Frank Titus is the founder of Titus Motion Therapy (TMT), a long-term solution that treats the causes of chronic pain and a proven method for eliminating pain. With an over 95% client success rate, Titus Motion Therapy offers the Los Angeles area a convenient, centrally located, and comfortable setting for TMT sessions. If you are not in Los Angeles, you can still receive direct treatment via Skype. Titus has perfected the process of treating clients throughout the world via Skype consultations and has had clients as far away as Europe, New Zealand.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Frank Titus about finding and fixing the real cause of your pain.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How today’s physical therapy focuses on symptoms rather than weakness throughout the body.
– Why minimalist shoes embrace people’s feet instead of bracing them.
– How there is an entire kinetic chain linked to your body’s movements.
– Why a break in the kinetic chain leads to weakness and dysfunction in the body.
– How our body’s foundation comes from proper hip placement and posture.
Connect with Frank:
Guest Contact Info
Facebook
facebook.com/frank_titusmotiontherapy
Links Mentioned:
titusmotiontherapy.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
xeroshoes.com
jointhemovementmovement.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
And we’re going to go. All right, here we go. Somebody once… Wait, I’m going to back up. This may not be true, but I was told that somebody asked Sigmund Freud as he was dying if he had to sum up everything that he knew in one sentence, what would it be? And he said, apparently, “No one’s ever upset for the reason they think they are.” Can live by that one. Well, maybe that’s true about bodies as well. Maybe you’re not in pain for the reason you think you are. We’re going to find out more about that on today’s episode of The Movement Movement Podcast, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting typically feet first because those things apparently are your foundation. We break down the propaganda, the mythology… Try saying that five times fast. Sometimes the outright lies that people have told you about what it takes to walk or run or play or hike or do yoga or CrossFit, whatever it is you like to do. And to do that enjoyably, efficiently… Did I mention enjoyably?
Frank Titus:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
That’s a trick question. Because, look, if you’re not having fun, do something different till you are. And we call this The Movement Movement because it is a movement that we’re creating that involves you, and I’ll say more about that in a second, about movement, natural movement more importantly. Letting your body do what bodies are supposed to do. So, the part that’s about you is really simple. If you like what we’re doing, go check us out on our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com. You’ll find previous episodes, all the places you can find this podcast, all the ways you can interact with us on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In short, you know the drill. If you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe and like, and thumbs up and you hit the bell on YouTube. You know how it goes.
Anyway, so let’s dive into how Freud might’ve been right about things having to do with your body, considering how wrong he was about many other things. Frank, a pleasure to welcome you here. I’m not going to do an intro. I’m going to let you tell people who the hell you are and what the hell you’re doing here.
Frank Titus:
Well, look, the intro is-
Steven Sashen:
Well, you can start… Well, wait, you can start with your whole name, which I didn’t do.
Frank Titus:
Frank Titus.
Steven Sashen:
Thank you. Now, what are you doing here? Who are you?
Frank Titus:
I developed Titus Motion Therapy and I started this journey from my own aches and pains really. I was doing squats at USC and this is after being through Ranger School and doing all this stuff. And I was at USC in South Carolina and I was doing squats. I just started working out and I heard a pop and I was like, “That’s probably not great.” And I was leaving the gym, walking down the hall to the locker room, just to get my keys and leave, and I got about halfway down the hall and bam, flat on the floor, face down, could not move my legs at all.
Steven Sashen:
Well, where was the pop?
Frank Titus:
It turned out to be a herniated disc.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Frank Titus:
And so, face down. And if I moved my legs, I was in tears. And this is after being through Ranger School. So you can imagine, it was pretty bad. And it seemed like forever that I was lying there, but it may have been a minute. It seemed like forever. And finally somebody walked by and they said, “Hey, are you okay?” I’m like, “No.”
Steven Sashen:
Clearly not.
Frank Titus:
Yeah, clearly not.
Steven Sashen:
Dude.
Frank Titus:
I’m like, “Do people just lay down in the hallway?”
Steven Sashen:
Very normal at USC for people just to face plant. I mean, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but-
Frank Titus:
Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on. Is this common? So, I had just had my son and I was 22. So, I’m freaking out and they bring a stretcher and they strap me down. Back in those days, I don’t know what to do now. And I got to the hospital, they said, “You have a herniated disc? We are going to inject you full a bunch of drugs. Go and bed-rest for three days.” And after three days, I was hunched over and bent to one side and they told me to go to a chiropractor and I did, and it helped, but I had to continue getting chiropractic treatments for the next five or six years. So, it really wasn’t fixing the problem. I was just getting worked on. I wasn’t getting well.
Steven Sashen:
Do you know the joke about the chiropractor’s handshake? Grab someone’s hand, you yank it really hard and go, “See you in two more days.”
Frank Titus:
Oh my goodness. Well, I’ll tell you what I think is funny about… Well, I got accepted at chiropractic school in PT school and because of my process that I was going through, but I just find it interesting that you will lay down on a table and they’ll go, “Oh, well, you’ve one leg longer than the other.” And then they’ll adjust you and they’ll go, “Hey, well, your legs are even now.” Like, “What? Did my leg grow longer? What actually happened?” In saying that though, I think chiropractic is great for initial treatment and problem. Anyways though, I moved up to California, got accepted to a paid internship. The internship paid $100 for 40 hours of work.
Steven Sashen:
Don’t spend it all in one place.
Frank Titus:
And that was difficult. And my son was out here. My ex-wife and son had moved out here. And I answered a little ad in there. The want ads, the employment or unemployment ads in the San Diego trip. And I started working with this clinic and it really changed the way I was thinking. And then I read a book by Otis Kendall, and it showed how physical therapy used to work. And it used to work that you would evaluate someone’s posture and you would know what was tight and what was weak, and you would fix that. And regardless if it was a foot problem, a knee problem, a hip problem, a back problem, a neck problem, if you corrected those tight and weak things, the misalignments, the dysfunctions, then wherever it was, it would go away. But now in PT, it’s more symptom driven. If you have a knee problem, they’re working on that. They’re working on that knee. Whether you are 90 or you’re 10, you’re getting the same thing. You can’t think outside the box. So, that book really changed everything. And I moved up to Los Angeles and started Titus Motion Therapy, 1995.
Steven Sashen:
So, let’s back up-
Frank Titus:
Out of the back of my car by the way.
Steven Sashen:
That’s a hell of an office.
Frank Titus:
It’s not as nice as it sounds.
Steven Sashen:
The best thing to do if you’re living basically in the back of your car is order a pizza from Domino’s and make them chase you.
Frank Titus:
That would be awesome.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, it’s a fun one. So, backing up to this whole thing of looking at people’s posture and identifying what’s strong, what’s weak, what’s in and out of alignment, so I imagine some people are… Well, the magic question is, what are you looking for? Is the first part of the question. What are you identifying and how are you doing that?
Frank Titus:
Well, visually, if someone’s… I always start at the hips because I think the hips are the foundation. So, if one hip is higher than the other, start with that. When you look at them visually straight on, and then you can look down at the knees or the knees like headlights. Are they turned out or in, right? The angle from the hip, in or out or bow-legged like I’m a little bow-legged. Then your feet are turned out a little bit and then are you losing an arch on one and have an arch on the other foot? I mean, you’re into the foot and the… I love the whole aspect of your shoes and basically your shoes just embracing your feet, not bracing the feet.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, man. Dude, I am so upset that after 11 and a half years of doing this, I never thought of that line.
Frank Titus:
All right. Well, I just copyrighted it. So, you owe me.
Steven Sashen:
I’ll get you a pair of shoes. I know a guy who…
Frank Titus:
So, then you look at… Yeah, one hip that’s higher than the other. And then a shoulder is going to… Shoulder girdle is going to respond to the pelvic girdle, right? So, if you, let’s say… If you’re standing and you can move your shoulders, but your pelvic girdle, your lower body doesn’t really have to move. But if you move your pelvic girdle, your shoulder… There you go. Your shoulders respond. And so, shoulder problems are actually pelvic girdle problems. And when you walk… When you take a step, the initial movement starts from your hip. It doesn’t start from your foot actually. It starts from the hip and it goes down. And when you take a step with your left foot, your right arm moves. So then there’s a whole kinetic chain like a wave of things that are going to go on. And if there’s one little link in that chain that is broken or not working, obviously, there’s going to be a problem. Where the problem is depends on how your body compensates.
Steven Sashen:
So, here’s where we go back to my Freudian intro.
Frank Titus:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
I mean, just what you said already. If you’ve got a shoulder problem, there’s going to most likely be a hip cause or a hip thing to attend to rather than paying attention to the shoulder itself.
Frank Titus:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
I had that experience. I mean, I’m a former All-American gymnast. I don’t know one gymnast who walks out of that with good shoulders. And I had some shoulder issues that were going on and someone just put me on a slant board up against a wall and said, just stand there until everything’s relaxed. And you’re basically standing flat against the wall. And 20 minutes later, some things had kind of loosen up in my hips a little. I didn’t know what was going on. He said, “Check your shoulder range of motion.” It’s like, “Oh my God. It’s 90% better.” Which was the weirdest thing I’d ever experienced. So, you’re looking for either imbalances or things that… I’m trying to think of the right way to put this. And you’re doing this with someone just standing or when they’re in motion as well.
Frank Titus:
Both. So, I evaluate the anterior, the front view, and then I’ll side view and then from the side, you can see the… Everything should be vertically loaded, right? So, the hips are a little forward than the shoulder. I don’t know which way to do this. So, the hips…
Steven Sashen:
Whichever way you go. One way is forward, the other way is back.
Frank Titus:
So, this is your booty. So, the hips move back because they’re weak a little bit. Then the shoulders are going to respond and they’re going to round a little bit, right? And depending on… If there’s an anterior tilt in the pelvic girdle or posture, it depend. That’ll tell you what muscles are weak and what are strong and where to start the process because if someone has a back problem where there are anterior tilted or posterior tilted, that’s going to make a huge difference. You can’t give both of those people the same set of exercises and expect to get the same results.
Steven Sashen:
That’s one of my favorite phenomenon when people talk about orthotics. I go, “Have you ever noticed that they recommend orthotics whether you have flat feet or high arches?” These are two totally different situations and they’re giving you the same “cure”. Something seems a bit awry in my mind.
Frank Titus:
Yes, because… I just worked on someone this morning and one foot had a fallen arch and she was a professional ice skater. And she could see that. I had her pay attention to that. She’d been through, I don’t know, 10 different treatment programs and nothing had worked. And within four days, she was texting me and saying, “What did you do? Did you tap me with the magic wand?” I’m like, “No. What we’re going to do is individualized towards what’s going on with you. It’s not a cookie-cutter thing.”
Steven Sashen:
So, you’re missing… It sounds like you’re missing a serious opportunity to sell magic wands.
Frank Titus:
Yes. I am. I just put out a Amazon order today.
Steven Sashen:
Good. When they come in, that’ll give you something extra to sell to people. So, yeah.
Frank Titus:
I’ll send you some so you can use them on all of your podcast.
Steven Sashen:
I’ll just trade you another pair of shoes for a magic wand.
Frank Titus:
All right. Perfect.
Steven Sashen:
Eventually, you’re going to end up with a lot of shoes, I don’t know what I’m going to do. So, I love where you just went with that. So, this is an individualized thing. It’s not a cookie-cutter process and this is not surprising because you’re going to see unique situations for unique people. So, you’ve identified… You can see these imbalances, you can see whether it’s posterior, anterior, at left or right, talk about what you then do with people if there’s strengthening and stretching involved. And I’m particularly interested in this because often there… So, I like to say there’s almost nothing that strength can’t cure, but there’s sometimes where things are too strong and there’s sometimes where the things are weak because there’s something on the other side that’s overactive, a little too strong. So, I’m really curious to hear how you then craft something and what are the kind of interventions that you do to work on people?
Frank Titus:
So, I could answer that in eight different directions.
Steven Sashen:
I’ve only got time for seven.
Frank Titus:
…one specific thing that you want me to answer first because I will lose track of…
Steven Sashen:
Give me a wacky case study and please mention names and give addresses that sort of describes what somebody might experience if they were working with you. And, of course, at some point, because there are many people who are not necessarily going to be able to come to LA, but I hear a rumor that you’re able to also use your magic wand through the inner tubes.
Frank Titus:
Yes. I worked with someone yesterday in San Francisco from my sailboat in Long Beach, California. So, if I can see someone and I can watch them walk and move, then I can tell them what to do or to show them what to do. I can even send a text video and all of that stuff. So, that’s not an issue. Even when people come… When I had an office, when they would come in, there’s no equipment. There’s no hands-on.
Steven Sashen:
Cool. So, that’s super interesting. It occurs to me if we can, if you can think of something that’s… And this is going to be a horrible thing to ask, but I’m going to ask it anyway.
Frank Titus:
What?
Steven Sashen:
If you can think of something that’s a relatively common thing that you see, like in a group of 100 people, you’re seeing it in some significant percentage of that group of people. And I say that because maybe in… However, many people are listening to this, there will be some number of people who will have whatever we’re about to describe and then something they could do basically to have an experience of what we’re talking about rather than have just a concept of what we’re talking about. Can you think of anything that fits that category?
Frank Titus:
Absolutely. 80% of the planet has back problems.
Steven Sashen:
So, working on the planet is hard because the planet has horrible internet connectivity. And to see the planet walk, you’ve got to have a perspective that is…
Frank Titus:
80% of the people on the planet.
Steven Sashen:
Oh. Okay. That’s a whole different story.
Frank Titus:
I mean, that was a good one. So, I have people start with… It’s almost like a 911 routine, and I have an ebook on my website that people can download very easily. And you start with on your back, knees bent, feet up on a chair, right. Everybody has a chair, so you don’t need any amazing equipment or anything. And that’s actually the position that astronauts take off in.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Frank Titus:
Right. Because gravitational pull is working the least. So, if you get in that position, everything can really chill and relax. And then the other thing is an exercise I call supine groin stretch, and that’s with one leg up on the chair and one leg out on the floor and that will passively stretch out. You’re not going to probably feel a stretch, but it will passively lengthen the psoas muscle because if you stretch that muscle too aggressively, which happens a lot of times in PT and training and stuff like that, you can get a stretch reflex. I think we talked about that.
Steven Sashen:
We have not actually. So, if you can define that for humans.
Frank Titus:
Well, you stretch something really aggressively, but the muscle in that length, it doesn’t know that something else is going to support that range of motion or that posture or anything. So, it can reflex back shorter than what you actually started. And that happens a lot of times with back problems. So many people hurt their backs vacuuming, right. Because you’re one side and you’re rotating and elongation and it’s too quick and too much and it’ll snap back. So, that’s similar to what I’m talking about.
Steven Sashen:
So, these first two… I don’t want to call them exercises. These first two things that you described, lying on your back, basically calves up on the chair, so you’ve got 90 degree angle at your knees, 90 degree angle at your hips. You’re resting there for some period of time.
Frank Titus:
Five minutes and just breathe and do nothing. And that alone will let everything relax.
Steven Sashen:
And then the next version is having one foot or one leg flat on the ground with the other one still on the chair. So, both of these are relaxation things to let things elongate a bit in a natural way. Is there a strength component as well for dealing with back pain?
Frank Titus:
After that because what happens, I always talk about taking a baby to the gym. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to, let’s say… This is the correct range of motion, right? You are here. This is where you are strong. You can do stuff, dah, dah, dah. So, when I open this up, here you are weak, right? This is like the baby at the gym or when you haven’t been in the gym and you do a bunch of bicep curls, and you’re like, “Oh my God.” So, you have to get to here and then strengthen here and then stretch a little more and then strengthen here and then bigger range of motion, and then strengthen there. It’s a process. It’s not going to happen instantaneously. I, typically, see people once a week for eight weeks and they have canceled their surgery.
Steven Sashen:
That’s a good one. I’ve had situations where people have said to me things like I plantar fasciitis and I look at them and I go, “No, actually you don’t.” And they go, “What?” I got this doctor in Aspen who told me and I said, “Yeah, yeah. I mean, your doctor’s wrong. He’s trying to get you into surgery, right?” They go, “Well, yeah. I’ve got it scheduled for next week.” I go, “Okay. So, you’ve actually got tight calves that are pulling on your plantar fascia. I think you don’t have plantar fasciitis, and I can demonstrate that.” And I showed him that and suddenly they’re running or walking pain free. But then they look at me like I’m crazy. And I go, “Dude, just because I look like this and don’t have letters after my name doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
Frank Titus:
I love it.
Steven Sashen:
I said, “FYI, I was a pre-med. And my friends who actually went to medical school were not my smartest friends.”
Frank Titus:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
Just FYI.
Frank Titus:
Well, you know what they call the person that graduated last in med school?
Steven Sashen:
Oh, doctor.
Frank Titus:
There you go.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. My dad who was a dentist used to say, “80% of the people doing any job aren’t qualified to be doing that job.” And most of the time that’s who you’re seeing. So, I love this whole idea that you’re going to start in the range of motion, where you do have strength and you’re slowly expanding that. So, using the back pain example, what are some of the things that you would do on the strengthening side because I’m assuming even though you have no equipment in your office, you’re not sending people to go to gym to then go do “fill in the blank” exercise.
Frank Titus:
Yeah. Again, it depends on what someone looks like. The posture alignment and the way that they’re moving, the level of symptom. If you come to me and you have a symptom of a 10 and you can’t get out of bed, that’s going to be different than someone that comes to me and says their back pain is a five, but they’re concerned. So, that will change things. The age of people. Can they get up and down off the floor? And the reason to me why people can’t get up and down off the floor a lot of times or they’re scared to is because they haven’t done it.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Frank Titus:
Because, again, it’s like baby to the gym thing. You’re trying to stand up, but you can’t recruit the right muscles to even fathom how to do that. So, there’s that. And then there’s the anterior posture tilt. A posterior pelvic tilt or flattening of the back, that’s very, very weak psoas. Someone with a anterior tilt, that’s overactive psoas muscle or hip flexor. I don’t know how we want to talk about how… I don’t want to sound like I’m super smart, but someone that-
Steven Sashen:
But I don’t think you have to worry about that, Frank.
Frank Titus:
Oh, okay. Good. Good. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Steven Sashen:
But it’s one of my favorite lines. David Letterman was interviewing Tina Fey and he says something and he says, “I’m not as dumb as I look.” And she said, “How could that be possible?”
Frank Titus:
That’s awesome. Well, I’m from Indiana. And we used to watch David Letterman when-
Steven Sashen:
Oh, yeah. When he was a weatherman.
Frank Titus:
Yes. And he was awesome back then. He would interview people on the street and he was just… I just loved David Letterman. So, I’m glad you brought it around to Indiana.
Steven Sashen:
Everything always lands in Indiana. People don’t know that.
Frank Titus:
Right. Yeah. Like Dan Quayle. Potato, potato. Anyway, someone who has, let’s say, a posterior or flattening of their low back, we might start with just having them stand against the wall. And a lot of times they’re so turned sideways. They’re so rounded through here and tilted under in their back. Just to stand against the wall is sometimes impossible to get your head back there. And when they get their head back there, they’re pulling it back and looking up here because it’s so rounded.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Frank Titus:
So, what you’re basically doing is just re-engaging all the muscles that are supposed to hold them up in the vertical position. And then you can do glute contractions or abductor presses, or scapular contractions all from just that position. And after that, they will feel better. And they’re like, “I didn’t know that,” or they didn’t know that they couldn’t put their head back against the wall without looking way up.
Steven Sashen:
Right. Here’s a weird question for you. So, a lot of these patterns that we get into, I mean, obviously they don’t happen immediately. Usually they happen over time. We become somewhat, I would argue, unconsciously identified with them. They’re part of our sense of self. So, when you’re having people discover this sort of new alignment, if you will, or this new relationship with certain parts of their body, some that are weak and are getting stronger, some that are overly stressed and are starting to relax, have you seen people experience any changes or even difficulties with sort of that, who am I now if I’m not the person with rounded shoulders, a flattened posterior, tilted pelvis, et cetera, or is it just all hallelujah chorus, angels flying, unicorn dust, et cetera?
Frank Titus:
It’s mostly unicorn dust.
Steven Sashen:
So, and how do you clean up-
Frank Titus:
I’m just kidding you.
Steven Sashen:
How do you clean up the unicorn dust in your office? Because I went to Home Depot and I could not find a good unicorn dustpan.
Frank Titus:
What? There’s one of those vacuum things you put on the bucket.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, okay. All right. I’ll go look for that.
Frank Titus:
Back to the point, things change differently with different people. Some people have held on to emotional things and they guarded themselves. And when you start opening things up, there can be a really big emotional release. And on the other side, I would say myself, I grew up on a farm, so when my something hurt, we didn’t talk about it because I know grandpa would hit the other hand and go, “Yeah. How does that first one hurt?” And you just go through it. So, when my back started hurting, I was more like, “This is just my life.” So, you just go through the process and go, “This is just to hurt and dah, dah, dah.” But in reality when you start getting better through this process, you realize at least items… First of all, you’re fixing yourself. I’m not really doing anything, I’m showing just people how to use the hammer. They have to go home and use it.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Frank Titus:
You don’t realize how good you can feel. That’s, I think, a very big thing that people just go through the process every day and they go get treatment, but they’re not getting well. And in this process, people realize, “Well, I didn’t realize that I could take care of myself and feel this good.”
Steven Sashen:
That’s a really interesting situation because we’ve grown up in a culture that thanks to the magic of marketers has really given us the idea that there’s a simple solution to everything. And it’s just buying the right product. And the idea that you need to change something about you is like antithesis of what we are often looking for. Talk about that.
Frank Titus:
Well, rather than taking responsibility for your own stuff, you’re trying to get fixed by something else. And I think, for me, and I think most of my patients, it’s very empowering to know that if you do this process and you continue on even after you’re out of pain, that you can heal yourself and it’s very empowering, meaning it builds confidence and it really changes the whole aspect of all that. And, again, I use no equipment. So, if you’re camping in, then you can do most of these things. I don’t know if that answered your question.
Steven Sashen:
No, it did actually. But do you ever have people who come to you who are, let’s say, so committed to being a problem that just needs a solution that they’re unwilling to just do the simple things that you’re asking them to do, or they’d rather have the identity of the broken person who’s looking for the magic fix than actually taking that kind of responsibility?
Frank Titus:
Absolutely. It becomes… Go ahead. I’m sorry.
Steven Sashen:
And what do you do in that situation? Do you just kind of wipe your hands of it or… I mean, it must be frustrating.
Frank Titus:
It really depends on, again, on the situation because there’s psychological aspects and emotional. I mean, those are similar stressful aspects and activity over activity. There’s all these different things. And I have found that people that use… I mean, I used to use insurance. People that use insurance and dependent only on insurance didn’t do their routines because they had no skin in the game. People that were on workers’ didn’t do their exercises and were afraid to say that they were feeling better because-
Steven Sashen:
Oh my God. Right.
Frank Titus:
… some people situations, that’s their total income. So they were afraid to lose that income. And I’m not saying everybody, nothing is a blanket statement, but people that pay, they are in. They’re more in and complete and they will continue on. I tell people to come back every six months or so, and to make sure you’re doing it right. And it puts responsibility on them to actually do it. They’re like, “Oh, I’m going to see Frank in a month. I better start doing my work.”
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. I wrote a joke about that in my head this morning. It’s like, I always schedule a dental cleaning two months after my birthday because that way my birthday reminds me I got to start flossing again, so I’m not embarrassing myself.
Frank Titus:
That is a good one.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Now, keep in mind, my dad was a dentist. So, this is..So, I’m still-
Frank Titus:
No, dude. He’s cringing right now while he watches this.
Steven Sashen:
That would be tricky since he died seven years ago. Thanks for bringing that up, Frank.
Frank Titus:
Oh my God. All right. Cut. We’re out.
Steven Sashen:
Oh man.
Frank Titus:
I’m so sorry.
Steven Sashen:
No, it’s okay. So, it’s been seven years. So, you just said something that… Oh, I have a friend who’s a doctor. Do you know what prolotherapy is?
Frank Titus:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
So, for people who don’t know prolotherapy, you’re injecting the ligaments and tendons to basically initiate a healing response. And I was asking my friend, Tom, who’s the guy who taught prolotherapy to most people in America. I said, “Where’s the research about prolotherapy?” He goes, “I can tell you the research. I charge $450 per shot. It’s excruciatingly painful and people come back for more.” And it was something that that saved my knee. I had blown out my knee and ripped up a bunch of things. And two prolotherapy treatments after two years of physical therapy and suddenly everything was better, but anyway, point being, I love what you’re saying that when you do have some skin in the game and you experienced the results, that really is sort of the Holy grail, if you will, and people can argue with it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
There was some other question I was going to ask. Oh man, where did it go? What are the things that when people walk in the door and they don’t really know a lot about what you do other than they’ve heard that you can help them with the pain they’re in, are there any sort of myths about health wellness, fitness, healing, et cetera that you run into that you have to debunk? I mean, we’re all about debunking mythology on this podcast. Anything you can think of in the… Let’s call it physical therapy world that you’ve… Other than the things we’ve already talked about like symptomology, et cetera, that you run into that you find yourself going, “I can’t believe people believe this and you have to respond to.”
Frank Titus:
Yeah. Prolotherapy.
Steven Sashen:
All right. Good call. Good call.
Frank Titus:
No, I think it’s called PRP and not the prolotherapy.
Steven Sashen:
Well, before you say it, when I asked my friend, Tom, about PRP, platelet rich plasma therapy, whatever they’re calling it, he said, “Yeah, it’s just prolo for people who don’t know how to do prolo and the platelet part is complete handwaving.”
Frank Titus:
Right. So, I worked on Kobe Bryant in 2011 and that was the only year that he had zero injuries. And if you look at 2010, he was really having trouble getting lifts and dunking and all these things. And 2011, I worked on… What was great was I got to see my work on screen three times a week. And he was doing 360s and all of these things, but the German doctor that was doing the PRP or prolotherapy, he had paid Kobe 30, 40, $50,000 to talk about it all the time. Well, Kobe decided to go that direction rather than with me and Tim Grover, who was Michael Jordan’s trainer and he was Kobe’s trainer for seven years and he dropped us. And after that, Kobe’s career went down and south and I actually sent a email to the Lakers and to his assistant and to him and to Rob Pelinka, his agent and said, “Look,” because he had torn his Achilles.
And I said… I saw him on TV. And email said, “You guys are paying too much attention to the Achilles and not the function of what’s going on in his knee.” Within two weeks, his knee gave out and he had to have a knee surgery. But there’s so many different stories about that. I mean, even Alex Rodriguez, he did the prolotherapy for his hip, but if you don’t change the function or his functional movement patterns of your whole body, then it’s not going to fix it indefinitely. So, Alex Rodriguez had to have hip replacement.
Steven Sashen:
And backing up to my dad’s line, 80% of the people don’t know how to do it. The thing that happened with PRP is that it gave people who really didn’t understand how or when to use something like prolotherapy the ability to, A, do it without training and, B, get insurance money. That was sort of the magic thing about PRP is they figured out a way to make it insurable by adding that plasma part, which is the part that does absolutely nothing.
Frank Titus:
To me… I mean, obviously it works. I mean, it will definitely help, but it’s like, again… I go back to a hinge on a door. If that hinge is misaligned and you just put a bunch of oil on it, it’s still misaligned and inevitably it’s going to break down.
Steven Sashen:
I mean, well, the way I’d frame prolo is when there’s a situation where… I mean, Tom’s very clear about it. The thing that prolo is good for is ligament laxity often as a result of an injury where your body is going to heal for enough time until you’re functional again, but not back to where you should be, but people are again over-prescribing this, if you will, because it’s the new fun thing that they know how to do is looking at ultrasound and stick a needle in you.
Frank Titus:
Right. But if you did that and-
Steven Sashen:
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Frank Titus:
I’m sure it will work better than this and it will work better than that.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, the right time and right place and the right instrument.
Frank Titus:
And that’s part of my treatment is basically no other modality is going to interfere with what I’m going to do. If you want to go get acupuncture or a chiropractic adjustment or whatever, I’m still going to do the same thing. And it will get better. And I don’t really need applause, just send a lot of money.
Steven Sashen:
I like the way that works. So, after you started figuring this out and this kind of… You started putting this together how long ago?
Frank Titus:
’92 is when I got out of college and came out here. I came out to San Diego and then ’95 is when I started working out of my car and then started my own business up in Los Angeles.
Steven Sashen:
Because there’s nothing people trust more than a medical practitioner working out of his car.
Frank Titus:
Or a medical practitioner working out of my sailboat. So yeah. I get it.
Steven Sashen:
Sailboats are a little better than working out of your car. So, in those 20-ish years, how has it evolved and what have you discovered that was surprising to you?
Frank Titus:
Oh gosh. So many things. I think probably the most amazing part is that… Oh gosh. That’s a really loaded question. It is because I got accepted to chiropractic school and physical therapy school. And that’s what kind of helped with me with my aches and pains, how uneducated I really was and how, and I think chiropractic has a really good sense of how to sell things because I don’t think an ongoing treatment plan with a chiropractor is good. It’s like taking a laxative for the rest of your life because, I mean, some people need it, but what happens is if you keep taking laxatives, then the muscles that are supposed to help with that, they stop working.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Frank Titus:
The same with chiropractic. If you just go in and have them put you in the right position, the muscles that are supposed to do that will quit doing that. And so now you’re reliant on that. And then the physical therapy aspect, it was amazing to me. I had to really unlearn a lot of stuff. It was amazing that… It was so symptom oriented and we talked about that already. And the other thing I think is the people that when I first started working, it was the people that no one else could fix. And so, they would send me these people. And then I was still had the ability 95% of the time to keep people out of surgery that was scheduled for the surgery. So, people continue to get worked on and they don’t get well.
Steven Sashen:
So, here’s perhaps the most important question of the time that we’ve had together that I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to ask. What’s with the antique telescope behind you?
Frank Titus:
That is Ben’s creation. I know. I’m looking for the meaning of life, I meant to say.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, you need a much bigger telescope for that or much smaller. One of those, you either need a bigger one or a smaller one, hard to say which. Given what you’re describing is in some ways kind of radical compared to what many other people are doing when they’re treating the same kind of people who come to you, what’s next for getting the word out?
Frank Titus:
Well, things like this, I have a website, titusmotiontherapy.com. I have a YouTube. I have all that stuff, but I’m also supposed to start teaching this to people so that I can sail around the world and just teach and relax and grow my hair out as long as yours.
Steven Sashen:
That’s going to take awhile. Trust me. Have you tried teaching other people how to do this yet?
Frank Titus:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
What’s that been like?
Frank Titus:
Well, before the recession, ’08, Ben helped me get a radio show. And for two and a half years in Los Angeles, we had the number one live talk radio show in all of Los Angeles. And we started getting 40 new patients a week.
Steven Sashen:
Wow.
Frank Titus:
And it was a really big deal. And we had three facilities and I had 12 therapists. So, I taught all of those people. I would just kind of oversee what was going on. Yeah, I’ve done that, but I wanted to get it a little bit more… What’s the right word? Organized and teachable so that I could teach more and more people and now I can do it online and all that stuff.
Steven Sashen:
It’s intriguing to me thinking about teaching because, again, back to this thing of whether people have eyes to see, if the fundamental diagnostic process, if you will, is really looking at someone’s body and how it stands, how it moves, I’ve seen certainly with coaches of various kinds. Some people have good eyes, some people not so good. Some people are… How do you deal with that when you’re looking to find other people to take what you’ve done and move it out into the world?
Frank Titus:
That is a great question. And I’m going to be so humble right now because when I started in that clinic in San Diego because I thought I was going to PT school or chiropractic, so I started this job just to have a job and to be able to pay the rent. And I remember I was sitting behind this therapist and he was moving the cursor and changing how the person’s posture looked and this and that and the other, and I remember standing… This is no joke. I remember standing behind him and thinking, “Oh my God. I will never be able to do this. And how long can I fake it before I’m fired?” So, you really have to… My process was you had to unlearn. And my process also is to make it simple and start simple. And now people would… I would say it on the radio show. I would say, “You could walk across the room and I can tell you where your aches and pains are,” and people would literally come and test me and they’d be like, “Well, what do you think? I’m not filling out this medical history thing, dah, dah, dah.” And I would watch him and I’d tell him and be like, “All right. How do I sign up?”
Steven Sashen:
That’s great. How long did that-
Frank Titus:
You could teach me? Yeah, I think I could teach you anything.
Steven Sashen:
Well, see. Yeah, that’s the humble part because often we have some unusual idiosyncratic unique to us thing that we don’t recognize is special about us that allows us to do, in this case, what you’re doing. My weird thing is I’ve been good at teaching movement to people since I was seven or eight. I mean, I remember just doing it then because for whatever reason, I’ve got a knack for identifying what the kind of common factor for some movement is. And the things that I’ve learned over the years, tap dancing, Zen archery, yoga, Tai Chi, I mean a whole list of things. I usually end up teaching them relatively soon after I start to learn them because I can just sort of spot those things, but I used to travel quite a bit and I’d go to Aikido schools. And I discovered that the guy who was running the school did not know anything about what he was doing. And I would discover this unfortunately by pointing it out to him at his own school, which led to things like people trying to break my arm or dislocate my shoulder because I thought everyone was interested in knowing the truth, but instead they just wanted to make sure they look good in front of their students. So, that was problematic.
Frank Titus:
Oh, I get that. I’ve worked on a lot of people that are professionals, professional athletes, that are Olympic athletes or whatever. And I can humble them within a few minutes because if I look at them, I can see where the weaknesses are and what they actually need to do. So, it’s interesting to… I remember a guy in San Diego, he was a police officer and he was the squat champion of California or something. And I put him into a position that actually used his thighs but in a total different position, and I put a little old lady, probably she’s my age now, but back when I was younger. No, she was probably 70. And I put her next to him against the wall. And she had been through the whole treatment. So, I knew she was able to do it. And he lasted a little over a minute and she lasted over two minutes. I’m like, “Okay, are you ready to figure out that I know more than you? And that there are some weak areas that need to be fixed?” Just like what you’re saying.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. This is like doing like a wall sit?
Frank Titus:
Yes. Similar, but the way I do it is going to be different than what you’ve learned.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, really?
Frank Titus:
Oh yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, really?
Frank Titus:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Are you going to say nothing more after I say “oh, really” a third time?
Frank Titus:
No.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, really?
Frank Titus:
That’s what I’m saying.
Steven Sashen:
Damn it. You threw me a bone. I’m so curious now.
Frank Titus:
Well, we could do it later and you could video it and whatever, but you’d have to change the wall and do it.
Steven Sashen:
There the wall goes beyond what you can see on the screen. Believe it or not, there’s things that extend beyond your field of vision. It’s a crazy thing… I don’t know what’s behind the screen behind you, for all I know.
Frank Titus:
It’s just a bunch of telescopes.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, I was going to say that’s where you keep the bodies.
Frank Titus:
Well, I didn’t want to say that out loud.
Steven Sashen:
I appreciate it. Your secret’s safe with me. No one’s listening. I promise.
Frank Titus:
Good. Get the trunk open guys.
Steven Sashen:
Get a bigger car next time.
Frank Titus:
I know. Where’s the bleach?
Steven Sashen:
I can’t believe we ran out of time again. We can keep doing this all day. So, this has been a total, total pleasure and really intriguing. And I can only imagine, but I’m sure I won’t have to imagine. There are people who are listening or watching who are having some sort of ache or pain or something that has plagued them that hopefully now they’re going to go, “Hmm. This is something I might want to check out and see if this is a better solution. Me taking responsibility under the guidance of someone who knows how to see.” How might they find you? I know you’ve already said it, but now let’s do this in a condensed fashion. Tell people how to track you down and find out what you’re doing and how they can be helped with you.
Frank Titus:
Well, the easiest way is Titus Motion Therapy. My name, T-I-T-U-S and motion therapy.com. And you can just Google that or you could Google my name, Frank Titus, or I have no problem with anyone calling me. My cell and home and office number are all the same. 310-753-2011. And I would love to offer you a free session. And maybe we could trade for a beautiful pair of shoes.
Steven Sashen:
We could trade for any kind of shoes. And I appreciate that. That sounds delightful. I’m always up to exploring and discovering something about what my body is or isn’t doing. And by the way, when you give out your phone number like that, I do the same thing. I send out an email to people when they join our tribe and say, “If you want to contact me, here’s my number.” A couple times a week, I get phone calls that sound like this, “Hello? This is Steven.” Oh my God. I imagine you get the same.
Frank Titus:
Right. They’re like, “Oh, it’s actually you?”
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Frank Titus:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, it’s my favorite.
Frank Titus:
I don’t have anything to hide, so just give me a buzz.
Steven Sashen:
I feel the same way. Well, Frank, this has been a total, total pleasure. I hope people do avail themselves of what you’re doing and experience the benefits of doing that. For everyone who’s listening, thank you for being here. Pardon me. As always, if you want to find out more about what we’re doing with The Movement Movement, like I said at the top, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. If you have any requests, anyone you think should be on the show, if you want to tell me I’ve got my head up my butt, anything you want to share directly, you can drop me an email at [email protected]. I’m not handing out my phone number on this one because I’m a little tired right now, but it’s findable. And other than that, I can’t think of anything other than as I love to say at the end of everything, please go out, have fun and live life feet first.
Frank Titus:
Perfect.