Dr. Brianne Showman has been a licensed physical therapist since 2006. Since that time, she has been helping active adults and athletes get back to the activities they love. As ideas and theories in rehabilitation, functional movement, and nutrition are constantly changing, she is constantly searching for the new information in order to get you back to the activities you love as quickly (but safely) as possible.
Being a CrossFitter and runner herself, she also understands the desire to want to push through the pain, not wanting to take time off, and wanting to get back to activity as soon as possible when required to take time off. She does her best to keep you active in the things you are able to do, modifying as necessary, but not taking you completely out of the gym, off the track/field, or off the road.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Dr. Brianne Showman about the myth of stretching.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How box breathing is a controlled breathing pattern method used for relaxation and stress relief.
– Why addressing weaknesses in key muscle groups is essential to alleviate chronic tightness and prevent further issues.
– How improving hip stability and control during running is crucial for overall performance.
– Why grip strength is a significant factor in obstacle course racing and ninja warrior training.
– How training the body to control new range of motion gained through stretching is crucial to prevent regression.
Connect with Brianne:
Guest Contact Info
Instagram
@the.ocr.doc
Facebook
facebook.com/GetYourFixPhysicalTherapy
LinkedIn
Linkedin.com/in/brianne-showman
Links Mentioned:
getyourfixpt.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
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facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
Stretching, icing, all that sort of massage, all that rehab stuff. Super, super important, right? Maybe it’s the worst thing you could be doing for yourself if you’re trying to be a healthier, better human being, let alone athlete. 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 with the feet first because those things are your foundation. We get rid of the mythology, the propaganda, sometimes the outright lies that people have been telling you for 50 years about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or lift or do yoga or CrossFit, or just hang out with your kids and do that enjoyably and effectively. And did I mention enjoyably? Because if you’re not having fun, remember please do something different until you are. We call this The Movement Movement podcast because we’re creating a movement about natural movement.
We’re trying to make natural movement the obvious or remind people really, that natural movement is the obvious, better, healthy choice. This is the same way we currently think of natural food, and it’s a movement that means it involves you, and all that means is sharing with your friends. So like and subscribe, and give us a thumbs up and hit the bell icon on YouTube if you’re on YouTube. And come visit us at www.jointhemovementmovement.com, you’ll find previous episodes and all the other ways that you can interact with us. I don’t need to tell you how to do that. You know how to find podcasts. You’ve been here before or you’ve been somewhere before. That’s the important part. So anyway, let’s jump in and talk about whether all those things that you think you need to do for staying healthy or really bad for you. And let’s start by saying, hello, Brianna, how are you?
Brianne Showman:
I am awesome. It’s Monday, my favorite day of the week, so we’re good.
Steven Sashen:
Really? Well, people won’t be hearing this on a Monday, so now you’ve just messed them up. Of course during the last 12 months, no one knows what day it is anyway, so it’s not going to really matter.
Brianne Showman:
That’s true.
Steven Sashen:
Before we jump into why all these horrible things or these wonderful things are horrible for you, why don’t you tell people who the hell you are and what you do with your life.
Brianne Showman:
Who I am? I’m still figuring that out myself, but for what I do know, I am Brianne Showman. I am a physical therapist by trade, but what I do primarily is coaching for runners and obstacle course racers. Many years ago, I was the traditional therapist who saw the injured person in an insurance-based clinic, and I got very fed up with what insurance companies do to control us. I got very fed up with just fixing broken people constantly. So I became a coach to get people on the front end of things in order to make more resilient athletes rather than constantly fixing broken people.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I want to jump back into that in a second because I want to start with just what we… Actually, I’m going to start with something else. So, since it is The Movement Movement podcast, I’m going to put you on the spot. We have not prepared for this. This is going to be a high pressure situation, so take a deep breath, shake it out if you need to. Is there any movement anything, whether it’s physical or mental, if there’s a mental movement, if you can figure out what that means or anything that you would want to share with human beings that could give them some sort of experience, whether they’re sitting down right now or taking a walk or in their car or doing whatever they might be doing. And we’ve done things like doing short foot exercise to do an isometric foot strengthening thing. We’ve done weird things like turning your head in one direction while turning your eyes in the other direction and finding out how that can make you stretch or move better. So anything you can think of that you might want to share with humans?
Brianne Showman:
You know what, I think just because it’s such an important element but tends to be forgotten by a lot of people as stress when we’re in high stress environments is breathing, and just remembering to take those long, deep breaths in through your nose, out through your nose.
Steven Sashen:
That was easy. Let’s just do one, shall we? Actually, wait, hold on. Do you have a theory about the timing of in-breaths versus out-breaths when you’re doing things like this? Because some people do.
Brianne Showman:
Yeah, it depends on the purpose. I do a lot of box breathing myself, which is making an equal amount of time for that inhale hold, exhale hold. But then there is a lot of science behind to in order to help decrease your heart rate and bring more calm, doing a longer exhale than a longer inhale. So it kind of depends on what your purpose is for it.
Steven Sashen:
Let’s do a combo. Let’s do a four-second inhale, six second hold, eight second out. So 4, 6, 8.
Brianne Showman:
Got it.
Steven Sashen:
Four in, six hold, eight out, and we’ll do like… We’ll just do two of those. What the hell?
Brianne Showman:
Let’s do it.
Steven Sashen:
All right, ready? I’ll count it off. I’ll count and read at the same time. Here we go. That’s the out. Okay. In two, three, four, hold, two, three, four, five, six out. One, two, three, four, hold, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, repeat in… Four. Hold, two, three, four, hold, two, three, four, five, six out, two, three, four, hold, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Now I got to tell you, that actually was really helpful. I was surprised, even trying to count and breathe in at the same time, which is really not easy. But for me to be able to do the breath hold and the exhale, I have to make sure I get a good inhale, good belly breath in, and then also into the upper chest as well. So like a complete breath in, gives me enough air to do all of that. So, I hope people report back on what they do when they’re doing that. I do something like that to help me get to sleep sometimes, actually.
Brianne Showman:
Yeah, it’s nice. I’ve used a lot of the breathing techniques for even if I just have something on my mind that I just cannot let go of, I’ll just do some box breathing and just… Because when you focus on the numbers and counting versus anything else, it just helps everything relax and calm down.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. And to be clear, I agree with you and nothing’s perfect, and I’m thinking that because last night I just could not get to sleep because I had these four thoughts running through my head incessantly. Basically, I was playing a negotiation out in my head. I have some people that I’m have to be going to be talking to and I’m trying to figure out the right way to frame everything we’re going to be doing, and it just was nonstop. And for me, this is going to sound weird, the only thing that works in that case is I get out of bed, I go into the other room where we have a couch and a television and I put the TV on, I put it on some YouTube thing that’s like a two-hour lecture by someone who I don’t care about and put the volume down kind of low.
And for some reason that’s very soothing for me. And I’ll wake up once or twice at night and have something going on in my dreams that’s based on what they were just saying, which is really fun. The other day I was dreaming about black holes because suddenly there was a thing. Someone talking about Stephen Hawking who I do care about, and that worked.
Brianne Showman:
That’s awesome.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I don’t like to be really prescriptive and assume there’s something that’s perfect for everyone all the time. So I don’t want to make it seem like, “Hey, this is the thing.” Anyway, so in the intro I said, maybe things like stretching and massage and foam rolling and all those things we do for rehab are not necessarily the things that we need to do. And I got to tell you, I want to hear this came from you, of course, and I want to hear what you think about that and why you gave me that idea to start with.
But I want to start with a story that may jumpstart this, this is maybe eight years ago or so. I happily believe there’s a guy named Dr. Bill Sands, who was at what’s now Colorado Mesa University. He was formerly head of biomechanics at the US Olympic Committee. They gave him a huge human performance lab to work in at Colorado Mesa State or Colorado Mesa University. And he would do a whole day’s worth of analysis on you for 50 bucks. There was all these Olympians who told me about him and said, “You got to go see this guy.” And so I went out there and he did all this amazing stuff, and he was using infrared things to measure where parts of your body are hot and cold and doing compression things and really, really fun stuff. And at one point I was having some issue, I can’t remember what it was at the time, and I said, “So what do I do about this?”
And he says, “Well, at the end of every workout you should ice that.” I said, “Well, that’s cool, but what do I do about it?” He said, “How old are you?” I said, “I’m 50.” He goes, “Yeah, at the end of every workout you should ice that.” And so I was like, that wasn’t the answer I was looking for because I had this idea that there was something I could do that would fix it, cure it, make it never come back, make it never happen. I hope that leads you to a jumping off point for this idea.
Brianne Showman:
Yes, yes it does. I mean, ice, I guess dulls the pain, but it doesn’t really do anything for you. But what I would’ve wanted to dive into and what I gave you. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
But other than that one sentence debunking years and years of rest, ice compression, elevation, but the ice, whatever.
Brianne Showman:
That’s a whole other rabbit hole we can go down later.
Steven Sashen:
We can go down that rabbit hole in a bit. We’ll come back to it.
Brianne Showman:
But when it comes to stretching, like at the end of the day, stretching is not going to hurt anybody, but it’s not the end all be all that a lot of athletes think it is. A lot of times I’ll talk to people who are injured. It’s like, “What are you doing? Well, I’m stretching before I run. I’m stretching after, I’m stretching multiple times a day.” And it’s just, they’re constantly stretching. And if you’re acutely injured, it might be helpful, but it’s one of these things that if something’s continually getting tight, there’s a reason for it. And that if all you’re doing is stretching constantly, we’re just treating those symptoms, we’re not actually getting to the cause of it on what’s actually causing that tightness to be there. So it’s not that stretching is necessarily a bad thing, it’s just the thing that if that’s all you’re doing and you’re having to do that to maintain a pain-free state or be able to continue training, then there’s other answers that need to be looked into.
Steven Sashen:
And how would someone go about finding those other things that might be the real cause that’s leading them to do all this, other than someone telling them that’s what they should have been doing?
Brianne Showman:
Yeah, this is very general statement, but for the most part, a lot of the things that get tight and that chronically tight is because something is weak. The question is, what is exactly weak? But the way the body works is the deep muscles around the joint have to stabilize the joint. That’s what keeps it nice and strong. If there’s weakness there or if it’s fatiguing out faster than the demands you’re putting on it, the only way the body knows how to control itself and protect that joint is to tighten up. So this constant tight state that we’re getting in often means that something’s not strong enough to do its job.
Steven Sashen:
So that’s an interesting thing. It makes me think of reciprocal inhibition. Makes me think of two things, reciprocal inhibition one, which is ironically, if someone’s going to stretch, perhaps the better way to do it. And for people who don’t know what that is, let’s think about doing a hamstring stretch. You’re sitting on the ground like a hurdler stretch or something. And what most people will do is try and relax the hamstring or stretch into the hamstring. But if you do the opposite of trying to lift your foot off the ground by tightening your quad, then that’s going to make the hamstring stretch.
Or it’s like when you’re doing a bicep curl, your tricep relaxes. When you’re doing a tricep push-down, your bicep relaxes because these are reciprocal muscles, and so activating one reciprocally inhibits the other one, which can allow it to relax and stretch more. But I’m so glad you said that, finding the thing that’s weak because it’s one of the things that I’ve seen with a lot of runners and I hope you can talk more about it, is they’re notoriously weak in exactly the places they need to be strong.
Brianne Showman:
Absolutely. Especially, talking about like a lot of what I see is foot and ankle issues. Obviously, Xero Shoes was started because of the foot and the bare foot and needing foot strength. I’m going to go foot ankle because they’re so much of that that goes on. When we’re talking most foot and ankle issues, post-tib tendonitis, perineal issues, even shin splints, these things are tightening up. We’re getting these inflammations in that area because it’s tightening up, because they’re weak and they don’t know how to actually stabilize either the joint it’s supposed to stabilize or the entire foot itself. I see a lot of these issues too with hamstring tightness. Like everyone tends to think they have really tight hamstrings, which you might, but the question is what is weak that’s causing that hamstring to tighten up so much? A lot of times it comes down to the core. You may do sit-ups all freaking day long. You’re still probably have a weak core because that’s just a small component of things that go wrong there.
Steven Sashen:
So are you including in the core… I mean, basically how high up and how low down are you going when you use that phrase?
Brianne Showman:
Yeah, that’s a great question because different for every… Or everyone thinks differently on it. Technically, in my opinion and the way I’ve learned is the core is actually from your shoulders down to your knees, because it all is interrelated.
Steven Sashen:
I like that. And when you’re looking at foot and ankle things, how often do you see glutes, especially glute medius related to that?
Brianne Showman:
There is a lot of correlation between the glute med and the foot and ankle weakness and strength or injury just because of other torsions that are taking place there.
Steven Sashen:
Can you do me a favor, and for people who don’t know, can you help them identify what their glute medius is and then talk about that relationship and how you would work with someone?
Brianne Showman:
Yeah, absolutely. So your glute med is one of your deep glute muscles. So the biggest one on your that you can palpate when you contract is your glute max. Underlying that is your glute med, it sits a little more lateral. So it almost sits on the outside of your hips, just above what you would think what a lot of people call their hip bone. That’s primarily where that muscle sits. And then what was the rest of that question?
Steven Sashen:
The rest of the question was talk more about the relationship between that and foot and ankle and what you might do with people to experiment. I mean, if they’re on their own, they’re not seeing you or someone like you, what they might do is an experiment to see what’s going on, whether their glute medius is in fact weak, how that might be impacting their foot and ankle.
Brianne Showman:
Okay, awesome. So, there actually is a lot of co-contractions that happen. So I know on this podcast he’s talked about short foot in the past. There is a co-contraction that happens between the short foot, the glute medius, and then our deeper core muscles. Like if that, where it just-
Steven Sashen:
Let me interject. So the short foot for people who don’t know, it’s basically just an isometric thing where… Well, you’re not imagining, you’re trying to shorten the distance between… Stand up and do this, you can do it sitting, but it’s easier standing at first and try to pull the ball of your foot closer to your heel while keeping your toes as relaxed as possible. So you’re basically just engaging the arch and the longitudinal arch, the one most people think of is the arch in their foot. It doesn’t matter if you’re flat-footed or higher arched feet, and really it’s an isometric contraction because you’re not going to be moving that too much. And so what you’re saying is that contraction ripples all the way up into your hips, into your glute medius.
Brianne Showman:
Correct. Like I’m standing here right now actually going short foot with my thumbs on my glute medius, and I’m actually feeling a contraction in that glute med when I do it. So, there’s a huge correlation and just vice versa, when you activate that glute med, that foot turns on a little bit better as well. One of the big problems we have though is our bodies are great at compensating for its weaknesses. We essentially find our workarounds for any weakness. This comes into play a lot if someone’s working on squats, and the big common cue is to get the knees out. Well, rather than activating their hips or activating the foot to actually get that to happen, I see people just totally pick up the inside of their foot, go on the outside of their foot to actually get their knees out. So if we can learn how to contract that foot, contract the hip together, we just gained so much more control and stability over that leg.
Steven Sashen:
That’s interesting. The cues that people give are often cues that they were given, and sometimes those people learned how to implement that cue correctly. Often they didn’t, and then they’re just repeating it because that’s the only way they think to say it. I mean, when you said that just now, yeah, the idea that you would roll onto the outside of your feet in order to get your knees out, it’s sort of like… It reminds me one of the first times I made a pair of running sandals for someone and I said, “Let’s take a little run together.” And the woman who I was with, she’s reaching her foot way out in front of her body and then pointing her toes to land on the ground, to land on her forefoot. I said, “What are you doing?” She said, “Well, you’re supposed to land on your forefoot.”
I said, “But you’re not supposed to prance. You’re supposed to have your foot underneath your body. You’re not supposed to be just bounding and landing on your forefoot.” So similar thing with squats, I mean, the obvious and easy fix for what you just described is keep your feet flat on the ground and then like stick a band around your knees and just make sure you’re pushing the band out while you’re squatting, which would be cue. And it just reminded me, the glute medius when I was in Bill Sand’s lab for my $50 diagnostic, whatever, he said, “Yeah, you got to do glute medius stuff.” And so if someone is going to be strengthening their glute medius, I’m not going to say which thing he taught me. I want to see which you say. They discover that when they try to engage their foot, they’re not feeling their glute tighten.
Sometimes they can’t just tighten their glutes at all. I’ve done this repeatedly with some athletes where they just can’t feel their glutes and I say, “This is not personal. Stick your hand on my butt.” And then I show them what it feels like when your glute goes from relaxed to tight and they’re like, “Oh my God.” And then I said, “All right, this is not personal. I’m going to stick my hand on your butt now, you just got to do the same thing.” And then they quickly figured out, but they just didn’t have the cue. So anyway, point being, some people aren’t really hip to intended, hip to how to do this. So if someone discovers they have this disconnect, what do you recommend they do for working on glute medius?
Brianne Showman:
Yeah, that’s a great question. And the reason I have so many cues and exercise ideas is because everyone responds to a different thing. But I will say first and foremost, typically unless someone’s had… So standard, if you go to a therapist, what they’re going to do is all these laying down exercises.
For the most part, unless you’ve had a surgery and you need to start there, we function standing up, we should start training standing up, which is how I normally do it. Now, that glute med typically, or its job is to hold our pelvis and hips stable when we’re standing. So when we’re standing on a single leg, it’s going to fire more than when we’re standing on one leg.
Steven Sashen:
I get that.
Brianne Showman:
So a lot of times just to understand where it’s at. I’ll have someone just stand, have both feet on the ground, then lift one leg up, stand on it, and have their thumb in that area. So they just understand what that feels like to work with. From there, I’ll do some different isometric things as far as standing on one leg, pushing the other leg, saying next to a wall, pushing the other leg into the wall, just to start getting used to some isometric contractions there. And then from there start adding different movements to it. But that’s where I usually start is just getting someone to understand where is it, when does it fire, and how do we truly activate it in a functional position?
Steven Sashen:
I like the isometric one. I’ve never done that. So let’s break that down for people. So, you’re going to stand perpendicular to a wall. How far away from the wall? So let’s say, with your right shoulder facing the wall, so how far away do you want someone to be?
Brianne Showman:
So typically I will be, so my shoulder is on that wall itself.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, okay. I see.
Brianne Showman:
And then, the leg that is off the ground is the one that’s next to the wall.
Steven Sashen:
So you’re lifting it up just by bending your knee a little or flexing your hip a little bit?
Brianne Showman:
Correct.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. And using the other leg. So in this case, you’re left leg to try to push yourself into the wall without letting your hips drop or rise too much. Is that the idea?
Brianne Showman:
Correct.
Steven Sashen:
And then how hard is someone pushing, how many reps, how many whatever?
Brianne Showman:
Yeah, not pushing real hard. Typically, with these isometric, just learn teaching the body how to move again. It’s about a 50% contraction, so you’re not using a whole lot of force. It’s just teaching the body how to move. Usually, 10 to 15 reps is good at a time before you… Because after that, if you’re just learning how to use that muscle again, it might start fatiguing out.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. And it occurs to me one indication, and this is going to be potentially tricky for people to self diagnose unless they get video or have someone watch them. But one of the things that I know that’s highly related to a clear indication of glute medius weakness is when someone’s running and their knees end up basically pointing in and banging into each other as they run. I saw a woman the other day and I was driving to have brunch with some friends, we’re doing socially distant outdoor picnic brunches and this woman’s running, and I almost pulled off the side of the road to yell at her like, “Stop doing that.” Because her knees were banging into each other and her feet were way, way out to the side. I mean, at first I didn’t think that this was someone who was actually meaning to run.
They realized they left their keys in the car or something. But then as I got closer, I could see this is someone who clearly spends a lot of time running. I mean, had all the gear, had everything, otherwise decent form, except her legs were completely out of whack. And I’ve seen a bunch of video from people like Irene Davis for example at Harvard showing that that’s one of the things that happens when your glute medius can’t stabilize your hips. The other is your hips just shifting up and down as you’re going from leg to leg. You just can’t maintain that stability.
Brianne Showman:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So if anyone sees that in video or has someone watch you and sees that, then you really know this is definitely something to play with.
Brianne Showman:
Yeah. And one thing I want to throw in there too, when we’re talking glute med weakness, and yes, that hip drop is a huge, huge one that I see a lot with weakness in there, is it’s been found that just working on strength does not correlate with improvement in running techniques. So you can strengthen your glute med all you want, but that doesn’t mean that hip drop is going to correct itself when you’re running. So, you also have to combine some different running drills of learning how to control that hip in that position with your strengthening work in order to really get that carry over.
Steven Sashen:
So what would be an example of a drill? Because again, what we’re trying to do with the exercises is really… There’s a guy that I know, Essop Merrick, he’s a YouTuber out of the UK. He’s a former sprinter who refers to strength training as the thing you do after you’re done running to get your body back into balance because you just whacked it out from running, which I think is a fun perspective. So we’re doing these things, isometric things or whatever strengthening things we’re doing to awaken a neurological path, if you will, or keep us aware of something. But like I say, there’s no substitute for the actual thing. There’s no amount of foot strengthening exercises you can do that prepare you for running barefoot other than running barefoot. Now, that doesn’t mean don’t do them, but don’t kid yourself into thinking you can short foot your way into running a barefoot marathon. So if we’re going to do that translation into running, what do you have people become aware of or do to bring that into action?
Brianne Showman:
Yeah, my favorite drill to start with, and you can find this on my YouTube channel, it’s called falling into a wall basically. But you’re facing a wall, literally like a board falling into a wall. You’re just going to keep your body straight and fall. But just when you get to that falling point before your hands hit the wall, you’re going to pull one leg off the ground as if you were bringing that leg up into your running position. And your goal on that is to maintain that good pelvic position when that leg comes off the ground, not letting it drop.
Steven Sashen:
I’m so glad you said right before your hands hit the wall, because I could imagine some people think they’re going to catch themselves with their face. There are a couple videos of this where have you seen the trust fall videos where people don’t know how a trust fall works?
Brianne Showman:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
There’s someone standing behind them and they fall forward. Oh my god, it’s my favorite thing in the world. I mean, it’s not like someone skateboarding and then landing on the rail and wrecking themselves, but it’s pretty damn close. So that’s a good one, and I’m willing to bet that people will find that they’re better on one side than the other.
Brianne Showman:
Typically, one side’s going to be a little bit stronger and more coordinated than the other. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
And I don’t know if this is true also, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a number of people who discovered that the side that they’re actually stronger on is the side that they think they’re weaker on?
Brianne Showman:
Probably, possibly.
Steven Sashen:
I just say that thinking there are a couple of things that I do where I think my left side is the weaker side. My left leg is undeniably stronger than my right leg and I’m right-handed and right leg and right whatever, but my left leg is definitely stronger. And so like, “What the hell?” It just makes no sense to me. It’s very confusing.
Brianne Showman:
And it’s really interesting too, when I’m looking at hip drop, it’s like half the people have the injury on their right leg. Half the people have the injury on the left leg. So there’s really no correlation necessarily between if it’s this hip, the injury is always going to be the same side or it’s always going to be opposite side. It kind of just depends how your body’s compensated over the years and how your body wants to, how your body gets injured because of that.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and to that point, if you do tighten something up as a compensatory measure over time you become numb to it and you just don’t feel it anymore. And so, you can become aware of a tightness that you didn’t have where you think it’s on the right side and it’s the left side that’s actually tightening something up and you’ve been oblivious to that, and then you discover that and that changes your whole self-image and then you have to get a new name and buy a new wardrobe. I think it works that way. Something like that.
Brianne Showman:
Pretty sure.
Steven Sashen:
That’s what somebody told me. I’m not really sure. So backing up to the very beginning of your transition from working with injured people to working with people to try to keep them from getting injured, I love that you delineated that you’re working with predominantly runners and obstacle horse racers. That is an unusual thing to specialize in.
Brianne Showman:
Yeah, it’s super fun. I’ve been a runner since high school and then I started CrossFit about nine years ago now. And a couple of years ago I was like, “Why not meld these two sports together?” So I started getting involved in the obstacle course world, fell in love with it and realized there was a very underserved population there when it comes to more of the rehab type specialist, functional movement specialist. There’s a lot of coaches, but there’s not a whole lot that really understand the intricacies of the body, whereas the CrossFit world and just the running world is very inundated with that. So, it’s just the direction that fell into my lap and I was having a lot of fun with, and I absolutely love still working with running technique and the runners, so I still have pulled the runners in, but absolutely love my racers.
Steven Sashen:
So what are the things that are potentially unique about obstacle horse racers that you don’t see with other populations?
Brianne Showman:
I think that for me, the biggest thing is training for both elements. Like a lot of runners just run, whether it’s road or trail. CrossFitters for the most part, hate running. People typically hate running, but when you’re looking at the obstacle course racers, it’s both of them combined. And the really fun thing is half of them absolutely hate running, but they do it for the obstacle part. And-
Steven Sashen:
By the way, I’m that guy.
Brianne Showman:
… the other half were runners and then they were dared to do an obstacle course race by some other friend and fell in love with it. So it’s a very unique population because there’s people who absolutely love running, but then there’s people who hate running but do it because of the joy of everything else, and it’s just really fun.
Steven Sashen:
There’s some crazy obstacle courses. I mean, I’m thinking of the one, it’s a mud run thing where isn’t there something you’re crawling on your belly, you’re crawling through the mud, there’s something electrified above you.
Brianne Showman:
That’s a Tough Mudder. And to be honest, I refuse to do that race for that one obstacle reason.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, see, that’s a shame. I was hoping you were going to say, “Those are the people I work with and I just tase them so that’s the training is that I just hit them with 50,000 volts over and over until they don’t mind.” I think that would be a good thing of open up a gym and all you do is tease people and hit them with logs and all those things that people do just fall off of things, that’d be very entertaining. I wonder if there’s a whole training thing for those Japanese TV game shows where it’s just obstacle course and they’re just getting pummeled with things and thrown into mud baths. And there’s got to be someone who does that. I mean, there’s a whole ninja training gyms now. There’ve got to be goofy ass gyms for things like that.
Brianne Showman:
Probably are, probably are.
Steven Sashen:
I would want to go there. See, I’m one of those guys not only for me, I don’t do an obstacle of course run because there’s way too much running. As a sprinter if it was things like a 50 or a hundred between obstacles, I’m all in. If it’s a half a mile to a mile between obstacles, just get me a scooter. You’re not old enough for this. When I was growing up, it was a network battle of the stars, and so it was all TV and movie stars, mostly TV stars doing tug of war. I can’t remember what all the things were, and I just remember thinking as a kid, “I want to get famous just so I could be on that,” because I think I could crush that game. It was all just sort of obstacle course level things. It would be really, really fun. It’s like the celebrity version of the Presidential Physical Fitness test or something crazy like that.
Brianne Showman:
That’s awesome.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, it was really fun. So just for the fun of it, since you’re such a big fan of OCR stuff, if you were going to talk to someone who was thinking about or maybe wasn’t even thinking about doing their first obstacle course run, what would you suggest to them in terms of how to pick one, what to do to prepare, what to be prepared for once they do it?
Brianne Showman:
Yeah. As far as picking one, I think the biggest thing with them is obstacle course racing, even though there’s obstacles, the biggest thing is the distance factor. There’s a lot more running in than there are obstacles, so you need to be able to cover the distance. If you’ve been a runner for a while, most likely that will not be an issue. If you haven’t been running for a long time, start with the ones that are more of a 5K distance. There are a lot of races that are in that 5K range.
From there just to get like start going to the park, if the parks are open right now. Start going to the park and play on the monkey bars and just be a kid and have fun. Just getting used to. I think the biggest part with them is the hanging obstacles. Most people, it may be a little bit heavy, but most people can lift some sort of sandbag or something because we lift things in our day-to-day life, but I think most people aren’t used to the hanging things. So even if you just go to the park and hang on the monkey bars for a little bit or actually do the monkey bars and just do things like that, I think that’s where people tend to have the worst or the most difficulty.
Steven Sashen:
That’s the thing. When I look at the Ninja Warrior stuff, it’s so much about grip, which is so disappointing it’s the one thing, I don’t have. Everything else, like all the jumping, all the bounding, all the whatever else I’m all in, but I’m just not a grip guy. It makes me very upset. Because that’s my other fantasies, I want to be like the oldest Ninja Warrior guy, but I don’t stand a chance.
Brianne Showman:
You just got to start training your grip.
Steven Sashen:
I’m such a fast twitch guy. It just seems unlikely. I don’t run distance for a list of reasons, but my VO2 max is low and I’m a VO2 max non-responder. If I do VO2 max training, just nothing changes. And people don’t realize that there are some people who don’t respond to doing long slow distance. It doesn’t change things. There’s some people who when they lift weights, it doesn’t make them stronger.
It’s kind of funny, and people don’t want to believe that. They want to believe that all they have to do is train long, slow and they get better cardiovascular conditioning, all they have to do is lift weights and they’re going to get stronger. And there’s some people who just don’t respond that way, or even worse, they make it stronger, but they don’t change their body shape, and that’s the reason they wanted to do it. I had a friend growing up, he was the strongest guy I ever knew, and he was twig thin, just had no muscle mass and would go into the gym and just lift the stack on every machine. It was so annoying, but also really cool to watch because people would like, “Look at him,” and not be able to figure it out.
Brianne Showman:
Actually, I’ve known people like that too. They would eat so much in order to try to bulk up and there was just like…
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Brianne Showman:
And they were strong, but yeah, there was just no adding muscle mass.
Steven Sashen:
And then there’s the opposite. There’s a disease, I don’t remember what it’s called, where you don’t produce myostatin and when you don’t produce myostatin limits the amount of muscle growth that you can have. And when you don’t produce it, you just get more and more muscle growth. I know of one person who has this disease and I grew up with someone who we’re pretty sure had it. Because when we were doing gymnastics, he’d come in bigger every day and we would say, “So what’d you do to get your biceps bigger?” And he goes, “Cheerios.”
I mean, just no lifting. He never lifted. He just kept getting bigger every day. Just the tiniest bit of stimulation just made it huge.
Brianne Showman:
Oh, wow.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, it was fascinating. We once found a jean jacket that was too small for me to wear, and this guy was… I mean, I was 5’2″ at the time. This guy was like 5’11” and I could barely get this thing on. We spent an hour squeezing him into it. It took that long to get the buttons done. He could barely breathe. And then he just did a flexing thing like he was the Hulk and literally ripped the seams and popped the rivets on a jean jacket. It was awesome. Things you do with your freaky friends.
Brianne Showman:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
So, can you think of anything else? I want to back me up to the beginning again. Anything else? We talked about stretching and how that’s not necessarily a thing and ice. Actually, do you want to talk more about any thoughts you have about why ice is doing nothing other than temporarily numbing things? Do you have any other thoughts on why ice is not all it’s cracked up to be?
Brianne Showman:
Yeah, so in order for our bodies to actually heal, we need that inflammation response to happen. When we put ice on an injury, especially in acute injury, even though you think you need to take that swelling down, the swelling actually is what brings the healing properties to the area. So if we get rid of that swelling, we try to decrease that inflammation, we actually are delaying that healing process that’s going on. If you sprain your ankle rather than going home and icing it, you’d be better to just do some active range of motion, try to keep it moving, and just let that healing response happen. If you want to ice it to numb the pain, it’s not a bad thing necessarily, but it’s going to delay that healing process.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. I remember, I did say things with contrast. So ice and heat and ice and heat just going back and forth like a minute each. Do you think that does something different?
Brianne Showman:
The biggest thing is it helps control the swelling. So it doesn’t necessarily help the healing process at all, but sometimes that swelling can just be uncomfortable. I’ve done contrast myself when I was dealing with some injuries, so sometimes just getting that swelling out of there can help decrease the discomfort so you can sleep better or so you can concentrate for your job. So there definitely is a time and place and it’s nothing that you can’t do at any ever, but I would say if it’s an acute injury, let that swelling stay in there for a little bit and let the healing happen.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, that’s a really interesting idea. You reminded me just backing up to the thing you just said is perhaps the key thing is just doing that active recovery, just as much movement as you can without pain to just keep things moving, keep things flowing. And it reminded me, I asked Dr. Irene Davis from Harvard, before she became the preeminent researcher in natural movement footwear, she was teaching people how to make orthotics. She was a physical therapy professor, whatever that would be at University of Delaware. And I said, “What was your aha moment about natural movement?” And she said, “One of the things was I realized people would come into our clinic and we would try to keep them moving as much as possible as whatever they could do, except suddenly we were putting their feet in orthotic that wouldn’t let their foot move and that didn’t make sense all of a sudden.”
And I say the same, I even say to people who are convinced that they need to wear thick padded motion-controlled running shoes. I go, “That’s cool. If you’re happy with those, do it.” But when you’re done, put on something like what we do so you can have that active recovery, you can keep the blood moving, keep everything flexible and let it possibly heal faster as a result. And then they go, “Oh, that’s okay.” Now what I don’t tell them is once they get used to wearing our shoes afterwards, they’re not going to be able to put on those big fit, chunky, heavy, ridiculous foot coffins, but you can’t tell people everything.
Brianne Showman:
Right. When I was in PT school, I went for a run in the morning and stepped down from a curb wrong, major ankle sprain, limped my way a mile and a half back home and went to class that day. I was like, “All right, got to keep this ankle moving as much as I can.” So I was doing ankle circles, alphabet while I was sitting there thinking I was moving my foot through a huge range of motion and I looked down and it was moving like an inch. It was so stiff and swollen. I was like, “That’s not good.”
Steven Sashen:
No, that is definitely not good. It’s so funny you say that, I actually was carrying a 50 pound box this morning out into our garage and tripped on one of the stairs and did exactly one of those things face planted after my ankle twisted. And I got up thinking, “Well, I’ll be very curious to see how this goes.” And then I just kept walking. And then until right now, and this was what, six hours ago until right now, I’d forgotten that it even happened. And so that made me feel pretty good. Wait, I’m checking down. Yeah, it moves fine.
Brianne Showman:
One thing that came to mind going back to the stretching a little bit too, is if you are… Or one of the downfalls was stretching is now say the stretching itself, but we aren’t teaching the body how to use that extra motion. So you stretch, but then you don’t train that say, we’re stretching our calves. Awesome. We loosen it up, but then you don’t actually teach the +body how to control that new range of motion, and so it’s just going to go right back to where it was. So a lot of times if you ever see me stretching on a video or in the gym, it looks like I’m stretching, but I’m actually doing more of an isometric contraction or I’m doing like a contract relax or something to actually teach the body how to be controlled in that end range.
Steven Sashen:
You just gave me a crazy flashback. I was getting PT for a calf pull from when I just got back into sprinting. So this is about 12, 13 years ago. So they were having me just facing the wall, just lean into the wall to get a calf stretch and then do that reciprocal inhibition thing, that tight and relaxed thing. So I was pushing in and then relaxing or trying to push away and then relax in. And I kept getting a deeper stretch and a deeper stretch and a deeper stretch. And I got really crazy far, and it felt really good until I couldn’t walk for the next week because I had just strained my calves so much from doing that. I had no idea.
In fact, to talk about stretching. There was a coach that I worked with when I got back into sprinting, and at the end of every workout he had everyone stretching. And one day I realized there was one other person who wasn’t doing it other than me. That person became my best friend because I said, “Why aren’t you doing any stretching at the end of the workout?” He goes, “Because it’s useless.” And I went, “I love you.” And one of my first actual sprinting coaches, same thing. Our cool down was, let’s walk around the track and talk and then get in the car. I mean, that was it. So, do you know from your either experience or research about any value to post-workout stretching or not?
Brianne Showman:
From what I’ve seen, there’s a whole lot of value, especially when it comes to endurance sports like when… I’m thinking if I do a workout that’s very hamstring heavy or triceps heavy when I’m lifting, sometimes stretching that out afterwards can delay the tightness that happens as that rebound effect, but even that’s far and few between. If you exhaust those muscles so much, they’re just going to get a little… Just that overuse tightness, not a bad thing, just an overuse tightness. When you get down to it, I don’t think most injuries are due to stretching or lack of stretching. The people who stretch all the time get injured just as much as the people who don’t stretch all the time. So if it makes you feel good to stretch afterwards, cool. But I don’t think it’s really necessary.
Steven Sashen:
Do we want to debunk the whole idea of a cool down?
Brianne Showman:
Depends what your definition of a cool down is. You’re walking around afterwards or hopping on a bike and just getting some low grade movements, I think is awesome. But as far as doing a cool down of stretching, I don’t think it’s really necessary.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, we did not prepare this, but you and I agree. Again, it’s one of these things that’s so interesting. I’m really curious to know how this idea evolved, where it came from and how it caught on. Because it seems like so many of these things just become like, they’re almost urban myths that have become a common wisdom and I’m always dying to know how. It’s an old teaching story joke that I love that’s related to this of a couple gets married and it’s the couple’s first Christmas, and the husband is making dinner and he makes a pot roast. And he pulls out two pans and cuts the pot roast in half and puts it in two pans and puts it in the oven. And his wife’s like, “Why’d you do that?” He goes, “Well, that’s what my mom taught me how to do.” So the next year they’re at mom’s house for Christmas and she cuts the pot roast in half and puts it in new pans and the wife says… Daughter-in this case, “Why’d do that?”
She goes, “Well, my mother taught me to do that because it cooks better. It cooks more evenly, it tastes better when you do it that way.” The next year they’re at grandma’s house and now great, whatever that the wife says, “So how come you do the cutting the pot roast in half? Does it make things taste better and cook better?” She goes, “No, I just never had a pan big enough for a whole pot roast.” And I think that there’s so many training things that are like that that just have been passed down because someone thought it out for some reason
And probably just pulled it totally out of their butt to begin with. Which by the way, you need to stretch to be able to pull something out of your butt like that. You need to really have good hamstring flexibility. So, it seems to be one of the only things I’m interested in is finding those things out to debunk them if they’re not useful, if they don’t help, like even sometimes warming up. To lift weights, I’ve never found that warming up helped me lift any better other than just going down and doing one set to know that I’m doing something, but I don’t do some elaborate warmup to get my heart rate up to a million and start sweating and all those things.
Brianne Showman:
Yeah. Now that you’re bringing up the warmup conversation, I think the biggest thing with doing a warmup is I call it activation. If I’m going to be doing overhead presses, I know I’m going to do decent weight. I’ll do some lightweight bottoms up kettlebell presses in order to just activate those muscles, get those dynamic muscles kicked in. If I’m going to be doing squats, I’ll do some banded standing hip abduction, some side stepping, some short foot stuff, just some things to get the legs activated. So, that’s how I view a warmup is it should be more dynamic. It should be activating those muscles that you intend to use during that workout.
Steven Sashen:
Well, you just nailed it. I mean, to be candid, I mean, or honest about it. When I’m going out for a sprinting workout, I mean, I do an extended set of drills and warmups, but the point of them is to make everything we do has a direct application to sprinting. For people who know A skips and B skips and C skips, there’s ways of doing it where it’s just glorified hip movement and not really doing anything, or there’s ways of doing it that are actually simulating and stimulating part of what the gait cycle should be when you’re sprinting. And I learned that from a sprinter who said, “You’re warming up like a distance runner who doesn’t know anything about warming up. You’re not warming up like a sprinter.” And the difference is dramatic. Some day I’ll have to go out and shoot video showing the difference. But I think that’s a really good point is to do things that are movement specific to activate those movements, to wake up that neural pathway. And I don’t think people think about that typically when they’re doing whatever their warmup is.
Brianne Showman:
And I think you made a great point there too that I like to talk to my athletes about is so many people do, whether it’s a drill or actually part of the workout is just going through the motions, not really thinking about how their body’s moving. Are they moving in a way to be powerful or are they just moving just to move? And it’s such a difference on how the body responds when you’re moving with intention and with purpose than if we’re just moving just to do it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, that is a good point of just bringing intention to it. And again, to be candid, it could be challenging because you’re not doing the thing that you want to do. I know the last three or four drills that I do in my warmup, I’m just going, “Come on. Can I just get these things done?” And they’re the most important ones. They’re the ones that are the closest thing to actually running, and I just want to get like, “I’m out here to run. What the hell’s going on?”
Brianne Showman:
Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
Well, anything else that you can think of that you would like to leave biped as we wrap this up?
Brianne Showman:
Bipeds.
Steven Sashen:
I’m okay with monopeds too.
Brianne Showman:
As long as you’re not just counting them out.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Brianne Showman:
I think the biggest thing is no matter what you do, if you are stretching or if you’re doing a dynamic activation exercise or whatever it is you’re doing, know why you’re doing it. Know the purpose of it. So many times we just go onto YouTube and we find exercises for hip pain or knee pain or to make me faster or whatever it is, and we just grab five or six of them and do them without knowing the actual purpose and intent behind them. If we don’t know that purpose, if we don’t really know why we’re doing it and we’re just doing it, you might be wasting your time.
Steven Sashen:
And how might someone figure out the why, considering that when they’re looking at something, they’re assuming the person they’re seeing it from as some sort of expert knowledge?
Brianne Showman:
Yeah. I think it’s really tough to figure out that why some videos when you look on YouTube will have it, some won’t. For me personally, if someone sees one of my videos and wants to ask me why, like what it’s for or why it’s out there, I’m always happy to answer someone’s question. So I think most people who put their information out there, if you look at it, you don’t know why it’s there or what the purpose of it is, if you reach out to them, I’m sure they’d be happy to respond.
Steven Sashen:
And my guess is that if you do that a couple of times, you’ll start to be able to hear the difference between something that seems like it really makes sense and something that sounds like more mythology.
Brianne Showman:
Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
More just repeating what someone else said to them some number of years before. Well, that’s the perfect segue to if somebody does want to find out what you’re up to and learn some of the things that we’ve been talking about them with a little more depth, how might they find you?
Brianne Showman:
Absolutely. Easiest way to find me is my website getyourfixpt.com or you can’t find me on Facebook. I’m most active in the Obstacle Course Race Health and Performance Group.
Steven Sashen:
Getyourfixpt.com. Got it.
Brianne Showman:
Getyourfixpt.com is my website. And then you can also find me, I have my own podcast it’s called Highly Functional, where I talk to all sorts of experts about everything to help someone become a highly functional human.
Steven Sashen:
That sounds delightful. Well, thank you so much for… I mean, we dove into a handful of things that maybe some people are going to be in an uproar about because it’s what they’ve been spending their life believing, and maybe we can make lives a little simpler, a little happier for people. So I really appreciate you sharing all that.
Brianne Showman:
Of course. And real quick, if you are interested, anyone who listens to this podcast, if you go to my website or you can just email me at [email protected], I would be happy to do a free running analysis for you.
Steven Sashen:
Ooh. And your [email protected].
Brianne Showman:
Correct.
Steven Sashen:
So awesome. That is a splendid offer. I appreciate you doing that.
Brianne Showman:
Of course.
Steven Sashen:
Well, let me call it a day for everyone. Thank you all for being here. If you want to find out more about what’s happening at The Movement Movement, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com previous episodes, all the different ways you can interact with us. If you have any questions for me or recommendations for people who should be on the show or suggestions or you want to tell me, I have my head up my butt because I’m super flexible, then you can send me an email [email protected]. And as always, the most important thing, please go out, have fun and live life feet first.