All right, welcome to the AdaptX podcast where we have conversations with individuals who are
building accessible businesses, advocating for inclusion or excelling in adaptive sports.
Our intention is never to speak on behalf of those with disabilities, but to provide a platform for
them to share insights to a more accessible world. Today we are joined by Travis Pollen,
an author, personal trainer, and assistant professor of exercise science at Thomas Jefferson
University in Philadelphia. His research focuses on athletic injury etiology and risk reduction.
He's particularly interested in pre-participation movement screening, return to sport testing, and
training load, and the roles that these factors play in injury risk. In addition to his PhD in
health and rehabilitative sciences, Travis holds a master's in biomechanics and movement sciences.
Outside of academia, he's been a personal trainer since 2013 and has worked with a variety of
clientele, from an Olympic hopeful to post-rehabilitation and older adults. He's also
the co-founder of two companies, Strand for Yoga and ACL Care Pro. Athletically, he's previously
held two American records in Paralympic swimming and recently returned to competitive swimming
after a decade-long hiatus. Thank you for including a ton of words that were hard to pronounce in that
bio to really just test how on the ball I'm going to be this episode. You nailed them all.
I think so. Etiology? Edeology? Either way, I think. All right, so let's maybe start with
the discussion on movement screening since it's a topic that you're heavily involved in and have
researched. Movement screens imply that there is one universal norm for movement that all individuals
should be working towards or that they should be compared against. That would be inaccessible for
a lot of people with disabilities and obviously the nature of this podcast is on inclusion and
accessibility. One challenge with physical therapy as a whole is the medicalized model.
So maybe can we discuss what role a movement screen plays in maybe a social model approach
to exercise, if that makes sense? Or maybe we can start with just defining what a movement screen is
and looking at the barriers of it. Yeah, so this is an awesome question because it definitely
applies to people with disabilities, but it also applies to all people. Like you said, a movement
screen is this battery of tests, often multiple tests, that is supposed to grade and rank human
fundamental movement patterns. So there are a lot of different ones out there. The most popular one
is probably the functional movement screen, which is a series of seven tests. And it'll look at
things like squats and lunges or split squats. It might look at push-ups, push-ups, push-ups,
and so those would kind of be like what you would call the fundamental movement patterns.
And then it also looks at things like core stability, looks at range of motion, flexibility,
mobility, and it attempts to compare you to some sort of norm or not even really a norm, but
someone's opinion of what a norm should be. And so it says, okay, here's the criteria to which we
want all people to move or range of motion or whatever. And so it'll say, okay, you meet our
standard or you don't. And that's kind of preposterous right off of the base of it because
people move differently, right? And so to say, well, this is the way that we think that all
people should move. They need to stand with their feet, hip width apart and toes forward and squat
down until their hip crease goes below their knee, keeping their torso vertical with a dowel rod
overhead. It's like, okay, if you can do that, that's wonderful. But most people can't do that
and that doesn't mean that there's actually anything wrong with them for many reasons.
That movement might not be relevant to them. That particular setup might not work for them
because that's not the way that they do the exercise. They haven't practiced it that way
or their unique anatomy, limb length ratios, whatever dictates that they need to do it
differently. And so when you're talking about people with disabilities, adaptive athletes,
clearly not everybody's going to move the same way. But even when you're talking about
people without disabilities, people are not going to move the same way. And so do we really want to
pathologize that and tell people that, hey, you're dysfunctional, quote unquote, based on
these arbitrary criteria we've laid out for these arbitrary movements, or is that potentially
detrimental? Does that not really do anything helpful for us besides getting people to subscribe
to a 10-week training program where we're going to supposedly fix, correct, these dysfunctions?
I use air quotes for all of these words. So long answer short, it doesn't apply to most
people without disabilities. It definitely doesn't apply to people with disabilities who
have so many different ways that they move, none of which we should really pathologize or very few
of which we should really pathologize because people find ways to get the job done. And so
whenever you create this cookie cutter thing and say everybody has to do these seven movements
this exact way, you wind up making just a... More barriers.
Yeah, adding huge barriers. And then it goes to even farther to say, well, okay, if you can't
do the squat with the dowel rod overhead, then we're not going to have you squat. And it's like,
whoa, that's a gross... We're going to have you do all of these quote unquote corrective exercises
before you squat. And now you're not able to give people a sufficient exercise stimulus because
you're trying to help them improve their internal hip rotation or whatever it is when you could just
find the version of the squat or whatever movement it is that is best suited for them in this moment.
Maybe that's a squat with TRX support. Maybe that is a squat to a box. Maybe it's a squat using
band assistance, whatever it is, there's usually a way that you can find to adapt the exercise to
the individual as opposed to trying to fit the individual to your arbitrary standard and not
allow them to do the exercise until they can meet that criteria.
Yeah, the pathologizing of movement, I think is the biggest issue and the associated kinesophobia
that could come with exercising just from... I think oftentimes it's a personal trainer wanting
to demonstrate that they have this unique skillset or they need to create a problem in order to
provide a solution. So someone comes with you and if they can squat and they can press and they can
row, then you have to demonstrate some other way, I guess, that you're going to improve them.
And then you convince them that they need to be able to overhead squat and then a half of your
session is being taken up by low-level mobility drills to try to get to that.
Right. They don't even want to overhead squat. They didn't even come to you expressing that goal.
It's different if they're an Olympic lifter, a CrossFitter who wants to do overhead squats,
and it's still, well, maybe they don't need to perform it to that standard. There's this great
side-by-side of Dmitry Klokov, an Olympic medalist in Olympic lifting, looking pretty substandard
according to the FMS's criteria when he does the FMS deep squat. And then they flash to him doing
a snatch with 300 pounds. And it's like, suddenly when you throw on Olympic squats, you're like,
suddenly when you throw on Olympic weightlifting shoes and allow him to self-select his stance,
and you put 300 pounds over his head instead of an empty dowel rod, he performs this movement
beautifully as one of the best in the world. Yeah. So the addition of load completely alters
how someone moves. Right. Which is like another nail in the coffin for it because it's like,
well, we're testing all these things with your body weight and moving slowly. And that is a
totally different context from the weight room or the athletic court or field. So maybe you actually
move better when you throw some weight on because a goblet squat gives you a little bit more of a
counterbalance so that you can stay more upright. So if the goal is to have somebody do a goblet
squat and they do a nice goblet squat, then they're good. They can do goblet squats. They
don't have to be able to do an unweighted squat or an overhead squat. So it's like, we have to match
the test or whatever you want to call it, the assessment process to the individual and not some
arbitrary cookie cutter thing. So then how do we go about doing that? So I mean, the literature is
pretty strong that the FMS, the improvements are often just made through practicing the movements
that they test that they don't necessarily carry over to injury prevention. So how can we screen
new clients more effectively or what should we be looking at in that first session?
So my process is basically thinking about the different movement patterns that I would want
to work within a session or within a program and thinking about each of those movement patterns on
a continuum of unloaded or assisted up to body weight up to added load. So different people will
have different fundamental movement patterns in their list, but it would be things like squatting
and lunging, pushing, pulling, hinging, bridging, rotating, carrying maybe if you wanted to add
that category. So my process would be, okay, I have each of these movement patterns and then I have
what I would consider to be like the baseline version of that movement pattern. So a goblet
squat, a kettlebell deadlift, whatever. And I would try to identify the point along each of the
movement continuums or each of the continuums of each movement pattern that that person is currently
prepared for. So can they do a goblet squat? If not, do they need to do a squat to a box, a squat
with assistance? Can they do a pushup or do they need to do some sort of pushup regression,
pushup on an incline, a pushup with band assistance, a kneeling pushup, an eccentric pushup?
Or maybe they can do a pushup, you know, regular flat on the ground and they can do 20 of them.
Well, that means we could put a plate on their back or give them band resistance. So it's about
identifying the point on that continuum from unloaded to body weight to added load for each
of the movement patterns. And that kind of tells me, okay, this is where the person's at. And this
is kind of the general level that they're at across these different movement patterns. And then I can
probably surmise within other exercises, single joint exercises, accessory exercises, whatever,
kind of where they're going to be based on what I find. So it's not like you're broken,
you're dysfunctional. It's just, here's where you're at right now. And sure, maybe we would
like to get everybody moving with their body weight and all of those movement patterns or moving with
added load. But it's kind of more of a neutral thing of just identifying where you are,
as opposed to saying, oh, you can't do this yet, or you are exhibiting some sort of movement
compensation or dysfunction. Like those words aren't even in the vocabulary.
And it sounds like that's basically just a traditional workout. Like the assessment's
basically just taking them through a workout and then trial and error.
It can be exactly that. It doesn't have to occur in a context of, hey, this is our first session,
and I'm going to run you through a test today. It can just be, okay, here are the basic movement
patterns. And maybe it occurs over two sessions instead of two, because maybe that would be a
lot to do depending on the person and the day. But yeah, I'm going to guess where you're at.
Maybe that's starting with the most regressed version, or maybe that's like an assisted version
of all of these different exercises, or maybe it's starting with the kettlebell version of each of
them. Ideally, you want to guess right so that they meet with success in the initial encounter,
not, hey, I'm going to put you through this overhead squat, this pushup, and this lunge on
a tightrope balance beam that you can't do any of these things. I'm going to make you feel really
bad about yourself, and then I'm going to show you my value is in helping to correct you to be able
to do these arbitrary things. It's not that at all. It's just, hey, your goblet squat looks great.
We're going to be able to add weight on that over the next few weeks. So trying to find the thing
that they can do off the bat as opposed to, oh, that doesn't look good. Let's try to rewind you
to a more basic version. Some people would do fine with that, but some people might get discouraged
with that. So starting on the easier side, showing them everything that they can do,
that's a really empowering thing for able-bodied or adaptive and running from there.
Yeah. So goals of an assessment, have the client leaving feeling confident and capable, identifying
what their goals are and maybe what exercises and movement patterns are most relevant for them
achieving those goals. Again, if they need to lose a lot of weight, then overhead squat assessment
isn't super relevant because the majority of your workout is not going to consist of trying to
improve your overhead squat. Right. I appreciate what you said. And that step even precedes,
if one of those movement patterns is totally not relevant to the person, then we don't have to
do it. So if somebody might tell me, oh, I'm not interested in deadlifting for whatever reason.
And I might take issue with that because I might think deadlifts would be great for that person.
But maybe at first I acknowledge that they are not interested in deadlifting and maybe we skip
that one. Maybe later on I have them do a sumo squat that's actually a deadlift to try to violate
that preconceived notion. But really it is about fitting the, like assessing them in a way that's
going to match their goals. So whatever those goals are, choosing the most relevant assessment
assessments to get them matched up with their goals, as opposed to something arbitrary, like
an overhead squat, which is so irrelevant to so many people. And I guess just to give the
overhead squat like one kudo, it does test a lot of things at once. So like if somebody can do a
nice overhead squat with a dowel rod, that does show you that they have decent ankle mobility,
shoulder mobility, balance, hip mobility, perhaps. So it's not like the worst thing in the world,
but if so many people struggle with it and then it doesn't really tell you where the issue is.
So then you need to do further testing. Okay, well, if we don't have the PVC overhead, can they do
it? Okay, well, maybe that's more relevant. So why were we doing that? Oh, we were just trying to
knock two things out at once, shoulder mobility and everything else underneath of that. So it's
like, it can be a useful thing because it does like give you a lot of check marks at one time,
but for so many people, it's not a good fit. And then we have to go further down the rabbit hole.
This is not an overhead squat hating podcast. It's just a real big example.
It's a convenient scapegoat.
Yeah, exactly. Can injuries be prevented? I think most people want, most fitness professionals
want a screening or an assessment process because they think that you can identify what's going to
cause an injury. And many clients are concerned that the weight room is dangerous or that they're
going to get hurt in the weight room. But I think if you look at the statistics, you're a lot less
likely to get hurt in the gym than you are playing your sport or doing a recreational activity. So
I guess what is the purpose of the movement screen, I guess, outside of what we mentioned,
which is helping you develop a training program. But if it's not that, can it prevent injury?
Can you identify what's going to cause an injury, I guess, is the ultimate question.
Yeah. So as you know, the answer to that question is a pretty conclusive no. And it is confusing
from a statistical standpoint or from a research standpoint, because when you look at a lot of
these studies, they will say that people who perform poorly on whatever movement screen it is
have an increased risk of injury. So it might be usually there's some sort of total score on the
screen. Maybe it's a 14 out of 21 in the case of the FMS. And they'll say people who score less
than 14 are four times more likely or whatever to sustain an injury over the next period of time.
So that might be true in some contexts with some athletic groups, depending on the sport and the
level of play and the gender and all that. But basically that association is very different
from predicting on an individual basis who is and isn't going to sustain an injury. So what
we think is going to happen is, oh, we're going to do this screen, we're going to find out that
they're less than this cutoff score, and then we're going to identify those people and then give them
an intervention and it's going to prevent their injuries. And what actually turns out to happen
is that the screen, there were a bunch of people who scored better than whatever your cutoff score
were, was that those people also get injured. And that's because this movement quality piece
is only one probably small component of all of the different things that can affect someone's injury
risk. So there's movement, there's also sports skill and strength, there are psychological factors,
age and sex are factors that can't be modified, previous injury factors in, those are adding to
the piece of the puzzle. There's also factors within the sport. So the playing field, the equipment,
the shoes that the people are wearing, the weather outside, and then there's what happens in that
moment of the injury, especially if it's a contact injury, like what was the opposing player doing.
So when you think about this whole picture of how injuries happen, you can readily realize that
movement quality or competency or the way that somebody moves is just this one small piece of
the puzzle. And even everything that I just said didn't even account for a training load or
like training history and relative preparedness, which is another huge piece of it. So when you
realize, oh, wow, this injury is really complicated, we probably can't identify on an individual
basis who's going to get injured based on the way that somebody moves. Then like you said,
you can start going into other reasons for why this screening process might be beneficial.
And again, like you said, it's really just about helping with exercise selection, maybe again,
showing the person what they're capable of, figuring out their starting point, figuring out
a baseline so that maybe you can compare to later to show someone the progress that they've made.
Hey, remember when we were first starting out, you needed assistance or you needed to do the drill
for the squat and the deadlift. Now look at you, you're deadlifting half your body weight
or whatever it is and kind of show people progress that way. Maybe also if somebody is
injured and you need something to compare to from a movement standpoint from their pre-injury,
that can be a nice thing to have that baseline assessment to then show that they're back to
their baseline or maybe even exceeding their baseline because they got injured at that initial
level of movement. But again, movement is just one piece of this much bigger puzzle. So then
then the other piece that you mentioned, we shouldn't even be really worried about getting
this. If we're talking about, oh, we're doing this movement screen because we're worried about
getting injured in the gym, that is not really something that we need to worry about.
Because like you said, the injury rates in the gym, strength training is a very safe movement practice
and most many athletic endeavors are, some of them are not like football,
it's not a safe sport. The injury rates on football are very high. So like if you compare,
oh, I could do a thousand exposures, I could play football a thousand times, I would get injured
a bunch of times. Whatever that high number is, 30 times if I were to play football a thousand times,
if I were to strength train, I would get injured once maybe or two or three times. And that's
like, those numbers are pretty uniform across bodybuilding, powerlifting, crossfit, which
everybody thinks is dangerous. Those numbers are so low, this is really safe, relatively safe.
So what does cause an injury in the gym? I find that people will be like, oh, that exercise is bad
for my back or they have these preconceived notions. But at the same time, maybe I'm introducing
someone to deadlift and I make a comment like, yeah, let's make sure we don't go too heavy this
first time. And it almost, I don't know if they pick up on it, but it's almost implying that if
they were to go heavy, they're going to get hurt. And I don't want them to be thinking that in the
back of their head. When I do go heavy deadlifting, it's a higher risk. And the risk-reward ratio is
probably a whole nother conversation. There's a person on Instagram, Alec Blenis, I don't know if
you follow him, but he puts out really great content. And I-
His unamazing follow.
Yeah. And I love all the stuff that he talks about. And he says like, sometimes those bilateral
exercises are the ones you're going to get hurt at because they're the ones that people actually
push really hard as opposed to like no one usually maxes out their lunge. So what causes an injury in
the gym? Are there good exercises? Are there bad exercises? Are there just exercises you're not
prepared for?
Yeah, that's my take on it. It's just things that you're not prepared for. What causes an injury,
it can be such a fluky thing. So I agree that it's not really this case of good and bad movements.
My thought process around that is a movement could only be bad if it was uniformly bad for
every single person who could attempt it. And I haven't come up with any exercises that I
put on that list. So there are certain exercises that might not be appropriate for an individual
at a given time, but that doesn't make the exercise bad. It's just a poor application of
like all exercises are neutral. So what causes an injury? Sometimes it's bad luck. Sometimes it's
all of those factors just unfortunately co-occurring at the same time of, hey, you got
poor sleep, you're stressed, you're under hydrated, you're doing more than you should have done on
that day, which is hard to know, and you did one rep too many. A lot of people when they look at
this say, oh, well, you got hurt deadlifting, so deadlifts must be bad. And it's not that deadlifts
are bad. It's just this person had the unlucky incident of those stars aligning in a bad way.
So I mean, sometimes it can just be poor. Yeah, especially if you do something like you drop a
plate on your foot. Well, that was poor safety measures. But yeah, if you get hurt deadlifting
on a weight that you normally do, bad luck. If you get hurt deadlifting on a weight that was more
than you normally would, you're not going to be able to do it. So it's not a bad thing.
That was more than you normally do. I guess you just found out that you weren't prepared for that.
But it is this fine line because we do want to progressively overload. And so, you know, it's
the thing like you mentioned about, oh, telling somebody this subtle kinesiophobic thing about,
hey, we won't want to go too heavy today, or hey, you want to make sure that you keep your
back flat so that you don't hurt your back. Like we mean well with these cues, or these words of
caution, but it can subtly plant that seed that if you flex your spine, you will get injured,
or if you go too heavy, you will get injured. And it's just not that simple. And furthermore,
we can adapt to any of those positions. So as long as you always lift with a flexed back,
and you build it up very gradually, you can adapt. And as long as you lift just a little bit more
than you have been doing, and don't go ham on a relatively new exercise to you, you are minimizing
the risk as much as you can. So as trainers, we tend to say these things, again, meaning well,
and trying to keep people safe. But at the same time, we might be subtly insinuating these
negative beliefs that can plant in the client's head the seed that could cause them to fear
a movement which we really don't want to do. Yeah, this is such a hard topic to discuss
because there's kind of so many nuances to it. When we teach our Adaptex course to people,
they often come from like a NASM cert or an ACE cert, and it's taught that movement looks very
similar. There's an ideal technique that everyone should adopt. But then when you get and you train
hundreds of people, you realize that doesn't really exist. People can RDO with a C-section
and they have a seemingly perfectly neutral spine and still have lower back pain. So it's tough
because we're not encouraging you to dismiss the relevancy of technique, but it's just that
there's so many things that go into it and technique kind of exists along a continuum of
acceptable and unacceptable. It's hard to make recommendations. Yeah, and I had my NASM cert
too. I've read that book. I've seen the lines that they draw from the back and the shins,
and they're saying, this has to be very parallel. And if they intersect, this is a recipe for
disaster. And then you train 100 people, especially somebody with disability or multiple
people with disabilities, and so few people move the same way. So few people move that textbook way
and you begin to realize, oh, well, they're all doing fine. Or maybe like you said, the people
who do move the textbook way have as much back pain as the people who move differently. So
we understand why there are these norms or these textbook things. We have to understand that this
thing is a squat, but then we also have to understand that it is a range where there might
be a couple things that we really feel strongly that we don't want to see the squat perform this
way or that way. And that's okay, but we can also have this wider range of what would be acceptable
and allow for that buffer. And also recognize again that if people train that, if they do that
movement that way and they build it up slowly over time, then they can adapt and be robust to that.
Whereas somebody else who's just doing it for the first time and looking a certain way,
maybe we would want to steer them a little bit away from that.
This could be a good segue into the relationship between flexibility and injury. And so you teach
yoga, you teach training for yoga. A lot of people associate the practice of yoga with people trying
to improve their flexibility and mobility. You could use it simultaneously, but I hear all the
time like, oh, so and so hurts. I just need to stretch more or I'm sore after the gym. I just
need to stretch more. But we also have a lot of dancers at our gym who are more mobile than
anyone else and they always have this perception of stiffness or tightness. They're always trying
to stretch their hamstrings and they're throwing their feet over their, or they're throwing their
legs over their head. And I can't even dream to touch those positions, but I don't have that same
perception of tightness. So all of that to say, what's flexibility's role in injury prevention?
And maybe what is flexibility's role in general in terms of pain and performance?
So, I mean, you touched on so many good points. Where do we even start? So
like you said, some of the people really value flexibility, right? Especially when you talk to
young athletes, they think I need to stretch more. That's what's going to prevent injuries. I need
to stretch more. That's going to help reduce my soreness. And I think what we find is that
neither of those things are true. And that doesn't mean stretching is bad or that we shouldn't do it.
It just means that it might not be a hundred percent necessary for everybody, or at least not
for those particular goals. So also what you mentioned, people who are flexible still perceive
that they're very tight. So like hamstrings are one of the most common ones. Everybody in the world
almost thinks that, perceives that they have tight hamstrings. And then you go and test their toe
touch or test their supine active straight leg raise. And they can touch their chin to their face
or their head to their shins and palm the floor. And it's like, well, clearly you're not inflexible.
You might be perceiving tightness and that is a different thing. So what the research shows is
that it's complicated as far as like, especially when you start talking about hypermobility.
I would say that you can certainly find studies that show that less flexibility might be associated
with increased risk, but not all studies show that. You can probably also find studies that show that
too much flexibility is associated with increased risk. So then you start talking about those
hypermobile yogis who can put their legs behind their head. And maybe that is a risk because
you have this access to this position that you don't have as much control over. So then when
you start talking about, oh, is yoga the best movement practice for someone who's hypermobile?
I mean, it depends on the type of yoga, but if the pursuit is just of more flexibility and the
person's already very flexible, then maybe that's not exactly what they need. Maybe they could do
yoga, but the yoga should be catered to building some strength into those positions. So yeah,
the, I guess the bottom line, and then I'll ask you what the question was again, is that there
are certainly instances, there are sports where you need deep, deep flexibility. Dance, ballet,
like ballerinas or hockey goalies, there are certain sports where you do need to be very
flexible and you do probably need to sort of be able to do that. But I think that's the
thing to stretch before the workout to be able to access those ranges of motion within the
training session or stretch every day or often to build up those chronic adaptations of flexibility.
You might also be able to get those adaptations from full range of motion strength training
because if you do a Romanian deadlift, a stiff legged deadlift, that's putting a pretty big
hamstring on the hamstrings, kind of not that different from if you lie on your back and put
your foot up against the wall. So I guess now I'll open that back up to, what was the question at
the beginning before I went on my rant? I'm not even sure if there was, it was more so a commentary
on should people prioritize flexibility for injury prevention, which I think kind of already
addressed to a degree. Yeah, so maybe, right? But not universally and not the way, it's not
this number one priority that many people think it is. Yeah, and not to the degree that it gets
in the way, again, kind of like the mobility or improving these arbitrary metrics of range of
motion, as long as it doesn't get in the way of actually training. If someone's spending an hour
of their, or a half hour of their hour long session stretching, are they really moving towards
the CDC's recommended levels of daily activity? So if you're thinking about, well, we have an
obesity epidemic and so many people don't meet the guidelines for physical activity of 150 minutes
of moderate intensity exercise, two days a week of strength training. If you're prioritizing a lot
of the time that you are allocating to exercise to flexibility training and it's very low intensity,
you're not going to get those adaptations that we're seeking from the strength and aerobic
training. So is this the biggest fish to fry? For most people, probably not. There could be a subset
of people, maybe older adults, people with chronic conditions who strength training and aerobic
exercise might not be a good fit for them in the immediate term. So the intensity of flexibility
stretching could be a good fit, but that's like a relatively smaller niche or subset of people
compared to the majority of the people who really just need to be working pretty hard doing something
aerobic and doing something strength. And sure, if they like stretching, have at it for separate from
those 150 minutes a week plus two sessions of strength training. Or as a very small
part of your workout. I'm not too in tune with all of the research on it, but I would imagine
there's certain activities where stiffness and tightness is advantageous to flexibility. For
example, running, I feel like some degree of stiffness is actually good because it's more
efficient for transferring force from the ground. Same thing with being a football lineman. You don't
want to be hyper mobile if someone's about to come smash into you. You want to be stiff to a degree.
That's kind of my surface level understanding of it too. I haven't delved too deeply into that
research, but apparently from a running efficiency standpoint, if you're stiffer and there's like
our colloquial understanding of stiffness and then there's the more biomechanical explanation of what
stiffness is. But yeah, it could be that doing a ton of stretching would be counterproductive to
that, especially when you think about not needing huge ranges of motion to do an activity like
jogging or running where again, it's task specific and it's individual specific.
But it's also probably not going to hurt. The amount of stretching that you actually have to do,
the duration of the hold, the intensity of the hold, the frequency of the stretching to
probably elicit these negative adaptations is likely more than the 30 seconds that people are
doing before their workout. So it's like, oh, people, you can take it to such an extreme and
say, well, we should never stretch because it inhibits force and power production. And it's
like, that's a transient thing that happens for like 15 minutes is washed out when you do dynamic
stretching afterwards. And unless you're trying to break a world record, you probably don't need to
be worried about a 2% drop off in your strength. Yeah, I feel like that was the big study that got
people on like the anti-stretching train. They were like, oh, the force production was decreased in
this population of people that stretched before they jumped. And then everyone was just like,
oh, we shouldn't stretch them because our workouts are going to be crap.
That's like holding the stretch for 10 minutes and then going immediately into a vertical jump,
which isn't neither like how long you hold it nor how you would do a session in real life.
So going off of hypermobility conditions like EDS, joint hypermobility, even Down syndrome to a
degree where hypotonia and hypermobility are common, is there specific forms of exercise that
are best for these populations? And are there specific forms of exercises that they should maybe
shy away from? I admittedly don't have a ton of experience working with those people besides the
yoga practitioners who I work with from a strength training standpoint. My bias is for strength
training, right? Especially when you think about like those people have pre-selected them yoga or
other types of flexibility practices because they're good at them and they feel good and they like
doing them. And I wouldn't say to stop doing those things, but I would say it's really important to
develop strength, especially when you do have access to those extreme ranges of motion.
So that's my bias for it. Absolutely. And can yoga, how can the practice of yoga bias
strength instead of flexibility? Yeah. So that's a really interesting one. And I kind of got
back and forth with this because I do have this platform that I co-created with my friend,
Jenny Rawlings, who's a yoga teacher. And we are all about teaching yoga students and teachers how
to strength train. And we kind of do it through this lens of yoga where we like, like a kettlebell
windmill we call, well, I guess we call it a windmill, but it's, we kind of make the analogy to
this is very similar to triangle pose. And so kind of showing people how similar it is to yoga
and how similar, how we can map these strength training exercises onto yoga poses. But anyway,
there are people who just don't want to strength train, right? They, they want to do yoga,
they love yoga. They don't want to go to the gym. They don't want to lift weights. So how do you
then make the yoga practice more strengthening? And so that is, you know, we, we, I guess our,
say, Hey, you should really try this thing. Strength training. We should do it separate from
a yoga practice so that you can just have yoga be for what it's really good for, and then have
strength training be separate and then find the, you know, experience the benefits of this
reciprocity. But if one, if the person would say, I don't want to do that. I only want to do yoga,
then we need to focus on how we can make the practice of yoga itself more strengthening.
So that might be doing things like, uh, single leg exercises because, you know,
something like chair pose, which is basically a half or quarter squat with your arms overhead
in yoga. People will say, well, I'm just going to hold it longer and that's going to get me stronger.
And as we know, that's going to get you stronger in the short term. But once you adapt to that
and you're holding it longer and longer, a 30 second or 60 second hold is an endurance,
a muscular endurance feat. It's not really building a ton of strength. So finding ways to
do the, you know, incorporate more single leg work or incorporate more end range positions where
you're building strength in those positions or incorporating more like isometric contractions,
maybe squeezing a yoga block, just, and then there are certainly yoga poses that are just hard,
uh, arm balances, inversions, handstands. So, so there are ways to, you know, tweak the practice.
So it's not just about, Hey, how deep can we go into this stretch, but how can we focus on poses
and implementations of poses that we can find some strength in, uh, which is, you know, it's a
different paradigm. Yeah, for sure. I think sometimes people think if something's hard,
it means it's good for you. Um, like you'll, you'll sometimes hear like a football player who's
obviously, uh, in the top 1% of the populations in terms of strengths say, Oh, I went to yoga and it
was so hard. It's like, obviously it was really hard, but that doesn't mean you necessarily
have to do it to improve at your sport or whatever. I think sometimes people think that they're like
filling in these gaps by finding things they're not good at. Like you don't, if you don't run,
going out for a run is going to be hard, but that doesn't necessarily mean you need to go out for
runs. Right. So like the linemen in football, yeah, running will be hard, but when do you have
to run two miles straight? Like your position requires like doing a sled push would be much
more, yeah, much more similar. And it's not to say that, well, maybe it is to say that you should,
I don't know. Is it then, then you're like, well, running's bad for linemen. Uh, I don't know.
I don't want to say that it could be gradually progressed to the point where they could talk.
Yeah. You would like, you want to find something that you can do, uh, for, for an extended period
of time. If you're 300 pounds, like is running the best thing or would cycling be better or an
elliptical or whatever. So yeah, they're, you know, finding things that are going to be specific to
the task. General aerobic fitness is beneficial for most people finding the way to that you can
do that comfortably. And that isn't just hard for the sake of it being hard. Yeah. We talked about
movement patterns a little bit in that movement screen, uh, discussion. One aspect of movement
patterns maybe could be core training. I, I just want to touch on it real quick. Um, when I first
started training people about 10 years ago, I think like Mike Boyle's functional training was,
was one of the first books I read and yeah, quickly adopted the old, uh, Paloff presses,
dead bugs and bird dogs were going to solve everyone's back pain. And then it just didn't,
it just didn't happen the way, um, I was told it was going to happen. I'm like, I was lied to. Um,
so I think over, over the years I've trended a little bit away from solely static core stuff,
or I definitely have turned it away from solely stack core stuff to the more dynamic stuff. I
don't think I fear sit-ups to the degree that I was, uh, taught to fear them. And, uh, we do a
lot of things like side bending and side planks with hip lifts and stuff now. So it's interesting
the same trajectory. It's interesting how the fitness industry as a whole kind of moves in
these trends. Um, and it's interesting to maybe predict what's going to become irrelevant in the
next five years and how things are going to change. But maybe we can talk about core training real
quick. Um, the balance between static, maybe yoga could be perceived as, as static poses versus,
uh, like dynamic core training. Um, how do you program both, uh, is one better than the other?
Yeah. So I had the very, the same influences and the same process of really focusing on
isometrics. When I first started to like yesterday, I was in the gym and I started a new training
program for myself and I did reverse crunches, side bends, and cable twists all in one workout.
And if I had, if I saw that, uh, five, 10 years ago, I would have been horrified. I think I hope
maybe five years ago, I would have been more, uh, more up to date, but yeah, I, so the pendulum
for me has definitely shifted back to, uh, you know, all movement of the spine is good movement.
Uh, and so I, in my programming, I kind of, I try to give a mix. So like, I, I typically think of
it in three categories. There's the category number one, that's purely the static that you
mentioned. So your power off presses, your side planks, your suit, well, maybe not suitcase carry,
that's a little bit more dynamic, your front plank, your hollow body hold. And then there
are exercises that are static at your trunk or torso or core, but then there's dynamic movement
happening around them. So things like bird dogs and dead bugs and suitcase carries, like one-armed
farmers carries. So those would be exercises where you're still training the torso core,
whatever you want to call it in a neutral position or a static position, but then you're resisting
perturbations around it from your arms and legs. And then there's the third category that 10 years
ago, everybody was saying to swear off because it was not functional or not the role of the core,
which is your side bends, your sit-ups, your crunches, your Russian twists. Um, and so I've,
I've over the last few years come to appreciate that these exercises are not bad for the spine.
They're not going to cause your spine to explode. In fact, they're going to cause your spine to be
more robust as long as you progress them gradually. Um, and, and like, when you, when you look back,
you see like, well, some people, some people realized that that whole anti-movement isometric
core training thing was a fad at the time and they like still were doing your, your dynamic exercises.
And so it's funny just to think about like who the, the, the loudest voices were about these things
and where, like you said, where it's headed and are we going to go back to, uh, are we going to,
in five years from now, are you going to say the isometric exercises are bad? And then in 10 years
from now, is it going to repeat all over again? Uh, but really just from my programming standpoint,
having a mix of all of those things that's appropriate to the person and to their goals
and to their current level. Yeah. It's interesting that the abdominals are kind of the only muscle
group that people train exclusively with isometrics. It's like, it's like, it's a unique muscle where
everything was eccentric and concentric. How do you, it, it, now that I'm 10 years in,
I'm like, well, how did I not see that that would be akin to saying we should only do isometric holds
for our bicep curls because the biceps are not meant to, they're meant to resist motion instead
of create, like it just doesn't make any sense, especially when you, you look at sports and you
see how people move into different positions all the time. And maybe we actually want to be prepared
for these positions instead of encountering them in the, uh, in the field of play for the first time.
And of course we know why we were, we were afraid because there were certain research, uh, that was
showing that sit-ups and spinal flexion might be injurious. And now we have a little bit more of a
nuanced understanding of that, that that's, you know, those studies weren't as real world as,
uh, we, maybe they were made out to be. The big divers didn't necessarily translate.
Uh, exactly. Uh, 86,000 flexion sex rolls or whatever. That's the number. Make sure you have
a ticker keeping track of how many times you round your spine. I joke with my fiance like,
Ooh, and like I use a shoe horn to put my shoe on, on my prosthetic side because my foot doesn't
dorsiflex or plantar flex. And, uh, I joke that I have like this really long shoe horn and I'm like,
I'm going to save this spinal flexion cycle by using my shoe horn today. So I don't have to bend
down. I'm sure your fiance really appreciates that joke. Um, we kind of glanced over it, I guess in
the bio I mentioned, um, that you were a Paralympic athlete. Um, I guess maybe why did you stop
competing and if Paralympics were as popular or, um, well televised as they are now, do you think
you would have pursued a career in athletics further? Oh, interesting question. So my swimming
career kind of neatly aligned with my college swimming career or my adaptive career. I tried
out for the 2012 games and that was my senior year of college. So it, the, you know, mostly the reason
I stopped was that I was done college swimming. I felt like I had reached the, the, the pinnacle of
my career, which was setting a couple of records. I ended up not making the U S team that final year
and I was just like, I was ready to move on with my life, which is when I got my diploma and personal
training, went back to grad school after that for biomechanics and so on. Um, but yeah, at, at the
time, 2012, which was 12 years ago at this point, like it was, it was a bit of a fringe thing, right?
I don't, I don't think that we had as many like Paralympians on in commercials during the Super
Bowl, like the way that it is now, like there, we're out there more in the public eye, which I think
is really cool. Um, but yeah, you know, it felt like my, my career had just reached its natural
conclusion at that time. I also, I had just been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis a couple of years
before the end of my career. So I was having some pretty, uh, wicked digestive issues that resulted
in me ending up getting my colon removed in 2015. So like would have had to stop swimming then. Um,
but anyway, I, uh, about six months ago, I joined a master swim team with a friend and just had my
second competition in this decade. Uh, and like, I'm not breaking any records, but I'm, I'm pleasantly
surprised with how much, uh, I've been able to recover my, my ability. Like I never thought that
I would get as fit as I am now again, like after college. So it's been really fun to get back into
it on a more recreational level without the intention of like trying to pursue a really elite,
uh, level and just doing it a couple of times a week for fun. Was that a hard to maybe not compare
to previous abilities or yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm still falling into that trap for sure of like
going on college swimming.com and looking at my, like I had to, I entered the 200 yard freestyle
in this meet. I didn't know what my time was going to be. So I looked at my college times.
I added a couple seconds and I thought, well, maybe I'll be close. I wasn't, um, I was, I ended
up being much slower than that. So honestly, that was a little discouraging to, you know, I, I just,
I guessed a time that I thought would be conservative and it ended up not even be conservative enough.
So, uh, yeah, it can be hard. And you know, I had to, I was, I was a little bit down just on that
event. The meet I swam like six events and four of them were, were better than the previous time
that I'd done in December. I was a little discouraged like the day, the day of, and then the next day,
I was like looking at the times again, I was like, Oh my God, like I did, I did better this meet than
I did like three months ago in all of the events that I duplicated. Like this is awesome. I'm making
progress. I'm 34 years old. I should try to forget what I did in my twenties because it's, it's just
no longer realistic anymore. And I should just compare myself to myself in my present 34 year old
status. Yeah. During college, uh, how did your strength training differ as an amputee? And can
you make any general recommendations for a personal trainer who might be working with the amputee?
Yeah. So, so strength training was, I, I joked that I did it to get a leg up on my competition
and, um, I hired a personal trainer my sophomore year of college and that I really did feel like
that made a huge difference in my performance. It also inspired me to then go and become a personal
trainer myself. Um, but the, the workouts that we did at the time, it was, it was very much, uh,
like a body part split. Uh, it was not super athletic oriented. I mean, there were certainly
some things, but it was more of like your body building, uh, program mapped onto an athlete as
opposed to like what I would consider to be more sports performance training. And so my, my personal
trainer and I kind of figured out what was going to work best for me. Right. And that was a lot of
single leg exercises. It was a lot of like taking the prosthesis off and balancing on one leg and do
it. I got, I mean, honestly, I wasn't even doing anything really heavy, like squatting and deadlifting.
It wasn't until I then became a personal trainer and realized that I could do like heavy barbell,
I could do those things on one leg. So, uh, it didn't, it didn't do a great job of working
with my disability. It kind of just worked around the, the not having a one leg. And so now, now
that I'm, you know, in the last 10 years since I became a personal trainer and started trying to
figure out, well, how can I train my affected side better? It's been a more gradual exploration of
what exercises can I do on both sides or how can I limit the range of motion so that I can, uh,
train, train both sides at the same time or independently or whatever. So it's like this
constant trial and error process of, Hey, does this work? Uh, that doesn't feel great. Hey, let
me try this other thing. And like, I'm still finding new exercises or ways of doing things,
uh, that I previously might've poo pooed or maybe I tried it before and it, it didn't work for me
then, but it works for me now. So like my best recommendation would just be to try so many
different things to find out what works for the person. And like what works for me as an amputee
might not work for another person as an amputee. I also like my limb difference is congenital. So
I was born missing my leg and I have like a kind of funkier hip anatomy, which more or less is
more or less prevents me from doing like something like a deadlift from the floor, uh, because I
can't get into a good position in the bottom, but like I can do rack pulls or I can do RDLs,
but maybe a different amputee either above knee or below knee would have no problem with that. So
like, it's not necessarily even taking my, my advice as this is what works for me and applying
it to somebody else with an above the knee amputation. It's really just like, what are all
the ways that we can adapt the, and a squat, a deadlift, a lunge or whatever it is. And then
trying those things out and finding what works for the person. Yeah. Which is like,
which is a non-answer because it's like, I can't tell you, but like, and it, but it's, it's co
co-creating that with the person and, and just being open to experimentation. I mean, you did
make great recommendations when you reviewed our amputation module for the Adaptex course, like
three years, like three years ago. Um, I just wanted some practical advice and you made great
comments about rack pulls versus deadlifts from the floor, maybe Smith machine squats, taking out
some of those stability issues. And that's the other like Smith machine squats. I'm, I'm sure
10 years ago, you probably imagine would have poohed it because those functional training
gurus were saying that was not functional. And now like, I love Smith machine for myself because
I have a little bit of instability in my, in my balance, right? So being able to get some external
stability is really helpful for me to then load that muscle. But I like, not even just for myself,
I would give Smith machine squats to anybody who wasn't, you know, didn't have a goal of
free bar squatting or maybe even they did, but just building strength and building muscle is
functional in and of itself. And then you can layer on the balance component afterwards if you want to.
But it just, yeah, we went, I was like so dogmatic about, oh, Smith machine isn't good because it's
creating a stability for you. Like there's so much benefit to that, uh, that it doesn't have to be
this black and white either, or it can be both. And especially for somebody who is an amputee or,
or, or anybody, it can be a great thing to try. Whereas I would have totally said no way a while
ago. Yeah, same thing. We don't have a Smith machine, but I've seen people be able to squat
with like a lot more forward knee translation. So maybe they're getting a better quad stimulus
when they have that orientation of the weight. So I thought, oh, it's, it's constraints to this fixed
bar path. It's no good. And then I finally tried it out and like, wow, I can put my feet farther
forward if I want so that I don't need ankle dorsiflexion. I can do it farther behind. I can
do it front back. I can do it zircher. Like I can do it zircher and basically lean back on the bar
for all this stability and really focus on pushing through my prosthetic side. And it's just like such
a game changer. So yeah, but you know, not everybody has a Smith machine at their gym. So you try to
replicate, like you can replicate that just by if you have a squat rack and you don't mind scraping
some of the paint off of it, sliding a bar up and down on the rack, like gives you that same, oh,
I can lean back against this. Yeah. Don't give anyone at my gym an idea of doing that. I do not
as an adaptive athlete. Did you want to work with adaptive athletes as a personal trainer?
Yeah. I got inquiries somewhat regularly from people reaching out through my website and
I'm an amputee. I'd love to work with you. And I occasionally take them on and sometimes
because it's not necessarily my number one expertise, like sometimes I refer them. I have
a couple other friends who are amputees and personal trainers. And if I receive the email
in a moment where I have eight tests to grade, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to refer you to
my friend who I think will be a better fit. So sometimes I like working with them and sometimes
I defer to people with more expertise. Is that lived experience essential for understanding
how to train amputees? I don't think so. I mean, I think it helps like I can relate on a personal
level, but I think if you're able-bodied, but you have a lot of experience working with people
in an adaptive context, you can build that to the point of like, I would much sooner trust you with
an adaptive athlete than I would trust myself. You've been doing it for a long time. The
materials you produce are so awesome. I have my own experience of lifting myself for 19 years,
but that's only any equals one. So I wouldn't necessarily know the first thing about training
an upper extremity amputee. But I actually, I have a friend who's missing his arm at the elbow and
he actually found me on the internet before we met in person. We like ran into each other at a rock
climbing gym and became friends. But he was like, oh my God, you're Travis Pond. I was blessed. I
was touched to be recognized in the wild. That's like one of two times that that's ever happened.
But anyway, he was like, I follow you on Instagram. You really inspired me to get into the gym and try
things because I saw you doing it. And it's like, well, totally different adaptations between upper
body and lower body. But him seeing me doing things was enough to get him motivated to try things. So
I think that's the cool thing. Maybe I don't give myself enough credit of like, yeah, I could figure
that out because I've adapted for myself. Anytime you work with anybody, nobody can do everything
to the Olympic level the first time they try it. So there's always an adaptation that's occurring,
regardless of what the reason is, it might not be a disability. So I guess my long answer is, I think
regardless of whether you're disabled yourself, we all have experience adapting things in the gym.
And so I think anybody could probably figure these things out. But having more experience figuring
it out for a specific population will make it easier. Yeah, you used the word inspired during
that, that you motivated him to get involved. Have you had to deal with any glorified inspiration
narrative sort of issues? What do you think about people calling you an inspiration?
Yeah, so I kind of leaned into that when I first got onto the internet. A lot of my social media
presence was showing off like cool single leg exercises or like feats of strength in the gym.
And I enjoyed attention. It helped me build a little bit of a following online. I subsequently
realized that it wasn't the type of audience that I necessarily wanted to build from a standpoint of,
hey, I want to educate other fitness enthusiasts, personal trainers about exercise science,
rehab science, and people who follow me for those cool tricks aren't necessarily interested in
learning about the science of exercise or rehab. So that, I guess I got away from it a little bit,
but maybe I still do it a little bit sometimes now too, just for fun. So yeah, I guess it's a
fine line of I like the attention. I don't mind that if it helps me get a few more likes and
follows on Instagram, like that doesn't bother me, but it can become over the top of, you know,
what's your excuse and if he can do it, whatever, whatever. Yeah, I wouldn't say I have too much of
a negative association with it, but it definitely, when I was really big into that, what I realized
was it wasn't the type of follower that I was really trying to attract.
Yeah, yeah, I get that. I think I've probably been following you for at least nine or 10 years. I'm
not sure when you started putting out content, but it never seemed that way to me. You never
really leaned into the, if I can do it, why aren't you doing it? No, I wouldn't do that,
but people would ascribe that to me in the comments or whatever. And I don't think it
bothered me. I also have pretty thick skin. Not that anybody was trying to insult me. People
were trying, were inspired by that. And yeah, it does get into the what's it called? Fitspiration
or like inspiration porn. Inspiration porn. And it's like, yeah, do I really want to be
fostering that? I don't know. But on a personal level, it never got to me.
Yeah. One question that we ask all the guests is whether they have any recommendations to making
the fitness industry as a whole more accessible or just fitness in general accessible?
Yeah. So this is interesting. And maybe this is like my, maybe not everybody would share this
opinion, but like when I approach a fitness setting, I just want to be treated as similarly
as everyone else. Like I don't want special favors or special treatment. Like I want to be treated
as similarly as everyone else. I don't know if that's like a personality flaw or because I
recognize that I'm different, but I aspire not to be. But I don't know. I find that if I can find
the way to do it, that's as similar as the way that everybody else is doing it, then I feel most
included. So that's not always going to be entirely possible. But I guess I gravitate towards the
activities that I don't need modifications for. And like that's not going to be, that might not
be possible for everybody. But that's, I guess what my point is, like if we can not make a big
deal out of modifying something, then that is what works best for me. Yeah. No, I think someone could
hear that a personal trainer could hear that and just take away that it's not, it doesn't necessarily
have to be drastically different training someone with a disability than someone without. In many
cases, there's more similarities and differences. And some people might want to be included amongst
the masses. Other people might feel more comfortable in sub-separate environments, but ultimately it's
up to the individual. So if you were to go into a gym and say, I want to take the traditional
CrossFit class or I want to take that group class, it's up to the trainer to figure out what
modifications are necessary or up to you and the trainer to figure out what modifications are
necessary. But yeah. And that I think is really important. That last thing you brought up. So
like I've been doing CrossFit for about a year and I had dabbled before, but like I'm actually
going to a CrossFit gym now. And the trainer knows that I'm an exercise science professor. So
I think he gives me maybe a little bit more free. I don't know if he gives me more free reign or
not, but like I'll ask him if, you know, do you have a suggestion or he'll volunteer a suggestion.
And that's great. Like us being able to co-create like that's the workout on the board and here's
how I'm going to modify it. Or do you have any ideas for how to modify it? Like just that
conversation, that comfortability of, Hey, like I have an idea for how I'm going to do it and he'll
let me go. Or he has an idea for how, you know, I might, maybe I modified it, but I made it easier
than he wanted me to make it. So the next time he says, Hey, you know, you could try this next
time. Or have you ever tried this or whatever? So having that two-way exchange of like, I'm the
expert in my own body. He's the, he is the fitness expert and the CrossFit expert. How can we
collaborate to find what's going to work best for me? That that's great. And recognizing both
expertises. Well, I think we covered a bunch of great topics. I think hopefully we did a good job
of providing the nuance within each of them. They're very case dependent, which is sometimes
tough, but at the same time, maybe reassuring to a degree that there doesn't always have to be
perfect standards. Movement doesn't have to be perfect, but appreciate everything that you've
done for me over the last few years, just staying in touch and always being willing to answer
questions that I have. And I'm glad to get you on the show to share some of the work that you're
doing. If people want to find your contents, we'll put it in the show notes, but where would you
recommend that they go? Well, first of all, thank you for the opportunity. It's, it's, it's been a
pleasure for years knowing you and being able to exchange information. And I learned from you,
I think just as much or more than you learned from me. So if people want to reach out, my website is
a good place to find me. There's a contact form on there. It's just my name, travispollen.com.
I'm also active on Instagram to an extent. My handle is fitness underscore pollinator. So
those are probably the two best places to reach me. And then if anybody was interested in working
with me, um, I do some individual remote training, and then I also have the, the group yoga strength
training platform that's called strength for yoga. And that's that website and then the same Instagram
handle. Awesome. Well, Travis, thanks again. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Brendan. Thank
you for listening to the adapt X podcast. Our effort to amplify the ideas of our guests and
create more inclusive and accessible industries is futile unless these episodes reach a larger
audience. If you enjoyed our discussion today, please leave us a rating or review on whichever
platform you use. And if you would like to learn more about adapt X, the course that we teach to
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subscribe to our newsletter through our website www.adaptex.org until next Monday.