Reflexive Core Stability: Lessons From My Back Surgery - Part 3
In this podcast episode, I delve deeper into the lessons learned during my personal journey of back surgery and recovery. Building on the insights shared in the previous episodes, I focus on the crucial concept of reflexive core stability.
I begin by highlighting the misconception that reflexive core control is solely associated with specific exercises, such as chops and lifts. Instead, I shed light on the role of reflexive stability and the fascinating ways our bodies instinctively activate core control.
Delving into the definition of stability, as outlined by Punjabi, I explore the factors that contribute to stiffness within the musculoskeletal and fascial systems. I discuss the role of neurological stiffness, particularly its connection to hypermobility and the body's protective response. By understanding the purpose of neurological stiffness, we can approach it with caution, avoiding attempts to break it without addressing the underlying causes.
Moving on, I discuss two other forms of stiffness: muscular stiffness and physiological stiffness. Muscular stiffness stems from conscious muscle contractions, such as bracing, while physiological stiffness arises from hypertrophy and the pressure-container effect within the fascia. I highlight the significance of hypertrophied muscles in creating stiffness and the relationship between load, strength, and reflexive stiffness.
I further explore the hydraulic amplifier effect, which occurs through intra-abdominal pressure and dynamic alignment of fascial containers. Understanding weight shifts and their impact on maintaining dynamic alignment becomes crucial in harnessing the hydraulic amplifier effect. By incorporating active sensory systems, such as active head and neck movements, active hands, and an awareness of three-dimensional breath, we can tap into reflexive stiffness and optimal core stability.
Throughout the episode, I emphasize the importance of finding the right balance of load and resistance in order to connect with and optimize reflexive stiffness. Drawing from my personal experience, I challenge the fear of lifting heavy weights, as it can be instrumental in activating the stabilizers and achieving reflexive core control.
Join me on this enlightening episode as we unravel the secrets of reflexive core stability and uncover the transformative power of understanding and harnessing our body's innate abilities for optimal movement and spinal health.
Considering the viscera as a source of musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction is a great way to ensure a more true whole body approach to care, however it can be a bit overwhelming on where to start, which is exactly why I created the Visceral Referral Cheat Sheet. This FREE download will help you to learn the most common visceral referral patterns affecting the musculoskeletal system. Download it at www.unrealresultspod.com
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Hey there and welcome. I'm Anna Hartman and this is Unreal Results, a podcast where I help you get better outcomes and gain the confidence that you can help anyone. Even the most complex cases. Join me as I teach about the influence of the visceral organs and the nervous system on movement, pain and injuries, all while shifting the paradigm of what whole body assessment and treatment really looks like.
I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in.
Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Unreal Results Podcast. I'm back at you from home, from my office in San Diego, California, which is currently in a deep, dark winter. No, apparently it's been like gray, 84% of the days of the month to the last few months, which is. Very abnormal for us.
Normally it's like this time of year, normally it's like 50% of the days are gray. Uh, it's like the cold, the coolest, the coldest June we've had for a while, um, which is, uh, tough. The gray makes you feel like, um, makes me feel like I live back in Oregon and, uh, this is why I don't live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest because.
The gray. But anyways, um, supposedly it's supposed to be sunny for the rest of the week, starting today at 3:00 PM but, uh, I'll believe it when I see it. Um, I took last week off, um, was traveling in Europe, like I said on the last podcast, and I just, well, what happened? I was like, good. I was feeling good, like getting, working, working on my athlete, seeing all the sites going on.
Walks and seeing the city. And then we got to the Netherlands and, which was beautiful by the way. I really liked it. Our first stop was hang, hello Netherlands. And um, it was so beautiful. It was so quiet where we were staying, I almost felt like we were camping. You could hear the wind, the leaves, and the trees with the wind, and it was just really green and beautiful day, like, great temperature.
Sunny just felt like a great day. So when we got to the hotel, I took a little nap with the, the door to the patio open just to have the fresh air, which way I thought was fresh air. And that night I was like, I swallowed, um, some supplements and I was like, oh my gosh, my, I have a really sore throat and.
That was weird. And the next day I was like, still itchy, sore throat, a little bit of a cough. Started to feel congested, and I was like, what's happening? And then it turned into like a full blown allergy attack slash sinus. I wouldn't say sinus infection. It wasn't an infection, but like some very acute sinusitis and, uh, I felt good except for all of that.
Like I, I wasn't tired, like I don't think I was sick by any means. Just the allergies got me and I was not the only person, um, on the track circuit that was in Netherlands and all of a sudden got a bunch of allergies. So at least that confirmed that it was allergies. The other confirmation was that it was allergies.
It was literally as soon as we left Amsterdam. We went from Helo and then we went over to the coast. We, we stayed in Den ho, um, Netherland, which was so awesome. Um, great food, super walkable, uh, such a great little downtown. Um, and then it's on the coast, so I got to put my feet in the North Sea, and, which was surprisingly not as cold as I thought.
I thought for sure North Sea was gonna be cold. Not at all. Um, super windy though, uh, but beautiful. Kind of weird to be somewhere where the, you know, didn't, the sun didn't set till so late, but it was, it was great. But it's literally as soon as we left Amsterdam and landed in Paris, my allergies were 80% better.
And every day that I was away from that. They were better and better and I'm just left over with a little bit of like residual congestion, which is totally my pattern, whether it's allergies or cold. It just takes a long time to get out of my sinuses. And uh, man, that allergy attack in those days of allergies in the Netherlands, we were there.
Gosh, we were in the Netherlands for Saturday to Tuesday, I think. Yeah, I believe Saturday or Tuesday. And that just like crushed me. Uh, by the time I got to Paris, I was just kind of like tired of not being able to breathe through my nose. And then also I wanted to be able to spend some time doing stuff.
So I was like, you know what? I'm gonna take a break from the podcast. And, uh, took the week off and it was good. Um, And actually that kind of took everything off. I didn't work on a lot of business stuff or emails or like I thought I was going to do. Um, and I just tried to. Be in the moment and be in the experience and you know, who knows when I'll be back, if I'll ever be back.
And I just didn't want to waste it, um, working. And um, it's also sort of the theme for this year is like, As much as I want to grow my business, it's also like I just wanna be, I just wanna be where my feet are and I wanna be really present for the experiences and opportunities and people that I am around.
Um, and that just sometimes means to say no and. Take more time and not open the computer and not do the to-do list all the time and not create as much content, and not create as much stuff, um, just to be. And so that, that is part of it. So, like I said, great trip. Uh, my athlete, he had a great trip. Um, every race he got better.
Um, We had high hopes for Paris and, uh, the race in Paris, which is was the, um, last race. And unfortunately he messed up his start in the semi-final and fell on the first hurdle, so did not finish and did not make the final. And so that was, um, a little heartbreaking to end the trip like that, especially when he was feeling so good and racing so well and like progressing each to race.
Um, but you know, It, it happened. And so that's where we're at and we, um, analyzed what happened and made, made, made are making changes and, um, Focusing on all the positives, um, of the trip instead of focusing on that. So, um, I joked and I said the whole reason really he didn't qualify was because we wanted to go see the Eiffel Tower at night when it was sparkling at sparkles.
Lights up in sparkles every hour on the hour after dark, um, until 1145. And had he been in the final, we would not have made it. So I was like, Hmm, that's really why you didn't finish. Uh, but, um, checked all the boxes in Paris. Um, Paris and Italy were really cool for me to walk around. Um, Fun fact, you may or may not know I started college as an architecture student.
Um, so I took architecture classes and many art history classes, and actually even when I, after I changed my major, To exercise in movement science. I continued to take a lot of art history classes because it's just something that I really enjoy and was interested in and, and, and, um, so it was really cool to walk through Florence and walk through Paris and see all the things that I had once.
Saw in my art history books and it was just like so cool to see the pages of the art history books come to life. And, um, even though I wasn't able to go in a lot of the structures and see the interior parts of the architecture that I really would've liked to because I was not prepared and did not get tickets in advance.
Um, heads up for anybody headed to those places. Maybe you know more than I do and, you know, you need tickets for a lot of these things and, uh, summer is like high tourist season in year up. And so, uh, like this, like whenever I looked to get tickets, it was like a week out from when I was there. Minimum. So anyways, but e even then, like just walking through the town and just seeing the history and the old architecture and, uh, it was so cool.
I really appreciated that. And it's just like so wild actually to think about in the United States how we don't have a whole lot of that because our country's so young comparatively to the countries in Europe. And, um, Yeah, it was just, it was a, I really enjoyed that experience and like I said, I'm, I'm just really so grateful that I was able to do it and be present for it.
So, 10 of 10 recommend. Um, I was a little de. Disappointed by the loof, to be honest. Um, as a person who likes art, um, the energy inside the lou with people just trying to like, get through and take pictures of the Mona Lisa and take pictures to like show that they're they've been to the Louv is a little,
misses the mark for me a little bit. Um, takes away from the art, takes away from the history and the significance and, and even the architecture of that building. So that was a little disappointing. Um, you know, the Mona Lisa, I would've really liked to like stand in front of it and stare at it for a while, but it literally has a huge line with everybody's cameras up looking at it.
And, uh, they just, Like usher you through quickly and allow you to take one picture of it and then move out of the way. And, um, that kind, that actually made me really sad. Really sad. And, um, anyways, that's a whole nother conversation. So we're 11 minutes into the podcast and I haven't started talking about any, anything, but obviously I want to share about my trip.
So, If you haven't checked it out already on my Instagram, I put a few reels together of each location we were at on the trip. So we were in Morocco, Rabat, Morocco, and then Florence, Italy, Hengelo and Den Haag Netherlands, and then um, Paris, France. And so I did a little reel for each of them and, uh, yeah, enjoy.
Looking forward to the next trip. So anyways, um, this podcast episode is part three of my lessons from my back surgery and, um, kind of left you, left you on part two talking about sort of the transition, um, from like an exercise standpoint and learning about the missing pieces, uh, relating to reflexive core stability.
And so that's really what this. This day, this, this podcast episode is about, is like what I learned about this reflexive core stability. So one of the, there's, there's two pieces to it. I st I I started to touch on it, um, when it comes last, last, last episode. But when it comes to reflexive core control, um, Most people probably think of it when they think of exercises from gray cook's, functional movement, screen programming, um, you know, with his original like chops and lifts, um, like p off presses, uh, pull downs and movements.
So all these things basically like creating some sort of resistance that you're moving across your body. Or creating some sort of resistance that you're connecting into in your body and then moving your limbs, right, to create some reflexive trunk stiffness, because we know it's the reflexive stability that really is what we need in our core to maintain really good spinal health and movement patterns, right?
Like having really good movement. Proximal stability, uh, for good, efficient movement. No, the reflexiveness, you know, the, the studies really show that even just thinking about moving my limb, the thinking about moving my limb. I have a pre-act reactivation of my core control. And, um, so this is what I'm speaking of with Reflexiveness.
So this, this is hard to create in a very non reflexive, purely cognitive or conscious control sort of way. So how then do we ensure this. Connection and it really relies in sort of even the definition of stability. So if you, if you look to the original journal or research article, By Punjabi at all. I think that was the last name of the researcher that defined stiffness or defined stability.
It is defined as as much stiffness as required for the anticipated load. So in a reflexive stability standpoint, it would be the reflexive amount of stiffness within the musculoskeletal or fascial system. Needed to control or, or, um, anchor down for a movement at a more distal segment. And, um,
why I start with that definition is because then we want to think about what creates stiffness. So what creates stiffness in. The musculoskeletal system or stiffness in the fascial system is, um, you know, and can be multiple things. But if we look at fundamental like muscular physiology, stiffness can be created from a contraction, um, uh, the nervous system, creating more of a, um, Almost like a trigger point.
So the nervous system creating some neurological stiffness, lowering the action potential in the cell for contraction. So when you have a lower action potential, that means there's less, what is it like calcium that is needed to activate a contraction of the myosin and actin filaments of the muscle?
Taking you back. Physiology. Right. So that is, um, neurologically we can, our body, our nervous system increases stiffness in that way.
So this nervous system or neurological stiffness is often more from like a protective mechanism. So I, I share it on the last episode, how I tend towards hypermobility, though I don't have a hypermobility disorder. Um, and. How that relates to neurological stiffness is when you tend towards hypermobility your nervous system.
Increases your respiratory rate, so creates hyperventilation. The hyperventilation then keeps us in a more sympathetic state, which creates more neurological stiffness. More than likely this is because when you're hyper mobile, you have more range of motion and more range of motion means that you're, um, Organs, ur neurovascular structures are more at risk for getting injured.
Having adverse tension or adverse stretch applied to them. Um, more compression. Your visceral organs are more exposed, um, when you ha when you're able to open up and like present them to the world more. So this neurological stiffness is often a protective pattern. And we see this too with just general injuries, right?
When we roll an ankle or we. Have a sore knee or, or a sore back, the muscles around that joint. Increase their stiffness neurologically, create a little bit of a co contraction around the joint to limit mobility. And so oftentimes we have this from a neurological standpoint. This neurological stiffness though is not so efficient.
This, this stiffness is more of a like batten down the hatches limit mobility sort of thing. And so it does not also help good movement patterns. In fact, it. It creates poor movement patterns because it's just splinting things and it doesn't allow for good dynamic alignment and dissociative movement patterns at different joints, et cetera.
So, but it, but it is a form of stiffness and it can be important. This is also why it's so important to realize that when there is a neurological stiffness happening, your body is doing that on purpose. Your body is smarter than you, and so the worst thing that you could do is actually try to break it.
So if you're finding that you have some sort of neurological stiffness, It's better to like take a step back and think about like, what is this protecting and is this a global thing or is this a local thing? And, and problem solve it from that standpoint. Um, and, and we see that a lot with people with back pain.
Specifically when you're in a flareup, everything stiffens up to protect you and, and to try to offload whatever the pathology is that maybe is, uh, part of the pain generator and. So it's like, you know, your back spasms and then you get a little uncomfortable from the tightness of the muscles. But so you go and get a massage and the massage therapist like breaks through that neurological stiffness, um, right.
Inhibits it, and you get rid of it, and then you stand up and what happens? You hurt actually even more. Um, and so, um, oftentimes when I see a protective pattern like that, it's like, hmm, I don't really wanna break it. I tell my athletes a lot and I'm like, I don't really want to get rid of your spasm. We have to figure out why you're spasming first before I just globally get rid of it, and then have a strategy to create some stiffness in a different way.
So the body feels protected. And so these other types of stiffness are muscular stiffness and physiological, muscular stiffness. I guess if, if you wanna categorize this, so you've got the muscular stiffness by an actual. Conscious contraction of a muscle. That contraction of a muscle, whether it's concentric or eccentric, is creating stiffness within the tissue.
So this would be like bracing, right? So if you want to create some stiffness across your core, an easy way to do it is to brace right, to, to contract your muscles. Um, physiological stiffness is. There's kind of two physiological stiffnesses. We can have physiological stiffness from the physiology of the muscle components.
So we learned in fundamental physiology class, when a muscle hypertrophies, the muscle cells, the sarcomeres get laid down in layers. When you have hypertrophy and muscle cells that go in layers, that naturally increases the stiffness. I always tell people it's imagine you have. Yellow TheraBand. Yellow TheraBand is very stretchy.
It's not very stiff at all. But if we put 10 layers of yellow TheraBand together and try to stretch them as a unit, it is more stiff than one layer, right? So that's a type of stiffness that can be helpful, and that only comes from hypertrophied muscles. And how do you hypertrophy a muscle? You make it stronger.
You have to, um, add load and a lot of load in order to get stronger to have a hypertrophy response to the muscle, which requires time under tension. Then you have, um, A stiffness that happens from a pressure and container standpoint in the fascia. So the best way that most people are familiar with this is like the intraabdominal pressure phenomenon of trunk stiffness.
You have this, um, It's basically called a hydraulic amplifier effect, where it, you have a closed container and there is you, you change the pressure on it. So like in this container, we think about like the diaphragm, the, the respiratory diaphragm, the pelvic floor diaphragm, and then you have the walls of the abdomen in trunk.
This is the container. When we contract, right? When we take an inhale breath and the diaphragm drops down, it changes the pressure on the container, right? The pressure then pushes out on the walls of the container, and you have a reflexive push back from the container walls into the pressure. It is the thought process of like putting wind in the sails, right?
When you put wind into the sail, the sail becomes taut and it sort of pushes back into the wind, and that's what propels a boat. So this is called the hydraulic amplifier effect. When we change the pressure like this, we have that reflexive contraction back into it. It also is more efficient. It requires less energy to create.
The contraction because the stiffening is coming from sort of the fascial components of it. And we also get this not just with an intraabdominal pressure like breath hold or Valsalva maneuver, but we get this when we have the dynamic alignment in our body that allows for all of our fascial containers to be sort of stacked up.
On another, and when they're stacked up in a good alignment, then when we go to move them, the fascial containers create this hydraulic amplifier effect Everywhere. You can feel it in your quads, you can feel it in your thac lumbar fascia. You can feel it in your forearms, you can feel it in your calves.
All areas that basically have a lot of fascial compartments. So the low leg, the thigh, the trunk, the forearms are big areas of. Fascial containers. Um, the neck is actually one of them too. And so this is how learning how to tap into that, finding that good dynamic alignment in our fascial containers is so important and.
The best way I've found to find this dynamic alignment I've already sort of spoke on, because it has to do with understanding how to control our center of mass and staying upright or in balance, and that is learning how to weight shift on your feet in having an anterior weight shift on your feet when you can.
Anterior your weight shift on your feet. You can. It's an active Dorsey flexion and this active Dorsey flexion really primes the whole unit, the whole organism for movement. And if we can take a step back and think about what active Dorsey flexion is and how it developed, um, and if we watch a baby and how it develops, their feet are always very active into Dorsey flexion.
Their hands are active, their hands and your hands and feet are sensory organs, and it is this active hand and feet always searching for information. To give the organism more information of where it is in space so the output can be organized, the output being movement or stability or whatever. And so the key is to having good dynamic alignment and having this hydraulic amplifier effect creates some fascial stiffness and provide some stiffness, reflexive stiffness to our core and our body.
Has a lot to do with understanding weight shifts and, and understanding how to have an active sensory system. So the way I teach it, um, and the way I've learned it and can feel it best to reflexively happen in my body, is having active Dorsey flexion, active hands, an active head and neck, and a three-dimensional breath.
All the in which if, again, if you go back to development, this is. All the things that the baby does as it starts to learn how to move itself active head and neck first is, is part of what helps drop the diaphragm down in the first place and become a postural, stabilizing mu muscle in addition to respiratory muscle.
And then, um, exploring the world with your hand and feet. Period. And what this looks like in movement too, is understanding that our weight shift on our feet, or our weight shift on our pelvis allows this dynamic alignment of all the fascial containers to always set up our muscles and our fascia in a way that we get that hydraulic amplifier effect.
So creating contraction and stiffness costs less. Costing less is key and reflexively being able to turn on without you thinking about it is key. And that's the difference between bracing and using muscle contractions just for stiffness. The great part is, is as you get stronger and increase your stiffness through hypertrophy, then you have more stiffness to play around with, with this hydraulic amplifier effect.
So they are important. For each other, one without the other is less effective. And from a weight shifting standpoint, this means that our body weight shifts. In a combined pattern so that we are always maintaining these alignments of our fascial containers and, and understanding the weight shift's important and when you can actually cue the weight shift in someone's body, there's a lot less to cue in a movement standpoint.
So for example, when you go to a rotate, the direction you rotate, you should wait shift to that side. When you do that, you don't have to then cue like, An abdominal contraction or cue, a good hip stability or whatever you're queuing. It literally happens reflexively, which is great because movement is an output.
So the more time I spend trying to cue an output, I'm just wasting my breath and it's not gonna stick for my clients anyways. And so this understanding how the weight shifts in our body combined with maintaining this hydraulic amplifier effect is key. So, you know, Feeling. The first place I felt these combinations of things happening was Pilates, loading the springs up on the reformer enough so that it created enough stiffness for me to connect into to find my stiffness was key.
And in someone that is more hyper mobile, you need it heavier than you think. Right, so there's gonna be a bell curve with the resistance pattern, whether that resistance is a spring or mass. The heavier I lift, the better connection to my stiffness. I'll get until it's too much, and then I'll be less. So you wanna play with the resistance and find what your bell curve is.
Load is so important to find stiffness. And this is fundamentally one of the things that I was doing wrong, is I wasn't actually loading enough. I was keeping the weights too low. I was a little bit afraid. Because of my history of back pain, of of, of doing an exercise that was too heavy and so I never fully actually was lifting things heavy enough to get a reflexive stiffness.
And so that is my number one rule for people with back pain. Is actually to lift heavy things and figure out what heavy is for you, and you'll know it because you'll feel yourself reflexively click on the stabilizers that you're trying to do cognitively in a physical therapy setting. And it's just not happening in, uh, Getting out of a posterior weight shift, going into your weight shift is almost always what people need.
Um, when you can be in the right spot on your feet, you'll feel this reflexive lift within your core lift within your body. Your body feels more on top of your legs. This is, again, a reflexive fascial stiffness or fascial integrity. Um, so it is a combination of all the things. When I'm lifting heavy, if I am good about my dynamic alignment, it takes less heavy to reflexively click onto my core, and over time as I lifted heavy and got stronger, and this is a dedicat, this means that you have to dedicate time to an actual strength training program to get strong.
Let me repeat that. Dedicating time to enough strength program to get strong, not a strength program to do like high intensity cardio stuff. Not a strength program to just check the box of lifting weights, but an actual program that gets you strong and hypertrophies your muscles to increase the stiffness.
That's needed because like I said, when we have a stiffer muscle contributing into these fascial containers, then the hydraulic amplifier effect is even better. So stiffness is really important. Um, and what I love about it is because now it's correcting our movement patterns and it's making us feel better.
By changing the sensory experience, this is what changing the sensory experience is through weight shifts and is through load. And when, when I talk about increasing load and lifting heavy, what I don't mean is like squatting a million pounds or. Doing a heavy bench press necessarily. Those things can be great if you want, but it can be more simple than that.
It can literally be like picking up a weight. So like if you wanna call that something, if you do a single alarm version picking up a weight, and you bend down, pick it up, and then stand up with it. If it's heavy enough, you'll feel your core reflexively turn on. That's called a single arm deadlift.
Keeping your way forward on your feet using all the good patterns. But again, when you can feel things reflexively happening, you don't have to worry about it so much. So I would say if you're having to think too much about where your hips are or what your feet are doing, or where your knees are at or where your where things are, then it's not heavy enough.
So think heavier weight. And make it easy for yourself, right? Like when my back hurts, I can't pick something up from the floor. So I start with the weight a little bit higher on like a bench. So I'm picking it up from the bench, but again, be heavy enough and maybe all I'm doing is picking it up and walking it to a different bench and putting it down.
So like a farmer's carry or a suitcase carry. These actions are so powerful. Much more powerful than like a chop and lift or a poff press or a pillar bridge or whatever. What other anti-rotation stability exercises are there? Like all this fancy stuff, Russian twists or like, there's all these exercises that are so fancy for core control, which can be under the category of anti-rotation exercises that actually don't.
Do that great in increasing your stiffness. So by just lifting a heavy weight, you increase your stiffness, so lift heavier. Um, also too, understanding that core control and creating core stiffness doesn't always have to be with a spine that's not moving. In fact, it's probably more. Helpful if the spine moves through flexion and extension, and one of the first ways that I felt the core container of my abdomen click on and like what it really felt like for this hydraulic amplifier effect to be.
Transmitted through the thac lumbar fascia via the interfacial triangle, which is called the lateral Raffi, which is a key spot that the posterior. Part of our trunk and the, and here part of our trunk connect is actually keeping my weight shift forward and doing a spinal roll down. So a spinal roll down going into full flexion.
And those of you in the strength world might recognize this as a Jefferson curl. But going into full flexion and keeping your weight forward on your feet and not allowing it to shift back too much actually allows you, you'll feel more of a deep core connection because you finally connect into that entire, um, fascial container.
Of the THCA lumbar fascia, and you'll feel this connection just to the sides. I feel it just to the sides of my paraspinals, and then deep into my core like belly button area. And this is that deep connection into the interfacial triangle and. The cool thing is, is how this makes sense. And when you know you're there is reflexively what it's happening.
What's happening is reflexively, you're turning on your core and you're connecting into your body to prevent yourself from falling over. If I wait shift too far, too far forward, what happens? I fall over. So what ha, what I feel reflexively happens is this. Stall this break in my body, in my spine, in my fascia to not fall over.
That is a really powerful, reflexive thing to feel, and this is why it always kind of blows my mind that it goes back to this fundamental understanding of controlling your balance and controlling your center of mass. So, Controlling your center mass. Understanding weight shifts lifting heavy enough to create stiffness and hypertrophy of the muscle to then tap into the fascial stiffness or physiological stiffness.
Be okay when your body adds neurological stiffness to it. The cool thing about neurological stiffness, neurological stiffness, or trigger points will go away as you give your body more physiological and muscular stiffness. You will have less trigger points in your body when you get stronger and when you can find your dynamic alignment so your core containers can create this hydraulic amplifier effect.
That's actually the best way to combat neurological stiffness. So trigger tight trigger points, and it's not to drop an elbow on it. It's not to smash the shit out of it with self-massage tools. It's actually to give the nervous system. More stiffness so it feels safer and doesn't have to be in protection anymore, protection mode anymore.
So most of my hyper mobile people, which most people, a lot of people with low back pain, are historically people who have a lot of movement available. Um, instead of just doing a lot of mobility work and, um, Cognitive conscious control of core control. They need more stiffness in all the ways. So that's it.
Um, now the wonderful thing is from actually going through some good heavy strength training programs. Shout out Allison Tenny and the Den. Um, I now have created enough hypertrophy in my muscles where I have a little bit extra physiological stiffness now. So when I am in good alignment and my core containers are happy, I, the reflexive stiffness I create is enough.
And even in instances when my back could flare up, it doesn't as much. So, for example, when I eat food that doesn't, Bode well on my gut and my gut muscles go back into that splinting pattern to protect my organs. I don't have back pain anymore because I have that added physiological stiffness from the muscle Hy hypertrophy, and so I'm still a little bit more.
Protected from a disc load standpoint than I was beforehand. And that is like the best gift ever. And so now since I added in heavy lifting, heavy with an asterisk, right, heavy enough to feel that reflexive connection, um, which is heavier than I would've thought, but not as heavy as maybe a strong man lifts, um, I have less flareups, and if I do have a flare up, it barely lasts a day.
Which, you know, I, I briefly talked about in the last episode, like what I do when I have a flare up. Um, one is not panic. The worst thing I could do is panic. That just creates a nervous system, potential for increased pain and increased disability. Um, I meet myself where I'm at, and I also use medicine. Um, understanding that when my disc material gets exposed to the nerve root, And that disc material is chemotactic and um, very toxic to the nerve root, and that's part of what creates the pain.
I have no problem using an anti-inflammatory to combat that because sometimes, Chemical chemotactic, a chemical reaction requires chemicals to buffer it. Now, are there natural things that I could take and do that are anti-inflammatory? Yes, I do those too, but frankly, I don't like to be in pain for that long.
Um, because. I don't, and I take the, because all, sometimes when I've shared that it's okay to use an ibuprofen or an NSAID to treat a flare up, I've gotten some pushback from people because of the role the anti-inflammatories play on blunting, the healing process. And I just have to say that person has probably never experienced discogenic back pain before, number one.
Number two is, um, it's not forever. It's often just one to three days of medicine. And so it's not, you know, it's not blunting the healing response that much. And then also the. This is not an acute thing. This is a chronic thing. This is, this is the, the, the moment I had the opportunity for a great acute healing response has come and gone probably 20 years ago.
And so I really feel like the risk of using the anti-inflammatories, the risk of it, um, preventing some sort of healing response is, Worth the benefit of getting out of pain and being able to go back to the things that I know are helpful in preventing back pain and flareups all the things I told you, increasing the stiffness with exercise.
Walking, um, manual lymph drainage. I didn't even like touch on that, but that's a big part too of the gut health thing. Like eating well, doing visceral manipulation, keeping my ankle mobility up so I can anterior weight shift and connect and reflexively connect into my core. Um, learning how to segment control my spine that does have.
Like segmental instabilities around it. All of those things I know that are helpful and useful in long-term spine health. I do. And if, if I want to facilitate a more rapid return and be more comfortable by taking an nsaid, then that is my option. And I'm all about informed consent and autonomy when it comes to treatment plans.
So, I understand the risks of taking the ibuprofen and I make that decision for my own body, and this is, I'm big on this with all my athletes, like pharmaceuticals. I get it. The industry sh is shit, but. Modern medicine and pharmaceuticals I'm very grateful for, and they can serve a very important purpose.
But like everything, they don't come without risk. So as long as you have an informed consent in terms of like you understand the risk, you understand the options, then you are choosing what seems best for you and your body in that moment, then that is your prerogative, your body, your choice always. It doesn't matter what the topic is.
Your body, your choice. I tell my athletes this all the time. Here are your options, your body, your choice. There are risks with everything we do. I am not here to tell you how to operate. I am here to give you the knowledge that I have, the knowledge that I use to make my informed decision. And when I get more knowledge, when my knowledge changes, that means my decision might change in the future.
But for right now, The one to two flareups I have if even that in a year. Uh, I have no problem grabbing the ibuprofen because that is the thing that works the best for me. And, uh, while doing all this other stuff, this is not a, a a six month fix. This is a lifetime fix, right? Like, you know, I know that there are times in my life when I get away from strength training, I, it's a ticking time bomb.
How much time can I get away from strength training? Before I start to lose, right to atrophy and lose a little bit of that hypertrophy, stiffness. So I have to decide how many times per week I train, how many weeks per month or weeks per year I train in order to keep enough stiffness in my body to protect my spine.
Um, And understand too, all the aspects of my nervous system and my gut health and all the other things that go into it, because back pain and back injuries and disc problem, like this is a, the best example of like a whole organism problem. And it's not one thing. So, Anyways, I hope this three part series was helpful for you.
I am working on a freebie, downloadable freebie for like my top 10 things to consider with back pain and, uh, hope to launch that soon. But it'll be kind of a summary of all the stuff I shared here and, um, Yeah, so I'm sure we'll talk more on these points in future episodes, and you've probably even seen some similarities of other things I've talked about.
But, um, my back surgery, like the lessons, like what I've learned from any injury, not just my back, but like my knee surgeries, my back surgery, like shoulder pain, neck pain, like my foot injuries, like every, my body. Your body is your best teacher. And that is the gift of injuries. That is the gift of feeling things in your body, is it?
You learn from it. And um, so as sucky as that whole experience was, and I definitely don't want to go through it again, it was worth it. It's taught me so much. It's taught my athletes and my clients and the people I teach so much and, um, what a great gift that is to be able to learn from our body and also, It has been the impetus in my life to learn how to trust my body and learn how to make friends with it and realize that everything my body is doing, it's doing for me, not against me.
And that is like a really important relationship to heal with our bodies. And I, I think, There's a lot of ways society minds fucks us into thinking there's something wrong with us and something wrong with our body when it doesn't look a certain way or act a certain way and it's like this is a journey back to ourselves and back to realizing like how amazing we are, how amazing our body is, no matter what it looks like, what shape it looks like, what movements it can or can't do at this time.
Like we're so lucky to be in this festival. It's only when we get. So why, why would you wanna spend your lifetime fighting with it? I actually regret the years of my life that I was fighting with it. And I wish I could go back and tell myself like, dude, your body's working for you, not against you. Why are you fighting with it?
This is, cherish it. It's not yours forever. So anyways, with that said, we're wrapping it up. Thanks for being here and uh, I'll see you next week.
