Episode 339
339. Is Pilates Education Increasing Our Risk Of Injury?
Resources:
- Strength training reduces injury risk substantially here and here and here
- Resistance training itself is a very safe activity here and here
- Foot pronation increases risk of shin splints here, but has no effect on overall injury risk here and there is minimal evidence that any biomechanical variable predicts running injuries here
- Knee valgus does not predict future ACL injury here
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
AdBarker - https://adbarker.com/privacy
Transcript
We talk a lot on this podcast about the lack of relationship between alignment and injury.
::And in that regard, we're kind of unique.
::I mean, there's one or two other people out there talking about it.
::Shout out to Adam McAtee.
::But most of the plot is metaverse. And I think you have the major players in the industry.
::Still very much grounded in alignment protocols for safety.
::And one of our favorite instructors here at Breathe Education happens to be
::on the other end of the microphone.
::And I think he's standing on a pile of about three soapboxes.
::Right now. And that's, uh, that's my friend Heath Lander.
::Yeah, that's me. I, um, well, I've, I've brought the topic today and,
::uh, I've slept badly while chewing on it.
::Um, I was driving, I had a long drive yesterday, time to think,
::listen to some podcasts and I was listening to some, some people talk about this idea of, um,
::surplus value and, or negative value and they were they were talking about in
::terms of raising children and that,
::while you're raising a child they're a negative value
::on society you know and by nature you know almost by
::definition they you know when they
::call 9-1-1 or when they get on the tube or when
::they go to school other people are putting value into
::the society that they're drawing down on and this
::the premise of this was that at some point that has to transition
::tip over as you become a functioning
::adult you start to create surplus
::value that puts back into the society and uh
::and i personally align with that and that's what i've seen in you know being
::a parent i think that's a valuable way to think about it and then what struck
::me was i've personally always been very careful to preface any discussion around a comparison between.
::The evidence-based approach that, as you say, ourselves at Breathe and others, some others,
::do the work to implement, which is hard work because the evidence changes and
::it means your education structure has to evolve and change and you've got to
::do a whole lot of work in terms of upskilling and rebuilding programs when you do it.
::We've done that and I've always tiptoed around making a comparison between that
::and education structures that aren't but.
::My epiphany while I was driving is I just, I actually think that what I see people,
::the transformation that we see instructors go through when they come and understand
::evidence-based, an evidence-based approach to Pilates versus a non-evidence-based approach.
::A takes them a really long time and they're
::not it's not because they're not cognitively agile they've
::just been indoctrinated as one is in an
::institution with concepts and beliefs that are then hard to shift especially
::when they're associated with large financial investment and time investment
::and they're coming out of education
::providers that teach them this still teach them this to this day,
::and they're passing them on to their clients.
::And what struck me was, you know, one of the things that makes me feel like
::my life has been a surplus value is that by helping people actually become stronger,
::more flexible, and more skillful so they can live healthier,
::happier, longer lives, which is my little mantra,
::which we've talked about before, and it's not an unreasonable claim based on the evidence,
::is that I'm helping, not just,
::i'm giving an it's an opportunity for me to
::create surplus value and if i make someone healthier happier
::and fit flexible stronger more skillful etc etc they can raise better kids they
::can make more money they can run better businesses they can do their job better
::they can live longer they can be less of a drain on the health services you
::know they all of that is surplus value in the community.
::And then if I then was to flip what I do back to what I was taught,
::which is to tell people that moving to end range is dangerous.
::That moving under load such that your form dissipates is dangerous, then I'm actively...
::I'm actively reducing the value that I could put back into the community via that person.
::And all of a sudden, I just thought, fuck it. This is bullshit.
::We're part of this industry that's growing around the world.
::And most of the injury, like the big players, are still telling people that
::you should move in a particular way under nominal loads.
::And your breath pattern or your muscle firing pattern is more important than
::how much load you're under or the range of motion that you're in or the skill
::that you scale up to bigger movements so that you feel more confident in your daily life.
::And I just thought, fuck it, that's negative value. That's a crime against humanity,
::to be purporting that horse shit to people who are passionate, passionate people,
::instructors, being taught things that are completely out of date you know there's
::just no excuse as far as and i mean i know i'm on the soapboxes there but i
::just can't see that there is any excuse for not updating your teaching structures in 2025.
::And I just feel like I'm sick of saying, oh, look, all movement's good movement
::because yes, all movement's good movement.
::But in terms of creating surplus value in other humans, some movement is measurably
::better than other movement.
::And that's movement that actually makes them stronger, more flexible, more skillful.
::So if you knowingly withhold that information because you don't have the energy
::to change your education structures or you're too calcified in your thinking
::to admit that you were wrong,
::like someone needs to put a firecracker up your ass and tell
::you to move on and let the new generation come through like fuck
::that you know this is other people's health
::that you're fucking with for the sake of what ultimately is
::money and laziness yeah that's what i was thinking i think um i mean i i broadly
::agree i think there's a lot of myths i guess i'm less skeptical or less cynical
::about human motivations there.
::I think it's just, you know, a combination.
::I don't think people are, you know, willfully misleading people.
::I think it's just kind of intellectual laziness.
::Um, you know, if you're balanced body or start Pilates and you've got, you know,
::20,000 copies of Emmanuel in print, it's, it's really hard to just,
::you know, make a quick little edit and go, you know what, actually neutral spy is not that important.
::It turns out, um, you know, you've got like, you know,
::5,000 instructor trainers around the world to, you know,
::turning out X number of tens of thousands of budgets, you know,
::it's like, and you've translated your materials into 17 languages and what,
::you know, it's like, it, it, it's, it's hard to turn a big ship like that.
::Um, and, and the, the, how big and impressive and, and established it is,
::is, is the Achilles, the Achilles heel of that is it's really,
::really hard to, to change direction, you know? Um, yeah.
::And we see it even in universities, which are supposed to, I mean,
::that's where the research literally happens, that the average university course
::is something like eight to 10 years out of date.
::And that is because just the inertia.
::But that's where I get frustrated because we've been saying that on their behalf
::for as long as I've been studying with you, and that's 15 years.
::And i do take your point absolutely who was
::it that said i can't remember who was it that said it's like
::it's very hard to convince a man um of some
::you know of something when he's when he's when his uh when
::his income depends on him not not understanding it you
::know um and so it's very
::hard like if you've got this business and you stop pilates or balanced body
::or bassy or whoever you know that is studio pilates all of them teach these
::kind of alignment protocols you know front and center that you know you've got
::a what you know at a guest 20 million dollar a year business,
::that is based around teaching these things it's like well that's a major disincentive
::to you know to change absolutely yeah.
::Um, but I agree it's a negative value and I think we are, I mean,
::I guess the reason I'm, the reason I, I guess I'm guilty of being,
::you know, kind of soft on crime, uh,
::as well in this.
::And, and the, I, and I do that consciously. I don't give a shit about offending,
::you know, the big Pilates companies, but I do give a shit about offending Pilates,
::our listeners, Pilates instructors. I don't want to.
::Yeah, absolutely. I don't want, I don't want, you know, people listening to
::this podcast to feel that, that we don't respect them or we think they're stupid
::or, you know, anything like that.
::So I guess that's why I'm, you know, I guess I would say.
::Overly diplomatic a lot of the time in, in talking about this.
::And it's kind of like, you know, all movement's good.
::And, and, and it's true. All movement is good.
::Right. Absolutely. That's the, and I don't want to, I don't want to misrepresent
::myself because I don't want to say that I'm saying that, you know,
::there is movement that's bad.
::And it's just that my little passion spike last night was that always saying
::first off, look, let's remember that all movement's good movement.
::It sort of ameliorates having a different position because it's like,
::okay, as long as everyone's moving, we're good.
::And it's like, well, actually within that, once we accept the assumption that
::all movement is better than no movement, then there is movement that is objectively
::more productive for human health and longevity.
::It's saying all movement's good is not the same thing as saying all movement's equally good.
::Equal, right. So yeah, all movement's better than no movement,
::but once you've got people moving, there is movement that's measurably better
::for the outcomes that make human life better or create surplus value.
::And the other part of that that's really frustrating, then we get this whole
::thing about Pilates somehow being better than fitness.
::Like, you know, heaven forbid that we call Pilates fitness training
::or whatever the fuck like if you're moving and you're getting stronger and more
::flexible that's the variable right like not where your movement came from you
::know and we only need to look at joseph and and what he how he taught anyway
::i mean you know where i'm going with that but so.
::All right. So, I mean, there's lots of stuff that we, you know,
::disagree with about in how Pilates is taught.
::And, you know, we've been fortunate enough to be able to just go and create
::our own education company that teaches the way we think it should be taught.
::And we base that the way we think it should be taught on current science as much as possible.
::And we're also lucky enough to be smart. And change our program when there's
::new evidence. Yeah. And you're in the middle of doing that for the umpteenth time right now.
::And, you know, that's basically a permanent job almost.
::Like they say, painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge, you know,
::they go from one end and paint it all the way to the other end and they just
::start at the first end again and go again because it takes that long to paint
::it. By the time you get to the other end, it needs painting again.
::And it's kind of like that with rebuilding our course. You know,
::we rebuild it and as soon as we finish it, we have to start rebuilding it again,
::you know, because the new evidence comes out, you know, new ACSM guidelines
::come out or new modal learning research comes out or new, you know,
::educational design research comes out or whatever it might be.
::And so, or we just, you know, learn, we have more student data,
::what works, what doesn't.
::You know, the market changes, you know, what employers want has changed.
::You know, so, so yeah, it is kind of a Sydney Harbour Bridge thing.
::But i guess uh you know one thing
::that like you say kind of hasn't changed you know
::really in the last i would say 20 years
::now and over that time there has been increasing amounts of literature uh on
::the lack of association between alignment and or cause injury risk and it's just not It's just not,
::I would say that.
::No reasonable, I don't think any reasonable, you know,
::scientist, any person who has read the literature widely could reasonably take
::the position that alignment is a major factor in all-cause injury risk.
::You know, I don't think a reasonable person could take that position.
::Now, there is a lot of, and to be fair to people reading this literature and
::maybe not feeling clear on that, there are a lot of….
::I think there's a lot of motivated reasoning that happens even within the literature
::itself and interpreting of it.
::Like there's, you know, if you look at the literature on biomechanics and injury
::risk, you know, you'll find like, oh yeah, there's a lot of biomechanical literature
::showing that, you know, alignment predicts injury risk, right?
::But then when you look at almost all of that literature, they're looking at,
::they're not actually looking at injury risk.
::They're looking at proxies for injury
::risk, like loading on a joint or EMG activity in a certain alignment.
::So when we squat with our knees inwards, that increases loading on the lateral
::compartment of the knee.
::And therefore, we conclude that doing that is dangerous because that might overload the knee.
::But it's like that prima facie, like on the face of it, But that is a hypothesis
::that by increasing the loading on that compartment of the knee, we increase injuries.
::We have no evidence that that's true. And there's an equal argument,
::a very plausible argument, saying it's not true at all.
::It's like, well, when you do a biceps curl, it increases loading on the elbow joint.
::So should we not avoid biceps curls because that might cause injury?
::It's like exercise is the process of deliberately loading the tissues of the
::body in order to stimulate a strengthening response.
::Like that's what strengthening is, right? So deliberately loading the tissues of the body.
::So saying like doing X, Y, and Z increases loading on this particular tissue,
::it's like, so, you know, it's like, how do we know that's a bad thing, right?
::And so when you look at this literature, there's a lot of that stuff on joint
::loads and EMG, you know, and very, very little looking at like, okay,
::people who squat with their knees
::in, how many of them actually get knee injuries, you know, afterwards?
::And guess what? The answer is… Right. And when they get the knee injury…,
::Because when they get the knee injury, what's the other variable?
::It's how much and how often are they training.
::And what's their nutrition status? How old are they? You know,
::what's their body composition? What's their weight?
::You know, what's their, there's so many, so many things, you know.
::Yeah. And just to what, like taking that and winding it back to what I think
::was a major turning point for me,
::and it was when a course, when you changed a course that, Back then I was still,
::I think I was studying or delivering, I can't remember, but back in the day,
::we were taught all that research.
::I think it was McGill that did the research on the pig spines.
::And then blinding flash of the blatantly fucking obvious, we were assessing
::the risk on dead tissues. And what we forgot to allow for was that when you
::load a human spine, they're not dead.
::And if you give them rest and nutrition appropriately, those tissues actually
::strengthen rather than just slamming them for 50,000 repetitions over a weekend.
::On a machine so that you can test the response to, I mean, you could probably
::talk much more accurately to the actual experiment, but just that idea of when
::I grew up in Pilates land.
::Why we taught neutral was predicated on tests done on dead tissues.
::Yeah. Well, I think that's the problem with pretty much any research in this
::area is almost to all of it actually isn't human trials that evaluate injury incidents, right?
::So what you, you know, like if you want to know, does, you know,
::bending your back or squatting with the knees in or whatever cause more injuries, right?
::Well, what you, you know, the gold standard to act, the way to actually measure
::that is to get a bunch of people, have half of them squat with their knees in,
::half of them not squat with their knees in, follow them for a year so you get to sore knee.
::And just that would be the gold standard, right?
::But it's really, really hard to do that. And so what we end up doing is we have
::people come into the lab for one day, we put AMGs on their knees and we go, okay, let's squat.
::Oh, when you squatted that way, it reduced the activation of tibialis anterior.
::That could cause increased weight on the lateral compartment of the knee.
::Therefore, that increases injury
::risk, right? So there's so many assumptions in between A and Z there.
::Or the other thing we do is we get you know
::we cut you know bits out of pig spines and we
::stick them in a jig and we bend them 86,400 times in 24 hours and then we say
::huh a lot of them got injured right therefore bending is dangerous you know
::but it's like all right well if if if you got a real live human and you got
::them to do 86,400 of anything you know even just.
::Without a break got them to like stand in perfect neutral posture you know with
::a dumbbell in each hand right for 24 hours which is 86,400 seconds,
::You probably get some injuries there, right?
::So just let alone doing 86,400 reps of any exercise in 24 hours.
::So it's like, but if you've got that person to do like 10 reps and then wait
::a couple of minutes and do that again and do that three times and do that three
::times a week and over 10 years do 86,400 reps, they'll probably just get a fuckload
::stronger and they wouldn't get injured, right?
::So it's like a lot of this literature, that's a really great example of it actually
::doesn't measure injury risk in live humans.
::We're measuring proxies. Either we're measuring proxy measures in live humans
::or we're measuring injury in dead pigs.
::Dead tissues. Yeah.
::And it's interesting that, you know, we do have some literature on looking at,
::you know, particular alignment and particular injuries.
::And so one of the things, like in humans, and so one of the areas we have, um,
::Well, two areas we have are foot pronation, ankle pronation,
::and then also knee valgus, you know, knees going in.
::And we see that when we look at foot pronation,
::people who run a lot regularly and who have very pronated feet tend to suffer
::more ankle injuries than people who run the equivalent amount and don't have
::very pronated feet, right?
::So you think, oh, well, pronation causes injury. Yeah,
::pronation can predispose people to ankle injuries, but people who have very
::pronated feet and run a lot have fewer tibial stress injuries than people who
::have non-pronated feet.
::So actually having pronated feet makes it more likely you'll have one particular
::injury and less likely you'll have a different particular injury,
::which kind of makes sense because if you think like, okay, when you pronate,
::it loads up the ankle more and probably offloads,
::the tibia, because the pronated position of the foot is the shock-absorbing
::position of the foot, so there's a softer landing, but it's all going into the ankle.
::So it's like, okay, you're loading the ankle more and the tibia less,
::so therefore the ankle has more injuries.
::Whereas when you are neutral, you have fewer ankle injuries,
::but more tibial injuries.
::Right. So we could frame that exact same research a different way and say people
::who don't pronate have more tibial injuries or people with a neutral foot have more tibial injuries.
::You know, so are we all going to go, oh crap, we should all stop having neutral feet now.
::No, I think what we find is when we look at the overall, what's the incidence
::of ankle injuries versus tibial injuries? Well, the answer is they're about the same.
::And so whether you have pronated feet or non-pronated feet, your total chance
::of getting some kind of injury is about the same, right?
::But just where that injury is likely to be is probably, you know,
::if you're a pronator, it's probably more likely to be in your ankle.
::If you're not a pronator, it's more likely to be in your shin, right?
::And so that's a very, very typical example.
::And we see that a lot in what human intervention studies we do have with alignment
::injury is that particular alignments do increase injury incidence of one particular type of injury,
::but at the same time, there's an equal and opposite decrease in the incidence
::of some other particular type of injury.
::And it all evens out in the wash in almost every case.
::Yeah. And, you know, dear listener, listen to Ralph explain that as many times
::as you need to, But can we just,
::because I would need to, if I hadn't heard him explain it many times before,
::but just for us in Pilates, the Pilates space, let's just bring that back to our reformer class.
::You know, if you've been taught at Pilates school that the way your clients
::lunge on one red spring or one blue spring, whether their knee is in or out
::is a risk to their ankle or their knee, like you just don't.
::Ref catch me if i'm missing something here
::but you're just not applying enough load over enough repetitions
::you just haven't got time or enough load to
::have any of those things be a concern because your clients need to leave in
::the next 45 minutes and go home and rest and then not you're just not those
::injuries are like when you're running too much over a week right the variable
::is how many miles you run per week so if your clients come to you twice a week
::and you do lunges each time you see them,
::do the lunge any fucking way you want.
::You're just not doing enough reps to put yourself in the risk category that
::puts you in the conversation that Raph just talked about.
::I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Raph, but how many lunges would you need to
::do to put yourself in that conversation? Yeah, so that's a really good point.
::And there's no literature on
::Pilates and the injury risk of people doing Pilates that I've ever read.
::I've looked, but I haven't found any literature looking at, okay.
::In a Pilates class, what is your chance of getting injured? What's the baseline rate?
::We don't know. But we know we have research in yoga, in breakdancing,
::in wrestling, all of which are kind of, sort of similar to Pilates.
::We have lots of literature on gym injuries and weightlifting and powerlifting,
::which you know, in other ways are kind of, sort of, you know, similar to Pilates.
::Um, and what we see is that all of these things are extremely safe.
::All of them are extremely safe.
::And, uh, one of the safest things you can do in fact is strength training,
::whether it's Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, or just going to lifting weights
::at the gym, you know, hitting the chest press or whatever.
::Uh, I don't have the stats right in front of me, but the number of injuries
::per thousand hours of, you know, training in gym. It's microscopic.
::It's like, you know, three per hundred thousand hours. It's very,
::very, very small, right?
::And the overwhelming majority of….
::Of injuries that occur in, you know, gyms are not people doing exercise incorrectly.
::It's people dropping shit on their own feet and tripping over and falling off
::cardio machines, right?
::So just imagine, you know, some idiot leaves the weights out and you're walking
::across the gym and you trip over it and smash your face into a dumbbell rack or something.
::That's a typical gym injury, right?
::Or some idiot's clowning around on the treadmill, you know, running backwards
::and sideways looking at a girl across the gym, falls off, you know,
::smashes their head on the wall or whatever, right?
::That is a typical gym injury, not someone doing a squat incorrectly and,
::you know, blowing out their knee, right?
::Way, way more common, like 80%. I don't have the stats right in front of me,
::but I have looked at the literature on this.
::And it's somewhere in 70, 80% of injuries are like just idiots doing stupid
::shit, you know, in the gym.
::And we have a lot of literature looking at resistance training volume,
::so basically how many hours per week you spend doing resistance training.
::Now, typically resistance training is measured in these studies as like lifting
::weights or using machines at the gym, right?
::But Pilates is essentially, it's in that category of thing, or it's not that
::exact same thing, but it's the same type of thing using bodyweight resistance
::and spring resistance, but it's still resistance training. if you do it right.
::And there is a very clear and very consistent inverse relationship between the
::number of hours you spend resistance training on a regular basis and your risk of injury, right?
::So the more you resistance train, the less injuries you get, right?
::And so these are studies looking at athletes, so, you know, soccer players,
::rugby players, dancers, you know, whatever it might be.
::Then we look at the dancers, rugby players, and soccer players who,
::you know, go to the gym half an hour a week, an hour a week,
::two hours a week, three hours a week.
::And guess what? The three hour a week people have the fewest injuries and the
::half an hour a week people have more injuries and the people who never go to
::the gym have the most injuries.
::And so, you know, there's a risk in anything. Like if you go for a walk,
::you might die of a heart attack.
::But if you never go for a walk, your chance of dying of a heart attack is way
::higher because your cardiovascular system is way weaker, right?
::And so, yes, if you go to the gym, there's a higher chance, like if you're squatting
::with a heavy barbell on your back, there's a higher chance you're going to hurt
::your back than if you're sitting on the sofa, right?
::But if you never squat, your lifetime chance of doing something in your back
::is way higher because your back is so much weaker.
::And if you'd step off a curb wrong or, you know,
::roll over in bed wrong, you can snap something because you're just made of chalk
::because you've never actually added any load to your system and stimulated that
::strengthening, that protective strengthening that you get from resistance training.
::Actually, you know, you and I have both been looking at this company.
::We're both kind of like called the Moves Method.
::And one of the things that they talk about is that, you know,
::you need to get strong out of alignment, right?
::Because if lunging with your knee in is dangerous, which it's not,
::but if lunging with your knee in was dangerous, well,
::are you truly going to guarantee that you go through the next 50,
::60 years of your life without ever once having your knee in?
::What about when you get up?
::I mean, dear listener, try this right now. I sit in a chair,
::get up out of a chair and rotate to one side at the same time.
::Like just imagine you're getting out from a table in a restaurant where you're
::in a corner or there's people either side of you on chairs and you're at dinner
::or you're on the bus and you have to get up and twist around somebody.
::It's like your knee fucking rotates when you do that.
::And you're going to Velgas, like it's a normal part of everyday movement,
::right? And so just say you're on the bus when you do that.
::And then as you're standing up, the bus jolts. Or just say you're at a restaurant
::and as you're doing that, someone else moves their chair and hits you in the side of the knee.
::Or just like, just say you're, you know, walking in the park and you change
::direction and a dog runs into you. Like shit happens in life, you know?
::And so if you've constantly avoided that position and never strengthened in
::that position, guess what?
::When shit happens, you've got no tolerance for it, right?
::But if you lunge every now and then with your knee going in a little bit,
::well, guess what? You get stronger in that position.
::You're more tolerant to load in that position because strength is specific,
::you know, specific to the joint angle, speed, range of motion,
::et cetera, that you move at.
::So yeah, it gets strong out of alignment. It's actually protective against injury.
::It's the opposite, you know? And that's why you're, you know,
::sweating and mumbling in your sleep, you know, and And, and,
::you know, going like, no, it's not alignment, you know,
::balanced body, you're wrong, um,
::is because like what the, what the message, that messaging is the exact opposite of what's true.
::I remember when I started to explore different kinds of movement and a program I was on said,
::I can't remember what they called it, I call it an inside squat.
::And you can try this, folks. You stand with your feet just a little wider than
::hip distance but not much and turn your toes out a little bit like duck-footed.
::And then as you squat put your knees together and
::squat as deep as you can and at the beginning it's kind
::of weird and awkward and hard and it's
::you're not as well set up to create force as you
::would in a normal squat but with a bit of practice I started to do barbell squats
::with my knees together and my feet apart asked to heal and once I started including
::movement like that with load my knees and I've got creaky knee I used to have
::creaky knees and sometimes they creak still my knees never felt better when I started to load.
::In that wrong squad when we've
::run the diploma there's a whole genre i'd call
::it a sub genre of kind of strongman like if
::you you know i'm i'm into strength and physiology and
::strength training i follow a whole bunch of people on youtube and instagram
::they're just into like weird and wacky you know strength training
::things and um there's this whole
::sub genre of like strongman competitors
::you know strongman people like they pick up like heavy rocks and
::you know throw things over poles and stuff like that that they're
::into doing like really weird lifts so they'll
::do something like a barbell on the ground and they'll
::pick it up off like a really heavy barbell with a fuck ton of weight on it and
::they'll put the barbell on one end and then they'll go sideways under put it
::on their shoulders sideways so they're laterally flexed like 90 degrees to their
::spine with this like 200 kilo barbell and then they'll get it a set and they'll
::stand up and do a squat and then they'll put it down again.
::And there are people that do like deadlifts with the bar behind their back or between their legs.
::Like, you know, there's this kind of weird, crazy shit that people do.
::And strongman, they pick up like massive fucking rocks that are really like
::odd, you know, asymmetrical shapes and you just cannot lift them in anything
::approaching neutral, in any joint.
::Then there's, you know, so there are so many, you know, sports that involve
::people just lifting extreme things, you know, in weird moments.
::And whenever they do that, and the argument is made by our education,
::Pilates education providers that that doesn't apply to your clients,
::is the only difference between those people is Milo and the Bull, right?
::They've just done a little weight and added a little more weight and added a
::little more weight and then all of a sudden they're doing these funky things in crazy alignment.
::It's exactly the same thing as any other kind of strength training.
::Well, you know. Backrowing, like backrowing. Like just think about some Pilates movements.
::Backrowing is a fucked up movement pattern, right? Like internally rotated and
::flexed at the spine and rotating. Why is that okay?
::Like why is that taught and okay when pushups with your elbows in a different position is not okay?
::Like it's, and you just add load over time, all tissues will get stronger in
::that movement. Well, it's, you know, what you said there about,
::like, and I've heard that argument too, it's like, are those strong men, you know, competitors?
::They're, you know, that's different. It's, you know, it doesn't apply to,
::like, you know, Mrs. Jones has got arthritic news. It's like,
::well, is their physiology different?
::I mean, do their cells respond differently to load? No, they've got human physiology, right?
::You know, I mean, if you cut them, they bleed, you know, like, they're humans.
::And so how did they get that strong? Well, they weren't always that strong.
::If you think about that person when they were born –.
::You know, zero days old, they couldn't do those things.
::So how is it that they're now able to do those things? Well, what do you think?
::They trained, you know, imagine little Johnny, you know, goes to the gym for
::the first time when he's 14, you know, does some biceps curls,
::you know, does that for a few years.
::One day, see some strongman competition, see someone picking up a rock,
::goes, oh, I think I'll give that a go, tries it, you know, then he goes down
::the rabbit hole, 20 years later, he's picking up fucking weird shit,
::you know, and weird angles on YouTube and people are going, oh,
::wow, that's amazing, but that doesn't apply to me.
::It's like, no, you just build up a tolerance to load by progressively adding load, right?
::And the difference between your client and the strongman competitors is your
::clients have not been exposed to enough load.
::That's why they're so fucking weak, right? If they can't bear to have their
::knee going two inches in a lunge, a bodyweight lunge, it's like,
::well, that's too little for too long.
::That's the problem there.
::And, and if you haven't looked up train with Joan and you're listening to us
::thinking, oh, it's too late.
::If you're, if you're not already strong by the time you're 40,
::it's too late. That's horse shit, right?
::Train with Joan. What is she? 75? 80? She went from one of the second half of
::her seventies now. I think she started training when she was 70.
::She was like just this completely sedentary, substantially overweight,
::70 year old who'd never exercised in her life.
::And for some reason she just decided to get fit. And now she's a fucking machine, you know?
::Yeah, it's so great. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, that's one of the ones,
::I've worked with lots of clients over 60 who had not exercised or if they had,
::it was before they were 20 and they came for whatever reason.
::And I've never seen anyone go through quite that transformation.
::But, you know, I will cry as soon as we start talking about working with older
::adults, because it's so transformational for them to feel strong and capable
::more so than sometimes they ever have in their life,
::simply by applying graded,
::consistent load and being patient, you know, and not giving them stories about
::their frailty or their inability to do things.
::And there's nothing special about that process. It's just special because it's
::extra transformational when people have lived a life without movement.
::And the one that really, and this is circling back to what makes me angry,
::is when working with clients who've been told to avoid movements because they're
::dangerous and so therefore they reduce their movement and their exposure to
::load and end up afraid to move.
::And the paradox is that actually makes them unsafe. Like as you explained so
::clearly before, If you have avoided movement because you're worried about it,
::you actually are more vulnerable.
::And our opportunity is to help people not be vulnerable, to actually make them
::stronger and more confident to move more freely and better.
::If we tell people that movements are dangerous and that load is dangerous and
::end range of motion is dangerous, and we don't do the work to know how to manage
::load incrementally and motivate people to come back, well,
::that's a negative, we're putting negative shit into those people's lives and
::making their lives measurably worse through, if nothing else,
::just through fear, let alone their physiological effect of not moving.
::Yeah. and the the you know
::that just going back to what you said about older adults there is
::we have a lot of literature on strength training
::uh for with older adults and we older adults are able to put on muscle and strength
::um with resistance training um they they tend to put on we're talking about
::people over 65 typically is what they refer to as older adults uh they tend to have a.
::Attenuated response to like hypertrophy training
::so in other words they put on less muscle for the
::same amount of training as a younger adult
::would but you just do a little bit more training and you can get the same amount
::of muscle you know so there's something like a 25 percent attenuation in the
::in the hypertrophy response so basically if the 20 year old and the 65 year
::old do the same number of sets of the same exercise at the same intensity,
::you know, the 20-year-old will probably have 25% more muscle, right?
::But if the older adult just does like a couple of extra sets, bam, equal, you know?
::And the older adults got plenty of time anyway, because they're retired.
::What else are they going to do?
::Good time for more training. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.
::So don't fear the valgus. Don't fear the spinal flexion. Don't fear the internal rotation.
::Don't fear the end range. Don't fear your knee going in in a lunge.
::And don't listen to bullshit from outdated educators who haven't changed their
::curriculum since the late, early 1990s.
::And, and if any, and, and the other, the thing there that I learned and you
::learned and we weren't taught is how to manage load over time.
::Like thinking, we teach, we call it teaching in layers. Like,
::and you think you teach in layers.
::Well, do you, when are your layers organized around adding load?
::Because that's what, that was the transformation for me in my teaching and my
::business and our education system is organizing what you add based on load and
::people's tolerance within the class.
::Like that's the skill. And that's why we built a
::whole system of Pilates designed to build people's capacity and make them stronger
::and more mobile so that they become more resistant to injury and they don't
::have to worry about their knee going in because they're strong enough to- And
::then they can move any way they want.
::And then you can go off and do neutral all you like, but you could do anything
::you want on either side of it. And they can even get up out of a chair in a
::restaurant without damaging their knee.
::On one leg. All right. Good talk.
