The Power of Biofeedback in Wellness with Ian O’Dwyer our Movement Yoda
Summary
In this episode, Vanessa Leone and Ian O’Dwyer discuss fitness metrics, movement assessment, and self-awareness in training. O’Dwyer emphasizes the importance of listening to the body over relying solely on biofeedback tools. He advocates for “appraisals” instead of “assessments” to reduce fear and improve self-awareness. They explore how movement, hydration, nutrition, sleep, and mood impact performance. O’Dwyer highlights fascia’s role in movement and explains mobilizers as low-force, functional movements tailored to individual needs. The conversation underscores the value of intuitive training, proper recovery, and questioning conventional fitness testing for a more holistic approach to health and movement.
Transcript
Vanessa Leone (00:01)
It’s movement Yoda. Back for one of my favourite segments. Hello.
OD (00:03)
Hello Ness how are you?
Vanessa Leone (00:09)
I’m much better now. Thank you. So good to see your face. Just to let you know and to let the listener know, we’ve just had a little chat. I’ve just prepped OD Movement Yoda very, very briefly. And I said to him, this is going to be a fun topic because this month we are talking about all things fitness, health and wellness measurements, which I think
Vanessa Leone (00:38)
is a great subject, super interesting, but I think that there’s a side of it that we don’t talk about. So my first question is very open-ended. How do you feel about all of these different measurements that we have in the fitness industry? know, like, just give me a general feel of it.
OD (00:58)
So you’re referring to various types of biofeedback systems that we have,
Vanessa Leone (01:05)
Yeah. And like there’s a whole
heap, right? Like you could, you can name a few too, if you wanted.
OD (01:10)
Well, it’s an interesting question. How do I feel about something that tells me how I feel?
OD (01:24)
Right, so, you know, I guess, Ness, as you’re well aware of, and I’m hoping that as we roll through this series that the people out there listening are gonna start to understand I’m about connection, I’m about awareness, I’m about getting back to feeling what our tissues are telling us, what our cells are telling us. You know, if you walk into a room and your gut says, ooh, I don’t feel that comfortable here, I don’t need a biofeedback system on my wrist saying,
Danger danger there’s an asshole in the room. I Reckon I can work that out for myself, right? So, you know if I’m in a relationship with someone and my heart’s not feeling it I don’t reckon the watch is gonna tell me that they’re not a nice person. I can’t trust them or maybe their values aren’t the same as mine so, you know, I have full respect for
anyone who creates any biofeedback technology, because I think there is a place for it, but we can’t put biofeedback in the feeling category because it’s not feeling us, it’s telling us. And it’s interesting because I have seen very expensive equipment used in…
you know, the best environments and I’ve had people come into me and we run through a lifestyle questionnaire which might take three minutes talking about, you know, nutrition, hydration, movement, sleep and mood and that doesn’t necessarily correlate to what their biofeedback system is telling them on their watch. So once again, I’m not saying they’re wrong, I’m not saying they’re right, I’m just saying
If I’m trying to condition someone to feel what their cells are telling them, what their body’s telling them, where they’re at, it can be used in addition to, but I certainly don’t want them to rely upon
Vanessa Leone (03:29)
I love that answer. And you’ve also already pre-empted a question that I was going to ask you. How did you know? Just in sync already, Yoda. So we’re going to come back to that later. You talked about a lifestyle questionnaire and we’re going to come back to that later. But I think that that’s a really valid thing that you said is sometimes we let these tests, we let these, you know,
Vanessa Leone (03:59)
assessments dictate how we feel. And it’s a tool, right? It’s just a tool to help us manage. It’s a tool to help us gain some feedback and to integrate that into our full awareness and to our, and, and, and to more knowledge rather than relying on that to tell us something. And I think that you made that point. Excellently. So good. So with saying that,
Do you actually measure anything when you’re working with a client? What would you measure? Are you measuring PRs and PBs? Are you measuring pain? Give us a little run through.
OD (04:40)
Absolutely, and measurement is something that’s critically important for us as we know. You you’ve worked in the conditioning realm.
I believe our KPIs aren’t necessarily congruent to our outcomes. And I’ll clarify that. We put a GPS on the back of an AFL player and it tells us maximum speed and it tells us concentrated efforts and it tells us, it doesn’t tell us how well he moves laterally. It doesn’t tell us.
how much involvement he has in the game. It doesn’t tell us how effective he is with his disposals. It doesn’t tell us, you know, the things that are important in sport, it doesn’t tell us because that technology probably hasn’t been designed yet because those questions haven’t been asked. So, Ness, you know, when we start looking at metrics, yes, I do measure. If I’m measuring someone who’s in pain, I’ll generally measure that.
through their response emotionally, mentally, and physically. Now, someone comes in in pain, this, you tell me what they’re feeling. You tell me what their face is looking like. You tell me how they’re moving. Pretty straightforward, right?
Vanessa Leone (06:00)
Yep, you can see it usually.
OD (06:01)
You can see it. Now, the very first thing, my words, you can sense it. There’s that, you know, left off from that last session we did about interoception, right? And then interoception is, you know, when we look at interoception, it’s just, it’s the ability to feel. That’s my gut. That’s my sense of, okay, if I’m connected to this person, I’m trying to create solutions. I’ve got to listen to them verbally, but I’ve also got to listen to them physically and emotionally, right?
Vanessa Leone (06:03)
You can sense it as well.
OD (06:31)
So, and also on a spiritual level in the fact of I want to treat this person the way I would expect I’d be treated if I was going to see someone. So it’s this whole situation of how do I measure them? Well, for me, I always think what’s the best way to measure someone? It’s got to mimic what they’re trying to do. You know, if they come in in pain, why do they want to get out of pain? What do they have to do in work? When do they have to do it by?
So there’s all these questions that we wanna find out, right? And if their pattern is a stepping and reaching pattern, some people might call it lunging, or a sit and reaching pattern, or it’s a gait pattern, then my assessment probably needs to be something or my appraisal. So I don’t do assessments. And I’ve gotta tell you, the reason I don’t do assessments, and as you know, we’ve been involved with some of the biggest assessment names around the world, right?
What do most people do in an assessment? They fail. So you use the word, or they act. I’m tested again, right? Like I’m 62, I don’t need more tests. That’s why I got out of school. That’s not going back to it. So it’s interesting, as soon as you use the word assessment, they try to act, they try to move the way that they know they should.
Vanessa Leone (07:36)
They fail or they act. They know they’re getting tested, right? They know they’re getting tested.
OD (07:58)
So we use the word appraisal. It’s a bit of softness to it, but it’s also them being able to connect to themselves. So our appraisal is nothing more than an awareness that their system’s going to inform us about, not that I’m gonna tell them about. Otherwise, I’m looking like that biofeedback system that’s sitting on my wrist. You know, I’ve spent seven years traveling the world, working with some of the best people in the world, you know.
and to see their assessments, whether it’s Grey Cook or whether it’s Mike Clark with the overhead squat, their assessments are mind blowing. Look, they’re so good, but realistically, the only person that can do their assessment is them. So, Nessie, what I tried to do is I thought, you know what? I’m not as smart as they are. And I certainly see things, but not the way they see it. So rather than me having the responsibility of judging someone, of assessing someone,
I thought, wouldn’t it be smarter if we could create an opportunity for someone to appraise themselves so that when I’m not there, they can still do it. You know, Phil Soma put together a really simple process and, you know, having Rodney Corn as you know, who’s had a big bearing on the National Academy of Sports Medicine, he wrote the original manual and Roddy’s knowledge on human being is just second to none.
But we just said, okay, let’s go back to fundamentals. Let’s do some sit and reaches. Let’s do some step and reaches. Let’s do some ground to stand, stand to ground. Let’s do some kneeling. So let’s do the things that we do in life. And the best part was we gave the person in front of us the opportunity now to tell us what they felt when they did those appraisals, which was pretty cool, right? So you’ve got to have a metric.
Vanessa Leone (09:54)
You do. I like, just want to point out the language that you’re using also is super important. Like you said, the language of assessment versus appraisal, but then you’re talking about, sit and reach, step and reach. Was it step and reach squat and lunge for people who aren’t familiar with Yoda language. That’s, that’s a squat and a lunge. But the reason why you don’t say a squat and a lunge, particularly to someone in pain is because
Vanessa Leone (10:22)
Words have a triggering effect, isn’t that right?
OD (10:24)
Huge, huge. And you know, it’s interesting because we’ve been advised by people far smarter than us that, you know, people in back pain shouldn’t rotate. Right? And you go, hang on, they’ve got to sit on a toilet. They’ve got to get into a car. They’ve got to be in a situation where they’ve got to walk down the street. That’s rotation. And it’s rotation from the toes to the nose. So I…
I get what they’re saying, you don’t want to squeeze or rotate that lower lumbar excessively, but you know what, our language can be very off-putting, because if you tell someone not to rotate, and all of a sudden they have a fear of rotation, that’s going to magnify the problem, right? So you’re right, the language is so important.
Vanessa Leone (11:11)
Yeah. I’ll use an example for that is I’ve had several clients who’ve, know, later in life have had to have a knee replacement and the advice from the surgeon is not to squat. And it’s really confusing advice considering what you just said. We all have to get in and out of the car. We all have to get on the toilet and that’s squatting. That’s, that’s just a, that’s just a daily movement and you know, people wouldn’t necessarily quantify it.
as a squat because they don’t use that as a metric, but that could be someone’s metric because they’re in pain. So if you’re having a knee replacement, being able to sit up and down off the toilet is an excellent metric to see if you’re capable of doing it with and without pain. And so what you’re saying is the metric doesn’t necessarily really matter. It’s the context that you put the metric in.
OD (11:57)
Yeah, yeah, and this we’ve all done it haven’t we? We’ve all gone through goniometers and we’ve measured this and we’ve measured internal rotation of the hip and all of that sort of stuff. But those goniometers don’t measure the emotional state of what the tissue is because emotion changes motion. If I’ve got a situation where I’ve gone through emotional stress, my pelvic floor is going to be hypertonic. It’s going to be rock hard. It’s not going to want to move. We know that, right? We’ve experienced that. I’m probably going to be back gripping, potentially back gripping.
So now I’ve got really no movement in the pelvis. And that’s gonna affect the measurement of what my physical outcome is gonna be, but it doesn’t solve the problem now. I’ve got back pain and what I’m realizing is it’s not back pain through limited internal or external rotation. It’s back pain through an event that’s occurred that’s hurt me emotionally.
Vanessa Leone (12:57)
Yeah, I’m so glad that we’re talking about this. It’s on it. Really, because I, yeah, sometimes, you know, as a trainer, I find it super important to question myself as well as, you know, what I’m seeing, what I’m hearing. think that that is really important. If I’m questioning others, then I should question my own methods. I think that’s pretty fair. And I have so many clients.
Vanessa Leone (13:27)
who thrive and I barely give them any measurement. Nothing. No, you know, PB, no, you know, let’s, let’s, let’s see how strong you are. Let’s see how fit you are. Let’s, and it’s not saying that they don’t ever do it, but when we do do it, it’s at their suggestion. It’s at their desire. And then we can, we can walk into it. And I think that measuring
is a huge barrier for a lot of people who want to engage in fitness and in health or in sport is because like you said, we put this word assessment in front of as soon as they start like you enter a gym and the first thing you do is an assessment, right? And that’s a that’s a barrier automatically you’re having someone judge you automatically you’re having having to go through a process that potentially makes you feel really uncomfortable and
Is that really necessary for someone starting out or someone who’s super experienced even? Like, does it really matter?
OD (14:29)
And it’s interesting because, you know, we’ve spoken many times over about if the experience is nothing more than positive, people aren’t going to come back. So you create a negativity by using a language, a failure. had, I’ve failed again. I’ve come in a back pain. What are you expecting to see? What he’s going to be able to do? You’re going to have a 20 degree, you know, dorsiflexion of his foot? No. You know, so it’s, anyway, it’s just interesting, isn’t it? So.
I guess, Ness, the biggest thing about us is that we’re not talking theoretically. We’re talking about experience. I can tell you right now, had 2010, 2011, when I was doing the conditioning and assistant coaching here at Noosa and one my best mates was coaching, and we had a scenario that we didn’t train any longer than 68 minutes for a session for the entire year. We would do…
Mobilizers they do some foam roller in inside we do some mobilizers. We would do some running drills, which would involve skipping We would do a drill of touch and then they had four drills that ran for eight minutes after that We had no soft tissue injuries in two years the umpires who I used to Look after at the time they’d come and see me some of the umpires and they’d say OD How come your players don’t appear to get injured?
They never answer back or argue and they’re sideways movement. How come that they just move sideways so well? And you think if you want to measure something, if a sports person is moving well, moving efficiently, that means that they’re going to make good decisions because they’ve got plenty of fuel and good oxygen flow to their brain. It means that you’re playing a 360 degree sport.
and they’re not breaking down their tissue, that tells you the conditioning you’re doing must be beneficial. And then you have a scenario where their endurance was through the roof. We never, in three years, we never ran a three minute or two minute or one K time, we never ran time for us. We never ran. We ran in the exercise. And the intensity, the intensities was never any higher.
than gear three, because I knew if I said gear three, for those of you out there, gear one’s 50 to 60% max heart rate, gear two, 60 to 70%, gear three, 70 to 80%, gear four, 80 to 90%, gear five, 90 to 100%. Now, I knew if I said gear three, you know where most of them would live, gear four. So we only had 48 hours between each training session and the game. So I knew that I was bordering on recovery time.
So we had to make sure that these guys were working within their threshold so they could recover, so they could perform. Otherwise I was jeopardizing, that’s the metric, right? So it’s really interesting when I hear conditioning coaches who have got three, four, five ACLs. And we’ve all had them, don’t get me wrong. There’s no way that I’m saying I’m perfect. I’ve had guys who have done ACLs in my conditioning as well. But when you have large numbers of injuries happen,
Vanessa Leone (17:29)
Yep. Yep.
OD (17:48)
which is happening in many sports now, you’ve got to look at it and say, why? Challenge it.
Vanessa Leone (17:54)
Yeah, I would agree with that sentiment. And I think for those listening who are super attached to their tests and their fitness tests, there still is a place for that. And I don’t think that we’re saying that you should just ditch them all. I’ll use my experience, been training, or have been training, a semi-pro tennis player. I started training him when he was on the Cusp of 16 and he’s now moved on. He’s turning 20 this year and he’s…
got a, he’s playing college tennis in the States. So quite high level. It’s great. I’m really happy for him. And when we started training, he had niggly shoulders, had niggly knees, you know, kind of injuries and he wanted to increase his power. I wanted to increase his fitness and obviously get better. His dream was to play tennis more, uh, you know, uh, and make something out of it. And we, I didn’t do fitness tests with him.
I did mobility tests, well not tests, again, appraisals. And the testing all happened from his coaches. I mean, he did strength and conditioning within his school conditioning as well, because he had that. So I didn’t need to focus on that. And he did testing in terms of how fast are you serving? All of that kind of stuff is important if you’re looking to advance.
Vanessa Leone (19:16)
into a semi-professional kind of sport or a professional sport. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but I’ll never forget what he said. So he came back from his break and we’re training again. And he’s like, they don’t train like we train. Like we move, you know, sideways and, and, and slowly and in weird joint angles. And, and he’s like, I go to training and it’s all
just compound traditional strength training, linear. again, time and a place, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if that’s all you’re doing, you play tennis, your majority of your movement is lateral and rotational. And it’s very limited in that training traditionally to see when you go into the gym and you watch them train, unless you’re a top top player and I’ve watched Federer and the Nadal’s and their coaches, they don’t train the way that…
Vanessa Leone (20:16)
You know, other people are training and I find it really interesting because it’s also that different measure. It’s I walk up to him and I say, how are you feeling today? Give me your energy out of 10. Like I’ve got power on the cards for us today, but if your energy is not an eight or more, then we’re not doing power because that defeats the purpose. I’m just going to break you down. I’m not going to, I’m not going to.
Vanessa Leone (20:40)
be able to progress you if you’re not feeling like you’re up to it. And that’s a measurement in itself. You know, he is giving me an appraisal of how he feels for the day. And I have to, as the coach, figure out how to best load this person for progression. So I don’t burn him out. So we don’t have an injury and he hasn’t had an injury touchwood superstitious, but he hasn’t had an injury for such a long time. And he moves like incredibly well.
You know, he’s got tight hips or he’s got tight, I say tight, you know, in inverted commas because that’s just how we feel. But it’s really interesting when you and I both get feedback like that. And we are very not traditional in the approach of, you know, metrics. I find it fascinating.
OD (21:30)
Yeah.
Well, I think as you say, like it’s that whole thing that I love metrics. I love getting feedback. I love KPIs, but I think we’ve got to ask better questions. Not just about the distance run, the amount of efforts made. We’ve got to ask better questions about what and how the person’s performing. Because really it’s about performance. It’s actually about performance and longevity. So if we can sustain that
know, that person. I’ll give you an example, Ness. We had a, I remember we had the heart rate monitors on, let’s say 10 of the players. And one of the young guys was a really heavy user of grass, of dope. Anyway, marijuana. Anyway, and I could just see, you know, he’s a hard trainer, but could just see, he just shouldn’t have been there that night. Anyway, so we’ve got the monitors on they’re running around. And I pulled him out and I said,
I need you to walk two laps.” And he said, what? I said, I just need you to walk two laps. And I’ve got the, you know, we’ve got the spikes, they’re in gear three, gear four. He was in gear five after doing mobilizers and the running drills. Right? Like he should have been in the gray, should have been 50 to 60 max heart rate right? And he was in gear five. Anyway, he walked and I walked with him and had a chat to him and I said, mate, I don’t need a heart attack.
you don’t need a heart attack, or an organ shutdown. So it was really nice because that in itself was just such, and we discussed it as a team. He was going through some pretty stressful times and wasn’t in the nice place. But it was interesting, Ness, because it was that whole process of, wow, you could show him, I could see, but I could also show him. So the metric was great, because I could actually see the amount of stress, which is what
We’re really looking for where’s your body with stress, right? So as you said, we both have no problem with metrics of any sort as long as they’re relevant.
Vanessa Leone (23:43)
Yes, that’s an excellent segue into what you mentioned first. So speaking of metrics, and we talked about these kind of verbal metrics, you talked about an appraisal, this questionnaire that you kind of give to your clients. You’ve called it several things throughout your career, my career that I’ve learned from you as well. I use a very similar appraisal. Talk us through some of the questions that people can ask themselves.
Vanessa Leone (24:13)
they train or maybe just daily if they are looking for a metric
OD (24:18)
Yep, so you know, from a fuel summit perspective, we break it into five categories. The first thing is we look at nutrition. If I’ve got, and once again, it’s all very specific because there’s so many things now that people are doing. They’re fasting for 18 and six, they’re doing all sorts of amazing things. But if I’m conditioning someone in the morning and I’m using whole body vibration, that person better eat. Because if they use a whole body vibration plate and they haven’t eaten, they’re probably gonna faint.
When we’re talking about whole body vibration, one of the most powerful tools, healing tools, one of the most powerful priming tools you can get, when you hop on a plate, if that plate’s at 40 hertz, that means the plate’s leaving your body 40 times a second. If I’m doing that for 45 seconds, now there’s around about 1700 actions that the tissues have to make. That’s a lot of energy going. That’s a lot of energy, and if you spend five minutes on it,
OD (25:18)
You you think about it. It’s a lot of action. It’s a lot of energy that’s burned. you know, I would want to know, have you eaten? When did you eat? And what was it? Simple. Was it something that was sugary, I know is going to, you know, spike and then drop? Was it something that I had that was maybe, you know, a protein or some sort of good quality fat that was, you know, not long before the session? So I know their fuel tank’s pretty full.
Just, it’s once again, it’s not a right or a wrong, it’s an appraisal, it’s an awareness tool for you. You know, if you haven’t eaten, you might give yourself a score out of three, you might say, that’s a one. If you have eaten and it’s been a good food, you might say it’s a 2.5, it might not be the perfect three, it doesn’t matter. But as long as you’re aware, then you’d sort of say, okay, what’s next? Well, hydration, you know, because most people we know come into a session and the first question I want to know is how much water have you got in your system?
Because we know the water, you you’ve got 20 litres of blood and lymph and blood’s 92 % and lymph’s 96%. So I need water for that system to, for those systems to flow. Now, you know, if you’ve had a water, good, that’s great. If you’ve had a coffee after that, maybe not ideal. So therefore that acts as a diuretic or if I’ve had a sugary drink and if I’ve had it, you know, maybe some time ago. So.
If I’ve had water, great, and I haven’t had a coffee and I haven’t had a sugary drink, you might say, you know, I’m a 2.5 or a three. If I’ve had a water and a coffee, pretty much simultaneously, but I haven’t had it, you know, for a while, they’re probably gonna be a closer spectrum to the one. Once again, that’s just making me aware of, okay, I’m a bit dehydrated if I’m a one, I’m fully hydrated if I’m two, I’m good to go if I’m a two or a three, I’m probably a bit dubious if I’m a one. Movement’s an interesting one, you know, have you moved?
And if you have moved, when was it? Because if I’ve left someone who moved at intensity yesterday and I’m planning on an intensity session today, they’re not gonna be recovered, right? They’re not gonna be ready for it. So I don’t wanna move them. Are they in pain? If you feel pain, today is not a day that we’re actually going to put you in anything other than our restore program. Pain says no more.
Restore just means the program is for today, it doesn’t mean it’s for the next three weeks. Let’s eliminate the pain so we can then remodel the body, repattern the body in the way we go. Sleep, really important. Have you slept seven to eight hours? If you have, that’s a two or a three, depending on how you’re feeling. Do you feel replenished? Do you feel like you’ve got plenty of get up and go? Two or three. If you’ve had less than five, you’re probably gonna be a one.
because you know that you haven’t got your REM, you know that you haven’t had your deep sleep. And you know, if we think about it, Ness, you your first four hours are your mental healing and physical healing, and your last four hours are your emotional healing. So if you’re only getting five hours or less, there’s something that’s missing that’s probably gonna be the emotional side. And then of course, you know, a big one, your mood. Do you feel positive? Do you wanna be here? Are you feeling bit blah and a bit sort of not on it?
Once again, it’s just gonna be a score out of three. Now, if I had those five segments and they score three ones, that’s nothing more than a restore session. And I know, if you haven’t eaten, I’ll probably have a protein bar that I’d give to you. If you haven’t drunk, I’ll probably give you some water. That takes about three minutes to be absorbed. If you’re in pain, that’s a different story. If I haven’t slept, I’m probably gonna do some breathing activities, same with mood, and I’m gonna bring some play in to bring some joy and happiness.
but that’ll be a restore session. If I’ve got one, one or two ones, that’s just an awareness to say, all right, let’s just monitor the session for them and see how they go. So that simple lifestyle questionnaire is just a way of me becoming aware of where I am today. And it’s really, really effective.
Vanessa Leone (29:26)
Yep.
I wholeheartedly agree. Let’s take it that next step further. So just say I’m a person who I’ve scored, you know, maybe one in the sleep. I moved intensely yesterday. I like to do daily classes at my, you box or gym or whatever. but I’m good for hydration. just had my water when I got up and I’m good. Like that’s, yep, I’m feeling pretty good. obviously moved.
you know, yesterday. So I’m kind of middle to low and I want to go in and I want to do, yeah, I want to do this class again. Like, what are you saying to this person who wants to go and do this class?
OD (30:04)
So I’m saying, okay, as you said before, everything we do is about being able to progress a program or regress a program. If it’s a class, so if this was a group X and this person’s come in and wants to do this class, they would be five questions I would ask. In fact, they wouldn’t be five questions I’d ask. They would be five questions I would have on a whiteboard that the person would ask themselves and score themselves. Has anyone here got three ones or more? If you have,
you’re over there today. Has anyone got two ones or less? You’re over there today. Simple. Because I can still have intensity, but my intensity for say a two out of three, my intensity might be up to 70%. So I’m still in gear three. My intensity for someone who’s a three, who’s all threes, might be up to 90%. But my intensity for someone who’s got three ones or more would only be 60%. So I would put them wherever they’re
score allows them to be understanding that if you’re, you know, if you haven’t slept, you might go over and do some breathing. You might go over and do some mobilization. And all of a sudden you check back in and you can say, you know what? I’m actually feeling better. Good. Let’s increase your intensity a little bit. You’re just going to monitor it. You would regress or progress the program based on how you felt and what your score told you.
Vanessa Leone (31:34)
Yeah. And I, like, I so stand by this method and this practice because I think it’s so important, you know, like people think that I’m dissing metrics. I’m not dissing metrics. I’ve got one on my wrist, right? I’m curious. I want to find out information. I don’t hate science. I’m all for it. Right. But what I, I don’t let myself check the metrics after I check in.
Vanessa Leone (32:03)
until after I check in with me. Right? So I go through my workout, I go through my morning and I ask myself, how do I actually feel? Like what’s happening in my body right now? And you know, I started exercise this morning and I felt good. It’s like I was doing my, people would call them rehab exercises, but then, you know, just movements, for my hip stabilization and they felt great.
really nice and they’re low intensity that’s, you know, a bit of endurance work. And then I started moving into my calisthenics, strength and conditioning, more strength conditioning. And after the first set I was gassed and I was like, all right, I’ve got to bring this down. I’ve got to bring this down. I was like, I should not be gassed after the first set. was four exercises, but that’s feedback and that’s a metric.
OD (32:47)
Yeah, more like that. I’m not letting go from that now.
Vanessa Leone (33:01)
And I, while I might’ve felt slightly disappointed that I couldn’t get out what I wanted to get out, I was still moving. I still found joy in movement. So doing the exercises that I wanted to do to help me progress to a point where I want to be. And that’s a skill that I think takes a lot of time to hone in yourself, right?
OD (33:25)
And having that one bout, that one set of calisthenics and knowing your gas, you’re gonna get more benefit from that one set and stopping than what you would from doing four sets and pushing through. Because what you would finish up doing is driving cortisol into your system. You would drive all sorts of various other hormone responses, which wouldn’t be positive. You would break your system down. would deplete your immune system. You would now start to…
stagnate your fluid flow, means movement’s gonna become less, your clarity is gonna become less, your body position’s gonna change into more of a, probably a more protected position. All the things that come off it, but you’ve had the courage to say, no, that’s enough for today. And it takes, it takes courage to say, my body’s saying no. As you say, I’ve still done a few bits and pieces, which is great.
Vanessa Leone (34:19)
Yeah. But then I checked my measure, my little Whoop measure later. Yeah. I’m in the yellow, the low end of yellow riding on the cusp of that red. So it’s, you know, the metrics don’t necessarily get it wrong. They don’t necessarily get it right It’s just information. I had what would be classified excellent sleep, right? But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m recovered. And I think that
If you’re someone who struggles with those internal feelings, a metric like this can help you. However, I think it’s really important to not use that to tell you how you’re feeling.
OD (35:00)
Yeah. And we’ve been, it’s interesting, it’s really interesting, Ness I’ve changed my language even a little bit more of recent times purely because of the fact that, you know, we give people movements, we give people, whether they’re fascial mobilizers or roller techniques or whether they’re stability exercises or whatever, we give them those exercises and a lot of people expect those exercises to fix them. And as I say to them,
Think about the exercise as an opportunity to ask yourself how you’re moving, how you’re feeling, where you are today. You know, I’ve got some really good clients who are really savvy, they understand what we do, and they do get frustrated at times because they’ve still got little niggles. And as I say to them, you know, we’re taking off layers. The better you feel, the more you do. The more you do, the worse you’re gonna feel. It’s just a cycle, right?
So if we can get to a situation where we keep taking those layers off, every time I get and do a mobilizer, my question to myself is, all right, buddy, where am I today? What’s happening today? I jump on a roller or a ball or some vibration. Okay, buddy, where am I today? What’s the point that’s giving me the most restriction? You know, it’s just an opportunity to be able to communicate to myself. So yeah, really, really important that we can actually listen to ourselves, you know, once again.
Technology incredibly important. It’s taken us a long, long way, but we can’t disconnect from the most important thing, and that’s us.
Vanessa Leone (36:39)
Yep. Yep. This is great. All very good things here. Now here’s a fun question and you’re on a time limit here. Good sir. So what’s a mobile? I know.
OD (36:52)
You know me on time, but not
in time, I cannot let go.
Vanessa Leone (36:57)
Well, what is a mobilizer?
And like how are you, I love mobilizers for measuring myself. I use them daily, but explain, explain to someone who’s never heard of it, no concept of it. What on earth is a mobilizer? What are we trying to affect in the body?
OD (37:08)
Yep. Yep.
So let’s go back one step further and say, why wouldn’t you stretch? Well, what we now know is, yeah, yeah, well, you know, cause I stretched for 20 years because that’s what we got told to do, right? So I stretched because that’s what the coach told us, the conditioning coach told us to do. But the thing was the conditioning coach, yeah, so it was exactly you. The conditioning coach didn’t understand that the body actually has two types of different fascial.
Vanessa Leone (37:24)
Good, here we go, controversy.
OD (37:47)
tissues. One type is a very stiff, what we call a Viking type of tissue, which responds well to stretching. The other is a bendy person like yourself and myself, and that would be known as a Temple dancer, which sort of people look at me and go, you temple dancer? Hmm, okay. But it’s interesting because I know you do, thank you for that.
Vanessa Leone (38:10)
I say it.
OD (38:15)
But it’s interesting because all that means is there’s cells in the fascial tissue. Remembering the fascia is the fabric that is nebulous. It’s everywhere in our body. There’s more fascia in the brain than there is brain matter and fat. There’s more fascia in your gut than what there is organs and intestines. So fascia is everywhere and it has the majority, it has four fifths of the nerve endings in our body in fascia. So fascia is important. But the thing with fascia is for people who are bendy like you and I,
who are temple dancers, we have less fibroblasts. And the fibroblasts are cells that we call the gardeners. They’re the gardeners of the body that eat the old fascia, lay new fascia down. The warriors, they have lots of fibroblasts. So if they damage fascial tissue, they heal quickly, we don’t. So what’s important for us is…
we can adapt and manipulate our bodies really easily and sometimes too easily and we can adapt and cheat really well. And if we’re stretching tissue that’s already bending, what we do is we take the integrity of our joints now and we jeopardize those joints. We make them too available to be broken. So I had to come up with, well, I wanted to come up with something for myself that I could do, because I knew I had to do something.
but stretching wasn’t for me. So then I started from a bodywork position, I started to notice that most areas that people glue up are in the bony structures, front of chest, lateral ribs, front of hips, back of hips, side of hips, knees are a big area that no one goes to, and of course the ankles. But the thing is, it’s the things in between, the calves, the hamstrings, the groins, you know, it’s the lats, the chest, it’s all the stuff that in between gets broken that we address with stretching.
So a fascial mobilizer is a low speed, low force movement that addresses the bony structures and the fascial structures of the body in a pattern that the body has to move in. So you think about it, we’ve already spoken, we do a sit and reach. Some people would say that’s a squatting pattern, which I would agree it is. But if you use the word sit and reach, you only sit to where you feel the first tension.
Now what I might do with that sitting pattern is I might manipulate where the feet are. Now as we know, Ness, there’s 69 different foot positions and yet we seem to squat in one. But every time I change a foot position, it changes everything. It becomes a triplanar or multiplanar calf stretch. It becomes a multiplanar thigh, adductor, hamstring stretch, if that’s what you want to call it.
You know, it addresses the pelvis multi-directionally, dimensionally as it does the trunk. But it addresses the fascial mobilizer, not a neuromuscular mobilizer, because you can still mobilize muscles, but that generally has more speed. And what we need to understand is that if we want to recondition, if you want to reset, if you want to remodel fascia, it has to be low speed, low force.
and doing it in a pattern in which, you know, it looks like life. Walking, gait, stepping pattern, reach pattern, whatever.
Vanessa Leone (41:41)
Yes, I love this because I love your definition of, know, temple dancer, bendy, Viking warrior, stiffer kind of body traits. Yeah. And it’s such a great picture because the industry is very good at saying this is bad for you or this is, this is great for you or whatever. And we all have such different, not only genetic makeup, but now you’re talking about fascial makeup as well. And.
Vanessa Leone (42:11)
You you and I both learnt the hard way because not a lot of people recognised our fascial type at all previously, you know, and we’re lucky now that that awareness is starting to come through a little bit more. But I’ll tell you, OD I am a magnet for temple dancers. I see them everywhere.
OD (42:19)
I reckon there’s more and people ask me the reason why and I don’t know. All I can think of is maybe it’s the fact that our chores have changed. there appears to be, my son will be coming in for some hands on after this and he’s 26, 27 years of age, beautifully built, but his shoulders could dislocate like that. He’s really bendy and he sits back in his knees. know how you get those people who’ve locked their knees out.
He’s just, that’s the way. Yeah, I know, you. But that’s the thing, right? So I’m seeing more and more of them as well. And I’m not sure whether it’s because they didn’t chop wood, didn’t work in the garden as kids, they didn’t build stiffness in their fascia. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know it’s because they didn’t hay cart. Because we know we can change fascial tissue. We can create more stiffness in fascial tissue. And probably by doing those sorts of activities as kids would have made their tissue stronger, stiffer.
And when I say stiffer, I don’t mean rigid. I mean it’s adaptable, it’s pliable, but under pressure, it stiffens to protect itself.
Vanessa Leone (43:44)
Yes, I definitely think next month is all about foundations, OD We’re going to have to go into the fascia. It is a foundation that, you know, to this day that I think we need more metrics in the industry so that people start to understand this incredible property of tissue that we have inside of us.
Vanessa Leone (44:10)
And this is definitely an area of the fitness industry. We don’t have very many metrics. We have so many metrics for everything else. And we, and we have a very, very small understanding of this incredible tissue. so if you do have questions for us specifically regarding what we’re talking about, please reach out to us because we will answer your question. Questions. Definitely as we talk into our next episode, last question for you.
Vanessa Leone (44:39)
really quickly, if you had to give anyone advice on how to question their own metrics, what would you say?
OD (44:52)
Mm-hmm.
Firstly, I’d say breathe. Because the biggest thing I find people don’t do, they do an exercise. They’ve got 15 minutes to do their little ritual. I would see a person come out in 15 minutes and do three movements and take five minutes of breathing to slow the mind and to reconnect the tissues and cells, then I would do 25 exercises in 15 minutes. Because I really believe what I’m seeing now in this is I’m seeing people
who are doing exercises and I’ll give you an example. Someone goes in the morning at six o’clock and does a meditation. Six to seven, they meditate for 60 minutes. They come out of that session, they feel great. By the end of the day, they’re cranky, they’re irritable, they’re anxious and they’re breathing in their throat. Has that session that they did at six o’clock been beneficial? And I would say no, because the whole idea of
having that time is to prepare ourselves to manage ourselves during the day. So if I’m going to take a breath in the morning, I should be able to breathe like we’re doing now. We’re diaphragmatically breathing while we’re doing this podcast because I’m not having to expel huge amounts of energy or effort. So therefore I can sit, breathe and have relative clarity of brain, know, reasonably pain-free body.
all those things that go with the breathing. But more importantly, I’m actually feeling everything that I’m saying to you. I’m not saying it verbally only, I’m feeling it, right? Because it has to come from your heart. So if you want to do a metric, do something that mimics what you need to do. If you’re a person who is a cricketer, what do you do? Are you a batsman? Are you a bowler? Are you a fields person?
Do something that you need to do regularly and do it on both sides. If I get golfers that come in and they’re right handed and they have back pain because they swing the golf club to their right handed side, I get them to swing left handed. And what happens? Nine times out of 10, the pain disappears. So the metric has to look like whatever you’re going to do. Before you do the metric, just breathe. And then secondly, when you do the metric, only move to where you feel the first tension.
Now remembering, tension is take your hand and put it on your skin, on your arm and just move your arm backwards and forwards. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna take my right hand, put it on my left forearm and I’m just gonna roll that forearm. That’s tension. If I take it a long way, I can feel a lot of tension. If I take it halfway, I’ll feel a little less tension. I just wanna feel tension. Because tension tells me that…
If I’m doing a movement, if I’ve got more tension in one place than the other, that place needs some attention. That place needs to be addressed. Whether it’s bone rolling, movement, whether it’s stability, whatever it may be. Because for you and I, Ness, a fascial mobilizer might be ideal or a stability exercise because it’s gonna give us more stability which then will give us more ability to move pain free. For someone who’s really, really
quite the Viking or warrior, they might wear a little bit of foam roller and then fascial mobilizing to give them bit more mobility, a bit more space in their tissues where we might want to create some stiffness, some stability to help us move more effectively.
Vanessa Leone (48:32)
Love it. No, that’s great. I didn’t think it was confusing. It’s great. I wish I could talk to you for like the next seven hours. However, I can’t.
OD (48:32)
We’ve got a few things to get done.
Vanessa Leone (48:46)
Exactly, I appreciate you and your time as always. Thank you so much. Like we said, please get in touch with your questions, otherwise prepare yourself for next time. So excited. Thank you, OD.
OD (48:52)
Thank you. Look forward to it. Thanks, Nessie.
Vanessa Leone Movement Therapist 