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29: The Cues We Use Pt. 1
1.4k Plays2 years ago
Welcome to Season 2 and Episode 29 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss the cues movement teachers like yoga teachers and strength coaches use, and then what research has to say about them. Namely, we look at the difference between internal and external cues, and what both types of cues are good for. We also discuss:
- What motor learning is and how it’s different from motor performance.
- What motor learning versus motor performance look like in the context of teaching and learning movement.
- What attentional focus is and how attentional focus affects motor learning.
- The difference between internal and external cues and what specifically defines them.
- Which type of cue is better for enhancing sport performance.
- What the mind muscle connection is and how it can enhance muscle growth.
- How internal cues can enhance the mind muscle connection.
- How the goals of yoga are different from the goals of athletics, or even the goal of improving skill within the asanas, and why that matters for the cues we use.
- Why internal cues have value both within the context of yoga and rehabilitation.
- Whether metaphor and analogy are internal or external cues.
- Tactile cues and what category they live in—internal or external cues.
- Constraints and what category they live in—internal or external cues.
- Lots of example cues in the context of yoga, strength, and kettlebells that illustrate the nuances between these different types of cues.
Attentional Focus and Motor Learning study
Enhancing the learning of sport skills through external-focus feedback study
Internal Cues Don’t Affect Muscle Activation With Explosive Lifting article, by Greg Nuckols
Can the Mind Muscle Connection Enhance Hypertrophy article, by Chris Beardsley
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Transcript
Visualizing the Rib Cage: Bread Analogy?
00:00:00
Speaker
No, they're visualizing their rib cage, no? No, they're visualizing the bread and the rib cage. The rib cage as bread, not a loaf of bread that's in the room that they're pointing their rib cage towards. I'm pretty sure they're... I know I'm thinking about bread right now. But is that bread that you're thinking about in the room with you right now? No, it's not, but it's in our world. It's in our external world. So I guess my question is, for it to be an external cue, does it have to be in the room?
Meet the Hosts: Laurel & Sarah
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf 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.
Pre-Trip Banter
00:01:09
Speaker
Welcome to Episode 29 of the Movement Logic Podcast. I'm Laurel Beiberstorff, and I'm here with my co-host, Dr. Sarah Court, DPT, Doctor of Physical Therapy. That's me. This is pre-Puerto Vallarta really right now in this moment that we're actually talking. Okay.
00:01:32
Speaker
But when listeners hear this, we will have already been to Puerto Vallarta. Oh. We will be our future post having been to Puerto Vallarta selves. Well, I had a great time. I gave it five stars. Five stars? Mm-hmm. Speaking of five stars.
Rate Us Five Stars!
00:01:49
Speaker
What? There's some five stars that our listeners could give us. Yes. Where are they?
00:01:56
Speaker
Let me check my phone real quick. Oh, okay. All you do is you go and you see all the episodes, right? Like right now I'm looking at episode 27, which was our last episode of season one. And this is our second episode of season two. And you just scroll and you scroll past all these amazing episodes and you get to a place that says ratings and reviews. And there are five blank stars. Just click, click the fifth star to give us five stars because why? What's in it for you?
00:02:27
Speaker
Nothing. This is purely for us. It's true. So that more people like you get our podcast. More people that are like you are able to like us. Which, by the way, is just more amazing people. I mean, don't you want more amazing people? Please. It's the least you can do.
00:02:48
Speaker
I mean, that's not true. That's not the actual least. The least you could do would be nothing. It's the next thing up from the least you could do. Yeah, it's pretty much all of the things that we ask you to do. That one's the easiest. That's true. That's true. It's pretty satisfying too. Yeah. Like you touch the fifth star and they all turn blue.
00:03:09
Speaker
Oh, do they turn blue or do they turn yellow? No, maybe one of us is colorblind. Is that dress blue and gold or black and white? Do you remember that dress picture that went around the internet? I have disagreements with my husband all the time about the color of things because he's colorblind. Oh, interesting. I didn't know that. I think the sky is green. Yeah. The stars turn blue. And the sky is green.
Verbal Cues in Movement
00:03:30
Speaker
Sarah, we are talking about cues today.
00:03:35
Speaker
like verbal cues, maybe some other types of cues. And this is going to be one of a total of three episodes, not back to back, we're going to split them up. Why three? Why so many? Yeah, there's a serious answer to that question, which is there's a lot of different things to talk about around cueing. And we started to brainstorm ideas. And as we were doing it, we realized like, this is way too much to stick in one episode. So we're going to talk about
00:03:59
Speaker
some very specific things in this episode and then some more very specific things in some other episodes. I feel like we have a lot to say about this topic. Definitely. The sort of joke answer that I was going to come up with when you said, why are we doing so many episodes on queuing is I don't know if you've ever watched Trixie Mattel and Katya, who are two very famous drag queens who have an online
00:04:20
Speaker
a show that's called, and it's exactly what it's called. You have to spell it, U-N-H-H-H-H-H. It's one of my favorite things. I watched a lot of it when I was in treatment for my cancer. But anyway, at the beginning of their show, when they're introducing themselves, they say, because it's our show, not yours. So when I was thinking about why are we doing so many episodes on queuing, in my head, I immediately heard, because it's our show and not yours.
00:04:48
Speaker
Exactly. And this is the type of stuff we want to be nerding out on. That's right. Three times. Yes. At least. At least. Maybe more. Maybe. We're not making any promises. But at least three times. So we have to split, again, this large topic of queuing up into some smaller topics. And today, our smaller topic of choice is internal versus external queues.
Motor Learning: Retention vs Performance
00:05:12
Speaker
The first time I actually heard these terms was actually from you, Sarah. I don't know if you know this. I don't think I do. Do you remember a long time ago when we did a- I don't remember everything from a long time ago. Well, let me refresh your memory. Thank you. Do you remember receiving an invitation from a person
00:05:32
Speaker
to do a conference, an online conference, and this is back before online conferences were even a thing, and you were asked to speak on a topic that is motor learning, and you did a 30-minute presentation for said conference, and I think it might have been called like
00:05:50
Speaker
re-examining alignment in yoga or realigning yoga or realigning yoga. Something like that. Yes, I do. Anyway, it was cool. Jules, Trina, lots of really cool people created content for it. You created a little 30-minute lecture on motor learning and I listened to it several times. You use the terms internal and external cueing and talked about the differences between those types of cues. Ever since then, I've been reading up more on
00:06:17
Speaker
this topic of motor learning and queuing. And I think you would be a great person actually to tell us what motor learning is. Sure. Since you are a presenter on set topic. Since you claim to have some knowledge on the topic. So motor learning, one of the best ways to define it, I think is in contrast to something else. And the something else is motor performance. So motor learning,
00:06:44
Speaker
is your ability to learn a movement skill so that you can recreate it at some future time. And there's more to it than that, but that's basically it. That's what motor learning means. You have retained the amount of learning around the movement skill so that you can then replicate it again in the future. Whereas motor performance is just the ability to perform that movement, quote unquote, perfectly one time
00:07:14
Speaker
and one time only. So it doesn't consider anything about retaining the ability to do it again. And in fact, it very specifically means you haven't retained the ability to do it again. In your presentation, I remember you cited Gabriel, or I think it's Gabriel, Wolf, and her name comes up a lot when you look into the research on motor learning.
00:07:41
Speaker
topic she's written about extensively is and research extensively is this concept of attentional focus. Attentional focus is how we allocate our mental resources to perform movement. In other words, how we take our attention and where we place it.
00:08:00
Speaker
verbal cues and other nonverbal stimuli, you could potentially call touch a cue constraints to movement, maybe a type of cue, but I think for the most part we think of cueing as something that we say, but all of these inputs, whether they be verbal or nonverbal, they all help the learner decide where to place their finite mental resources
00:08:26
Speaker
And
Effective Verbal Cues for Motor Learning
00:08:27
Speaker
depending these different inputs, these different stimuli can cause the learner to allocate their mental resources to more or less beneficial effects. Some ways, in other words, of queuing are better than others, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. Queues matter. And I think that's why we want to talk about this. Because it's probably one of the most important tools that we have as teachers to wield. And so different input creates different output.
00:08:56
Speaker
And so once we've identified what the goal is or maybe even what the problem is, choosing what to say and what not to say and when to say it is very important. But today we're just focused and these are all things we could talk about in these episodes, but right now we're just focusing and we're gonna get kind of get out our scalpel.
00:09:14
Speaker
and cut right to the chase. Man, I love mixing metaphors. We're going to just talk about internal and external cues because I feel like it's a very, very, very, very, very wide-away sound like I'm from the Midwest right now. Great place to start. You are from the Midwest. I am. That's true. Maybe that's why.
00:09:34
Speaker
Wisconsin. It's a great place to start. And it's also something that I think a lot of people listening to this podcast will immediately be able to grasp because if you teach movement, you are queuing and you have probably used both already internal and external cues. However, you might lean more towards using one versus the other. But first I want to ask you, what are internal cues? What are external cues? And how do they relate to attentional focus?
00:09:59
Speaker
I'm going to speak to specifically verbal cues as far as internal and extra, just to give us kind of a container to be working in.
00:10:09
Speaker
So verbal cues that you might give your students can either be internal or they can be external. And so an internal verbal cue would be describing something that your student is feeling inside their body or a cue to move their body in relationship to itself. So it might be something like lengthen your spine.
00:10:34
Speaker
So the cue is about what they're feeling, their spine, and they're trying to make it longer. Versus an external cue is a cue that describes your student's body in relation to the space around it. So you may say, you know, as you're lying on your back, reach your arms up towards the ceiling. So now the cue is telling them to move their body in a direction
00:11:00
Speaker
and to aim a part of their body at something that is outside of their body. So that's the most kind of basic definition between the two. It's like the rule is for internal cues, you can only reference the body, nothing outside of the body. Right. And then with external cues, you must reference something outside the body. Cool. Which one is better, Sarah?
00:11:27
Speaker
depends. What? Don't start with your it depends. I know. It's the most irritating answer and most of the time it's the most accurate answer to pretty much any question. And it's also, even though it probably seems like it's just a tactic to buy time so you can think about it. But it's not an answer. It's not an answer. I would disagree. It is an answer. It's not a complete answer.
00:11:52
Speaker
Although it is a complete answer. It is both a complete answer and an incomplete answer. It's like no being a full sentence. No is a complete sentence. Just tell me what to do. Sarah, do you want to take out the trash? No. I just want you to tell me what to do and I want you to tell me the best thing to do so that I can be the best. I know. I know. Well, so here's the criteria. It depends on what you're trying to make happen.
00:12:19
Speaker
If you're trying to make something happen that is about, I was going to say performance, but not necessarily. If you're trying to make something external happen, if you're trying to make a body move in a certain way, then an external cue might be better for that. If you're trying to bring someone's attentional focus to their insides and how their insides are feeling,
00:12:41
Speaker
you might choose an internal cue for that. So it depends on what you're teaching and what you're trying to make happen.
Enhancing Performance with External Cues
00:12:48
Speaker
I do remember when I first learned about external cues, I was still teaching some classes, and I suddenly discovered that when I was giving cues that were very much about the shape of the asana, so not a sort of
00:13:06
Speaker
you know, yogic experience necessarily not a why am I here taking a yoga class and not just stretching and something but but when I was doing a queue that was really about okay I need I need everyone in the room to basically be aiming towards the same shape.
00:13:20
Speaker
what I discovered was that external cues are really good for that. And so I used to say, I can't remember what I was doing with this, but I remember this happening all the time. I would have people lie down on their back and I would say, reach your arms along your ears. And half of the people would
00:13:36
Speaker
reach their arms along their ears and the other half would cover their ears with their hands. There's a huge disconnect going on here. So I was like, all right, clearly this cue of reach your arms alongside your ears is not crystal clear to the entire room because half of the room got it and half of the room thought they were supposed to like cover their ears. So then I started saying, lie down on your back, reach your arms towards the wall behind you. And that everybody understood. So that's an example of an external cue using something that is in the room around you.
00:14:06
Speaker
to get a movement to look like what you want it to look like? I think of it as kind of the difference between what we do when we are practicing some form of mindful self-care, whether that is a yoga class or maybe receiving a massage or meditating, where actually our job in that moment is to really bring our awareness inward and pay attention to what we're feeling and the relationship between maybe different parts of our body. And it feels good to do that.
00:14:37
Speaker
But when we're just living our lives as humans and then over like from the beginning of mankind or woman kind or person kind until now, like what we have been doing to survive has been acting on our environment in various ways. Looking for food, building our house, watching for prey. Like we're constantly looking outside of ourselves because that's where the threats to our survival and that's where the keys to our survival are.
00:15:06
Speaker
We are very much outwardly focused because that's how we have to be. And that's how we want to be, right? For the most part, it actually takes quite a bit of effort to get somebody to like go inward. And so I think that when we speak to that really old part of the
00:15:23
Speaker
human mind, right? With our cues, we're probably going to get results sooner, faster, and potentially more effectively, especially when it comes to performing something on the environment. Basically, anytime we're working on any type of performance of something, whether it's kicking up in a handstand, deadlifting, jumping, dancing, right? We are actually acting on the environment. We're acting on the floor. We're acting within the space relative to the space with our dance partner.
00:15:52
Speaker
with the barbell, with the wall, with the block, whatever it is, it's all about us and it's not about us at all. It's about what we're doing to the room we're in. And so it makes sense to me that external cues would potentially enhance the ability to do things. This word anatomy gets bandied about and like used to mean all kinds of different things, but really anatomy is like the dissection and separation and naming
00:16:15
Speaker
of parts and locations in the body. And I like to think of this idea of creating separation to specifically name the parts as being kind of the anatomy of anything, right? So I like to use the word anatomy even to talk about the anatomy of a cue. So what is the anatomy of an external cue? What does it involve? And we're going to give some examples of these cues as well. Lots of examples in this episode.
00:16:40
Speaker
Well, it definitely involves a verb. Like... Do something. Do something. Point this part of your body somewhere.
00:16:49
Speaker
right so that was like a verb object and a direction right because it has a direction or if not a direction it has a an object outside of yourself the rule of external cues is it has to have an object that is external to your body within like its anatomy so it's got whatever body part maybe it's your whole body maybe it's part of your body it's got a verb what you're going to do with that body part and it's got a uh an object which is the the
00:17:13
Speaker
part of the room or whatever that you are pointing or doing or moving or taking your body part too. So for example, you might say jump. You might also say drive your feet into the ground. You might also say drive your feet into the ground to extend upward. You might also say drive your feet into the ground to extend upward and touch.
00:17:41
Speaker
this point on the wall, right? And so these different components of the cue direct attentional focus in increasingly more specific ways. But the external cue requirement is only covered by that very last thing that you said, the point on the wall. The anatomy of external cue is that it must actually, in order to be an external cue, contain some object in the external environment.
00:18:07
Speaker
Between internal and external cues, what research has shown when it comes to performance, and we know that there's been a lot of research done on athletic performance, that numerous studies have shown that adopting an external focus of attention enhances the performance of various sporting skills. And so one example that I have read about and heard about is this study they did on long jumpers.
00:18:35
Speaker
And so they applied two different cues to this group of long jumpers. And the internal cue, which was jump as far as possible. So no reference to anything external in the environment. There's a verb, and then there's a distance, verb distance, but no object. The external cue was jump as far past this line, probably a line in the sand, right? Jump as far past this line as possible.
00:19:03
Speaker
So we've got a verb, we've got a distance, but we've got a very specific point in space in the environment to jump past. The people who received the external cue jumped farther. So you've mentioned already that motor learning and motor performance are different. With motor performance, right, the student, for example, if you have private students, I know many people listening are movement teachers, you may have had this experience, you gave this experience in your, this anecdote in your talk,
00:19:33
Speaker
that you've probably had this experience as teachers where every time you see this private student, you're basically teaching them the same poses or maybe they're working on the same skill, but you always feel like you're starting over with them. Like you say, like, let's come into warrior two. And they're like, I don't even know what pose that is. But then you
00:19:52
Speaker
give them all the internal cues that you always give them. And eventually they're in Warrior II and they look really good in Warrior II, but they can literally only do Warrior II. They don't even know what the pose is unless you're in the room with them, walking them through the steps of the pose, step by step. Can I interrupt you for a second? With a very funny story from our friend, Amanda Tripp.
00:20:14
Speaker
who is a brilliant Canadian. If you don't know about Amanda, not enough people know about her. If you don't know who Amanda Tripp is, you should go find her on the socials and on, I'm sure there's a website. She's a brilliant, brilliant teacher. I've never laughed harder.
00:20:28
Speaker
in anyone's presence in my entire life than with Amanda Tripp. She's very, she is not only hilarious. She is incredibly smart. But so I remember her when we were talking about motor learning, she was like, Oh my God, this Oh, so she she she told this story about a student who would come to her class. And I think it was in warrior two and every warrior to
00:20:47
Speaker
this student's knee would cave in, which is anatomically not necessarily a problem, but for the aesthetic of the pose, not what was being taught. And so every time she would have to go over to the student and either physically with her hand, or I think usually just kind of adjust him physically and move the knee.
00:21:05
Speaker
And she said one time she was like, just so annoying, I'm just not going to do it and see what happens. And so she just left the person. And when she looked over at him, he looked at her, and then he very pointedly looked at his knee, and then he looked at her again, like,
00:21:21
Speaker
Like, this is the part where you come over and you move my knee. And I just thought that was so funny because it's exactly that. It's motor performance taken to the nth degree. This person not only wasn't doing it, they were purposely choosing not to do it. Because that's your job. Your job. My job is not to do this correctly. It's your job to fix me.
00:21:43
Speaker
Right. So motor learning is when the student the next time you see them and the next time that you see them and the next time you see them, they're actually building off of the skills. Yeah. Because they've retained the skills. Right. And it turns out that research shows that external cues are more conducive to motor learning. Yeah. So that's a very, you know, salient thing to know as a movement teacher, who's teaching something, right, is that you in order to be a teacher, are
00:22:10
Speaker
hopefully facilitating some type of learning. Okay, so what do you think, though? Yoga is not the same as long jumping. And yes, there is skill in the practice of many of the postures. I mean, handstand is largely about strength and skill, right? Should we use more or less
00:22:33
Speaker
But should we only use external cues in yoga? I mean, have we now decided that external cues are the only cues that anyone should be using because they're better for sports performance and motor learning? Or does it depend on what we're trying to do? And you've already hinted that it does. What do you think would be potentially the benefit of using an internal cue in yoga versus an external cue?
Internal vs External Cues in Yoga
00:22:55
Speaker
Well, in yoga in particular, although it may have lost some of this in some of the ways that it's taught in this country in particular, the practice of yoga
00:23:07
Speaker
is not the end goal is not uh sports performance related unless you've decided that it is you can certainly be working on something like a handstand but overall the overarching uh goal in yoga is this better connection to you know self with a capital s right a better um
00:23:31
Speaker
ability to be present with yourself and to understand your body as part of The universe around us, you know these sort of broader non-performance based goals and people experience those things as like stress relief or better sleep or They feel happier or all those sorts of things and so none of those, you know Your knee can point any which way and that's not going to make a huge difference on how well you feel connected to the world around you per se right so
00:24:01
Speaker
In terms of the practice of yoga specifically, I think ultimately, and again, it's going to depend on what kind of class you teach, but I think ultimately some sort of combination of the two is going to be the most useful, where there are things where you are making specific external cues as far as like, OK, so to make this shape, this arm is going to point at that wall, and your other arm is going to point at the other wall behind you. And that's your warrior two arms, for example.
00:24:30
Speaker
versus the kind of language you might use in a restorative class or even once you've gotten somebody into the shape that basically you're trying to get them into, then you can switch and talk about some of the internal cues and things you might want them to be feeling or focusing on or returning to their breathing, right? All of those sorts of things. So I think ultimately it's a mix as far as yoga goes.
00:24:53
Speaker
I do too. I've noticed in my practice of Feldenkrais and probably restorative yoga, although I don't know, I've taken some restorative classes where there is a lot of reference to the props and the feeling of the props, yielding to the props, things like that. But in Feldenkrais or other somatic practices,
00:25:12
Speaker
It seems to be almost exclusively internal cues. And I find that those practices are just super duper relaxing. And that's me. That's not everyone's experience. But for me, the more I'm able to kind of tune in, introvert my attention and really pay attention to how something feels versus like how I look doing it or
00:25:34
Speaker
you know, my ability to do it, actually the more relaxed I become and the more inwardly focused I become. So that in and of itself for me has enormous benefit. So I do definitely think that there's a place for internal cues, in fact, probably a pretty predominant place for internal cues
00:25:52
Speaker
especially in these practices where our main reason for being there is to relax and turn our attention actually away from the external environment, which we may have been pulled to all day long and really take a break mentally from that to really pay attention to what we're feeling and amazing insights can come from that.
00:26:15
Speaker
you know, amazing periods of reflection and epiphanies and rest, just deep rest. So internal cueing can be actually really wonderful for that. I think internal cueing can also be incredible for enhancing proprioception.
00:26:30
Speaker
really just getting a sense of where my body is in space and understanding like, oh, this is my breast bone, and this is my pelvis, or these are my ankles, and how are these parts relating? It can be like a way of almost mapping and finding yourself through really using language to help people understand their own kind of map in their mind of their actual body.
00:27:00
Speaker
The other benefit, and this relates more to actually strength training, actually bodybuilding, that I've heard mentioned around internal cues is that they can enhance what's called the mind-muscle connection. Before we talk about this mind-muscle connection, can we talk about the mind-hip connection? Sure. The hip is made of muscles. There are lots of muscles. And there's a mind attached to those muscles.
00:27:30
Speaker
Hopefully. We did a hip mini course. We did. It's true. And I was wondering if you could share a little bit about it because our listeners could get the hip mini course for free, right? They sure can. You know, sometimes when you realize you've just always done something and never really thought about the why you've done something. So we talked about
00:27:49
Speaker
gender-based queuing in talking about the hips and about how you know if you should be standing with your feet underneath your hip sockets and so if you're a woman it should be a little wider and all that kind of stuff and I remember realizing like oh my god I have just adhered to this idea of like I'm a woman my feet go here
00:28:08
Speaker
without really thinking about it, you know, without, you know, questioning whether or not there's any relevance to the I am a woman, therefore part of it, whether it's just sort of, you know, I personally felt more stable in a certain position. So then I assumed that every woman was going to feel more stable in that position, you know, I just had really never unpacked it in any meaningful way. So that was kind of really interesting to think about in a more in a deeper way than I really ever had before. And so that's part of our one of the conversations that we have about the hips in this mini course.
00:28:37
Speaker
The entire course is basically a conversation between Jason, Sarah and I about some pervasive myths. But I think what we do is actually have a conversation. There is an agenda, which is to talk about this topic, but there isn't an agenda in terms of we're not going to cram our opinions down.
00:28:56
Speaker
your throat slash we're not going to basically be kind of on a one-track of like let's disprove this claim. It's a pretty empathic, pretty open-minded discussion where I feel like some of us made discoveries right in the moment. I know I did. So you can get this free mini course by putting your email address and first name into some fields on our website and you can find that link in the show notes. Or if you don't happen to be looking at the show notes, it's not that hard to remember. It's movementlogictutorials.com.
00:29:27
Speaker
We were talking about the mind-muscle connection, which is actually a super yoga sounding term. Mind-body, mind-muscle connection, but actually it's used a lot in bodybuilding. And this mind-muscle connection has been researched. Basically, the mind-muscle connection is when you're lifting some weights and you bring your mind to the muscle that you are intending to strengthen with whatever exercise you're doing.
00:29:56
Speaker
And you really focus on using that muscle and the feeling of using that muscle and creating tension within that muscle. And what they found is that because my muscle hypertrophy depends almost exclusively, very heavily on mechanical tension, that indeed when you bring your awareness to the muscle and consciously try to make more tension in the muscle, you do produce more tension and therefore
00:30:22
Speaker
this can induce greater hypertrophic adaptations for folks. There are some caveats.
00:30:28
Speaker
One caveat is that when it comes to sports performance, which typically combines force production with some type of speed, right, where you're actually moving quickly under load of some kind, right, whether it's body weight or you're an Olympic weightlifter or whatever, whenever you're trying to move quickly, internal cues of the mind-muscle connection don't actually have very beneficial results. In fact, they might actually be counterproductive.
00:30:54
Speaker
Also, any time you're lifting something that is like close to maximal load, it tends to be that the way to increase strength gains from heavy strength training is to actually try to lift the weight up as quickly as possible. Of course, you won't because you will be lifting a very heavy load.
00:31:13
Speaker
but you definitely don't want to try to lift the weight up slowly. And so this relates to mind-muscle connection because it turns out that mind-muscle connection, this idea of really paying attention internally, using internal cues, right? So if you're telling someone to really focus on muscle activation, this is probably, or muscle tension, this is probably an internal cue, right? It turns out that it's great for when you're lifting in that hypertrophy range of maybe eight to 12 reps, when you're lifting a moderate load, we'll say, or even a light load.
00:31:40
Speaker
and working on something like strength endurance, which can also create increases in muscle size when you work close enough to failure, that the mind-muscle connection works in those contexts, but it's not necessarily going to improve your force output, your muscle activation when you're trying to move quickly, trying to move in some sport-specific way, or trying to lift something very heavy. And the reason for that is simply that we're not as good as our own body.
00:32:05
Speaker
at getting the job done when the job involves some type of sport-specific task.
00:32:11
Speaker
or just getting up from underneath a heavy weight. We can really just rely on our body's reflexive ability, our brain's reflexive ability to recruit the right muscles for the right job. We don't need to override that reflex by going, no, I really want to really feel this in my glutes because that's the muscle I'm targeting with the squat when in actuality your brain has a much better idea about how to
00:32:37
Speaker
come up from underneath that heavy bar if you're squatting or how to dunk the basketball if you're trying to dunk the basketball and it really the more you Internalize your awareness in these contexts actually the worse you perform it turns out So which is which is pretty interesting and it makes sense to me It kind of goes back to that research on the long jumpers right like you could say something like contract your quadriceps as quickly as possible and You can kind of feel how that's not going to produce
00:33:06
Speaker
this is good of a result is telling somebody to jump as far past the line as possible. And I feel like as people who move our bodies, we could probably tell that one of those cues is going to go better than the other, right? Yeah. Mind muscle connection, though, does have internal cues also have a role in strength training is my point. And so they're not internal cues are not less than.
00:33:30
Speaker
there are some very good reasons to use them. And so like you said, I think it's a combination, especially as yoga teachers who are facilitating an experience that probably goes beyond performance, right?
Cues in Physical Therapy
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah, we're probably going to want to use both types of cues. So I have a couple of things. I've just sort of been like bouncing around in my head. One is so when we were, if you scroll back in your memory to maybe 10, 15 minutes ago, we were talking about proprioception.
00:33:56
Speaker
using internal keys for proprioception in the end what i want to talk about right now is sort of working in the pc space in particular and how all these things play into that so working on proprioception is something that i do a lot with my patients because there is a connection between increasing proprioception decreases nocioception which is your
00:34:15
Speaker
Sense of pain right so I work a ton on proprioception with people But I do it in a you kind of have to do it in an internal way because that's what your body You know these these proprioceptive sensors are sensing where you are in space. They're not telling you you are 30 feet away from the door They're saying your hand is palm face up or palm face down, right?
00:34:37
Speaker
So I use that a lot for people as internal cues. And in particular, if I do a hands-on adjustment for a position, I'll say, OK, close your eyes. And I'll put them into, let's say they were doing a bridge and one hip was dipped lower than the other. And to them, that felt level. So I might say, OK, I'm going to bring this other hip and I'm going to put it here. OK, now this is level. And usually they go, what? What are you talking about? I'm like, I know.
00:35:02
Speaker
And even when it's a tiny movement, it feels huge in your body. But because we're trying to now train motor learning, but also spatial awareness and how much that glute has to do, what feels to them more to get them to the same place. So there's a lot of things that their body's trying to figure out. So I'll specifically have them close their eyes and feel from the inside out where they are in space.
00:35:26
Speaker
come out of the movement and then try to replicate it and put themselves where I had put them, right? So I'm trying to actually retrain their brain in terms of what it thinks is, you know, quote unquote, correct alignment.
00:35:38
Speaker
in particular when there is a side that is weaker or there's a real deficit between, you know, there's a deficit that we're trying to change. So that's one thing that I was thinking about. Can I ask, did you say you put your hands on them to help them with that? Yes, I do it because there I'll be like, okay, put yourself where you think your hips are level and invariably, it's not level. So we're like, okay, well, their picture of in their brain of where they are in space is incorrect.
00:36:02
Speaker
And so we're trying to improve that, right? And so then I usually sometimes, sometimes, well, usually the way I do it actually is the very first time I'll do it with my hands physically. And then as we're repeating it, I'll tell them, okay, you need to lift your right hip bone a half an inch higher. And I see like, okay, is that verbal cue enough? It's still an internal cue because it's not to anything outside of them, right? So I sort of play around with what kind of cues I'm giving them and what they're able to figure out. And some people like massively overshoot and I'm like, okay, so this person is,
00:36:32
Speaker
No sense of what a half an inch in movement in this particular capacity looks like. So just working on our sense of where we are in space and proprioception, those are really, really useful things in a rehab setting for pain, but it's useful throughout. The other thing I wanted to talk about was when you're talking about the body's innate ability to do a movement,
00:36:53
Speaker
rather than us saying okay contract this area so because in a let's say a fitness setting let's say you were in a kettlebell class and the kettlebell instructor is telling you when you do your swing squeeze your glutes at the top right have you heard that i've heard that squeeze your glutes at the top and then so so if we're re-patterning like let's say i'm working on walking with somebody
00:37:15
Speaker
Invariably, they'll be like, because I'm trying to get them to use the back of their leg more, and they're like, should I be squeezing my butt? And I'm like, no. I don't want you squeezing your butt because this is a motor pattern that your body knows how to do. We're just trying to recruit the muscles to do it a little bit differently. I don't want you walking around for the rest of your life squeezing your butt with every step you take.
00:37:36
Speaker
or if it's a squat and they're like, okay, so should I squeeze my butt to come up out of this? And I'll say, no, I want you to push down into the floor to come up out of it because what we're trying to train there as well is the motor learning, is your body's innate ability to do the entire movement.
00:37:52
Speaker
And maybe if we need one glute to kind of wake up a little more and do more, I'll go in with a bunch of tactile cueing and I'll poke them and I'll be like, this muscle, make this muscle work more. And I'll use that kind of mind motor, mind muscle connection. But generally speaking, I'm encouraging people away from that specifically because what I'm trying to get them to do is an entire movement, not like we need to make this muscle get more hypertrophy or something like that.
00:38:22
Speaker
And that's specifically in a rehab setting. What types of cues do you think you use predominantly in your PT practice? It depends on a few things. It depends on what I'm working on with that person. And then it also depends on, you know, one of the reasons why it's so good to have a lot of different ways to cue in your pocket is that not everybody can conceptualize
00:38:43
Speaker
certain cues. And so especially external cues are really helpful for people who have a hard time taking a verbal cue and putting it into their body. They can see where the door is. So if you're saying, you know what, take your left leg and I want you to angle your knee to the door. They're like, there's my knee, there's the door, go, right? As opposed to saying something like, okay, now externally rotate your hip more.
00:39:04
Speaker
Then you got to be like, well, okay, what is even external rotation? How does that then, at my hip, impact my knee and my foot? A lot of the time, the easier to understand cue for people is take this body part and point it at something in this room. Or I might say, do you feel the difference? How that feels different than how you were doing it before? Where do you feel? Oh, you feel your glutes turning on more on that side? Yes.
00:39:27
Speaker
this is what we're going for. So the next time you do it, I want you to have that feeling, right? And so I tend to kind of mash them all together. Yeah, you're shifting their attentional focus outward, then bringing it back inward.
00:39:39
Speaker
When I work with dancers and gymnasts and yoga people, you can say things like, you know, depress your left hip two inches, and they'll know exactly, and they'll just do it, right? Because they've spent their lives paying attention to what their bodies are doing in space, but a lot of most people haven't, right? So that skill is something that can be acquired, but will need coaching into. So I really use a lot of different verbal cues.
00:40:06
Speaker
Depending and also sometimes with people a big part of what we're working on is actually like down Regulating them like so that might be much more of an internal cue and we're gonna lie down on your back and we're gonna focus on your breathing and I want you to feel How your ribs expand in the back of your body when you breathe in or something like that, right? And and that's but that's a completely different goal, right? That's a different focus
00:40:29
Speaker
You can direct their attention to the external and also create a down regulating effect. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind with that is the therapy balls, right? Like you're rolling on therapy balls. You're asking them to pay attention to where the therapy balls are on their body and the pressure that therapy balls are creating or the stretch that therapy balls are creating. But at the same time, that is also felt in the area of the body where the therapy ball isn't. And so now I'm kind of getting into this realm of like,
00:40:58
Speaker
there are maybe subcategories of an external queue. Well, that's also kind of a tactile queue. I was going to say, so this is where we're going. I was hoping that we could actually share some examples of these different queue types. And I'll also ask your opinion if you think that this constitutes an external queue.
00:41:17
Speaker
My first question is, are metaphors or analogies, which are one of my favorite ways to cue and one of my favorite ways to learn movement, are those internal or external?
Metaphors in Movement Queuing
00:41:29
Speaker
Let me give you an example so that we actually can root this in a specific. One cue that I like to give to students in plank pose.
00:41:40
Speaker
who may not be accessing the full potential of their pushing abilities. And their shoulder blades are kind of poking up through their t-shirt, right? You can kind of see the medial border of their shoulder blades are sort of poking up. They're kind of collapsed. You might say that they're kind of collapsing into their shoulders. As I like to tell them to press their rib cage, their upper back up, through their shoulder blades like dough rising in the oven, to protract their shoulder blades. So now that is,
00:42:09
Speaker
definitely, I guess, dough rising in the oven, right? It's the external object, but it's made up. It's an image. It's an analogy. And it's not something in the room. And it's not something in the room. I would call that an internal cue, yeah. An internal cue. I would. Because they're using their imagination. They're visualizing dough rising in the oven. But they're visualizing an object external to their body.
00:42:37
Speaker
No, they're visualizing their ribcage, no? No, they're visualizing the bread and the ribcage. Right, but the ribcage as bread, not a loaf of bread that's in the room that they're pointing their ribcage towards. I'm pretty sure they're... I know I'm thinking about bread right now. But is that bread that you're thinking about in the room with you right now?
00:43:00
Speaker
No, it's not, but it's in our world. It's in our external world. So I guess my question is, for it to be an external cue, does it have to be in the room? So if I'm being really sort of sticklery about it, it would be press down into the ground, try to get your ribs to touch the ceiling. That's an external cue because the ceiling is in the room and it's something that they're directing part of their body towards. I like it when you get sticklery because it creates healthy boundaries. I'm all about healthy boundaries.
00:43:30
Speaker
But I do think there is room for analogy and metaphor and queuing. And I think they can be some of the most effective ways to queue or some of the most frustrating, depending. Depending, yeah. I actually think that they are, when used well, one of the best ways because they accomplish multiple things at the same time. One is that if they're clearly articulated and they're relevant to the group in front of you, like you're not referencing some like
00:44:00
Speaker
K-pop singer to a group of 65-year-old women in Ireland. I mean, or maybe that is relevant to them. I'm not sure, right? Know your audience. They can, you know, potentially create motor learning and they're memorable because they're very specific and they're embedded in a larger narrative of our life, so they're not boring. And they might actually help to endear
00:44:28
Speaker
the teacher and student to one another because there now is this shared. I like bread. Do you like bread? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. There's definitely a place for that imagery, but I just want to make the point that it's not an external cue. That's all.
00:44:44
Speaker
I think in a group class setting, it's a great place to bring in pictures and metaphor and all of that kind of stuff. You've got room for people to have their experience. You're sort of taking your time. I don't tend to use a ton of analogy in my rehab work.
00:45:00
Speaker
because I'm going after a very specific thing. This is not a setting where we're inviting play or exploration necessarily as we're aiming for a very specific goal.
00:45:16
Speaker
I might do it if it's something like, I want someone to do something like, let's say I want them to press down through their heels more or something and they're not really doing it. I might be like, press down like you just found the largest cockroach you've ever seen. It's under your heel. Push down as hard as you can. I might use it something like that. There you go. I might use something like that. That's a metaphor. It is a metaphor. I think that's an external cue.
00:45:42
Speaker
I mean, it's asking someone to act on their environment and yes, draw on their imagination to do so. But we've all probably had this experience of like, ew, gross, stop. And I think this is where you can sort of get nitpicky about the language. Like it might be something where what's causing you to press down more through your heel is less the fact that the floor is there and more the fact that you're imagining a bug is there.
00:46:07
Speaker
Right? So I don't know. My whole thing about it, as far as like, is it external or not, is just if we look at research, specifically at research, the language they're using, like the one about the long jump is jump past this line. It's not imagine a line and now I want you to jump past it. So that's sort of where I'm coming from as far as like what is or is not an external cue. And I'm totally on board with that. But since we're on the topic of analogies and metaphors,
00:46:33
Speaker
Do you have a favorite couple of cues that you like to use that are analogous slash metaphorical? And do you have a cue that you hate? That is one of those like, ew, that was a really unclear, flowery, overly unspecific.
00:46:51
Speaker
I probably have more that I can recall off the top of my head that I hate, only because, honestly, a lot of the time, the metaphor stuff, if I'm using it, either when I'm teaching or with a patient, I'm generally coming up with it on the fly. I don't always have saved concepts. You don't memorize scripts before you teach?
00:47:12
Speaker
or rehab people? I'm shocked. Yeah, so the things that I, if I might recall one where I'm like, oh, I really liked that and I'll say it again, but off the top of my head, I might not have something prepared. But there are certainly plenty of metaphors and analogies that I dislike intensely. One of them is broaden your collarbones. I find that offensive. But is that an analogy?
00:47:37
Speaker
Uh, maybe it's how about smile your collarbones. Anything about, yeah, smile your collarbones. That doesn't make any sense to me. Uh, you know, I've heard shoulder blades described as wings, which is, I don't have a problem with if you tell me that what you're talking about are my shoulder blades first, right? So if you're going to use some sort of
00:47:57
Speaker
descriptive language, you better tell me why, because I remember taking a class with someone who's a very popular teacher, and they're going on and on about moving your wings around, and they're like, now do this with your wings, and everyone was going along. And at no point did they say, and by your wings, I mean your shoulder blades. You know what's, here's, here's something that's kind of standing out to me about that difference between that cue, which is, you know, a metaphor or analogy, and the difference between ground your heel into the ground, as though you're killing a disgusting cockroach, is that one is rooted in
00:48:27
Speaker
like what would be reasonable, like a reasonable experience for someone to have had. And the other is kind of purely made up. Like people with wings, there is, there are no people with actual wings. So what am I, what am I actually imagining here? Now, if they had referenced a character in a popular movie that had wings, I think that's different. One example I have is of one of my favorite teachers when I was a newer yoga student would, would in the pose parsvottanasana, where your hands are behind your back.
00:48:57
Speaker
and you're getting, you know, maybe some length through your spine before you fold over your, you know, legs that are straight. So your hamstrings are gonna probably be stretching and pulling on your pelvis and causing your spine to maybe round a little bit. And God forbid that should happen because this was during the time when we were like all like neutral spine, that's the only safe position being. But anyway, that wasn't what she was saying. She would reference the prow of a ship. And then there was all these Titanic jokes. And it was hysterically funny, but it really,
00:49:26
Speaker
It really gave a feeling of the movement that I felt, at least personally, that I could really see. Like the probably ship were like Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are on the probably ship and she's standing there and or he's standing there and he's like, I'm the king of the world. Like there was this attitude, this feeling and also this humor associated with that cue that, like I said, accomplished a lot and
00:49:55
Speaker
I literally had to take my mind outside of myself and remember this movie. A lot of people like to make fun of the movie, so it's kind of a running joke. There's lots of scenes of the Titanic that are used as jokes.
00:50:10
Speaker
That was one of my, one that really stuck with me. Well, and it's a really rich image that has a lot of qualities to it, right? That's so a lot of people can, you know, pretty much everybody has seen that movie. And there's just, there's a lot to draw on from that versus two panes of glass. Put your body between two panes of glass. If somebody tells me to put my body between two panes of glass one more time. What are we like condemned flies now? Like,
00:50:39
Speaker
Am I two-dimensional? Am I a flower that you are pressing into your book? But here, at the same time, what I will say is that I think I know a little bit about what that cue is trying to accomplish. And I don't think it's the worst cue for accomplishing that. I'm just not sure that that's what we're trying to do in that pose, triangle pose, right? Put your body between two panes of glass. So here's another type of cue that I think lives in this interesting gray area that
00:51:03
Speaker
I hope you're like, no, that is not an external cue. And they're like, oh, thank you for showing me my boundaries. Thank you for rooting me in reality. No, it is when we use touch. So tactile, we've already mentioned this. So touch could be something that we use any external object in the room for. Like the wall, even the floor, the floor is an implement of touch, right? Blocks, blankets, but also the teacher, right? The hands-on adjustments or the hands-on feedback that you're giving your patients.
00:51:33
Speaker
Are those external cues? Are they internal cues? What are those? Well, so I would separate out tactile objects that somebody is touching, like the floor or a block, versus your teacher is touching you, or somebody else is touching you, or even you are touching you. So I would categorize external cues as take your hands and put them on the blocks on either side of your feet.
00:52:02
Speaker
Perfect. That's a that's our cue telling me where to put my hands. It's not an object that's in the room versus if I come in.
00:52:10
Speaker
and I'm putting my hands on your body, that is me giving you, I'm speaking to the sensors in your skin layers and lower, deeper in your body that are gonna get that input from my hands on your body. And then, you know, making whatever adjustment I can that way. Because you can also pick up a block and press it against your body to receive some type of feedback if taught classes
00:52:39
Speaker
where all I use is a block, the whole class. And most of the time, we're pressing the block into some part of our body, or we're hugging the block, or we're squeezing the block. And we're doing it right. We're doing it in more of a way that you would receive a hands-on adjustment. And I think that's a really interesting distinction, because in the case of putting your hands on the blocks, the block is more like a target, similar to reaching your arms toward the wall behind you is a target. It's a direction to move in.
00:53:09
Speaker
However, what I also will say is that I think the cue, for example, in a deadlift to pull the bar back into your shins or to try to bend the bar to create some type of scapular position is more similar. It's less barbell as target, and it's more barbell as implement to act on.
00:53:37
Speaker
Whereas pressing the block into your body is more like implement acting on you. Does this make sense when I'm saying like these, these, these kind of more nuanced differences? What they're both doing to some extent is creating a closed chain.
00:53:52
Speaker
where there was previously none. So the ability to, with a barbell, the idea of, I mean, you're not actually going to break the barbell in half. But this idea of breaking a barbell in half, because you have the closed chain situation where your hands are wrapped around the bar,
00:54:09
Speaker
the effort, the focus can go more proximal, meaning to your shoulder blades on your body and that action of trying to break, quote unquote, trying to break the barbell and how bend it in half speaks directly to that scapular position and turning those muscles on.
00:54:24
Speaker
Yeah. So would that be? That's an external cue, I would think, right? Because we could also say it's a task-based cue,
Tactile Cues in Teaching
00:54:31
Speaker
right? It's like, do something to this object, complete a task, which is different than receiving the pressure of an object, I feel, or the touch of an object. So it's very interesting. So maybe that's really the difference between a tactile cue and what would then maybe more closely be like an external cue or a task-based cue, which is that
00:54:51
Speaker
Is the implement doing something to you? Or are you doing something to the implement? And then also you can use something like a wall. Let's say you're trying to help someone find their gluteus medius in a balancing pose, right? You could ask them to move their hip away from the wall, right? Where the wall is now like the opposite of a target. It's like something you're trying not to move toward, which is a very, I think, clearly an external cue.
00:55:19
Speaker
But you can use your hands for something like that as well. And in that sense, using your hands not so much to create an adjustment, but as a target. So I might put my hand on the side of someone's hip and say, as you do this movement, don't hit my hand. So it's the same thing where it's like, I'm asking you to do something and not aim away from something, but you're going to get this tactile feedback the second that you go too far because you're going to run your hip into my hand. Right. Another one is I work with resistance bands a lot.
00:55:48
Speaker
And I'll often use a resistance band as a target to move toward, move into the band's tension, or as something to actually try to move away from slack in the band. And so resistance bands are actually phenomenal objects of really inspiration for external cues. And then while you're moving into the band, you're feeling your muscles contract, and then you can quickly draw the student's attention to the muscle for the internal mind-muscle connection component of it.
00:56:19
Speaker
Same thing with therapy balls. Oh, here's a question for you. And I think I know what you're going to say. Well, let's find out. I'm going to try my hardest to say the most random thing I can think of. Yes. I hope you do. When you're rolling on therapy balls, let's say you're rolling your upper traps out.
00:56:39
Speaker
And you just kind of quick get on there and you just do a little grizzly bear against the tree trunk like, oh, let's work it out. And then you come off of the therapy balls. And then you go to have that student do something with their shoulder blades related to where the balls just were. Let's say at the superior angle of the shoulder blades, right at the top where upper trapezius is. And you say something like, where you felt the balls earlier.
00:57:06
Speaker
move that part of your shoulder away from your ears. I'm referencing the ball, but I'm referencing it in the past. It's an external object, but it's not currently. You don't say yes. The thing that's present now is just the memory of the touch. What do you say, Dr. Court?
00:57:30
Speaker
Court is in session. I've never heard that before. I know, I know. Never. Never. Well, so is your question, is that an external cue? Is it external? Yes, yes, that's my question. The specific language where you're saying move your shoulders away from your ears is not an external cue. Referencing an object that they felt recently
00:57:57
Speaker
is I'm looking at those eyebrows. I've got some grouch on my eyebrows going on right now. Looking at referencing an external object, but what you're referencing is not the externality of it. Is that a word? It's not the externality of it so much as it is. What you're referencing though is the recollection of the sense, the tactile sense of where the ball was. Yeah. So you're not saying, remember the ball
00:58:22
Speaker
Now I want you to move your shoulders away from the ball. You're saying- No, no, no. I'm saying, remember where the ball was touching you. It was touching you. Exactly. Exactly. I'm here with all the knits to pick. I'm going to pick all the knits. Yeah, see, because you wouldn't say like, remember where the carcass of the dead cockroach was touching your heel? Exactly. Right. You wouldn't say that. Yeah. That would be an internal cue.
00:58:45
Speaker
the kind that makes your stomach churn. Seriously, I think we're having some incredible insights right now. I do too. I hope everybody else thinks that. Yeah. All right. All right. Constraints, Sarah, this is like kind of the it topic right now. I don't know if you've been noticing, but people are really into this concept of constraints. So if I were, if I were, yes, if I were to define constraint, what I would say, and then you get to, you know, maybe
00:59:09
Speaker
add some to this or correct me. I think just kidding. I think a constraint is suggesting that people actually not do something in order to do something or that they only do something in order to accomplish like a larger, more complex task. For example, out when I'm teaching my small group strength training,
00:59:35
Speaker
will be working on squat depth. And that's kind of my priority, is I really want people to work more on the depth than adding the load in the, especially in the beginning when they're not quite able to get their hip creases below knee creases. So I always ask them to find something to touch down on that's lower than their knees, right? And the constraint is squat to the box, squat to the stool, squat to the step, whatever it is.
01:00:02
Speaker
so that I'm not giving them any other, I'm not giving them any other cues, but there's this one rule and it's that you're gonna do this, right? Like, let's say you were going, you had somebody and you were working on a squat and at first it was just doing like a sit to stand or a stand to the box. And then to progress them, you might say, okay, instead of actually touching it with your butt, I want you to just like stop right before you touch it and then come right back. Get as close as possible.
01:00:31
Speaker
There's lots of ways, for example, you could use the wall to create a constraint like, you know, if say someone is working on balancing and handstand, you could have them
01:00:44
Speaker
not to touch the wall through some part of their body instead of touch the wall through some part of their body.
Creative Constraints in Learning
01:00:50
Speaker
I know in Feldenkrais, Feldenkrais capitalizes on constraints a lot, so you might be working on some type of action through the knee, and you do the action through the knee, and then you ask them to hold onto their foot and do the action through the knee. And so now you've created this constraint, which is that there's only so much they're going to be able to move now that they're holding onto their foot.
01:01:10
Speaker
One constraint that I gave that is both a constraint and an analogy. Yes. Are you ready for it? Am I sitting? I'm sitting down. Okay, yes. Shoulder circles. Picture it. Center aisle, center aisle of a Boeing. Packed flight. You're doing shoulder circles, kneeling on the ground.
01:01:35
Speaker
and you definitely don't want to hit the passengers in the aisle seats. The constraint with the analogy, right, you're not going to hit these imaginary people on this imaginary plane.
01:01:47
Speaker
is different than stand one foot away from the wall, and as you circle your shoulder, don't let your hand hit the wall, right? So that's an external. Now, your one with the analogy is more fun, for sure. And I think that's a big part of metaphor and analogy is that it can actually make the entire process more enjoyable for people, because they're imagining this plane full of people that they're not hitting, as opposed to like, ah, there's a wall, and I have to not hit the wall with my hand. As you ponder that, because I see your pondering face. I am, because I'm still not convinced
01:02:17
Speaker
that the motor output would be that different. My guess, this is totally my guess. I have no idea. My guess is that the motor output from an analogy is probably going to be more similar to a similar constraint within the actual room itself. So now instead of imagining yourself in the center aisle of an airplane and not hitting the passenger in seat 12B,
01:02:42
Speaker
you are with your side body to the wall, X amount of distance, try not to hit the wall, versus the internal cue, which would be take your arm up and back and squeeze your arm behind you as far as you can.
01:03:01
Speaker
I wonder, I wonder, that's all, but I have literally no evidence to support my wonderings yet. Yet. One of the ways that I use constraint is in the end, speaking specifically about the PT world, although that's not true. I do this in what I'm teaching as well, is
01:03:16
Speaker
I'll use the constraint of keep one body part in one place while you move another body part. And particularly in rehab, a lot of the time what I find myself teaching people is like trunk, they call it stiffness or stability, right? The ability to keep your torso in one place while your leg is moving or while your arm is moving. And the ability to disassociate an arm
01:03:43
Speaker
flexion from a spinal flexion or something like that for people is shockingly hard for a lot of people to kind of feel where their body is in space. So a lot of the constraints that I use are that. But like I said, I might use an external constraint where I'll be like, as you're doing this lunge, I don't want your hand to touch my knee. No, I don't want your knee to touch my hand. That's what I meant. So something like that where they have a target to not hit or a target to hit.
01:04:10
Speaker
You know, absolutely. You know, one of the best constraints I know of that could be applied both within an internal and external queuing scenario is a very heavy barbell. Interesting. Tell me more.
01:04:21
Speaker
Yeah. There's probably 300, 400 different ways I could squat with body weight. There's only one way I'm probably going to squat with 150 pounds on my back. You know what I'm saying? No, it's true. My squat, my Astagrass squat, my squat all the way to the ground, when I do it without any weight, I either fall over backwards or it's hard for me to hold that position. As soon as I add weight to it, it's like boom, straight up and down. Yeah. It's really interesting.
01:04:51
Speaker
fascinating. It's so counter to what people think. Right. You'd think that they're like, Oh my gosh, my form isn't good enough to lift this heavy barbell when in actuality, their form will never be good enough to lift a heavy barbell unless they're lifting a heavy barbell. And the lifting of the heavy barbell actually creates the form that looks correct. Exactly.
01:05:14
Speaker
Cool. All right. So next I want to continue along this line of providing example cues because it roots us in a specific, you and I have been teaching for many years and we've probably used some of our best cues multiple times. I'm going to go whip this one out of my back pocket because I know it's a good one, but I wanted to actually take some internal cues, warning some of them are not particularly inspiring that we might hear a lot in strength
01:05:44
Speaker
in yoga and flip them so that they're external. Okay. Are you, are you game? Sure. Okay, let's do it. So first is the context of yoga. Picture it. Sicily. 1912. You're in, you're in baby Cobra. Yes. The teacher says, lengthen the back of your neck. That is an internal cue.
01:06:15
Speaker
I don't think it's a bad one. I just, I don't think anybody really thinks much about the back of their necks. They're like, well, the what? The what? The like, lengthen it? What does that mean?
01:06:25
Speaker
How would I make that an external cue? Yeah, what would you say? Well, I have the part. Okay, what I'm running into is the fact you want to use an analogy. No, actually, no. I'm way less creative than that. I'm like, well, I don't exactly know how tall the room is. So if I tell them to aim the top of their head at the point where the wall meets the ceiling, I don't know if that's the correct place that's going to actually lengthen. Okay, so I would probably say something like aim the top of your head to the spot where the wall and the ceiling meet.
01:06:53
Speaker
Or maybe there's some object in the front of the room or something. Aim the top of your head towards the photograph on the wall over there. I would say, and this is assuming everyone is clothed and wearing at least a shirt, aim your chin toward the, I guess, collar of your t-shirt. The collar of your t-shirt, I like that. Clothing can be a pretty good object.
01:07:20
Speaker
You're sitting and the teacher says, elongate your spine. And I say, fuck off. Well, now actually all that's done is clue everybody in onto my mental state whenever I'm taking a yoga class. My initial response to everything is don't tell me what to do. So that's just me getting over myself. Elongate my spine.
01:07:46
Speaker
There's a lot of different things you could say for elongate your spine. What could someone say to you that wouldn't make you go fuck off and still have the same effect? Because actually, you're making me think of something about maybe why people are turned off by things that yoga teachers say. Frankly, yoga teachers say a lot.
01:08:09
Speaker
Yes, because a lot a lot of yoga teaching is is teaching is not really it's more kind of conducive to motor performance, right? It's like perform the aesthetics of this pose. And it's also a lot of like
01:08:23
Speaker
Repeating things that they've heard so there's a lot of cues that just get used I think that in my head the fuck off is more about like I'm so tired of people telling me to elongate my spine You know what I mean? It's less like do not to do that action. It's more like could somebody say something interesting I think to be honest the kind of cue that would actually get me to elongate my spine Would be a metaphor Are you ready? Are you ready?
01:08:48
Speaker
Are you ready? After I finish my happy dance. I can't run now. I would say imagine you're holding, let me, you know, I've got to come up with the right words for this, but it would basically be about like your spine is like chewing gum and I want you to take it between your imaginary hands and pull it longer. Stretch your chewing gum spine longer. That's probably what I would, that would get me excited about doing it.
01:09:17
Speaker
Dude, that was a fiery cinnamon flavor of gum right there. I liked it. Protract your shoulder blades. OK, I gave one already, the rising dough. Also, sometimes resistance band, press your back ribs up into the band.
01:09:40
Speaker
And that's a good sort of external slash tactile cue because they've got something to feel. Yeah, especially if they're like in quadruped and they're not lying on their back. I mean, I think about protraction usually in something like a plank. God, you got me metaphoring again.
01:09:55
Speaker
So I might say pull your ribs away from the ground. That's not a metaphor. That's not a metaphor, but I might be like... It's very insightful though, because I don't think a lot of people recognize that in many scenarios, protracting the shoulder blades is actually a movement of the rib cage relative to the shoulder blades. Yes. That was a big light bulb moment for me. Yeah. Yesterday. Just kidding.
01:10:18
Speaker
I could also say like push more into the ground and people just kind of like hyperextend their elbows. Like it doesn't necessarily mean anything. So it's this idea of take a body part and move it relative to the room around you. So maybe you say push down to the ground so that your ribs move away from the floor. Yeah, sometimes I again like to reference clothing and I'll say move your back ribs up into your t-shirt. One more yoga related example. Shavasana, relax.
01:10:47
Speaker
I know you love that one. I love it. Hey, lady relaxes also. Relax and calm down. I'd be hilarious if somebody taught Shavasan. They're like, just calm down. Just chill out. This is one that I have used, and I do use pretty often, is I'll say something like, allow yourself to be held by the ground. Ooh, that's also kind of metaphorical. It is a metaphor and an external cue. I love it.
01:11:17
Speaker
This is also, it's also a metaphor, but I have also heard in like the queue, Matt, and this might actually kind of scare some people. So I don't know if I would use this in every context, but imagine the ground is rising up to meet you and swallowing you whole.
01:11:36
Speaker
Yeah, all around you. Yeah, so maybe that one's not the best for every population. Okay. Strength. Let's transition to strength. So you've done some kettlebelling. Tell me about the swing. So you referenced a cue. Squeeze your glutes at the top. Hinge your hips right on the backswing. Those are internal cues. Can you think of a way to translate
01:12:06
Speaker
one or both cues to an external cue. Yeah. And so the hinge or hips part, because I'm working on hip hinging with people is not just in the context of kettlebell, but in a lot of things, I'm working with people figuring out how to hip hinge and only hip hinge. And so I use a lot of cues about
01:12:28
Speaker
aim your butt for the chair behind you. That's one, right? So an imaginary chair.
Creative Cues for Kettlebell Swings
01:12:33
Speaker
The one I use for a lot of women as far as like getting your, and this actually, this is, I'm gonna go off-piste a little bit. I use this more in like sort of deadlift shape is, and the reason I say this for women specifically, you'll understand in a moment. I'll say, you're gonna stick your butt back like you're in a bathroom where there's a toilet that you don't wanna touch.
01:12:55
Speaker
And that response that you just had, and every single woman goes, got it. Because every woman has been in a bathroom where there is a toilet seat that they do not want to sit down on. And they know how far back they have to stick their butt. I'm going to make a t-shirt, and it's going to say, metaphors and analogies are the new external cues. Fight me. Fight me? And people are going to be like, huh?
01:13:25
Speaker
That's probably what they've been doing most this episode. Instead of saying, hinge your hips, which is an internal cue, you could put a seat behind someone and say, okay, aim your butt for the seat each time, which really gets you to stick it backwards. I love that. I like using the kettlebell as that external object, but I don't know if this cue really
01:13:49
Speaker
I don't even know if it's actually a very good cue to give, but I have tried using it, which is that I'm a hinge, right? A lot of times people will hinge too soon on the swing. And so then the kettlebell is further away from their center and is potentially loading their lower back more than it needs to. So I'll say play a game of crotch chicken. Go on. Well,
01:14:17
Speaker
I mean, isn't it clear? Well, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Okay, so you're at the top of the kettlebell swing. And then the kettlebell starts to, on its backswing, it starts to accelerate
01:14:32
Speaker
rapidly towards your crotch. It does. So of course, we're, you know, obviously wired for self protection. Yes. We immediately want to get the goods out of the way of the swinging cast iron ball, wrecking ball so that I suggest that they shouldn't.
01:14:51
Speaker
and they should actually wait until the very last second because if you delay the hinge the kettlebell then is more underneath you as you are you know exposing your lower back to the axis of gravity and your glutes are absorbing potentially more of that force and redirecting that force back into the upswing versus your lower back.
01:15:14
Speaker
I have to say, you know, I haven't noticed that that cue works great, but I do feel that it is many things all at once. It is many things. Potentially one of them being inappropriate.
01:15:32
Speaker
That might be, that might come under the heading of know your audience. That's, that's a different category of cues. Inappropriate cues. We should do a whole episode on that. Okay. I mean, I can tell you about one inappropriate cue, again, referencing our friend Amanda Tripp. I have a picture that she drew for me of a joke that I really maybe this is what the t shirt should be, that I really wanted to sort of like use and I never I never got up the guts to do it because it it's just it's right on the edge of
01:16:02
Speaker
this is maybe a little, am I a professional? Is this my job? But we had this joke about people saying like, blossom your whatever body part, like how people love to say, blossom your something. And so we had this whole joke about blossom your anus. And then we were laughing about blossom your anus for a while. But people used to say that. Did they say blossom your anus? Your actual anus?
01:16:29
Speaker
So anyway, she drew me a picture of a person standing over bent in, I'll forward it to you, it's adorable, of a person standing over bent in half with a flower sticking out of their butt. And underneath it says, blossom your anus. That really could be a t-shirt. In fact, I think we might have to make t-shirts. And on the back it just says, movement logic. Honestly, you can't make this shit up like some of the cues you hear in a yoga classroom. Yeah, they're special.
01:16:58
Speaker
I know you've been doing a lot of bench pressing. I have. Yeah. Straighten your elbows. Yeah. And also like fuck off because it sounds so simple. Right. Just straighten your elbows. There's so much more going on in a bench press. What do you think?
01:17:25
Speaker
One of the things that I'm running into is like, I'm a deeply literal person sometimes. And what's, what's going through my head right now is I'm like, well, when I'm cueing, I'm saying a bunch of things. Not just one thing, like, like straighten your elbows, but I might say something like, bring your arms towards each other as you press the weight up, which also, which does straighten your elbows because that's an internal cue though.
01:17:55
Speaker
What about what about drive the bar to the ceiling? Yeah. Drive the push this bar to the ceiling. Yeah, I mean, something it doesn't have to be like, you know, not every cue has to shatter the earth. Or your anus. I think this is a great time to end the show. Okay, that sounds fair. Goodbye. Oh, no. All right, no, I will I will say all the things. Say at least one of the things.
01:18:27
Speaker
Okay, well I feel like this has been a really interesting conversation. A note to you listeners that you can check out our show notes for links to references we mentioned and visit our website movementlogictutorials.com where you can and you will almost immediately be prompted to
Podcast Wrap-Up
01:18:49
Speaker
join our mailing list and receive our free hips mini course. It's really good. Yeah, and also hear about something coming down the pike.
01:19:01
Speaker
Is it pike or pipe? It is absolutely pike. Okay. So you can also not watch the video version of this episode because we've stopped doing that. We have stopped doing that. Yeah, we didn't really see the point. Maybe someday, maybe someday we will. Maybe someday. You know, if you want us to just leave us a review. Thanks so much for joining us on the Movement Logic podcast.
01:19:27
Speaker
As I mentioned, it really helps us out if you subscribe, rate, and review. And iTunes, we would absolutely love that. And we read all the reviews. Join us again next week for more movement logic and more of our strong opinions, loosely held, and the banta.
01:19:48
Speaker
So much banter. Although next week's episode is just me bantering with my very special guest, Dr. Chris Rayner, who is an orthopedic surgeon who is not obsessed with surgery. How about that? No, he's fantastic. And he is a great conversation. I love to talk with him. I'm super excited to listen. Alrighty, thanks for joining. Bye.