and I later were able to both spend time at Kezar stadium learning sprint and movement philosophy from Adarian Barr, while having plenty of conversations on training.
Charlie is one of the smartest and wisest coaches that you may not know. His base of knowledge is massive, as well as the range of those coaches and systems he has spent time learning from. If there is a system of thought out there in the world of movement and human performance, there is a good chance Charlie has experience with it. Charlie is not only a strength coach, but also a certified massage practitioner, and spent years as a professional musician.
On the podcast today, Charlie helps us “zoom out” our views on things like stretching, corrective exercise and motor learning. At the core of our chat today is an extended discussion on the redundancy of the term “corrective exercise” and how to look at the body in a manner that leaves us wondering what truly needs to be corrected. We also get into a learner-centered approach, and how facilitating that approach may differ from working from novices, up to more advanced athletes.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Timestamps and Main Points
5:50 What Charlie learned from a silent meditation retreat, and what he learned from that in regards to exercise and the body
9:50 The relationship between long isometric holds, fatigue and heart rate variability
17:00 Charlie’s experience with the Egoscue method, and what good could possibly come from holding a passive stretch for such a long period of time
23:20 Ideas on Feldenkrais and the body’s ability to heal itself, as well as teaching individuals to help themselves as the highest order priority in coaching
36:05 Charlie’s take on corrective work and rehab based on a learner-centered approach versus a structured approach
48:05 How being a massage and body-worker has helped Charlie to acquire a better understanding of the body and how to train individuals
57:20 How Charlie puts together a rehab/training program based on common principles and concepts
1:01:20 Where respiration and breathing has landed for Charlie and how he integrates it
“As soon as we get the slightest bit of discomfort, we cringe up, and tighten up, instead of softening around the pain”
“I wonder if you could look at someone’s HRV score, and correlate that with their ability to tolerate long isometrics”
“Two of the most common reasons why bodies get better is novelty and graded exposure”
“Feldenkrais never told you what to do, you got to come up with your own solutions, that is the highest level”
“When you give constraints for a beginner, maybe it’s better to create more structure first”
“The consumer really drives (which coach) gets the dollars, and that’s really frustrating (in light of a “position driven” versus “learner driven” approach to training)”
“I’m less and less a fan of “corrective” exercise, it’s kind of a popular word, I know language is important, but I don’t know if we are correcting anything. They are low-force, inner directed mindful exercises to generate some awareness around something”
“I’m always asking the questions, say you are doing a side-clam for your glute medius, but show me where that goes, show me where that’s eventually going to lead to”
“I don’t love the term “corrective exercise”, it’s all just gradations of movement”
“I will do quote-on-quote on corrective exercises if I have to; but only if I have to”
“Anything that has a name like a “fascia blaster” I am probably not going to subscribe”
“If you are feeling the need that you need to foam roll 30 minutes before the workout, maybe let’s talk about what’s going on, and maybe we can save you some time”
“Foam rolling and doing low-level exercises is no guarantee that you are going to avoid injury; I’d rather you go home and take a nap”
“I start there with all my people, learning how to get a rib-cage stacked over a pelvis”
About Charlie Reid
Charlie Reid B.S., CSCS, CPT, is a movement educator, coach and massage therapist based out of San Francisco, CA. His passion lies in helping others realize their physical potential through training smarter and learning to move their bodies in the most efficient way possible. He believes that physical health and well-being can be distilled from learning to master one’s own body through guided discovery and consistent practice. When he’s not coaching one-on-one, teaching workshops, or hosting seminars in the Bay Area, he is most likely drinking too much espresso whilst torturing a bass guitar.
Some of Charlie’s certifications and education includes:
- B.S. in Kinesiology (San Diego State University)
- National Strength and Conditioning Association_-Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (NSCA-CSCS)
- American College of Sports Medicine-Certified Personal Trainer (ACSM-CPT)
- Functional Range Assessment Certified (FRA)
- Functional Range Conditioning-Mobility Specialist (FRCmc)
- Functional Range Release-Upper, Spine, and Lower Limb Certified
- Dynamic Contraction Technique and Ki-Hara Resistance Stretching Certified
- Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certified
Transcripts:
Joel Smith: So you were just telling me about a silent meditation retreat, and I’m curious, what did you learn on that? And in the sense that you could relate it to just things that perhaps we do in the gym or in rehab or quote-unquote corrective type work.
Charlie Reid: Yeah. I mean, a little bit of backstory. I toyed around with some meditation things and I had done this thing called MBSR, which is mindfulness-based stress reduction. And it culminated in a one-day meditation retreat and it was kind of like a collection of different mindfulness techniques. So you got a little bit of exposure to different things, whether that’s yoga, walking, meditation, sitting meditation, body scan meditation. But really the one day retreat, which was six hours long, was like the most powerful thing for me. So, you know, my brain was like, I want to do, what’s like the Navy seals boot camp of meditation retreats? And talking with some friends and colleagues and whatnot, they said, Oh, the 10-day vipassana, you gotta do that. And so, my stepfather sadly had passed away in 2018 and I was like, kind of in this existential crisis.
Charlie Reid: And I decided that this was the year that I was going to do this. So that’s how I arrived as a little bit of the backstory there. But what’s interesting. And I think for movement professionals, coaches, fitness professionals, we’re such movement-oriented people. So I would say as it relates to movement and fitness, that taking some time to not move and just to sit is probably very, very challenging. At least it certainly was for me to be at this meditation retreat, having to, you know, you’re meditating for 12, 14 hours a day and there’s no talking, your exercise is basically walking in between, you know, hour-long or two hour-long sits. So, that was probably the most fascinating thing to me was kind of getting away from this idea of moving and starting to just sit with yourself.
Charlie Reid: And also as we were discussing, just a moment ago that, sensations in your body physical sensations are transient a lot of times, they come and go. So they come and go into your awareness and they’re not always permanent. So maybe as it relates to something like pain, oftentimes sensations of pain that you would feel in your body, or if you define it as pain are just a sensation like any other. And so you’ll, for example, be sitting and I would experience like incredible back pain, but if I would just sit there for long enough, oftentimes it would go away. And what actually made the pain worse was like trying to want to be somewhere else other than with the pain, which could be a valuable lesson for people. Because we just, as soon as we get a little slightest bit of discomfort, we’re just like, Ooh, no, we cringe and tighten up around the pain as opposed to softening around the pain. So those are just some of the many lessons I think that could be gleaned from that, but I’m sure everybody has their own experience and should have their own experience going through something like that. But yeah, it was a very, very cool experience.
Joel Smith: I think in our general culture, we just don’t tend to take much time period for anything that involves prolonged time periods of sensing and just being forced to sit with ourselves. It definitely takes some intention to do that. Was this before or after you and I were hanging out at Kaiser talking about extreme ISO lunges? I forget.
Charlie Reid: That’s a good question. I think it was afterwards or might’ve been right afterwards. Yeah, I can’t remember. But I had been doing like isometrics… That actually be interesting to see, like if I did some isometrics beforehand and then did the 10 day sit and just see how the quality of that felt, or maybe I could sit with it for longer. I can’t recall.
Joel Smith: I think there’s a lot of things to be learned out of like just the extreme isometric lunge, holding a prolonged, full stretch lunge position for time. And I think one of the thoughts that has crossed my mind is where is this pain coming from? Or what is this? And actually, I should say the most extreme, maybe even more than extreme iso lunge is just hanging from a bar, just straight up, hanging from a bar. Cause what are those? The at least the hypnosis anecdotes would say this person got hypnotized and they could hold this bridge like indefinitely or whatnot, or the physiology that might say your slow twitch muscles really have a almost indefinite capacity to hang on or whatever. And where does fatigue start with like central governor theory? And I noticed this more when I’m having very poor days with hanging from a bar where probably the last year more.
Joel Smith: So I used to, when I was rock climbing, I could easily go like over three minutes. And then the further I got away from that, I could still get over two, but then days I couldn’t get over two, and I’m just like dying. I’m like, where is this coming from? Like, is it just strength? Am I mentally weak? Am I neurally weak? Like what is going on here? But I’ll say too like the extreme iso lunge is a good one. I’m like, what is this like? Cause in coaching people on the extremist iso lunge for long enough, you realize that there’s almost in some ways, two kinds of people. It’s never just two, but there’s the people who just don’t even want to go into that stretch range because they know it’s going to hurt. And so they just avoid it. And then there’s the people who will basically, you’re the person who goes down into the ISO lunge or you’re the person who goes up out of it. And I wonder if there’s something to the person that goes into it and like being willing to sit with that, you know, sinking into that discomfort, if you will.
Charlie Reid: That’s interesting. I wonder if you could do like something where you could look at somebody’s HRV score, for example, and correlate that with their ability to tolerate like long isometrics, you know what I mean? Like that day, like you were mentioning, you’re kind of using the bar hang as a litmus test for how well you’re doing that day maybe. If for some people that can there maybe a little bit too revved up on the sympathetic side of things. Maybe they just can’t handle the isometrics that, or even something like breath hold times. Like if you’re really, really stressed out, you know, your control pause, your breath, hold time would be, would be less. And that can affect things too. And I think people that are really like super parasympathetic, maybe they can just sit there and handle the burn for longer. I don’t know.
Joel Smith: I haven’t done a lot with HRV outside of myself just a little bit, but I would bet you that there’s a super close correlation between the HRV and the hang time. The podcast I just did with Leo Ryan, a breathing specialist, not too long ago, he was saying that that’s what he uses instead of HRV. And it makes me think every time we’re in the gym, like what are we doing from an art form perspective that says we’re skilled practitioners like looking at a phone or an app that says HRV does not take, I mean, you get better at it, but it’s like, it’s not as skilled as just teaching someone to breathe and understanding based off that. But perhaps a rougher form of a pure number would be just, Hey, everyone, hang from the bar. As long as you can this morning.
Joel Smith: All right, let’s write down your time. And I would do that particularly with the water polo team that I trained at UC Berkeley because the assistant coach loved it too. It was a tough thing to do. And he really enjoyed that. And it’s an easy way to get something very hard in and difficult without like destroying people, you know? Cause you recover from it pretty quickly. We usually did at the end though, it’s kind of hard. I mean, if you think of the workout as a crescendo effect, like to come in and say, all right, like get on the bar, let’s see. And you do it every day. I mean, it takes a little bit of mental energy. I’d be interested though. If there’s anyone out there looking for a master’s thesis research or something or an idea, I think that’d be kind of cool. So if you end up doing it, let me know.
Charlie Reid: Totally. I think there’s a lot to be learned about ways to ramp the system down. And I certainly see that, you know, with meditation practice, I don’t necessarily either think that meditation has to have a monopoly on this kind of stuff, but like, there’s something to be said for this like public tabula rasa. This cleaning of the slate and starting from a baseline and maybe even just like cleaning house mentally or psychologically every year to start to appreciate greater levels of training. And maybe it’s just not adopted as much again, I’m guessing here, but maybe it’s just not adopted as much just because it’s time constraints. Like, you know, I’m thinking of athletes here, like, okay, everybody, we’re going to go on a 10 day silent retreat. They’re like, ah, we actually got training to do, you know, but yeah, it’s super fascinating.
Charlie Reid: I’m curious to see if other coaches have implemented some of that stuff with their athletes at some capacity. I know we have apps like Headspace, I think is one of them. And people do like 10 minutes a day, but which I’m sure could have some benefit, but the difference between doing 10 minutes, like a 10 day sit can be quite profound. And at least from my personality, I feel like I need to be hit over the head with a frying pan to really like feel something. And maybe some people can appreciate subtlety. I never got much out of doing just 10 of an app, but I guess that’s why there’s something for everybody.
Joel Smith: Yeah, same here. It makes you think. Well, what if you just did, I mean, you could look at doing an extreme isometric hold for that same amount of time. I’m curious what would happen in the brainwaves, you know… Actually maybe I’m gonna do that. Cause I have the Muse headband, which it’s like an EEG or electroencephalogram and tells you where your brain waves are at. And so far I’ve just used it for, you know, it’s kind of a, I guess meditation tool though. I’m so ADD, part of me is just interested where my brain waves are at. If it’s like low and you’re getting into alpha, you hear the little birds and stuff like that, but maybe I’ll do this. This will have to be a YouTube video or something is just to see what happens the further… I feel like I might go the opposite way, like, you know, way in the beta high beta and just like up cycle, like freaking out. Active meditation. We’ll have to see what becomes of that.
Charlie Reid: Keep me posted. That sounds fun.
Joel Smith: So with the sustained work though, like akin to maybe the meditation… And one thing we’re going to talk about is just like, maybe we could just call them strong schools of thought in the fitness and performance industry, extreme, very strong schools of thought, but you were in Egoscue for awhile, which I think involves like long stretching periods of time. Could you explain a little bit about, I mean, honestly, I don’t even know that much about it. I have one client who uses it and seems to enjoy it, but I’ve always just kind of wondered like what good becomes of holding this long passive stretch for such a long period of time. And what’s your take on that whole system?
Charlie Reid: Yeah. Pete Egoscue was a Vietnam war vet who had a tragic injury, and I think he was shot in his hamstring and he came out of it in a lot of pain and he was terribly crooked and he just looked in the mirror one day. And this is, again, this is folklore. So I’m getting the story kind of secondhand from one of his employees who I worked under, but he looked in the mirror one day and he’s like, I’m crooked. And he tried to straighten his body up in a way that was anatomically correct. I’ll put that in air quotes. And he tried to hold it and it was very exhausting and he fell out of it, but he noticed that he felt better. So we can call that an isometric, right? You’re holding an isometric position. So he went to the doctor and said, Hey, doctor, I’m in a lot of pain.
Charlie Reid: And the doctor said, you know, just take these drugs, whatever. I think this is in the seventies. And so he just grabbed the anatomy book out of the doctor’s office and says, nevermind, I’m gonna figure this out on my own. So he kind of went on this journey to healing. And so we kind of got ahold of a lot of books and started doing his own research and experimenting and came up with this method. The method is centered around kind of what I would call very old school, Florence Kendall era posture, 90 degree angles, straight lines kind of thing. And it obviously doesn’t jive with my philosophy anymore of how the body functions, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t think it doesn’t have some utility and that it doesn’t help people, but there certainly are some features within the Egoscue system that I think are probably helpful for people, especially that are in pain.
Charlie Reid: And we can talk about those things, but there’s a lot of passive positioning and passive holds. So you, for example, they have an exercise called static back where you’re laying on your back and your legs are up and over a chair at 90 degrees at the hips and knees and you just lie there and wait until your body just kind of settles into the floor. And if you stay there long enough, you can actually feel your lumbar spine kind of melting and flattening into the floor. So for those that have like, you know, hypertonicity, or those that are in pain that have a lot of tension in their body, just sitting quietly and breathing, no matter what position you’re in, could have some beneficial effects. They also have a lot of these long isometric holds, as you mentioned. And what we know from our understanding now from the literature and as well as anecdotal experiences that isometrics tend to have an analgesic or a pain relieving effect on the body, at least for some people.
Charlie Reid: And that could be modulating biochemically from when you occlude a muscle, as you’re holding the contraction and you release that, you’re kind of creating this hydrostatic pumping effect of new fluids. There’s a change in the maybe some sensory change within the cortex. So we know that from the tendinopathy literature, that isometrics can have an effect on the feedback loops in the body and helping to decrease sensitivity. My note from Ebony Rio and colleagues in Australia, they talked a lot about tendinopathy and how there’s a, it’s almost like you have a foot on the brake and the gas at the same time. And so maybe it can kind of reset that system a little bit. And again, that’s probably a crude definition. Neurophysiology is probably much more complex than that, but I’m gonna work with that for now. And also, you know, there’s a powerful relationship between the practitioner and the client.
Charlie Reid: So Egoscue was very unique in the way that they talked to clients in the way that they communicated with them. And I don’t think that gets enough credit either. So there’s many different factors that informed the therapeutic process that I think were valuable. And so that’s why I think people probably do well, but I don’t necessarily think it’s because we got people to be more aligned posturally, you know what I mean? Posture is such a transient thing. It changes minute to minute, hour to hour. You know what I mean? So, yeah, those are, those are my initial thoughts anyway.
Joel Smith: Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack. I mean, it makes me think about the origins of that make me think of Moshe Feldenkrais and how he figured his stuff out a lot by just, I think he tore his ACL and was trying to like walk it, not walk it off, but tend to figure out how to function on it and try to just try to make a way around it. But I like what you say, because I’ve been to enough different systems where there’s always… Not always, but like a lot of times it’s, Hey, here’s this person who has a problem. Okay, come up here and let’s, you know, do a few things, whatever it is, you know, press here, you know, massage here, work here, breathe this way. And then we test again and now you’re better, whatever. And I guess to me, Egoscue actually is probably maybe the opposite of that in a sense, cause you’re just sitting there a long time, but like you said, things happening.
Joel Smith: And that’s like, that’s really, what I want to get into is what are these global ideas that are, that can really almost be expressed in all these different methods, so to speak. And so you said, just being more parasympathetic, I believe was one of the things that you were talking about or just like breathe, like just breathing there. Like if you would sit and breathe and just be mindful. And you know, instead of necessarily being in a stretch position. I’m curious what your take is on that.
Charlie Reid: Yeah. I mean, I’ve heard the same argument made for acupuncture. You know, when we do studies on things like this, do you have a good control group? Like how do you know its the needles or how do you know it’s not that somebody just gets to be with their thoughts for an hour. Or is not doing something that could potentially harm them. So in the case of Egoscue, if you’re spending an hour a day doing something that’s passive, then relaxing and not doing something, maybe that’s insidious to your body, that’s causing more provocation of symptoms then you know what I mean? So maybe it’s just avoiding the bad thing, that’s making things better, right? And also we know that it could just be the passage of time that makes you feel better. Like the body is a self healing organism. And so maybe just the passage of time helps that too.
Charlie Reid: Now I will say that. I think there’s probably two who are the most common reasons why bodies probably get better. And I guess you can, you know, extrapolate this into both pain and performance is just novelty and graded exposure. So the body is being exposed to something different and interpreting it in either a favorable or unfavorable way and then graded exposure, of course, is you’re just exposing yourself to greater and greater levels of stimulus until the body adapts, hopefully, and you get stronger if you want to call it that or more resilient or, or whatever. And you mentioned Feldenkrais. And I think Moshe Feldenkrais is probably in my opinion, as far as like somatic methods the most far ahead of his time and still relevant to today because he never told you… It wasn’t like this westernized, militant. Like I tell you what to do.
Charlie Reid: This is the way, you know, even with Egoscue, it’s like 90 degree angles. Like this is the standard we hold the body to. It must be in this. Moshe Feldenkrais never told you to be any way. It was more of a learning experience. And you learned to write your own owner’s manual, you learned and listened and he never told you what to do is all, it was all experiential. And then you get to come up with your own solutions. And to me that’s the highest level of, I think, of any of any method or system, if you want to call it that. Shouldn’t even be a method or a system. It should just be you experiencing the world and writing your own, finding your own path.
Joel Smith: Yeah, I like that. I mean, that’s where my coaching has certainly gone and I think even just on some level innately, that’s always been there with me is even, I remember when I, as a young track coach, 24, 25, 26, I realized really quickly that just saying, do this with a limb, get to this position with a limb, never really did anything. And so it was always trying to get an athlete like in javelin, instead of saying, hold your arm here and go throw it again. Like that’s what every other coach would usually do that in my conference at least they would say, Oh, do you need to do this with your arm, this, with your leg, this with your hip. And I would just be like, all right, tell me athlete, Hey I want you to do this drill and feel this stretch, you know, about five or 10 times and then go through again. You know, that just made sense to me. It just, and honestly, even I probably was more technical than that. I probably told them some positions in the drill, but whereas now I think it would be to make it more sensory oriented and, and feel this and, and those types of things. But that’s
Charlie Reid: I don’t think it’s bad either. I mean, I, I’m not, that’s not to say that I don’t judge people for being a little bit more constraining about how they teach or being more rigid about some. And you can tell me what you think about this too, but I think it’s important to meet people where they’re at. And you know, when you create more constraints for learners, sometimes it’s better just to give some structure at first, right? Like you can’t go to a five year old necessarily, unless there may be a savant and you say like, all right, we’re going to talk about the javelin. And then you just say, I’m not going to do anything. I’m just going to have you experience the javelin. You know what I mean? Like then he ended up kid throws a javelin at some other kid or something. I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t teach kids.
Charlie Reid: That’s probably not a fair analogy for me to comment on that. But yeah, sometimes you have to have rules, but then over time, hopefully, as our understanding grows that start to release those constraints and break the rules a little bit and become a little bit more experiential. But that’s also a scary place to be in, and can be frustrating for some people. And I understand in a commercial model when you’re trying to sell a product, sometimes it’s nice to be so certain about things and create this rigidity because it gives people confidence to deal with a problem that’s scary. And the reality is that the world is a very vast and uncertain place. And so sometimes providing some peace of mind through uncertainty just helps people to sleep at night. You know, you and I know as coaches, it’s like, none of us know what we’re looking at and the body is incredibly complex, but hopefully, you know, I have some ideas that can move us in a direction that’s going to be good for you.
Joel Smith: Yeah. That I like that. Cause I will say, I like how you drew that distinction out. And I think of it is yeah. The highest order of coaching is really just having… You think about a cheetah, doesn’t need anybody to tell it what to do. It just does what it is and in it’s environment it’s perfect. It’s perfection. No one could coach, when you see those slow motion of a cheater or anything like the Bobcat jumping 10 feet and landing on a rock, nobody’s going to be able to coach that animal to do that thing any better than it’s doing. It’s impossible. That is perfection. And so it’s like, well now where did things go wrong with us? Do we have a bigger, you know, part of our brain that screws it all up and you know, in our development, do we miss steps?
Joel Smith: Do we miss fundamental skills? Did we not move enough? Did we get hurt? Do we wear bad shoes? Are we too hard on ourselves from a, you know, a pain and punishment perspective? And we use more will than we need to like, and I don’t want to go on with that too much, but I’ve seen it in coaching where a coach may be trying to tell an athlete, trying to get an athlete, to feel something the way a child might feel. But the athlete just wants just, just tell me where to put this limb. I need a position to anchor, you know, so I think the ultimate is if we can just explain things without having to say, you know, talk about positions and put this limb here and feel this muscle, but it’s almost like you said, like there’s like a bridge maybe to get there for a lot of people.
Joel Smith: And I think that that is important. Cause I think being around track meets enough, I would say for every, probably one person that you can see is out there feeling a rhythm, feeling the movement, feeling their body, there’s probably five or 10 who are just trying to find a position the coach told them to do, you know? And it’s like we want to be like that more like that person or time. And there is also the idea of the, I think people make the straw man on the learner centered approach saying, Oh, it’s just a free for all. Well, I think there’s more to it than just that like, as you were talking about.
Charlie Reid: Yeah. I mean the coaches, the best coaches that I’ve had, the privilege of watching, they have groomed their athletes over time to become more autonomous and to seek out the coaches to continue their own development. As opposed to the coach, just being a more autocratic and telling them exactly like a dictator, like you need to do this, this, this, this. So I think it probably means that at the higher level of sport and performance that, you know, there’s more autonomy on the part of the athletes. And it’s less about kind of telling people what to do.
Joel Smith: Yeah. At some level, I was talking to a coach about this last year, is on some level. I almost wonder if each of us could be a coach in virtually any sport. Like if I could, I mean, I’m not very good at golf, but if I could coach golf and I don’t know much about golf either, I mean a little bit about rotation, but I mean, I’m like, I’m not a genius at by any means, but I almost wonder, like, could I go be a good coach for a golfer just by sequentially directing their attention, you know, to say, Hey, just place your intention on what this joint is doing. And this is doing and not, you know, and just see what happens. I feel like I ended up doing that a lot in the skills that I do know anyways. And so I wonder how far that could take some people or if you just started there and saw what happened and then you started feeding in, okay, well, here’s a image of a similar golfer doing this and, you know, whatever, but I kind of wonder how far that could take some people before they’d run into roadblocks.
Charlie Reid: Yeah. That’s interesting. You know, also considering the environment too. So let’s say you took your approach, Joel’s experiential golfing Academy, and then you got some guy, super bio mechanistic, golfing guy. We’ll call him. Yeah. And he looks super sciency and he has these rules and right. And so you might be out of business, Joel, because your approach, for example, might be better for the learner longterm, but maybe this biomechanics guy, it gets results in the short term. So I understand the pressures of, and the appeal of, you know, these shaved apes, these humans that appear more confident than they are about something and how the general public really looks for that confidence to get better. Right. Even though, you know, you might think in your mind, well now I’ve seen that approach. I understand it, but really longterm, this more experiential, model’s probably going to be better for you, but again, people are going to be drawn to. And that’s really largely a problem of our industry too. We have a consumer, largely a consumer driven industry. So the consumer really drives who gets the dollars a lot of times. And that’s, that can be frustrating.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I think if you are…like if I’m going to do a tennis lesson for a kid or something, is a parent going to pay me if I just show up and I’m like, Hey…. Well I think about Timothy Galloway, inner game of tennis, like just work very learner centered, like just pay attention to how the ball feels. What does it sound like? What’s the rhythm versus trying to coach a hard line position or whatnot versus a Brad Gilbert. Someone directed me to this after I had been kind of putting out anecdotes from inner game of tennis, which, and he was saying, well, Brad Gilbert who wrote winning ugly, I think Brad Gilbert was top 10 in the world in tennis. At some point I wrote a very technical Chrsitian Thibaudeau called him a type three, like a very analytical structural book on how to like be a very structured.
Joel Smith: And, and people would say, this guy technique is not very pretty, but he’s just tactical. And so, well, what if we could have the best of both worlds? What if that guy could have had a more, because obviously his form was not good because it was probably very rigid and there was a very strategic, the strategical wheel centered person in there trying to, you know, out and it clearly worked in that way. I’m just always interested with what is the balance in these things? I do think too about a study I’ve been aware of for awhile was… I don’t know who did it, but Frans Bosch highlighted it. Cause I know his, you know, Frans Bosch really big like motor learning and human skill acquisition guy. And it was two groups of throwers. And I think they were fairly high level, like fairly decently trained and one group just went and they just threw the discus or whatever.
Joel Smith: And they, all they got was feedback of how far it went. That’s all they knew. How far did this go? And then the other group had a coach like coaching them up and teaching them what to do. And the, the group that I believe this is like 99% sure this is what happened. But the coached up group did a little bit better in like the short term, like the first few weeks. But then as the weeks went on that group that just had the feedback of results and that’s it eventually eclipse because all these coaching cues were just biomechanical shortcuts. I had this idea there that these are all hacks. I was listening to health and wellbeing podcasts where they were talking about like hack is the common for everything. Like, and I always kind of hated that. I don’t know why, like
Charlie Reid: It’s the Tim Ferriss syndrome, you know, the four hour athlete, right?
Joel Smith: Yeah. It’s like, something’s wrong. So here’s a quick bandaid to slap over it, but you’re not getting to the core of what’s going on. And so I think that that can be the same thing with coaching cues and mechanics is, Hey, here’s something that’s wrong. Let me give you a position to maybe fix it and maybe get you ahead for, and maybe get you ahead for a few weeks or months, but this isn’t what your system is meant to do from its purest form. You know, it’s like that, you’re not letting that supercomputer, that’s coordinating all these reactions and balances and levers do what I think ultimately is meant to do. And so that does make me think, well, what would be the balance there between, cause I’d imagined that group that just got to do whatever and then only had the distance with probably coached formerly on some, they had to have been coach format at some level prior to that. So it’s an interesting conversation. I know we were going to talk about corrective stuff and I’m trying to think about where that, where that fits with that. So maybe I’ll just ask you, this is what’s your take on corrective and rehab and where that structured versus learning centered approach fits with someone who’s in pain or someone who has suboptimal, air quotes here, posture or anything like that.
Charlie Reid: Yeah. And I’m less and less of a fan of the term corrective. I know that’s kind of a popular word, but I think language is important. And I don’t even know if what we’re really doing is correcting anything, you know, cause I think about this a lot in regards to what we think we’re doing with these corrective exercises, really they’re just low force, very mindful, you know inner centered exercises to generate some awareness around something. Or maybe like I talked earlier about graded exposure. Maybe you’re just doing a movement at a low enough level. That’s not painful until their body can build themselves up in order to do the things that they want to do with their body. So I’m not against the exercises themselves. I think they’re just different ways of engaging somebody’s, you know, psychophysiology for lack of a better term and getting them to start moving again.
Charlie Reid: And so I think any movement really can be quote unquote corrective, but really I think it’s just the way that they’re implemented and what do they fold into? Shane Parrish has a great book called the great mental models and he talks about the second order thinking in the book. And so that is where does it go? So I’m always asking the questions. Okay, you’re doing a, let’s say a side clam for your glute medius. Well, where does that go? Show me where that goes. Not that I’m against a side clam necessarily, but you have to show me where that eventually is going to lead to. So I always ask and then what? And if I can’t think in my mind, you know, where the side clam is going to lead to, then I’m probably going to take that out of the order of exercises.
Charlie Reid: And I think that’s a problem within the continuum from rehab to performance is that we have this rehab oriented style of movement to help somebody to either modulate pain or to start the process of increasing capacity in an area all the way to performance, where we’re running, jumping, sprinting, kicking, lifting, whatever that activity is. And then there’s this chasm in the middle. And you can’t tell me that a side clam is going to make the leap into sprinting and putting multiples of your body weight on your structure. So I don’t know if that answers your question, but long story short is that I don’t really love the term corrective exercises and just look at this gradations of movement.
Joel Smith: So yeah, a spectrum of two opposite poles, one being pure, maybe sensation, I guess, on the joint level, like the small joint and proprioceptive level all the way up to giant like gross explosive motor movements and yeah. To think of it as just one big giant like spectrum, I think it’s cool because it’s like, Oh, you’re good. You can go to the gym and just totally crush it and get full sympathetic, you know, fight or flight. And to think that there’s no elements of perhaps the complete opposite polarity where there is like a level of sensation and understanding of your body and maybe that’s why the martial arts, I mean, I’ve, that’s one thing I want to get into more, but like from my understanding, the martial arts combines those worlds well, where there’s that, that inner understanding and the body awareness. And you’re combining that with the power. It’s almost as if, I mean, I’ve never done it, so I can’t speak to it. But if you’re just reading some books, like just reading a book on Bruce Lee really count. But I think it was like, I think the worry within was, it was, but yeah, I like that. So based off what you said, where are we going? So let’s just say, if we’re on these polarities and I’m in pain, I need something fixed and changed. So I can get onto the higher end of the polarity. Where do you start? Like, what is your starting point with that issue in terms of giving them something to help them on their way?
Charlie Reid: I mean, I think you should always start with what their intentions or their goals are and figure out what those movements are and what the demands are. And then really, it sounds simple, but we want to observe their activity and see what they’re doing before you start applying tools. Right? You know, so obviously somebody that is just looking to, because again, I’m not trying to author their own life for them. I’m just trying to understand what they want to do. And sometimes it’s not always clear, they’re not always clear with what they want to do. You know, like for an athlete, like a sprinter, for example, their demands are obviously going to be much higher than somebody that just wants to go hiking or walking. Right? So you consider the demands of their activities and then you say, okay, well, if you want to sprint, I know that you’re going to have to handle multiples of your body weight on one leg.
Charlie Reid: And so there’s some prerequisites there, I think that are going to have to take place before you get there. But I always try and always go to the whole first, before I start breaking up the constituent parts. And I know there’s different philosophies on how people will break that out. Some people will start from the parts and build up to the whole. I personally just have never found that approach to be a good use of time. And if I can see that, that it can accomplish the whole part then I don’t see the necessity of having to do these specialized corrective exercises necessarily. And I’ve had many conversations about coaches. It’s a really interesting conversation to have, but even things like we use things like glute bridges and I’m listing off some classic corrective exercises that people will do. Whereas if I can see somebody do just a march in place and they can get adequate hip extension and achieve the positions that are appropriate, then I think I don’t see the need to necessarily keep doing low level activities now. So I guess I also could say that I will do corrective exercises, quote-unquote, corrective exercises if I have to, but only if I have to, you know, if it means that it keeps somebody moving, then I’m, I’m in favor of doing that. Do you view things similarly, as far as corrective exercises for yourself and your athletes, or do you kind of take a different slant?
Joel Smith: That’s a good question. Well to say, as far as I go with correctives, to me correctives are more… I think a good illustration for me is I like Austin Yochum, who’s been on this podcast. He had an Instagram post that I think it fits with my ideology pretty well is he showed like an athlete doing a lateral lunge in the warmup like here, we’re doing a lateral lunge. And then he showed another athlete playing spike ball, basically doing a dynamic lateral lunge to spike the ball in space and how much greater, how much more is going on from a coordination perspective in that lateral lunge to go spike the ball, then just, Oh, the coach said, just do this lateral lunge. You know what I’m saying? So I always want to… I’d rather cater towards the more coordinated demand, the better, the more quantitative demand you can handle the better.
Joel Smith: And so I like using like the Marvin Marinovich, like the physio ball stuff, probotics is a good spectrum. They have stuff from like the low level, just simple stuff with these water bells or your body all the way up to dynamic and reversible. And so a lot of my movements rely on that, on the lower level. If an athlete is in pain, I like the idea of, well, let’s give you sensation where you don’t have it and then let’s move. And ultimately it’s, let’s move. Let’s move the body and let’s explore spaces. Like you said, let’s explore sensations and let’s get joints to move. And just by getting joints to move and just moving your body. I don’t, I feel like it’s as simple as that, be it FRC shoulder cars or my go-to for the lower back has been Gary Ward’s wedges. I mean, just total magic just by moving and opening up joints and ultimately the body kind of working as intended. And I’m getting long winded. So I’m gonna stop here, but how can I get the body as close to moving as intended. Meaning, you know, pronation supination, joint spirals, all joints are moving and then exploring that space as tolerated and then increasing the coordination demand over time as I can. I just kind of put that together in my head. So hopefully it makes sense.
Charlie Reid: No, I would agree with you. And I would say going back to my two points about novelty and graded exposure, I think sometimes a lot of these exercises are just ways of injecting novelty. So the body can start interpreting positions and movements differently. And then that may inform the whole, or maybe at least allows them to feel better or maybe feel like they’re in less pain when they’re doing an activity. And do we really know why it’s working? I don’t know. You know what I mean? I don’t think we really know or can know a lot of these things, but I think there’s a reason why we have a lot of options for movement and there’s so many systems that are born out cause they probably all work at some level. And having a collection of tools is probably going to be helpful.
Charlie Reid: Even if we don’t necessarily know the reasons why they’re working is a very good chiropractor and physical therapist, Greg Layman up in Canada and he calls it, building shit up and calming shit down. Very simply. I love it. Cause it’s such a distillation. That’s so simple. It takes things that are incredibly complex. It makes it very simple and essentially says, you’re either calming things down. So that’s decreasing pain or threat or you’re building stuff up. So you’re increasing the capacities of the body to be able to handle forces, be able to handle load. So I really, I think at the base level, even though, even if it’s a kind of a reductio ad absurdum, I’m making a assumption, probably making things too simple at some level, we’re probably just calming things down and building them up. Yeah.
Joel Smith: If I realize anything, Matt Cooper said this on this podcast and I thought it was funny, but it’s like, it’s very woke sounding to talk about the nervous system. But to me that’s how, you know, how complex is. I mean the nervous system is so complex. It’s like, I think it’s going to be the last thing that we, if we ever really figure it out, you know what I’m saying? And it’s like, so to just kind of give it up to that, that complex thing, it’s solved it, whatever I did help the nervous system to solve this problem. And for me even just getting into like just using like DC current and the ARP wave and stuff, and just seeing how the electrical resistance of the body changes based off of either using the machine itself or certain exercises, and then going back to the machine and seeing what happened, what changed.
Joel Smith: It’s just like, we can almost always just try to find what got us close. I know you do massage as well. I mean, I imagine that has helped you understand also perhaps, or gives some insights as to how this whole thing fits, cause I’m sure being able to put your hands and get into the tissue and understand things on that feeling level. I’ve heard that too, like, Oh, the tissue changed based off this input and what’s your, how has being a massage and body worker helped you understand? I guess yeah, not corrective, but just that of the spectrum?
Charlie Reid: Yeah, I just think it’s given me another layer and another set of tools again, to encourage movement and allow an experience of movement that’s maybe less threatening. So again, do I really know what’s going on in massage? No I don’t, but I do know that sometimes doing some manual work for people helps to decrease threat. If you want to call it that or help them to just feel better from a sensory perspective and then they can start moving more. And yeah, there may be some things you can glean from just putting your hands on somebody just about how they hold tension or how their joints move and things like that. But it’s, I think a lot of massage therapists, manual therapists make a lot of assumptions about things that may or may or may not be true, you know, and I kinda went down that rabbit hole pretty hard when I was going through my massage program and taking courses and people are talking about how they’re communicating at the cellular level with this, and they’re changing fiber alignment with their hands.
Charlie Reid: And, you know, I would say I’m pretty skeptical of that claim, but that being said, I also don’t think it’s I still think it’s useful or can be useful in the right context at the right time. And also people just appreciate it. I think there’s so much bashing going on with manual therapy, at least in the, you know, in the physical therapy world and the performance role, I think, and there’s nothing wrong with just helping people feel better. You know what I mean? Like why does that, I know there’s a big flame out with those massage guns. People were like, Oh, they don’t do anything and blah, blah, blah. It’s like, yeah. But if people feel better, like they’re not hurting anybody. I mean, unless you’re causing massive contusions or bruising and stuff.
Joel Smith: Like the huge, gigantic rollers.
Charlie Reid: Yeah. Rumble rollers, or the fascia blasters and anything that has a name, like a fascia blaster, I’m probably not going to subscribe, you know?
Joel Smith: Yeah. I I’m on the same wavelength with the thera guns. Cause I first saw him and I’m just thinking, Oh, this is stupid. This isn’t actually doing anything to the fascia or whatever it’s supposed to do. Right. And then, but I’m like, you know, these wouldn’t be popular if they didn’t help people feel better. Like if they didn’t help people feel better, why would you use it? And I remember someone had one and I was like, ah, my legs sore. I’ll try it. And I’m like, Oh, that does feel a lot better. Like this is great. I’d use this.
Charlie Reid: And you also look at the people that use them quite a bit, you know. Not to throw CrossFitters under the bus, but like I see a lot of the CrossFit community using these intense massage devices and I’m thinking to myself, why would they gravitate towards that? And I’m thinking, well, you know, CrossFitters spend a lot of time doing very intense exercise. And if you’ve ever as a, bodyworker worked on CrossFitters, they’re like their whole body is like incredibly hypertonic. And that’s not a judgment. That’s just how they want to operate in their world. You know? But it probably feels really good to just massage things. And so you could say like, Oh my God, your whole body’s hypertonic. You need relax. It’s like, well, that’s not my job to tell you how to live your life. So if massage makes you feel better, there’s a reason that people gravitate to the things that they do.
Charlie Reid: And that’s, you know, independent of me and what I think you should do. And I think that’s the problem of the ego within what we do is you have coaches and trainers wanting to tell other people what to do. And I think we should just start with the position of understanding and then let the person make the most informed decision for themselves that they can, not me as an expert, trying to tell you what to do, you know. You want to do a backflip off of a cliff with the chainsaw in your teeth, then go for it. It’s not my job to tell you what to do or not to do. Hopefully I would just be able to you know, provide a perspective for you about the alternative or maybe some other choices that might be more favorable for you. So
Joel Smith: I like the crossfit example, cause it makes me think about as the roller. I can’t remember the name of the roller, but it’s Donnie Thompson I think invented it. Who suit squatted, like 1300 pounds and the roller weighs like a hundred, some pounds..
Charlie Reid: Body tempering I think is what it’s called. Yeah.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Yeah. And I had heard the story about like, cause it’s like, okay, as soon as this guy does this, Oh this is the most hardcore way to roll. And that kind of stuff could like kinda mess you up? I think I’d even heard some stories of like some small scale, like, you know, injuries or soreness. That was the result of, I mean, anything you can do too much, right? Like the tool that it feels good for a huge guy that squats 1300 is maybe not the tool that used to be. I don’t know. You know, I’m sure there’s people that’s good. I mean, I, and again, they wouldn’t sell if people didn’t like, if it only worked for him and no one else, it wouldn’t sell. So clearly it works for somebody. But I do think that’s interesting that the tools we gravitate towards it’s like, it’s almost like, you know, the, as above, so below type mentality, it’s just, you know, if you work like this, but I dunno on some, on some level, you almost wonder if maybe you should draw some extremes that are bigger.
Joel Smith: You know, if you work really hard, you should rest really hard. Or I don’t know, it’s areas to explore.
Charlie Reid: Right. Well, and then, you know, where does it go? So what’s the, what’s the logical end there or illogical end, you know? So you have these body tempering devices that are 200 pounds or what’s the next step you’re going to put your arm under a steamroller.
Joel Smith: That’ll actually will get the fascia.
Charlie Reid: Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, I think at some point you should ask where it’s going. And also you’ve probably seen this with some athletes that like fall in love with the foam roller. Like you should ask some questions about like, well, if you’re feeling the need to have to foam roll half an hour before every workout, you know, let’s talk about maybe what’s going on and maybe we can save you some time of not having to feel like you need to do that. Because sometimes it’s just a belief. That’s just an idea that somebody, you know, implanted in their head or that they adopted from somebody else. Maybe they saw another athlete doing this and like, Oh, I just need to do it. I see that largely the endurance community, they tend to do like these rehab exercises that they did 10 years ago in addition to lots of foam rolling as kind of a form of an insurance policy, because they’re trying to avoid injury.
Charlie Reid: But as you and I know foam rolling and doing, you know, low level exercises, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to avoid injury. In fact, you’re probably just wasting your time. I’d rather have you just go home and take a nap or go eat or something. So that’s the tragedy of the story is that people feel like they have to do it even though they don’t need to do it. So that’s where us as professionals can help others to put the pieces together for themselves and avoid. And it’s really save them time, especially in a world like ours, where people are starved for time as it is.
Joel Smith: Yeah, for sure. I know I definitely got away from that habit of just feeling like I had to foam roll. And as soon as, and part of it too, is just, just learning how to move and train more intelligently prevents you from feeling messed up as it is just moving your body more naturally. And just understanding yourself more in the warmup to learning, to move better in the warm up to create the same effect that you would have gotten from a roller. Not saying, I’m not saying a roller can’t. I had a really good experience working in person with Rocky Snyder down in Santa Cruz, not too long ago where he would selectively use it and test use a neurological tests to then see if this is in fact actually helping you for this muscle group and it’s, but it was not at all, hey, just roll your muscles out type thing, which most people do,
Charlie Reid: I would say too about 80% of the, if I had to put a number on it about 80% of the issues that people have are really related to, as you said, just errors in training. Improper load management, doing things that are above their pay grade, not training at the right intensity and the right frequency. Those are all issues that need to be addressed on an educational level. And especially working on bodies, you know, bodies tell a story sometimes. And one of those stories could just be like, as mentioned about the hypertonic CrossFitters, you know, like they could be, it could just be that they’re tired all the time because they’re really pushing themselves very hard and maybe they’re not providing enough of a de-load or whatever it needs to be in order to allow them to adapt. Maybe.
Joel Smith: So, as you mentioned, you were talking about observing the person first, before you start assigning these things that help them to move better, get out of pain. And you’ve been through a lot of systems. Egoscue, PRI, Feldenkrais. I feel like we’ve met, maybe it wasn’t a PRI it was, it was Pat Davidson seminar where you and I first met not PRI. I know Pat has experience with PRI as well, but so the synthesis of these, these methods and means, do you have any, any themes that really tend to resonate when you’re working with somebody from the ground up, if you are trying to find that linchpin. I mean, I doubt you’re cranking out the clam shells and monster ban walks. Where has this kind of landed you a little bit?
Charlie Reid: Yeah. I think it’s hopefully getting more and more simple. We were talking about approaching this fitness singularity at some point, that’d be a wonderful goal for us to just… The one exercise that does it all. That’s what I’m always asking. Every time I’m waiting for it, nobody’s found it yet. Honestly it just gets a lot, it gets a lot simpler for me. I’ve been really interested lately in understanding kind of different physiological stereotypes, meaning per somatotypes. So like different bodies. I think we have a lot to learn. I certainly have a lot to learn about different individual response to things, right? And so you have somebody like, you know, an ectomorphic female that might respond really well to strength training. That might be the linchpin that changes her world. You know, whereas if I have somebody that is like a power lifter type that’s a really muscular, but maybe they need a little bit more aerobic work in their life to just feel better and recover better.
Charlie Reid: So I’m always interested in kind of like filling these buckets for people and just seeing based on what they want to do and what they want to accomplish and where, where some buckets might need to be filled. And often what I find is people, we like to do what we’re good at, of course, right? Like we’re naturally inclined to do what we enjoy doing, which is wonderful, but sometimes taken to an extreme, we were avoiding the things that allow our body to function the way it should. So that recipe is going to look a little different for different people. But, you know, I would say my system, if I had a system, is not that complicated. It’s really centered around understanding good movement, whatever that is for the person, fundamental movement, skill and coordination, just the ability to learn how to squat and hinge and, you know, do a pushup.
Charlie Reid: These are all basic foundational, physical literacy things. And then, you know, I, I’m a big fan of at least in the general population of just very simple strength training. I think strength training does a ton of things for people and it doesn’t have to be complicated. And as far as what it looks like, I’m not beholden to any one style of loading. I just want to get, I want to load people’s bodies. And that has several reasons structural hormonal, you know, even from a movement standpoint, to me, strength training can be loaded mobility. You can get increases in range of motion just by getting stronger in greater ranges. And so I think it doesn’t have to be too complicated. And then of course from a health standpoint, I want to make sure people are doing things that encourage cardiovascular health and aerobic fitness, which is correlated with cardiovascular disease.
Charlie Reid: So those are all important things as well. That’s kind of my overarching theme. I know that was kind of broad in general, but that’s kind of the paradigm that I operate under, you know, do you move well? Are you strong? And do you have know healthy heart and lungs and then people to get specific as far as work performance, then now we’re talking about titrating down into more of a specific format and sometimes that’ll lead us further away from health, but those are decisions that ultimately have to be made by the athlete. Not by, by me, I’m just there to be a sounding board. Or I like to say I’m a STEM cell for your dreams. So you just don’t know what you want to do. And we’ll just plug and play.
Joel Smith: Where does respiration and breathing land in all this for you?
Charlie Reid: It’s fundamental. So I would put that in kind of the fundamental movement category. There are many different ways to, breeathe. Certainly learn from the DNS courses and also through PRI about respiration as it relates to movement, you know, finding a zone of apposition. For PRI has been big for me. So I start that with all my people, learning how to get a rib cage stacked over a pelvis, and to really start from that position as they’re moving. So that’s certainly important from a movement standpoint. I honestly don’t, even though I’ve taken like Wim Hof breathing, I’ve taken Buteyko courses. I think they all have some great stuff in there. I honestly don’t spend a lot of time with it only because of the context that I’m in. I’m kind of a movement professional.
Charlie Reid: So I tend to guide breath more around stuff as it relates to improving people’s movement. So that would be more stuff in like the PRI world, the DNS world, less about the Buteyko or the oxygen advantage kind of thing. But I might encourage a client to explore that further. If it’s something that’s going to help them with their life, whether it’s helping them to ramp their system down, help with anxiety or whatever it is, or maybe I’ll refer them to somebody to get that work done for themselves. But yeah, breathing is huge. It’s so, so important. And it tells you a lot about people and how they move when they’re holding their breath or fixing in any kind of way while they’re moving.
Joel Smith: Yeah. There’s a lot of really cool observations that can be made when someone’s holding their breath. I’ve learned.
Charlie Reid: Yeah. Yeah. The coordination just falls apart. Right. I mean, you know, unless you’re a powerlifter trying to squat a thousand pounds or whatever, you know, breathing is such an important part of a movement, so it should be emphasis.
Joel Smith: Rright on man. Well, Hey, I think we’re, we’re just about an hour. I think we just about got through our list, man. So I’ll yeah. We’ll leave it at that. And it was really good talking to you, Charlie. I just always love the way your mind works and the way you see things. And it was really cool. Especially these corrective exercise and how that filters up through the explosive. And I’ll definitely be thinking about that, man. So appreciate your thoughts, your insight, and yeah. I appreciate you coming on the show.
Charlie Reid: Well, thanks for having me. Hopefully it’s helpful for your listeners.
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