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Episode 7: Joe Hippensteel - Owner and Founder of Ultimate Human Performance
84 Plays4 months ago
Welcome to another episode of the Coffee Expeditions Podcast, where we blend the richness of coffee culture with inspiring stories of exploration and personal growth. Today, we are honoured to host Joe Hippensteel, the founder and owner of Ultimate Human Performance. Joe is a leading expert in the field of human performance, specializing in flexibility, injury prevention, and recovery techniques that have transformed the lives of athletes, military personnel, and everyday individuals alike.
Joe Hippensteel is not your average fitness trainer; he is a pioneer in optimizing human potential. With decades of experience and a deep understanding of the human body, Joe has developed innovative techniques that challenge conventional fitness paradigms. His approach at Ultimate Human Performance focuses on achieving the highest level of physical performance while preventing injuries and promoting long-term health. Joe’s methods have been successfully applied to elite athletes, special forces operators, and anyone seeking to push their physical limits safely and effectively.
In this episode, Joe shares his journey from a young athlete with a passion for fitness to becoming a sought-after expert in human performance. We delve into the philosophy behind Ultimate Human Performance and explore the groundbreaking techniques that set his programs apart. Joe discusses the importance of flexibility and mobility in achieving peak performance, offering insights into how these often-overlooked aspects can prevent injuries and enhance overall well-being.
Joe also shares inspiring success stories of clients who have transformed their lives through his programs, highlighting the real-world impact of his work.
Grab your favorite cup of coffee and tune in as we explore the cutting-edge world of human performance with Joe Hippensteel. His expertise, combined with his passion for helping others achieve their best, makes this a must-listen episode for anyone looking to unlock their full potential.
Check out more from Joe Hippensteel at:
www.ultimatehumanperformance.com or his Instagram @ulitmatehumanperformancebyjoe
Check out more episodes from Coffee Expeditions on Spotify, Apple and Youtube. We are also on Instagram @coffeeexpeditions
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
um Bye!
Introduction to Joe Hippenstiel and Ultimate Human Performance
00:00:08
Speaker
Okay. And we're live. We've got episode seven of the coffee expeditions podcast and, uh, really excited today. I've got, um, someone, uh, and his team that have helped me and my family out immensely in the last year. Um, his name is Joe hip and steel. He's the owner of ultimate human performance. Uh, he's done some incredible things with incredible people, athletes, uh, regular people like myself, and, uh, it's gonna be really exciting to chat about so all the great things
Joe's Background and Training Philosophy
00:00:37
Speaker
he does.
00:00:37
Speaker
Joe, do you may mind just maybe introducing yourself to to the viewers and listeners? Sure. First, thank you, Reed, for having me. My name is Joe Hippenstiel. My company is Ultimate Human Performance. And we focus on human performance. We want to take it to the highest level. So thanks for having me, Reed. Yeah, I know. it's It's great. And just before I forget, I don't want to i don't want to forget you have a website, UltimateHumanPerformance.com. And your Instagram is all to Ultimate Human Performance by Joe. Is that correct?
00:01:07
Speaker
Yes, sir. That's it. yeah And of course you have your book, The Joe Evans Tale Method as well, which is awesome. There you go. Yeah, there it is. Yeah. So how I came to learn about you was a couple of ways. So first of all, everyone talks about, you know, you've worked with the Navy SEALs, but everybody talks about the fact that you worked with David Gaudens and he mentioned you in his book. And it's interesting because I listened to that book, but I i kind of glossed over that part of it.
00:01:33
Speaker
But I'd heard about David doing these huge stretching routines, and I just chalked it up at the time as David being extreme, you know, just David doing his extreme thing and not really understanding what he was doing. um And then, ah you know, about a year later, I was injured pretty, pretty, pretty good in jujitsu. My whole right side, lower back, glute was just locked right up.
00:01:58
Speaker
And I was in pain 24 seven. I had a big trip planned down to Austin that we we did go on. And I wanted to train with the famous instructor, John Donahue at Henzo Gracie. I had like four or five sessions plan. And I only ended up doing one cause I was just in agony. And I got lucky because I listened to Eddie Bravo, the famous jujitsu black belt from 10th planet.
Reed's Personal Experience with Joe's Methods
00:02:19
Speaker
He was on Joe Rogan and I got lucky cause I listened to the very end of that podcast. And he mentioned briefly cause he's had some serious back issues over the, over the years.
00:02:27
Speaker
He mentioned briefly how he he was introduced to you by your your um ah ah you know employee day, who's in a student of his and how much it's been beneficial to him.
00:02:40
Speaker
So I took a chance and I ah bought your videos, went on your website and i I started studying and it wasn't soon thereafter that things really started to click for me in terms of what you were seeing. I started implementing the the the the techniques and and it wasn't like a couple of weeks before I was starting to feel a lot of pain relief and and and it it also really opened my eyes to where I was at.
00:03:03
Speaker
but Maybe, um, just to start off with, uh, before we kind of get into the nuts and bolts of like what you, what you teach is like, maybe just talk about the journey of how you got to where you're at and your athletic background, if if that's okay. Cause I know you have a strong athletic background and that landed heavily to how you've created these methods. Yeah. Um, I'm glad I got the opportunity to work with you, um, since you're a black belt, since you're a fireman first responder. So.
00:03:33
Speaker
Yeah. like ah Thank you. The, I guess when I was, when I was pretty young and and always enjoyed athletics, uh, was always in three sports, at least, um, football, basketball on track. And, um, I, I did all three sports through high school, always wanted to work out, always wanted to train and lifting weights and running and everything else. And so that led me to, when I first went to college, I went to a small school in Pennsylvania.
00:04:03
Speaker
And I was a biology major thinking about med school because I wanted to keep learning more about the human body and performance and all that. And it didn't really give me what I wanted to learn. And the sports there, because it was a division three school, wasn't the big emphasis that I wanted and seriousness of the right coaching staff, et cetera. So I just ventured out and I transferred to California. I said, that's it. I'm going to train for the Olympics. I'm going to focus on track and field. I was too small to play the other sports.
00:04:33
Speaker
And when I started focusing on track and field, I wanted to do the all around sport, which is the decathlon, 10 events in track and field, all events, discus, javelin, shot, high jump, long jump, pole ball, hurdles, running events. so Because i wasn't any I wasn't good enough in any one event. So I figured, well, maybe if I did the overall, could I could ah shine in some of the events and catch up in some others and and work on my weaknesses. so So I focused on the decathlon and Because I'm small, I had to train harder and longer to compete against. All the other guys were over six foot, I'm five eight. So to high jump against them, for the shot put against them, match their strides when they're bigger and stronger, um just wasn't in the cards. So I just kept training and training and training. And after I graduated, did well there, became all American top eight Americans and got a scholar athlete the award. I was tops in my class. So everything was pointing towards keep going.
00:05:31
Speaker
try and be successful, try and take this as far as you can. So I went into training and I trained
Development of Joe's Training System
00:05:36
Speaker
for many, many years. And that's what started developing my training system, which, uh, I was able to have tremendous improvements and overcome literally over a hundred injuries over a 20 year period. I was training eight to 10 hours a day, most days, um, and trying to work on the side, lived in my car for a while so that I could train more and work less. Um,
00:05:59
Speaker
um It's really just perseverance and that's what created my system. That's where I learned what I learned. it's It's impressive because you you talked about, you know, your size compared to the other athletes and you were able to take your body to incredible heights in terms of um being at that like that upper echelon of decathlon, which is incredible. And you also, like you said, you touched on, you had like a hundred injuries, but my understanding is that's what kind of led you to figuring out how to loosen your body off and and hopefully avoid surgery.
00:06:36
Speaker
um That was a lot of trial and error, wasn't it? And along along the time along the route of the journey. Yeah. Yeah. um You know, when you're training eight hours a day, you're you're creating a lot of demand for your body. And the intensity is is um pretty demanding on the joints and the muscles and and you know, you reach fatigue levels and you keep going, you keep going. Eventually, things break down. And when When, you know, you go, I go to the physical therapist, I go to the acupuncturist, I go to the athletic trainer and they have all these gadgets and all these machines and things and stuff that, you know, they hook to you and, and you're supposed to sit there and, you know, electric stim on the muscle. And, yeah um, I just didn't find the results that I wanted. So I just kept thought, okay, maybe if I get stronger, I'm not going to have these things. And then you get more fatigued and, and, and work on my techniques. So it's most efficient. And then.
00:07:31
Speaker
ah the flexibility part and it just seemed like when I put all those together emphasizing more so the flexibility I found I discovered some some magic secrets and yeah literally what I found was when when they told me that my first big aha moment was when when I pulled a hamstring in my sprinting in I was in Arizona at the time with a with a world-class sprint coach and my Um, hamstring seemed to grab and seem to what everyone told me was a torn hamstring. And I was at the peak of my, my game. It was six weeks before the Olympic trials and I'm like, I can do this. And then my hamstring goes and without the hamstring, ah you can't sprint, you can't jump.
Breakthrough Techniques and Success Stories
00:08:19
Speaker
So, um, with everyone confirming that, yep, it's torn, nothing I can do. I thought, well, I'm just going to make it stronger. I'm going to go to the weight room. I'm going to do more hamstring curls, try and make it stronger and stronger.
00:08:30
Speaker
And that made it worse. And it worked so bad that at night I couldn't sleep. So I massaged it and I massaged it deeper. And I felt like the more I massaged deeply, the more I could stretch it. And so I kept um massaging very deeply to the point of doing what they call trigger point where you're pressing on a spot. And it seemed to melt down. That allowed me more flexibility. And then i I reached a certain level of flexibility where I could actually put my nose on my knee, my legs straight, and it was gone.
00:09:00
Speaker
And it was like my muscles torn, you know, how can that be possible? So I yeah logically, I deduced that there was a kink in the muscle. I got it out. yeah I did the same thing that I had the same discovery with my shoulder, same discovery with, with back spasms. If you reach certain levels of flexibility, all these labels that the doctors put on you, they go away. I don't care if it's migraine headache or tennis elbow or plantar fasciitis.
00:09:26
Speaker
a restless leg syndrome, back spasms, you name it. and And all those things are just tension. And when I learned certain ranges of motion to eliminate these things, all those labels go away. There's no more syndromes. There's no more of those conditions. And so what I discovered was 24 ranges of motion. And by following those 24 ranges of motion, almost anything that hurts in your musculoskeletal system goes away.
00:09:56
Speaker
I don't care what they put on it as a label for their medical lingo and for their insurance purposes and whatever, um we can make it go away. And so I started working with friends on the track to help them because I was keeping myself going, help my friends. And then I started saying, you know, I got to turn this into a business. And so we've grown now to the point where we have 10,000 clients in 57 countries. We have 58, we have a new country.
00:10:26
Speaker
And, uh, we have and over a hundred instructors trained in, in, I think 12 or 13 different countries now. So, um, we're proving success. We're working with pro athletes, working with the Navy SEALs. The biggest thing we've spent 14 years with Navy SEALs and they are a very, very tough population to work with. And we are just making their injuries go away. And, uh, it almost causes antagonism with the physical therapists and the athletic trainers there because our stuff works.
00:10:52
Speaker
and they go to them and they hook them up to a machine, electric, stem, or acupuncture, or whatever they do. and And it's just not doing what we can do. So we're finding miraculous results. It's, it's been amazing for me. Uh, first of all, I didn't understand what my range of emotions, like how bad they were. And I didn't definitely didn't understand how to loosen my body off. I had, I had researched, uh, stretching, trying to figure it out for my whole life. Pretty much had limited results. Um, I enjoy yoga, but it didn't really work for me. Uh, and then when I started doing your, uh, your 24 inches of motion and
00:11:33
Speaker
learning about your your system. It just made a huge difference. I was able to, uh, it took, it took time. It took a lot of work and effort, but my ranges are pretty much like probably 80, 85% or more fully open now, I'd say. And, uh, I've just got a couple more that I've got to kind of, you know, kind of keep working at. And that's been like eight months of, of work. Um, so yeah, it's been pretty, pretty incredible. Uh, now for you, for you, you started working with the Navy seals, but you you were working with professional athletes before that. Is that correct?
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah, I was able to start with a few golfers and, uh, baseball pitchers. And, um, you know, like, like right now there's a epidemic in elbow injuries and shoulder injuries with pitchers. And bottom line is none of them have the ranges of motion that they should. Um, interestingly, some of the ones from Japan who do a lot of flexibility work, they have less injuries. And so, interesting yeah. Um, so, but the pro athletes that I worked with, uh, and the Navy SEALs that I worked with,
00:12:36
Speaker
We just kept accumulating more and more data more and more success and we got to hundreds of of of You know high-level athletes like that and then it became thousands so the results are the same we just keep hammering away and Teaching flexibility and like you said, you know, you're in jujitsu. So I know you have decent flexibility But there's a lot of contractions when you don't jujitsu over and over and over hundreds and hundreds of So you're using your whole body like, you know, like wrestling, jujitsu, et cetera. And so there's gotta be a standard and what makes us different is we have a standard. We have an exact protocol. It's not just stretching. Stretching is kind of a overall term that's overused and not really understood. And we've taken it to, to the, to the umpteenth level where if you reach an exact level, your pain is gone.
00:13:33
Speaker
And we've got to, well, we have what's called the building phase and the maintenance phase. Got to go through the building phase, holding a stretch for two minutes. Who holds a stretch for two minutes? great yeah They do have, they do have some holds in yoga, but there's no consistency. There's no repetition of of the same range of motion over and over and over. Two minutes on, one minute rest, two minutes on, one minute rest. They go right to another pose and another pose and another pose. Ours is exact. You have to build what we call the basic building blocks first. Then you expand on that.
00:14:03
Speaker
So your whole body is reworked. That's what, like for me, what really hit home is, number one, you had a standard. So for people that don't maybe understand that, it means um when you're doing these stretches, it's sort of a target that you're looking to try to get your body to. And then secondly, the big thing for me that was crucial was you have progression. So it was like, okay, we're not maybe going to do all 24 stretches initially because you're too tight to do all of those. so So we'll start off with five or six and we'll build those up. And once you start hitting those standards, we'll start adding more on. And that was huge because the first part of it is I could measure, I had a measurable, okay, this is you know where I'm at. I'm like so far off of your standard.
00:14:50
Speaker
And the second part of it is it it it gave me a clear path. Like I wasn't kind of randomly trying to stretch something. And then the other thing is you define, like there's rules to what you do. So when people look at this program, they might come in and go, Oh, it's just 24 ranges of motion. Well, no, no, there's, there's complexity here. There there's, you have to understand what you're doing. It's not that you can't do it. It's not so complex that you can't do it. You can definitely easily learn it.
00:15:16
Speaker
But there's complexity like i've been doing it for eight months and i'm still learning the little nuances to what's going on here you know i went back and preparing for this podcast and i was like i listen to a few things you're saying a couple of your interviews and couple and i'm like how now that makes sense like what you said made sense like i studied john down her a lot for jiu jitsu and.
00:15:39
Speaker
he's ah He's a legend in that world. And a lot of people can't listen to him because he he he talks very slowly and methodically. But I think it's not so much that. It's that he's giving so many nuggets of information along the way. Sometimes you're not ready to absorb that. And so what I found is at first, yeah, like things were clicking. i'm I'm learning what you're saying. But now, like eight months later, it's now it's starting to click even more. And and so Having that, that progression, those standards, those goals really, really helped me, uh, you know, progress and, and my, and my daughter and my wife, they've, they've immensely it's, it's helped them immensely.
The Two-Step Methodology Explained
00:16:14
Speaker
It's, it's phenomenal, uh, overall. Yeah. Um, you hit the nail on the head. There's definitely specifics. There's definitely, um, goals with with exact standards. Uh, but what we do is we break it down into what we call the basic building blocks first, four lower body.
00:16:32
Speaker
to upper body stretches that once you conquered those, you can add the rest and you may never need all 24. But you may need 15 of them. If you're a runner, you need all the lower body ones. But as an example, most people can't sit with their legs crossed, leaning forward and touch their head to the ground. Right. And that doesn't, you know, people kind of laugh at that saying, Oh, I'm just tight. Well, it's not a genetic joke. yeah yeah It's it's It's something that you've created in your lifestyle through your training or through your lifestyle or the way you sit over and over at a computer eight hours a day, you know, whatever it is that created it, you have to undo it. You can't just accept it. And then by the time you're 40 years old, everything hurts. And the doctors say, Oh, you're just aging. You have arthritis and bursitis and tendonitis and all these things. I'm like, no, do the maintenance.
00:17:24
Speaker
You know, make if you want to make your car last 250,000 miles, you got to change the oil. You got to do the change the fluids. You got to keep it maintained. You've got to maintain the human body. People aren't doing that. They just work out, work out, work out until they can't do it anymore. Then the doctor tells all you need knee surgery. Okay, fine. And and it it's it's the wrong way to go. You can do it naturally. You can do it um consistently and stay young.
00:17:51
Speaker
I tell people you're going to be 17 years old forever when you've received ranges. And they think I'm kidding. And I get emails or texts a month or two later and they say, you weren't kidding. ready it's um it's um It's amazing. I feel a million times better than I did a year ago. And and ah and now, like this is one thing I was thinking about too is, first of all, I didn't have an ability. I didn't know where my ranges should be.
00:18:18
Speaker
Now I have, my ranges are, you know, they're getting there. They're not, they're not a hundred percent there, but they're almost there. But I call it now. Um, so what happens is, so let's just say I go for a big mountain bike ride and, and, and then I don't stretch that day and I sleep overnight. And then I stretch the next day. My ranges have, like they've, they've reduced. And, and so what I, I almost think of it now is I'm resetting my ranges of motion to where they should be. And, and I, i Madison, my daughter and I were talking about this yesterday.
00:18:49
Speaker
I don't understand how people do it when they don't have this knowledge. And I think I told you that years ago, I said, I don't understand how everybody doesn't understand or know this stuff because it's, especially as you get older, I mean, it's definitely important for young athletes. But as you get older, this is, it's so important. And it's, it's, um, it's really a game changer. It's been a game changer for, for, for my life for sure. It's, it's huge. just no question about It is, it is a, it's a,
00:19:17
Speaker
It's a life-altering concept, and once you know it, you can't unknow it. and Once you start doing this and you feel the results, you actually feel them every day. When you skip a day, it's like, no, I want to go back and do it because it feels good to do it. Spending the time, getting the body back to the maintenance level, and from there, you know in the athletic world right now, they they say, don't do static stretching before you work out because you'll inactivate the muscles.
00:19:46
Speaker
That's just, that's just wrong. It's just wrong. They do dynamic warmup. Everybody's on dynamic warmup. You gotta do some static stretching to get to your range. Then you do dynamic to warm up for the activity that you're doing. But you've got to do, if you if you don't do the static stretching to our level and maintain that every day that you train or every day day that you sit at your desk or whatever your lifestyle is, you get tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter.
00:20:16
Speaker
The muscles get shorter and shorter and then things start to hurt and they give you a label. Oh, you have tennis elbow. You have plantar fasciitis. You have a bulging disc and all this is tension. It's just tension. If we can just get the word out for that for people to understand, why does your, why do you have migraine headaches? There's tension in two little muscles in the back of your neck. Choking nerves. Why do you have tennis elbow? Because you've overused these on your backhand and tennis to the point where now instead of being eight inches long, they're six inches long.
00:20:46
Speaker
So now we got to go in and we got to stretch them. We've got to open them up. We've got to get those ranges of motion back yeah to the level that all kids can do, no adults can do. All kids can do our ranges, every one of them. And once you can get back to that, literally you're 17 years old forever. It's an amazing miracle.
00:21:04
Speaker
it What you just said there is like, it's something that is so important for people to try to understand that. and And I think the more that you're in tune with your body, the more you're kind of kind of get that combined with the stretching principles. I had no idea any of that. And now I very much understand it. And I'm still learning, of course, but the idea that repetitive ah firing of your muscle will tighten your muscles up and reduce your ranges of motion.
00:21:33
Speaker
And um so like i still use other things right there like this is my number one like the stretching is my number one it took over everything else and it it's still my number one it will always will be i use things like a spa and sauna and i you know go to massage a little bit.
00:21:47
Speaker
But things like those things, uh, you know, like a lacrosse ball on the wall, that's not going to increase your ranges of motion. This will increase your range of motion. Those things are great supplemental things to this in my opinion. Um, but if you, if you don't have your ranges of motion open and yet you're just going to teeter on injury eventually and, and, and cause problems, is that kind of a fair assessment, um, on, on that. Yeah. A lot of people will go to massage therapists and they have them do trigger point work. So if they have a.
00:22:15
Speaker
can't get in there back or whatever and and they press on it and it and it kind of melts down the tension, but it doesn't lengthen the muscle. If you have a seven inch muscle in an eight inch slot, you can press on it all you want and and try and melt down some of the tension. But if it's not eight inches long, you're still going to have that tension there once you get up from the table. So all those other things are just superfluous too. The base um has to be flexibility to a standard and that's what we're teaching. And I know you get it as a, as a jujitsu guy and as a middle-aged person, um, you jumped on this and you did phenomenally well right from the beginning because you took it seriously. And as you felt the improvements, it's like, okay, I want to keep going. So I'm really proud of you. re for yeah
00:23:01
Speaker
yeah Thank you so much. and you know And thank you to you and your team. like the The thing that I did that helped me like for anyone that might be starting this is I right away took pictures of where I was at. So I looked out learned your standards. You explained where they should be at. And like you know if you look at someone like Mimi, she can drop into all these in like 10 minutes and it's incredible to see. Now for me, I was doing an hour and a half, which to people they'll be like, Oh my God, an hour and a half. But when you understand why you're doing it for an hour and a half, and that that's not always going to be the case, it makes a lot of sense. And when I would take those pictures and I would look at my, where I was, I was like, Holy macro, I'm so far off.
00:23:40
Speaker
of of what, where I, you know, what the targets I should be aiming for. And then after two weeks, a month, I would take more pictures. I took probably six or seven, I haven't done it in a little while, like progression pictures, and you can see the improvements. And I think like for people, if you can kind of understand that it's going to take some time, depending, not everybody's a little bit different, of course, but someone like myself that was so tight at 53 years old, I'm undoing essentially like 50 years of like,
00:24:08
Speaker
playing hard. So it's going to take time to to get there. But when you see that, when you see that happening, oh, man, it's so rewarding. And then you just feel better. And then you start to realize, no, this is effective. It actually works. Yeah, and you're right. You have to undo decades worth of typing. And um the way you describe it is you have to go through this building phase. That's why people are at the beginning doing an hour and a half, maybe two hours.
00:24:37
Speaker
Some of our Navy SEALs are stretching three hours a day <unk> start to start the process and then repeat the process and then repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it to undo years of hard, hard training. But you get to the point where here's the goal. You reach our standards 20 minutes a day and nothing hurts. So you have to work your way from an hour and a half to work your way down to 20 minutes a day. But it does take time. And in our program, we'll use 18 different criteria.
00:25:07
Speaker
um Not just, well, how long should you stretch? I've read articles for all these PhDs and doctorates in physical therapy, and they're talking about, oh, you should stretch for 30 seconds.
Scientific Approach vs. Common Opinions
00:25:16
Speaker
Well, they don't even know which stretches to do, how long to do them, whether they're in the building phase or the maintenance phase. What's the progression? What's this what's the um you know the basic building blocks leading into the more complex stretches? So it's just kind of a random opinion. We don't have opinion. We have science, and we finally developed it. We perfected it. and having tremendous results. We have people that fly in to us from New York or from Australia just to get their back out of spasm that they've had for 10 years and they've spent tens of thousands of dollars with chiropractors and acupuncturists and and e-stim and physical therapy and it just doesn't work for most people. You've got to get your body back to what you can do. Kids don't have back spasm.
00:26:00
Speaker
Kids don't have tennis elbow because they're just naturally loose until they screw it up and for decades worth of work, right? Yeah. yeah from From playing hard, getting into sports, and and maybe or maybe working in construction, whatever it might be. ah you' know You're swinging a hammer all day long. um the One of the things that like I was thinking about this quite a bit over the last like eight months is the and if i want to bounce it off use it seems like the human muscle it's kinda and and the human body like the human first of all the human body doesn't seem to give good indicator sometimes of of where you're at so i would use the example of thirst i give you feel thirsty in a marathon or say i got ultra endurance event it's probably way late like you're probably almost like you know.
00:26:44
Speaker
maybe a day behind even or maybe like half a day behind in your what you should be. So the signals it seems to give you are are not the greatest. And would you say that like muscles are similar in that regard where they're not telling you that they're getting tighter and you're able to operate for a long time until they finally either pop a ligament or tendon or the muscle like just spasms. um Is that is that a fair assessment? Would you say? Yeah, absolutely.
Understanding Muscle Lock and Treatment
00:27:09
Speaker
Absolutely. And we when a muscle goes beyond tight,
00:27:14
Speaker
It'll lock. There's 12 reasons why a muscle will lock. For example, impact injury. If you have a web blast, a car hits you and your head goes like this. lucky The muscles in the neck are literally gonna lock to prevent the the vertebra and the ligaments from tearing. And if they wouldn't lock, your head would, you'd crack a spine, you you would,
00:27:41
Speaker
um you know, herniated disc, you turn the lateness. And so once those muscles lock, they do not unlock unless you do what we teach. You can go get trigger point, you can go do E-Stim, you can do the dry needling and all the gadgets and stuff they do. The bottom line is if you don't lengthen that muscle to the length it's supposed to be, it's going to be a problem. And so, um, you've got to be able to, to persevere with a specific goal in mind if it takes a month or six months or whatever it takes.
00:28:11
Speaker
you have a choice. People say, why don't we have time to stretch for an hour and a half a day? Okay, if you have time to hurt for the rest of your life, you have time to get those surgeries, and then recover from the surgeries for six months where you can't do anything anyway. So why don't you put the time in now? um and And stay ahead of it, rather than continue to get behind it. Yeah, when when we worked with the Navy SEALs and Dave Goggins, who with his book can't hurt me. 5 million people have read the book. And he says I saved his life there. Bottom line is He had trained and trained and trained and trained all to marathons and alter everything. Everything he does was extreme to the point where he couldn't move anymore. It's like standing in the North Pole with no clothes on. you just You're just frozen. Doctors are trying to pump drugs into him. He was on 17 different meds when he finally called me up and says, Joe, you saved my life. I started stretching. I thought stretching was bullshit. I thought it was just a waste of time.
00:29:03
Speaker
He said, now I do it every day. Yeah. he's And he's religious with it now, isn't he? He's like, for like, for a long time, he's been, and this is the thing is that, so he's extreme. He's an extreme athlete, extreme endurance athlete and and and amazing, amazing performer. And now I'm, I'm very recreational, but I still was able to lock my muscles up severely to the point where I was in pain 24 seven, couldn't sleep at all.
00:29:30
Speaker
One of the things that I wanted to touch on is it seems like, and and I know you've got some pretty interesting cases where the muscle locks so tight, like you just said, where it might take a long time for this muscle to to to release. I think people don't understand that. Like I definitely did not understand that. I would have just thought, well, you know, the muscle, you just stretch it out of it and it'll be good again. But when it's locked, it it it it's like, it has a mind of its own almost. Is that a fair kind of assessment? Yeah, we call it muscle lock.
00:29:59
Speaker
It's a new term we're introducing to the world that really describes what the problem is. If you have a migraine headache, you have muscle lock and two little muscles behind the on your neck. If you have tennis elbow, you have muscle lock in your forearm. Plantar fasciitis has nothing to do with the fascia. It's the arch muscles that control the toes that are too tight. They're locked. Muscle lock. Restless leg syndrome, where people have to constantly move to get blood flow. It's because their muscles are locked.
00:30:27
Speaker
it chokes nerves and and it chokes all blood vessels so you've got to keep moving. So all these things again are are what we call muscle lock. The way out is a lot of stretching very specifically the way we do it. Two minutes on, one minute off, two minutes on, one minute off. We may do four or five reps of one position then move on to the more advanced position and the next position and in addition to the stretching then we do a little bit of trigger point work or a little bit of deep tissue massage work in order to kind of melt down some of the tension, then we should go right back to stretching. An important point, trigger point is not a therapy. If you go to any physical therapist or massage therapist, of course it's a therapy. No, what it really is, it's an aid to the stretching. Stretching is the key. Trigger point helps the stretching. But if you go there to a massage and they and they work on your trigger points in your back, oh, that feels great. 15 minutes later, they're back again because you haven't lengthened the muscles. So you haven't changed anything.
00:31:28
Speaker
All you've done is calm them down a little bit for a few minutes. So, you know, that's what we're trying to teach is, bottom line is if it takes work. You got to undo, like you said, decades, sometimes worth of accumulative tension that you've created with your lifestyle or with your training or whatever you do. Even even when I see kids these days, you know, if they're if they're reading, they're playing with their their video and they're leaning, let's say on their elbow on this side, they're using the left hand to do all the work they're They're taking their neck and they're doing this for an hour on their neck and you're creating a problem. So you gotta to be conscious of what you're doing. You have to know how to um do what you're doing. That's what we have. 24 ranges to do that. and or Or like looking at their cell phone with their head lean way forward. Yeah. All that. All that. The the one thing that um
00:32:19
Speaker
that like what i what I found is like with the muscles being so tight and and and it's interesting because I was lucky to come down with my daughter and we spent a week with you and learned. the stretching seminar, learn the techniques of the trigger. and And you'd said all the way through is like trigger is like maybe 10 or 20% of it. It's the bulk of this is stretching and it's absolutely been true. Like I've done some trigger for my daughter cause she doesn't do sports and it has helped her, but we very, very little, need like barely ever need that because we are stretching so well. And, and so it's only occasionally that she might have a real tight cramp or something from just training hard that will will utilize that.
00:32:57
Speaker
But it's, it's, it goes back to, I think your point there is understanding what the muscle, what you're doing with the muscle is going to be a big aid to getting it back to where it should be. And, and, and, and so like understanding what is the pressure of the trigger point doing versus the, the actual, uh, stretching or, um, ah to get that range of motion back. and And that's something I didn't understand at all. Yeah. Um, because without trying to.
00:33:26
Speaker
We are training the muscle to be tight with our lifestyle. We're training it. Let's say you're a marathon runner and your range of emotions are like this instead of sprinting like this. So, you know, if you go out and run 10 miles a day or whatever, whatever your goals are, whatever your, um, no plan is for your, for your training, you're doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over. And you're training your muscles to be tight.
00:33:54
Speaker
We have to train them to open back up. It's not a matter of just, okay, you're gonna press on over your thumb or do dry needling or electric stem where it gives you pulses or whatever. You gotta train it to open back up. How do you do that? You try and hold it open for two minutes and then you rest. And then when you're resting after two minutes, a little bit of blood's gonna seep into those little gaps that you've opened and the duct drops off the calcium and magnesium. It's like putting oil on a tin man on a Wizard of Oz.
00:34:23
Speaker
Yeah. another two minutes And you rest and you absorb some more blood and another two minutes over and over and over. It may take days. It may take weeks. It may take months, yeah but you're training it to open back up again. But and people, I have sometimes people call me and they say, well, I've been stretching, uh, you go on your basic building blocks for three months and my back's still tight. And I say, okay, so what else are you doing? Uh, tell me about your workouts. Oh, well, I lift weights four days a week. I run five days a week. I'm doing bike three days a week.
00:34:51
Speaker
I said, how much is stretching? Why stretch for 30 minutes, three times a week? Okay, you see the difference? Yeah, I'm stretching 20 hours of training. So if you want to cancel it, and you want to reverse that process, you got to commit to it. And it's, it's hard work.
Importance of Consistent Stretching for Athletes
00:35:06
Speaker
I'm not saying you just stretch a little bit. and It's fine. It's hard work. But it is the answer. Yeah.
00:35:12
Speaker
i it i And this is a thing like for people listening or, you know, watching the video is when when Joe says it's hard work, he means it. Like the the things he's saying, these are all important things to understand now. It's doable. It's like when I when i did took the challenge of so opening up my ranges of motion, it was hard. Like it's it's as hard as any athletic endeavor I've done. Not hard, like, not like painful hard, not like,
00:35:39
Speaker
You know, mentally, I think it's mentally, you just got to get into a routine, be consistent. And, and now, like I said, if I go for like, say a hard mountain bike ride two, three hours and I come back in.
00:35:51
Speaker
and I sleep overnight and I haven't stretched, immediately everything's tightened up like I said earlier. and and And I know that and so now I just reset it back to where it was. I'm able to reset it to where it should be versus what I would have done before is not stretched. So now it's tight and then I go out and I ah ah ride again and I'm able to get through the ride and I'm tighter and I'm tighter and you but you don't realize this. and And I kind of equate it to like sometimes people will be like, oh, I don't have time, an hour and a half or whatever. it's like If you look at it like almost sometimes you'll see somebody wants to go into the gym and they were like, I want to put 20 pounds of size on. Well, it's going to take some time to to to to change your body and put that size on. It's going to take six months, a year, whatever. Well, it's kind of the same and in my mind in this. You're kind of making microscopic changes back to where you should have been. Is is that a fair kind of a fair assessment or comparison? Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's it's perseverance. If you want to change your physiology, you you have to persevere.
00:36:49
Speaker
Yeah, there's no shortcuts. Now, that being said, 20% of the population has natural flexibility. Yeah, they're 80% doesn't. The 20% can go to a yoga class, they can do whatever they want to do and do it all wrong. And the body's still open. Yeah, they're 80%. Not going to happen. if People that enjoy yoga are the ones who have natural flexibility.
00:37:09
Speaker
The rest of them, they can enjoy it because there's so many people that get injured in yoga trying to keep up with these skinny little yoga instructor up front because they make it look so easy. And you've got to be really careful. You've got to have a protocol. This is a is a medical, scientific protocol that we've developed. And it's the cure. It really is. It's it's the answer.
00:37:32
Speaker
but takes more experience It's hard work. Sure. It's it hard work. And yeah the other thing too, like what I was thinking about with athletes, and I don't know, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but i so if I looked at my, my two daughters, my, my older daughter going through soccer, I think she got really tight, really young, like 13, 14 years old. You'd watch her running and honest Austin, honestly, like she was one of the most technical players at the time in our kind of local soccer scene. She was very, like, you know, for this area, they both were very, very good for,
00:38:00
Speaker
for this local little area. ah um But it it was almost like watching her running in sand sometimes. It looked like she was so tight versus my other daughter, effortless, effortless running, effortless movement. And I wonder sometimes with athletes, some athletes have, like you said, that extra ability or the extra flexibility ah and and a range of motions longer, almost like they can, sustain they've they've they've got the natural flexibility, but they're able to sustain it longer. So I think though, eventually you will tighten up even with, with, if you know, if you're doing your sport long enough, hard enough, you will tighten. It might not be at 14 years old. It might be 26 years old. Is that kind of a fair statement or? Yeah. The 20% of the population that has natural flexibility. Yes, eventually they'll tighten up, but it takes them a week, two weeks and okay all the ranges are back. Whereas the rest of us, you get into your forties and fifties, it may take you months. It may take you a year to get your ranges in motion back.
00:38:58
Speaker
I'm constantly working on my body because I've worked so many hours on my clients and maybe seals and it's very demanding. I've gotten to the point where I had to back off in the last month or two and and spend more time with me. I'm spending three hours a day stretching right now. I still have some kinks I'm working on, so it's always a challenge, but it's something I have to do to get back to my maintenance level um and this work. Now, one thing that we're talking about where people are So many people are going to say, well, I don't have an hour and a half. Okay. But you're going to hurt. You're going to continue to hurt. Yeah. But I still don't have an hour. Okay. Do you watch television? Sometimes we prescribe. Okay. You have to watch five two hour movies this week. Okay. I can do that. Stretch. Why are you doing it? That's why I have the pause button. You lean forward to put your head towards the ground. You press the pause button. And before you know it, you're watching the whole movie and you're stretching the whole time.
00:39:52
Speaker
and your body turns out better because of it. So you can make the time. I often will, uh, I've got my routine down. I'll have either an audible book going or music or, or a podcast, right? And I just throw that on in the background and, or, you know, sometimes we do it as a family too. So it's, we're, I'm very lucky that way. My, my girls didn't want to do it with me. So we'll just chitchat about everybody's day. Uh, but we make the time we definitely, we definitely try to, you know, we make the time and we're very religious about it. It's pretty much almost every day, I'd say five days out of seven in a week kind of thing, something to that effect.
00:40:26
Speaker
And, um, it's, it's been, it's been excellent. Um,
Success Stories with Navy SEALs
00:40:30
Speaker
I was going to ask you a little bit about how did you get involved with the Navy SEALs and how, how did that all come about? Because you've worked with them for 14 years. And obviously those guys are and incredibly tight. I would imagine like they're elite athletes. They're working really, really hard. Uh, and, and I just, how did, how did that all come? How did that all come about? Yeah. Um, you know, I just kept teaching what I do and.
00:40:57
Speaker
When we were out on the track one day doing a hard track workout, and one of the guys was there, a stranger that we met before he was doing sprints. And we started talking and he said he had a knee issue. So I said, well, you know, I can help you with the knee. Oh, no, no, I have to get knee surgery. I played NFL football for, you know, in America. And I said, well, tell me what's wrong with you. He goes, well, you know, I got damage in the joint, you know, and and arthritis. And I said, well, come see me. I said, let's, let's spend a session.
00:41:26
Speaker
And it took, I think, three or four sessions. His knee was completely better. He's doing squats. He's like, well, he went to the Naval Academy and was in the Navy for a few years. And so he knew some of the Navy SEAL captains and one admiral. And so he said, I want to and introduce these guys. So we went in the first day that we introduced what we do to them. They jumped on it and they said, okay, let's do a seminar. They said, how many guys do you need? How many hours? And we said, well, look we agreed on 25 guys.
00:41:56
Speaker
three days, three hours each. And we had three of us instructors. And we had 22 out of 25 guys say, Oh my God, this is life changing. We got to have this. We got to add this for training. The three guys in the back of the room, they didn't like it. Dave Goggins. and dr They just thought it was bullshit. yeah stretch And they told him to were like, no, no, no, we got to do this. So maybe seal foundation jumped in, started funding our program and They just give us free reigns to work on the guys. So yeah, it it's been a great run. That's amazing. I mean, and, and, and I'm sure there's nobody that would need it more as those guys, the the amount that they punish their bodies and how tight they get. And, and they're trying to operate, um, at elite levels for years and years. So the more that they can back their bodies off and loosen them off, hopefully, you know, the better they can operate and do and do their jobs. Right.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah, we've saved over at least 400 guys from surgery. You know, schedule a surgery or knowing that's the only alternative and we get them to stretch out the tension and joints don't hurt anymore. yeah And it's funny, the physical therapist will say, well, you still have pathology and joint, you need surgery. And like, if I have full range of motion, I have full strength, and it doesn't hurt, why would I get surgery? Because you want me to? That's not the right reason.
00:43:17
Speaker
Yeah, that's like what what I sort of thought too is, I mean, I was in so much pain and I sympathize for people that are in pain, like 24 seven, because I was in so much pain that I was willing to do just about anything to get out of it. And when I, when I started studying your, your, your program and learning about it, and kind of it was working, I was thinking, why wouldn't you people at least try this? I try it and just see, but you do have to commit. It is hard work. You've got to kind of really get in tune with your body and and and put the time commitment in.
00:43:45
Speaker
But clearly it's worked for the Navy SEALs. I was lucky when I came down, i you had one of the Navy SEALs came in, we were able to work on him a little bit, which is which was a real honor and privilege. um You've also had some other notable people that you worked with, like Eddie Bravo, who had severe, he's had severe back injury. I know Joe Rogan and him have talked about it quite a bit. And yeah I think he had surgery and he's had quite a quite a bit of success, I think, through your program as well. Is that is that fairly correct?
00:44:13
Speaker
Yeah, we've had the privilege of working with a lot of professional athletes and Eddie Bravo, who has been a world champion, has had problems with his back for six years, had one back surgery. They told him he's going to have to come back and get another back surgery. We had not done jujitsu for six years. And one of my employees a kept kept talking to him about, she's also a student of his and he, and she says, no, we can help you.
00:44:43
Speaker
He says, I've had so many people tell me they have the right guy to help me and all this. And so he finally came down and tried it. And in one day is 50% better. Never had the second back surgery stretches almost every day. He says, some days it feels so good. He forgets to stretch. That's awesome. Oh, that's good. That's good to hear. Yeah. i can like Great, great, great clients like that, but a real jumped on it and, and, uh, loved it. And, and, and open-minded enough to give it a try. That's a, that's a big part of it too, because a lot of times I think in,
00:45:12
Speaker
In society, for whatever reason, we we get our biases or we get our, you know, people, you know, maybe say, Oh, that's not going to work or whatever. What are some of the biggest challenges that you found with people in terms of like buying in, is it, is it like, they'll like the time commitment thing or, or is there other things that
Common Misconceptions about Stretching
00:45:30
Speaker
kind of come up that people kind of like, like resist the idea of trying it or. Um, time commitment is a big thing.
00:45:39
Speaker
Um, but when we take them through the first session, we usually spend an hour and a half of them. And I do that in order to make them feel better. yeah In other words, I do it until they feel better when they feel it. Then they have a choice. They want to keep feeling better and keep doing it, but they can back off and whine and complain for the rest of the life and not great yet. That's probably the biggest challenge is the time commitment. Um, believing that they can, uh, get rid of like bulging discs or or anything that's that's serious like that. And the doctors are telling them one thing, now you're gonna have to have surgery, you have a herniated disc, or saying, no, let's start bending the spine different ways, nice and slowly, carefully, so that you create more space between the vertebra. um Therefore, it's not gonna squash the vertebra, therefore, it's not gonna split open. And it's hard for them to understand the medical significance of what we're doing, because the doctors are telling them something different. And of course, the doctors are smarter
00:46:37
Speaker
Right. Yeah. yeah i to go into too biggest challenges and hurdles Yeah. That makes sense. And and I think like I was thinking about this a little bit, you know, from a personal point of view, sometimes you don't have, you don't have the knowledge about your body. Even like when I got into studying everything, I started actually studying the muscle structure, like the different muscles and I, and I had misconceptions on what muscles, like how many muscles were say in you know your hip flexors? What is that even? and And not even really understanding that whole like idea. And once I started to kind of study the different muscles and kind of looking at, okay, this is how they work, how they operate you know to a very rudimentary level, then it started to click a lot more. And I think one of the big things that you chat about quite a bit is type tight hip flexors from sitting. And that's been a big thing for me. When I stretch and I do your routine,
00:47:28
Speaker
My, I feel everything's reset. My hip flexors, they might not be perfect, but they're definitely like probably 95% better. Um, is that one of the biggest things that you've kind of come across with your clients or? Yeah. I mean, the number one injury is, is low back. Um, people have back spasms, herniated disc bulging discs, pinched nerves, um, misalignments. And so much of it is caused from sitting, sitting your own way. When you're sitting, your hips are rotated forward into what's called anterior pelvic tilt.
00:47:58
Speaker
because your hip flexors, your quads and your thighs are in a shortened position. When you stand out and you feel like you have to lean back and kind of open up your back, you're not stretching your back, you're stretching your hip flexors to get your hips to rotate back so you don't have all that tension in the front. And so we teach people how to sit. People buy $600 chairs and that's not the answer. Loan bar supports and all that.
00:48:25
Speaker
Bottom line is you got to stretch out the hip flexors so you're not in anterior pelvic tilt. right Now, doctors and physical therapists know what that term means. They have no idea what to do for it. We have very specific stretches that can undo that. that's that's That's one of the things that you'd said there is that you know when people so people sit there, hip flexors get tight. So this is, again, something that I think people don't really understand well is that putting your hit your your muscles in a certain position That almost, it almost creates a memory of sorts for the muscles. I don't know how to script. Is that kind of like a, I don't know if that's a good way to describe it, but that's the way I think of it. So when they create that sort of like quote unquote memory, now they don't want to extend and now everything's tighter because of it. So if you're looking at your cell phone and your next forward, or you're sitting in your hips, you're like bent now yeah for hours and hours and hours, that's reducing your range of motion. Is that kind of training? Again, you're training your muscles to be short without trying to.
00:49:25
Speaker
You have to be conscious of what you're doing in your lifestyle and in your movements and in your training in order to know how to cancel that. problem's all that makes that makes That makes total sense.
00:49:39
Speaker
now um So what other like, uh, so what other sort of things would you, would you recommend in terms of like, if someone was coming to work with you or, or, or see you, what other things would you, um, chat with them about primarily be probably, I would imagine the, the ranges of motion, but you also go through nutrition sometimes and, and, uh, uh, and meditation as well as mental readiness for, for taking on, on things.
Meditation and Its Role in Flexibility
00:50:06
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Um, if you're an athlete and if you're,
00:50:11
Speaker
training or competing at a high level, or even if you're a normal person that doesn't have the high athletic goals, you still have to learn how to control your metabolism. Part of our ultimate human performance is learning how to control your metabolism. If you're if you're in gear all the time, when we wake up in the morning, our brain waves go to a certain speed based on our goals.
00:50:39
Speaker
So you wake up and you think, oh, I gotta to do this, I gotta do that, to be here after they're off the schedule. So you immediately put it in gear. That gear that you put it in um makes your brainwave frequencies go up to above 21 cycles per second on an EEG reading. When you meditate, you learn to slow it down, just like when you're sleeping, to 10 cycles per second or below. If you're going 16 hours a day, every day, all your life, and you're in gear, in gear, in gear, never take it out of gear except when you sleep,
00:51:06
Speaker
It's hard to get fully relaxed when you sleep. You don't get enough sleep. It's better to to split that and tap take a meditation, take a stretch where you calm things down, yeah let your body catch up. Otherwise you're always you're always in catch up mode where your metabolism, your your immune system is trying to catch up. So if you slow your metabolism down, your immune system can boost.
00:51:34
Speaker
Right. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't your immune system's taxed all the time. So it's, it's, I wasn't down. So we teach meditation. We teach it the right way. It's a lot of people that, that like, I hear some of these meditations on the internet and, and, and the, the teacher will say, take a deep breath. That's not taking a deep breath. That's exhaling. You got to inhale. You got to hold the air in your lungs so that you have time to get it in your blood.
00:52:04
Speaker
We hold eight seconds. And at the bottom of, after you exhale, we hold for eight seconds without breathing so you can feel what it feels like to be completely motionless, completely calm. As you focus on the calm, increase the oxygen, focus on the calm, everything slows down. Your immune system works perfectly then.
00:52:23
Speaker
it's It's something that I'm not particularly good at because I haven't put a ton of effort in other than when we came down there and I definitely enjoyed it. the Like when we came down for the week and you did a little bit of it with us. But I do find that just doing the stretching alone seems to calm my body down. They just let it alone for an hour and a half. Like everything ah just seems to, I just relax, if that makes sense. Yeah. When you hold certain positions um without moving, you when you do what we call long, sustained side of stretching.
00:52:53
Speaker
You have to calm down. You can't be jittery. You can't be hyper. You got to calm it down. So it is a form of meditation just on the stretches. So if you learn to take deep breaths while you're doing it, it gives your immune system even more of a boost.
00:53:06
Speaker
it's It's impressive, or ah one of the things that sort of impressive, but it's also an amazing thing for me was the idea of learning to listen to your your your body in terms of like, like we you have certain rules, like, you know, like, you know, pain rules and different things. Like we don't take it above a seven out of 10, you know, roughly. ah One of the things is that When the body relaxes, that, that moment really is incredible that you can get a little more, like you'll actually like the muscle relax and stretch out a little bit more. And when you look at like, so I'm going to try to put a couple of before and after pictures up on, on the video here, you look at where I was and where I'm at now, people will look at the, um, the end, the end and end result, and they'll say, that's crazy. Like, say like, you know, um, the quad stretch.
00:53:56
Speaker
And, and when I first started doing that, I hated it. I was like, oh man, I, this, this is terrible. I can't stand it. And then, but I had to really start to relax, relax, listen to the body. And then like one of the key things that you're certain, just a few little tools that you you utilize, like maybe ah like the calf board and the pillows and things.
00:54:15
Speaker
Once I started to do that, I could just calm and relax and let the body do its thing. And now I'm hitting like that quad stretch fully, which is insane. If if you'd seen where it's like, I'll try to put the video, the picture up and that's where like sometimes people will have skepticism. They'll see that and all that's crazy. But I'm living proof of that it worked, right? And at least for myself, it worked really well, you know? Yeah, yeah readid what's interesting is if you go to a physical therapist,
00:54:43
Speaker
Someone who has a doctorate degree in physical therapy, they're supposed to be the experts in flexibility and strength and rehab and all that. And we say, what is your standard for this range of motion? And they say, what do you mean? And I say, what do you mean? What do I mean? You don't have a standard. Well, everybody's different. Well, okay, but they're different in strength and endurance too, but you can improve that. Why can't you improve flexibility? Well, you can do a certain point, but some people are tighter than others. Duh, no kidding. yeah yeah And that's why we have to do it.
00:55:13
Speaker
you've got to reach a standard if you want the human body to not be in pain. And so it's it's just funny that we show them something like the quad stretch or like the arms behind an upper, we're stretching the front of the shoulders.
Resistance from Traditional Physical Therapists
00:55:27
Speaker
They're like, they can see someone improve right in front of their eyes. Person say they feel better. Like we had with some Navy SEALs and the physical therapist will say, I can't have my people do that. It's too extreme.
00:55:40
Speaker
but yet the person feels better when they do it and we have hundreds of cases of that right in front of their eyes and they're like no we can't do it it's extreme because outside the box of what they learn and you know they they have boundaries and we take the boundaries we say don't disregard the boundaries work through them to get to the right boundaries And that's what we've said. yeah And you have solid guidance guidance in terms of rules along the way. Like, so for instance, one of the things like going back to that pain threshold idea, ah yeah and and there's a certain couple of things, if if you break those, yeah, you can you can maybe tighten up a muscle by accident. You know what I mean? Like, so if you go into or out of a stretch too quickly, you might cause the muscle to spasm. But if you follow the rules properly and you're and you're patient with it,
00:56:27
Speaker
you at least for me anyway i can just speak for me and my family we've seen progress and it's been it's been like i said before it's been life changing. Yeah for sure it's a matter of growing into it growing to relaxation you have to grow into letting the tension release and you become an expert at it and you hit our goals just not gonna hurt anymore you're gonna be young for everyone.
00:56:53
Speaker
We have people in their eighties and nineties doing their stretching routine and they feel better without it. It's incredible. Um, you've worked with a lot of professional athletes, uh, and you have, you have your set, you know, your UHP 24 ranges of motion with the professional athletes. Do you have like, as I understand you have even more ranges for them to based on their sport. Is that correct? Uh, the 24 ranges pretty much covers, uh, what we need from most athletes and most sports.
Stretching as a Fundamental Athletic Practice
00:57:23
Speaker
When you have someone like a dancer or gymnast, they have to take it to a little bit further level. We do have some more advanced stretches for that. But they learn to stretch. That's 50% of what they do. Dancers and gymnasts, they have to stretch to get into positions they want to be in. And it's funny in the other sports, stretching is not part of what they do. It's not in the culture. And we have to change the whole culture to get them to do it.
00:57:52
Speaker
to try and get a football player to stretch. They're so used to just dynamic warmup and then run sprints right and lift weights and to try and get them to change is like, uh, you know, shrinking a dinosaur. I mean, it's, it's not, not an easy, not an easy project, but the ones that do immediately get the reward for it and they feel better and they run faster and they they perform better. They're stronger. Um, a lot of people think that stretching will, will inactivate muscles. So you're not going to be as strong.
00:58:21
Speaker
No, you actually become more strong. You're stronger because you're you're unlocking fibers that you weren't using. And when you unlock them, and you can use them, you have more fibers to use for a longer range of motion. And you have more fuel to store. So you end up being stronger by being more flexible. We've proved that over and over and over.
00:58:40
Speaker
It makes so much sense when you start to understand the the the training and the ideas. Would you say like, and I don't know if this is a fair assessment or not with like, say like with a professional athlete, like someone that's incredibly good at their sport. They've worked hard to get there. They've got incredible genetics. Would it be something that like they've been able to get there without having to stretch because maybe they had that added a layer of flexibility early on and they were able to kind of perform it at a high level, but at a certain point they're going to get tighter and then that's going to be like the problem. Kind of like what we were chatting about earlier, is that kind of a common theme and thus the direction from like trainers and coaches might view performance first or for themselves performance first and like I don't think their body's not giving them those warning signals that, hey, you are getting tighter along the way. Is that a big part of the problem or? Yeah. I mean, there look, there's there's
00:59:32
Speaker
Some, if you look at, we just had the Olympics and you have some 16, 17, 18 year olds out there performing and they're performing on talent. Now, four years from now, if they compete again, are they going to improve? If you get a sprinter who's running a world-class time when he's 17 years old and he's 21, he doesn't run any faster. What did he do for four years? He's running on talent. He never learned how to train properly. And that's what we do is we teach people how to train properly to reach ultimate performance.
01:00:02
Speaker
but it starts with flexibility so you don't get injured. It starts with learning how to control the tension in your body and gear it towards the right activity, gear it towards the right movements. So, uh, you know, all the time we have young athletes and they, they make it to age 21 or 25 and then all of a sudden they have injuries and then people think, Oh, they're old. They're 25. No, they're not. You don't matter. Professional athletes should be the ones that when they retire,
01:00:29
Speaker
70% of professional athletes retire because of pain and injury they can't take it and They write them off. So they're the ones who should be learning how to train properly to go then Teach the general population teach their family teach their friends teach other people how to train properly But instead it's the reverse 70% of them retire because of pain and injury Otherwise it all be otherwise they'd all be competing till they're 40 years old and and yeah the
01:01:01
Speaker
the The evidence is in the he in the the Asian performance. If if you're 29 and you've had your second knee surgery and you just can't run fast anymore, maybe you should look at how to train properly instead of the doctor's way of doing things or the strength coach's way of doing things.
Preventing Injuries through Flexibility
01:01:19
Speaker
You need to open up and learn and and add to your your your repertoire of training so that you can do it properly.
01:01:28
Speaker
That's, it's very interesting. I often think about it seems like we're getting athletes, just certain athletes that are going farther in age than, than previous generations. So some people that come to mind and be like um Tom Brady, um, You know, maybe LeBron James, you know, these guys are, and would you say that they're, they're taking it like point keen interest into this as well? Like with, is that how they're kind of starting? Like, I mean, obviously they're trying to hit it on every level, but they take it very seriously. I heard, ah I don't know how true this is. So take it with green assault. I heard like LeBron throwing in a couple million dollars plus a year just in his own personal wellness. Is that something where like those guys that are extending those, like able to go that longer years, is that
01:02:12
Speaker
Possibly that they're tapping into this idea of keeping their body open Yeah, I don't know what they're doing for their training. They either have natural flexibility so they can last longer or the training proper more properly um So I don't know what they're doing So I can't comment on whether they're doing it our way or not or yeah close to what we're doing But they're obviously doing some things, right?
01:02:36
Speaker
or they have natural flexibility and they've been able to get away with it this far. Right. Yeah, they've been able to. Yeah. yeah ah That's it's fascinating. um ah So going forward for Ultimate Human Performance, you guys just did a big seminar in London. ah How was that? It sounded like it was really good. You got to do, you've been all over the world doing seminars. Like you've come to Vancouver, you've been ah quite a few places. How was that? Did you get experience? And do you have anything else coming up in the near future?
01:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, we have, um, it looks like we're going to do our next seminar is going to be in November in San Diego. We're home turf and, uh, wall of people from all over the world coming. Um, we just had one in London, very successful. We've done, uh, other ones in London, in Germany, in Vancouver, in Edmonton, Canada, all over the United States, Mexico. So, um, yeah, we try to do three or four at least, or sometimes many as five or six per year.
01:03:34
Speaker
The next one looks like November. We're about to announce that the dates. Uh, so anyone who's out there, you can either read the book. joe still method It's now a best seller. Uh, and it teaches most of what we do. Um, or you can come to a seminar or you can do a one-on-one session with us through our contact us through the website, ultimate human performance.com and set up a separate one-on-one session. We do a zoom session. We literally get people who had been to 10 different doctors can't get fixed. We do a zoom session with them. We can see them. We put them in certain positions. Okay. Lean a little bit more, put your elbow down here, do this position and hold. We're going to hold it. Now we're going to educate you as you do it. Never go past the seven in pain when you're stretching. Hold for two minutes or two minutes. I want you to come out of it and lie flat on the ground and absorb blood. We call it the dead zone. So we teach them, teach them, teach them, teach them for an hour and a half.
01:04:29
Speaker
And the black feels better when they're done. We haven't even touched them. we can't really see the computer to me It's amazing. Yeah, it's, it's, it's incredible. And it just takes a bit of, you know, like you said, for per perseverance and desire and want to, to, to, to get it, to make it happen, hopefully. And, and then it comes together. Um, are you, uh, anything else big coming up? I know that you said you're going to be doing some podcasts coming up and in the near future, is there anything else happening in for you guys? or Yeah, we have about 10 different podcasts that are going to be.
01:04:58
Speaker
publicizing our our work and and sessions like this to get the word out. People that have followed us and found that hey this stuff is pretty amazing so we want to tell our listeners. So we want to thank them and we thank you of course for allowing us the opportunity and we're honored to be able to be on your show.
01:05:16
Speaker
Yeah, I know. Thank you. for It's been great. It's been good. One of the questions that I try to ask everyone, ah you know do you drink do you drink coffee anymore or at all? or no no no never help so So if you were to have a drink of your choice, any drink with anyone in the world, past or present, anywhere, does someone come to mind who it would be or who who you'd be interested in having a coffee or a drink with? Wow. It would either be Uncle Albert Einstein or or Elon Musk drinking a protein shake.
01:05:49
Speaker
Those would be fascinating conversations. I mean, everybody's I'm a broken record, but I'm, I've been big on learning about Napoleon. So I think it'd be pretty fascinating to like to sit in a tent with him, you know, go over some of it, you know, maybe a couple of days outside of a big battle and just chat about, you know, what, what, uh, his philosophies and, and battle plans would be and all that kind of stuff. But, uh, yeah, I think Elon or, or, uh, Einstein would be incredible to, to, to pick their brain on how they, how they learn, how they do things for sure.
01:06:19
Speaker
Yeah. These are people that, that, that have a vision and they want to take it to the next level. yeah And so visionaries is, we have fascinating conversations when I get to sit with people who have the vision of, you know, a better way of doing things. And it leads to paradigm shifts in human culture. And, uh, that's what we're doing here is we're we're shifting the paradigms from, from just training hard and, and using gadgets in the athletic training room.
01:06:47
Speaker
taking it to the next level learning how to maintain your body and Expand its capabilities by by yeah starting with a foundation of natural range of motion like kids can do Yeah. all you like that's what we're working on It's awesome. and and And I think that ah it says it sums it up really well, but what you and your team that you have a vision and and you persevered, persevered through a lot of like, you know, uh, working with athletes, criticism at times, I think, uh, from youre just chatting with you.
01:07:19
Speaker
and having to kind of knock down barriers and go, no, no, like this works or at least try it. And, so you know, hopefully it will work for you. Um, and, and, uh, which is, you know, kudos to you to persevere through it. Cause I know that must be challenging at times. Like it must be pretty difficult when, when you have people, like you said, maybe with a PhD that is trying to poke holes in what you're doing. Um, how, how do you find that you manage that, manage that and have that resilience? It's something that I struggle with when times like,
01:07:48
Speaker
If you have seen the movie Moneyball. Yes. Yes. Brad Pitt plays the part of Billy being the manager of the Oakland A's and they end up through statistics, changing the game of baseball, yeah learning how to get people on base, which is how you ultimately will score runs. And that system is now being used by everybody. But when he made it to their lead championships, um, I don't know what the year was, but, um, the,
01:08:18
Speaker
owner of the Boston Red Sox called, called him up and said, we want to talk. And so he he flies the Boston and they sit down and he says, um, you, you've taken it, you've taken it.
Overcoming Resistance to Change
01:08:30
Speaker
I think the exact quote is you've taken it in the teeth. First guy through the wall gets bloody. So Yeah. Yeah. it's a big It's a big part of it, isn't it? It's a big part of like having having that bravery and and and belief and and and yeah and vision, really, to to try to end it. But the other part of it, I think I would imagine for you that that that um
01:08:54
Speaker
has really helped is you've seen the success in the athletes and the people that you work with. Like you're like, it's, it's amazing. You look at like yourself. Okay. You took your, your body to an ah elite level, um, into Catherine, uh, your, your wife, Mimi, she did incredible in masters, uh, track and field. Uh, we guys worked together on that. And I think she won like some like five national championships at the master's level, which is incredible yeah with no talent.
01:09:21
Speaker
none Yeah, which is unbelievable and and and and you're not saying and and I know you're not saying that in a in a in a drug tour where you're just saying that like. like in the sense of she didn't have that, that like some people just come in with natural talent and they can just blow the doors off. She had to work extremely hard to to hit those benchmarks. And then ah you have, um you know, people like ah your, your brother, I know you've helped your brother. He's like ah like a four times 60 plus CrossFit world champion. um And, and, you know, It just goes to show the people around you, like the Navy SEALs, the professional athletes, ah because you've worked with big pro teams too, haven't you, over the years? Yeah. yeah have I'll tell you another really good example. Five years ago, I met a kid in high school who had a broken back baseball player, and he went to all the specialists, like five different doctors, surgeons, um back experts, and they said, you'll never play baseball again.
01:10:19
Speaker
Five different physical therapists. They said, no, you'll never play again. He came to me and said, well, have you planned in 10 days? Yeah. Yeah. And it's incredible because I met him, Andy, right? He just signed this week a professional contract.
01:10:36
Speaker
What? Oh, man. Congrats. Oh, that's so amazing. That's incredible. Because we've been we've been we've been kind of following and and hoping for him. Yeah, that's so awesome. Oh, man. I'm so excited. those grow Yeah, that's great. Are you allowed to say where or not? Not so much right now. Yeah, it's it's actually he was gonna sign with a Canadian League. Yeah. And um it's a um development league. He flies tomorrow to Albany, New York to compete against the Canadian League, who was going to sign them, but they They hesitated. So the other team signed him, which is now going to be the proving grounds for him to be absorbed into one of the big teams. That's incredible. yeah good to him man he He's worked. He's been dedicated. He's done an incredible job. His name is Andy Simo. You'll see we're going to put up Instagram up today.
01:11:25
Speaker
He's such a nice young man. He's, he's awesome. He's really good. That's great. And like you said, his story is incredible. Cause you said like he had a broken back right through baseball. I think he, and you were able to work with him and bring him back to life. And his range of emotion are incredible because he's a big, thick guy. And like, can you talk a little bit to that too? Cause you had to work with him in quite a bit on that. I was like a gymnast now. I mean, he has incredible flexibility. He's, he's resolved our range of emotion. He stretches.
01:11:54
Speaker
sometimes two hours a day, um, whatever he has to do to be prepared. And, uh, it takes that kind of dedication, uh, to be at that level. And, uh, kudos to him. he's He's done a fantastic job. He's dedicated another athlete that I worked with, like Frini, who was just inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame literally last week.
Athletes Extending Careers through Flexibility
01:12:15
Speaker
And, uh, um, he had blown his knee out. He had, he was, uh, had an all-star career for 13 years.
01:12:22
Speaker
with Indianapolis Colts and he got traded to the Chargers and blew out his knee the fourth game. I met him at the end of that year. We had six weeks left before the next season and he couldn't bend his knee 90 degrees. man And all the rehab he did and all the physical therapy he did and strength work wasn't working. And so I said, well, here's what you're going to have to do. You have to reach these ranges of motion. And he dug in and we spent two hours a day for six weeks and he played four more years, making a million dollars a year, no injuries.
01:12:51
Speaker
Well, 38 as a defensive end, incredible. And he was just inducted in the Hall of Fame. So he deserves it. being a kind dedicated athlete Yeah, that's, um that's, that's, that's amazing. Like truly, truly. You've also worked with, uh, can you describe a little bit, um,
01:13:10
Speaker
When you've worked with professional baseball players, one of the things that I remember you talking about is like, like say for a pitcher, for example, sometimes they're, and I know like, um, we're talking athletics here, but sometimes their ranges are so tight when they're, when they're throwing that ball. Can you describe a little bit? I know you like you've got like certain, um, things that you do specifically for different professional athletes, but can you just kind of describe in a nutshell, some of the stuff that you've done to help those guys so that they can go on and have, you know, good careers.
01:13:41
Speaker
Yeah, I've worked with about 16 different pitchers and the ranges of motion that they have are just deficient for what they're supposed to be able to do. You know, these kids are throwing when they're eight years old, they throw by the time they're 16, their arms and shoulders are already worn out. Some of them have already had surgeries and that's just ridiculous. That's just improper training. They throw and they throw and they throw and they throw and they develop their bodies into just a tight machine and we take and open up their ranges of motion.
01:14:09
Speaker
taking some professional app, some professional pitchers who have lost their professional contracts in age thirties and nobody will pick them up. they They try to, they try and rehab them for a couple of years. Can't do it in six weeks. We get them a multimillion dollar contract and it's, it's like, that's just what we do. You do it. You have to have a range of motion. You have to be able to be strong through that range of motion. Then you can do your job, but if you don't have that range of motion and You know, when I watched some of the strength coaches or the physical therapists on those teams, professional teams, they're deficient. They're deficient in the right understanding of flexibility. If you don't have our protocol, our standards, you're going to get injured. It's just a matter of time. yeah just matter resource standard You're not injured anymore. You can go back and play your game. Make millions of dollars.
01:14:58
Speaker
is Is it something like fair to say, like with some of those guys, like when they were throwing the ball, uh, you've been able to take like, you know, uh, I think I remember you saying you're able to add almost like something like four inches on the front and four inches on the back. So now they've got like almost like eight inches more whip. If that they not again, i'm I'm not a baseball player. So I was saying it kind of like rudimentary, but yeah, if you, if you, the the average range of motion that but major league pitcher has now, if we add A little bit more in the doc where they have an extra four inches of pull on the ball and a little bit more extension in the front, the longer and harder you can pull on that ball the faster. It's going to go. You're taking guys that are older and they throw faster in their older age than they did when they were in their twenties. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. And that's worth millions of dollars. So, uh, yeah, it's just a matter of understanding the foundation of all training should be flexibility. And if people don't get that.
01:15:53
Speaker
Good luck. You're going to get injured. Yeah. I wish the best say, but you're going to. Yeah. This is, this has become the foundation of my, you know, uh, sort of recreational athletics that I do at this age. And it'll be the foundation for the rest of my life because it's really given me that benchmark of where I should be at or, and, and, and I can really tell when I'm tight now. So it's been, it's been pretty, pretty awesome, but yeah, and but yeah's awesome joe that's It's great. one thank As you are black called in jujitsu.
01:16:23
Speaker
20 years from now, you want to keep training? You're going to blow some of the young guys away. That's ah ass funny because I'm at a bit of a crossroads. I've taken a few months off and I really miss Jiu Jitsu, but I'm enjoying mountain biking. So I'm kind of trying to figure out a buddy of mine just opened up a new gym. and He might be on the podcast and he's a pro fighter. So I'm hoping to maybe get out there and train with him this week. So it's going to hurt because I'm so rusty, but I just have to swallow the pride a little bit and and hopefully get out there. But um well, that's awesome.
01:16:52
Speaker
Thank you so much, Joe. I don't, I don't, uh, I think we've covered a lot of ground. It's been, uh, it's been awesome and, uh, appreciate you taking the time and, uh, you know, your, your staff's awesome day and Mimi and everybody that's down there. And I'm so stoked to hear that Andy got signed. That's, that's incredible. Really,
Conclusion and Contact Information
01:17:08
Speaker
really good news. So, but, uh, thanks for the opportunity. I'm honored to be on the show. So, uh, get a few tidbits and, uh, improve their lifestyle.
01:17:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. and And once again, if you, if you, if you get chance, like reach out to Joe, uh, you got, uh, you know, go to www.ultimatehumanperformance.com and check out his Instagram at, uh, ultimate human performance by Joe. And he's also got his book and whatnot. So yeah, right on. Thanks, Joe. That's great. Appreciate it. You too. Thank you so much.