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12: Movement Fads and Myths: Interview with Jules Mitchell MS, CMT, E-RYT500
435 Plays3 years ago
Welcome to Episode 12 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah is joined by the one and only Jules Mitchell, to talk about myths and misbeliefs around strength, stretching, and how to really understand how research applies to our teaching.
- What are other models for movement beyond soft tissue - and can they coexist
- Does it matter if your teaching still “looks like yoga”?
- Should you call yourself a movement teacher instead of a yoga teacher?
- How accurate is it to make claims about strength in yoga?
- How teachers misinterpret research and why it’s happening
- Does age reflect interest in different aspects of yoga
- Should we still be stretching? Is it possible to overstretch?
- What movement trends are we moving towards in the future
Reference links:
Yoga Biomechanics: Stretching Redefined by Jules Mitchell
Jules Mitchell Website
Twelve-Minute Daily Yoga Regimen Reverses Osteoporotic Bone Loss - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4851231/
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Watch the video of this conversation at: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast
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Transcript
Introduction to Movement Logic Podcast
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaverstorff and physical therapist Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up-to-date and cutting-edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
Introducing Jules Metjal
00:00:37
Speaker
Welcome to Episode 12 of the Movement Logic Podcast. I'm Dr. Sarah Court, physical therapist, and I'm here with my guest who probably needs no introduction to most of you, Jules Metjal. Jules is a Las Vegas-based yoga teacher, educator, educator, and massage therapist with an MS in exercise science and biomechanics from CSU Long Beach.
00:00:59
Speaker
She is adjunct faculty at Arizona State University, where she serves as a yoga consultant on yoga therapy research for special populations, including pregnant women, perinatal loss and depression, and cancer patients. Jules is the author of Yoga Biomechanics Stretching Redefined, a comprehensive text for yoga teachers.
00:01:19
Speaker
Her methods intend to achieve ease and movement through deliberate effort. Thus her teachings integrate numerous modalities, balancing the somatic aspects of yoga with the most current exercise science.
Yoga, Strength Training, and Movement Insights
00:01:30
Speaker
Today we're talking about all sorts of things. I was trying to think of a title for the episode and I was like,
00:01:35
Speaker
everything because if you know anything about Jules, you know that she is a total genius. And so asking her on the show was just a very selfish move on my part because I just wanted to pick her brain about yoga, strength training, bone density, and just sort of movement fads in general. So Jules, welcome. Thank you so much for coming on.
00:01:54
Speaker
Thanks for having me. Yeah. Yeah. I love that you read my bio that I've been wanting to, uh, update for like two years. Like whenever that up on the list of priorities. Tomorrow now.
00:02:11
Speaker
I've had that happen too, where I'm like, oh, that's, that's old. It's okay. None of it, none of it's incorrect. So yeah, it's still technically, it's all still, it's all still true. So is there anything that you, you know, in your various and, and I was gonna say various and fairied, but that means the same thing in your various studies lately, that you're kind of really interested in something that you're kind of fascinated by at the moment?
Jules's Educational Journey
00:02:38
Speaker
I mean, it's not like one thing in particular. I have definitely started on a path of my own continuing education that is separate from kind of the narrative that I've been driving for a long time, which is like soft tissue mechanics.
00:02:56
Speaker
just to get some other perspectives because there are a lot of different explanations within a lot of different models for a lot of the same things. And so I have been kind of putting myself into those other models. So I've been doing some like joint mechanics research. I've been doing a little biochemistry studies. I've been doing a bit of
00:03:25
Speaker
of little biotensegrity, like I took a non-Euclidean geometry math course, just to kind of like verse myself in the competing narratives to mine. And it's been really fulfilling and interesting. That's very cool. That's very cool. Yeah.
Teaching Yoga to Educators
00:03:45
Speaker
You generally at this point, and correct me if I'm wrong, you mostly teach sort of continuing education for movement teachers, yoga teachers mostly. Do you miss teaching like just general gen-pop classes, like public classes? Because when I started practicing as a clinician and I would still teach a workshop here and there, but every now and then I'm like, it'd be fun to just teach like a yoga class.
00:04:13
Speaker
You know? Well, I kind of do teach yoga classes. I don't teach to the general public.
00:04:21
Speaker
but I do have like practice collections which are like mini miniature libraries of online classes so I do get in front of my camera and teach a yoga class or I do teach my teacher training started this week I taught a yoga class so I'm still teaching classes it's just I'm teaching with the teacher and
00:04:45
Speaker
in mind. So they're a little bit more sophisticated. Like sometimes I'll weave together three or four different skills in a class, knowing that the yoga teacher will then take that class and break it down into like five or six classes, different classes that they could offer the general population, you know. So I kind of layer them heavy with educational concepts.
00:05:09
Speaker
So I don't really miss teaching the general public, because I kind of do, even though it just has a little bit of an edge to make it more in line with what I do. And also, I just have to say, I'm so overwhelmed with running an online business since we've all been forced to go there. I'm not missing anything. I'm not sitting around going, you know,
00:05:33
Speaker
I have all this extra time and I'd really like to, you know, like I have plenty to keep me busy. So it's okay the way it is. And I'm still teaching. Nice. Do you feel like your classes, you know, are still
00:05:50
Speaker
I don't know, like, quote unquote, recognizable as a yoga class. Or does that matter? Or what would that even look like? Or how important is it that it can form in
Evolution of Yoga Classes
00:06:02
Speaker
that way? I feel like there's a lot of variety out there now. And I think we've gotten a little less precious about what exactly a yoga class, quote unquote, should look like. I would say that
00:06:16
Speaker
I've probably, it's probably more recognizable about as yoga now than it has been in the past. I think I'm, now there's so much variety that I think a lot of yoga teachers
00:06:31
Speaker
are a little confused. They don't know what to call themselves. They're calling themselves movement teachers. The general public has no idea what movement means. They just want to find a yoga class. So I feel like I don't oppose all that, and I don't oppose incorporating other things into yoga in any way. But just for my business and for clarity and to be there to help yoga teachers find their way through yoga
00:07:01
Speaker
I, it's like more yoga now than ever before. Um, maybe not ever before, obviously, but you know, over the last five years, let's just say that's very recognizable as yoga. I mean, I do have, you know, I do incorporate some somatic stuff, but it's for the poses. It's not for mobility drills. It's for the poses. Right.
00:07:22
Speaker
Um, and this kind of takes me into my next question because there's been so much focus that I've seen at least in the yoga teacher world about strength suddenly.
Yoga vs. Strength Training
00:07:31
Speaker
Um, and you know, in my sort of broad clinical definition of strength, I think strength training involves an external load. That external load is greater than your day-to-day demands that you can, you know, move it however it is, whether it's a squat or an overhead press or something, but there's only a limited number of times that you can do it.
00:07:51
Speaker
And, you know, while the yoga community has grown more interested in strength training, which I think is great, how do we then, you know, bridge the gap or get better understanding between what strength training is and what happens in a yoga or a Pilates class? Is it fair? Is it accurate? If a yoga teacher is saying that's like, here's my yoga for strength training, or I don't know, I don't know what people are calling their classes, but
00:08:18
Speaker
And again, does that sort of very, very specific academic accuracy matter? What do you think? Yes and no. I think it depends. I know it's always depends, but what does it depend on? It kind of depends on the stakeholders in the conversation. Do you know what I mean? If you're just trying to reach the general public,
00:08:41
Speaker
I don't think the general public cares if it's strength or not strength, they just, they just want to do what they want to do and feel better or feel stronger and if they feel stronger because they went to yoga and did a bunch of vinyasas, or if they you know, I don't think it matters to regular people who can barely
00:09:00
Speaker
fit into their schedule an hour or two of what they would consider exercise or whatever. So I think we can get very wrapped up in like industry, I call it industry pageantry. And I don't think that's serving our customer. The person who really just needs an hour of yoga, I don't think it matters if they
00:09:25
Speaker
think their bands are strengthening or not strengthening, unless they're truly seeking strength training, you know, then we can guide them and say, you know, maybe you want to go find a strength and conditioning coach or something like that, you know, but if they're just trying to fit it into their routine, I don't think it matters.
00:09:44
Speaker
I do think it matters when we are talking amongst ourselves. I do think as professionals in the industry, we should have clear understandings of what the parameters are to make something a strength practice if we're gonna be using that language. And then when you're educated on that and when you understand it, then it just naturally bleeds into the way you talk to your customer without trying to
00:10:12
Speaker
re-arrange their ideas of things that they don't really care
Understanding Strength Parameters
00:10:17
Speaker
about. I always use like the accountant example. Accountants need to know the tax laws and they need to know them so well that when you come to bring them your taxes, they just give you the advice for, they can hear what you need and give you the advice. They don't explain the tax law to you. You would lose your mind, right? So it's kind of like that. Like we need to be very well informed
00:10:37
Speaker
so well-informed that we can tease out what our customer is looking for and what they want and what their goals are and point them in the right direction without explaining to them the nuance on why a TheraBand isn't the proper strengthening tool. Does that make sense? Yeah. Well then, so let's say, you know, if a teacher had someone come up to them after class and the class had had some resistance bands in it and the student was like, is this going to make me stronger?
00:11:02
Speaker
Because I mean, I just remember getting a lot of very vague general questions like that a lot of the time where I'm like, well, do you want that half an hour answer? I would say probably not. You know, you might feel stronger because you've got a little workout, there's a little, you know, whatever. But like, it probably isn't going to meet the parameters for actual strength. But if you feel good,
00:11:26
Speaker
You know, like, so you can answer them in two sentences, I think, you know, if you're looking to build muscle mass or something like that, you know, like this probably isn't it. Right. You know, if you've been quite sedentary for a long time, this is probably a really great place to start, you know, like stuff like that.
00:11:44
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think about the patients that I work with in the clinic. I mean, you know, we're not starting with like a 25 kettlebell goblet squat, like nothing near that. And is it, you know, in these early stages where we're using like, you know, the yellow resistance band or the very small hand weight
00:12:03
Speaker
Am I thinking about that? Like I'm making this person stronger or am I thinking about that? Like, well, I'm really, what I'm helping them do is motor control, motor planning, like this sort of, and you talked about in the beginning about how, you know, you're exploring other areas around the sort of soft tissue explanation for things. My sort of recent biggest nerd out is just about how I really think the nervous system is just in charge of everything. And so, you know, something like hypertrophy is one thing, but something like,
00:12:33
Speaker
you know, helping someone find their serratus anterior. If they, if they can't do it with just their arm, they're not going to be able to do it with a, you know, 20 pound kettlebell. So we start with a yellow band and we start with, you know, a lot of repetition and a lot of sort of like planning and programming and all that kind of stuff. Is that strength? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe not technically, but they're not going to get the strength if they don't know where it is. Right. Yeah.
00:12:58
Speaker
So maybe there's a way to talk about. So there's one model, right? So you just explain like one model, one approach of progression towards strength training. There's other models too. And multiple models can be true at the same time, or maybe not true, nothing's true. But you know what I mean? It can be effective at the same time. They can coexist. Yeah, they can coexist, even though they might contradict each other. But this is biology. So we actually don't know anything anyway.
00:13:25
Speaker
But yeah, so, you know, is it part of, you know, a program that could lead someone to getting stronger? Sure, you know, you could say that easily. Right.
Yoga and Osteoporosis Claims
00:13:39
Speaker
The other thing that I am seeing a lot of lately is the focus on like bone density and osteoporosis.
00:13:47
Speaker
and classes that are called yoga for osteoporosis. And I'm not trying to like pick on yoga teachers. It's just the world that I know. There's probably like Pilates classes that are called Pilates for osteoporosis. Yeah. And similarly to strength training, I mean, it just makes me a little, I feel a little twitchy when I see stuff like that because I look at it and I'm like, well, from a clinical perspective, the PT perspective is you're doing short, sustained, very heavy loads.
00:14:16
Speaker
you know, like strength training, maybe even more into the category of what we'd call power or something like that, where it's, you know, you're, um, and, you know, again, in a yoga, in a yoga class, that's your, your is body weight. It's a resistance band. Maybe I've never seen anything more than like a, you know, two pound hand weight. Um, you know, and I did read that there's a, that Lauren Fishman study, uh, from 2016 that showed yoga increasing bone mineral density, but,
00:14:44
Speaker
Like a lot of studies, it was very specific population, very specific parts of the bones, and it was a two-year study. There were a lot of things about it that were research limitations, and even they were more studies are needed. But there's a program out there, I think, where people are just like, oh, it's this 12-minute yoga program and it's going to reverse your osteoporosis.
00:15:12
Speaker
stop talking to me about fat-free cookies, you know, like it's one of those things where I feel like it's a sort of sales pitch a little bit. Do you have a better understanding than I do about the effect of yoga on bone mineral density? Do you think it's fair to interpret the research as like now I can say that my yoga class is for osteoporosis? This is such a big topic.
00:15:39
Speaker
So it is my strong bias that yoga does not provide the load parameters that reverse osteoporosis. And that's a really big claim in that paper.
00:16:00
Speaker
Even just if you're not even in the stages of osteoporosis, just like building bone density. It's my very strong bias that yoga is not that. That being said, once a week, probably somebody emails me online course.
00:16:21
Speaker
referencing this, you know, whatever literally once a week, even my teaching that Instagram me when like two days ago, I was like, I know I get it every week because there's a huge push for it. There's books published on it. There's New York Times articles published on it. There's online courses for it written by or the courses and the books written by the people in the study that have that conducted the study.
00:16:49
Speaker
And actually, we use that study in my teacher training because we look at its challenges. It's a very poor quality study, if you ask me. I read a lot of research. And I actually think it's important for yoga teachers who want to cite research to not just read high quality papers, but to read poor quality papers as well, because it helps them tease out what's missing.
00:17:16
Speaker
I mean, it's an observational, you know, longitudinal study that's already problematic, especially when you're just looking at biology. And there's so many conclusions that can't be made from that. But in this paper that are, you know, I have so many issues with it. There's very there's literally one sentence in that paper that says we controlled for all other variables as best as possible. And then they continued talking about something else. I'm like, well, what are they and how did you? That to me isn't good enough. You know,
00:17:44
Speaker
So I really struggle with that paper. I've talked about it on other podcasts. Lauren Fishman has requested those podcasts come down. Like it's been a thing, you know? Yeah. And I'm telling you all this because I had to preface it with my bias.
00:18:06
Speaker
Yeah. And I've read all kinds of other research on bone density. There's case studies out there that say yoga causes fractures and you shouldn't do yoga. It's bad for your, for people with osteoporosis. And then this paper says it reverses osteoporosis. And then you look at some higher quality randomized control trials and you see it's generally safe, but it doesn't improve bone density. Like if you're looking at the whole body of literature. Yeah.
00:18:31
Speaker
And you throw out, imagine you're doing a Cochrane review, that Fishman paper wouldn't make it in the review, it just wouldn't, you know what I mean? It wouldn't make it just systematic review. And neither would the case study. And so you're now looking at the higher quality research papers and you're really- Can I pause you for a second? Just for any of our listeners who don't know what a systematic review is, can you describe what that is?
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah, just a systematic review is a paper that looks at other research and reviews it. And they take the time to look at the quality of the papers. They throw out ones that don't really add to the conversation.
00:19:10
Speaker
Usually they search and find thousands of papers and they end up with six papers that are good enough to consider. That tells you that just because it's published, you can't take one study and be like, hey, look, 12 minutes of yoga reverses osteoporosis. If you read that study also, they didn't do 12 minutes of yoga a day. It ended up being like two or three days a week. Every time you keep reading, you're like, well, this is less and less what's in the abstract as you go through.
00:19:38
Speaker
But anyway, so if you're looking at some of the higher quality studies that would be eligible for a systematic review, you know, yoga is fine. It's very, you know, very few adverse events. Of course, things happen. Things happen when you get out of bed, though. So it's, you know, like generally it's safe, but it's not really what you're looking for. Now,
00:19:58
Speaker
That being said, there are probably other aspects of yoga like improving balance and things like that. And so in maybe reducing falls or quality of life, there's all kinds of other good benefits, but that's not measuring bone density. So making a claim that yoga is good for bone density or builds bone or reverses osteoporosis to me is a stretch. Now,
00:20:27
Speaker
Someone in my mentoring program was emailing me back and forth on this. She also emailed me one of these online courses. Hey, have you seen this? It showed up in her inbox. And she said to me in the email, I just don't understand how they can get it so wrong. And so my answer to her was, well, maybe we have it wrong.
00:20:47
Speaker
I mean, I have to acknowledge that I'm reporting on all of this through a strong bias. So I'm willing to listen to the arguments. I really am, because even though I don't think it is, but you have to show up with a strong paper and some strong evidence. And in the meantime, I'm going to hold my position. And you share that position. Yeah.
00:21:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean that's that was sort of my feeling when I when I was looking at it I was just sort of like, I don't know about this, you know, and I think just to sort of go slightly tangential I think one of one of the things that that I am often frustrated by is
00:21:32
Speaker
that there is now this kind of willingness, which is amazing, of a lot of teachers to read research papers, which was not something that was happening when I started out as a yoga teacher. It was just you just did yoga and shut up about it. So now people are trying to find this more scientific
00:21:55
Speaker
evidence, at the same time, there's no training for yoga teachers in how to read research and how to actually assess the quality of the research and decide what I do.
Importance of Research in Yoga
00:22:07
Speaker
Can you talk about that a little bit, how you help teachers
00:22:10
Speaker
understand that not all research is created equal. Yeah. I mean, that is what we do a little bit in my teacher training. I do a lot more in my mentoring program because I think it's important. The more like you said, the more people are throwing around research papers on social media. They're like, oh, look, stretching makes you weaker.
00:22:27
Speaker
It's like, well, wait a minute, let's look at this. They're doing a 100 yard dash and they're slower and they're doing a high jump and they don't jump as high because they stretched for six weeks and didn't run or jump. So is it the stretching or is it the deconditioning? So what I kind of like to do when I'm working with teachers on reading research is I actually like to have them go to the methods. I think that is a really,
00:22:54
Speaker
a helpful way, and can they read the methods and can they recreate the study? If they had 20 people and they were to give them the intervention, take the measurements before, take the measurements after, and if they could recreate that in their mind,
00:23:12
Speaker
how were they being stretched and what position? What was it like? Were they using this? Were they using that? What was considered the end range? Was it this much sensation? How are they calculating that? And if they can recreate it in their mind, then they have an understanding of what was studied. And when you have an understanding of what was studied, then you can start to think about what the results mean.
00:23:40
Speaker
And so like, if you're looking at a lot of yoga studies, you don't actually know what they did. There's very little information about like, oh, there was a five minute warmup. And then they did 50 minutes of breathing and poses, and then they did a cool down. Well, if you can't recreate that, then you actually can't take those conclusions and make any meaning out of it. You know? Yeah, yeah. I love that as a, just, I think that'd be amazing for a lot of people. I think,
00:24:10
Speaker
My thing was always sort of like, if you're posting the New York Times article that's talking about the research, you really have to go and find the paper and read the paper. And at that level, does the kind of like,
00:24:25
Speaker
clickbaity article title actually describe what's happening in the paper and my finding a lot of time was that it wasn't like it actually did not reflect accurately what the paper actually was even trying to study but you know again it's it's more you're going to get more clicks if you say something really provocative like you know stretching makes you weaker or something like that
00:24:48
Speaker
But yeah, really, I think it's I love that you're doing that because they really do think it's so important that people I mean we did a ton of it at school but prior to that I didn't know that much about you know what's a good study what's not a good study, you know, so
00:25:01
Speaker
There's also so much statistics in it that just makes me completely cross-eyed, but I do think you can. Well, that's the next part, is really at the end of the day, if you don't understand the statistics, it's really hard to interpret the research. But I don't expect that for yoga teachers. My goal with providing scientific literacy skills to a yoga teacher isn't that they need to start taking statistics classes.
00:25:27
Speaker
It's not about being able to understand a paper fully. It's about understanding how to think about a paper. I'm going to think about this paper about yoga and bone density. Let me question where it might be missing some stuff. Let me question where
00:25:47
Speaker
actually you know might have some valid points and let me think about it instead of just seeing the headline or reading the abstract and saying you know this is what it does you know like the stretching makes you weaker well you know in this study if it was a good quality study it maybe it did make you weaker
00:26:04
Speaker
but that doesn't mean that that going to yoga makes all people weaker because the yoga intervention doesn't look anything like the stretching and the and the the test for you know weakening and strengthening and stuff where no one's no one's doing a hundred yard dash or a high jump so so like you know that's what just think about the research and and any of you learn to do that you
00:26:29
Speaker
You kind of soften, I guess, like you soften your viewpoints. You recognize like, you know, you have a bias. I have a clear bias around yoga and osteoporosis, but I'm soft about it. You know, instead of like arguing with people, it's like they send me the, they send me this course and I'm like, yes, here we are. This is the world of capitalism. Everyone's selling something, you know? You know, like, but I could, I could
00:26:55
Speaker
you know, create a course that, you know, yoga, the anti osteoporosis for, you know, yoga course or whatever, but, uh, you know, it's okay. It's okay. I'd still rather people with osteoporosis do yoga than nothing else. So absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm like, I just want you to stand up. Yeah. Yeah. Live your life. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. However you want to move your body.
00:27:24
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:29:08
Speaker
Do you think, I mean, one of the things is I'm sort of looking at these trends of talking about strength training, talking about osteoporosis in yoga or movement teachers.
Generational Shifts in Yoga Teaching
00:29:19
Speaker
And it seems like there is this sudden interest and the people that I'm looking at are my peers in age, at least.
00:29:29
Speaker
I'm wondering if it's because we're all coming up to this point where we are perimenopausal or some of us are fully menopausal and we're dealing with concerns around strength training and bone density. Is this purely reflecting of a generation of yoga teachers who are now their concerns, their interests have changed? I don't know the average 28 year old, 30 year old yoga teacher, but I don't know if they're out there
00:29:55
Speaker
you know, talking about bone density and yoga or if they're just doing what I was doing, which was like, hey, put your leg behind your head. We're cool. You know, like.
00:30:02
Speaker
Do you think it's like it's a generational thing? Yeah. When we were 28 year old yoga teachers putting our leg behind our head, there was a generation our age doing what we're doing now. We're not the first ones to discover this. I promise you that. That's a very egotistical place to be if we think that, you know, we're not the first ones to discover, oh, wait a minute, maybe adding a little strength to my, you know, is good for me. So there was a generation before us and probably a generation before that and probably a generation before that.
00:30:31
Speaker
As long as exercise science and physio and all this has been an industry, I would say that's probably the case. We are in our echo chamber. I do think that because of social media, the message of this generation
00:30:53
Speaker
you're talking about spreads a little further. I think before, when I was 28 teaching yoga, there was no social media. We had blackberries at the time, maybe even, maybe not even that yet. There was barely internet. I remember in my yoga teacher training, we were looking at yoga journal magazines, like on a bookshelf and making Xerox copies of them. We were not emailing articles to each other. That was not a thing.
00:31:22
Speaker
So I do think that the message spreads faster and wider. And I think if we'd had social media, we would have had access to the generation above us that was sharing this information, doing podcasts, things like that. So it might feel like it's spreading. But I do think that the 25-year-olds
00:31:42
Speaker
Practicing what you know hot vinyasa are very happy there. I took a class recently in town. I was like, I was like, oh my god. I mean, I had a great time. I just went slower than everybody else, you know, but but it was like, like, it's alive and well. Yes, yes. I know. I have no doubt. I have no doubt. I haven't taken one of those in a long time and I bet it would be really entertaining and
00:32:05
Speaker
I bet I would be in the corner doing my, what I jokingly call my feeble old lady yoga. And the room would be like, well, why isn't she doing the fifth headstand that we're all doing? That's so funny. Are we just getting old? Is that what's happening? Yeah. I'm so glad. Finally. I've been wanting to be an adult since I was 10 years old. So I'm going in the right direction. Such a relief sometimes. Oh my God.
00:32:35
Speaker
So, you know, when, so back in the day, back in the, you know, 20, when we were photocopying pictures out of your yoga journal and, and taking hand notes by hand, one of the things when I went back to PT school that blew my mind was as a total aside, but I was like, people are taking notes on their computer. I was, I was there with like my five different colored pens and my little notebook. And I was like, well, the title has to be, you know, and then I look around and everyone else was like, I was like, Oh.
00:33:04
Speaker
I am the old here. Back in the day when that was how I was working, there was a lot of different ways that you could structure a yoga class, but a lot of it was around like you're working towards a peak pose. A peak pose is an advanced pose.
00:33:25
Speaker
It may also have been, you know, I started in Jeevan Mukti Yoga, which is, as someone once lovingly described to me, that rock and roll shit. So I was like, I mean, should I have earlier?
Dangers of Overstretching in Yoga
00:33:37
Speaker
So there wasn't a concept that maybe not everybody should be doing three wheel poses and a 10-minute shoulder stand. And it does seem like, and again, this may be just generational, that people are starting to pull back from this idea of, oh, an advanced yoga is a complicated yoga. It's a physically advanced. And people are talking a lot about things like overstretching and hypermobility.
00:34:00
Speaker
And people are concerned about this idea that they could overstretch something or they're already too flexible, they don't need to be stretching anymore, the lack kind of stuff. And at the same time, as people ask me, they're like, do you give people stretches for part of their rehab program in a PT setting? And I'm like, yeah, absolutely, I do.
00:34:21
Speaker
You know, and but it's very specific. It's very to very specific patients usually and it's with a specific goal. That's not necessarily range of motion related. It's not necessarily, you know, trying to get their range better, but it might be more about helping with pain helping them just move better generally things like that. You know, and and
00:34:42
Speaker
you have a whole book about stretching. It's not just, that's, sorry, that is a, that is a huge... It is about stretching. It is. You're not wrong. Well, it sounds like, I'm just like, oh, it's a book where you learn how to stretch. It's so much more. So, so much more. If you guys have not read Jule's book, you absolutely should. But, you know, when people ask you, like, should I be stretching?
00:35:05
Speaker
At this point, do you say, do you have an answer? Do you say like maybe, maybe not? Yes. No, here's why. I usually say yes. People like stretching. It feels good. It feels good. It really does. There's so many things around stretching that aren't just range of motion. You know, there's so many things around it. Um,
00:35:27
Speaker
I mean, if you dive into the stretching research, and I have a three hour webinar just on this, but like if you dive into that, you know, there's
00:35:39
Speaker
dozens of variables that they're measuring, from quality of life, to range of motion, to, you know, tendon stiffness, to sports performance, to cardiovascular health, to metabolic factors, you know, stress hormones. Like, there's like so many things. So, yeah, stretching is great and fine.
00:36:04
Speaker
You know, your question had so many things. I'm just trying to, you know, organize them. You know, I do think there are certain populations, like you mentioned hypermobility, where stretching doesn't feel that great. But I don't think it's, this is like, I don't think it's
00:36:25
Speaker
the stretching, like they're not, they probably won't overstretch themselves. It's just like, you just, you know, your end range is your end range, you know, like you, you're, it's, there's, aside from extreme situations, it's really hard to, you know, overstretch tissue, but they do have different composition of their structure of their, um,
00:36:53
Speaker
connective tissue. And I think it's really, the reality is when they do like stretching, like the general public thinks of stretching, like a flexibility exercise, they're not able to sense tension. And so that's why they might not like the feeling of those stretches. So when they like engage muscles and stuff, and they all of a sudden everything feels more stable, but guess what? When you contract your muscle, it's still tension.
00:37:21
Speaker
So so it's it's not the tension. It's not the stretching. I'm using air quotes for that. It's not the stretching. That's a problem. It's just the the the parameters around the stretch or the details around the stretch, because when they end up like everything is a stretch, you can't like a deadlift is a stretch.
00:37:39
Speaker
You're bending over. So when they actually add some load, they're actually getting more stretch, technically, because more tension, because there's more muscle contraction. So it's just that's the condition in which they enjoy the tension, if that makes sense, where it feels better for them.
00:37:58
Speaker
I've kind of like gone back and forth on this a lot, but I'm really kind of pro-stretching. I don't think you should use stretching to improve your marathon time or those types of things, but if you enjoy it, then great.
00:38:14
Speaker
And I do think that taking away the emphasis of range of motion, if we just do that, it sort of resolves itself. If you just start kind of looking at it like, oh, it feels good to reach my arm overhead and reach for the cookie jar. That's a stretch. But if you're pushing to end range where you might
00:38:33
Speaker
start to aggravate some stuff, sensitize some stuff. Then all of a sudden we're like, oh, stretching is the worst. And the only thing that was in that conversation is that we're like trying to get more and you don't always need more. You could do a gentle stretch, not very far, and then engage your muscles. And all of a sudden it feels like a way deeper stretch, even though you haven't gone deeper. So you can play around with
00:38:59
Speaker
the sensations of tension and get all the benefits. People like it. Yeah, it does feel good. I mean, I think there is that sort of, there was like this conflation, is that the right word? Where we took the idea of, you know, trying to do these more, for lack of a better word, gymnastic, more complicated yoga poses. And we were like, oh, but the problem with that is I'm overstretching, right? Or that that was, the two things were the same.
00:39:26
Speaker
You know, and, and to your point, I mean, you know, I tore hamstring doing, uh, what's called a fish farmer toss in a, like I was at, well, maybe the problem is that you're trying to put your leg behind your head, you know, like maybe it's not a question of just.
00:39:41
Speaker
And what? As an extreme, an extreme position, extreme situation. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It wasn't because I was stretching my hamstring. It was because I was taking my body and I was just kind of trying to wedge it into a shape because that's what everybody else in the room was doing and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
00:39:59
Speaker
Maybe it was the, you know, the whole hip joint that wasn't ready for that. And the tendon was the sacrificial tissue. Do you know what I'm saying? Like that's where all these, when you, the first question you asked, like all the other things I'm studying, like, you know, I have my explanations for soft tissue stretching and I'm starting to like layer on other models. Cause there's a lot of things that could play a factor. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I, um, you know, there's people that I work with where,
00:40:27
Speaker
Yes, we were doing strength. Our focus for them is, is getting strength back into their body, but we may start our session with, you know, five, 10 minutes of static stretching, because even if that were to, you know, decrease the output for an Olympic weightlifter, it's not an issue for my client where we're going to be doing bridges, you know, like, I think it's, it's that kind of thing as well, where there's this idea where people take, you know, and to your point, again, what you were saying previously, it's context-based, right?
00:40:56
Speaker
It's, it's not, it's not relevant in this situation. She's not trying to PR her bridge. They're taking athlete research and applying it to, you know, the general population who's coming to your yoga class straight from the office, like whatever, you know, they're fine. Yeah.
00:41:12
Speaker
And it does seem like a laurel that I've talked about this how so much of the research is you know on athletes and it's just frustrating to like I'm like if I read another study that starts with we took 20 college age male athletes and I'm just like. And what they were fine sure.
Reflecting on Movement Fads
00:41:28
Speaker
It's tough is tough.
00:41:31
Speaker
So, I mean, this is a kind of goofy question, but I just wanted to ask you what you thought. Like, we see, you know, we see all these movement fads come and go. I mean, fad free cookies to me is just my, my, it's not a movement fad, obviously, but I just remember it well when everyone was obsessed with like, the Snackwells era. And then suddenly everyone realized like, oh, maybe this is a terrible idea.
00:41:54
Speaker
But in the movement world, there are also trends that come and go. We can think about the 80s and the 90s, and we think about aerobics and step class and things like that, which I did both of. And then from my perspective, at least, there was kind of a big, maybe sort of like in terms of how the country, or there were certainly people doing it before, but there was sort of a big yoga explosion kind of in the 90s and into the 2000s where suddenly it was like, well Madonna and Sting are doing yoga, and so is everybody in New York, and you want to be going to class and all that kind of stuff.
00:42:23
Speaker
You know, it does seem like now people are starting to see the value in not just like, oh, I'm doing my yoga and I'm doing strength training, but just sort of like doing a lot of different things. Like certainly when I was practicing yoga, there was a sort of generally held belief that all you needed to do was practice yoga because it took care of all of your
00:42:42
Speaker
you know, health and wellness needs, then I think, you know, even if teachers aren't necessarily putting, you know, resistance bands in their classes, they're at least aware that yoga is not the be all and end all for every single thing that your body may need.
00:42:58
Speaker
What do you, do you think, what do you think we're shifting towards next? Like, do you think there's some going to be some new, is there a thymaster in the future that I just don't know about yet? Probably. Remember the thymaster? Yeah, I do. Yeah. It was a hinge. Yeah, exactly. It was a big hinge that you could do more exercise with. Yeah, right. I know.
00:43:18
Speaker
I think you, I think there's like, definitely cycles, you know like eccentrics are really popular right now and they've been popular before like I you know I do think that that we recycle stuff I mean nothing's nothing's that original, you know, even a new
00:43:34
Speaker
new piece of equipment is a modification of an old piece of equipment. There's music today. There's not much that's original fashion. There's not much that's original. There's an original twist on things, but there's a lot of sampling, so to speak. And I think what's happening now is the yoga studio model
00:44:00
Speaker
was really successful, cause there really wasn't much else. There was, you know, aerobics and like body pump and things, but you had to go to the gym. But this sort of boutiquey studio model, and I think that's what, I mean, yes, yoga was trendy, but I think it's accessibility to people driving home from work and you know, that kind of thing.
00:44:22
Speaker
classes in the evening after work. There was a social aspect to it. I'm still friends today with the friends I met in my 20s at the yoga studio. We still get together. And so I think that model
Evolution of Fitness Studios
00:44:36
Speaker
exploded and more people came to yoga because there was a yoga studio everywhere it was very easy to do and now that model has moved into other areas there's like cycling classes like that and and you know there's these boutique studios that have like orange theory i think you run on a treadmill you know and like here we have like these true fusions and there's yoga and there's pilates and there's kettlebells and there's spin and there's you know there's like all the and so the the studio model exists in other forms um
00:45:06
Speaker
exercise including kettlebells and so I think like that is where we're going and so to me it's not like what's next. I kind of think we already have all the exercises out there you know there's like but it's really what's it going to look like next like what's the the market how's the market going to serve the customer and
00:45:29
Speaker
It's really unknown right now because a lot of studios have closed. Some people are used to now doing yoga at home. You know you can't really do that like a lot of the other types of classes at home the way you can with yoga. I think yoga is really, so I don't know what's going to happen, but I think that that's where my interest lies. Like if I'm going to be watching the trends, it's not unlike what's the next new widget that's going to be invented, but really like
00:45:54
Speaker
What is the what is the market demand? How are people how do people want to consume this? Do they want to go to big commercial gyms or do they want small group classes at a little private gym or do they want now we all have we all have equipment at home. You know, like I know Laurel does a kettlebell class on, you know, online. Do we just want to do our kettlebell class at home? Do we want to do
00:46:14
Speaker
pull up for a pull up class, a pull up club. You know, my friend Catherine Boudignon does one of those, you know what it like, like, how's it going to look more, more than what is it? That's my interest.
00:46:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's, I agree with you. I think it is an unknown at the moment because I think we are, you know, obviously with everything that's happened over the past couple of years, a lot of models just stopped working in a lot of ways and unfortunately for a lot of people.
Community and Fitness Post-Pandemic
00:46:42
Speaker
And some of us don't want to go back, you know, like a lot of people.
00:46:46
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of people don't want to go back. I know a lot of people that teach exclusively online now and are very happy with it and don't miss the hassle of the drive and the whatever and all that kind of stuff.
00:47:00
Speaker
I look friendly, but I'm actually really quite curmudgeonly and I although the whatever workshops I taught online, I was so happy to just be like goodbye and turn it off and not have to talk to anybody. So, you know, I think there's there's pluses and minuses to both but I do think, you know, ultimately long term, that community that we all sort of
00:47:24
Speaker
gravitated towards, whether it was specifically around yoga, whether it was just more about having like a studio where people knew you and you felt like it was, it was like the cheers bar, but it was for health activity. I mean, you know, um, you know, I think that's, I think that maybe is something that, um, some people miss a lot, you know, and, and want to get back to some people need. Yeah. Yeah.
00:47:48
Speaker
All right, well, thank you so much for joining me today and talking about all this stuff. Do you have anything coming up that you'd like our listeners to know about? I'm always running.
00:48:00
Speaker
something. I have something to sell all the time. So there's nothing specifically off the top of my head, but there's things available. So I run my science of stretching webinar twice a year. It's in every January, every July. I have a teacher training. I have a mentoring program. If you want to learn to read research, join that. There's always offerings on my website. There's no shortage. And we'll put a link to your website in our show notes for sure. Perfect. That's it. That's all I need.
00:48:30
Speaker
I'd note to you listeners, you can check out the show notes for exactly what I just talked about, links to any references we mentioned, also to Jules's website. You can also visit the Movement Logic website where you can get on our mailing list to be in the know about sales on our tutorials. If you want to watch the video version of this episode and you see what Jules and I look like when we're thinking and my recording studio, which is just a closet, let's be real, you can go to movementlogictutorials.com forward slash podcast.
00:49:00
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. It helps us out so much. If you like this episode to please subscribe and rate and review either on iTunes. It's not iTunes anymore. It's Apple podcasts. I have to like wrap my brain around it or wherever you get your podcasts. We would really appreciate it. And please join us again next week for more movement logic and our loosely held opinions and strong ideas.