Nikki Costello is a lifestyle coach with the CHEK Institute and operator of MyWholeBody. She has worked with Dr. Mark Barnes at SOMA Physical Therapy on the rehabilitation of whole-body health. Nikki specializes in resilience, recovery and longevity. She is also an experienced ELDOA teacher—in English, it stands for Longitudinal Osteo-Articular Decoaptation Stretching—a practice that she and Colby discuss at length during the episode. Much of this practice is focused on the body’s fascial system and repairing or instituting its integrity.
REFERENCES
- Merrill Performance Web: https://www.mperformance.com/
- NC Website: http://mywholebody.net/about-us/nikki-costello/
- Anatomy Trains: https://www.anatomytrains.com/
- Weston A. Price: https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of-nutrition/why-we-need-carbs/
- Black Onyx (cocoa) https://www.savoryspiceshop.com/black-onyx-cocoa-powder
Episode Transcript
00:13
Welcome to the cycling and alignment podcast, an examination of cycling as a practice and dialogue about the integration of sport in right relationship to your life.
Colby Pearce 00:25
Greetings and salutations space monkeys. Welcome to another episode of cycling in alignment. today’s podcast guest is Nikki Costello. Nikki owns a studio here in Boulder, Colorado, called My whole body. She’s a Czech practitioner, and an elbow instructor. If you don’t know what elbow is buckle your seat belt, we will unpack that exercise modality. I’ve taken several elda classes with Anki and found that to be quite challenging. The concepts are really interesting and we’ll get into it. Nikki and I also have a great discussion about fascia. What fascia is, if you’ve never heard of it, stay tuned, how it works, how you can exercise it, how you can improve it, how you can stretch it, mobilize it, utilize it. I also talk a bit about how fascia plays into your position. On the bike. Specifically, we get into a little bit of the limitations of time traveling and how riders find it hard to get into the aero bars and hold their head low wallet race pace. A central theme in the episode today with Nikki is fascia. She’s an elbow instructor and of course, elbow is an exercise modality that works at the fascia. It stretches the fascia, it conditions the fascia and helps people remove adhesions, fascicle adhesions, which can occur pretty much anywhere in the body. This past weekend, I had the opportunity to take a class here in Boulder well all classes are at home now because Hashtag spring 2020 I don’t think it’s a hashtag. But class was an anatomy trains course the lab is here in Boulder. That’s just coincidental. But what’s interesting about this class is it’s a live dissection of a human corpse and the corpses unpreserved. So that means it gets quite real. And I found it absolutely riveting. And something I’ve been considering for a long time and before the whole pandemic COVID thing happened. I was considering taking this class live in person.
02:42
And honestly, it gave me a little bit of
Colby Pearce 02:46
caution. Because you’re in a room with a dead body and in our culture. That’s not a thing that’s real common. Maybe in other parts of the world it is but certainly not in the United States recently During this course a bit, I’ve seen that some students are anatomically challenged and they learn a lot about the human body. But of course, on a spiritual level, there are challenges as well. Because you spend five days in a room with a dead rotting corpse. And you’re confronted with the smell of death, you are confronted with your own mortality or perhaps the mortality of your loved ones or the prior passing of your loved ones or friends or, or people you new acquaintances perhaps, and you might see parallels in their own passing and the passing of the person that you are dissecting. That said, the human body is like a fractal. It repeats itself over and over again, on the most microscopic level. And, to me, there’s nothing more amazing than the structure of the human body, the biological spacesuit. And in particular, the anatomy trains course emphasizes some aspects of the anatomy of the human body and they really dig into the whole system. In this episode Nikki and I unpack quite a bit about the fascia. So this course was quite timely for me would have been more timely had I taken it before I recorded the episode, but that’s not the way it worked out. In any case, I learned a lot. And I feel as though connected some pre serious dots for me in both my coaching world and my fitting world. If you are interested in a course like this, I highly recommend it. We’ll see if I make it back into the lab for a live course in the future. I may. There are students who do take these repeatedly. Because the human body is so fantastically complex. You can kind of just keep learning on that in that paradigm forever. There are no prerequisites for this anatomy trans course, the live dissection course. That said there are professionals from pretty much any walk of life. You can imagine. There are different doctors, there are physical therapists, their manual therapists, acupuncturists, sports trainers, anyone else who works with human bodies can end up in this course and learn a tremendous amount. I mean, it’s helpful to have some anatomical knowledge and training going into it. That said, you learn so much during the course that kind of drinking from the fire hose, I would argue almost no matter what your prior experiences, so, it took Tom Meyers, the founder and Grand Wizard of anatomy trains quite a while to agree to put this course online. For obvious reasons, the point is to dissect a human cadaver and see it yourself to do it yourself to feel the tissues, to cut through the tissues, the fascia to figure out where the functional connections are, and understand how strong they are and how pervasive they are throughout the body. I mean, these are concepts that I understood intellectually, but to do it Another thing entirely. So of course, I missed that. That tangible experience of feeling those tissues and cutting them with a scalpel. However, they did an amazing job of filming this course and getting cameras in all kinds of nooks and crannies and removing of organs and showing us different views of different structures. So, yeah, it wasn’t the same experience Had it been in life course. But that said, I’m really glad I took it and it was definitely worthwhile learn a tremendous amount. One side note, Nikki and I do unpack a bit of conversation involving the term EMF and I failed to define what those are, in case you don’t know EMF are electromagnetic frequencies. These are the little waves that come out of your computer and your cell phone, your television, and any device that produces an electrical field. To expand there are native EMF and non native e Ms. Native would be considered electromagnetic frequencies generated by natural sources such as the sun. non native EMF come from 5g towers. If you want to go down the wormhole of conspiracy theories, just google 5g Tower and have fun with that one. You can get lost for a whole afternoon. In the meantime, enjoy this episode with Nikki
07:33
Nikki Costello Welcome to cycling one.
07:36
Thanks, Callie. Thanks for having me.
Colby Pearce 07:39
Why don’t we begin by giving us we’d love to have some context about who you are and what you’ve studied and where you’re from things like that.
07:46
Um, so I’m Nikki Costello and the business I have here in Boulder, Colorado is my whole body health and fitness coaching. I grew up in a very tiny town called Rachel West Virginia, and I call it tiny town because it’s had a population of like less than 1000 Coal Miner’s Daughter dad was a coal miner mom was like classic stay at home mom. So grew up competitive gymnast, most of my life ended up going into cheerleading at the University of Kentucky after that for school ended up in that direction because I injured myself quite a bit in gymnastics and had a lot of spinal injuries head injuries, ribcage, wrists, knees, all kinds of things.
08:29
Wow. I kind of missed.
08:32
I don’t think so. I actually don’t think I missed anything. So I was pretty beat up with gymnastics and I kind of got to that place where it was like do you want to keep pushing through this and pushing through these injuries? You know, your your body is getting really beat up or you’re going to kind of step away from from the sport. I chose to step away from the sport and it was super hard. Mary Lou Retton was totally my idol. She grew up just down the street from me not far away. My first gymnastics gymnastics coach was her gymnastics coach before she started doing Starting with Bela karolyi. So it was it was pretty intense. It was an intense childhood of competitive gymnastics, you know, I ended up becoming kind of getting into health and fitness coaching. Because of my injuries. Predominantly, I was in a place where in my early mid 20s, I was just wrecked from all of the athletics. And so I started trying to find different ways to heal my body and kind of figure things out and figure out performance, without medication without surgery without you know, all of the typical Western medicine, routes of trying to heal. And I actually had that experience once and when I very first moved out here I worked with a PT who tried to help me with some of my neck injuries from all the head traumas and car accidents and things of that nature. You know, she she helped me tremendously and I learned a lot from her. While I was working with her, she herself was actually in a car accident. And that totally changed her approach to working with him. Once that have actually happened to her, she said, wow, you know, I, I realized I’ve been teaching people these things all my life and now that I’m trying to do them myself with this injury, and I can’t do these exercises that I’m like insisting people work on. And so it was a pretty profound moment for her. She was just like it, you know, it completely changed the way that she approached her clients. Interesting. So that was really, really cool to say,
Colby Pearce 10:25
tell us a bit about all the cool things you’ve studied on this path to become a healer.
10:30
You know, I started out just as a general personal trainer, like that was kind of my my study I studied with just Nesta personal training is just like a, you know, generic Personal Training, certification, nothing fancy at all. And in 2005, I had my first interaction with with the Czech practitioner, Terrence Thomas, and he ended up becoming a very dear friend and mentor of mine. And at that time, he he said to me, he was he said, if if he You start kind of going down this path with Paul in the Czech Institute and taking your education further. 1520 years from now, when people actually catch up to this, you’re going to be ahead of you will be ahead of the curve. And that’s totally proven itself to be true. And so in 2005, I started kind of headed down the path with the Czech Institute and started studying with Paul and did my holistic Lifestyle coaching and things like that. But I mentored quite a bit with parents. And so I spent a lot of time learning with him and just doing continuing education through the Czech Institute. So that was a big, big influence in my education. I studied with stop allottees I chose to study with them because of their they had a very heavy influence in physical therapy. And so their method of polities was very rehabilitation based. And at that time, they were one of the only you know, Institute’s for polities that was that were really focusing on rehabilitation post surgical stuff, postural correction, like really using it in a therapeutic way versus just polities. We’re going to strengthen your core, you know, you’re going to get leaner, stronger, that kind of thing. So they were opposite whatever. Yeah, no, no, yeah. And so, Scott was a huge influence for me then. And then most recently, in the last number of years, that’s where I’ve started studying with Dr. Voy a GI for elbow and the stoma therapy program.
Colby Pearce 12:32
Great. So let’s, let’s bust into all dough. The reason
12:34
I got into elbow and kind of how I went down the road of Alcoa, was that given my history of injuries and kind of postural patterns and things of that nature, there were always certain things that I I still had a really hard time fixing. And I you know, people work on me great physical therapists, great neuromuscular therapist, acupuncturist, chiropractors been at the whole deal. I was doing everything, you know the polities corrective stuff with Paul whatever But there were still these long standing patterns in my body from gymnastics from the trauma from gymnastics that I really couldn’t unwind that I, you know, there’s just certain certain spots that just wouldn’t, wouldn’t let go wouldn’t change. And I had a young woman who worked with me for a little while, who was fully trained an alto and some therapy. And I had never done although I had no idea what it was. And I was like, wow, this is interesting. So we’ll, you know, kind of see what this what this is all about. She and I got together one afternoon, she goes, Okay, we’ll go through a session, I’ll show you what it is and blah, blah, blah, okay. And in that very first session, you know, she immediately saw my pattern, and she knew what was going on in my body. She was also a Czech practitioner. So she had gone through the entire check program and then gone through the eldo and some a therapy with Dr. Wei. We did, I think, maybe less than five different movements like five different elbow posture. And when I stood up my entire neck and spine where it always stuck, completely adjusted, like the whole, that whole pattern that was always sticking completely shifted and adjusted. And it was just like my whole system whole Nervous System opened up, just like being in a totally different body. And it was such a total with a total reboot. Like it was it was impressive, like I stood up and I was just like, wow, this is incredible. And then I stood there going, why don’t why don’t I know about this? Yeah, and why don’t more people know about this? Like, what, what’s the deal here? So then I set you know, kind of set off down the path of learning about elbow and trying to figure out what it what it what it is what it does, and started studying elbow with Dr. Boyer.
Colby Pearce 14:50
So maybe you can describe a little more specifically what an elbow session would look like if a client came to you and they took an elbow class or you You gave them a few poses. What was that look? What comes it feel like?
15:00
Yeah, so technically what elbow is is longitudinal osteo articular D co option. That’s that’s the, that’s the technical term for elbow, right. And basically what that means is that we are creating space in any specific given joint. So you’re actually creating space between the vertebra could be the knees, the hips, the shoulders, you’re creating space in a given joint, but it’s creating space in a way that it’s actually pumping fluid into the joint. So there’s decompression where we just create space, but then there’s what’s called D co option in Indy co option, we create space but then it pushes fluid, so limb, cerebral spinal fluid, synovial, fluid, minerals, vitamins, nutrients, water into that space, which promotes healing in that space, and D in decompression. And so the elders are technically if you want to call them myofascial stretches and What you’re doing is putting your body in a position in any given very specific position. Where you’re twisting your factual systems, you’re basically taking the fascia and twisting it into a figure eight. And what that does, it’s if you think about like wringing out a washcloth, right, and you take a washcloth, you wring it out in that, that twisting motion, and it pushes fluid out of the washcloth, when, and so what we’re doing with elbow is, is putting the body in very specific postures that take the fascicle system and kind of wring it out. So it pumps fluid throughout the body. The cool thing about the elbow is is that you’re, you’re addressing the entire system. So even though we might be focusing on one specific joint or the shoulder or the hip or the knee or whatever it is. Because you’re dealing with a factual system, you’re addressing the entire system. you’re addressing your organs, your dressing, your intestines, your pair, cardiac, your heart, all kinds of things.
Colby Pearce 17:00
especial runs through the entire body. Exactly. Right. Right. So maybe we can take a moment just to define fashion on its own because I think a lot of people and a lot of my clients who come into work with me on my fit studio, I use the word fashion that kind of look at me quizzically. Yeah, they don’t quite understand what it is. So
17:16
fascist become, you know, it’s one of those things, it’s starting to become kind of a hot button word for people. They’re like Russia myofascial release, we do this, we do that. And so it’s starting to become more popular and more of a term that people are getting a little more familiar with. But generally speaking, I think most people don’t know. They really don’t know what it does. They don’t know how it works. They don’t know how it functions. So, the I think the best way to describe it in the way that I describe it to people in class, is that you know, you’re, it’s like if I took a piece of cellophane and pulled it over your head, and wrapped it all around your entire body all the way down to the bottoms of your feet through your toes, your fingers and just wrapped you up like cellophane. That’s kind of the idea. Do you want to think about when you think about fascia with without subjecting you right? Yes. Okay. Absolutely. Because it wraps the entire system. in it. It’s made of these tiny inner woven fibers. And so those fibers are I like to describe them like fishing wire in a very fine, they’re very thin, and they’re actually tubes. So most people don’t realize that is it those little fascicle wires are tubes that fluid travels through. And that fascia doesn’t just sit on top of your muscles. And so a lot of people think that it just sits on top of there and it’s like this layer, kind of between the skin and between the muscles, those little fibers actually permeate all the way down through the muscle into the bone. So it it is it is connective tissue, it just it weaves everything together like a spiderweb.
18:52
So it’s not just a sheath of
Colby Pearce 18:57
cellophane around the muscle. It’s a sheath that travels through the muscle. Right as well, right in between the organs. Yeah. And so if we didn’t have fascia, and we stood up, our muscles would kind of hang from our skeleton like jelly and they would, because assuming they weren’t contracted, right, right, exactly. fibers aren’t contracted, they were completely relaxed the muscle if you stood up and your arms at your side, your bicep would, would fall down and sag at the bottom. Oh, kind of look like a exactly a lumpy ball at the bottom right with this thin long so the fascia kind of organizes all that kind of contains it, but also travels through it. So that is that right? Yeah. So when you’re fascists tight or bound up these little clumps of proteins, as I understand it can kind of get stuck to the fashion glue the fascia together. Absolutely. And that prevents the muscle from doing its function which the muscle shouldn’t glide smoothly through the actual sheath, which would kind of be the outer sheath of fascia that surrounds the muscle contains it. But also if those little protein chains are glued and stuck together and causing the fascia to, to be too constrictive within the muscle than the fibers can’t Fire properly in a proper sequence. Exactly. So that’s where you get exactly what you were describing, which is, even though I’ve had PT, and massage and acupuncture and all these other treatments, I’ve still got areas of my neck that are just locked up.
20:11
Yeah, yeah. And this is where you’re helpful. You’ll also hear people or clients of mine come in, and they’re like, Well, you know, I’ve gone for this, this great rolfing session, and I felt great for several months, but then everything came back. You know, I went, I saw this great massage therapist felt great for a couple hours and everything came back on a chiropractic, you know, like, there’s always this something that they’re doing whatever it is, that they get this kind of instant, really from, that could last a few hours, a few days, a few months. But because we’re not really dealing with the health and wellness of the tissue via the fascia, which delivers all of the nutrients and the fluid to the system, then you don’t achieve real change. You don’t change that you don’t achieve that permanent result before.
Colby Pearce 21:00
Yeah, the last podcast I did was with Charlie, Maryland, he described that phenomenon of chiropractic massage, reiki, you know, wherever you’re doing, as he said, unfortunately, a lot of the science and our, our common experience has shown us that a lot of those modalities end up being very transient. So which doesn’t make them invaluable. Yeah. If you’re in a lot of pain and you go to a chiropractor, you feel better than I mean, that’s without getting down the nuance of whether or not chiropractic is actually healthy. Like, yeah, what I’m saying is superficially, at least, if you have pain, and it’s relieved, that’s probably a good thing. Yeah. But ultimately, I think most people would prefer a long term solution. Absolutely.
21:37
Right. Right. Yeah. And my big thing when it comes one of the things that I love about the Doa system and kind of what Dr. Boyce is doing, and part of you know, what Paul does is that you know, I think it’s just really important to give people tools. You know, I’m there’s nothing worse than dealing with somebody who just wants to be fixed. That shows up, fix me, fix me. Fix me fix me. Touch me push me twisters do that whatever. Like, I want to give people tools. I want to give people things that they can use that will correct their bodies that they can they can do on their own.
Colby Pearce 22:13
teach people how to fish
22:14
it totally exactly right. You want to teach people to fish. And not to mention, and I was I was on that merry go round when I was injured. So when I was in my early mid 20s, I’m kind of all those injuries had really taken hold and my facial system was a wreck and my nervous system was a wreck. I was totally on that merry go round of acupuncture every week chiropractor, massage. Every I mean, it was like a part time job trying to keep my body to get expensive and time consuming. It’s expensive. It’s time consuming. It’s exhausting, especially when you’re not really achieving the level of performance that you’re used to having. Right and so you come into those kind of places, as you will know. It’s like You’re used to being a high performance person and you’re used to your body running at 100%. And then all of a sudden, you wake up in the morning, and it’s 95% that’s like the end of the world. And then it’s 90% It is like, Oh, God, and then God forbid, you know, it just keeps going down from there. And you’re, you’re doing everything, you know, how you think that you’re, you know, you’re listening, everyone, you’re following instruction, and you’re never getting back to the hundred percent. And that’s, that is very frustrating. And I see that happen with so many. So many athletes, so many people in general, where, you know, they they come to me and they’re like, I used to feel like this. No, I used to look like this. I used to be able to do that. And there’s just this like level of exhaustion there. Like I’m spending so much time so much energy, doing all this stuff, and I’m just not getting there,
Colby Pearce 23:52
you know, or that experience a lot of client intake question before I do like fit with them and one of the questions is how many rides out of the last 100? Would you say our flow state rides? Right? I kind of define I break that down a little bit but basically it’s you could just go ride your bike and do whatever your goal is if your goals a bunch of intervals and you want to go hard you can focus on those intervals if you just want to ride your bike and gerrae and look at the deer and you know stop for coffee that then you’re able to do that without some pain or dysfunction or sensation of twisting or wrestling with cell position or cleats or whatever. Yeah, interfering with your and the number of riders who say 100 out of 100 a flow state rides I’ve yet to see one. But the But what’s even more, really a bummer. And a bit shocking is that the number of rides the number of riders who list a high number of those rides as being close date is very low. Right. So it tells me a lot. There are a lot of broken people out there. Yeah. That’s it I recognize that I see my profession is to fix people, at least in the world of cycling or help them give them tools, I should say to fix themselves. Yeah, education is part of my process as well. So
25:08
it’s not necessarily a great business model, but
Colby Pearce 25:10
you know, right. No, it’s not you put yourself out of business that way. It’s kind of the opposite of the disposable electronic device and whatever. That’s okay. You know what, a lot of people on this planet and there are a lot of people who are struggling with, with health and with their bodies. Absolutely. Paul tells us that all the time. He says if you can’t make good money in this modern day and age, then you’re doing something wrong because you’re fixing broken people and you’ve got a lot of tools in your tool shed. Absolutely. So. Yeah, interesting. Okay, so I’ve taken a few classes with Nicki a few other classes, and I’m gonna just give you my own personal view of what a single elbow oppose is like, each one last 60 seconds. And imagine doing an exercise. Well, okay in comparison, we look at a conventional exercise like pick of normal gym exercise, even something moderately complex, like kettlebell swing. If you’ve never swung a kettlebell before, in your learning how there are quite a few cues, you have to pay attention to right? you swing the bell in the right way, you have to have the right amount of grip, let the bell move a little bit more, don’t cast the bell too far in front of you, etc. Elbow and elbow in an in a single elbow oppose the list of cues is extensive. It might be 15 or 20 items. And that makes it not boring, because you’ll always have a lot of things to concentrate on. It also means that your instructor really has to have have their act in gear. And they need to be in touch with the client and what they need, but also constantly refreshing your memory on what to do because it’s easy to forget some of the cues. Yeah. And the reason is that in most of the poses, you’re actually these are primarily while they’re all to my knowledge isometric in nature, right?
26:50
Believe it or not, actually not. Ah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that’s that’s one of the misconception, probably common misconceptions about the outdoors.
Colby Pearce 27:01
Because if you think about an isometric contraction, right, it’s just a holding position tight. So it’s isometric. It’s just like this holding. So let’s define that just so people know like an isometric think of a wall squat. If you put your your back against the wall and you held your knees at 90, and you just, you just stayed where you were, as long as you could that would be isometric. Right?
27:20
Okay. And so, the, the reality of Alcoa is that
27:26
you’re never not moving. And so, because the fascicle system is changing throughout the entire posture. So as you are starting to move fluid and those fibers start to slide across each other. Because what most people don’t realize is that fashion doesn’t actually stretch. So it’s not it’s, it’s not stretchable, right, it doesn’t, you can’t stretch it like a rubber band. Those tiny little fibers glide, they actually glide and they skip around from one fiber to another, to create the movement. So they glide and they skip Fiber fiber to create that movement. And so as we get into the elbow posture, and that fluid starts to pump and things start moving, you start gaining more range of motion. So you start gaining more muscular contraction, you start gaining more space, and it’s super told us so then you can go deeper. No,
Colby Pearce 28:21
yeah, I felt that. I felt that during poses. Yeah, very powerful.
28:24
Yeah, it feels isometric for a lot of people, okay, only because they get they get there. And it’s often very hard. It’s very challenging. And they, you know, they get into the posture and they’re like, oh, when there’s this like, Oh, my gosh, it feels like nothing’s moving. Right? Yeah. And so it feels very isometric. Most people think that it is Yeah. Okay.
Colby Pearce 28:47
Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Thank you for expanding on that. So it’s a non isometric pose for 60 seconds. Your instructors cueing you on what to do and In most of the poses the fastest being stretched almost from tip to toe, we’d say always, right. I mean, while there are a few where one arm is resting, for example, yeah. And so you’re not necessarily applying a lot of tension in that resting arm. Is that
29:13
right? what you’re doing with your resting arm is that so what we’re always working with an elbow as in elbow, as are that is that figure eight or the lemony scat? Let me skate is what it’s called. And so let me skate
Colby Pearce 29:25
like, what’s not what is that some sort of strange animal?
29:31
Is the elusive lemniscate
Colby Pearce 29:33
this one on the way to the office, straight into the bushes. Okay, who else was that it was me skate.
29:41
So uh, let me skate is just a fancy word for a figure eight. Okay, so like if you put that into the, into your, into your Google bar, it’s gonna pop up and it’s gonna look like kind of like a helix, right? It’s this kind of helical form of like the MC Escher with the track with the ants. Ya know that picture? Yeah, there you go.
Colby Pearce 29:58
Yeah. For weird obtuse references, if you don’t know MC Escher is go forth and find the internet searching.
30:07
Find it. Okay. So basically, you’re creating those figurines as Lenny skates throughout the body. And what happens when you have a hand that’s actually fixed and not in? Technically in your mind, you think it’s not moving? You’re creating a fixed point to twist the rest of the fascia around. So even though that hand and that arm is fixed, it’s still not active and not contracted. It actually still is contracted. Okay, supposed to be contracted. Yeah, I might not have been queuing you very long. To talk to your instructor, right? Okay. So when that hand is fixed, it’s actually you are you are actively trying to rotate the arm kind of think of corkscrewing it into the floor. So feel it’s like, like, if you’re trying to screw something into the floor. That’s kind of what you’re doing with your arm. Okay, so it’s actually very act. And creating part of that. Let me scan or let me see. Yep. And then you’re building around that.
Colby Pearce 31:06
Okay. Yeah, one concept I’ve been having a lot of conversations with about my clients recently is, well, like we talked about the definition of fashion, the concept of fashion, the descriptors that I use to kind of illustrate or when you go to the supermarket and you go to the organic produce section,
31:25
not the conventional, right, we don’t do that and you
Colby Pearce 31:28
get Yes, thank you. And when you get your potatoes, you get a bag of potatoes that come in that little black mesh bag. And that’s how I kind of think of fascia. That’s how I describe it to my clients. It’s which is similar to your concept. It’s like a net sort of, and it goes around the muscles but also through the muscles right? In this web of connective tissue. It has a massive impact on our function in particular when we are under load during exercise and we are at a close to or add maximum range of Yeah, absolutely pretty excited. I’m just gonna, just gonna tell you I signed up for a course it starts tomorrow it’s anatomy trains with Thomas Meyers. It’s a live dissection online within four days. They moved it online they were kind of forced to. And I was considering attending this class in person anyway, so this is a pretty unique class I don’t know. If you want to find out more check out anatomy trains will will make a magic internet portal on our wiki page. anatomy trains, one of the concepts that really Thomas Meyers teachings are all about fascia, and how fascia impacts our posture and our movement through the world. And if you want to see some really cool posters, which Nikki has had in her studio, and I subsequently ended up ordering putting in my studio because I thought there were so useful and illustrated helpful. They’re very helpful are the anatomy trains, posters, which which label and illustrate lines of fashion as they travel through the body. And you can see for example, one of the deep posterior lines of fascia travels all the way from the Achilles heel. Literally to the crown of your head. So if you’re on a time trial bike, for example, people can’t figure out sometimes why it’s hard for them to hold their head down and low aerodynamic position in line with the torso when they’re in Aero bars. So let’s look at our checklist. So if you have, imagine that you’ve got, imagine you’re standing upright, and we taped a string to the back of your heel, and we ran it all the way up to the top of your head, and we taped it to the top of your head with imaginary super strong tape, and the string did not stretch. Okay, so now this is when you’re standing, I’m going to have you fold at the hip, like you do in a time trial position. So you’re going to put your butt way up on your stick up, stick your butt way up behind you, and that string is going to gain the tension is going to go up on that string, because you fold it forward, right. Hopefully everyone sees that. But now imagine that that string had two extra branches that went from about the middle of You’re back to the ends of to the ends of your collarbones. And again, this is non stretchy string that’s attached with super with superglue. Just a super glue. It’s not healthy, don’t do this at home. But this is a thought experiment. So we can play with these things. So now you’re going to take your hands from the standard road bike position, and you’re going to pin your elbows together. And that’s going to pull your shoulders in and towards your ears. So now we have increased the tension on the two strings that came from the center of your back. And that is also pulling on the center string. Right now obviously, this interesting has to split, but to go down each leg, just roll with me. So when we look at our time trial bike checklist, we’re folding it the hip, we’re pinning the elbows together. So when we’re when we put you in a time trial position, when an athlete assumes a time trial position, they’re gonna fold it the hip, probably maximally because you’re trying to be aerodynamic. So you’re need to horizontal eyes, the torso, right, the mark up Right, the torso is lesser all you are, the more we make you horizontal, the faster you go. Then we’re going to pin your elbows together, which kind of pulls your shoulders in towards your chest. And now we’re going to ask you to pedal with some semblance of normalcy, which means we want your heels to be close to flat, and that increases the tension on that poster line. Right? Now, I want you to drop your head down as close to your hands as possible. Again, pulling on that line. Now go as hard as you can. So Nikki, what happens to fascia when muscles are exerted and they contract and they have to increase blood flow and increased demands because of increased metabolic load from aerobic activity. Fashion gets tighter, right becomes more restrictive.
35:47
Totally. Yeah. When you’re also dealing with the nervous system itself. And so when we think about the fact that the autonomic nervous system communicates through our fascicle system, which is a lot of people forget that You know, you put yourself in a high performance situation where your nervous system is more in a fight or flight performance state, and it’s in that parasympathetic, or sorry, sympathetic mode. Now, their whole facial system is totally bracing itself to run from the tiger rate. And so you’ve got the nervous system kicking running through the fascicle system, putting that load in there, and now everything’s just tense,
Colby Pearce 36:27
everything contract
36:28
everything contracts. Yeah. And so we’re not going to move as well, things aren’t going to perform as well, like your posture, nothing is going to perform quite as well, right? If that fascicle system isn’t rendered healthy, right, if that
Colby Pearce 36:40
tissue is healthy, you know, and in case you’re wondering, as soon as you cross functional threshold power for any duration of time, that is the transition zone between it’s not just when you stop shuttling lactate or, or Well, I should rephrase that you’re still shuttling lactate, but it’s not when the bathtub overflows and you can no longer consume all the lactate. you’re producing. It’s not only that point, it is also the point when you firmly transitioned from a balance of parasympathetic and sympathetic stress to full sympathetic, that’s kind of the definition of threshold. Right? You’re going as fast as you can. Yeah. Right. So think about it from a neurological perspective, if Tigers don’t run for very long duration, but as soon as you saw tiger and it began to chase, you would run as fast as you could instant sympathetic mode button, right? It’s like the ludicrous button in the Tesla. Exactly. So that places that global strain on the fascist system and on the nervous system, and the most common compensation I see for that in a time trial rider, which is our textbook example is they can do all these things when they’re riding along and zone two or a moderate pace. But as soon as you put them in a race situation, what happens is the global load on the system is too high and the relief valve is the head pops up. periscopes up from the back. If you want to see this in action, just go find your local time trial from 2019. Apparently, flick through your local photographers photo line and see how many riders are riding with a face that’s really vertical to the horizon, you know, vertical to vertical doesn’t need any reference to the horizon verticals, always vertical peers, but the writing of the vertical face in their head is well above the height of their torso. And that is the meat now it’s possible some writers don’t know that the writing that way that’s quite possible. But in general, I think most TT writers, especially in 2020, know that we want to keep your head as low as possible, right? So they may not be capable of that. This is a challenge for bike fitters, because, until we see a rider at race pace, when that sympathetic mode kicks in, we don’t really see the whole picture, right?
38:49
We don’t see a lot of things in life until sympathetic mode kicks in.
38:53
What’s that?
Colby Pearce 38:57
Okay, so rewinding Just for a moment back to one of your first descriptions of elda you were talking about the wet towel being wrung out. Yeah. Now so if I have a wet towel and I bring it out on the water comes out. But the end result of although, of course, is not to have a dry crunchy towel, of course. So what’s one of our prerequisites for elda? What do you tell people before every class hydration hydration is life? radiation is life.
39:21
Yeah. It’s I mean, that is one of the things that it seems so, so simple and just if there any I mean, you know this like when people come in on the first questions I asked them as you know, I dealt with a man who came in today, it was kind of not planned last minute client came in back pain, spine pain. athlete runner, biker cyclist, you know, at first thing I looked down on how much water Are you drinking every day? I drink plenty of water. I do this do that. Am I okay, how much water you drink. And then when I told them how much water I want him drinking. He was like, Oh, actually, I don’t drink that much water. No. And so the thing about our financial system is that it cannot function properly if the fluid isn’t there for it to pump. So if we are at all dehydrated, if we are the tiniest bit dehydrated, that fascist system starts to become compromised, thus rendering our nervous system compromised. So it’s like this cycle
Colby Pearce 40:18
that starts you’re kind of always running up an engine is not quite firing exactly capacity right on. And well, but we don’t have to worry about that we live in Colorado. I mean, it’s like 19% humidity or all the one thing I think that I’ve learned from racing in Colorado, especially very high altitude is how important hydration is. In particular, because at that altitude, the air so dry that with every exhale, you’re losing moisture out your breath. Absolutely. This is the equivalent of leaving your refrigerator open and hoping it will cool your entire house. That’s what we’re doing. Because the moisture content in your body wants to equalize just through physics with the moisture content. outside the body. Yeah, that means we’re constantly losing moisture even if you’re not working out and sweating. Yeah, I think that’s a bit of a misconception that maybe some people have they think oh well I didn’t run today or I didn’t run today. I didn’t sweat very much or I did my workout but was really quite cold. It’s cold and dry. You’re losing moisture like crazy. The other point I’d like to touch on I think is important is that I think as people we tend to think of hydration on a timeline we tend to think of it is immediate. Yeah. How hydrated are you right now you gave your client is pop the pop quiz. hydrated are you right now? Well, right now I’m pretty good. Right now is important, but also think about all the minutes of your days. Yeah, meaning if you don’t drink water for eight hours of the day, and then you go home and you realize how thirsty you are or even if you’re making new found effort to look after your health, you decide you’re going to hydrate more regularly and you drink a ton of water. That doesn’t fix the level. to eight hours where you had subpar performance at work or on your workout, or when you were having lunch with your wife or whatever you were doing that you maybe wanted to be present for, and fully able to function at your best ability. Right?
42:14
Well, and I think, you know, want to just to speak to that what what most people don’t know or realize is that, you know, people walk in our door, I’m gonna say nine out of 10 people are dehydrated, technically, they’re dehydrated. I’ve never had people walk in, they’re like, Oh, yeah, I drink a glass of water a day. And I don’t. And of course, and I look at them. Exactly. explosion, explosion emoticons. How are you functioning? And then I realized, well, they’re not functioning. That’s why they’re here. But when you are dealing with dehydration, and then you actually start to understand what real hydration is what that looks like. What is it for you? That’s my big chunk IQ. Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, that’s a good idea. I will travel.
43:01
I’ve got my stones on.
43:02
I can’t take this one. I’ve got
Colby Pearce 43:04
some about it’s about to what? five centimeters by five centimeters.
43:10
Yeah, yeah, it’s a good two pounds. Yeah, maybe three.
Colby Pearce 43:14
So now you said you have a stronger IQ. I know
43:16
people would have shrunk IQs Yes,
43:17
you looked at me across the table. I was
Colby Pearce 43:19
just, it caught my eye and I was like, look at you.
43:22
This is a big block of wood. This is my shunga cube shunga eight is a stone that comes from Russia. And Shanghai naturally deters EMF. So that’s that’s, that’s one of the main things on
43:39
there, no emails or naming
43:41
was trying to make sure my brain was gonna function optimally. Yes, it does a lot of other things on a kind of metaphysical spiritual level as well and helps with grounding and things of that nature and just protection and clearing but it’s very well known for its EMF, EMF protection,
Colby Pearce 43:58
dispersion ability. Totally Excellent
44:00
selection. Okay,
44:02
so, back to hydration. So what most people don’t realize is that when they start really hydrating and they learn, okay, I need this amount of water, I’m not getting a yada yada yada, it takes up to two weeks, sometimes three, have consistency in that zone of consuming the amount of water that you’re supposed to be consuming to fully hydrate the system once you’ve been dehydrated. And so most people, they’ll go, Oh, you know, I started drinking my water, I don’t feel any different. It’s been a few days, whatever. And then like this was just take some time. You know, take it takes, it takes an effort.
44:41
Yeah. And I would
Colby Pearce 44:44
also add to that, that if someone’s got, someone’s been dehydrated for a long period of time on three years of their life and they start adding water, just like any change, your body’s gonna have to assimilate to that. Absolutely. And we need to make sure that we’re maybe getting people better Information about what what we’re talking about because we’re not talking about chlorinated tap water or we know.
45:05
Absolutely. What’s your pick my pick? Yeah, well since we live here in Boulder, Colorado, my my pick is Eldorado springs. So I try to since we are fortunate enough to have a clean spring water source that’s full of minerals and the perfect alkalinity. Then I go for Eldorado springs in my glass bottles. Nice. Quartz. All right. I get made fun of a lot from my boozy water.
Colby Pearce 45:30
Yeah, I’m cool that little care if people call me a weird hippie or whatever, whatever, go for it. Okay, great. So it sounds like your recommendation is is local spring water if that’s possible, what about filtered waters? What happens when you when you strip the water of everything?
45:45
You know, I think that when people have access to local spring water and they know it’s a good source, it’s good alkalinity, go for it because that’s you know, that’s, that’s how nature intended it. When you have to filter your water obviously you start taking out all the minerals you start Taking out the natural sodium you change the alkalinity of the water, it typically becomes much more acidic and things like that. So if you’re filtering water, it’s great because you want you want to get out the chlorines. You want to get out the core amines, you want to get the fluoride out, you know, you want to get what for I, I like taking other people’s
46:19
prescription drugs.
46:21
What do you mean? Well, like taking birth control? Yeah, I mean, what am I getting
Colby Pearce 46:26
at homeopathic doses? I mean, I’ve heard I’ve got to do something good for me. Right. Right.
46:30
Right notation. Yeah.
Colby Pearce 46:32
Sorry. My sarcastic meter is a little high today. But yeah, please continue.
46:38
Yeah. So you start pulling all that stuff out, right, you want to get it out, but then you’re left with this water that’s, you know, doesn’t have a lot of minerals doesn’t have nutrients doesn’t have what the water life giving water actually gives to us. And so at that point, you have to figure out how to put those things back in. Are you drinking Eldorado and just getting From that, are you supplementing with any additional minerals, I do not supplement with any additional minerals, I just stick with Eldorado springs, they have a really good mineral profile. Their alkalinity is awesome. So I just stick with that, you know, and I can and it was interesting I’d I used to live in a home where we had well water. That was clean. Great. And so that was that was awesome. And there was a transition period where I had, you know, our best option was reverse osmosis because I had to get the fluoride and all this stuff out somehow. And I can definitely see that in that time of having to drink through reverse osmosis water and put minerals back in it was much harder to stay hydrated. I had a very hard time like actually keeping that water in my body.
Colby Pearce 47:42
Yeah, so that brings me to a topic. I feel like some of my clients start drinking water and they noticed that peeing a lot more first. And that probably goes to our comment about letting the body learn to take the water in and really have it saturate your tissues properly, right? Yeah,
47:57
I don’t typically You know,
48:01
one of the things that I’ve tried to, to shift about my coaching and training after 25 years is you know, we get this knowledge, right we we learn things we’re like, oh my god, how is it now? Um, how are we even still even functioning? And when somebody walks in and you’re like, Okay, half your body weight in ounces of water and then if you’re an athlete and you’re in a high desert climate like we are and and, and we’re adding and adding is that, you know, it’s it’s giving them the tools to slowly increase that water intake. So not saying, okay, go start drinking a gallon of water right now, but they’re not going to retain most of that. They’re just gonna pee it out. It’s
Colby Pearce 48:43
gonna come out you might get discouraged and totally not sore.
48:47
Yeah, whatever. And nine out of 10 people get discouraged of like, I’m in the bathroom all day long. I can’t do boys. I can do it. I’m just not like I know I get it. And so I’ve just kind of switched over to that like Trying to be more more gentle, a little more gentle and like, okay, so just we’re going to increase this. You’ve been drinking one glass of water a day. Okay, we’re going to start with two. So we’re going to try for two for a couple days, then we’re going to increase it to three for a couple days, and then four. So it’s more of this slow increase versus just bombarding their brains and their systems. Yep. Yeah,
Colby Pearce 49:21
yep. I think that’s what Paul would refer to as a rainbow bridge, which is the concept that if you see a client who walks through your door, and just metaphorically, maybe they’re running at 22% of what you think they can run out, right? You don’t take them to 100 or 99. On the first week, or the first day, it’s too much. You have to recognize that the client has a life they have habits. And maybe they’re drinking five nights a week. Oh, so Rainbow Bridge would be okay, we got to make a change here, right? You don’t go five nights a week to zero, maybe it’s half the quantity at first and then after a month when they start to trust you and they see positive results from the changes you’re recommending, then you say, to feel better now? Yeah, I feel better. I’m drinking less beer I think that had to do with and I also lost weight, okay, instead of five minutes a week, we can trim it down to two, you know. And that’s then eventually, your master plan is to keep pushing all the buttons and then demonstrating to them that your program is helping them feel healthier. And that’s where true effective change happens. Because not every change has to be about a, an air quotes, sacrifice or giving up the things that you love. The other side of the tunnel is when you as a client, you start to see the positive change and you feel so much healthier, you have such better energy, you can perform better, all those neck problems and back problems start to go away and you’re lifting more weight than you’ve ever lifted or you’re running faster than you’ve ever ran or whatever your goal is. And then it’s not that you still give up or sacrifice you choose to not drink beer even though you really want to It’s that you don’t really want the beer anymore because you realize yours toxic poison,
51:04
right? And you poisoning yourself where you actually feel better if I drink less,
Colby Pearce 51:08
right? And then it becomes a natural choice. Yeah. It’s a concept that perhaps escapes some people. Yeah.
51:15
Well, it’s I think that and I was thinking about this earlier today, it’s that
51:20
very few people actually know what running their body functioning at 100% feels like how high performance athletes we can get to experience that at some point where legally, hopefully, right and then all hopefully at some point, you’re really your top performers are here some finding some kind of flow state, like you said, where they’re just 100% the body is just cranking everything’s in alignment. It’s all working. And very few people I think, ever, ever experienced that. And so when they come in to see people like you and I, it’s it’s just so much fun. Just just to start baby step in them with it like most people don’t know what it’s like to feel hydrated.
Colby Pearce 52:04
You’ve done some fasting up, cause I related left turn topic. Have you done any dry fasts speaking of dehydration, or only water fasting, never done a dry fast.
52:17
I used to practice daily once a week I would water fast you know like Sunday It was kind of my my ritual days that I would fast and water fast all day Sunday I would technology fast I would fast on Sunday. And that was that was nice and it gave my system a nice break it gave it a reboot. It was great. But I’ve also done some prolonged like fasting extended four or five six days I’ve never gone like super long with just water fasting like weeks at a time.
52:49
I found for dis for my system and how my system works that it was just way too harsh for my system to do something like that for for extended periods
Colby Pearce 52:56
of time. So are you feeling pretty low energy by the time time you came to do six? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that was that was all water fast. Right? Yeah. Okay. And do you feel that it was a healthy thing for you to do in the long term? Do you feel better after you rebounded and started eating again? Absolutely. Okay.
53:17
Yeah, I’ve always. I mean, I started doing fasting and cleansing and things like that when I was, I think 21 or 22. And that was kind of part of my trying to regain my health, when all of the injuries and things were taking hold.
53:33
And so it’s I’ve never felt poorly or worse after doing any sort of cleanse or fast. It’s always been been a great benefit for me.
Colby Pearce 53:43
And when you do your longer, dry fasts that are maybe for six days, are you continuing to exercise are you kind of cutting down on your exercise quite a bit,
53:49
I typically cut down on the exercise, the output definitely goes down. You know, I’ll do more gentle things like yoga elbow was just blocking, things like that, but nothing like super high impact on exertion
Colby Pearce 54:00
seems to me like a lot of athletes who have a pretty high output, especially more aerobic oriented athletes tend to gravitate towards later in their lives and their journeys, they tend to gravitate more towards Kido. Because especially if you’re an endurance athlete, you’re a cyclist or a runner or something. It’s just so carb intensive. Right, right. In particular, if you’re kind of old school, I mean, now they’re keto athletes who are doing Ironman and stuff, which I don’t necessarily recommend but depends on the athlete I suppose and how you’re how you’re looking at it and your system handles that everybody’s an individual but you know, the rebound from years of foods that generate a high insulin response. I’ll say, the natural kind of rebound from that is keto, right. It’s like you’re your rebound girlfriend, I guess. Then you you learn to control your blood sugar. You’re eating foods that help you stabilize blood sugar, and then maybe you find the limits on the other side, which I feel I’ve done. Have you played with keto a lot yourself.
55:00
to maybe see two years ago, three years ago, like right when right around the time keto started kind of gaining some momentum and it started becoming, you know, hop on word. I was like, Okay, I’ll give it a try. I’m one of those people that I don’t ask my clients to do anything I’ve not done. And I’m a big believer and walking, walking the talk, like I don’t I’m not gonna ask You to cleanse or fast or do anything that I haven’t done or I don’t know the side effects or any of those kinds of things.
Colby Pearce 55:29
Such a powerful tenant of real personal and health coaching, right? Oh my gosh.
55:35
Like, have you don’t this Oh, no, no, no, you should. You should I’m not gonna
55:41
they’re using me know how that goes. works out for you. So I did a like a 30 day keto to try it out and just kind of get a feel for it. I was also at that time in a situation where I was dealing with a systemic infection that I had, and Quito was supposed to be great for inflammation. and whatnot. And so I went for it. And initially, I felt great. You know, my initial, my initial experience was super high energy. I mean, I was doing the Brain Octane the MCT oil in the coffee, no deal fasting and then I did it full on. And initially it was it was awesome.
Colby Pearce 56:20
I got the first week maybe
56:23
I would say I felt great for about the first two weeks even. Okay, I was doing pretty well for like the first two, two and a half weeks. Lots of energy brain like super focused brain felt very strong. slept well, like super lean, like everything was just I was in that I was in the zone for sure. And then all of a sudden, things started kind of going south. Like I started getting muscle cramps I started losing muscle tissue. And that’s where it didn’t work well for me. And I started getting you know, just weird muscle tension. My cramps, my sleep started to get on erupted because of that.
57:04
And like I said, I actually lost a lot of muscle tissue in like two and a half three week period started like I could just feel myself.
57:14
So it’s kind of my experience with it was that
57:21
I’m not sure it’s something that’s meant for long term. I don’t think that we know enough yet. Like it’s so new and there hasn’t been enough time and bodies doing keto long enough with enough research to really know what are like the long term effects of doing keto, at least that’s just kind of my observation. When you’re dealing with people who have a lot of inflammation in their bodies, they have hormonal disruptions and things of that nature. You know, you’re talking about your liver right? You know, our liver is our main Oregon that really organizes hormones and filters and cleans and to have this That much fat being bombarded into the system for the liver and gallbladder to deal with for a long period of time, logically doesn’t make sense to me. Like I have a hard time wrapping my head around that for a long period of time, that would be okay.
58:16
I can see why people do it in the short term, you know, for a quick fix
58:22
for whatever it is that they’re dealing with, whether they’re trying to lose weight or whatever. And my biggest experience with people who have wanted to do keto, or my clients that have wanted to do keto, it’s been more for weight loss or just in flat and you know, they feel like it might help their inflammation.
58:41
But I’ve never really I’ve yet to see someone really sustain it for a long period of time.
58:48
Interesting, and I do wonder, I am very curious about the long term, you know, health.
Colby Pearce 58:54
No. Do you study a lot of Peter Jia? I don’t he’s one of the I would say he’s He’s one of the guys to look at her a lot of keto resources and he’s got a lot of practical information about it and his technique now I think he was I won’t speak too much out of my study Peterson not a ton so it could be a little bit wrong on this but I’m pretty sure he was full on keto for quite a while he was one of the first people to work with our magazine on the first commercially available ketone esters and now he has a thing called the nothing burger which is a periodic he’s not continuously ketogenic I as I understand it, he doesn’t nothing burger and so that’s a week of strict keto, and then a week of fasting water fasting and then a week of strict keto. But then sandwiched around that to use multiple sandwich layers and analogies. Is I know right to dinner Yeah. dinnertime sandwich. On the other side is, I suppose, you know, Peters version of a normal diet, which does include Some
1:00:01
carbohydrates
Colby Pearce 1:00:04
which are now being vilified, you know, fat was vilified in the 80s and protein red meat will make you dropped out at the dinner table in 1994.
1:00:12
Now as cars
Colby Pearce 1:00:15
or one of my favorite movie lines ever I haven’t had a car since 2003 just trying to figure out what maybe that’s wrong. We’re just gonna let it hang. Just let it hang. I can’t remember either. stepbrothers interface. I can picture those abs but as he pulls up a shirt, look at these out. I haven’t had a car since 2003. Yeah, that’s really impressive. Of course, it’s like an app double you know some
1:00:42
dude who
Colby Pearce 1:00:44
spends 15 hours a day doing stuff. Okay, so it says we’ve been talking about food so much. Here’s your pop quiz. Okay, would you have for breakfast this morning.
1:00:52
So I am a modified faster for sure. So I you know, I fast I try to fast from nine until 11
1:00:58
nine at night until Aluminum
Colby Pearce 1:01:01
food window.
1:01:02
Yeah, I have a compressed food window. And
1:01:06
my my breakfast every morning is this movie. I do do the smoothies or smoothie bypass and I’m a smoothie breakfast person. I put a lot of coconut fat in it a lot of like heavy coconut cream fat. Yeah. It had spirulina in it. It has collagen in it. And fruit, fresh fruit, these cups of
1:01:28
fresh fruit card their carbs in that harvest
1:01:30
in there and love the
1:01:32
gardener. They’re so bad for you
1:01:34
Good. Put seaweed in it. Like there’s some herbs and things that I put in there some Chinese herbs from a liver health.
Colby Pearce 1:01:42
Okay. Have you started a lot of Western press stuff?
1:01:44
Yeah, absolutely.
Colby Pearce 1:01:45
So they’ve got some great articles on why carbs are essential. Important. Absolutely. And how and the differences in particular I think one, one aspect that is easy to miss is the difference between refined carb and a carbohydrate that is a lot less refined or not refined at all. For example, a below ground vegetable like a sweet potato. So that might be a good resource. We’ll we’ll find that put in the show notes too.
1:02:14
You know I’ve been all over the board and in how I’ve eaten what I’ve tried the different fad diets, you know, keto no carbs, no fat, high fat, all of that no protein. vegan. I was vegan for a long time were tried that out.
1:02:31
That’s an workout didn’t work out. So how long were you beating about a year?
1:02:36
Okay, committed to it for a year and just did not didn’t work out for me. I was very sick when I was a vegan was very low energy. I think I may have did end up with mono that year or bronchitis or something. I mean, like it was not good. Well, it really didn’t work well for me. I was overweight. I was heavy.
1:02:57
It was not good. But I am interested in order. What I’ve learned my kind of my takeaway in the whole food world of nutrition and this like insanity that people have to serve through every day here in
1:03:09
America is in the supermarket that’s insanity are playing tonight.
1:03:14
Yeah, yes. No, the supermarket, the media, everything. I know, people are just being, you know, so bombarded and overwhelmed with information of what’s right, what’s wrong, eat this, don’t eat this need this, like you said next year. Now, we don’t need that. I mean, it’s not saying and I just, it’s crazy. But my my biggest takeaway has been that there’s a season for everything. And that just because what you ate last year, or the diet you predominantly consumed last year was working for you. As you shift and change and as your stressors change, and as your hormones change, and as your age changes and your environment changes, your dietary needs change, no and I think The hard thing for people is that we’re so out of touch with our bodies generally, you know, unless you’re one of those highly fine tuned people that’s like really into your body and you love food. And you, you know, like me like you like that. We’re just like, we’re fanatics about it. You know, we’re, we’re just nerds about it. We love I love experimenting with my meatsuit, right? I’m like, what’s this gonna do? If I do this? What’s gonna happen? I don’t, you know, I’m totally into it. Not most people aren’t like that. And so I think the hard thing is that so many people are just so out of touch with their bodies and what affects how they feel like what affects their performance, what affects their brain, you know, they have no idea that if they’re slightly dehydrated, their brains gonna lose 30% of its function and they can’t figure out like, why can’t I quite Why can’t remember, X, Y and Z. And so most people just running on autopilot at this point. You know, they’re Running on autopilot around food. They’re looking for some program to follow somebody, please just tell me what to do. Because I don’t know what to do. It’s confusing. I’m overwhelmed. The rest of my life is already overwhelming. How am I supposed to figure this out? And I’m just not a believer in a one, a one food plan that that does it for every single person on this planet that does not work. I’ve gone through periods where I need tons of protein, and I eat lots of protein with all my meals and I’ll consume 100 125 grams of protein a day. Currently, the way my body has changed in my environment, my stressors have changed. I could probably consume half that now. And I feel great. I feel good that way. Sleep well that way like,
Colby Pearce 1:05:46
Yeah, that’s a great point. I think people imagine that people are looking for an answer to what should I eat? What should I do? What exercise should I do? And they want that answer. And it’s easy to assume that the answer might go forever. Yeah, but as you pointed out, like If you’re your environmental stressors, your life stressors, your work, environment you work in, whether you’re commuting to your work in a car for 45 minutes or riding your bike for 12 minutes whether what your exercise load is where you move to live in Florida or Colorado, yeah, like totally different places every day humidity, different demands, different atmospheric pressure, all these things are going to influence your the outcome of all the stressors are going to be felt in your biological speeds spacesuit. Totally. Right. Yeah, that’s your body, by the way, in case you missed that.
1:06:36
It’s a touchy topic for me when people start talking about food because clients come in and they’re like, Oh, my girlfriend did this or, you know, when I was 30. When I was 40. Yeah, 10 years ago, five years ago. And I’m just like, you know, it’s hard for me to roll my eyes.
Colby Pearce 1:06:55
I think it’s human nature. I get the same. I have the same experience of my athletes who had a great season of racing in 2012. And when things aren’t going, Well, sometimes they’ll call me up or email me and be like, Hey, we just did this. This is the program I did. Can I just do it over again? Well, yeah, you can, but don’t expect the same result. You’re not the same person. You’re not saying human. You’ve had six or eight or 10 more years of racing and your your legs and weight training or strength and conditioning and all these things, and you crashed and fell off a cliff or whatever has happened to all of us.
1:07:30
Right? You had a baby?
1:07:33
Yes.
1:07:34
Right away, right. Whatever. Yeah.
1:07:36
which only has a small impact on tests. Very, very small. Very small. Yeah.
Colby Pearce 1:07:43
Yeah, you you do a lot of work with women who have had children. Tell us maybe a little bit about that. How What are your common findings? What do you what you see in your clientele?
1:07:54
What I would say is, is the biggest challenge post pregnancy See?
1:08:02
And I don’t know if this is I doubt that this is across across the world, but here in Boulder
1:08:10
is that doctors, doctors often tell them to resume activity. You know, give yourself five or six weeks slowly resume activity as you feel. Okay, like they don’t, there’s not a large they don’t give them a lot of parameters and there’s not a lot of guidance with how to return back to activity after pregnancy. And here in Boulder, we obviously have a very active crowd, you know, runners, hikers, bikers, you know, whether they’re professional athletes or just very active people, you know, and what I find is that many of the women here have
1:08:56
are shocked after they have a baby as to how their body feels. They’re just shocked. They’re shocked as to how their hips work, how their pelvis feels, how their back feels, their energy levels.
1:09:09
And they go into it thinking doctor said, six to eight weeks, why can’t I run right now everything will be normal. Everything will be normal though. I can’t hold my urine, you know, like in these. And so they’re, they’re pretty shocked as to how how much the body does change with pregnancy. And they’re, they’re more so shocked as to how long it takes to really heal after that, for the pelvic floor to heal for them, the core system to fully heal for everything to start to come back to what is something that resembles normal, but is actually never, never never normal again. Yeah, I mean, we’re talking about your fascicle system, it’s getting stretched and pulled, the hormones are changing, like the entire environment of the body is getting changed drastically. And so I think that for most Women that that’s just a hard thing to wrap their mind around. And I watched them go through that realization that oh my god, like this is this is gonna take a while and I just really just want to go for a run. I just want to go for a hike. No. There’s a woman who I worked with at one point who she was a very intense runner and she ran marathons and half marathons. She ran her first marathon within, I believe six weeks of having a baby and cracked her pelvis.
1:10:36
And I just, you know, I stopped I’m like, why didn’t Who told you? That was okay?
1:10:43
You know, who told you that
Colby Pearce 1:10:44
was okay? He didn’t tell you. That’s not
1:10:46
who didn’t tell you that right. Yeah,
Colby Pearce 1:10:50
yeah. That’s unfortunate. Yeah.
1:10:52
And so I just really try to work from a place of truly educating women and putting the facts in front of them. I was like, I you know, I just worked with a woman for instance who I got to be with her from conception through birth and now it’s a year later right? And I from the from the beginning, I said get strong now we’re going to get stronger now right because the stronger you are going into this the faster recovery will be and understand that when the baby comes out you’re not going to do anything for a while like if you really do want to heal you’re not going to do anything for a while with your baby Take it easy let your body heal no there’s no reason to run there’s no reason to even walk that much like you just need to chill out now if you want if you want it to be somewhat normal again you’re gonna have to just let yourself heal Yeah. And so it was a little bit easier for her because she knew it you know why educated her quite a bit going into it if like this is what to expect this is this is what’s really gonna happen. Yeah. Just forget all the stories in the pictures and the stuff that you hear and the you know, the you know, because of course, there’s stories you see these crazy athletes that like pop out a baby and then they you know and then they’re running the next day and and like you don’t you don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors like just let go of all that and know this is going to be it’s a process
Colby Pearce 1:12:14
as humans we tend to we like sensationalism so we tend to sometimes gravitate towards stories like you see on Instagram, you know that this woman gave birth and then four days later she’s running a marathon or across the Arctic Circle or whatever is going on, you know, and that’s great. But also we have to recognize that because of the diversity of the human race because of the fact that well to use of my one of my favorite Polish Czech isms. God is a novelty generator. Everyone is as unique as their fingerprint. We we have the super freaks, who can handle we have Jocko willing. We have women who can give birth and then five days later go run a marathon or wherever and they’re okay, right? But those people are One in 8 billion, just as you are, but they’re just one in a billion on the certain end of the spectrum and you’re not so much on the end. Most of us aren’t, That’s bizarre. And I include me very much in that. That mean I am an elite athlete and when I went to Paul’s course and took my take my tests, most of them I do really well. Right? When I look at my own internal testing like I’m I look at my aq and it’s the scores are quite low compared to some of my colleagues even that doesn’t make me any better or worse. It’s just the score that I have at the moment doesn’t mean I don’t have my own work to do. But my point is arguably in some ways I have a robust amount of physical health and I can be quite gratitude credit and I can have a lot of gratitude for but I’m no I’m no Jocko willing that’s for sure if I tried to do what he does, I would get crushed and my health would be destroyed. So when I hold him as a false idol and I try to equate in my own life, what Jocko does or pick any other Model who’s on that level, right? It’s not necessarily going to serve me. And I hope people can take something from that sentiment because we need to recognize there’s a delta between between us and everyone else. But also they’re the supervisors, you have to do what’s right for you. I mean, I guess that’s kind of the theme, right? And it’s the same thing like you were saying about diet. Did you happen to hear Paul’s podcast with Wade light heart? He’s been a vegan, and he’s a he is a bodybuilder and like a world class bodybuilder. He’s really accomplished. He’s been a vegan for I think, 25 years or something. Yeah. Now, clearly, those two don’t go together very commonly. But it’s working for Wade and he’s healthy. And he’s doing well. He’s prospering. Right? Probably most bodybuilders couldn’t pull that off. Most humans couldn’t pull that off. So I called Wade, a super freak. And I mean that in the most complimentary sense. Absolutely. I guess maybe the takeaway that you might agree with is dogmatic. Adherence to any dietary philosophy is just not really constructive. Just to go for Self a wormhole for a minute when you work with various plant medicines and have an entheogenic experience. Part of the idea is that you intentionally elicit a death of ego. That’s part of the point is to smash those walls down. For a lot of people that can be quite terrifying, because they do identify with those walls as them. If you want to warm up course or prologue, these a way to do that is begin to meditate and separate yourself from your thoughts. Realize that you are not the thoughts that are passing through your head. those thoughts are just like clouds going by on a nice happy day at the park. And you can look at the clouds and say that one looks like a dinosaur or that one looks like Bob Thornton or whatever is going through your head. But that cloud is not me. It’s a cloud and fog. are the same way and when you learn to dissociate from those thoughts, then you learn to detach from your reactivity. And the way you walk through the world you begin to slowly disassemble your, your default mode network, right? The term that I have heard. That’s a good one is survival machinery. Survival machinery. That is good. machinery. Yes. Yeah. So we’re equipped with our survival machinery. Yeah, that brings to me that brings about an image of like, almost like a terminator suit, or not a terminator suit, but, uh, what’s that movie with Robocop? Yeah, like a Robocop suit? Yeah, right, like a big electronic kind of walking thing. Or in the second matrix? I think I’m like, five or five on matrix. Just gonna keep it rolling. I mean, it is one of the best series ever made. The first one.
1:16:48
Okay, now we’re on to Nikki’s dream goal or objective nine dream, my goal, my objective in 41 years I have been through a lot with my body. I’ve been through a lot with my body. I’ve had more injuries, more car accidents, more traumas, more health issues than some people will ever experience in multiple lifetimes, if you believe.
1:17:15
And, and I’ve learned a lot. Because of that. I’ve learned a lot because that I’ve studied with so many different people. I’ve worked with so many different practitioners. I’ve tried everything.
1:17:28
And so my kind of dream goal objective is really to be able to share what I’ve learned on a much larger platform.
1:17:38
You know, we’re predominantly one on one with people and we do also have classes and groups and things like that. But I’m ready to just really start sharing that on a much larger platform to be able to reach more people. I feel like with the experience that I have had, you know, it’s been a blessing. Now I used to when I was younger, I looked at it as Like, you know, total victim like Why me? I’m only 28 Why is this happening? You gotta be kidding me. But as my, as I started to gain some wisdom and got a little bit older, and I realized that it was it was a blessing and that with every challenge I had, there was something much deeper to heal much deeper to work with there. One of the big things is being able to share that with people, because I find that clients that come in with whatever their issues are, whether it’s gut issues, weight issues, structural issues, depression, whatever it is. And they talk to me about what their therapist is telling them to do and what their this person has told them to do. And they are, they’re so only getting a fraction of the information that they need to really heal, to really, truly heal, not just Band Aid it not just, you know, give him a little relief. So that’s, that’s where I just want to be able to reach people on a much larger platform and really, really be able to utilize what I’ve learned, and how I’ve grown to to help other people heal.
Colby Pearce 1:19:13
back to my original analogy about the time traveler and the folding of the hip and the global tension on that, what I call the posterior line, right, which is an anatomy trains kind of concept. And the head periscoping. But super applicable. you think that is? I mean, without base there is that yeah, that’s what I see what you’ve studied this quite a bit further than I have. So
1:19:32
now it’s, it’s totally applicable and you’re dead on as far as you know, because there there still are going to be certain patterns, certain people that hold true to that specific concept yet, it’s still going to show up. And that might be their overriding pattern or their overriding train, whatever’s whatever’s going on. But then it’s a matter of really getting even deeper into that and saying okay, from That, from that, that train from from that pattern. Now what’s happening outside of that? Like what is what is this branching out into what kinds of problems is causing in the rest of the system? Yeah, aside from just that line for three, four or five
1:20:17
parts of the system. Great. Thank you so much for taking time to come and chat with me tonight. That was cool.
1:20:29
Disclaimer,
1:20:31
listen up monkeys.
1:20:34
The ramblings on this podcast represent me and me alone.
Colby Pearce 1:20:39
They’re not indicative of the thoughts or opinions of fast labs or Chris case or Trevor Connor, or anyone else. Also, none of this advice is intended to prescribe or diagnose anything, not a doctor. Don’t play one on the internet. So just want to be clear on those points. Thanks for Listening
