So you'll very seldom see me overarch because immediately I
get feedback from my body saying, oh, that's a bad place,
Don't go there. Yeah.
The biggest thing that I wanted to focus on with you when you
came in was that there was no notification to you to say, hey,
we've gone too far. You're not allowed down this
road. You need to come back, right?
And we would just keep going down that road.
So what we had to do was build in those tension points for you
and, and create them for you so that you understood where they
were. And now you know where to go
because you've taught your body that, hey, this is the tension
point that I need to get to. Hey, I'm Hyper Mobile, and if
you're listening to this, I'm guessing you might be too.
Hi, my name is Alex and I'm your Hyper Mobile host.
And today we have on Sean Thompson.
Sean, thank you for being here today.
I'm so excited to have you on. You're a level 2 CrossFit
trainer. You are my coach.
Actually. We've worked together since
April. Yeah, May something like this.
Yeah, it's. Been going well.
It's been going fantastic actually.
But yeah, you are my coach and you're you're someone I would
consider you a movement expert. I we've talked a little bit
before this episode about some of the things we're going to
touch on. For me, this episode is really
for that person who is just struggling to make progress in
the gym. So going back to my kind of
personal situation a little bit, when I was really, really
struggling in my early 20s, I was just trying to figure out
like what I could do to make some progress and find a way to
do a little bit more than I could do the previous day.
And although yourself are not hyper mobile, you seem to have a
very good understanding of tension and body position and
that's kind of informed a little bit of of how you've worked with
me. Yeah.
So, Sean, tell me a little bit about yourself because I know
you had a point in your life. You know, you're quite sporty,
doing rugby and different things.
And then some health issues happened.
Tell me a bit about those. Yeah, I've been been playing
sport my whole life and in 2015 I was diagnosed with testicular
cancer. Fortunately caught it quite
early, had an operation to have my right testicle removed so I
didn't have to worry about that anymore.
Doctors suggested that I go through chemotherapy, which I
did. That was about a what was
supposed to be a six week process took about 8 to 10 weeks
because it was during winter. I got quite sickly and obviously
they can't give you treatment when your white blood cell
levels are too low. So I came out of that very
weekend which for me was it was a very different place to be
having been such a sporty kid and always involved in sports.
At that time I was involved with a CrossFit box.
I wasn't a coach or anything yet.
I had coached schoolboy rugby and rowing, but at that point,
you know, I was just an everyday member.
And I slowly got back into training a little bit myself at
home, getting comfortable with moving again.
And then I finally made my way back into my CrossFit box back
then. And they really helped me to get
back to a level where I would say probably post 2015 is, is
some of the fittest times I've had in my life.
So that was kind of the big struggle that that I went
through there kind of always being at a fairly high level to,
I mean, remember kind of rolling over in bed and being out of
breath or walking upstairs, which gave me a new, I would say
perspective on kind of what it actually means to not be the
fittest or have to struggle with certain things that, you know,
I'd never experienced before. So it was it was a big learning
curve for me. Yeah, I think it's hard,
especially to when you're a relatively young person.
How old were you when you were going through?
That 23. 23 So you're going through something.
I'm guessing you didn't have many friends going through the
same thing at the time as well. Or perhaps you did, I don't
know. No, it was.
It was quite a shock when I used to go for treatment.
I remember whenever I'd be in the in the treatment room, I was
the the youngest by by far. And I think in my 4th week of
treatment, there was a younger gentleman who actually ended up
coming in and me and him had a little bit of a chat.
But you know, when you're there sitting in the treatment room
having your chemo come through, you end up talking to a lot of
people and even the kind of older population, some of the
older gentleman that I was speaking to was so shocked that
I was there. And I think that was, that was
one of the hardest things about this that had gone on.
I just, I never thought I'd ever have to deal with anything like
that. So it was quite a jarring
experience for me. But in the same sense, having
come through it, I think I learned a whole lot about myself
and just also the type of things that people go through and just
being compassionate and understanding of how we can help
anyone in any situation. You know, I think when I was
going through the treatment, I never thought that I'd be fit
again or be able to do the things that I did.
And three years past 2015, you know, I was the fittest I'd
been. I'd got further in sporting
events than I had before, which which was really great.
It was really uplifting for me, yeah.
And I think that's kind of why I then decided that coaching was
something that I wanted to do in life to make a little bit more
of a difference. Yeah, no, absolutely.
I, you know, I can see that in my work with you as an
individual, but also in your discussion kind of of how you
approach things more broadly. It's, it's clear that you have
an understanding of what it's like to be in that kind of dark
place. And, and we've talked about that
a bit with like my experience when my body was not working
well because of my connective tissue disorder and having to
just kind of claw back that progress.
And I think what must have been difficult in your situation, at
least I know it was hard in mind is like you, I did childhood
sports and I was fairly athletic.
And you go from having a body that can do lots of things to
having a body that can't. Do you know much?
Yeah. And the psychological shift,
whether it's someone dealing with cancer or whether it's
someone dealing with HDS or HSD or another health issue is hard
like it's. Can you tell me a little bit
more about how important or maybe not important exercises
for your like mental health? Because for me, I can say
certainly it's how I, I always tell you when I see you like
this is the happiest hour for me to be like, how are you, Alex?
I'm like, I'm so happy to be, this is the happiest time I
have. So tell me a little bit about
kind of how exercise affects your mental health or what
effects you feel like it has for people more broadly.
I mean, for me personally, exercise is really important.
It really helps with my own mental health.
I do have struggles every now and again and I find moving and
just allowing myself to move almost switch off sometimes.
You know, we always talk about kind of when you're doing a
steady state training, how much you love it, you kind of just
zone out and you almost go to your own world.
And I think fitness for me does that.
And it's really important as a whole for people just in
general. I think it's, it's hugely
important. One of the things I strive
myself on it, on it as a coach is giving people the best hour
of their day. So when you come in and you say,
oh, this is the best hour of my week, you know it.
It's really great for me because that's that's what I want at the
end of the day. Obviously we want to be
progressing you with your gymnastics training and getting
you to the point that you want to.
But the fact that you're coming in and you're having a great
time and it's something that you look forward to, I think it's
really important. We all live very busy, stressful
lives, so if we can have an hour a day, an hour every second day
to ourselves where we get to focus on ourselves because
that's what it is, right? When you make the conscious
decision to train for a certain amount of time, you're taking
the decision to put focus and energy into yourself.
And I think that's important in a world where so much focus and
energy is demanded of us. We have to kind of fill our own
cups sometimes, and I think exercise is a great way to do
that. No, I I fully fully agree and
that quiet place and again, I'm AI love everything.
That's my problem. And I know there are some people
listening to this who just don't like exercise and that's OK.
Like we don't have to all like the same things.
I always try to help my patients find what they hate the least if
they don't like exercise. But if you're someone who does,
certainly it's like that safe refuge sometimes getting to that
quiet place where you're just kind of doing something that
feels good for your body and that chance to switch off.
As you said, in terms of gymnastics, we have to touch on
that because people here like, oh, like Alex, you're doing
gymnastics and people think I'm like doing, I don't know, flips
and this and that. It is not that glamorous.
And I've had kind of a bit of an atypical fitness journey.
And we can touch on that in a minute.
But before we do, can you explain a little bit like what
we're actually doing with me? Yeah.
I mean, so the gymnastics that we're doing to you to explain to
everyone a little bit more kind of position to allowing you to
get more out of your functional fitness.
So we're, we're focusing on things like pull ups with
assistance, which is what we would call a kipping pull up,
yeah, where we're using the full body to assist us in getting
that pull up. So we're taking principles from
gymnastics and we're applying them to the fitness world to
allow us to kind of get more power output from a workout.
Because if I can do more pull ups in a shorter amount of time,
I'm technically producing more energy, which is great for me to
get further. Yeah, no, it's been great
working on those like specific skills with you certainly, and
having that progress. And I think as someone who's a
patient myself as well as a healthcare professional, for me,
it's always been critical to have goals that are outside of
just like doing something so I can feel better.
Like I find that kind of depressing to be honest.
But I, I think going back to kind of where we started out as
well, it's been a really about generating tension and feeling
tension. Yes, because people, some people
will be listening to this. And look, I know that my
everyone's body is different. There are people where doing
certain sports or certain movements absolutely are not
safe for them and they should not do it.
I have some patients who have frequent shoulder dislocations
and other things where we would not want them to be swinging off
bars, for example. Yeah.
But in my situation, it's been really helpful thinking of
different ways to develop muscular control in my hip
flexors in particular and in my kind of interscapular region or
my, you know, my thoracic spine if we call it that, kind of my
mid back. I feel like that's been a huge
focus of our work. Yeah.
I think when you came in, obviously I've coached you in
situations in Group classes. Yeah.
And you wanted to get better at your gymnastics.
And the very first thing I was like, tension.
Yeah. We need to find a way to help
you understand how we should be generating tension in the body.
And I think one of the most interesting things about our
journey together is because of the hypermobility is finding
ways that we can allow you to do that, right?
So obviously, we started out with the hollow hold where we
had feedback from the floor constantly to let you know that
you were in that position versus putting you on a rig immediately
and asking you just to find this tension with no feedback at any
point, right? Yeah, well, hanging, which is
not easy to do. No, no, of course, of course.
And, and, and you know, from the times that I'd seen you in
classes, I could see that you had a little bit of tension in
your shoulders probably from your swimming days.
But it was more the midline where I think I started my
attack. And we have constantly kept
getting off to the midline and strengthening the hip flexors as
we go. Absolutely.
I'm one of those people too. And I'm just saying this again
in case they're listeners. You kind of have similar
situations to me. I most people who was able to do
lifts like a snatch or kind of these really advanced things to
a pretty reasonable weight. But I would struggle to do a
hollow hold off the floor. Like, I could hold it for like
one second maybe. And I get really bad neck pain
and it would always irritate my symptoms.
So we really took it back to basics and had me in like, and I
wish we could kind of see a video of the sessions,
especially the first ones, because again, people think it's
cool. And like, if I share stuff,
yeah, I tend to share the stuff that looks a bit cooler.
But I was mainly just lying on the floor trying my best to
like, hold a position. Yeah.
It's not been glamorous, I will say, in, in terms of working
with a, with a personal trainer or a coach.
You mentioned the word coach earlier.
I think it came up when, when the introduction we were talking
about it or maybe it was before this episode when we were
talking. Tell me a little bit about that,
because I think it's an important subject.
I like the word coach. Yeah.
I prefer if people call me coach.
Yeah, I'm not saying people have to call me coach.
You know, if if you're talking about what you did with me, I I
don't like it when you call me your personal trainer.
I just find the word personal trainer.
It's kind of like, oh, you're going to come in, I'm going to
tell you what to do. You do it for the day, you go
home, you don't think about anything and you come back in a
week's time or in two days time and we do the same thing again.
I feel like a coach is a far more collaborative idea.
You're going to come in, we're going to talk through the things
that you are struggling with and how we can work together to get
the best result for you, right? And kind of not looking at you
as just a just that all this is a person that I need to get
fitter. But what are the things that are
really going to make a difference to Alex so that she
doesn't have to keep coming back to me every week?
And we get to a point where she feels comfortable enough And
I've left her with enough knowledge that it's like, Sean,
thank you so much. I appreciate it.
But you know, I'm now going to continue my fitness journey on
my own, right? And I, you know, that's kind of
what I used to get from coaches at school.
They would help you with a skill as you would develop through the
age groups and you would move on to the next coach who was going
to teach you, you know, harder things or more difficult skills.
And I feel like don't see me as a personal trainer, See me as a
coach who's going to work with you to get your toolbox ready so
that you don't have to keep relying on my tools.
Absolutely. And I, I think that idea of
having a, a longer view in mind is key when it comes to you as a
coach. For example, say that in two
years I've mastered whatever I want to master.
My back is now bulletproof. We'll talk about the back and
driven dealing with this SEC because that's been a nightmare.
But I know like, in some cases you might be like Alex, like you
want to see this specialist coach for this reason or
whatever, a good coach, they have that, that view in mind and
help people access what they need to.
I got, I guess to progress. And it, it's that it really
comes down to caring. I think at the end of the day,
in terms of let's talk about kind of CrossFit for a bit,
because it's played an important role in both of our journeys.
And I know that there's like CrossFit, the business or the
brand. But if we take away kind of the,
the CrossFit brand for a moment, what are we, what, what else can
we call it? Like I jokingly call it Alex fit
when I just do my weird stuff by myself.
Please don't see me CrossFit, but what else could Can we call
it this type of training? I mean, if you, if you look at
the definition of CrossFit as as CrossFit as a methodology, it's
constantly varied high intensity functional movement formed over
broad time and modal domains. So, you know, if we want to give
it a different name, it's it's mixed modal training and making
sure that it's not just the type of training I'm doing, but the
amount of time I train for. Sometimes I'm going to train for
5 minutes and it's going to be a short aggressive workout.
Sometimes I'm going to train for an hour where I'm sitting on
the, you know, rowing machine and I'm just kind of working on
my aerobic capacity and sometimes we're going to be
right in the middle where it's maybe a 15 to 20 minute workout.
Or even doing active recovery. People forget about how I'm a
big fan of recovery. No, I think for me that that
perfectly sums it up, to be honest.
But what helped me so much in terms of my fitness journey was
kind of stumbling upon CrossFit. So early on in my career, I was
working with some professional CrossFit athletes at that same
time. I didn't have the money to
access a coach or anything. I couldn't even even access
really like regular gym classes. So I just found this local gym
and I would go and just make my own little workouts and I would
really just try to find things that didn't cause me pain, which
is kind of a, a weird trial and error system.
But I'd be like, can I squat today?
Can I do like a shoulder press or whatever?
What can I do? And then I'd try and just do
something, you know, whatever I could with what I had.
And when I started to learn about kind of mixed modal
fitness or CrossFit, as I was working with at the time, what I
found so helpful as someone whose body would hurt from doing
weird things, was the infinite variety of movements.
Like there is, you know, people say to me like Alex, what's the
best exercise for hypermobility? You know, as a broad term like
is it Pilates? Is, is it like strength
training? What's the best?
The truth is there is no singular best type of exercise.
And what's ultimately not worked for me has been limiting myself
to one thing because I would start to eventually, you know,
do too much of it and overtrain with that one thing.
And I would, you know, it's like my body would get injured or
almost in a sense, you can think of it as it getting sick of it.
You can't live off the same food every meal for years and years
and years. It's what I tried to do when I
was swimming so much. And that's what led to a lot of
the injuries and different issues I have today.
So with CrossFit, I know what helped me certainly was having
just this variety to look at. Should I do, as you said, some
steady state training, some, I don't know, Turkish get up.
So you know, any, there is every movement imaginable under the
sun. How does how did scaling help
you when you were kind of digging yourself out of that
hole back when you were dealing with recovering from cancer?
I mean, just kind of scaling is, is, is, is a tough one.
When you, you enter a room and you're not used to doing that,
it can be kind of ego driven a lot of the time and, and you
start to think, oh, well, I'm not doing what everybody else is
doing and those type of things. But when you look at it for what
it is, which is we're modifying the workout for you or modifying
the movement or whatever it may be so that you can continue to
move and perform and get the stimulus that we're looking for.
It really helps you to understand that, oh, what this
is actually doing is just allowing me to move again, you
know. So I mean, I remember when I
came back from my cancer, I had written myself up a workout
which was very basic and simple. And it started with 10 knee push
ups from the 10 knee push ups. I then did I think it was 10
alternating lunges, which in the beginning was a little bit too
difficult. So we had like a little step
onto our outside patio. So I started with 10 step UPS
onto that and then I would walk the length of the guard and come
back and I would do that again. And each week I would try
progress and be a little bit better.
So, you know, eventually after I'd done that for about two
weeks, the knee push ups started turning into 5 normal push ups
and then five knee push ups and the step UPS onto the patio
turned into lunges. And you know, slowly just
started bringing myself back that way.
And then when I was in the gym and it became kind of more
technical things, looking at the lifting again, starting to get
my cardio back up, maybe intenser intervals on machines
or running or mixed modal stuff all put together.
I had the guidance of a coach there who would help me and say,
look, Sean, you've just come back.
It's been about four months. Let's.
Take it a little bit easier and that guidance really helped.
It just kind of let you know where you need it to be.
It helps hugely. It's why I'm so happy now that
I'm in a position where I can have some external guidance,
because being your own coach is really difficult.
And that's what a lot of, you know, listeners ultimately have
to end up doing, is trying to be their own coach.
Either because they've tried to access support and they can't
find anyone who really is able to support them, or, you know,
they're just the type, they're unable to access support for
whatever reason when it comes to HDS and HSD.
I have to talk about the health stuff for a SEC.
Again, this. I always forgot to do the
medical disclaimer. It's going to, it's in the text.
OK? This is not medical advice in
any way, shape or form. You need to talk to your
appropriately qualified medical doctor, healthcare provider for
what's right for you. But when it comes to HDS or HSD,
I find a lot of people get very nervous about whether or not
it's safe to exercise. And that nervousness is, it's
very reasonable because some people can have very serious
ways in which they are affected. I don't remember if, sorry, I
don't recall if you remember when I first met you and I said,
hey, like I can't be upside down for too long because I'll start
to get burst blood vessels on. My face.
You recall this? Yeah, very nervous.
And I have to be careful with pressure in my eyes as I have AI
have a history of eye surgery. There's we have to be, we do do
some upside down stuff, but we're careful with, with the
time domain for that. And then also, I think I told
you like I will get injured at some point, which did happen.
And that's just normal. And I will, you know, we will
manage it as and when it happens.
But certainly in my case, I'm able to do some of that
healthcare management myself for patients who are, you know,
trying to find someone to work with who's a PT or a coach in
the fitness space. It's really difficult right now
because there are a lot of people there.
Sorry, there are not many coaches or PTS who specialize in
working with people who are hyper mobile.
It's a very, very niche area. I'm low key trying to get you to
specialize. Let's see.
But in terms of making this work, I think a really good
setup can be if the patient's healthcare provider is able to
talk with the PT or the coach, even if they're not hyper
mobility specialists themselves. And again, that's just a
self-proclaimed term. Often there's no official exam
people take to be able to say this.
So whether or not someone's good or not depends on just whether
or not they're good. But if a patient is not able to
find a person who specializes in this field, certainly having a
healthcare provider who's willing to kind of talk to that,
that coach or that PT can be really helpful.
Because you can be told like, hey, the patient can't do this
or they can't go above this heart rate or whatever.
And you then are able to support them with that.
Yeah, I mean, if if you're a good coach, when you have
someone who comes into your class environment or into the
one-on-one environment with you, you're you're, you're monitoring
them and you're doing tests to see what is their range, what
are their limits, what can they do, what they cannot do.
Obviously with a patient who's a little bit more specialized,
getting some sort of feedback from the provider to say, look,
these are the boundaries and this is where we want to stay.
Definitely makes a difference, right.
And I think what I found with us, obviously you're very
knowledgeable about what's going on with this, which makes my job
a lot easier. But even still, just to get
Peace of Mind for myself when I give you something new, I've
always got you down doing it and then it's OK.
How does that feel? You know, is this working for
you? Is there pain?
Is there not pain when you're doing the kind of homework
drills that I've given you? You're giving me feedback so I
know what's going on, which then gives me more confidence when we
have a one-on-one session to say, OK, I can push Alex this
way today and we can try get a little bit more out of it or,
OK, no, that didn't work so well for Alex.
So what's another way we can think about kind of attacking
this problem, not problem, but thing that we need to overcome
to find more tension or to get better positions to perform the
movement that we want to end up doing?
Yeah. No, the, the gold is in the
things you're not good at. I really believe that.
And I, I think again that's something from kind of the whole
like mixed modal fitness type of methodology of like that we have
this broad set of movements and the, this all these different
things we can do. What am I not good at and why
And addressing that's been key in terms of working again with
patients or sorry with clients. I should say you are a bit more
complex. I think something that's worked
really well for us is that you don't, as far as I know, like
there's not a strict like this is our 12 week block.
Week 1 you'll do this. Week 2 you'll do this.
You kind of I, I, I think I've also made you have to adjust it
as you go, but it's felt a lot like you kind of look at me and
where we are and as you, as you said, you modify it from there.
Is that correct? Or yeah, no, that is correct.
I mean, I think you know, you, you're going to have programs
where you want to see progression as you go throughout
the program and things like progressive overload is, is and
periodization is important, but it's, am I seeing you progress
week in and week out and that's what really matters and managing
that, right. So you know, if if I gave you a
strict 12 week program, you probably would have injured
yourself in the first 3 weeks and then you would have tried to
stick to it or I would have tried to force you to do it
again and we would have just kept re injuring every three
weeks. And that doesn't work for you.
And I feel if you're going to do a system or situation where
you're one-on-one with someone, then it is my responsibility to
make sure that the service I'm delivering to you is completely
customizable to you. Otherwise, as we know in the
world that we live in now with AI and stuff you could just type
into ChatGPT. Give me a 12 week.
I think that happens sometimes too.
Appreciate this is where the difference really comes in.
It's that human connection. It's that understanding your
client and making sure that you're working with them to get
the most out of it, right? I don't see you like I see you
as an athlete and one of the things that we can do to help
you get the most out of your fitness to make you feel better.
Like you've been speaking about how because of your back injury,
you're not going to be able to do all the normal classes again.
So from my side, I'm going, OK, well, let's do some kind of
steady straight training programming for you because
that's something you really enjoy.
So you're then still able to get that enjoyment out of training
and continue to move, which is going to make my job easier when
you're coming and seeing me on one-on-one situations because
you're now conditioned. And if I'm asking you to hold
positions or do some things a little bit more, you're where I
need you to be. And I'm also mentally happier,
like it's people, again, a lot of healthcare providers, they
don't understand that for me to not be able to go to the classes
I go to means I can't spend time in a way that I like to spend
time with my boyfriend because Dave and I go together.
And I, I'm really sad that right now that's just the, the risk of
me doing a, a movement and pushing myself a bit hard is, is
a bit high. And it's just a good, whether
it's good healthcare, whether it's good coaching or personal
training or whatever, it all comes down to a risk benefit
assessment ultimately. So absolutely in my case right
now because of this injury, which we'll get on to more in a
second, but it's made sense just to control some variables and
kind of put me off of my, you know, I don't want to get
tempted by fun movements in the class because I'm like a little
puppy. I get tempted.
I just wanted, there's a point when you deal with injuries your
whole life, you just get so sick and tired of it.
But that doesn't make it go away, unfortunately, which is
really, really annoying. And I think I told you this
early on too, if you're someone with HDS or HSD, injuries take
longer. So for me, I, I had my back
injury, I think I injured a disc.
I haven't had medical imaging just that's a decision I've made
because of my current symptoms. But if it's not a disc, it's
going to be some other dense connective tissue structure in
my low back. We know we're looking at like 6
months of doing everything right, which is a long and
depressing window to be doing things.
Right. It's hard to be tied down and
you know, and not be able to do the things you want to do.
Yeah, but we're still, we're still find fun ways.
That's The thing is it's about finding ways to have fun and to
continue to develop that fitness and thinking about why this
injury has happened. So in my my case, I'm a tall
person. I'm about 5 foot 10 and I have
long heavy legs and a long, heavy upper body.
And I'm not surprised that after years of not developing good hip
flexor strength and good lower abdominal strength, and I would
say I'm relatively weak there compared to the rest of me.
You're like, yeah, she weak, but I go, you know, it.
It was, I was kind of due that injury, which is annoying, but I
just, I'd never been able to find a way to successfully
strengthen the lower abdominals and hip flexors for me because
it's just it's hard to do these things.
Yeah, no, it is very difficult and you know you follow
traditional fitness things and all sit ups is going to take
care. Of it, my neck would hurt.
That was to make my neck would get so painful.
A night of headaches and I was just like this is not for me.
And then you stop, right, Because it's like this isn't
working. It's causing me more pain.
It's not helping me, it's not assisting me.
And I think in the beginning of our journey there, there were
some things that, you know, traditionally I would give this
to someone and it would be like, cool, that's going to sort out
the issue. We're going to strengthen there
and everything will be fine. And then you'd come back to me
and you're like, that's not really working for me.
Are there any examples you can think of?
I really like the drill where we do the hollow hold.
Yeah. And I.
Know the one. Yeah, Within the hollow hold,
you've got a PVC pipe above your head.
That PVC pipe is connected to a red band which is connected to
the rig. And Alex has to hold her hollow
hold position, which is going to require to be tucked through her
rib cage and her hips. And then she pushes down on the
PVC pipe. But obviously this was engaging
your neck quite a bit, and in the beginning it was too much
for you, right? So we scaled it down.
We started to do the dead bug, which again has got you in that
crunched position, but we were able to keep the hands up.
So we're still looking for that engagement through the neck, but
we're dynamically moving the leg now, and we just strengthened
you through that way. We then kind of would come back
to hollow rocks, but without the movement of the yard, hollow
rocks being moving back and forth.
So there's some dynamicism again, but it's not that push
down which is aggravating the neck.
And we just slowly built you up through there.
And we're at a point now where if I give you that drill, you're
able to do it and you don't have.
That yeah, no pain, pain free. And I, I think like many people
who are hypermobile and you do see this pattern in people who
are kind of that hypermobile but sporty type.
And again, there are people who their health and their bodies
are affected in different ways. But for the hypermobile people
who are kind able to go to the gym and you know, carry on with
some physical activity, very often they call it a coat hanger
pain or they'll, they'll hit you see me hitch my shoulders up all
the time. And I think that's probably what
was causing some of my issues. And learning and being able to
develop that scapular control. We've worked really hard on
keeping my shoulder blades where they should be and finding my
lots and engaging those like that has been instrumental to my
success. I'd say certainly so far
thinking about again, like risk and benefit because I, I feel
like that's something that coaches always think about.
Certainly what's the benefit of this exercise?
You know, what's the risk and looking at it from that
perspective. We have talked about different
health things too. So I've told you I love, I love
rowing on the machines and different cardio things.
I was a swimmer growing up. I like my quiet time out, don't
have to talk to anyone and sit on our time listening to like
Basshunter and really embarrassing music.
But I want to potentially look at doing some relatively just
amateur competition goals. And again, a lot of people will
say, Oh well, you have HS or HSD, you know, it's not safe to
like push yourself physically. Again, everyone's situation is
different. My healthcare providers and I
agree that it is fine for me to do that.
But I had a really great talk with one of my doctors and he
agreed with me when we discussed this that it would be sensible
for me to example, get an ultrasound of my heart just to
make sure that it's OK, because I like doing long distance
pieces. And it's nice sometimes to have
other pieces of information just to lower the risk further.
So I guess what I'm trying to say for anyone listening to this
is just just everyone's situation so different.
And it's for me like the the magic, the Triforce, if we call
it that, from like Legend of Zelda, the thing that makes
really good coaching outcomes work.
And my situation's a bit different because I'm healthcare
provider and kind of client together, but it's having the
client, the coach and the healthcare provider able to talk
and communicate. While you were speaking earlier
about some of my shoulder instability issues, I was
thinking of a patient that I had I've had recently who's actually
working with another coach on ways to strengthen that shoulder
and prevent dislocation. And this is someone who's had a
history of repeat shoulder dislocations.
And I saw her the other day actually at the gym and she was
so excited because she's like Alex, I've gone like XML.
I can't remember how many months, but she's like, I've
gone months now without a shoulder dislocation.
And it goes to show like, yes, there is risk to doing strength
training for this person. They could absolutely, you know,
if they are given an exercise that's not correct for them or
not safe or they even just they're doing everything right,
but maybe they slip or something happens.
There is risk to doing exercise, but there's also risk to not
yes, doing it. There's a lot of risk to sitting
on the couch. Right, there's this risk sitting
behind the desk all day. Yep, never doing anything.
Yeah, or lying in bed there's. You know, I, I think but
controversial, but you go to doctors, whoever, and they point
out the risks of doing something.
Yep. I don't think they ever point
out the risks of not doing something and that being
exercised right. We speak about how I see you as
an athlete. I'm your coach.
If we had a talking professional sports relationship, my job as a
coach would be to get you on the field, right?
Because I need you to perform as an athlete.
My job as your coach for one-on-one is to keep you
moving. Because I know mentally it does
a lot for you. And also I know that through the
work we've done over the past six months, right, you have felt
a lot better in all around your fitness by simply just focusing
on finding tension points in your body right now when you're
sitting on the assault bike or Echo bike, air bike.
You know the bike with the arm thing?
The bike with the the worst bike ever.
You know you're able to now feel better tension in your upper
back, which is something you never felt.
Before that used to give me shoulder pain.
So I would hate the the the bike with the arm thingies, echo
bike, whatever. I would hate it because I would
get this grinding pain in my shoulder and when I would tell
coaches about it they were confused.
And again it goes back to my shoulder instability.
I've never had a dislocation, but my shoulders are hyper
mobile and I have a lot of history of injury and probably
some degenerative changes to the tissues there.
And it would feel like almost like rubbing sandpaper inside my
shoulder. Like it just, it felt awful.
And being able to be on the bike recently in a workout and
actually feel that tension in my upper back and across the
shoulder girdle, that was really exciting for me like that, that
brought me joy. And I know people get joy in
different ways, but I was in that workout and I don't think
anyone's been so happy to be on a bike doing that.
And I think for a coach who's dealing with someone who, you
know, has specialist needs, it's understanding that something as
simple as that makes a huge difference.
You know, if you're dealing with a perfect athlete who say comes
to you because they want to learn how to do bio muscle UPS,
I have that right. I have athletes who just want to
learn the really cool gymnastic skills.
And when they get their bio muscle up, that's their level of
like, yes, that's the best thing ever.
But when you have an athlete like yourself or like me, when I
was coming back from my cancer, the fact that I was able to do
20 unbroken lunges without feeling like I was going to fall
over, that was the best thing ever at that point, you know?
So it's it's about coming and meeting your athlete on their
level. Yeah.
And, and getting the most out of them.
And that can be the smallest thing.
You know, I remember when you told me about the back and how
happy you were. And I thought to myself, I was
like, well, I wasn't coaching you for that, but I'm glad it
worked. You know, no, it is it.
Made a huge. Difference and I think it's
because of the positioning of the shoulder blades from the I
have gained muscle mount. I've been checking out my back
in the mirror. I'm going to be honest, but it's
really I think got my glenohumeral joints what people
think of as the shoulder. I think it's got that in a
slightly better position now where I just have those that
joint moving as it should because the shoulder blade is a
little bit more secure because of that muscle mass.
Can we talk about tension? Because I feel like this is so
important and I hear you once a week.
I hear you like 100 times be like tension, tension, tension.
Like what is tension and what when you're seeing when you're
working with a hyper mobile athlete or hyper mobile client?
Like why is tension important? For me, tension is important
when we look at gymnastics in terms of the the fitness world,
as keeping the body tight allows my muscles to work together in
the chain as efficiently as possible to perform the outcome
that I'm looking for. Tension also is really important
because it allows me to understand where the safe end
range of a movement is. Yeah, 5%.
So if I have no tension and I can't find tension when
performing a specific movement, I have no idea that I'm going
past the safe point. It's like ski, it's like skiing
off piece. Like, you know, like you, you
want to ski down the the hill. You don't want to go through the
trees. It's like driving on the road.
You don't want to drive like off the road.
It's it's like that. And when I first started really
getting into fitness, we talked about this before the whole this
obsession with full range of motion, you know, like the ass
to grass squat. Yeah, I was smashing the front
of my hip so hard, like going all the way down, down, all the
way up. Or when I was hanging off a bar,
I was just pours in movement through the front of my shoulder
so aggressively because simply because I could.
And I thought I was doing a good thing, but this was like a
decade plus ago because I was doing the full range of motion.
But sometimes full range of motion is bad.
Yeah, 100% because that full range of motion for yourself is
not a safe range of motion. You know, we have very different
problems when it comes to gymnastics, right?
You see that when I demo movements for you, because I can
see you're kind of looking at my shoulders and thinking, oh, a
little bit bad. But I, I, I have too much
tension in my system because I have very E mobile shoulders.
So, you know, it's very easy to identify when I'm going too far
because straight away my shoulders go, whoa, that's a bad
idea. Why are we doing?
It just feels tight. Right.
It feels really tight and sometimes if I push it way too
far, I have a bit of pain either in the shoulder or a lot of
times when we're doing that, keep swinging, I'm going into
the arch. I feel it in my lower back.
So you'll very seldom see me over arch because immediately I
get feedback from my body saying, oh, that's a bad place,
don't go there. Yeah.
The biggest thing that I wanted to focus on with you when you
came in was that there was no notification to you to say, hey,
we've gone too far, you're not allowed down this road, you need
to come back, right? And we would just keep going
down that road. So what we had to do was build
in those tension points for you and, and create them for you so
that you understood where they were and now you know where to
go because you've taught your body that, hey, this is the
tension point that I need to get to.
And I think that's a downfall for a lot of coaches.
We can very easily identify when someone cannot hit the full
range of motion, but sometimes we are a little bit LAX or don't
always see when someone goes past the full range of motion
and then can potentially lead to unsafe places.
And since working with you, I'm constantly now in the gym, in my
group classes, I'm like, no, that's too far.
You need to come up out of that squad or because, you know, now
it's a lot more obvious to me and you can see it.
I always used to see it on the gymnastics swing on the on the
arch because you see a lot of especially ladies who rarely go
too far through the shoulder. So I was always aware of that.
But then, you know, after the conversations we had, it was
like, oh, yeah, this shouldn't be actually happening in the
squats. Whereas before, for someone
who's got so much attention, was like, oh, that's an impressive
squat. And then you go, oh, actually,
no, hold on. We're putting ourselves at risk.
Yeah, obviously if it's trained, you know, like you're going to
have a weightlifter who trains to that range of motion because
part of their job description is to get under the heaviest weight
possible, which requires them to catch that weight as low as
possible. Yeah.
But they're trained in that position.
Absolutely. And they're not doing one Rep
Max every day. So even if I when I only left, I
know I'm doing that much lately we have to talk about back in a
SEC. But if you're doing 1 Max,
you're gonna get shoved down and it's okay, I think.
And again, people will disagree with me on this and that's fine.
But when it comes to fitness for the hyper mobile person who
wants to do it in a relatively high level.
And I'm not a professional athlete by any means, but I
really enjoy the the sports and the activities that I do and
they're important for me. But when it comes to doing a one
Rep Max, you will get shoved down by the bar.
And yes, you have to fight it. You have to have that technical
expertise 100%. But if you are hyper mobile in
your hip, you're going to go down potentially.
Absolutely. You need to be able to come back
up. But the key thing here is that
you shouldn't be doing one Rep Max every day.
If you're doing a lot of big volume of those squats and
you're being shoved down, you know, then it's a huge issue.
Or again, if you're doing a one Rep Max and your knee moves in a
tiny bit, you're dealing at the maximum capacity of your ability
to move. And again, that type of
technical quirk I think is tolerable in that very, very
limited Rep range. But if that athlete has that
those knees diving in day in, day out, that's going to cause
huge problems. So I think again, like I'm so
grateful I had the time I had working with these professional
athletes because it taught me to think about, you know, risk
benefit assessment in different Rep ranges or different volume
ranges for different types of fitness.
Yeah, I mean, definitely. And it's, it's applying that,
right. Because at the end of the day, I
think trying to avoid something is also going to lead to
disaster. You know, sometimes you can't
help it. Sometimes in everyday life
you're going to get forced in it to a position or a range that
you're not supposed to be. But the better prepared I've
made my body to handle that, the better off I'll be.
Absolutely, yeah, it's whether you like it or not, eventually
that end range will come for you and we want to be careful.
This is a question I get asked all the time on social media,
Like should I be training movements, you know, should I
let my elbow hyperextend or whatever when I'm doing a
finishing a push up or something, I don't know,
overhead press or whatever. And The thing is, look, ideally
you're not going to be going deep into that hyperextension
and range all the time. But if you do that on a, you
know, a low volume set or it's being done in a controlled way,
ideally with the supervision of a coach who's knowledgeable,
then it's, it's possible there may even be some benefit when
life forces you into that position and you have to put
your arm out to catch yourself or something.
It's, I think it's I like the same from spider man.
This is really random. But with great power comes great
responsibility. With great range of motion comes
great responsibility. And I have quite muscular
shoulders that are kind of, you know, well developed because I
need to be able to stop my shoulder from going there or
being prepared for when it does inevitably go into that end
range. Yeah.
So that's, that's how I like to handle it.
And again, there will be some people listening where that's
not safe for them. And if that's not safe for you,
you've been told that do what's safe for you.
OK. But if it is safe for you to
train, I think there are ways you can certainly try and
improve your fitness. Let's talk a little bit about
kind of, we've touched before on kind of dysautonomia because a
lot of people, myself included, will find that they feel a bit
nauseous or a bit sick when they're exercising.
And this is because some people who are hypermobile, they get
lightheaded when they're changing body positions.
So I have orthostatic hypotension.
And what that means is that when I go from being basically in a
horizontal position to being upright, or if I'm doing that
repeatedly, I previously would start to feel really unwell.
I still will sometimes get a bit dizzy, although it's not too
often for me. And I have to say that I think
my fitness journey has actually really helped me with that.
Can you talk a little bit just about kind of blood flow
diversion and how that can affect body functioning just in
a general sense? Yeah, I mean in a in a general
sense, if we looked at mixed modal training.
So let's take a workout where I'm going to do a 400 meter run.
Yeah. And following that 400 meter
run, I'm then going to go into instead of Max pull ups.
OK, if I started off with the Max pull ups and did no running
those pull ups, I would let's say hit 10.
I then go on my 400 meter run and when I come back inside,
it's a little bit harder to get those 10.
Obviously, there are many reasons for this.
My heart rate's a little bit higher, I'm a little bit more
fatigued. But one of the reasons why this
is happening is because all of my blood flow has been diverted
to my legs, right? Switching off, keeping blood in
the essential places it needs to be.
But my body goes, hey, we're not really using our arms.
The muscles in the legs are really screaming out for more
oxygen. So we're going to pump as much
blood down there as we can. You come inside from your run,
you've just sneaked up ninja your body and said, oh, wait,
hold on. We're going to jump on the rig
and we're going to start pulling.
And now your body immediately goes, oh, wait, hold on.
We got to shut off blood flow to the legs and now pump it all the
way up to the body. And that's a hard thing to do.
I want to say from a physiological perspective like
that is I'm, I'm amazed that we're, you know, I'm amazed that
we're functioning all the time. The body's incredible.
But getting blood flow from your legs up is defying graffiti,
literally. Really, really difficult.
And that's one of the kind of keys to the secret source about
mixed modal functional training. You know, CrossFit is, is, is
that we have this type of training where yes, you work in
your muscles, but you're also working the blood flow, the
central nervous system, telling it where to send blood, how to
do this, how to do that. So with the type of training
that you've done over the years, the kind of in my head makes
sense. And we had a conversation about
this after one PT session, why you would feel a little bit
better prepared to now handle that dizziness that you would be
used to from going from down here to up all of a sudden.
Because through the training you've done, you've trained your
body to better handle and process that.
Yeah, just to literally cope with it, I think again, and I
know this is, this is controversial stuff, this is
just my opinion on this as well. But although there are different
ways to manage this type of dysautonomia, so the the
umbrella term is orthostatic intolerant.
Some people have pot, some people have orthostatic
hypotension, there are medications and people should
ideally be under the care of a cardiologist and checked out.
I love safety. I'm very keen on that.
But I have to say anecdotally that doing types of training
which have focused on, as you say, like that diversion of
blood flow, even though I didn't know that's what I was doing at
the time, as I think at least it's correlated with a really
big improvement in my symptoms. I remember a workout I was with
an athlete's parents, actually, they were in like their 50s at
the time or 60s, and they were doing all these burpees.
And I was trying to do burpees with them.
I was in my mid 20s. I thought I should absolutely be
able to do this. And I just felt so like sick and
like, it's this nausea and Lightheadedness.
And again, we want to be safe. We don't want people passing out
and some people will pass out. So again, these are the people
where they need to be doing exercise like on the floor in a
safe and controlled way for them.
But in my case, I, I knew I wasn't going to actually like
lose consciousness. I just felt gross basically.
And for me, it was always one of those like, why am I so bad at
this? And I've just always been one of
those people where I look at what I'm bad at and I'm like,
can I find a way to get better at this?
So I thought it was just that because I'm tall, my heart rate
is maybe getting a bit spiked from, you know, changing body
position. It's a long way.
It is a long way. And I became obsessed with
burpees too. Technically I'm like, am I doing
the technique right? Like I wanted to know everything
because I, I like to try and find ways to be better at the
things that I'm, I'm not good at.
But I started to do burpees in a more slow and controlled and
casual way. I became more aggressive with
scaling again. So I would just scale the
numbers. I wanted to feel safe while I
was doing them. I started also going to the gym
and being on the skier because I noticed I got the same feeling
when I was on the skiing machine.
And again, we have that upright body position to that kind of
bent over body position. And I was feeling like, yeah, I
was feeling woozy. But what I found helpful was
actually using my chest strap heart rate monitor at the time,
figuring out because of the the rowing I've done previously, I
know my kind of like steady state heart rate range where I
feel really safe and really comfortable making a rule that,
OK, I'm not going to pass this heart rate range.
And then doing these kind of slightly longer pieces like I do
5 to 10 minutes on the ski machine, really slow and chill,
just having that heart rate there.
I mean, overtime, I think that's absolutely improved my ability
to port blood around my body. Yeah, One thing I want to touch
on too, with some blood flow and training as well, is so we
haven't talked that much. We've talked a fair amount about
hypermobility, but you like, again, you're not a specialist
in this field yet, although I absolutely think you should
become one. But one of the big issues people
have is getting this blood flow moved around their body in a way
that helps their body do what they need to do.
So it'll be those people that stand up and get dizzy or this
type of thing, as we've talked about.
But another common symptom is that people will feel unwell
after eating. And that's partly, there can be
different reasons for this, but one reason can be that their
blood is kind of going to all be concentrated in their digestive
system, their bodies focusing on that.
They then go to do something like for example, stand up or do
something physically that has some physical exertion element
to it and they will then feel really unwell.
So I think finding ways to kind of safely, I, I call, I tell my
patients, we're like micro dosing cardio, but finding ways
to do where we're really safe and in control is critical.
We bonded early on a little bit over rowing and steady state
training. Can you, I've tried to tell
people what it is. I actually have a guide on
Amazon where I tried my best to explain it from a uniquely
hypermobile perspective, might I add.
But tell me a little bit about steady state training and why
it's so helpful for health reasons.
Steady state training is really helpful because it's working
your aerobic system. So that's everything to do with
our breathing, your cardio, kind of your respiratory system.
Yeah. What's really great about steady
state training, if you're looking at it from a kind of
scientific way, and I'm not really that scientific, but the
more cardio, the more steady state training I do, the better
my blood flow or the more my blood flow has to work.
Yeah, Right. And what happens is the
capillaries that are attached to your muscles grow because your
muscles demanding more blood. Yeah.
We know our bodies are very smart, right?
So. So adapters.
Yeah, and it goes, oh cool, this muscle wants more blood.
I'm struggling to send it that blood with the one capillary to
that muscle. So I'm going to add in another
four. Yeah, right.
And three time and doing more and more steady state training.
Your capillaries grow so the delivery of blood to that muscle
becomes better, right. It's like, you know, getting the
Uber driver to deliver you one massive food thing and expecting
him to fit it in for feed of 10 people.
It's not going to happen. You're probably going to have
three Uber scooters rock up instead of just the one.
Yeah, yeah. You want you want that delivery
to happen in an organized way. The one scooter going back and
forth, back and forth, you know they're going to put it in three
scooters and send it off to you once.
Yeah. Probably a very weird way to
explain that I had some. It was slightly confused me for
a minute, but I do get it now. It's about the efficiency.
Basically how efficiently can you deliver what the muscle
needs to function. And there is ample research.
Again, if you want to read about steady state training, I
encourage you to do it as sports gets lots of money in research.
High probability stuff does not get so much research.
So I have to say that I do often end up role-playing, you know,
pretending that I am a professional athlete and looking
at what they're doing and finding ways to apply it to my
own health. But when it comes to this type
of steady state training, we see that we get this improvement in
efficiency of the cardiovascular system because of the
capillaries that are being built.
I have to say one reason I fell in love with steady state
training too is because it makes me feel warmer.
So I get really painfully cold if I don't do cardio, which is
why we have the bike in the flat.
We have a tiny flat, but I've insisted on a bike in it.
If someone doesn't do this type of training, so let's say that
they're not doing any cardio. The general message out there
for people who are hyper mobile is strength train, strength
train, strength train. And I love strength training.
I love all fitness, but if someone's making their muscles
bigger but they don't have those delivery drivers or they don't
have the infrastructure as I think about it with the
capillaries, what happens in that situation?
Well, if we carry on with the metaphor.
Yeah, let's do it. Right, You used to live really
close to your favorite eat out place and your driver only had
to take 5 minutes to get to your house.
Dream situation dream. Situation right Order as you
need it. The more strength training you
do, the bigger your muscles get. Strength training doesn't kind
of entice that cardiovascular response that we look for.
That increases the capillaries, but your muscle grows.
So what happens now is you had to up and leave.
You had to change flats. You now live 15 minutes away
from your favorite eat out place.
So when you call to get your food delivered, it's now going
to take that much longer to get to go where you need it to be.
So I might be a lot stronger, but when I actually have to use
those muscles and now want to get my food, it's not as
efficient as coming to me as it was before.
Whereas if I strength train, right, and I think about doing
cardiovascular work at the same time, right, we never want to
specialize into one more than the other because as a human, we
need to be able to get our heart rate up, but we also need to be
resilient to handle external loads, right?
We want to be doing these things together so I can be as
efficient as possible. Whereas if I just strength
train, it's not going to help my cardiovascular system.
It's going to make me stronger. But those muscles are not going
to be able to work for as long as you were hoping, right?
It's kind of like, take a bodybuilder, ask him to walk up
a flight of stairs. He's probably going to be just
as out of breath as an untrained person would, right?
It's the same as you take a marathon runner and you ask him
to lift heavy weights. He's going to struggle as much
as an untrained person would. If you find someone who's in the
middle who says let's they do this mixed modal training that
we've been talking about, They're not going to lift as
heavy as the bodybuilder and they're not going to run as fast
as the marathon runner over that long distance.
But they will perform both of those tasks a lot better than an
untrained person would, if that makes sense.
No, that makes complete sense. It was making me think of
actually the whole concept of GPP as you call it.
I'll get you to define that in a second, But no, when when
working with patients or clients, I think it's critical
to always think about like what they need to do with their,
their body, you know, do they need to carry groceries?
Do they need to go up a flight of stairs?
Like what does their life require of them?
And the best approach for most people, as you said, it's going
to be to do a combination of different types of training.
It's not strength is good and cardio is bad or even aerobic
cardio is good or anaerobic sprinting is bad.
You know, everything has its role and everything can be
scaled for the most part in different ways.
I think people forget this like we I could make a strength
program that my 92 year old grandpa could do.
I can add in a cardiovascular component to it and I'd add in
some balance and proprioception based exercises as well.
Because I think that's kind of how I just really try to
simplify the fitness world and think about it in my brain when
plugging things together when it comes to trying to find ways to
just improve people's overall health.
Can you tell me a little bit about GPP and how that kind of
guides you in management? So GPP, we think general
physical preparedness and that's basically if I'm looking at a
client in front of me, as you've just been saying, yeah, how can
I best prepare them for their day?
Yeah. So one of the things that's
really important to us with the group coaching and training that
we do at our gym is making sure that people are very strong at
getting up off the floor, right? That people have strong legs and
that people have a strong cardiovascular system.
So burpees get a bad rap, right? But burpees are really good for
you because if I'm able to burpee, I'm able to get up off
the floor. And when I'm younger or
middle-aged, if I can do a lot of burpees, this bodes well for
me. Because as I get older, I
maintain the mobility to get up and off the floor.
I maintain the strength to get up and off the floor.
And that means I'm less dependent on other people.
So if I'm at home and I fall over, I'm able to get myself
back up and I'm now not in a situation where I'm potentially
stuck there until somebody comes to visit me, which could be very
dire. Yeah, right.
It's no with the fall example, we still talk about the back
injury a second at some point I got injured.
We've been figuring out ways to manage it.
But with I fell recently as well, I fell really badly
running for the train and people are offering to help me Like
that's, you know, it's bad when when people like, are you OK?
And I have to say, having fractured my wrist previously, I
was so expecting to have fractured something 100%.
Like I was really worried. You've seen me.
It was the sand, actually, but we've been careful with it
because I was so nervous, but I didn't fracture it.
And I do think we will never get a study funded on this.
If you're listening and you want to fund the study, please do.
But I do wonder if doing burpees for years has helped me get
better at just dealing with my body weight through my wrist and
through my hand and coming out of that uninjured in that kind
of general physical preparedness sense.
It supports me and living my life and dealing with what comes
up, whether that's falling over over at the tender age of like
33 or you know, other things that my life requires.
To touch on the back injury, I have to say that the core
strength that we've been focusing on developing for me,
as we talked about earlier, it's something I know I've always
been not as strong and and I look at it as a way not only to
try and achieve some of the sporty things.
Of course I have goals, OK. I like, I like my fitness stuff.
But it helps me to kind of make sure I can work long term and
make sure, you know, if I ever did become pregnant or had
something physically challenging happened to my body, have a
health set back of some other kind that we've built up that
buffer of fitness high enough that I then have a place I can
fall from. Yeah.
Instead of going from kind of just functioning to, you know,
being really unwell, I'm going from being relatively very, you
know, athletic or physically fit to then less so.
And it just buys you time and the ability to come back.
And I think, you know, it's very easy to point out examples that
are based off of strength training.
You know, if, if I have strong legs and I'm able to squat,
chances of me being able to assess people all the time, you
know, sit up and get off the toilet by yourself without
having to worry about getting help to do that or having to
have special things kind of fitted in your bathroom.
But it, it doesn't just come down to that, it the stronger
your cardiovascular system are there is the healthier you will
be and the better you'll be able to fight off some of the kind of
chronic diseases that we start seeing to come into play.
I had a guy who I worked with, this was just after I got my
cancer. I think it was around 2017 for
him. We both did CrossFit because we
worked at a company that sold CrossFit equipment.
So we both believed in, in this thing.
And he got really bad blood clots.
They went towards his heart and he got admitted to the ER and
you know, he's on blood thinners to this day and he has to be
very careful about what he does now.
But when he came out of the whole ordeal, his doctor said to
him, if you were not as fit as an individual as you were, you
would be dead right now, right? So staying healthy in all
aspects and not just trying to be as strong as possible or kind
of as fit as possible, able to run as far as I can, but being
right. Somewhere in the middle is this
idea of GPP. You know, I'm not specializing.
I'm being generally physically prepared for anything and
everything that comes my way, which for people with
hypermobility is probably the best thing you can be.
Oh, absolutely. Deal with so many different
situations where you're going to be tested by things.
Oh for sure. These unexpected movements,
you're just more prone to them because you might step funny or
you know, things happen more often.
No, I have to say when I work with patients and I try and be
that bridge. So you know, there's like a gym
facility in my clinic. So I'll do, I will like trial
exercise with exercises with them and then I try to refer
them and then communicate through that referral.
As you know from having worked with my patients.
But it's a, for me, it's about finding almost that fitness
multivitamin, that's what I call it.
So it's like, or what's your broccoli as I like to say.
So it's like finding that little workout, whatever it is, where
they're able to do something, it feels good.
It targets some of that GPP aspect or some of that kind of
Health Protection. You know, what are they prone
to? Do they have a history of ankle
sprains that we need to address, a history of getting, you know,
light headed and they want to try and work on their
cardiovascular fitness. Or maybe they're like me and
they have shoulder issues and they need some more muscle to
help with that stability there. But finding that like Alex's
perfect multivitamin of a workout or whatever, I think
that totally is like one of the best investments and
interventions someone who's hyper mobile can make,
especially if they're a young person and they are going to the
gym anyways. Like, why not just do it in a
way that benefits your health long term?
100%, Sean, thank you so much for being with us today.
Is there anything that you'd like to say just briefly in
terms of like, I guess stuff that you've learned from working
with me or you know, future considerations for people who
are hyper mobile? I hope I've inspired you to want
to work with We're hyper mobile clients.
Yeah, definitely I you've inspired me with with my
one-on-one coaching and and helped me to think of things
different ways. And it's, it's been really, it's
been really great to work with you.
Thank you. Because I feel like it's forced
me to kind of look at things differently, which helps me to
grow as as a coach. I think from my side, the
biggest thing is that if you are a little bit nervous and you are
out there and you're a bit tentative about doing training
or getting involved with something, whether it's because
you are hyper mobile and you have previous, you know, things
that you have to worry about. Or like myself, back in the day
where I struggled coming back from chemotherapy starts more.
You know, it doesn't have to be this massive crazy thing that
you do. It can be the smallest thing.
And if you find the right person who aligns with you, who you get
along with, who you have a connection with, they can really
help you through through that journey.
You know, we, we've been talking fitness and I just want people
to take away the idea that, you know, fitness could be going
outside right now and walking around your block and coming
back inside. You're just getting up off the
couch. Getting up off the couch 10
times before you decide to go walk around the block.
Or even twice, you know, there is you can scale things
infinitely and there is usually some way to move for most
people. And I think absolutely, you
know, for patients or put people out there looking to exercise,
that's great for them, for personal trainers and coaches in
the space as well. What I want to say is like,
don't be scared of people who are hyper mobile, you know, talk
to them, learn about the relevant health issues, try and
talk to their healthcare providers if you.
But I'm convinced that the best way we can help a lot of people
is by having healthcare providers talk with personal
trainers and coaches and then talk with clients.
And we all, like, work together. I think that open communication
chain, right? We are constantly talking at the
beginning of our sessions about how are we feeling about this,
How are we feeling about that? And we're just building on that
every week. And I'm taking what you know,
and I'm taking kind of how I see you responding to things.
And I'm letting you know, OK, these are the things we should
look out for. And then you're giving me
constant feedback, and it's just this feedback loop.
And that's why I like to be called a coach, right?
Because I'm not just having you come in and say, all right, this
is what you're doing today. You're going to do that.
It's collaborative. And if you're doing that with
your fitness, you'll be in a good place.
Absolutely, Sean, thank you so much again for your time.
It's been a pleasure to have you on and I hope to have any of you
listening or watching and join next time.
Be sure to subscribe, be sure to leave a review if you can, and
keep an eye out for my upcoming book.
Take Care. Bye.