This episode is sponsored by TeamBuildr, yet another company that's doing great things for the first responder community.
As a strength and conditioning coach myself who also trains tactical athletes,
dissemination of wellness information is one of the biggest challenges.
Now TeamBuildr is the premier strength and conditioning software for tactical athletes, and there are several features that really impress me.
Firstly, there is a full exercise library, so you the personal trainer does not have to create that within your own department.
Secondly, you can send out programming, but also individualize, which I love. So you blanket program for everyone.
Now you can tweak based on someone's injury, someone's need to maybe drop some body composition,
rather than having to write a program for every single person on their own.
TeamBuildr also allows you to build custom questionnaires to collate health and wellness data.
It integrates with wearables, and I think one of the most important things is obviously it tracks.
To me, it's imperative that we as a profession start tracking our people from day one,
and then over the full span of their career, therefore catching potential wellness issues and injuries before they happen.
Now if you want to try Team Builder, they are offering you, the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast, a free 14-day trial to experience all of the features.
And if you want to take a deeper dive into Team Builder, listen to episode 1032 with Melissa Mercado, or go to teambuilder.com, and I'll spell that to you because it's not as you'd think.
T-E-A-M-B-U-I-L-D-R.com.
This episode is sponsored by Global Medical Response, yet another sponsor that I have tracked down because they have a solution to one of the biggest problems we have in emergency medicine and healthcare.
We often hear the term 911 abuse, but what I love is the concept that this should be a three-tier system.
ALS, BLS, and then the non-emergent element.
With the evolution of telehealth and telemedicine, that third tier is now possible virtually.
In 2018, Global Medical Response pioneered 911 nurse navigation.
In communities across the country, GMR's nurse navigators use evidence-based clinical protocols to screen a patient's current condition, providing an appropriate resource to meet the patient's unique healthcare needs.
Whether that's dispatching a rideshare to an urgent care, an appointment at a federally qualified health center, or virtual care with a physician on the spot.
The five-level screening system ensures patients receive the right resource at the right time, in the right setting, to achieve the right outcome at the right cost.
So as a huge advocate for our first responders' health, and of course the people that we serve, this solves three issues.
It allows the patient to have a far less expensive option when it comes to their non-emergent issue.
It stops a firefighter or a paramedic being woken up for that call, and it frees up an ER bed for a true emergency.
So if you want to hear more about how GMR can integrate nurse navigation in your 911 system, listen to episode 998 with Joshua Rose and Dr. Jared Troutman, or go to globalmedicalresponse.com.
This episode is sponsored by Transcend, a veteran-owned and operated performance optimization company that I introduced recently as a sponsor on this show.
Well since then I have actually been using my products and I have had incredible success.
There was initial blood work that was extremely detailed and based on that they offered supplementation.
So I began taking DHEA, BPC157 for inflammation, based on the fact that I've been a stump man and martial artist and a firefighter my whole life, lots of aches and pains,
Dyehexia to help cognition after multiple punches to the head and shift work and peptides. Four months later they did a detailed blood work again and I was actually able to taper off two of the peptides because my body had responded so well to just one of them that it was optimized at that point.
So I cannot speak highly enough of the immense range of supplementation that they offer, whether it's male health, female health, peptides to boost your own testosterone, which I would argue is needed by a lot of the fire service, or whether it's exogenous testosterone needed, especially after TBIs or advanced age.
Now as I mentioned before, the other side of this company is an altruistic arm called the Transcend Foundation, which is putting veterans and first responders through some of their protocols free of charge.
Now Transcend are also offering you the audience 10% off their protocols and you can find that on JamesGearing.com under the products tab.
And if you want to hear more about Transcend and their story, listen to episode 808 with the founder Ernie Colling or go to TranscendCompany.com.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show athletic trainer and the co-founder of functional movement systems, Lee Burton.
Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from his own journey into athletic training, longevity in our youth athletes, screening, the tactical athlete, common lifestyle elements that contribute to pain and injury, rehabilitation, breath work, and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment. Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback, and leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find.
And this is a free library of well over 1000 episodes now, so all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Lee Burton. Enjoy.
Well Lee, I want to start by saying two things. Firstly, thank you to our mutual friend John Hoffman for making the connection, even though I was fully aware of you and FMS and it just was the perfect time to put you back on the radar.
And secondly, I want to welcome you to the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thank you, James. And of course, I'll thank John as well for connecting us and pretty excited.
So where on planet earth we finding you this afternoon?
Yeah, I'm actually in my hometown of Danville, Virginia, which is a small town in southern Virginia.
Born and raised, you know, went off and did my thing for school and work a little a few years.
But, you know, got a call from a colleague of mine, Greg Cook, who I grew up with and he asked me to move back to our town and start a sports medicine outreach program.
And I've been here ever since.
Well, let's start that. That's where I love to, you know, begin the conversation is the origin story, as it were.
So tell me about your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings?
Yeah, I appreciate you bring that up, because I definitely think between Gray and myself and Gray, some of you may or may not know, we both started FMS a number of years ago.
And being from a small town, I definitely formed no question formed who I am today.
I came up with a very close knit family, have a brother, an older brother and a younger sister, so it's three every time.
I'm the middle child. So take that for what it's worth.
Parents and even grandparents, I was always involved, grew up on a farm.
And I think that's a lot to do with kind of how I've looked at my work and what we do, because growing up on the farm and working on a farm from the time I was probably five or six years old,
doing odd jobs, different chores, you know, creating that work ethic.
And my parents were both instilled with me that work ethic.
My dad, actually, his family owned a car dealership.
So I would work on the farm because that was my my mom's family had a tobacco farm, of all things.
So I grew up on the farm working there. And then my dad's car business, I would spend some time working at his place.
And I think the one thing that, you know, from early on, my dad made me punch the clock.
And if you don't know what that means, this day and age, you don't know what that means.
I would have to, you know, say, wasn't like he would just pay me to show up.
He would make me when I walked in the door, I'd have to go back to the little thing, which literally it's a thing that punches what time you come into work.
And then if I was going to go to lunch, I had to punch out.
And that I think that a lot, James, instilled me my work ethic and just how you're supposed to go about life in general.
Hey, you do you get up, you do your chores, you do your work.
There's always time for play, but you got to get your work done first.
With the farm kind of upbringing, I grew up on a farm as well.
And that was a horse fat and a small animal vet as well.
So, you know, we grew up around mucking stables out, herding sheep, doing all the things.
And when you hear the conversation from some people in our community and in the coaching community, there's or maybe rephrase that in the fitness community,
there's some element of looking down your nose at the people that aren't fit.
And all you got to do is just get up every day at five and go for a run and have a nice bath and eat a salad.
And you can be like me. And I always say that's all well and good.
But I grew up on a farm. I grew up with all that activity.
I grew up with no cell phones because they weren't invented back then.
And then the food that I ate came from my garden, it came from my livestock.
And so it's very, very unfair for James Gearing to be like, oh, you have to do is just be like me to someone who maybe grew up in the inner city.
And the bodega was where they found their food, you know, and the places where they might play might also be ridden with gangs so they can't play.
So what is your perspective of that upbringing and the impact of that environment on your wellness as you progress through the years?
Yeah, it's a great and that's so true.
It kind of even when I started my first job, which I'll get into in just a few minutes as this conversation progresses.
But, yeah, I wasn't even didn't think about, you know, exercise and, you know, the other thing, I think, coming up, my physical education program was very fundamental.
I mean, we did the fundamentals and P.E. And I never really thought about exercise and eating to exercise, even the diet, as you miss mentioned.
I mean, we, you know, all summer I would have to tend our garden and our garden wasn't just a small little garden.
It was like it was a big, you know, part of where we grew up that we would go out and, you know, hey, we need corn.
I'd go out and get corn. We need vegetables. I'd go out and get vegetables.
We we had a you know, we had our cows and cattle right behind our house.
So I was always brought up where we were eating very natural, holistic foods and never thought at that point in my life that it was anything really any different.
And, you know, eating what many people consider to be bad food, you know, eat a lot of meat, eat a lot of gravy, biscuits, homemade breads and stuff that we had available to us.
So it wasn't like I'm not trying to say I was poor by any stretch, but that's just the way we we did it.
And then, you know, when I think it really occurred to me is when not going to college because college, you're still around people that are very like minded and you're very, you know, still more affluent no matter what.
I mean, most people don't go to college. And then I went right to grad school.
But when I came back and started working, I worked at a graduate school that was very inner city.
And I think that's what really was more eye opening is is obviously getting into fitness and getting to the world that we're in.
James, you don't realize and you just touched on it like I would see these athletes come in to see me that look fit, were cut.
They had six pack abs and they really look fit.
But then you start diving in and talking to them. It wasn't because they were eating the right foods.
Most of them weren't even eating like they didn't have much of a diet.
And the diet they would eat mainly at school, no breakfast, very little dinner at night.
So they weren't, you know, nutritionally fit by any stretch, but they looked fit.
And I think that's what kind of made me start to realize that, you know, when people go to the stores, you just said the bodega or wherever they are.
And they're getting what you and I both would agree is not good food choices or making good food choices.
It's just what they had. And, you know, we've got to realize that.
Absolutely. Well, with the PE program, too, have you ever seen the documentary The Motivation Factor?
I don't think so. I have to look that up.
You know, it's so sad because it's such a good film and almost everyone I ask in this community hasn't seen it.
And this is just, you know, the problem. Everyone knows who Kim Kardashian is, though.
Therein lies the problem. Doug Orchard made it.
He's an amazing documentary maker, but it was on the La Sierra High School PE program.
So the progressive coaches and we're talking like late 50s, early 60s, learned from the Russians
and they created almost like this kind of martial arts belt system PE program.
And as they progressed through, even the least fit kids were in phenomenal shape.
Now, the fittest ones, you could basically pluck into any any sporting program.
All they got to focus in on was the skill development.
They already had the fitness, the strength and the top tier.
You know, it was like seven times up the pegboard.
I think it was one mile or it was more than that.
A partner carry. I mean, crazy fitness, but it was all body weight and they did it as teams.
So when they implemented this, because it was a teamwork, they found the bullying went away.
Their grades went up. So it wasn't just about the fitness.
It was about community. It was about overall physical and mental health.
And then ultimately, like all good things, it got shut down.
And it was a school that had done it for a bit out west and Covid came in and they shut it down.
And all this is outside, by the way, pretty much.
So we have seen now the polar opposite of that, where PE and even recess is being slashed in our schools.
So while we're on this topic, what is your perspective of where PE programs are in 2024
and where do we need to go to start fostering, you know,
strong fit young people before they even leave school?
Yeah, I think that's a major I'm glad you brought that up, James,
because I think that's a major problem right now that we're not even.
Well, I think we're starting to see the problems or it's starting to manifest itself just with type two
diabetes being a major issue with teenagers. I think it starts there.
Obviously, you know, you talk about funding, you know, PE and music and arts are going to be some of the first things slashed.
But but physical education and that's where we need to look at it.
It's physical education. It is setting, you know, my opinion.
You know, like I said, I was very fortunate in looking at the time.
Again, you don't realize it at the time how some of these things really shape you as you as you grow older.
And maybe I'm getting old. That's why I'm looking back to some of this stuff, James.
But at the time, you know, my PE physical education teacher, he, you know, I'm talking about first grade up through eighth grade.
So, you know, early on, not not in high school, you know, I was playing sports,
I was doing the things we all typically do. But at that point, he was more of a PE teacher.
Like it was education. Like he was talking to us about when I say fundamentals, how to hop, how to skip,
how to put you in certain positions to, you know, the intricacies of throwing and how you should throw.
So really more of a biomechanical approach and not just rolling a ball out there and saying,
hey, I want you guys to go play basketball for the next hour.
It was, you know, today we're doing this specific thing and it may be dribbling.
We're only going to focus on dribbling for 45 minutes.
And we've certainly lost that because, you know, one, PE is not looked at as a part of a educational process anymore.
It's just thrown out there. It's just something you're going to do for 30 minutes, 45 minutes during the day.
And I think what that's what that then leads into is kids today, you know, I want to, you know, we're doing we've always been involved with this from early,
you know, early on, trying to get more PE, get into more PE curriculums to talk about movement and the things that we do.
And in doing that, I have been shocked at the amount of kids that can't even skip.
So you go and ask a 13, 12, 13 year old to skip, you would be really surprised how many people can't even do that.
And we don't think that's a big deal. We kind of laugh at ask skipping, but that's coordination, that's motor skills.
These are things that that as humans, we need to be able to do.
I'm not even talking about the diet. But if you can't skip, you can't hop, you can't you don't really understand how to do those basic fundamental motor skills.
It's not like when you get older, you're going to be doing that a lot, because if you don't get it,
if you don't understand at least how to coordinate in time and do those things at that young age, then you're certainly not going to gravitate to it as you get older.
And those simple things we're losing are going to be a bigger problem as we get older.
So I do think we're at a point now, because it's gotten so bad that we have to look back at things and say, OK, how do we how do we reinstill,
you know, going back to and I think you brought up the fifties where John F.
John Kennedy was the one that said we got to have physical education started the physical education, you know, the president's medals, those things.
Those were things that as students when I was coming up, we aspire to do.
There's nothing like that anymore.
And I think we've got to get back to that if we really want to set the stage as we get older, because that's what's happening.
We're not doing that at a younger age.
So as we get older, we don't really think about it.
And then, lo and behold, we've got all this disease, all these preventable problems we've got.
And I think we've got to basically make a cultural shift.
And that's what this is, a cultural shift where we're dedicating more resources, instilling this into our communities.
And whether it's out, whether it's just a community program or whether it's in P.E.
where it's really where it should be, we've lost that.
And it's and we can see the results of that now as adults.
One of the things that I've seen fail miserably in the fire service is we have a recruitment crisis and they just lower the bar.
Oh, we'll just we'll just hire, you know, we'll make it easier for people to come in.
And that results in you might get some more people, but you're not getting the right kind of person.
I feel like this is the same kind of ridiculous notion when it comes to slashing the P.E. programs and arts and some of those other ones, too.
If you look at the healthy school systems like Norway, recess and play are very, very important.
And if you look at a healthy child, then that's going to affect their academic grades.
We've devolved in the U.S. to this kind of standardized testing where if a school is struggling, they're punished.
If a school is struggling in Norway, they're supported and bolstered to get these kids up.
They may be in a poorer neighborhood than some of the other ones.
So I feel like we've got it completely backwards.
And if we actually refocus back on the health of the child, we'll actually probably see our academic standards rise as well.
Yeah, there's no question there's a lot of research out on that saying that if you know the people that are more active,
the people that are more healthy, they're going to have better grades, their academics will be better.
I mean, we've got even data saying if you score poorly on our movement tests, that that again,
I'm not saying there's a cause and effect relationship, but there is a relationship between people who move poorly and people who score lower grade wise.
And we also we just did a really a user word study.
It was just like a pilot data over the semester.
We showed that people who scored poorly and some of the movements actually had worse behavior,
had behavioral problems, meaning they were they had more absences, they were tardy, you know, things like that.
So and I'm not sitting it's you know, movements just a one little thing.
You know, it's it's all it's what relates to that.
It's a lack of activity, in my opinion, that that really what it is, it's a lot of lack of maybe structure as part of that.
So there's a lot of other reasons, you know, but I think we've got to look at it as very fundamental.
One of the most fundamental things we are missing right now, and that's activity.
Whether you want to say P.E. or just live in a little bit healthier at that young age, which sets you up for problems later on.
You have literally taught all over the world.
Are there any countries that really stuck out where when you were teaching,
when you were doing the screens just as a populace based on the way that they have been raised,
that there was just an overall better movement range of movement, that kind of thing?
You did mention the Scandinavian countries, I definitely think they they are better.
Don't assume people around the world, there are people around the world better.
It's I mean, it's almost gotten bad everywhere, James, to be quite honest.
And I think we could we could point to any number of reasons.
You know, I spent a decent amount of time in China screening and working with that group.
They are they're no better. A lot of you know, I do think Mediterranean countries,
because of their diet, may be set up a little bit better than other parts of the world.
But a lot of European countries still are not doing what they need to do.
So I definitely think it's a global issue.
I do. I would say that a lot of some of the countries, you mentioned Norway, you know, it's a little bit maybe I'll use the word easier,
maybe easier because it is a very specific region of the world.
But then again, you take Norway that I mean, I haven't spent a lot of time up there.
I've been up there a couple of times, but it's dark certain times of the year,
so long that you can't use some of that as an excuse either.
So I think it has to meet an effort, a very genuine effort by the whether it's the government,
whether, again, communities, whether it's people like us trying to to get this across.
But I think overall, to kind of specifically answer your question, I don't think I think everywhere around the world,
this is becoming a bigger, bigger problem.
And I think technology and and and just how easy it is to get your hands on certain things now,
you don't have to make an effort to do certain things.
But but I don't think it's it's just the United States is everywhere.
Go stand with the states and the observation that I made coming from the UK,
which I talk about this all the time, but it's mainly to people like yourself, because it's such an interesting perspective.
I when I came over here, I was mid to late 20s.
And so I started interacting with people in fire academies and other places.
And over and over again, I started seeing outside the fire academy a lot of deconditioned men and women,
usually men that I was talking to.
And it was always the same kind of Uncle Rico story.
Well, I was going to be in the NFL, the major leagues, whatever.
It wasn't for my ACL, my shoulder insert, you know, catastrophic injury here.
And I started wondering what the hell are they doing to their kids here?
If you look at certainly the UK when I was younger, again, like you said, I think the whole the whole planet is shifting.
You didn't have that elite performance unless really you were an amazing football player, soccer player.
Then that was the only sport where, yeah, maybe you'd be groomed into some sort of Premier League.
But aside from that, everyone else just played sport.
So once you graduated, you would see cricket leagues and pub football leagues and rugby and all that stuff.
And men would still play or men and women would still play in the 20s, their 30s, their 40s, even beyond.
What I saw in America was squeezing elite performance out of high school kids, college age kids,
and then a massive drop off, especially after injury.
And so there was a physical burnout, there was probably a mental burnout and a disconnect from the love of movement,
the love of just simply playing rather than winning, air quotes.
What have you seen through your lens of that kind of balance between performance and longevity of the athlete themselves?
Yeah, I definitely think now, especially especially the United States, and you could even out even maybe point to even China
because of how in China, the ultimate everybody's trying to get a gold medal.
And what in China, because of how they put together their sports academies, if you will, they weed themselves out.
So if you're not performing at a certain level, then you're going to get put over here to a different school or someone else.
And they just keep weeding them out, weeding them out, weeding them out.
And that's OK. Well, I'm not going to say that's OK.
Let me back up. However, when you have that many people, you've got a lot of people to pull from.
You've got a lot of people that when they get, you know, one thing that it really I realized when I went to China the first time is there is no sports medicine.
There is no one person taking care of athletes when they got injured.
And that was one of the reasons they were bringing us over is when an athlete got injured there,
they were basically pushed to the side and they just pull another one off the sidelines to say, all right, now get in the game.
And in really diving in, that's what it was.
They had so many different people that they could easily do that until that person just got better.
And then that's that's the way it would happen.
Now, in the United States, it's it's not to that degree because we don't have as many opportunities, you know, people.
However, because we've gotten so it's just gotten so that we're looking for, you know,
you've got to be the best or you got to perform at a certain level that if you don't perform at that certain level, you just don't worry about it.
You're going to get any almost like I don't want to use the word that everybody gets a trophy.
That's definitely not I'm all for competition.
I think, you know, if you don't earn it, you don't get it.
However, if that's all you're looking for, then we are waiting some people out.
You need to have and I think like what you said a few minutes ago, James, where, you know, you're not you're not everybody needs to help.
Everybody's got to be part of the team, especially if you're a team environment.
You know, there's only going to be one or two really, really good athletes.
Everybody else has got to be involved to make the team approach.
And I think we've lost that as being what we're searching for as a team.
And we've got more individualized that the individual is really trying to make themselves better.
And, you know, I've had conversations and talk to people that is it because, you know, back, you know,
when a lot of these kids or even I was was, you know, I would say when I was growing up, but, you know, not even the Internet,
but TV and as that as sports center is a lot of these sports shows would only highlight, you know,
the person making the great play or hitting the home run or doing the slam dunk that you were just aspiring to make you,
you know, make yourself stand out as opposed to pulling the team along as part of that process.
And I think in the United States, specifically, we've gotten so sports specific oriented that we've lost that crossover.
And I think you couple that with the lack of structured physical education that these kids aren't really getting involved much past their sport,
that if I'm a baseball player, I'm a baseball player, five years old, I'm not playing anything else.
I'm playing baseball because the parents want to do that so that their kid can get this,
quote unquote, division one scholarship or some type of baseball scholarship as the example.
And not only that, not only are they sports specific, now they're, you know, position specific.
So I'm just a pitcher or I'm just a second baseman or an outfielder.
And I think that's that's occurring right now because, again, he's not around to help.
And these parents, parents being a major driver, this won't their kids to be the best.
And it's not even about the team. I think that's a big, big problem.
You know, and then that leads to the injuries and whatnot.
And I think that's where these kids start to really get burnt out at a very younger age.
They may see that, OK, I'm 14 or 15 and, you know, I'm good, but I'm not great.
You know, I'm just I'm just done. I've been playing the same sport for 15, you know, 10 years now.
And it's just not where I want to be. And my elbow is a little sore or whatever.
And they're not taking the time off that they need to recover or switching sports, just play something else.
You know, I think when I was growing up, I played three sports and, you know, I played.
I didn't I didn't worry about, you know, hey, when the winter was here, it was basketball.
When spring came, it was baseball. In the summer, I was playing baseball or I was swimming.
I was doing whatever. And then the winter comes around in the U.S.
I was playing football. That's the way it was. And now it's not like that.
If you're a football player, you're playing that sport year round.
And I think for the wrong, in my opinion, the wrong reasons, you're playing it not because you just want to go out and play and be part of the team.
You're playing it because you're you're aspiring to maybe go to college or do something else.
It always makes me laugh with that.
Everyone gets a trophy conversation because I, at 50 years old, still haven't seen any child play a game where they put zero effort in and were given a trophy.
And then I look a lot of adults, so I've got trophies and medals hanging up in the other room for Spartan races, for Tough Mudders, you know, for five case.
Didn't win any of them, but I got a medal. You know what I mean?
So everyone gets a medal.
Everyone does get a medal in certain things where you put a lot of effort and you get up at God knows what hour you get dirty.
You go under barbed wire, you get electrocuted.
You get a medal and a beer at the end.
So to sit there and go, you know, if you're first, you're last and all this stuff to kids, I think it's you know, it's so detrimental.
There is a time and a place, of course, to forge excellence if that's the little minute percentile that your child or you as an adult are in.
But to discourage, you know, community and play on the premise that you have to be the winner, I think is absolute shit.
And I actually witnessed it very sadly.
I wish this wasn't the case.
But my son plays volleyball and again, a new sport he's just got into, played with a club when we were traveling all over the state, went down south twice.
So that was a 600 mile round trip each time.
Hotels, gas, tolls.
This last time he went all the way down, they brought him on for one serve. He hit the net and that was it.
And at the end, I pulled him. I'm like, I've been I've held my tongue for this whole season waiting for you to kind of, oh, this is a kind of right of passage.
He's going to earn it because every time he was on the court, he played really well in the games prior when he did get a little bit of time.
I'm like, what are you thinking? Oh, well, the boys want to win.
I'm like, so if I pull him, you're going to say he's not a team player. But what is what are you?
The way that you're acting is telling these kids that you never bring on that they're actually not part of the team.
So you just like you said, you're so focused on what you think is the dream team to win that these other children whose parents are paying thousands of dollars with all these expenses and fees and are standing there like cheerleaders for the rest of the kids.
And that doesn't in your mind doesn't compute that maybe that's not right, that maybe you should rotate the kids through first you to give the good players a rest.
And secondly, to let these kids get better because they don't play in practice, they just drill.
So how is a child supposed to get better at a sport if you never bring them in?
So I see this as such a toxic kind of element of American sports.
I mean, there's obviously a financial gain for a lot of people for these travel ball teams, but I feel like it just destroys the love of sports for these children.
And if you happen to be the golden boy and you play, well, good for you.
But how the hell are other kids going to get better if they sit on the bench the whole time?
I think it's absolutely ridiculous.
And James, you said something right there that I totally that is exactly the environment from my perspective.
It's toxic. And, you know, what what? Well, one, the data is very clear sports participation for younger athletes is way down for.
And this is exactly the reason, in my opinion.
So if you're these travel ball teams, all the sports specificity is hurting.
And a lot of these professional organizations that I work with, very fortunate to work with some of these professionals organizations, they're trying to figure out and fix the problem.
Because if you really think about it, yes, these kids are not playing the way they were 15 to 20 years ago, meaning meaning the number of kids going out and playing because it's they just get discouraged.
I mean, my son with a very similar thing is what's happening is if you're weeding out a lot of kids at a young age when they haven't developed, they don't know.
You don't you don't know if your your son or my son is going to be the best baseball tennis player in the world if they if they stop playing when they're eight, nine, ten years old, because they just they don't want to, you know, deal with X, Y or Z.
Because that then leads to the pro teams not having the pool of people that they need to get better because now you're weeding them out at such a young age.
So my son, his story, very similar to what you just described.
You know, he was I would I would say I'm his dad, but I feel like I'm pretty objective doing what I do.
He's a pretty good little athlete and at eight, nine and he played baseball and played basketball and did different things up to a little.
He was like nine or 10.
And he really liked baseball because he's pretty good at it.
So we got through the season and the fall season.
He got through and then the coach invited him to play on this higher level team.
And they were started in January and I was driving him over there to do his batting practice.
And I said, say, do you really want to be here?
He goes, no, Dad, I really don't want to be playing baseball right now.
I'd rather do something else. I'm like, all right, then we don't need to do it.
Here's the problem. So he chose not to be involved that one winter season.
But now he lost the ability to be on that team because they, you know, they had their team.
And now he was almost pushed to the side with these with these travel teams.
So maybe he wanted to go play.
He said that I like to play again and get him back on it.
Now he was on a different team, didn't have fun, didn't like it.
Fine. That's that's that's what we got to make those types of choices.
He and he was fine.
But just that one time where he said, I don't want to do it right here.
He then basically took himself out of the mix, so to speak.
And I think a lot of times that's what happens is that if you're not part of this,
you're going to get left behind and then you can't come back in.
So it's very difficult to kind of put insert yourself back in as these kids do.
And he's not there to help.
So it's a very difficult time now for these younger athletes who aren't looking to be the greatest,
aren't looking to, you know, go and get a Division one scholarship.
They just want to go out and play baseball or basketball or tennis or whatever and have a good time.
It's difficult for those type of kids right now.
Well, even I've said this with some of my fellow English guests, British guests.
You know, what's interesting as well as back home.
And again, I'm still referring to, you know, 20 plus years ago and I still was there.
But, you know, you had just open playing fields.
Anyone, you know, first come, first serve.
You show up, you get a game going.
And normally, you know, like they call it pick up games here.
And I actually play a soccer for pick up game on Sundays now.
And it's just like that. But it's rare to see that, you know, a lot of the times these sporting pitches,
you can only play if you reserve it and you've got to pay for the lights and all the things.
And so there's this, you know, barrier to entry to just simply playing as well.
And then, as I mentioned, if you're in the city, maybe it's not even safe for your kids to play in that basketball court in the evening.
So these are all kind of elements.
I think it's just great to have this conversation about what are we what are we doing this discouraging sport or increasing injury in our extremely young people?
And can we fix that?
So then we've got a bigger pool, not only for the sporting community, but for the military and the first responder professionals as well.
Right. So, yeah, you take that same scenario and add it to first responders or the tactical community.
You're doing the same thing. So these kids who, you know, again, I still think that's that's the structure that physical education should be providing,
at least or the school system, at least.
So even after school, having some sort of, you know, system in place that these kids could at least go out and play for another hour or two hours.
But at least where in the U.S., these school based teams and things are starting to decrease, where you don't have is, you know,
maybe the school doesn't have a baseball team or a football team.
And again, it's not I don't even want to just just hone in on sports, but it's just the activity.
It's just being active, being, you know, doing something where you're not going home and just sitting around and getting on social media or getting all the video games and all that.
You know, and then you throw diet in there. Then it's yeah, it's not just it's becoming because of the situation with the tactical community, military community.
It's a it's a bigger problem than just, yeah, these kids are overweight when you can't.
You know, one of the things I think started off this, James, is when you have to lower the standards to so you can fulfill the first responder needs or the military needs.
That's a bigger problem than just, yeah, these kids a little bit overweight.
I mean, you know, if you've got to lower the standards to be a firefighter or sheriff or just a general just in the military,
what happens when they're faced with a situation that they really got to perform at a little bit higher level?
You got to come into my house and pull me out of out of my bathroom because I fell and hit my head.
I'm unconscious. I need you to be able to get there and pull my butt out of there without having a major problem.
Absolutely, absolutely. And this is so scary. I mean, this is the adult population, but we are 70 percent overweight for East.
I think it's 42, 43 percent obese. So, you know, this is what just turns my stomach with the whole political conversations.
And this is why I find RFK refreshing because he's about the first person's even talked about the wellness of the population.
But that's spanned both aisles for the last 40, 50 years of it just getting worse and worse and worse.
So when people and I've had Dan Bornstein on talking about this, when people say, hey, by the way, this is a national security issue as well.
You'll be in your chest about China and Russia. Well, who's going to fight?
You know, that kid's overweight, that kid's looks like he's got scoliosis because he's so hunched over from gaming, you know, eight hours a day.
Where are your warfires? So if you're not worried about, you know, your own health itself, then think about your security, the security of your country.
Do you want to be speaking a foreign language? Do you want to be made to worship a different God than you've been raised to worship?
Well, this is a this is all part of the conversation.
And like you said, God forbid you have your worst day and your teenage child is in a mangled car or your infant is trapped on the 10th floor.
Do you want a workforce that can't make it? Can't pick up the tool. Can't make it 10 flights of stairs.
Of course you don't. So this is why I think this is such an important conversation to have today.
And I'm glad, you know, as much as a lot of people don't want to talk politics, I'm glad you break that up, James, because it it has to start there.
You know, we can do we can have these conversations and I can go out and speak about this and you can speak about this.
But until until we make a concerted effort at the top, because governments again, we talk about physical education.
That's where it has to start at these and just in cultural changes. This at this point has to be a cultural shift where we can't accept the fact that one,
P.E. is getting pulled out of all the schools and to the school systems and what they're serving these kids is awful with what these kids are eating.
And I think that's OK is is whether you like RFK or don't like RFK to me, the one thing he is saying is he is making this an issue.
And if we make this an issue, this is nonpolitical. It should be.
Yes, we've got to start looking at, OK, whether it's vaccines, whether it's nutrition, especially nutrition and how because I think nutrition is what's leading us to need more vaccines.
Quite honestly, is nutrition, you know, something as simple as folic acid.
Why is we spreading folic acid on everything?
And we're about the only one of the countries that do that.
You go to and I do say the food over in Europe and parts of the Mediterranean is great.
You don't have a lot of people who have these gluten allergies over there.
Why not? And I think if we just start asking those questions and at least start investigating that,
I think that will help versus, you know, just shine away from it because, you know, the government is being funded by by these groups that have a vested interest in the food being crappy.
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, staying on science, going back to your early early life,
were you already thinking about entering the sports science world when you were young or was there something else on your mind before?
Yeah, I mean, I like most probably people that get into the sports medicine field,
which is my primary background sports medicine, I think training physical therapy is I got injured.
I got injured at an early age and, you know, I broke my leg.
I broke my femur, which is kind of crazy at a young age.
Just I was actually playing step twisted, which at that time I didn't realize it was fairly common at a young age.
When you step and twist a certain way, you can kind of torque your femur and it can it can break or fracture.
So I did that. And then, you know, the orthopedic surgeons, people are around, you know, I was like, think I was 10 years old.
I like that and what happened. So that I think early on and then as I got more into sports, you know, sustain a few injuries here and there.
That's what got me thinking. I really like this area of staying around sports, which I loved and taking care of the people who got injured.
And when I was, you know, when I was looking to different schools and whatnot to graduate when I was graduating my high school career,
I was looking at schools that did that and I was very fortunate to go to a school that had a good program in athletic training and sports medicine.
And that even further ingrained into me that this was the career or my career path, as you probably know, James,
just because you choose something, you know, in college doesn't mean that's what you're going to do.
And I think, you know, growing up and having that early, early influence on my life and then in college, kind of reinforcing it, you know,
and then again, still I'm doing the same thing I've been doing, you know, since I was in college. So I was very lucky in that regard.
So it's always interesting when people leave academia and they go into the real world and start seeing things that maybe, you know,
weren't relatable when it came to the textbooks. I think the sports science world, which is where I came from, was a good example.
Like I found ultimately when I reflect and a lot of the trainers and coaches on here have had a similar experience,
the sports science track, I don't think really prepares you very well to be a coach.
You know, you're looking at all these myopic studies and, you know, this will give you a one percent increase in your vertical jump,
but it's not giving you the overall principles of coaching and, you know, the different ways of programming and that kind of thing.
Were there any kind of aha moments when you got into the real world with the way that you'd been taught in sports medicine versus what you were seeing in these athletes?
That's a great question, James, because that is so true.
And even though my background, I spent my professional career in both the practical world and the academic world, I got my Ph.D., did the research,
kind of checked the box, I would say, on my research, quite honestly.
But the application of that until you get in there and do it, I think, you know, we can say that in college you get you do your internships,
you do those hours, volunteer hours, you start to get in great, but you're still behind someone who's in charge.
You're still kind of second. And the aha moment, I'm glad you brought that.
The aha moment was when I was actually in my graduate program when I was in graduate school, but I worked.
I did my athletic training at a local high school.
And one of the coaches is Lee, because I had developed a good rapport, one of the coaches, hey, I'm not going to be here.
I want you to run the warm up.
And I'm like, all right, I was getting my strength conditioning, too.
So it's kind of like I can handle the warm up.
And I'm thinking, we're going to change it up.
I made I made the mistake to say, James, I want to change it up, do something I think is a little bit better than what this typical coach did.
So I had to I had my warm up in my head in my head. That was a mistake.
All laid out. Here's what we're going to do.
And the coaches likely basically we got 15 minutes to do this.
So reality set in when these kids, there was a football team, so it was 75 kids roll out to the field.
And these 75 kids are looking at me and I'm going, holy shit, I actually have to do this with 75 kids.
I've got to actually do this warm up in 15 minutes.
And I'm like, it looked good on paper. It's got it good in my head.
But when you've got 75 kids staring at you, that's the reality of like, holy shit, I've got I've got to figure this thing out and figure it out quick.
And it was a disaster. And I think from that point on, the reality was, yeah, you can talk about, hey, you do this, do this.
But when you actually have to lay it out in the real world on a field or in the gym or in a weight room.
Another good example is I walked in the weight room, weight room, and I started talking to coaches about these are the lifts we should be doing.
You know, really talking about things that, you know, things that they weren't really doing wrong or were doing, I would say, wrong.
But then the coach looks at me and says, Lee, look at this space.
I've got 50 kids and I've got this much space, this much equipment.
Tell me how I'm going to do what you want me to do.
Again, another aha moment. It's like, all right.
So, yeah, even though the textbook says this, when you actually stand in the real world, you've got to make you got to be able to pivot and make some changes and get as get as close to where you want to as possible.
Knowing you're probably never going to get there. Absolutely.
Well, when it comes to the kind of genesis of FMS, what were some of the issues that you started seeing that obviously didn't seem to have a solution at that time?
And then let's talk to me about you and Gray developing the system.
Yeah, I think early on, you know, Gray and I made a lot of assumptions when we developed and started really getting the FMS out to more people.
It was never our intention of teaching classes, doing workshops.
We were working in a clinic in the in the town I'm now in a small clinic.
And we're just simply trying to to get a way for athletes to check their movements before they go into the weight room and just make sure that you can squat.
You can lunge. You can put your arms up. You can do an overhead press without, you know, limitations.
So our goal was simply to check these things to make sure that you can do this with your body weight before you add load.
That way, when you go into the weight room and add load as a coach, I'm more confident you can do it.
What we assumed is that one, if you did these things poorly, that a lot of a lot of coaches, for that matter,
understood how to fix the problems or knew that they probably shouldn't do these lifts.
For example, if you can't squat with your body weight and you just look horrible squatting,
I probably don't need to put weight on your back and try to coach you through it because that's just not your body's just not going to learn that way.
So Gray and I early on made an assumption that when we just screen somebody and gave you those results,
you could take those results and make decisions.
And I think that was probably our biggest mistake and probably one of the bigger reasons people may use the FMS,
but really have maybe gotten away from it or they did it and they're like, well, I don't know what to do with this.
So let's just go do our normal thing.
So I think that was probably the biggest thing early on that we didn't we didn't do a good enough job explaining, OK, you do it for this reason.
But here's how you here's how you use this information in the weight room, as you just said, that practical piece is what we're probably missing.
But even before that, the actual formation of the FMS, what was it that you were seeing that you decided to put your heads together and even create it?
Yeah, so I think, you know, giving Gray a lot of the credit for the idea.
So Gray was always looking great, having a more neurological background in physical therapy,
meaning when I say neurological background, not necessarily biomechanics or kinesiological background.
So biomechanics or kinesiology, for example, the bicep is designed to flex the elbow.
You know, the deltoid does abduction of the shoulder, you know, internal external rotations with the rotator cuff does.
Well, when you take a neurological approach, you're really combining all of those things in order to perform a task.
So, for example, if I'm going to take a sip of water, the biceps going to work to flex the elbow.
But so is the rotator cuff. So is the pecs.
So all of these muscles are going to work synergistically to perform just simply picking up a cup of water to do that.
If I'm going to squat, well, yeah, your hips have got to do something, but a lot of different things have got to occur for you to do that.
So Gray's mind was all about how everything worked together.
So one of the first things he was doing in the clinic that we worked at was not just looking at the isolation of a joint for the injury.
So I think this is this is really the genesis of it. So you come in for an ankle injury.
So we're going to look at your ankle, but we're also going to look at how that ankle interacts with other areas of the body.
So can you squat? Can you balance? Can you even rotate?
So we're looking at someone with an ankle injury. Yeah, we got to fix the ankle.
But we also need to think about that injured ankle has probably impacted negatively something else in the body like your hips, like your back.
So we were watching people who come in with an ankle injury rotate, touch their toes, bend backwards, balance, all these different movements we were looking at.
So that was part of the initial evaluation that Gray was doing almost no matter what.
OK, you come in with a back problem. All right, let's you know.
And again, I'm not talking about acute or post surgery.
Somebody comes in with, you know, and they're only, you know, walking in on crutches or just had a surgery.
We weren't necessarily looking at those things until they got them a little bit better.
But once we got them, at least on their feet, we started looking at these global movement patterns.
And I really didn't put it in my head exactly what we were doing at the time.
I just thought it was kind of cool. Right. OK, we're going to watch them touch their toes.
They can't touch their toes, which means we got to work through that.
And it's more much more motor programming than it is than stretching the hamstrings, as an example.
So everything was kind of working out that premise of this is more motor learning, motor programming and neurological that we've got to work through.
So we were doing that in a clinical setting.
Meanwhile, part of my responsibility was to do physicals for these high school kids.
And these high school kids just mean this is still unfortunate today. Don't move very well.
Well, Gray, during that time, started thinking about different ways we could easily screen some movements.
So the story goes that he went out and consulted on a very high level athlete's ankle problem.
This athlete kept spraining his ankles, kept spraining his ankles.
And he actually the reason Gray went out is because Gray at the time was making a name for himself, looking at back pain.
And at this time, sports hernias were starting to be this big thing.
I don't know if anybody had listened to sports hernias were a huge thing back in the mid to late 1990s or early 1990s.
Sports hernias was something that everybody was just throwing out there.
So this one athlete had had his sports hernia. Gray went out there to check him out.
Gray starts looking at it and Gray does what we did.
He had to touch his toes, been backwards.
And he found that this kid had a locked up ankle because he had all these ankle injuries.
But nobody had looked at this kid's ankle.
Everybody was zoning in on his sports hernia.
And if you're a fast and powerful athlete, if you've got a lack of mobility in your ankle and you're still running and creating that power,
that a lot of those forces are going to be set up the kinetic chain.
And for this athlete set right into his groin.
So he had a he had a problem in his pelvis due to him having two different sets of ankles.
So that's where Gray started thinking there's a way we got to pick these things up before they turn into a groin problem.
So we've got to make sure the ankle works well and make sure he doesn't have any problems moving because this guy had a poor balance problem.
He had a poor lunge on one side compared to the other.
So he is very asymmetrical.
So Gray brought this idea back.
He remember he jotted him on a piece of paper.
He came back to us and threw him up on a whiteboard and this was 1996, 97 and started talking about these different movements that we should be looking at.
So meanwhile, I'm doing physicals with these hundreds of athletes.
So, James, literally, I would have 400 athletes at the school, inner city school that I worked at, show up to do physicals.
And I was asked to go out and get a bunch of doctors to come out to make sure these high school kids could do physical or were cleared to do everything they needed to do.
So they do their physical and then the very next day they would show up to practice and they would do a lot of their performance testing.
So I had an orthopedic surgeon and this is what's so cool about this whole story now, but I didn't realize it at the time.
This one orthopedic surgeon didn't want any help from other doctors.
He wanted to bring in 10 to 15 kids at a time and do their physical.
And I'm thinking, I don't know how you're going to do it.
I don't know what you're going to do, but you're the one signing the document.
So it's your ass and not necessarily mine.
Like, OK, so we did it.
And here's what the cool part is, he'd line these kids up shoulder to shoulder and he'd listen to their heart, listen to their lungs, kind of do the basics, you know, look in their mouth, their eyes and ears and all that.
He'd make them touch their toes looking for scoliosis.
And then he had him do this.
He had them spread out, throw their arms over their head and squat.
And he'd say, keep your heels down when you squat.
So he made them do an overhead squat.
And I'm watching him do this.
And every kid that couldn't do it, he'd look at me and say, well, you need to stretch these kids.
And it was probably 60 to 70 percent of the kids weren't even coming close to an overhead squat.
So then I take that information back.
I say, listen, this doc's doing these overhead squats with all these kids and it's picking up a lot of kids that the very next day they're going to go in the weight room and do.
Do heavy squats.
I said, we've got to figure something out.
So took Gray's, what are you wrote on a piece of paper?
This and this idea of screening these kids.
And from that point, we developed a functional movement screen, saying overhead squatting.
Gray said, we got to have the lungs.
We got to have a leg raise.
We got to look at their upper body mobility.
And we just started over the course of what took probably a year of just doing stuff.
We used to have a rotation test.
What works? What doesn't work?
I'd go to the I'd literally go to the high school that afternoon after we kind of figured out.
And I'd come back and report, hey, that work, this didn't work because the whole goal was to do what that doctor was doing.
Take a bunch of kids, screen them and figure out what problems they've got so that when they go into the weight room, we can avoid those heavy lifts.
The problem we had right there, James, is I was pulling out like a lot of kids.
I was like, yeah, you really shouldn't squat this kid.
And I think you asked me earlier, that was a major barrier because this high school coach, even though he had a great rapport, he's like, you screen these kids.
You're telling me half these kids can't even show up in the weight room.
What we needed to do was say, OK, they can't squat, but maybe let's deadlift them or maybe let's substitute a different lift instead of something that I know is going to be problematic.
That's another thing we learned over time is how to communicate what we were really trying to do.
It wasn't about trying to just add a bunch of corrective exercises to somebody's workout.
It was really trying to get the strength coach or in my example here, the coach, something where some kids shouldn't be doing this, but they can do this type of thing.
So I know that's a long way around, but it is a pretty cool story when you think about it.
Yeah, well, it just underlines a change in mentality. I was in CrossFit very, very early on.
So I was doing it from the main site.
Originally, I was being taught by one of my firefighter friends who actually went to a gym.
So I was being taught at least somewhat well when I first did it.
Then I moved back to Florida.
Now I'm just working from the main site and videos of Matt Chan and all these other people that were doing at the time.
And then I got into an actual gym, this CrossFit gym, and I watched and I became a coach.
And so I watched this kind of pendulum swing of what we were doing right.
And then, oh, God, we're screwing that up. What we're doing right and screwing it up.
And so early on, it used to be cues.
Oh, all I got to do is just cue the athlete and they'll be able to squat and then fast forward 10 years.
We're like, what we what we thinking if there's an imbalance, you know, if there's muscular imbalance and flexibility issues, you can cue someone all you want.
But they're not going to be able to move that way.
So then fast forward a little bit more.
And now we do the Wolfgate programming, which is amazing.
But you just just like you said, you it's not the time to do an overhead squat or put a barbell on your shoulder.
But you can bear hug a sandbag or hold a goblet goblet squat.
And now you can work with an athlete with some weight until they're moving in a good range of motion.
And then ultimately, they will be at a transition to a bar.
So I think, you know, again, those absolutes now as we've become more and more experienced to start and fade away and a more,
you know, well versed coach can can see, OK, you can't do this.
But there are three alternatives that we can give you with the end goal.
Yes. You know, we'd love to get you back under the bar at some point.
Yeah. And I think that was probably one of the bigger mistakes we made or miss miss representation of the functional movement screen early on.
And even today, when someone if someone hears it third or fourth, you know, down the line, so to speak, and they see how we screen you,
well, we screen you in a very specific way in order to and so the problems are easier to see.
So, for example, we do an overhead squat and we narrow your feet.
We make your feet point straight and we keep you in a very narrow base.
Well, that's for a screen, because when I screen you, I got to make sure it's reliable.
Everybody does it the same way.
And I want to push you up against a barrier.
I mean, it's by design difficult for someone to do if they do it really well.
But we're not really we're looking for good enough.
So that being the example, I don't I'm not saying or I would not even say you don't want to go into a weight room and keep your feet narrow and pointing straight.
If I'm going to get under a squat rack, I got to turn my feet out, maybe widen my base of support a little bit more.
And I'm not going to go overhead.
I'm going to keep my hands maybe a front squat or back squat, whatever, as you said, Sam, but whatever it is, that's going to be the way our strength training.
So how we screen you is for a very specific purpose to push you up against your biggest weakness.
So it's easier for either an expert or even a novice to see.
And then I think where we really started losing people is what you just described.
Well, Lee, you said I can't squat.
I said, no, I said you should know you shouldn't squat at this level.
Maybe do a front squat, maybe do so.
We score you, James, zero to three.
Three is you doing exactly exactly how I tell you to do it.
A two means you're doing it.
It's just not great. So a two, that middle ground is what we're looking for for everybody.
And I think one of the things we lost is people thought you had to be at that pinnacle.
No, we just want you to pass. And as long as you're passing, you can go and do what you want to do.
Just don't go below passing.
So talk to me about the movements that you screen.
Yes, so we obviously we screen a squat and a squat is one of the most fundamental things.
And, you know, the one thing that I think is as strength coaches and maybe some of the people listening
or probably just maybe not even strength coaches is you've got things that you do in the weight room
and you've got things that we should be doing fundamentally.
So a squat is something we should be doing fundamentally to simply squat our center of gravity down,
primarily to either pick berries, light a fire or go to the bathroom.
It's not about lifting heavy objects.
The other thing, so we look at a squat, we look at a balance.
And we say balance, we actually make that harder because we actually want you to step over an object.
So we place an object in front of you and tell you, can you step over it and maintain good balance?
We look at a lunge test. So we do a lunge.
So we do lunge, balance and squatting, which are fundamentally some of the main movements
we should be loading and stressing in the weight room.
Then we look at your ability to reach overhead.
So we look at upper body mobility, we look at your lower body mobility,
then we have you do a push up and then we have you do we put you in like a crawling pattern
and have you see if you can balance, basically removing your base of support and see how well you balance.
And what we call that is reflex stabilization.
So and some people look at that balance, that quadruped or hands and knees test and say,
why are you doing that? Because basically reflex stabilization is how we need to stabilize.
So a push up, what we look at is when we do a push up is what we call a high threshold,
because when you're doing a push up, you really got to bear down, create a lot of pressure
to do a push up so you don't hyperextend your back.
Well, another form of stability, somewhat like balance, is being able to react and respond.
So if somebody comes up to me at a bar and bumps into me, I've got to shift my weight,
react to that so I don't tip over. And that's reflex stabilization.
So those we look at seven tests. That's the FMS.
That's fundamentally, especially in active populations, you need to pass pretty much
all those. And the main thing is have no pain with them. Really shouldn't hurt when you
go through those things.
I heard you talking with Annette Zap on her Fire Rescue Wellness podcast about the introduction
of the ankle mobility test as well. And I had Ben Patrick on a while ago from the Knees
Over Toes in a philosophy coaching. And it really opened my eyes again to going back
to cues. Never let your knees go past your toes. And then you start looking at the powerlifting
community, for example, versus just like you said, can I squat down and pick up berries
or have a poo? Two very different range of motions and two very different applications.
But with the boots that we wear and the fire service, it doesn't allow for much ankle
flexion with these insane trainers that they put out these days where you're so disconnected
from the floor. I walk around barefoot as much as I can and even work out barefoot.
Talk to me about the introduction of that test and how prevalent is that in today's
society?
Yeah. So I think the first thing to realize, I've been very fortunate to go around and
do different lectures and talk about it. And the main topic that we hit is injury prevention.
And if you want to look at some of the things that easily look at to determine if someone
has a risk for injury, you look at ankle mobility and you look at balance and even grip for
that matter. Ankle mobility through the research is very consistent for someone who's going
to have a higher risk for injury as well as balance. So that's been very consistent.
So check ankle mobility and just see who's got a lack of it. So going back to our tests,
so early on, James, when we were developing the FMS, we looked at ankle mobility in three
ways. We looked at your squat because you got to have good ankle mobility to squat.
The lunge test, the way we do it, you got to have good ankle mobility. And even that
balance or that stepping over that object test, you've got to have good ankle mobility
for those tests. Well, what we started to realize through the research, when tons of
research on the FMS is out there, is that we weren't catching ankle mobility like we
thought. Meaning the only way in the FMS that we are truly saying you have adequate ankle
mobility is if you get a three on our squat test. And if you get a two on our squat test,
now just so everybody can understand, when we get a two, when we do a two on the squat
test, that means you have a board under your heels. So we actually elevate your heels and
see if you can squat down. Now, most people assume that if you can squat with the board
under your heels, that it's an ankle mobility problem. That's not the case because you could
have a weight shift problem because actually what happens when you elevate your heels is
that your brain, again, a lot of this is neurological. Your brain, that's an anterior weight shift,
so you're actually pushing yourself forward when your heels are up. The brain's automatic
response to that is take your center of gravity backwards, which in most all of us, that's
our butt, and we sit back, which forces a hip hinge. So by elevating your heels, you're
actually forcing a hip hinge. So your ankle, it could be your ankle, but the researchers
say maybe not if you're a two. So then we said, all right, then we got to figure out
a way to check ankle mobility. So what we started looking at is there's plenty of ways
to check ankle mobility. Half kneeling, you can do it. You can stand next to a wall and
move yourself a few inches away from the wall and keep your heel down and see if you can
touch the wall with your knee. I know I went through that quick, but I want to make this
statement. You need around 35 to 40 degrees. We like to say minimum 35 degrees of ankle
mobility functionally, which means standing in order for you to be able to do, in order
for you to be had the minimum amount. Some other researchers say 40, 35 to 40, okay,
fine, whatever. That's close enough for what we're trying to do by screening you. If you're
an elite athlete, if you're a division one basketball player, I'm going to want you to
have closer to 40. But if you're an average person, I'd say even in the tactical community,
35 to 40 degrees, you're fine. So what that is, is about taking your knee about three
inches, and I say about because I'm not going to measure it. I'm just going to say, are
you three inches beyond your toe with your heel down? And if your knee is three inches
beyond your toe in a half kneeling or even standing position, you've got about enough
ankle range of motion. Now here's the problem. So going back to our test. So what we said
is, all right, the problem with doing that, and this is where when you start developing
a test, you got to consider all these things, is can we make sure that if we're going to
push out a test, it has to be reliable? Because James, if you have a lack of ankle mobility,
you're going to compensate. When I say compensate, other areas of the body are going to sacrifice
what they should be doing to overcome the lack of mobility, in this case, your ankle.
So if I've got a lack of ankle mobility, as I start to run or jump or more importantly,
land, you should use that ankle mobility to help dissipate the force. So then you can
jump back up, spring forward, whatever it is you're doing. If you got a lack of ankle
mobility, the common compensation is going to be at your foot, where your foot will flatten
out to help dissipate that force, which then will cause your knee to cave in and internally
rotate your hips. So now your knee is going to cave in, your foot's flattened out, and
that could be due to a lack of ankle mobility. So we're testing ankle mobility. If you've
got a lack of it, if I'm just standing here and I take my knee forward, my foot could
collapse. So we have to account for that in the test. So what we did is say, let's get
you in a tandem stance, one foot directly in front of the other. So now my back foot
is what I'm testing. And can my back knee, as I let it track forward, go at least to
the middle or front part of my front ankle? And I know that's hard to kind of grasp on
the podcast, but basically if you're going to check your ankle mobility, it's an easy
thing to do. Just have one foot right in front of the other. And what that does is it kind
of forces you not to allow that knee to cave in, puts your back foot in a little bit better
position. So it's more of a true ankle measurement as opposed to just standing and seeing how
far your knees can go forward or even getting in a half kneeling because you can let that
foot drop down, which is what you don't want. And I think now the problem, James, that we
have, we don't use ankle mobility. We just don't use it. And if you think about when
you really use ankle, a good ankle mobility throughout the day, not very often, because
the best time to use ankle mobility is when your hip is extended. Walking, you get into
a little bit, but not that much. Going up and down stairs, really not that much. And
honestly, we never squat low is when you really use ankle mobility. If you're sitting in the
chair, the chair is pretty high up. We don't have to squat very low. And even the toilets
in the United States and most places around the world are pretty high up. You go to Asian
countries, those toilets are low, which I guarantee you, they all got good ankle mobility.
I know they do. I've tested a bunch of them. So ankle mobility, we're not using that much.
Now here's where it gets interesting, James. So really, you're going to use ankle mobility
when you run, when you're jogging, walking a little. So most of us don't run or jog throughout
the day. Most of us aren't squatting deep throughout the day. So then we're going to
lose ankle mobility. The problem with that then is if you lose that ankle mobility, that's
also going to help shut down your glutes. Because if you're not getting into good hip
extension, you're not going to use your glutes that much. So now your glutes are going to
shut down. And then what's going to be forced when you're walking or even start trying to
jog or run, if your glutes aren't working that well, if your ankles aren't working that
well, that means your hip flexors have to actually work harder to pull you forward instead
of your glutes pushing you forward. And then that forces your hip flexors to work harder.
And what also has to help you out a little bit more, your hamstrings. And where are the
problems most people have? Tight hamstrings, tight hip flexors, because the glutes, and
I could trace it all the way back to the ankle.
And is that fundamentally why we see a lot of people pronated almost duck walking in
modern society?
I think so. I think it's exactly what it is. They don't have that. And once something occurs,
they create that in their brain, that new motor program that's hard to get away from.
And I think that's where the problem is. And you touched on it, James, when you say queuing.
If I've got this motor program that's a poor one, where I'm not using my hips enough, I'm
not using my ankles enough, I can't teach you, I can't coach you out of that by me telling
you, hey, sit back or get your knees out over your toes. You can't coach people through
that. You've got to put them in a position where they have to work themselves through
it, because that's how we learned to move initially.
Absolutely. I said about the Wolf Brigade programming, we use the Mesa lot, which has
done wonders for my shoulders for a start, but also we'll do the Mesa fully extended,
holding at the bottom of the handle, the Mesa is pointing up and then squatting. And it's
amazing how that allows you to get into a beautiful position. And so you're reprogramming
that squat. And then as you progress through, now you are holding a heavy kettlebell in
the goblet squat. Now you get under the bar and you're like, oh, now I feel like I can
move properly. But had you just gone under the bar immediately and said, we'll just sit
back and push your knees out. The body doesn't, that goes back to my son playing volleyball.
One of the things they said to him was, well, what he's getting out of not playing, but
watching is he can see all the strategic decisions that we make. I was like, that's bullshit.
That's like telling me that if he watches the Olympic running, the track event, that
he's just going to jump on the track and be faster. You have to actually do the thing.
You're full of shit. The only way you're going to get better is to actually do it. So that's
why, you know, what you say, it makes perfect sense. You know, incrementally, whatever tools
you can use to get that person going through that movement pattern. And then, you know,
loading in a more and more challenging way, whether that's increasing the weight or putting
the bar further and further back.
Yeah. And if you think about how we all as humans learn to move as babies, we were in
a very closed environment. There wasn't a lot of stuff around. We were in our cribs
and even our parents kind of kept all the stuff away from us. And then as our environments
expanded, we react and respond to the environment. And, you know, when you are starting first
start learning how to move and walk and run, you fall a lot. I mean, one of the things
that that, you know, physicians, you know, pediatricians may look for is, are your knees
skin up a little bit as babies, because, you know, that's a sign that you're falling, you're
crawling, you're doing the things you need to do, and you're making some mistakes, but
your brain is going to learn from those mistakes. And we had that ability. So it's not like
we have to retrain and do all these hours of retraining the system to do, as you just
talked about with the mace, squat. Now, what we have to do is put you in an environment
that is difficult or feeding what we call feed a mistake. So if your problem is that
you lean forward when you squat within, let's put you put you more forward. And if we push
you more forward, your automatic response that is push back against that instability
or that imbalance. And when you talk about holding the mace up, you know, that's a that
is pulling you forward. And if you get pulled too far forward, you're going to fall on your
face. Whereas the first thing is going to make you do is force you to sit back and keep
your chest up. Because again, that counterweight is forcing you to create that good slot position
and to drop down because we could all squat when we were all of us can have the ability
to squat. We lost it due to some other reason. And the way to get it back is to create an
environment where you've got to work yourself through it and then your brain will hit that
reset button. And that's why it's always good to try to do that before you go into the squat
rack.
Something else that that's asked you in her podcast that I'm kind of intrigued to unpack
a little bit more, you touched on some research in the tactical population that more money
has been spent on the wellness side, but you've actually seen a decrease in the overall wellness,
fitness, whatever what the metric was. So I'd love to hear more about that and then
and talk about solutions for it.
Yeah, so one thing that we've been we, I don't want to say stumbled upon, I think a lot of
these concepts, we already know they're there, we just don't know how to either test for
them or figure out how we can get some of these concepts more mainstream. But this idea
of, you know, we started looking at movement, the way we looked at it, and it really, I
would argue, wasn't looked at the way that we do it, these fundamentals, we're always
squatting, pushing, pulling, and that was part of the, you know, the thing in the weight
room. Well, we got to make sure we can do the fundamentals. What we also realize is
there's a lot of other things that impact your ability to move. And that's your lifestyle.
You know, your sleep, a lot of the things that in the, you know, me being an outsider,
looking in that your community, tactical first responders are really looking at more now
is sleep, behavioral health, stress, anxiety, all of the things. Well, those things can
negatively impact movement. And movement can negatively impact those things. So, you know,
you talk about someone who's got poor shoulder mobility, that then their posture is poor,
and then they're going to develop neck problems. That neck problem will then give them poor
sleep. Poor sleep is going to add to your stress. So, all of this is connected. And
I think one of the things that's been interesting is how much you all, and I see you all, James,
the first responder community is really diving into this behavioral health aspect, the stress
aspect of how do we manage that? How do we give the resources we need to? And the one
thing and just some of the data I've been able to collect over the last 12 months and
looking at this more holistic approach is that the people that I've looked at, behavioral
health is not the major issue. Sleep is much more of an issue. And the lack of movement,
and I would say people that are in pain is a bigger issue. So, I think, and I'm not sure
exactly what Annette and I are talking about, but I think the thing that I'd like to really
get across is everything matters because everything is connected, especially whether it's movement,
whether it's your stress, behavioral health, whether it's your sleep, because I would argue
with the amount of people, I mean, James, you know this, how many people listening right
now have some sort of painful area of the body? Something just kind of hurts or nags
or when you bend over, it kind of hurts. Well, if you're in pain, well, your cortisol is
going to go up. You're going to be a little bit overweight, maybe. You're not going to
get the sleep you want because you got a little bit, and it may not be as in your face as
you think. If you're not getting sleep or because you get that little pain, you may
have a little bit more stress going on. So, pain could be an underlying factor that's
driving a lot of these. And that's not talked about enough, in my opinion. We talk about
sprains and strains. I'm not sure how much is really being done about that. A lot is
being dedicated to mental health. A lot is being dedicated now. I think, James, you and
I met briefly a couple weeks ago about sleep and need to change that. But we've also got
this big thing sitting up here in the corner of pain and how many people have pain and
poor movements that have to be part of the solution because everything is connected.
And I'm not going to sit here and tell you that one is the underlying driver. I think
that's part of what we also have to do is figure out if I've got my back hurts, I'm
not sleeping like I need to, I've got some stuff going on in my personal life, I just
got off the job and all this stuff is going on in my head. I'm not going to tell you which
one's first is the chicken or the egg, but we've got to start trying to more individualize
the approach and not just throwing out what we hope is the solution. And we've got to
start looking at the data maybe a little bit more. So, I'll pause because I know that may
stir up us for a few more questions of conversation.
Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, as you said, we were at the Florida Fire Chiefs Association
conference, the safety and wellness conference, I think it was. And yeah, my one was the panel
of people that have gone, the fire departments that have gone from the what we call the 2448,
which is a 56 hour work week to the 2472. So, a 42 hour work week. And this to me is
the elephant in the room. Even if you think about musculoskeletal injuries, I had Stuart
McGill on a few years ago now. And he was saying, look, the way that you work your fire
department, it's not if it's when you are going to break. If you're not sleeping every
third day, and then you're getting up, God knows what time, you know, the day before
your shift as well, you're just you're going to break. And I know this is the case because
I've always heard, oh, it's always the fit guys to get hurt, you know, from the fat guy
and the lazy boy. And so it's true, because if you take your job seriously, and you train
and you're out in the drill ground, and you're, you know, climbing the hundred foot aerial,
you're putting stress on your body, but you're not getting the restorative nature that sleep
would normally give a sporting athlete. So with your kind of interaction with the fire
service specifically, what is your impression of of these shifts? And what is the importance
of sleep for all these other stresses that we've just talked about?
Yeah, I think right now just, you know, collecting some of the data we've collected the last
12 to 15 months, and this historically looking back, you know, sleep is a major, major issue.
And again, I don't know exactly how you solve it based off, you know, I know you all are
tackling the different shifts, I don't know a lot of the research or data, as far as that's
concerned. But, but I definitely think, you know, how we approach things, what are the
basics? What are some of the basic things that we can do? And I think this was part
of the conversation that I think you get, in my opinion, is to sit back and listening,
you know, creating a little bit better environment at the stations, you know, let's be honest,
put your phone away an hour before you go to bed, stop drinking caffeine, you know,
after three o'clock in the afternoon, those are things that are just some basics. Now
I know the question in the fire service is, well, I can't because who knows when I'm going
to get a call and then you got to come down from that. So understand all that. But I think
just, you know, thinking, taking some very basic strategies of what can I easily do to
set myself up before you get into what you're talking about as far as shift changes, you
know, you start talking about the rooms at the places and at the stations and changing
all those up. What are some basic key concepts that we should be getting across the board?
You know, drink water, quit drinking coffee and Red Bulls. To me, that's a big thing.
You know, I went to somewhere and I was lecturing and we took a break, came back from the break
at three in the afternoon and almost everybody in the room were dipping and taking and drinking
Red Bull. Well, then I know your sleep is not going to be that great that night. If
you're if you're taking a big old Red Bull at three in the afternoon, but that's not
I don't think I think that gets lost. And then I think another key thing that again,
maybe getting away from sleep a little bit, but I do think it's connected is hydration.
I think there's a key component to if we talk about even sprains and strains, you take somebody
who's dehydrated and then they go on a call and then get into the environments that you
all get into dehydrated. Well, that is setting yourself up for a problem. So I think there's
some very basic things that you know, whether it's sleep, hydration, nutrition, that can
be at least brought to the forefront that says, hey, here's some here's almost like
the basics. Here's like the things that you got to do before we get him really get dive
into some of the more nuances. Absolutely. Yeah, I think if we gave them another 24 hours
between shifts, which is that 42 hour workweek, I think you'd see the energy drink usage less.
I think the problem is because we've got met what we call mandatory overtime. So you work
a 24 you get a phone call 7am the next day, you can't go home. Now you're doing 48 hours.
So you know, the impact on the human body on the hormones on the cognitive ability,
I mean, it's just completely depleted. And so then you've got them leaning into coffee
was my thing, but now it's energy drinks. And then you know, you're dehydrated, you're
hyper caffeinated. Now you get a structure fire, you're in the bunker gear, you know,
now you've got to climb those 10 flights of stairs. And then you get rabbo because or
you fall out, you know, so I mean, all these are completely interconnected. And I've always
said this is a this is a double sided conversation. Yes, it's the ownership of the firefighter
and we got to teach sleep hygiene and, and you know, all the things and in my opinion,
put a fitness standard, a punitive fitness standard back in our profession. The fact
that we don't is insanity. But if you're going to do that, you got to create an environment
for an athlete to thrive a tactical athlete. And a 56 or an 80 hour workweek is insane
when you've got the barista at Starbucks working 40. So what about the performance side? What
have you seen in the sporting athletes and the importance of sleep for performance itself
and injury reduction? Yeah, I think the research is is pretty I mean, you can't really debate
it at this point in almost any environment that it is you just said it cognitive delays,
reaction time, injury pain. So people who don't sleep very well more likely have pain
in their cervical spine and their backs. And the sporting world, there's no difference.
The sporting world really should not have any issues. I mean, when I say about sleep,
you all when I you all the first responders when I go and interact, I get it. Like if
I go in there and I just talked to a group of firefighters say, hey, you got to improve
your sleep. Everybody's hands gonna go up and say, well, Lee, it's this problem, this
problem. These are the difficulties. I get that athletes have no real reason to say you
can't get consistently eight hours of sleep. The problem in the the problem in the athletic
world is these are younger athletes. So these are collegiate athletes. These are, you know,
even the professionals you'd be maybe not you James, but people be surprised at just
how poor a lot of these professional athletes treat their bodies. Now, it's getting better,
but it's still problematic where they stay up too late. They're not drinking enough water.
Their diets not where they need to be. Collegiate athletes are worse. And I'll tell this story
a lot now. When you know, I worked at a very small university for that was my career for
15 years, where I would, you know, I was teaching and I was working with the athletes. And every
year and this was true in other universities, I would ask, I call people different places,
no matter where you are. And these is like clockwork, they'd show up in August, two weeks
in or weekend, a lot of these incoming freshmen would get strains and sprains, they would
be growing typically hip flexor strains and groin strains. Those are the major problems
I'd see the first week or two of these incoming freshmen. And of course, I would do what I'd
do is, you know, stretch them out, ice them, hey, okay, let's take a day or two off and
let's get you back right. But lo and behold, end of August, they start getting better,
I'd see less and less. Tribute, you could contribute attribute that to okay, they're
new and, you know, they are, you know, doing more than they've done in the past. And, you
know, colleges is a different deal. Well, looking back now, knowing what I know now,
I would attribute that just those those first couple of weeks, just as much to stress and
anxiety, a lack of sleep and a lack of hydration, because they're moving away from home. They're
not sleeping at all because they're college freshmen coming in and just, you know, playing
video games, drinking too much doing the things that every college freshman does. And then
you know, put on top of that they are, you know, free to do what they want. So I would
go back and attribute that much more to lifestyle and a lack of, you know, discipline, I would
say. And I think in the sports world, there can be that. When you get into the elite sports
world, it's different because they got money riding on it. But at that young age, you know,
I think, I mean, they can get away with it to a degree. But I think just looking back,
I think that's where that sleep, stress, anxiety has a much bigger role than probably we think.
But I think it's getting better, it's become more mainstream to consider that.
Absolutely. Well, we talked about, you know, the the movement patterns and screening. Let's
talk about the other side of the coin, then. So let's say someone becomes FMS certified,
you know, they're doing a screening for their department. Like you said, you're not looking
for excellence. You know, the two is kind of really where you're trying to hit. But
there are some big deficits. There are some movements with pain. What is the next step
through your system?
Yeah. So, you know, if there's a person is, you know, this is I'm going to say this, but
I'm going to contradict myself, James. So if you guys listen to me when I say this. So
if a person has pain, you always need to get them evaluated. So you understand because
again, if you're if you're in pain, that pain is a signal telling you something's going
on. We got to figure out what that something is. So I want to know, is it just, you know,
a little bit of a shoulder problem or is it a major shoulder problem, as an example? But
the key component doesn't mean they can't. So if I screen you, I'll give you the very
straightforward response here. If I screen, let's say James, I screen you and you've got
pain in your shoulder, but yet your squats not really good. And your let's say your leg
raise that we check is not good. Well, first of all, I'll say the reason you can't squat
is because your shoulder problems bad. But if your leg raise is bad, I'm going to zero
in and work on improving your leg raise while I'm taking kind of doing a few basic things
for your shoulder. So I'm not going to quote unquote exercise the painful area. I'm going
to focus on improving the area that's not painful, but problematic, all the while removing
some of the other exercises. So in this case, your squat, let's not load your squat, but
maybe you can launch, maybe your lunch pattern is okay. Well, then let's go ahead and lunge
you, meaning loaded lunges if you're working on improving your strength while I'm improving
these other areas that are problematic. Now, the fire service, and I would say this is
kind of what I'm seeing across the board, shoulder mobility is a major, major limitation.
So if nothing else, giving someone ways to improve shoulder and upper back, and again,
it's not the shoulder. And I'll make that clear. Most people say, well, we got to go
stretch the shoulders out. No, it's the upper back. That's limited. It's your posture that's
problematic. Your shoulder, the reasons your shoulder hurts in most situations is because
you're not getting your upper back and using your spine the way that you need to use your
spine, which means if you're not using your spine and using your upper back the way you
should, your shoulder has to do that much more. So that's why people have shoulder problems
and even people have neck problems is that upper back area is not moving like it needs
to move. So the way we look at those FMS results, those functional movement screen results,
find the areas that person can do good in and then exercise them. Find the areas that
they can pour in and try to improve them, but first remove the stress that the person
is being placed in those positions. Meaning again, if you can't squat, don't let their
squat. If you've got really poor shoulder mobility, probably don't want you doing an
overhead press. That's how we look at it.
Back to the Maces. I've found it's worked so well. And we do like today, our programming,
one of them is Pendlay Row, which is that you hinge to a 90 degrees and then it touches
the floor each time, but they're really working on the posterior chain. It's made all the
difference. And I used to have shoulder impingement and I haven't had surgery or anything. And
I think it originally came from either separating my shoulder or broke my collarbone doing stunts.
I just got hired in Japan, so I wasn't going to tell anyone. So I just sucked it up and
it healed the way it healed. So for years I had that, but the same thing, like you said,
once I actually strengthened the areas that needed to do, and then obviously stretching
the delt as well, excuse me, the pec as well, my overhead is fantastic now and I can do
it with no pain. And it wasn't about surgery. It wasn't focusing on the shoulder. It's
exactly what you just said. It was strengthening and lengthening the things that were out of
whack.
Yeah. You brought up the mace. I think the mace for someone who's got limited shoulder
mobility is great. Indian clubs are great because it's connecting not just your shoulder,
it's connecting your core. You just said it's stretching the things that need to be stretched
and it's strengthening the areas that need to be strengthened. And if you do that, the
way you're talking about with the mace, because it's got such a load at the end, you've got
to create good postural stability while you're moving your shoulders. And that's the key
for upper body mobility. Keep good stable, make sure your shoulders are moving. But that
actually, especially that implement, you've got to react to that unbalance. So it's an
instability. It's creating an unbalanced environment. You got to react and respond to that in Indian
clubs the same way.
So if I know if shoulder mobility is limited in this entire department, then instead of
saying, okay, everybody needs to be doing these specific exercises, implement the mace
of the Indian clubs. I mean, that's right then and there's something that could help
the entire group without having just to pull somebody aside and say, you've got to do this,
this and this. The goal is to say, hey, here's something that we know is going to help the
entire environment. Let's add this in. And that's a lot easier and simpler than saying,
okay, I've got to go figure something out for a hundred people.
Absolutely. I think as well, coming from the CrossFit background, we don't really do any
rotational movements. So we didn't when I did it. It was very linear. And so now we're
doing the medicine ball against the wall and the mace 360s and using the mace as a hammer
for the tires so you can up the weight and all these different things. And we haven't
had the clubs specifically, but obviously we're doing similar movements and then the
unilateral strict kettlebell movements. It's on top of the base that I had from CrossFit.
I mean, it's just added another complete layer. And I think for our profession, a couple with
sandbags and sleds and that kind of weight over distance that we need, you can really
forge a resilient tactical athlete's body. And I think one thing I've learned as I've
matured is their philosophy is also, there's no one rep max in the programming now. It's
the three rep max at the most, maybe a five rep max. So again, it's about that load under,
sorry, time under tension and that control and not chasing that top five percentile that
you do as an athlete because as a tactical athlete in this environment that we've talked
about with stress and sleep, that's when you're going to get hurt. But if you can be 90% or
85% consistently and not getting hurt, your trending line is actually going to surpass
that kind of up and down of chasing that one rep max.
I totally agree. I'm glad you brought that up. Just what you described is that functional
CrossFit, CrossTraining, if you will, is what's needed versus trying to go out to that one
rep max. And really the one rep max is if you're going to go compete in some type of
event where that's needed, great, that's fine. I had no problem trying to train you for that
and you're doing that. But for the job, for resiliency, what we're really all going for,
James, trying to get to retirement and beyond healthy, you've got to focus your efforts
on stuff max, multiple different movement patterns, but stressing the patterns at a
higher level. And I think that's what helps create, you know, we got to get them. So if
you got problems in, let's say upper body mobility, let's get upper body mobility at
least to an adequate level. But the only way to keep it is to do something that's going
to stress it, whether that's using a mace, whether that's using a kettlebell, whatever
it is, but you got to load it, but you don't need to think you got to lift this, you got
to lift as heavy as possible.
Absolutely. Well, I want to get to the systems and the application in the first responder
professions. But one last area before we do. When I look back now, it blows me away that
there isn't more focus on breath. I mean, obviously, that your mental state as well,
but that a whole overall efficiency of breath, the biomechanics of the breath for a profession
that's one of the only ones on the planet whose entire air supply is strapped to their
back. So talk to me, I know you have a breathing course or class that you offer as well. So
talk to me about that element, because obviously, in the fire service, we don't think about
it very much. But in the middle of a fire where we've lost, you know, our point of orientation
and we rely on that to get us out, there couldn't be anything more important than learning how
to control your breath and being efficient and respiratory, the maximal amount of respiratory
efficiency that you can possibly forge for this particular profession.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, James. I wasn't expecting that. But you are spot
on. I think that is probably most people take it for granted. Just like, you know, I'd say
hydration, but it's such a critical part. And we know there's problems or dysfunction.
So yes, we have a breathing screen, and it's simply a breath hold time. But also, we have
to ask a few questions because a poor breathing dysfunction could be chemical, psychosocial,
physical. If you've got poor upper body mobility, that may negatively impact what we got. We
got research that says that poor, poor upper body mobility when we test you typically means
you're going to fail our breathing screen and vice versa. If you fail our breathing
screen, you're good chance you're going to have lack of poor shoulder mobility. And we're
getting data now that says even ankle mobility. So I'm not going to, again, just there's a
relationship there, not saying one causes the other, but it's something that we have
to start considering more than we've ever considered it.
Now, with that, I don't want to, you know, throw, so when I did my research for my PhD,
I did it on the fire service. And what I found is I was looking for injury relationship with
our movement screen. And I found it, but it, you know, I didn't really take the next step
to publish it. I just want to get my doctorate and move on. But we also found, so what I
did is I screened, you know, at the time it was an academy of 25 guys, people, I should
say, sorry, 25 individuals. So I screened them. And then I, and what I did is they went
through their 16 week program or whatever, how many weeks it was. And I want to see how
many people got hurt. And actually I saw a relationship with injuries and people who
scored low. But here's what I also saw when they went through their, the obstacle course
with their full gear on their packs, everything they were using their, your air tanks to go
through this, the people who scored lower actually consumed more air out of their air
tanks, which was interesting because again, you are, you are inefficient. So if I don't
have good ability to squat, to balance, or even put my arms above my head, you're going
to use your body in an inefficient way. Now breathing, breathing, many times if you think
about the breath is when you put your body in a position where it's unstable or where
you got tension, your breathing is negatively impacted. So just think of you stand on one
foot and you start to get off balance. The first thing that impacts your breathing, you
stop and you create tension and that automatic response, unfortunately starts to get ingrained.
Bend over and try to touch your toes or try to tie your shoes for a lot of people. If
you're limited or you create tension, that's going to alter your breathing and your breathing
sometimes is what should be part of, you talk about, you know, breath, I mean, as far as
relaxing, yoga, think about yoga. Yoga is much more about your breath and meditation
as much as it is about the movements you're going through. Be able to connect your breath
with your movements and too often people will get into an inefficient breathing or dysfunctional
breathing patterning because of maybe a position they're in. So if I've got difficulty squatting,
I'm going to squat down. If I get to a point where I start creating maybe a lack of mobility,
whatever it is, my breath will also change and we should be able to get into a position.
I should be able to easily bend over and touch my toes without my breath altering that and
that too often is what happens. So we screen your breathing to simply figure out, okay,
if your breathing is poor, we need to make sure that breathing is a focus when we do
some of the exercises. Now that's not to say for a lot of people maybe listening that do
a lot of heavy lifting. We're not connecting that I'm not talking about breathing when
you've got to use your breath to create pressure to lift heavy. I'm talking about breathing
when you're simply doing basic movements like a squat or a lunge without weight and breathing
can get altered then. So you talk about that. So back to your point, James, you talk about
breathing problem without any gear. You throw your gear on, which you know the gear is going
to make breathing, excuse me, make your movements worse. And now your movements are worse. Now
you're going to be under tension. So that's going to significantly alter your breathing
at a very fundamental level, which then when you go into do what you all do, it's going
to make it even worse.
Well, this is just another layer to what I said before, the fitness standard, you know,
we are held to a standard in the academy. And I've said this a thousand times on here
already, but in Florida, my fire academy is labeled the certification that we get the
end is labeled minimal standards, minimum standards, excuse me. So that's the shitest
you should ever be the rest of your career. And yet then you go in like, oh, actually
we've got no standard. So, you know, you're good now instead. And so you get this kind
of almost nostalgic conversation about how they used to be in great shape in the fire
academy. Well, can you imagine the Navy SEALs or the ocean lifeguards being like that? And
now they're, you know, three, 400 pounds just talking about the good old days while the
kids drowning in the ocean. Like it, it, it makes no sense. But if you look at the upside
of, of holding that standard, that means longevity in your career. That means fewer injury. That
means a longer retirement life. And then even this, you know, when you go to that fire,
you are stronger. You are, you have the muscular endurance, you have the actual, you know,
aerobic endurance. And then like you said, you're efficient in your movement, all those
combined to your tank lasting longer. So when I get resistance, um, even on the sleep conversation,
I tell them, well, look, you, you're beating your chest about being this hero. I mean,
your pictures are all over his Instagram, but you're not even fighting for the things
that will make you a better firefighter fitness standards, you know, enough rest and recovery
between shifts. So you're living a fairy tale. If you actually want to be a true functioning
tactical athlete, then you have to treat yourself like that. And you have to, you know, hold
yourself to a high physical standard and demand an environment that allows you to thrive.
Well, it's not only, I don't want to, well, I will, why not James? We're, we're having
this discussion. That's what just really baffles me as an outsider looking in when I, when
I go in or when I, you know, pitching and it like, like I'm better work pitching this
idea of being stronger, being able to move well, being able to, you know, make sure you're
not getting, make sure you're getting up sleep. You're not over stressed. Everything that
we all know needs to happen. Why is it so difficult changing that culture? That's what
I'm really, I don't understand why the first responder community, this is not just, it's
not a standard. There is no, you know, what, what is the, and again, I don't know if we
want to get too far into this James, but I just, I just, for the life of me, knowing
what you all must be doing in order to save the lives and go out on the job, why this
is not just something that every six months, here's what you need to be doing. You need
to be able to do this, this, this, and this and whatever that is. That's not for me to
say, but at minimum, there's got to be something that you're, that you must be able to do,
whether that's put your gear on and climb X amount of stairs or whatever it is, but
not to have those. I just, I don't understand it.
No. And the thing is I've had this conversation with military, with law enforcement. The beautiful
thing about the fire service is the standardized test is built into our job. So we have a thing
called the CPAT. There's another one, my friend developed who's the founder of fire sled.
And so they're basically replicating a charged hose line, carrying certain tools that we'd
need, dragging a dummy, you know, crawling through a small search area. So whether you're
18 or 50, whether you're male, female, gay, straight, black, white, you know, whatever
the things are, it's fair because all they're saying is move the stuff that you would require
to move if the call went out and you had to go do your job. So this is what really blows
me away. You know, for law enforcement, it's a little bit, you know, less specific. I mean,
they're not having certain tools normally, you know, this is a foot pursuit. It's, you
know, maybe jumping over fences and that kind of things is what you normally see their tests.
But for us, we have hoses, we have ladders, we have extrication tools. Like it is a standard
set of things that we have to do. So it's so easy to create a test. And there are, like
I said, the CPAT is a acknowledged test. And this other one now is rising rapidly where
we have that. So all you got to do is say every year you got to pass that. That's it.
And again, not today, otherwise you're fired. I mean, obviously in a fair way where, all
right, we're going to give you two years to get to the point where you can pass it because
we've just, you know, introduced this and you're behind and we're going to give you
the tools, the FMS and access to a gym and all the things that will get you there. But
at the end of that two years, if you're still not there or you show no willingness to get
there and then great, you can go to fire prevention and check, you know, sprinklers and fire extinguishers
the rest of your career, because we need people that can do the job to be on these rigs, not
someone who's just collecting a paycheck. So I agree with you. And I always held myself
to a high standard, even to this day, I haven't been wearing uniform for six years and I still
hold myself to the ability to be able to do the job that I would have in uniform because,
you know, as a father, as a neighbor in this community, you don't know what you might be
called to do. You know, I just did CPR on a plane a year ago, for example. So, you know,
this is, I mean, it blows my mind too. And I'm not picking on the individuals. Some of
these men and women are so exhausted. They don't even realize that this is the wrong
environment for them. They're just so beat down. But the profession has completely changed
and we have not changed with it. So this is what's good about this crisis that we're in
now and this conversation we had at the fire conference is that now we're at a crossroads.
Do we allow the fire service to completely disintegrate? Or do we start, you know, supporting
these men and women, putting that bar back where it belongs, because only certain people
are able to do this job, and then give them the tools to maintain that and be phenomenal
first responders for 20, 25 years, and then have a healthy retirement?
I think that's the one thing that really blows me away is you just said 20, 25 years, if
you enter the fire service at 18 or 20, you can retire at a young age. And why would you
want to retire at such a young age and be broken? Because a lot of the things we're
talking about can be addressed, can be prevented. There's no reason it can't be prevented. Now,
you don't need to go out and just try to train yourself where you're, you know, want to run
a marathon or do a triathlon. It's just meet some minimum, again, minimum standards that
we can establish that says, yeah, your sleep's okay, your behavioral health's okay. None
of these things are major, major problems. But if we can identify, that's the other thing
about setting these standards, James, it's not a, it's not, I know this is the, this
is the thought process is it's going to be a way to identify you as a problem, kick you
out or do something else. The sooner we identify some of these issues for you as an individual,
the better off you're going to be long term. Because if we know you're going down the wrong
path when you're 30, then we can deviate that and maybe put you on a better path. And to
me, that's just as important as saying, Hey, you know, we need to identify the people who
are problematic and give them the right resources they need to keep them on the right path so
that when they're 50, 60, you're more healthy. And I think because of the fire service and
tactical community, it's somewhat, it is very, very a, a, it is a community. It's not like,
you know, the office worker who's overweight, eating poorly, you guys have a very much a
specific community that you're helping each other and you are relying as the other pieces,
you're relying on a person beside you to do their job so you don't have to pick up the
slack. So all of this is connected. So, you know, identifying some problems, the sooner
you can is going to give you the ability to change your course of direction. Because if
somebody hurts their back when they're 25, you've got yourself a back problem unless
you do something about it. You hurt your back and have surgery at 25, you can get better.
I know people who can still deadlift and squat a tremendous amount of weight and they had
back surgery. You can, it can happen, but you just got to take those steps.
You're speaking to one. I didn't even have surgery. I had a career ending, a near career
ending back injury, um, God, almost 10 years ago now, I think it was, and it was actually
a foundation training. I don't know if you ever heard of that, Dr. Eric Goodman. And
it's, it's a movement, you know, series and it looks like yoga, but it's not, you, you're
basically using the body almost cantilevering to add weight to these lengthening movements.
Phenomenal. I mean, absolutely incredible. So I paid for Cairo out of my own pocket.
I did foundation training every day. I was in the gym with a PVC pipe and then an empty
bar and working my way up and then got back to full duty. And just like you said, I did
a firefighter fundraiser about three months after that, and it was 225 deadlifts, you
know, 10 reps and burpees and stuff. So it wasn't just barely getting back. It was addressing
that issue, fixing the reason why I got hurt in the first place, and then going back stronger,
learning from it and growing from it. And I think this is what's exciting about FMS.
And I used FMS my last department, we had a very progressive, uh, member of the wellness
team there, Brian. Um, and he was the one that really was, you know, going to TSAC and
seeking out people like yourself. And he brought it to us and we did the screenings and it
was awesome. So with that being said, for the first responders listening or even the
military side, what are some of the screens or products that you guys offer that you think
would be beneficial for, you know, the first responder community to have in their department?
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I think the functional movement screen, that's, that's
the one that we've, we've been doing, you know, after this conversation for over 20,
20 some years now, and we've gotten a lot of positive feedback, a lot of data, a lot
of research on that being implemented. The only, the barrier to that is, and you just
mentioned it, James, you need a person that goes through and understands the, get the
education. I've gone into, again, you don't have to have a background in strength and
conditioning to, to be able to learn how to do a functional movement screen. I've gone
into plenty of departments and, and, you know, certified their staff to be able to do it.
The problem I'm presenting is you do need someone to take you through it. And what we
developed since that point, what we've really been working on the last number of years,
is what we call a functional wellness screen. And that's what we developed that you can
take yourself through it. Meaning, you know, you can actually do it on your own and you
don't need any equipment. The reason we call it wellness is because we add in the lifestyle
component. So we do a questionnaire on your breathing, your behavioral health, your sleep.
We look at nutrition. So we factor in all of those, plus we have you do these basic movements,
and then we score them, and then we give you recommendations on what you need to focus on.
So that's what we've been implementing with some certain departments over the last,
really 12 to 15 months since we, since we kind of put a bow on it, wrapped it up. But that's
something I definitely, it's easy to do. It's, you know, I'm sure James, I can get you a link,
and anybody listening can go on and do it to yourself for free. I mean, I'm not, you know,
just get the screen and see what it tells you. But that's something that we're starting to
gain some traction with. And actually, that's what I presented some of that data. And what some of
that data I've been talking about today, but I presented a couple when we're at the, with the
conference a few weeks ago, presented that data. So that's starting to gain some traction. That's
an easy thing to do. And I think honestly, because of, because we're adding in those other components
of lifestyle with your movements, it's a much more holistic, and I think it's, it's much easier to
kind of wrap your head around, because it's not like we're asking you to go out and lift a bunch
of weights. It's like, can you touch your toes? Can you balance? Can you rotate? And if you can't
do those things, just when I asked you to, then when you put on your equipment and you go out there
and try to drag somebody out of a house, it's going to be problematic. What about as we touched on
before the solution side, whether it's, you know, focusing on a specific area, or as you mentioned,
focusing on other areas that seem to be weak, that may be contributing to an imbalance and pain.
Is there a catalog, a library or kind of resource that they've done the screen, they found
deficiencies, what would be the next step for them? Yeah, so if you do the screen that I'm
describing just now, we're going to give you the exercises to do. So we're going to give you a daily
dose of, hey, here, and these are what we call corrective strategies. These are like, hey, my
shoulder mobility is not good. We're going to tell you what to do. It's not a workout. And that
doesn't mean you shouldn't do a workout. There still needs to be some sort of workout that you
add on to that. But this is going to be about a 10 to 15 minute little thing, specifically to,
to improving that area. We've got some other resources as far as exercises and things. Definitely
invite somebody to go to our website, functionalmovement.com. You can go into our exercise
library and type in shoulder mobility, and we'll give you a laundry list of exercises to do that.
That's kind of our wheelhouse. As far as programming and giving you an overall workout,
I think that takes a little bit more involvement. But definitely that's something I think
departments have to take on, whether you have your peer fitness trainers, or whatever. And I think
it's cultural, James. I think that's, that's the other thing is, you know, you mentioned having a
progressive department. Every department has got to take this on and do something, provide some sort
of resource to the individuals to get them on the right path. Whether that's you're hiring somebody
to come in, whether you're leveraging certain Firefighters Union department, but something's
got to be done. And that starts at the top. Absolutely. Well, even as we mentioned with the
lowering of the bar, with the lowering of the activity of some of our young people, I've had
people say, the fit first responder applicants now are really, really fit because they grew up in the
world of Spartan and CrossFit and all that. So we've got some incredible athletes, but, you know,
you've also got this pool of kids that just haven't maybe had the opportunity to move as well or as
often as our generation did. So I can see the application for a new hire screen as well. When
you first get them on, not punitive, as you said, but all right, you know, here's some areas that
we're going to work on so that by the end of your probation, hopefully you'll be scoring twos across
the board and we would have set you up for success in uniform rather than just, you know, make a
weakness even worse to the point where now you're on workman's comp for six months.
Right. And I think that's where some of the places that are utilizing our tools, that's one thing
that they do. They'll send out, for example, the self screening I'd mentioned, they'll send that out
six weeks prior to their test or to the academy and say, okay, six weeks, you got six weeks to
clean up everything because when you show up, these are the things we expect. So they're actually
seeing some positive benefits to sending that out before they even show up. And again, they're not
hired. This is all voluntary, but hopefully that's going to see a change and they just start, again,
that's where the culture change can happen. And then same thing, some of the departments that
have some of these standardized or annual testing, same thing, hey, six weeks, two months prior,
we're going to send you this test. I want you to definitely clean up some things that you got.
So I think that's something to be said about at least before you show up or before we're asking
you to do some of these very job specific tasks, let's clean up some of the problems.
I can see an application on the other side of the career too. You've got retirees that are,
you know, getting ready to retire in the say a year, because obviously it's going to take them
probably a bit longer. If you haven't had this already in place, you know, there'd be a kind of
eye rolling, poo pooing maybe a bit while I've only got a year left. It's like, well, think of
it a different way. This is what I say to the people that are, you know, towards the end of
their career with the 24 72. Well, this is your chance to start unfucking your life before you
transition out to, cause you have got a lot of shit going on physically, mentally. So this extra
sleep will help you start healing a little bit before you transition out. And the same with the
FMS. Well, let's look at where you're at so that on your last day, you feel better than a year prior.
Yeah. So the thing that, that is very true in the fire service from my just interaction is you stack
your surgeries up. So that last last, as you said, two years, you may end up having a shoulder
surgery, a knee surgery, a back surgery. And I totally understand why let the, let the department
pay for that before you get out. So then they fix these problems, but you haven't fixed the underlying
reason why you may have needed that knee surgery or back surgery. And that's where our methodology
can come in is like, all right, you cleaned up that, you know, we got your knee cleaned up,
we got your shoulder cleaned up. Well, you still have poor posture. You still have poor core control.
You don't have enough hip mobility. So we got to get those things going. So when you do have that
second career, which is really, again, if you're retiring at 50, 55, you may have a second career.
If nothing else, play with your grandkids. When you get older, you still got to clean a lot of
those things up. So yeah, they'll go on into that second part of your career, or, you know, you just
want to retire and live the rest of your life. You want to live it healthy and happy. And, you know,
you don't want to keep having the sleep problems, the stress problems. So we got to get in a position
where we're teeing you up for success at that level. Absolutely. Well, I wanted to throw some
quick closing questions at you before I let you go if you've got time. Sure. All right. The first
one I love to ask, is there a book or are there books that you love to recommend? It can be related
to our discussion today or completely unrelated? I definitely like Simon Sinek across the board.
Simon Sinek, I know Jocka Wilnick, I know that's been this community probably all over the place,
but I do have really enjoyed reading some of this. So Simon Sinek, the tipping point, I'm not sure
if that's Simon Sinek or not. The talent code is another one. But Coyle, I think his last name is
Coyle. That's one. And Breath. Breath is another good one. It's called Breath. Can't think of the
author's name, but those are all the top. James Nestor. Yes. Yep. James Nestor. Yep. And then
the Checklist Manifesto. I'm not sure who wrote that one, but the Checklist Manifesto is another one.
Tribes is another good one, especially community building, things like that.
I had Sebastian Junger on, I think it's been on four or five times now. I read Tribe and I was like,
this is everything. Every person in uniform, but every person in uniform at least needs to read
this book. It's mind blowing. Yeah. I'm glad I thought about that, especially for this community.
I totally agree. What about films and documentaries that you love? Oh man, I'm a documentary guy.
Oh man, I don't want to... Because I'll zone out and watch a documentary.
Teddy Roosevelt was a good one I just watched. And I think that one's just fairly new. I think they
did an updated one on that. Teddy Roosevelt, I think is a very good one. I love the Vietnam HD.
That's another one that's pretty good. Because I'm really into history side of things. Ben Franklin
was another good one that I watched. I just watched another one on Yacht Rock. I just watched the one
on Yacht Rock that was pretty good. The Roosevelt one, did they talk about his proposal for national
health around the war time? Because he was going to put in, I hate the word socialized medicine,
it sounds like something came out of communist Russia, but the altruistic model of a national
health system. Yep. Got into that. And even got into a lot of just expanding into the West,
but also even how he treated certain races. So it was interesting, to say the least.
Because I think it was only that he passed away that they scrapped the national health. Otherwise,
we would have a national health system and not be crippled by medical bills because we had the
audacity to get cancer, which is the American model. Right. It's another interesting one that's on the
history channel. It's not a documentary, but I find it to be very interesting. Just me. It's how
food built America. And it talks about all the different foods and more of a historical approach
of how they became famous and how they took over someplace. Some of them are just kind of,
I wouldn't bother, but Kellogg's and the cereal one, that was interesting, just how that came
about. So those were been pretty interesting to me. Beautiful. All right. Well, the next question,
is there a person that you'd recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first
responders, military and associated professions of the world? Well, my colleague, Greg Cook,
is a great, you know, Kim and I have a podcast and he is, he's a philosophically, forget the FMS side
of things, but philosophically, he has just an interesting way of thinking about things. Definitely,
but of course, he's like my brother. So I'll throw his name out there. Oh, gosh, James, I have to
think. I can't believe I'm drawing a blank here. I'm just trying to think of two people. Michael
Easter, maybe someone. I actually had him on. Yeah. Did you? Yeah. What was his book? The Comfort
Crisis. The Comfort Crisis. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's another book. Another great book. He's good.
Yeah, I'm drawing a blank here. That's good. Yeah. I mean, Greg, Greg would be a great person to get
on next if you can help me with that. Yeah. I mean, he just tail take it so many different places.
James, he's an interesting cat. Brilliant. All right. Well, then the last question before we
make sure everyone knows where to find FMS and yourself. What do you do to decompress?
I have a place on the lake and I go out and paddleboard. That's my thing. And I do like
watching documentaries. And the other thing, I don't know if I say decompress, but just kind
of just shut your mind off. I love college football. I do like watching sports. But I think
to really just zone out. I don't wear AirPods. I don't do anything. I don't wear a hat. I don't
wear a hat. I don't wear a hat. I don't do anything. Especially when the weather's nice.
The winter is where it kind of ruffles my feathers a little bit because right now where I am,
I can't do it. I just take a paddleboard. Beautiful. All right. Well, then where are
the best places online to find FMS? And then what about yourself personally?
Yeah. So you go to functionalmovement.com. That's our website. The other one is Simeo. Check out.
I think that's where our new wellness screen, S-Y-M-M-I-O. And then best way, I'm on LinkedIn,
but you know what? Anybody listening, you want to send me an email, you got questions, it's
lee at functionalmovement.com. Brilliant. Well, Lee, I want to say thank you so, so much. We
met very briefly between the two presentations in Florida here, but this has been a phenomenal
conversation and asking your perspective on some of the kind of youth athletics, stuff like that,
the kind of youth athletic side and the health crisis on top of obviously the tactical community
has been amazing. So I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time
and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today. James, I can't thank you enough. I appreciate
you bringing me on and appreciate everyone for what you and everyone in this community does.
I can't thank you guys enough, but truly, truly appreciate you having me on.