"Running Is Bad For Your Knees Is A Myth" - Protect Your Joints & Transform Your Life | Helen Hall

To start this conversation I wanted to talk about, you know, a common

myth

that exists, or what I think is a

myth

, which one is working poorly for our granddaughter, oh, that one, yeah, well, of course, it's in the context of how . you are

running

, you may be being bad to

your

knees

, but the question is why are you

running

like that, which could be bad for

your

knees

. Running per se cannot be bad for your knees. I don't remember the last time. I have had people come to see me with knee pain on both sides, but it is never symmetrical, one is always worse than the other, it can switch between knees and one has a tendency to start before the other, so given the fact that you're not jumping, you're running and for every step to the left there will be a step to the right, it seems strange that you have such bad WP that the advice is that either your knee hurts when you run. or after you run, stop running, maybe instead of saying stop running and it's bad for you, look at how you are running and even more importantly what happens when you walk, are you taking into account what your movement patterns from walking to running and running is just the tipping point of impact so there are more impact forces when we run compared to walking so is that just the negative in terms of knee pain?

So they walk but the knee is not particularly happy when they are walking but they don't notice it until they are Renning. If we step back for a minute, yes, and if we assume that running is bad for your knees just for a moment as a thought experiment, then it would be valid. reason why all runners have knee pain if running is bad for your knees you know or you should say the vast majority of people who run should experience knee pain at some point but I don't think that's the case, yes, correct B From my understanding of talking to people who have gone and lived with hunter-gatherer tribes who have studied them, done research on them, we know that many adults from these tribes in their 60s and 70s regularly run distances quite long and, from what I understand, don't complain about knee pain, so that's a long way of saying that many people can run without knee pain, so it seems to me that it can't just be running what they do. is causing if we assume which I don't assume, but if I assumed that running is bad for our knees, so you're pretty clear that running is not bad for our knees.

It doesn't make sense to me that running is bad for your knees. I've run my whole

life

and uh n equals 1 and knee pain has never been a feature so I work with so many different types of athletes and just non-athletes and it's not knee pain they're suffering from, maybe it's sprains. ankle or IT band syndrome or piriformis syndrome and its evidence. If your knee hurts every time you run, running is bad for your knees, but it's usually on one knee, so for that person who feels knee pain when they run, I guess a more accurate statement for that person might be: when?

I run like I do currently. I feel pain in my knee, yes, and the question is why, yes, so just don't stop running, find out why the knee is bothering. It is the largest joint in the body. Think of the hip as the largest joint in the body, the knee is huge, and the top of the shin is like a big table for the femur to roll on and access all the different shapes you have. It is needed and is a fairly stable joint, it only moves in two dimensions or should only move in two dimensions and it is on top of a joint that only moves in one dimension, the ankle joint, but the problem is that it is sandwiched between the ground, which has 33 articulated

joints

. with it in the foot and the hip joint, which moves quite a bit in three dimensions, which is attached to the pelvis, which moves really a lot in three dimensions, so you look above and below that particular joint that It hurts and you think well, maybe something is happening.

What's happening above or below or both is negatively affecting how the knee can handle it in our first chat, Helen. One thing we spent a little bit of time talking about was the idea that the view of the symptom is not always the cause and I think make the analogy with medicine, like sometimes your eczema, for example, is a problem with the skin, it actually comes from your gut and it seems like you are telling the reason why this myth or one of the reasons why it has been perpetuated and is considered. As true for many, it is because many people actually experience knee pain when they run.

True, you would agree with that, yes, but it doesn't necessarily mean that running is the cause of knee pain and I think what you're saying. is that the knee is between some very important

joints

, both above and below, and often there is a problem elsewhere, but the knee is taking the strain. Yes, generally speaking, in my experience, it is overloaded. It's the area that's bearing the brunt of lack of movement elsewhere or overload and you can go as far as you want, you can go all the way down to the floor to your feet and you can go all the way down to um my little soap box. head area, so if someone has knee pain, I always wonder where their head is, that will be my first thought.

I wonder where his head is. I wonder if they even know where their head is because so many people have written since then. The first podcast conversation said that they resolved their knee pain by paying attention to where their head was and discovered that it was not placed effortlessly on the top of their head. Not only did it make their race easier, it solved their knee pain, so it's their race. Easier and painless, one of the things that attracted people the most during our first conversation was the idea that if your head is not right, nothing good is going to happen, yes, so I want us to go into some new areas in today's conversation compared to the previous one. time, but I think it's such an important point that we should reiterate it for people who have never heard it before, so I think a lot of people are aware that, for a variety of reasons, maybe our sedentary lies, maybe our phones smart and our laptops, you know, our necks often or our heads stick out, we're not anymore.

I mean, if someone stood aside and took a photo for a lot of people, they'd probably be pretty surprised at what their stance does. Does that affect the movement? I'm trying to get this out of running. How does it affect walking too? Do you know why it is important that your head is well? Yes, so it is heavy, it is very heavy, on average, an adult's head weighs about 5 kilos on average. and the further along it is, there is a massive driving effect on the rest of the body, so our entire being from birth as a mass, two within three months, we need to have control of the head, so when, when the baby. is drawn to the person by their arms, the baby must have control of the head and the head must come with him, so it is about this precious commodity, our sensory headquarters and I always say that it is not a pun, but always I love that it is the sensory headquarters.

It's if we're standing on two little feet that are very mobile 66 joints down there a quarter of the bones in the body are designed to be flexible adapters and rigid levers so they're busy down there on the ground helping us stay balanced and propelling us forward. forward at whatever speed we want where our main sensory headquarters is so far in you very far in some not so far but it's still relatively far so the whole process of our movement pattern is uh to get from A to B without However, whatever speed we want to do without face planting without falling backwards without falling to the side then our vestibular system what does that mean vestibular system vestibular system is the mechanics of our inner ear that tells us where we are in our space the orientation It helps with balance, yeah, so if you go, I always think that if we go to one limb, um, at one extreme, it's easy to understand everything, so the person who doesn't have vestibular control thinks that they're falling all over. time, so it can be spread. eagle on the ground and think they're still falling, it's a horrendous condition because you can't move, so our vestibular system, our inner ear mechanics, helps our head understand where we are in space.

Our visual fields help our head understand where we are. space and our proceptive system, which are all the muscle spindle cells and the special cells, the tendons and the joint capsules that tell us about how our limbs move, how fast they are, all the forces that help us move because we are animals of movement without causing us harm and without falling, so our movement must not be harmful and it is the only thing that makes sense to me, we are not so badly made that we hurt ourselves every time we move and We are moving without face planting , we are moving without pain, without injuries and without face planting because of everything that is happening up here in the head, so the head weighs and there was an old way that was quite accurate to understand the effect of postures of the head forward and if the head forward has a tilt then you have an asymmetric load to the left or right as well so for every centimeter this is old school for every centimeter further forward your head would be if it was. posed effortlessly on your head with maximum movement potential, you add the weight of another head, support for every inch forward, your head is compared to what it could be, you know biomechanically.

Optimally, let's say yes, you are indeed having the weight of another head and you. I have already said that the heads are very heavy, the average head weighs around 5 kilos, so it is a lot of weight to add to the body, it is a lot of load, It is not like this? And then the new science that comes out adds a little bit. more details so that our neck, our spine, comes back, it has an inward curve, but it ends up quite upright at the end so that the head can rest well on the top and we can move it easily and we don't realize it.

The weight of our head, if the end of your neck does not return to vertical and tilt forward 15°, this weight of five KY L is now your effective load through the spine of the neck and then through the rest of the body is now 12. kilos you have that angle at 30° and now the effective load of the head is 18 kilos 30 degrees I measure regularly so that people come to tell me that they have weak glutes and a weak core and if they have a front head, They're epically strong, but they just don't realize how much energy they're wasting hanging over their head.

Yes, there are a couple of points here for me. You've been doing this for three or four decades. People come to see you when you're desperate when they've tried everything else and in addition to your clinical experience, you also have your Doris Doris machine, which we can talk about again, at some point, but you can very accurately measure what's happening. in people's spines and I'm saying that you regularly see people with a 30° head position, you know, in relation to the rest of the body and that adds an additional 18 kilos of effective load to that body, yeah, now just for anyone who needs another way to listen, go figure.

You are going to go out for a walk with exactly 18 kilos in your backpack, you would feel that yes, that is heavy, well, if you think about what a baggage allowance is, normally the plane is like 20 kilos, or you know, EasyJet allows 23 kilos like luggage. Look at the struggle that people have to lift that, one of the reasons I love your approach so much, Helen, is that it's very holistic, right, it's about this idea that nothing in the body moves in any way. Isolated, the way something moves has an impact on something else and me. I guess what you're saying is that whatever problems you may have with back knee, hip and foot, if your head is forward before you get into the weeds, it might be worth looking at the posture of your head or the position of your head, is often the elephant in the room because It's uh if any of the following appear on the list of uh please can you help me with neck pain, shoulder pain, between shoulder blades, middle back pain, lower back pain, um purform syndrome, buttock pain, hip pain, knee pain, calf strain, repetitive cal? tension plop fasciitis knee pain any of those I'm thinking I wonder where his head is.

I wonder where people's heads are every day, that's why I talk about it so much now, it doesn't necessarily mean that. For everyone who has those symptoms, sorting out the head posture or at least improving it will result in relief of symptoms, but it often happens, if it is advanced enough, it will be relevant and it will be relevant because if it is advanced enough enough , it has an effect on the spine, it makes the spine curve in a sea, it is like imagining a decorationof Christmas tree that is too heavy for its branch and leans the branch when our spine is not in extension, so, um, vertical, no, no, behavior.

Uh, I'm perfect with a book in my head, although I'm starting to sit down more. Uh, as you just said, our spinal extension offers us the maximum potential for movement in the vertical position, it gives us the potential to move more in all planes. movement in which that joint has more than one plane of motion, as soon as we flex the spine, as soon as we adjust, we have the same three-dimensional movement, but the range is less, so our movement potential is less, so what people get stuck. in their movement patterns they can't get out of whatever prejudice they have in their head. far enough forward to flex their spine to effectively curve it to bend it like a Christmas tree branch that has this decoration that's too heavy and now its range of motion is limited but they still want to run faster so they are pushing their ranges of motion with a spine that won't actually allow it, as soon as the spine is more extended because it can be, then you can automatically have a range of motion a little older without trying, without throwing things, without stretching to a greater range. of movement that for me, in our first conversation, Helen, I summarized the two main Essences that I get from your approach, one which is noticing and being and improving awareness of what your body is doing well and the second type of principle is about of efficiency, how can we move more efficiently now?

That's relevant to every person who's alive, because it doesn't matter if you're a runner or not, we all move, we all, even if it's just to move to your car, to move from your car to your office seat, you're still moving. your body and the more efficiently you can move your body the better, why wouldn't you want more efficiency and greater efficiency will generally result in less pain depending on the cause of the pain. I really like the idea of ​​efficiency and it speaks to what so many runners are talking about, particularly this time of year, this is the time when you know people might have a marathon or the weather starts to clear up and they're excited to get through into the spring and summer, you know, they're trying to go out and try harder to be faster.

I talked about some of those concepts with Stephen Cyer a few weeks ago, the sports scientist professor from Norway, he just had a wonderful conversation about how often we need to not push as hard, basically, but I guess what I've experienced with you is moving faster without try it, so you've improved my efficiency, my posture, all these things, so I'm really finding out, oh, I feel. I'm making the same effort but walking faster. I'm running faster but I'm not trying. Yeah, uh, I don't know if it's because I'm lazy by nature, or I just want to venture out more.

If I want to go further, I'd better make sure every move I make is as easy as possible, so people, for example, will do an ultra but put away their poles until they get tired and I. I'll say no, no, no, keep the canes. Start using them from the beginning because with effective use of the poles, whether you are walking or running, it doesn't matter, you can take 75% of your body weight off your knees. a big clue for the knees: flippers did an amazing study a few decades ago and were able to get post-surgical patients moving again more quickly to aid healing and help strengthen the heart again by using canes because they were instead It became a whole body activity. of your upper body being a sack of potatoes in your pelvis instead of your upper body sagging and having a circulation around the heart, making

life

, making the heart pump stronger and making life harder on the legs, making the exercise harder, making people not want to do it with poles the whole body starts to move the arms start to activate now the upper body is dynamic you are not like a sack of potatoes in The pelvis is now a little more extended so there is more circulation around the heart and they had massive improvements in outcomes for cardiac surgery patients and as a sort of accidental side effect of better movement patterns, much happier knees because these Older patients generally with chronic heart disease not only had chronic heart disease.

They had other things like arthritis in their knees, so a lot of people want to run, but they can't get to the next stage without it hurting, so it's not running that's causing the pain, they're already in trouble even just moving. . I want about ego, right, and you must see this a lot, I feel it a lot too, you feel it a lot, yes, you are a human being, right, yes, we all suffer from ego, but you said that for many ultra runners and, in First of all, maybe for people who don't know what an ultra is, could you just expand on what an ultra is?

Well, it's more than just a marathon, but the purists will have you believe that you must have reached 30 miles, it can't be 26.3 million. being technical technically so technically the marathon is 26.2 anything over that is an ultra is an ultra but people in the business so to speak don't really consider an ultra until it's 30 miles yeah and up , so you just said that on Ultras there are a lot of people who won't use their surveys until they're tired M. Now it's really interesting because I think ego gets in the way of humans reaching their potential in all things life. life, so let's take motion for a minute, that's an example and of course it may not just be ego, then there may be other reasons, but I'm sure some of them will consider it well, that's cheating you know, I'm not going to do that until it absolutely needs to be corrected, there are strategies for running and walking, oh that's a big one right for, frankly, park running, half marathons, marathons, but people seem to have this reluctance that they think which doesn't count unless you run all the way.

I've learned a lot about running and walking through my work with you over the past four years. It's been years, Helen, but you still hear these things, you know, I'm not going to run a marathon, I'm not going to do a marathon, Le, I can do everything, I mean, I could run all the way, but if we make the evolutionary case. to run and we think of humans as persistent hunters, right, we weren't sure we could cover 20 miles, but we weren't running all the way, you know, we were tracking an animal, we'd run a little bit and then we'd stop. we'd take a look, we'd probably hide whatever is right, so I don't know, tell me about ego and how that gets in the way of people reaching their full movement potential.

I worked with a lovely lady who needed to achieve a certain time in the London Marathon to qualify for the World Championships. Well, she is a good runner, so she is going well to the World Championships in her age group, so don't underestimate her achievements at all. She was a normal person. As an elite athlete, she's not a professional athlete, she just loved running, she was doing well and she was going to be able to qualify for her age group to be world champion and it wasn't in marathon races, it was just a running activity and she just needed this um this time and the time was uh 4 hours 30 minutes which is good it's a reasonable time um and she was 60 so it's to put into context so there's an age group and this is a reasonable The time is not super fast or slow, but for us in our 30s it's a pretty good time, you'd say for people in our 60s, so I'd be delighted if I did a marathon in that time.

Now, so there's always there's context and there's always um, if you Google average times, Google will put us in a very bad place when we talk about what we should do again. This is ego, so anyone who finishes a marathon is completely brilliant because it is a very long road. and those who finish it in a short time, as we have said before, the party bus is behind, the heroes are behind because they are out for much longer, the ones who finished and dusted themselves off with all resistance. events in the shortest time yes, they work, they work harder well and it's not even that they don't work harder, they are more capable, they get the job done faster, they can be more efficient and, in fact, it is the people in the back who are working. the hardest of all because they have more repetitions and they get more and more tired, so that's to warn anyone who gets upset because 4:30 is a reasonable time for some, that would be, you know the Pinnacle. but it has to be in the context of what we are talking about, so with this lady she needed that time to qualify and she had an Achilles tendon injury and she had not been able to train and now the marathon was 2 weeks away and she had almost lost hope, so we looked at why he had a problem with his Achilles tendon, it wasn't a difficult problem, um, but he hadn't trained enough and I said, okay, let's put this stimulus in to help. um, the Achilles, the Achilles was being overloaded, uh, there was nothing wrong with the Achilles, she was leaning on it, so she was just leaning that way to that side, yeah, the other side was basically having a vacation, so we put information. to help her stand up straighter seen from behind, uh, so she wouldn't lean forward, she leaned to one side and that took the load off the Achilles tendon and then she said well, but I can't, you know I can't.

The furthest I ran was 11 miles and that was months ago. I said, "Okay, so we walk, we run, don't worry, so repeat those 11 miles, but let's do a walk and run strategy, so each time we work on it." Tell her how she was feeling so we experimented a little bit while she was with me and I think we started with a three minute run and a one minute walk and she was golden and she went that weekend and completed 11 miles that she had done. After running for about 3 months, she completed 11 miles with amazing alacrity because she didn't feel tired at any point even though she hadn't done any training and had no pain in her Achilles tendon and I told her and she said well, why not? supposed.

Now there is only one weekend left. I feel like you're going to tell me that she should relax and rest, but my brain won't let me. I will get stressed, so there is always a weight, yes, for some people, a reduction. it starts pretty far back and you just keep them moving for everyone else. Can you just explain what tapering means? So when you've peaked, for whatever event you're doing, you've done all your training and now you're resting your body so you can start when you're fresh at the starting line and you're not tired. Many people arrive at the starting line and are tired and this is overtraining and is common. the precursor to an injury, so by all logic she should have rested, but her body would have been in such a state of nerves and anxiety due to worry that she had not done enough for her brain to have room for her during the mental calm she needed. going out the next weekend MH, so I said, "Okay, so if you're going out, run less and walk more, so from memory, I think he turned it around, so I think maybe they were twenty-one". anyway, it was less and he completed 17 points, 2 minutes running, one minute walking, yes, something like that, yes, something like that, it was less than before simply because we needed to make sure that he did not instantly go into overtraining if he resisted doing the war. running because I know you've had clients before who resisted a lot, did she resist? or well, at that moment she was willing to give anything to make everything work out, so she is open to it, so when people have the need to let go of the ego, I will let go of the ego and then often , progress can be made by simply taking a short break to appreciate the Vivo barefoot shoes.

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This is after a few months of not running due to injury, yes, so he does 11 miles one weekend on the 17th. the next weekend using a run and walk strategy, yes, and then the following weekend It was the marathon so I had a strategy because I had figured it all out to get this qualification so it was like, well let's put it all on the table do everything you can and see what happens and she had it on her back. a little note that said because there are so many people when you're walking and I'm used to this uh you can do it you can do it and I'm walking I'm thinking I know I can this is my strategy and thank you and I'm always thanking everyone yes, before my marathon from London a couple of years ago I did a few half marathons and I remember I was at a 52 or something like that 5 minutes running 2 minutes walking and when you walk people keep going mate, okay, okay, you know, keep going, you can do it and I comes from love. of those guys because we are conditioned as a society to think that I, I, you know, I can't help but think that this is more of a Western than something genuinely Eastern and I say having grown up exposed to both cultures family background Indians at home born and raised in the UK going to school here and growing up here but I don't know, I don't know it seems like you have to try really hard you have to work hard you have to leave everything on the table even though it doesn't count yeah I'm moving away from that now in my life I'm like you know I'm tired of it, I don't want to, why does everything have to hurt?

Wouldn't it be wonderful to live in a world where at these big events you saw people walking? great strategy you look like you know what you're doing Bravo with the walk like that would be I would think I'd made it to heaven um if I ever saw that we understand we'll get hell yeah we just got there send the message so this lady oh god mine, put a sign on his shirt. She was just a wonderful lady. It was a t-shirt that said run and walk strategy and it was to warn the runners behind her not to get too close because at random times for you, but on a strict schedule for me, I will stop running and go for a walk, so don't be behind me, don't cut my heels, anyway it's very rude to applaud someone, uh um.

Touch anyone's heels, so he had this strategy, um five, and he did five minutes of running, one minute of walking for the entire marathon and he texted me and not only did he take advantage of his golden time out of the water, but he did it in me . I think from memory it was 4 hours 19 so she passed the grade. Time for 11 minutes easily if she had ever run water before. No, okay, then she runs with water. Did you say 51 five minutes running one minute walking? Okay, so the average of her. The pace was epic and she wrote and said it wasn't just that she qualified but the experience of the last six miles.

She said I had a lot of fun in the last six miles. Who says that in a marathon? Who says oh the last six? miles oh it was so much fun people don't say the last six miles are usually hard you know you've hit the 20 mile mark there's another 6 miles to go it doesn't seem like much but when I've already done 20 miles it's a lot, so it's hard work bordering on torture for many and many people are in pain and she enjoyed it because she wasn't tired, she wasn't in pain and she wasn't tired. because she had been recovering as she went and this is the point where ultra distance runners, endurance athletes and not professional athletes but just people who run around all day to me, the longer Here, I have been better.

Have a longer adventure, have more fun, get more benefits as far as I'm concerned, so I'm very happy to be out all day as long as I don't get lost, which is very common, but that's beside the point. . you're out all day you're having fun and you're recovering quickly and science has now caught up with what endurance athletes have always known: you think you can't take another step running you walk a little and suddenly you can run again, so you walk and run when you're off road, the train tends to give you the ability or common sense to walk that hill, which you would spend too much energy running if you did.

Run it when you still have a long way to go, so endurance athletes doing an ultra will walk sections where they know running it would be inefficient because they would be more tired and can make it to the top of the race. hill with less energy if they walk and sometimes faster than if they ran. I have passed runners uphill when walking because they are so tired but want to run, every step doesn't count unless you ran it, it's funny to think where that came from, so, the amazing book in the jaw, by Alex Hutchinson, science has caught up and told us that we are recovering, our muscles are literally healing as we walk, no.

When we stop and put our feet up and take an ice bath or an Epom salt bath or whatever rocks your boat, you are recovering and healing as you walk so that you can still make progress within your body, progressing through the event while putting one foot in front of the other so don't stop don't stop and stretch walk go out if something hurts go for a walk if you feel tired go for a walk the answer is always keep moving go for a walk and see what It happens, I mean, you've had athletes make you rest for four hours in marathons, three and a half hours, even those kinds of times using race strategies, yeah, which I think people who were in the running world would actually do.

What really because your average pace is still high, yeah, you don't feel that sudden fatigue where everything starts going downhill at the end, yeah, which is less speed for more effort, the epitome of inefficiency, yeah, ya You know, I often talk about the impact of chronic stress on bodies and the way I often explain it is through the lens of something I call the stress threshold, so assuming you wake up completely rested and calm and you know that You feel good, you are quite far from your stress threshold, but throughout the day you accumulate many doses of stress, what I call doses of microstress, and little by little they bring you closer and closer and, at some point, the last hit of microstress takes you to and beyond your stress threshold, which is when you know you're yelling at your partner, you're yelling at your kids, your back goes into spasm, your neck does whatever and we think it was the last thing that happened, that was the problem, but it wasn't the last thing that happened.

It wasn't the email you received on Friday at 400 p.m. was the fact that you had been getting closer and closer to your stress threshold, so when I hear you talk about strategies for running and walking, you know that someone, frankly, wants to go hiking on the hill on the weekend or wants do a marathon or little adventure, whatever, that's the point, right? If you think about it during a work day, if work was very busy from 9 to 11, you are building up stress and tension if you could take a 15 minute walk. blocking at that point you just decompress a little bit so that you stay, you are constantly doing something that keeps you away from your stress threshold, but if you work during work during lunch without a break, you will be much more reactive and troubled by the Late is the same kind of thing, isn't it? during a race if you keep running you will get fatigued, everyone will get fatigued at some point, even Kip Choate will get fatigued at some point, but when you go back that different gate pattern where everything is lifted off the ground and now you have an energy expenditure in the shock absorption because You have more landing forces to manage en masse, so you land with one tiny foot and you push off with that same tiny foot, whereas when you walk there's always one, there's always one foot in contact with the ground. you are never clear of the ground so if you continue you will get tired and then you will get tired, injuries happen, yes now you are operating from a state of good, now I am tired, so now if you continue there are degrees of more tired whereas if you start the tour strategy don't wait until you're tired don't do anything waiting oh I'll do it when I'm tired start like you want to continue so don't get tired that's the point and it can be the same so there are many one uh and most people think they should run more than they walk but I often suggest people walk more than they run and It can be a great recovery set so you walk for 9 minutes and run for one just relax but don't stress too much system and that's still a great way to recover from a harder interval session, maybe on hills, so there are no rules other than that, for me the only rule of thumb is that it's always horis, right? ?

So the general rule is to avoid doing it continuously, even walking, every step of the way is difficult because it is the same activity, so when walking 100 kilometers was much more difficult than running walking the 100 kilometers because we want variety, yes, the body changes and changes gears, the body enjoys it because you get into this less repetitive, um, almost like an RSI, almost like a repetitive tension, the same thing over and over again. once again the brain shuts down it binds as soon as the brain is bound the body is bound so by continuing to change it it is easier for the body it is easier for the brain which of course is in control of the body yes it is a bit soap box thinking about what we celebrate in society and how that cultural conditioning impacts how we think and how we operate in the world what else do people celebrate at the end of a half marathon or a 10K or a marathon is that person who looks like They're done, they're hunched over, they can't do it anymore, but they're there, they're sweating and they're fighting and we love it and I would be celebrating that again.

Well done, friend. Well done, friend. You can do it. again and again, I'm not saying we shouldn't celebrate that, but wouldn't it also be great if we gave the same C VI level to that person who still looks calm and collected at the end in very good posture? As you know, I spoke with Elliot Kip Chogi a couple of years ago on this podcast, a week exactly after he broke the world record at the time and for people who don't know, he's still the only person to have run a marathon in less fingers. hours that we know of and that was under certain conditions, it doesn't count as an official world record, all that kind of stuff, but one thing I told him I'm pretty sure of and one thing I've always enjoyed watching him is that to me it never seems like He is trying, even when he was breaking his world records well and with just over two hours to complete a marathon.

I'm pretty sure because that was in Berlin, as I remember, he didn't look. At the end, like he was fighting, he had his Kip chogi smile that he usually does when he's in pain, but it seemed like his posture was great, he was relaxed, it's a point of principle and you could argue it's Pride, but it's the beginning. If you know how to use your body well you better make sure you keep doing it when you're tired because if you're not using it well when you're tired it's harder so as a principle my goal is Whatever I do I need to have the same appearance at the end than at the beginning.

It's easy to look great when you're fresh and it doesn't do you any good to allow your body to follow the sensation inside you. fatigue body, so let yourself slump, let yourself feel heavy, let your legs feel heavy, so you're dragging them, but that makes life harder. I made a little SK on Insta because this shows up as questions. I, I'm, I'm really good until a thousand so-and-so and then I collapse, well, strategy number one, walk, run, so that you get to that level of fatigue, or later, and number two, you know what you are doing and it is the people who realize it. closer to the ground, their knees bend, they squat, they run, their arms wave everywhere, their head hangs forward, now we know the weight of their head, so they carry I don't know 30 kilos. backpack while they are absolutely exhausted, so it stands to reason that things would be harder now, but if they could discover that that small amount of mental effort is not physical effort, they lose the physical effort, it is the mental effort to say, where is my head? to find that beautiful trembling, trembling face, um, I can, I can moan.

Well, then I could, while I'm running, press my hands on the top of my chest and drag the skin down and it's like that opposition reflex that we see in dogs, you push, I push you. pull, I pull, you pull down and often in people you want to pushof spatial awareness if you don't understand the question of where your head is, then I don't know where your head is, so the first thing for people who don't have that awareness that there is some kind of blockage is that they can use Skin. So you press the crown and the squid, yeah, lie down on it so the back of the skull has information, oh, so wait, you're on the ground, so the ground is hitting the skin on the back of your head the entry that that's where I am.

Your hand goes on your crown, which is giving that part of the skin. input, this is where your crown is, that's what sends signals to the brain saying here I am, this is where these body parts are, yeah, so you're making neural connections with, oh my gosh, this is my head and then you have to start the movement. So you can still have your hand on the crown of your head and you want your head to be on something slippery, so I often use a document wallet, underneath a piece of paper will do, so what you don't want is movement.

The part of your head will be interrupted by the traction between your hair, if you have it, and the surface you are lying on, so have something slippery between your head and what you are lying on and then just start nodding and tilt your head back. comfortable ranges and because your hand is on your head and your head is on something, you get all kinds of information about where your head is, then you can start a rotation and you'll have an idea of ​​how close your ear is to the floor toward a side versus the other and the more you do that, the more awareness number one you get from the head, head number two, you start to realize that the head talks to the next column and as you nod, it pushes the next column back down. to bed and you don't have a double chin, your chin tissue retracts so you get a nice clean jawline instead of you know if you if my head is forward and I just let my chin fall down. just for the purposes of people listening, now I have a proper double chin, but if I'm lying on the floor and nodding and my next column follows me, then I won't have a double chin, so many people in my experience don't put their heads right because they've It has been said that when they do it they get double chins and they don't like it but they only get double chins because their heads are thinner.

I don't talk to the neck, which then won't talk to the spine of the PRC, which would mean we don't get the extension of the spine. Okay, so let's back up a minute. So you said that if you do this regularly, you will be lying down. your back and then when you're at the same time you put your hand on your crown and rub the top of your you know, the scalp skin around that also provides sensory information because it's a huge tendon, if you want, there's a Yeah. there's a muscle there but there's a lot of tendon but you're saying we're getting information but we're not getting it's not that much cognitive information it's brilliant because this is what I've learned over the last few years of working with you that it's not always cognitive, but you're giving information to your brain and again this is where we are a society based on thought and rational thinking, right, we want to explain everything, we want to know the reasons, but really we just want we just want to feel it more we just want to be more and I guess you're giving information to your brain it's fair to say that it's almost like you're giving subconscious information where you're not.

We don't have to think about it anymore, yeah, so it's a fundamental element of our movement pattern that our brain knows where everything is. That would seem to be critical if our brain doesn't know where our left arm is, do we think it's going to move with us as we move, probably not and Helen, I'm sorry I interrupted you, but let's stick with that logic for a moment more, if not everything can be cognitive because you have as many joints, muscles, tendons, joints throughout your body as you can. Not going for a walk and with your thinking brain being my head here my shoulders here my hips there my knees here is simply not possible, so it has to be below the level of Consciousness at some level, you know, at some level, I I would say yes. exactly us, it can't be cognitive because, number one, it's so complex that we don't understand it, it can't be cognitive, number two, because we don't spend enough time on the ground for our Bo to individualize. all the joint movements when we walk, we can be on the ground for, say, 7 seconds when you are Renning, says Max, probably at most, generally speaking, on average, three seconds less than half that walking time, so you can Don't micromanage your body cognitively, yes, while you move BEC and it's not necessary, we are so well made, all the fundamentals must be in place, that is called movement development, unfortunately it is also called child development, which It means that it is framed in a certain period of life. and then dismissed as irrelevant and now science shows us that it is not irrelevant, it is relevant throughout our lives.

Will Smith in the movie Concussion, has explained the science in a movie and it is sadly true. You know, it's based on the reality of the NFL. Concussions and their consequences, so we know that the fundamentals of movement accompany us throughout our lives. They are like running on a beautiful background of software upon which we build more complex cognitive patterns of movement and some of us have some of those building blocks. of slightly disorganized movement, resulting in certain movement patterns when we are older that cause pain or discomfort, whatever that may be regarding this exercise. I want to make sure people understand this and can use it themselves correctly.

You work in a very Mm, I was going to say in an unusual way, simple, very yes, in a simple way, but I guess you tend to see people one by one who struggled for years, so they tried everything and that shouldn't be negative for any health professional. not at all, each modality exists because it helped someone, someone and more than someone, then you know that more than n equals one, of course, many people have seen that people have improved and move on with their lives, but you are seeing people who for some reason those approaches haven't worked for some reason and you also have this machine so I would like to explain to people who don't know who Doris is or what Doris is and then secondly I think these are points key, really keys about movement, what I have experienced with you, Helen, is that sometimes I do more in my head, the less related movement, right, you have me in Doris, you are measuring everything.

If I see my spine moving and there's clearly a problem or I can't access a certain movement, then you have me on the floor and maybe for a few minutes I do some seemingly unrelated movements, like the one you just mentioned about lying down. on your back and it starts giving you information about where your head is, so you do that and then you go back to the Tra Mill and suddenly you move completely differently. It's remarkable when you've experienced that because when you see that it gives you 100% confidence that I need to do that exercise five minutes twice a day for the next four weeks because I know that when I do it automatically without thinking about posture or putting my head in correct position or whatever, I'm moving differently, so could you help put that together for the listener and also maybe share some examples from some of your clients who you did that exercise with and saw immediate improvement to make sure What are you taking action after watching this video?

We've created a free guide to help you develop healthy habits. We can all make short-term changes, but is it possible for those changes to become a fundamental part of our lives? Many times this is not the case and that is why in this free guide I share with you the six crucial steps. you should take them they are really effective if you want to get that free guide right now all you have to do is click the link in the description box below for Doris to be my teacher and I use her as It is a tool for both help my thinking to investigate hypotheses.

It is the most advanced door analysis technology in the world. There are only four. Well, now there's more. Apparently, yes, there is more. I think there are still less than 10, but I think. the 10th. I think the 10th is about to settle in India. I think it's the 10th, so it's the most advanced gate analysis in the world, so I know there's a treadmill, yes, but there's also a lot of other technology around it that you put stickers on. Like, what do those stickers do well? They just help Doris doesn't need anything to stay still, so it's more accurate than an x-ray.

Even Doris has limitations of up to 30 km per hour which no one has ever reached close to. there um I had a couple of elite athletes who thought they were going to no, I'm going to beat Doris and the furthest they went was 21 km per hour and I still thought they were going to Ping from the end, so, then, she's more accurate than an x-ray, uh, for whatever speed we need to measure and when you're stationary, you don't need stickers, you just need the stickers when you're moving. a reference point, then she just needs guidance on exactly when you move, where the pelvis is and where the base of the neck is, but what are you measuring?

What is my spine doing while I move in three? correct dimensions so that the movement of the lateral view of the spine from left to right the movement of the frontal plane so that anything you can see from the baseline of a tennis court and from a bird's eye view is the rotational movement of the spine and the pelvis and simultaneously uh, not only the forces through your feet, but also the pressures that you exert through your feet, so you have impact forces and your center of mass travels through the feet, to the less for me Helen, yes, Doris can do static measurements and you have said that They are more accurate than an x-ray, but one of the problems that I would say about x-rays, CT scans or MRIs is that they are done while, in Generally, you're still speaking well, so you're actually getting a representation of what it is.

It happens as you move, yeah, which I think is really key. I think what's interesting about bodies is what they do when they're still and then what happens to them when they move at a variety of paces, because wherever you are. The frame is when you are standing still while moving. Everything should move. Everything should change. Nothing should stay the same. Not denying anything is saying okay, yes, that information is really useful, so now we have to overlay it on what's happening as we move, does everything stay the same or does it change? And, in fact, one of the things you found with me. in recent years is that initially at least my body I think, as I remember, it was better to run than to walk, yes, many, many, explain why it would be like that, because when you run you are free from the ground, so anything inside the The purpose of contralateral movement is opposite to it, the arm and leg rotate through the system that is our innate character as humans, so we are the only hum, the only mammal that wriggles within the field of gravity, we do not have to bounce up and down. like a kangaroo or a rabbit uh we also don't have to slide uh like a slippery thing so we rotate in the field of gravity because we have this um uh transverse plane rotating rotationally if someone imagines walking while his left foot moves forward to continue there I like the that I don't see, their pelvises are actually facing to the right and when you move your right hand, correct me if I'm wrong, Helen, but your chest is relatively or when you take it to the left, it's easier. because if you're listening just do it, put one arm in front of you and that arm pulls your ribcage away you feel like yeah, I'm doing it and you turn it so it doesn't, it shouldn't pull you in It's because then you can feel how tight it is.

If the outstretched arm doesn't turn in your direction, how do you reach it? If you block in reverse, if you don't let the ribcage move and you stick your arm out at 90 degrees at shoulder level. height, put your arm in, how can you? You feel like you're getting nowhere, yeah, so move on. Stick it forward at shoulder height and you can't get anywhere. You can't reach your reaches. Limited until you allow the ribcage to move. turn away from it, okay, so we're the only mammal that's contralateral, yeah, and then the opposite leg will do the same and the opposite, so if I have my left arm forward, my right leg forward, my right leg He is moving his pelvis away from her.

I just see a lot of pelvises turning towards the front leg, that's why there are so many problems. Okay, so we have this twist in the system where the opposite arm and leg are doing something in front and the opposite arm and leg are doing something. different on the back and it's that spin through the system that whenyou're standing still, you may only have rotation in one direction, your entire spine may be rotating in one direction, and then as you move, you don't move. anywhere near that direction, you just move away from that direction, you just go in the opposite direction of that and come back to it, so the point you are at is part of the story, but not the whole story, It can't be the whole story because we're moving animals so it's okay and it's not necessarily what you think is going to happen so you can look at someone statically and think oh uh I have a hypothesis that this and that is going to happen. happen, but it often surprises me.

Like I didn't expect it to not happen and I've seen it, I don't know thousands of people, I didn't expect that to happen, oh my gosh, every day is a learning day, that's why there are so many strategies within a system. This is why we cannot cognitively plan everything we have. A lot of people call them compensations and I think that means a little bit that our body is so amazing. These are amazing strategies. That's why it stays like that but doesn't move like that at all. you have a strategy for doing something completely different to make the movement as easy as possible for that person in that context.

Well, one of the things we discussed in our first conversation was my emergency appendectomy when I was seven or eight years old in India and how our feeling was that that was still significantly influencing my movements as an adult, it was very, you know, very painful, Mucky, painful there and we could actually see all my movements and almost everything was done to prevent me from closing that scar so I could do it. anything that I wasn't even aware of, I'm just mentioning this because you're saying the body is amazing, my body is phenomenal because it was like hey, I don't really want to go and compress that area because there was a problem there there was inflammation there there was pus there you had an inflamed appendix maybe that helped me while my appendix was inflamed sure it won't help me now that I'm 40 in terms of my movement yeah so it's really interesting is the body is amazing the body will whatever it has to do to keep you functioning and moving and everything works until it doesn't, yeah, and the brain has so many potential connections that some brain scientists say that really for anything human, uh. the sky's the limit, So set the bar high.

I would suggest people set the bar as high as possible because they have not found the limit in human potential and that is why of course they have to keep rewriting the Guinness Book of Records, so this is not just a process athletic, it's about any topic, so if we can see where someone would come in and a lot of the things that would have helped their friends, then their friend has said, oh, try to stretch because it helped them and it helped a lot of their friends because the Stretching works for many, as does strength and conditioning, painkillers and surgery, what else is there out there?, just like acupuncture, there are so many, as does meditation and massage. all of these modalities help a lot of people, that's why they exist and then when they haven't helped, this is in the context of I've tried everything but of course they haven't tried, which is common, which is common. and what is not common is, in my experience, looking at the movement from the point of view of: well, do you have all your fundamentals?

Do you have an organized movement? This consciousness spatial consciousness understands the brain above, which is, of course, the head, below, which is the tailbone, not your feet, uh, left, which would be up to the extremities of the hand and the extremities of the foot and the right again to the extremities of On that side, the hand, the foot, the front and the back, the brain has Clarity, not cognitive clarity, fundamental innate spatial awareness of that organization because, returning to the question of why people run better than what they walk, walking is a contralateral movement that is, uh, the front.

The back of the body is doing one thing, the back of the body is doing another, the upper body is doing one thing, the lower body is doing another and you're doing it in a Twist, so the left and the right are diagonal. I can't access that at any level of fluid efficiency if the brain doesn't have fundamental spatial awareness of all those things I've already listed when you're running, because neither foot is in contact with the ground at any time. point the body is free the body is now there is no reference point uh the body is free so any limitations in this fundamental movement pattern so a common one that I see is uh the shoulder throat is very tight so the shoulder throat No I actually move when they walk and I will pick up the pace and I do this very often.

I will quicken my pace to walk. I will ask you to walk and everyone can do this, so walk freely, just walk normally, not so If someone is watching you and you can take a selfie on a mobile phone, then you walk and just take a few steps away from the camera, then you What you should do is start walking and then appear on the camera so that it gets a flow for your entire recording then you do the same but now you are walking quickly you are going to be late you are going to miss the train but you can't run so you are walking quickly and I do it if I suspect that I am not sure that the shoulder girl moves, so when you walk easily maybe the shoulder intestine does not need to move, but if you go faster we want GLE harmony in the shoulder girdle and pelvis of the way we do it. the movement is the shoulder, the arm, the clavicle, the scapula, that is the shoulder, its movements tell the thoracic spine, the rib cage area, what to do the pelvic GLE is the pelvis and the legs and their movement feeds the lumbar spine, the lower back. and then they meet in the middle and there is a little twisting action, it is a spiral, actually a very organized smooth and coordinated movement is the harmonious cooperation between the shoulder girdle and the pelvic girdle, the girdles are where the gold is, so I could see someone walking. and I can clearly see that the pallic girdle is moving because they are one step in front of each other and the shoulder GLE is muted and I will think whose all that is, so maybe it is muted because they are not going very fast and who needs to move the legs? arms if they don't go very fast?

So I'll pick up the pace. Now your arms need to move. Otherwise how do they move? What happens is that the shoulders do not flex, but the elbows do. Bend so the arm swings back and then the shoulder comes forward as soon as the elbow is below the shoulder, all that happens is the elbow flexes so they walk with their forearms, they walk with their legs and forearms, they don't with all the arms, so and the problem with that is that now the shoulder girdle is limiting the pelvic girdle because there is no freedom in the shoulder girdle, it is limited, it limits the freedom in the pelvic girdle because they move in cooperation, so which could cause pain.

I know the reason for your pain and discomfort in my experience uh it's commonly related to hip pain yeah so the pain and

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ion of our joints in general is something that worries a lot of people you know they want to move more and I know We've got you covered. This right at the top says that running isn't bad for your knees, maybe the way you're currently running might be, but if we can change that then it's not bad for your knees, right, yeah, and follow that now It is the moment itself. you are Renning and you are not in contact with the ground, you should and the arm no longer needs to swing from the shoulder because you raise your arms and then the GLE shoulder can move, then it is a completely different picture when they are walking, the shoulder does not move, the upper body does not move, but the legs move when they run, the GLE shoulder moves, so for some people like me, running is freedom, it is freedom, but the problem is the effect. of the shoulder not moving in the pelvic throat when you walk and now it is not running that is causing the problem, the hip pain comes from the way they walk but now there is impact because they actually move better when they run.

It's not just that it's softer and that's why they enjoy it, but it always hurts and they associate it with running when it's actually the movement pattern at a fundamental level, just to make this conversation really useful in practice for the people. Helen. I know. I know. After the last podcast came out, a lot of people signed up to see you and of course not everyone can come see you for a variety of reasons, that's why you wrote your book, isn't it? and you also created these six videos or These types of videos on their websites basically help people dig a little bit deeper into these types of things to be efficient so that people don't have to travel and they can help themselves if they are willing to play the game with me.

So some people will read and some people will need the images. There are also videos in the book but the goal is to help as many people as possible and some people need an extra set of eyes but can ask their partner to do it. Take a look, you can take a look and see what's supposed to be happening and you can't feel it, maybe have a partner film you so you can then get the visual cue, because that's another part of the brain that understands where. We are very helpful visual fields and I think in our first conversation you were talking about one of your clients, a footballer, who basically didn't know his head was forward and you thought it was the club's physiotherapists who could have told him he wasn't going. no, it was my wife who noticed it well, so this is another thing for us that we can ask our partners because they are probably seeing patterns in us that we don't see ourselves.

Job. I love working with couples because you don't. I see you, but your partner sees you from all angles, they don't see themselves, but you see them, so you get this cooperation between the two of you because, oh yeah, he's always like that or she's always like, yeah, yes, that sounds familiar to you because you don't know. It sounds like it can also be dangerous sometimes it's uh it's always interesting it's always fun it's always fun so yeah all the tools are there even everything that's free everything I can do to get through a day on social networks.

To help as many people as possible be efficient let's go back to that floor exercise for a few minutes for the person who doesn't know where their head is and wants to give their brain that awareness. I don't know if you have a particular client. in mind, but I wonder if you could explain. I don't know a client who came in with pain and problems. He thought it might be his head. They didn't know where his head was. You gave him that exercise. They did it and. You put them back on Doris as if something occurred to you.

Yes, always the most recent. It comes to mind because there are so many and my brain has to eliminate a lot to make more fit, so the problem was chronic foot pain. feet and everything has been tested, so I don't need to go to everything because it's already done, yeah, so that makes it a joy for me because I don't have to examine everything that might be obvious because that's already been done by someone else already did another professional try that approach yeah and uh and there was a head uh of some note so this person is middle aged well of course I'm old so everyone is younger than me um so I would say so young, okay, so someone came, men who had, had chronic pain in their feet, both feet or just one, so both feet and uh, I hope he, um, if you're listening, um, no names, you will know who you are. m I'm sorry I'm using you because, but what I saw was seen so often, okay, you think if more people could try it, then they could help themselves.

So this client that you can see has a forward head posture. Did you name the client Doris? Yes, and Doris was confirming that and other information for you, so we have clarity of the degrees of how far away the next column is. Go ahead, so we have at least one 40-pound head making the Christmas tree decoration and putting the spine in a flexed position, so I'm sure you saw a lot of other anomalies too, but you were thinking it was fine until we got improve the head, don't worry about anything else, that was, that was good, yes, more or less, it's the obvious because we don't need to be perfect, who knows what that is?

So if there was, they were things that were minor, the obvious thing was the view from the side, so we said we wondered why and that's why he couldn't understand, he tried to stand up straight because another physio had suggested he stand up straight. , so As far as I was concerned, I was absolutely right and the best thing was that I could do it but I couldn't maintain it, so I could do it cognitively, yeah, that's the key I could figure out, okay, this is behavior. This is organized, I am, but now I can't move because it is not innate inmy.

I am pulling muscles to create tension and keep myself upright. We should be upright without tension because that is our best place to move, so without trying. without trying, so what came out, what's missing, what's a little complicated for the upright one, not upright, okay, so you identified the forward head posture that another healthcare professional had also identified. and had tried to help him forever. If you can't, then you did an exercise like we've talked about, so that he feels it, so when you're lying on your back, even just your back is, I think the statistics are 15 times the surface. area of ​​your feet, so a lot more information is getting to the brain about what's happening in the back, uh, in terms of pressures from left to right and pressures along the spine and, of course, this is the whole column, isn't it? your back and we start with okay, can you, can you, can you find your inner Mia Cat, one of my favorites for all of us to imagine and visualize airat airat is on alert, so the eyes are level, the ears are level, the Jaws are level, are you ready? everything is fine, stand back and you can relax so that our inner Mia Cat uh, there is an incredible video of fetuses in the womb performing what I call the flesh, which is an extension of the trunk, your heels are digging into the ground. your heels of your hands are standing up, uh, the heels of your hands are pushing down, the heels of your feet are pushing down and that kind of pushing down pushes the rest of the body up and flexes your neck so that you finish. up in this spinal extension position in the book it's Sagittal Cog but that's a cognitive spinal extension this is innate within us it's an innate fundamental I call it so he was doing this on the floor he was doing it lying down and his spine was No he was moving, so the heels of his hands and the heels of his feet were doing exactly the right thing, but his head wasn't moving and his spine wasn't moving, so okay, is it the head that doesn't know where?

It's the ribcage, it's the pelvis and it was the head and the pelvis, the ribcage actually knew even though it was flexed and tilted, it knew exactly what to do, it just wasn't getting the right information from the head or from the pelvis. , uh, which was actually pretty sweet because the heads and pelvis cooperate greatly in our movement patterns, so we just nodded, which made the pelvis nod because wherever your pubic arches, wherever it goes your nose, your pubic wants to go. Also, so if your nose is directed towards your toes, your pubic bone can be directed towards your toes and offers that look um uh, so everything we did was played with the extension of the spine lying on the way of pushing the crown out and allowing the pelvis to follow in the same direction and then he stood up and felt a little bit taller and we measured him standing still and walking so there was no, don't just stand still and be anything, just stay, just stay however you want, just stay and the difference in spinal flexion was extraordinary, I had probably lost a good half of the load I was carrying with this. head forward, so not all, but maybe 50%, yes, and he continued until the movement, so without trying to move perfectly without trying to walk perfectly upright, he was able to move better in an upright position, is what I understand.

What I've really learned from all the work I've done with you, Helen, is that when you teach the brain, remind it where the different parts of the body are, what they should do optimally, you start doing it naturally, it's in your DNA. . You do it without thinking oh I'm going to do this with my wrist I'm going to do this with my shoulder or whatever it just starts to happen because that's how we are made and what happens to your foot pain, well we don't know yet, It's because it appears after 30 minutes, so we have to wait, we have to wait and see, there will be a lot of work to do, but before, before, before, before, we can judge. whatever we have to deal with the elephant in the room, which is the posture that overloads um The souls of the feet, okay, so you know, not everyone, I don't wave magic once, uh, a lot of people have a lot of work. to do before you get to where you want to be, but we look at it from the point of view of whether you have everything you need in your body, innate in your body so that you can create the forms that you want to create, because it could be that, uh, you have um. your tennis backhand is really, no matter how hard you try your tennis backhand and it just doesn't work, but on a fundamental level does your body, without having to think about it, understand rotation in that direction because it may not?

Yes, this is This is another point, it is so important that many people have a passion for sports. We can distract ourselves by running, walking, skiing or playing tennis, and that doesn't mean that training in those areas isn't useful, of course it is, but sometimes we just don't innately have the movement that the coach asks us to do. , it's just not within us, so the question is how you move. I often say that good health, 99% of health, frankly, happens more than that. Outside of the doctor's office, it's the same with movement. 99% of good movement happens outside of your sport, yes, you bring them all into the sport and therefore at a fundamental level of all the fundamental movement patterns that we have talked about at that time. we are 10 of all of those, how many are organized and then you will use them in your sport, no, you don't do these movements for your sport, you have the movements to enable the sport, an easy example is uh the rower who rows on one side of the boat No I know the words, I won't even try, so he's a rower on one side of the boat and his spine shows him flexing toward that side. side and his GLE shoulder is leaning that way and all the good things and he's injured and they're saying it's because of the rowing and which W that can't be wrong but it's not coming This is because of the rowing, it's because of the shape he's in doing, which put him on that side of the boat and his coach knows that if the other one, the guy on the other side of the boat, was sick, he wouldn't be able to put this on. guy in place because that guy doesn't have the movement pattern available to be on that side of the ship we are good at what we start doing because we are already good at it because we have those movement patterns and if we can understand that and realize that we weren't good because we did more, we'll get better at it and maybe we'll have more skills at it, but we're good at it, we were good at it from the beginning. go away but we should all have the fundamental movement patterns and this is what hurts me with kids at school oh you're not good at sports so they leave you in the library instead of oh you don't want to move very well I wonder why that's a little strange because we're moving animals, we're going to organize some messy pieces.

I call them Lego pieces, they're just fundamental movement patterns. Let's organize them so you can enjoy the movement. and you know that in the future saving the NHS could be a fortune because you discovered the movement. It's whether you have what you need to move well because you can't cognitively think of a good move every moment of the day. It's not possible, Helen, one of the topics today, one of the things we've covered is that you can give information to your body and your brain through your skin. Mhm, okay, and you already explained that one way to do it is. lying on the floor and you know, allowing your skull to touch the floor, that gives you information, the skin on the back of your skull, touching the crown of your head and massaging it, that gives you information, okay, so That's one way I want to talk. about feet, okay, I mean, we could spend two hours just standing, so I specifically want to talk about cleaning feet and tickling feet, okay, and maybe we can do a quick recap of that, we can go deeper more the next time you return to the program. but what's interesting to me and I've done this in your clinic is that I used to have really ticklish feet and now they're less ticklish because of all this work, and in my kitchen, as you know, we have a door like that.

We're a simple household, no one uses shees in our house and um, but there's a doormat in our kitchen and the doormat isn't there for people to wipe their feet, it's there for me and hopefully the kids, yeah I can continue to remember them gently. every morning is to wipe your feet for about a minute, explain if you can why it's important to wipe your feet and what you've seen because I think you've measured this and you've seen it pretty much every time. I come back to Doris after they have cleaned their feet for a minute or two, it's okay, it's so big, the skin is full of skin receptor cells that give information to the brain and we feed it from the extremities and the entrance more sensory.

It is found in the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet and the tongue and these form the extremities, of course, feeding the system. The tongue is a limb because it is the only part of the human body that can be outside the human body and not be called a prolapse. and it is a very central muscle because it never gets tired. Ergo, I talk all day and I deviate and it is attached to the hyoid bone, which is a very corol bone, because it is the only bone in the human body that is not attached to another bone and the tongue is great because it is only attached by one end, it's the only muscle attached only at one end to a bone, so we have all this sensory information coming into our system to feed information to the brain about what's happening as you move. through space and initially we have receptive fields, um, that are hypersensitive, so you can replace feeding with tickling, which is just I like easy terms, they are hypersensitive, uh, these people struggle because walking on a beach of pebbles would be horrible. for them they would need to put on shoes.

They don't use even the slightest gravel. It's like a princess in the pee. Their feet do not like to be in contact with the ground. Are. I call them squeamish. Souls, is it that normal? I must say that it is optimal, it is not suboptimal, it is common, but it does not mean that it is correct. We have these sensitivities in our feet when we are born because no one is born with arches, no one is born with bunions. There are people who have told me that they were born with bunions, no one is born with bunions, the bunion is the result of the movement patterns you use and the foot that does everything it can to help you, there are pathologists and feet of course, but we are not Speaking of pathologists and feet, we are talking about human development and initially there are receptive fields in the soles of the feet that when activated through a blow in a certain place and in a certain direction and uh or or traction they lengthen. of tissue triggers a reaction a reflex reaction now the reflex travels at 180 to 270 M per hour it is super fast it has happened to you you did not choose it it already happened it is a stereotyped response to a stimulus and we need it because In the beginning we are a mass, so We need all of these receptive fields and sensory information to create the movement response for our body to start moving and thus repetitively strengthen the muscles.

It's like strength and conditioning for us babies to stand upright in the field of gravity. I'm simplifying this greatly, it's a big part of brain science. I made a little 17 minute long animated video in my attempt to try to get people excited about the topic because very often the answer is here, where is that video? Youtube. on YouTube on YouTube We link it for free uh and because if nothing else has worked, just look if you watch the video pennes. People tell me that they suddenly thought, oh my God, so maybe uh, when I couldn't do it, I went to ballet. class and I was great at everything except paa and I couldn't find my heels so they were a toe Walker couldn't find his heels this is you this is to say uh as a human an adult human I can't find My heels, this doesn't have makes sense, doesn't it?

Of course you can find your heels, but at a fundamental root level within your DNA, the heel thing doesn't work, so they walk on their toes, they're brilliant at sprinting, really good riders because all the information is. they come through the forefoot and yeah they're pushing the heel down but they're not touching anything yeah so there's all this anyway so watch the video because it might just happen pennies falling from the sky uh in my experience, then the receptive fields create this reaction the toes click all over the movement of the bones of the foot to create the arches that we need to walk on to create the strength in the four layers of muscles under the bones of the foot feet people think we need cushioning we have four layers of muscles they should be busy

protect

ing us we shouldn't need to have shoes we like shoes where we are we are brilliant humans we are developed our feet get cold so we will protect them our feet get too hot from the burning sun , so we could have a layer of material toprotect ourselves from the hot ground, but we don't need cushioning because we have it and our feet have given way due to the development of the Arches.

All this starts before. We have even stood up and the problem is, and this is an opinion. I dare say that the baby's growth should be prohibited because the foot, can you imagine if the baby's foot floats in the sky and the baby sees it? He doesn't realize that it belongs to them, he grabs it, he puts it in his mouth because everything is explored through mouss. I have a puppy, everything goes in his mouth, so his mouth explodes and his tongue on his foot triggers all this movement that gives him baby Great Joy so keep doing it so let's have all this movement can you imagine putting a cloth a dry cloth in your mouth do you think it will stay there for a long time? it's not fruitful it doesn't give any kind of reward so that won't happen again so that's my own it's just an opinion but we're finding that instead of injury rates going down they're going up yeah to make sure that you are taking action after watching this video I created.

A free breathing guide that will help you reduce stress, calm your mind and increase your energy In this guide I share six really simple breathing practices that work immediately, even just a minute a day will start to make a big difference in receiving your breath free. guides, all you have to do is click the link in the description box below. They're going up and up and up and up and I'm seeing people doing a lot of footwork, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of footwork and still the problem persists. and when I test the soles of my feet, they're hypersensitive, hypersensitive, these feet don't want to be in contact with the ground, these feet don't want to be in contact with the ground, it's crazy, isn't it if you just step away and get a good look , hold on to move in life, walk around our house or our apartments, go to the stores, walk, your feet must be in contact with the ground and you are saying that for some people, their feet are in the center. level they don't really want to be in contact with the ground, which is pretty crazy, your feet find every way to avoid those still active receptive fields, those hypersensitivities and they will when I check them, I will. the pull of the stroke is the weight of your body rolling through them so when you are on them you are triggering that response because it was never organized or it was organized and you had a concussion and then it didn't organize again, but this is fundamental the freedom of the feet we have 33 joints stand there to do exciting things if your feet are apprehensive if they are hypersensitive if they don't like to be touched if you thought about a pedicure it fills you with horror if you have to keep socks on all the time if you have to have something that protects you all the time if you have pain in your body, I'm going to do it, so it's almost like going up and down, okay, check your head, yeah, sure and go. even your feet, look, do they have tickle? and I'm using it for the people listening.

I'm doing the old rabbit seers apostrophes so that ticklish people just think, oh well everything is ticklish, well no they're not really and it's just a simple term to describe hypersensitivity and we can't have the plants of our feet that are there to give us all that sensory information pressure temperature um vibration uh danger all that own all that sensory information needs to reach the brain You don't try to hide your foot from the ground or you step hard on a tingle that makes the foot go rigid. The only people who really have a bit of freedom are those whose central nervous system has organized itself around this tickling and just allow the toes to ping all over the place and these people will hold their socks so that the big toe comes to through your socks in the blink of an eye and I've even seen them go through the leather uppers to pierce your leather uppers the force of the um, the messy receptive field still there is creating such a force on the big toe of the foot that holds up your leather shoes, so if you have ticklish feet and so low tech may be the solution for you, right?

Yes, you just rub your feet. I think it's almost like you're putting out a cigarette, Stu, so there's a receptive field where your toes meet your foot, so to access that area it's like you're putting out a cigarette. so you're doing that for, say, a minute or two, yeah, what have you seen in Doris when people with a variety of different symptoms you found out that their feet are hypersensitive, they rubbed their feet and you put them back on? Doris, I think the last time we exchanged messages about this you said you'd never seen a difference, yeah, on this topic, actually this and, uh, tongues, if I, if I didn't have Doris, no one would believe me, they'd think that I'm a little peculiar. something like that, but because I have the data that I have, I have 8 terabytes of data to back up everything that I do because I'm curious, I'm thinking well, what does it do, what does it do, oh my gosh, and I've had? group of guinea pigs who did a little pocket research and the common themes are, so what you're doing is almost like the receptive Fields haven't gotten used to it.

I don't know if that's accurate in brain science, but in it's a feeling inside of me or maybe it just wasn't used, you know, and we need to use it because what we're doing is using it, we're not desensitizing ourselves because we're not . we want insensitive feet we just don't want hypersensitive feet we want all that information to come clearly without any noise so we are vigorously rubbing every millimeter imagine you have treal or something sticky on every millimeter of your soul and you are trying to get it off so you have to enter the Inner Arch and I've had people grimacing, oh, I don't like it, I don't like it, and if they stick with it, I always say like you.

Let's say associate one habit with another habit, so if you have an electric toothbrush you can let the toothbrush brush you up here while you clean your feet for the 2 minutes it takes to clean your teeth and if you do it twice a day . Great things happen. I'll tell you a story in a moment and what I measure is consistent so that the person reports well. I think I'm probably making this up, but I feel a little better balanced. And everyone has their doubts. or I feel, oh, I can, I can feel more grounded, I can feel more grounded, I feel better, I feel more stable somehow, I feel more grounded, oh my God, I can feel my toes because my toes their feet echoed outwards, they didn't want to know and You can see it when you put out the cigarette.

They're doing it and I have to make videos for them. No one should need a video to clean their feet. your feet are not very smart, the body is very smart, oh my god, the body is so smart or they will lift your toes, the tips of your toes to move them apart so that the skin under your toes and where your toes are They join with the foot and do not break. They don't make contact with that prickly mat at all, they will find a way and then they express what they feel as they walk and I see in real time the foot pressure changing on Doris, so where was there? excess pressure there's less um so where all the strategies were implemented to avoid or immobilize or just not roll, not stretch the foot, so they'll just walk hard and flat-footed, they'll just land because then there's no stretching. and they're setting the reaction, so what I measure is more pressures of Bal B, uh, it follows it all the way up.

I measure it to the shoulder GLE, it changes the movement not only to the pelvic girdle but that changes the shoulder girdle, so if I have changed feet then I should be able to measure to the shoulder girdle unless there is something in the way preventing it from reaching there because the whole body is connected, yes, and that's the clue. gold is like okay oh it hits the shoulder cool uh oh no okay what's in the way so that's my next train of thought but I'll measure the weight change and it becomes more effective so that the ability to get the weight from one leg to the other carrying your mass overhead in an organized manner.

I will see better synchronization through the feet, yes just better use of the feet and they will almost certainly have a longer stride so at the same speed they will travel further. They're getting faster effortlessly, they're getting poorer, they're not thinking about it. All you have done, in a better term, is awaken a certain part of the body or a certain connection in the body and naturally the body begins to function. move better yes, I had a lady who loved her marathons, she loved them. A 5 and a half hour marathon she loved them she just jogged but couldn't understand after eight years why she wasn't getting faster why because you know she surely should. be faster, she didn't mind the time, she loved her marriage, 5 and a half hours, so she had incredibly ticklish rates, so 8 years of five and a half hour marathons loving them, wiping her feet for three months, five hours , wait, okay, okay.

Okay, the number of competitive athletes that listen to this podcast, there's a wide variety, but there are definitely competitive runners that listen. You just said that someone who constantly could use a 5 and a half hour marathon, so for them that's their limit. what you can do without changing anything just wipe your feet just wipe your feet what a few minutes a day uh 2 minutes when she was brushing her teeth she was fine so she did it four minutes a day and then she cuts 30 minutes off her marathon time , which anyone who runs knows that that is a ridiculous level of improvement, yes, because without additional training, no, nothing, his life was too busy, yes, because you are changing the innate, you are changing it at a core level, like this Naturally, she's starting to move more efficiently, her feet worked better, this is the real root cause, Stu, which is what I love about Helen.

Look, we had planned to talk about all kinds of important things, like stress incontinence in women and how quickly it can sometimes be helped. they fix it yeah, symmetries, plantar fasciitis, um, how the brain dictates your movement. Jaws. I don't think we'll get to that in this conversation, but if you're willing, Helen, let's come back soon because they're important. topics that affect a lot of people, so first of all, are you prepared for that? Oh, it's my favorite topic to talk about all things body and movement, so we'll do that to wrap up this topic we haven't talked about. however, and we just need to cover this briefly, the bottom line I think is minimalist shoes or barefoot shoes and the reason why I think it's worth mentioning here you mentioned that you're not a big baby fan, yeah, so when the baby grows.

It's not easy to spank a baby for the good reason she might, if it's warm enough she can simply take off their socks and give their feet freedom to put in their mouths. You can't, it's not easy to spank a baby. Yeah, so just to make sure we're being very clear here, I don't want any mother who currently has her baby growing up to be angry or think that she's doing something wrong. The context here is how much time is spent on a baby's growth because if it is all the time then the baby will not have the opportunity to explore the foot in the mouth, he will explore the hand in the mouth but will not have the opportunity to explore the foot in mouth and then the baby won't get as much information, he'll have whatever information he can access through uh, tummy, when, when he's tummy, pushing with his big toes, but and that's another topic, so it's in the frame.

For any young mother, it would be just realizing how often the baby puts on and maybe she could just cut off the baby's feet and put on socks so they can be put on and taken off depending on the temperature, and that's it. Yes, because we have to be able to have these conversations, Helen, because, as you say, movement problems are getting worse, the number of people who are in pain is increasing, the number of people who are not moving as much as they would like because also Seeing science and studies, they know that they feel better when they move, but injury restriction pain often stops them and sometimes that gets to a core level where some of these innate movements that we would have always done in the past they are not. it's not being fully explored because of the way we live these days and life happens and stress gets in the way and what was organized can become disorganized so you know if we keep checking our bodies and noticing that my feet seem more sensitive. than when I did it this summer last summer.

I was able to walk barefoot everywhere this summer. I can't so the answer is to immediately go and check check check yes, did something happen last year was there any kind of physical damage or emotional trauma um, which would be enough to disrupt the system and then go back in uh and just reorganize ourselves , simply give thebrain the information it needs to reorganize itself. I have no idea what happens in the brain when we wipe our feet, but we are just taking the foot from being hypersensitive to being more functional yeah, we just end up there maybe 10 minutes ago you mentioned that we have these four layers of cushioning in our feet. , we shouldn't need cushions My philosophy is largely that you know, people say support minimalist shoes.

I was like, well, wait, when did they make shoes with cushions? I was about to say the same thing. You know, for most of our meeting, we haven't been wearing them and we've been running pretty well, we've been moving pretty well, like who made the case for the padded shoes, that's the first thing, but the second thing is I think that if we kept the children barefoot longer, I think if we didn't put them on. on thick, cushioned soles and we keep them if you have to wear shoes to school or to protect your feet when you're out, whatever if they were barefoot minimalist shoes without SES without heel-to-toe drop.

I think we would. stop or reduce so many subsequent problems in the future back pain hip pain knee pain whatever your perspective is on everything I just said, so the science is already there, we don't even have to hypothesize, dear my friend. He was invited to present some of his work in India and they said, "Just let us know what you want to talk about and then we'll do all the promotion and he was like, oh, what should I do?" He talks about and uh, he was a foot person, um, he's a foot person, so he said, uh, oh, let's do fasciitis and the email came back, yeah, dude, uh, well, I think that one is your problem. we don't have this, it doesn't really exist here, think about something else, there are so many cultures around the world that don't have these problems and they don't wear padded shoes and some don't wear shoes and In some cultures, kids don't wear shoes to play sports until 14 years old, so that certainly happened in South Africa and New Zealand when I lived in Africa, that was the state, now you know I've returned from Africa 30 years ago. so I don't know if it's changed since then but at that time kids didn't wear Sho, they weren't allowed to wear shoes for sports so they needed to move around with their little growing feet without any restrictions and it's not just the shoes . it's the socks, the socks are so tight and people don't even realize that you know the elastic is that people tend to wash a lot and you know that one has to go to the washing machine and every time these fibers are washed, these elastic The fibers wash and lose a little elasticity until we all know that cute, comfortable, stretchy, lovely sock that was lovely when you first put it on is now tight and won't break comfortable, but we're going to put it on everyone ways because it doesn't have any holes yet, so we'll just keep going like this, which is fair enough and yeah, and it's not, it's kind of bad for your feet because the bones in your feet need to move, the joints need to move to activate the muscles.

Of which there is plenty, then, do you think? I think you know we're going to have to save certain parts of this discussion for next time, Helen, but as a general rule, are you a fan of minimal issues? I, personally, don't do it. like padded shoes I can't I can't feel the ground it doesn't work for me I want to feel I want to be connected to the ground nothing pleases me more than standing as little as possible but my feet get cold so in winter I don't like wet and cold feet, like that that I wear waterproof socks and minimalist shoes because I have nothing else, yes, me too, so I have also experienced the benefits of minimalist shoes and I like them for some people.

The minimum is the shoes. I think it helps them feel the ground more and helps them activate all kinds of things. We know from some research that the strength of your feet can greatly improve within a few months of using them. I'm not talking about just running with them. use them, yes, but sometimes you need more than that, you still need to wake up your feet with a cloth, for example, yes, I think, although I don't know, are you saying that in an ideal world you mentioned the example of India where you wrote to to your friends and tell them: "Hey, look, we don't really have much fas PL here, talk about something else and I know, and a lot of people know, that there are many more who live barefoot, uh, of course, things are changing , there is a huge growing middle class." there are those who were buying padded souls etc., but it's interesting that you would also say throughout society that it is better for children not to wear padded shoes in the first place, all things being equal, I would say that my children had one of my children , one.

One of my sons was born in Africa and we were all barefoot most of the time and I would say their feet, both feet, became less fabulous, they came back to the UK and wore school shoes, mhm, and then people said, well, now you know, school shoes fit you, um and uh, all these things, it's a very complicated topic, but if you think about the human spine or the human body from top to toe like a pole, you know and this is the the science was done a long, long time ago if it's a long time ago if you lift uh uh this so that the cane has a foot and then the cane if you lift the heel more than 5 mm above the end of the foot at the end of the toe foot then the pole will start to wobble forward, so as humans, because we are dynamic, we can accommodate this because we can accommodate all types of landing on uneven ground with the heel higher than the toe, we can accommodate the heel higher lower than the tip of the foot. the foot, so it's not ground, it actually needs to be uneven and maybe that's why our feet are so articulated so we can accommodate all this unevenness, not because of the softness of the ground, most of the ground on this Earth It's hard, so it has nothing to do with cushioning against a hard ground, it's the ball, the heel can be where it needs to depending on the ground in relation to the foot, but if it is permanently x number of millimeters above the ball of the foot, then the body has to do something to accommodate it, the foot has to do something and to prevent you from standing, the rest of the body does it.

The famous story of very high heels is about the society we live in, where if a heel is a woman's heel rises enormously, swells the back of her body, from the calf to the buttocks, and tends to push up the front of your body to offer aesthetic pleasure to people looking at it, so the origins of heels. like fashion items because we have adorned ourselves to attract the opposite sex or attract the person we want to be attracted to forever because that is how we are made, but there is one consequence that is interesting to me and this is a completely different one. rabbit hole that we might fall into next time about where high heels come from and what it is about this culture and the social pressure on women of a certain class and whatever it was like in the past to wear heels and you've explained some of the rationale there, but essentially what fits the theme of this whole conversation, Helen, is that every right thing has a consequence, so your foot can adapt to both going uphill and going downhill, so the heel is lower than the ball of the foot, the toe lower than the heel.

Uneven terrain, great, but when you put it permanently. your foot in one place, let's say with a heel, not even just a high heel, if your heel is above your toe and that's how you go about your life every day, there will be a compensation in other parts of your body to which you have to adapt. Mind you, the body will create strategies to maintain whatever you want to do, it will find a way and that's a double edged sword, so I think in summary the question about children's shoes is a fraud because everyone, everyone parents are trying to do the best they can for their children, I understand that for sure and there is an important factor, because I have seen it in many comments that well, everything is very good, but these are growing feet and minimalist shoes No. cheap and we need to have room to grow and you know they are swimming in these shoes that don't fit them, but somehow rather with normal shoes, normal school shoes, normal kids shoes, they can have room to grow and somehow get Enter the foot and pin it so it doesn't fall off as the growing space is still there so it is a fraud issue due to people's sensitivity because they are trying to do the right thing with maybe limited resources and Children have this flourishing habit of continuing to grow and cost more and more money.

Wouldn't it be pure joy if we could do without all that and have them just take off their shoes and be barefoot, just be barefoot so they can have some kind of something to wear them to school and then everyone can take off their shoes because they're inside, yeah , they are inside all day, why do they wear shoes? Being inside all day has its own problems, sure, but just to top it off. Outside of that point, Helen, I think it's very important and people are often unhappy with minimalist shoe companies, but I think it's out of line personally because there are so many of them, uh, they're flourishing all over the world now. and there are all kinds of different prices, yes. some of them are expensive and I understand why parents go.

I can't afford for that to be the cost of living crisis. People are struggling, but it's not minimalist shoes. I would say they are not the problem. The problem is that we have never done the case for cushioned shoes, all the big shoe companies are now creating cushioned shoes at scale, so of course they are cheaper, it's a bit like you know the big foods. Of course, not all the time, but most of the time it's ultra-processed foods because they are mass-produced and at scale, while the companies that try to come in and out know that we think this is better for our children's health. and if they are trying to do things the right way, sometimes they are more expensive, so I understand that, but what's the problem?

If you can't afford it, there are many things you can do when your child is home. It is best to go barefoot, take off your shoes, and clean your feet so that even when you are wearing padded shoes, even with your shoes on, as the name of your book says, your feet will function better. You know anything you would add that you would disagree with something there. no, no, I agree with everything and if you turn it around like you did before, the minimalist movement is on the bench and, like you said, no one, no one put fashionable footwear on the bench, it just happened, it's just because it's there and It is omnipresent, no one questions it because it has always been there.

It has always been like this. When I taught how to ride bicycles, I asked and people came from all over Europe because we teach Europe. We were the teachers of Europe for the bank. appropriate and I got people who couldn't speak English, people who could speak English, to translate for their partners if they couldn't speak English, because there was this story that it's always been the bottom line. It's always been that way, so no one questions the norm because it's always been that way, so the norm is that everyone has grown up with whatever they've grown up in whatever country they're in, so standard footwear gives us it normalizes what doesn't really make any sense, so if you flip it, does this norm make any sense?

Because we're moving the foot away from the ground, we elevate the heel to varying degrees, we fill it with things to do that. they don't feel like the ground and we're asking bodies to move on this articulated fourth part of the bones of the body with all that sensory information 200,000 nerve endings or something absolutely extraordinary we're asking them to move well, well, where this? So where is the logic? So can I have less or can I have less time on that? So can I have less shoes or less time? and let's pay attention to the socks, please pay attention to the socks, everyone because they may have the loosest ones. shoe in the world, you know, uh, teenagers don't tie their laces, I applaud you, I'm just a fan of loose laces, uh, like anyone who knows me, I talk about laces and if you have a tight sock inside your pair.

If it's a luo, then you're still restricting, so if we just pair up again so there's less restriction, we give less restriction, we give more freedom to our movement on as many levels as you can imagine, what belief do you subscribe to that keeps you ? caught yes, yes, you know, and it could just be a standardization, yes, what is the belief? Where did you get the belief that you had to wear padded shoes? What if you don't believe in that? What happens if you just go? Well, wait a minute, what? What would my life be like if I didn't subscribe to that point of view?

Yeah, if you understood that for 99.9% of human evolution we didn't have cushions and we did pretty well with the terms of our movement, it's amazing to me that I need to defend it, but Helen let'sleave that there for another conversation. We have covered a lot. We've gotten off topic, which is what I love to do. Who needs lists? You're ready to finish. Helen, let's take it. this far from the marathon runners or triathletes or iron men or half marathoners right, let's talk to the person who is frustrated because they can't go around the block the way they want mhm, keep listening to me or anyone else from the one you talk about The moves are cool, but they're like hey, I get it.

I hear what you're saying, but I can't move every time I go for a walk. My knee hurts. My foot hurts. My shoulder hurts. Yes, of course, go see your healthcare professionals there. There may be something they can help you with, but with all your years of experience, I'd love to know at the end of this conversation, Helen, what you would say to that person. Okay, so you want to walk around the block and things hurt, somewhere it hurts. and we can start, we can finish where we started with the knees, so I worked with a footballer who had had two surgeries on his knee and there was still no solution and no one because I said okay, so you know, everyone would have done everything that is .

They would have crossed and dotted eyes within the realm of standard post-surgery knee rehab and I said okay and looked. He took the assessment from him. Everyone puts on their socks and stands still walking and then if they run with their shoes on, obviously. We measured running with shoes in whatever they want to run and he took off his socks and I almost fell. He had stiffer feet. I think I had probably seen the higher arches, an extended toe, the ATT tendon, so the little tendons that come on the top of your foot from the toe to the foot that lift the toe were like strings of guitar, that's how they were taught, everything was taught and I said well, has anyone looked at your feet?

No, so we look. in their feet they couldn't move, they couldn't move because they were hypersensitive and then we reduced the hypersensitivity through the very technical art of cleaning the feet and their feet could move and then we could progress with the knee. The knee function requires the shin to rotate, but if your feet are locked, the shin can't rotate in the direction it's just stuck, so we were able to make ground so you can keep it as simple as lying down. the ground, where is my? head, is it even comfortable to have my head in line with the rest of my body, so the progression is to then take it against the wall?

You know, is it comfortable for my head to be more or less above the rib cage, above the pelvis? the wall um and then maybe rub the scalp a little bit to give the brain awareness maybe uh engage with your inner Mia Cat um uh I should do it uh In fact, I have quite a few posts on Instagram about it um and and the Another thing is that you can check physically from top to bottom and then you can help yourself with the superpower that is above your nose, your eyes, so if that person can see, they can use their eyes to change.

I dare say everything so that your field of vision informs. your spinal activity your spinal activity to some extent, um, it informs it, it's to some extent the other way around, but it's much more the visual field, which informs our spine, so we need peripheral vision when we're upright, our nervous system The central nervous system feels safe because we only have eyes on the front of our head unlike other animals that have eyes on the sides of their heads, so our general sense of alertness is because we have a field of vision that goes toward the back. left and right, as well as forward, so when we access that peripheral field of vision, we and I measure this so consistently it's ridiculous, it's such an easy way to extend your spine.

I had a guy who didn't run because he couldn't run, but he wanted to do it and he was. mmm he showed me he was walking and he was looking down and he said well I want to run but you know I can't run and I'm embarrassed to show you how I run and I said please, please, please don't be ashamed, it's just you and Solo Show me what you've been doing and he ran looking down like a bull in a china shop. He was leaning so far forward that he was like a bull in a china shop.

Three minutes later, I have a video of this. I'd like to ask him if he could show it to people because he went from someone who couldn't run at all. Couldn't he have difficulty moving? He changed his field of vision. He came and looked at the screen. He's gone. I look like a runner. and I told you, you look totally glorious, just his field of vision left him still, you don't even need to try, we got it, you can be careful, same with the minimalist, but when you start doing it, when you start matching. down and maybe you will be on your feet less for longer just do it gradually because the muscles are not used to it just a heads up don't throw everything away give your body a chance so that when you start paying attention to your field of vision it doesn't too much at once because the eyes get tired, but they move by muscles like everything else, so you can have this, and the easiest thing is to go around the block, maybe rubbing your feet. a little bit and there is also hiccups, so there are hypersensitive soles of the feet and hiccups and these people can stomp, they can walk on anything, they make your feet sensitive, but really the hiccups are just the extreme, the other extreme of the same. the Spectrum, so if you can, stand on pointy rocks and walk on glass and it doesn't affect you at all, maybe rub your feet a little to make them respond a little more because these feet are hyposensitive and are still not feeding the information through system, so maybe you've done some skin work on your feet to clear your brain a little, maybe you've found a better place for your head to be, and then you walk around the block. and you see in front of you but you're not looking at anything, you're not trying to do anything, you're just looking ahead and you're looking at the houses on both sides of the street, so you have this field of vision and you see. what happens in your system I measure every time.

I have never not measured it. It improves by simply changing the field of view and I get people. I tell you, please don't believe anything I say, go and experience, yes, bring your field of vision back to where it was. Does that feel like it? Switch it back and of course it's not just down, you can look, you can have your head forward and look down, but you're looking somewhere, it has nothing to do with anything other than what you're looking at. something or you're seeing everything when I say looking at something I'm putting my two fingers together because I have laser vision focus and when you're seeing everything you're not looking at anything you're seeing everything nothing is in focus but you can see where you're going we don't need to look at the ground right in front at our feet, our eyes have already seen it.

Move forward with our scan ahead, where we are going. We are scanning where we are going and with that, because it is peripheral vision, our system relaxes, our autonomic nervous system detects that there is no danger. I can see everything, it relaxes, it relaxes to its innate state, which is upright, yeah, no, upright posture, you know. Department no. that vertical functionally vertical and when you go to look at something you will feel sunken, you will feel I call it the button Stern uh the base of the stern is like a little button there, it just sinks and falls and everything feels a little more difficult, I don't you believe, play.

It's the contrast with this with that with this with that get your own empirical evidence and if you relate to and if you wear glasses then if you wear glasses and you have contact lenses please put your contact lenses on if you don't have contact lenses then wear the least irritating frame so you can allow the field of view, it won't be in focus because you're not looking at anything you don't need to be concentrating on and simply allow the field of view to extend as far as is comfortable for you is the key you'll find better with the peripheral vision the superpower is above your nose I mean I've experienced it myself you know since I learned you know when you have that soft look that peripheral vision I feel more rotation uh it just feels more fluid seriously Helen I think There's a little preview for our next conversation because today we didn't get into Vision properly as I expected.

I guess your message is really one of hope for people, don't assume you can't move without pain anymore, start paying attention, think in your head, think about your feet and then see where you are and if you can't find it. anything lies on it, so you only get the information if you think about it. I don't know where anything is. Lie on it if you don't know where your left arm is. lie on it if you don't know where your head is. lie on it, give your brain the information, let your brain find it for you Helen, I honestly think you're doing an amazing job.

I know some of the amazing case studies of people who have tried everything they have done. Seeing you and suddenly they're moving well again, they're not in pain anymore, it's really remarkable. I think you left a lot of wisdom in this conversation, a lot in the first conversation, if people want more, I guess they can go to your book, they can go. to his website because it has all these videos that he's made for people. There is also the course, of course, for health professionals, physiotherapists, running coaches and people who want to learn more about the whole philosophy.

What is the website?

helen

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hall

.co thanks to any other place you would point them to other than your Instagram of course, oh I'm trying to do better in the instant I've been. I've recently relaxed, but I'm going to do it. to get back on top I moved house so I'm going to do it again eh so yeah I just want to help as many people as humanly possible and very often when the complex hasn't worked out maybe the Helen is missed, always love Chass and C. Thanks for coming back to the show. Thanks for inviting me.

If you enjoyed that conversation, then I think you'll really enjoy this one. Distribution of training intensity. Management of the relationship between the adaptive signal and stress. Which is a systemic phenomenon. We're trying to stay under the stress radar for most of our workouts. Yeah.