How correct movement and exercise can heal joint pain with Jarlo Ilano (GMB Fitness)

Full Transcript

Hello, it’s bill the knee pain guru, and welcome to the pain education podcast sponsored by The comella Foundation. We have a really special guest today. His name is Jarlo ilano, he is one of the founding members of GMB fitness. And I am going to let him introduce or share your knowledge and expertise.

Thanks a lot, Bill. It’s been great to be on…

Yeah, so share, I know you’re a physical therapist, I know you’ve been involved in martial arts, which has a very special place in my heart because I’m a martial artist as well, so would you share your journey… Where you were in your life to bring you to the point where you’re talking with us today.

Yeah, so yeah, I was kind of relatively athletic through my childhood, teenage year, but mostly with martial arts, so I started… Everyone says they go to communities center, karate and all that, and I did that and I just kinda kept going on how… You’re 12 years old, your parents put you in it and like, Oh, we’ll do it for a little bit, and most of my friends fell off, but I kept with it. So I did that, and then I boxed when I was 13, wrestled in school. I got my black belt in Taekwondo when I was 17, that whole thing, and then Filipino martial arts is actually… My main endeavor, my parents are from the Philippines, and I actually started when we were on there for vacation, and I always like telling the story ’cause we were where my mom lives, which was in Macola, or her family was, and I did what the… I did a private session, which was what they called a crash course, so I was four hours a day for a week, so I did two hours in the morning and two hours in the after. And then I loved it, it was the best thing in the world, I was a 15.

And that was brand new, like working with a stake, working with a knife, and it was… I didn’t know too much of the language, I know a little bit, and my teacher Grandmaster her, he didn’t know any English basically, so it was just a body language trying to tell me how it goes demonstrating. And I loved it, I loved it, so I kept up with that. And through… Basically talk about Marshall Arts the whole time, right? When I moved to Hawaii back in 2002, I met with my primary teacher now Burton Richardson, in a famous and the yearly College. So I learned primarily marchers from him in the last 16 years. And also resilient Jijitsu with him, I’m a brown belt with that, so I just kinda kept going on. It’s not like I was gonna be a fighter or anything like that, but I just really enjoyed it, and it sort of fit in well with what I liked even going through school in my studies, I was in pre-med for a while until I discovered Physical Therapy, and I went to clinics and did volunteer work, I’m like, This is what I want to do.

You’re interacting with their patients and you’re helping people immediately. Right. One of the things my patients always say this, man, you spend so much time with us versus doctors, so unfortunately, with the healthcare system now doctors really can’t spend that much time with their patients unless they’re in a really different kind of practice, they’re lucky to get 15 20 minutes with you. So yeah, I got my Master’s in Physical Therapy in 98. So I’ve been doing this a while. Okay, yeah, and then that led me to when we met my friends who are founded the GMB fitness with, through various, again, Marshall arts seminars or physical conditioning seminars, and we all have that sort of background. And that’s where we are. Nice.

And how long… You graduated physical therapy. 98. And how long have you been doing the GMB fitness? Doing that on a.

One started that, we got together in 2009 and sort of officially launched 2010, we were very focused on sort of bringing gymnastic style training to people. Our first project was with the ring gymnastic rings, and really at that point, this was 2010, there was maybe two other products out there, I think there was a DVD from the gold medalist, but it was not really user-friendly, it was sort of like, Oh, here do this do this, and you’re like, Oh no, people cannot do that unless they have years and years of training behind them, so we developed that and worked through there, but then we realized this is just sort of an entry point for people, and it was really about working… On telling people that there is a full body whole body fitness out there that isn’t necessarily on lifting heavy weights or running until you’re exhausted, it’s what we term physical autonomy, like really developing your body capabilities in a way that helps you versus having some sort of external goal that other people are telling you you need to do, or you need to get to a certain level of body fat, or you need to lift this much weight, or you need to be able to run three miles in this amount of time to be considered fit and yes, that can be part of it, but I can…

You know how arbitrary that is for someone to just give you a standard a, Well, you have to meet this, or You’re not fit at all. That’s not true at all.

And I think it… It’s an unrealistic expectation for everybody across the board, and there’s a big… It’s almost like a gap between where the person starts out with and they’re like, I wanna exercise and, Oh, but I can’t do 50 push-ups straight off the bat. How do I get to that place?

Or just disheartening. If you do this and you just let go, I just wanna try and get somewhere and then you don’t even come close to some of these things that you were talking about, then why wouldn’t you just quite sure it’s a normal, reasonable reaction to go on that… I can’t do that at all, so I might as well do nothing, and then that is so bad, and that’s taking away almost like this birth rate we have for really being comfortable in our bodies and exploring what we can do, then that’s a shame. Yeah, that’s what we’re really fighting against, I think…

Yeah, I really like the philosophy. It’s something that I’ve worked with myself to figure out how to break down movements or even working with clients, this is gonna dovetail perfectly into our conversation with that gap that exists, and how someone that’s stuck in pain doesn’t know how to bridge that gap. It doesn’t know how to take where they’re at, they’re struggling with a new injury, an old injury, something like that, and how they could begin to baby step out of that place to have more functional movement, more comfortable movement, more ease of movement. And I think that’s what I really wanna dig in with you today is your perspective, your floss, your understanding of how the body works, what causes pain, and how we can empower people with an awareness of that path.

Right, right. Well, I think… So being a physical therapist, I’ve worked with thousands, literally thousands of patients over the years. I started at a time when I say it, but we’re really pumping patients through, this was sort of… Well, you’ve known what the healthcare system is like over the last 20, 25 years, and it’s been this up and down, and I remember seeing… It’s terrible to say. I remember seeing 20 to 30 patients a day. Now, earlier in this conversation, I talked about how we could spend more time, we did, but we also had so many patients running through… I had 10 12 days and I had assistance. And we were working through it. But one good thing is that I saw so many people and I learned from them. When you just see people and you learn from them, and back in the late 90s and even early 2000s, the model was, come in and I’m gonna fix you and I’m gonna fix you, we’re gonna identify the problem, you’re gonna do this thing, and then you’re gone. And good luck. And after a bit of that, I was like, I really started to understand that that’s not how we could help people, it was much better for us to, as much as possible, help them understand what was going on in their bodies versus…

Okay, the doctor is telling you, humans is torn. So we’re gonna do this and this and this, and then you’re gonna go, you’re gonna be good, do three sets of this and work on it rather than helping them understand how does your knee work in conjunction with your hip and your food and your whole body, and understand even just walking, you can get a lot out of just seeing how you walk… Understanding those sensations and really sort of being in tune with yourself, and that’s really hard to impart, but as you work with patients through it… And you kind of give them the benefit of the doubt that that’s what they want and what they need. And really understanding what their pain is, understanding why it’s happening, and… That’s been really fruitful.

I hear you saying you’re trying to increase your patient’s awareness, awareness of what’s going on because… Absolutely, we don’t know what we don’t know. That’s everybody on every level, it… So how could you take somebody that wasn’t aware of what they did to get them into pain, and now they’re all in, and I just wanna get out of pain, how could you increase that awareness in a way that moves them down a different path that isn’t going to recreate the pattern that they got them there to… Right, right. Well, you know, what’s been going on with in pain science, especially in the last dozen years or so, is really first giving patients that kind of education of what it is, and.

So the main thing is understanding that pain is supposed to be a good thing, it’s a protective response, your body to your brain, your nervous system is telling you, Hey, wait a minute, something’s wrong and you need to change something, or else you’re gonna hurt yourself, you’re gonna hurt yourself more, damage yourself more. So pain is a protective response to a threat, right, you step on a nail and you get hurt and you’re like, Okay, then you gotta pull that mail out, that’s not great. The trouble begins when that alarm system, that protective response doesn’t turn down like it’s supposed to, and it just stays with you, is this what everyone says, chronic pain or like, Oh, now my knee is bad… No, me back is bad, I’ve had it for years, and so that’s the problem that when the pain… That is supposed to be good, it supposed to be a good protective response, it just stays on, it stays on. And so letting people understand that that’s what’s happening, and it’s not necessarily because you’re still injured, it doesn’t… Pain doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not. You guys a healer, you’re un-healed, not correct.

Whether it is, is that your body is still experiencing this sensation, a threat happening, and what you had said earlier, it’s really instructive, is because you have… A lot of times, you’re still maintaining whatever pattern of disinformation, and that’s what it is, is a pattern where you’re providing sensations to your nervous system that are still telling it… Or something still going on. And so how do we give that to patients, like How do we let them understand that’s what’s going on, is we have to provide better information, so the easiest thing is an example of whatever physical treatment people give you, whether it’s heat or ice, or lasers or needling all of that kind of stuff. Sure, all of that kind of stuff really just gives your nervous system different kinds of information, and it sort of breaks you out of that loop. A lot of people like to use the term reset. This is a recent, whether you’re taping somebody up or whether you do a mobilization or manipulation with your hands or anything like that, it’s giving you this and giving your nervous system a chance to break free of that pattern, but the trouble is that’s temporary.

And we always say, Well, this gives you a window now for providing good information, so really you have to couple that with better movement. Does that make sense? So before you were moving… Oh, sorry, not.

A GA.

Before you were walking and you’re back and you feel it, you feel it with every step. And even if it’s as simple as taking some Advil, it everyone’s like, Oh, don’t take drugs. Well, sometimes you got to, right? Sometimes just you gotta get that flare-up down, now you’re walking around and it’s a little less, so it can be as simple that the trouble is when people do these things, whether it’s taking medicine or putting ice on and then they don’t do anything at all, and they’re like, Oh, I gotta wait until it’s fully gone before I do anything. Right. Well, you kinda… I don’t wanna say wasted, but you didn’t have a chance to work within that window and give your body… Give your nervous system that good information. And so I’m being really vague here, but that’s sort of what we’re doing, when we tell people we are try this movement, try this, try this, and we’re kinda Coaxing them to get their overall physical capacity back again.

You’re bringing a really good piece that is building on my understanding of one of the mindset shifts I was working with my clients on is taking pain as being bad, to having pain as being information, and you’re building on that for me, and it’s like, we wanna take that information and give the body even more information outside of the pain, like you were saying, the Advil or the manipulation or the whatever you’re doing, to give that window of opportunity to correct the pattern, and I think that’s crucial, that if a client patient, someone suffering and pain doesn’t take the most of that window… Right, they’re gonna end up in the same place again.

Absolutely, and I’m giving examples like medicine and this treatment in that treatment, just to show that there’s many different ways to get out of pain, many different people can help you… Right, the trouble is, is if you think there’s only one person… For me, I’m always like that. It’s like, Oh, there’s only one person that can help you. Has to be this doctor has to be this massage therapist, has to be this physical therapist, and I think that’s also limited, it’s also limiting because say something happens and you can’t see this person or see this particular note… Now, what And I think it’s super important and you’re right, it’s the mindset first, it’s the mindset that what this pain really is, and it’s supposed to be a protective, normal, natural mechanism, and to just say It’s all bad, it is the wrong kind of mindset and that contributes to anxiety contributes to all these things, and it’s not just psychological, all of another bad thing that’s kinda come out with pain science is people kinda take it and go, Oh, that means this all in your head, you can think away this pain because it’s just in your…

And that’s wrong. No, there’s physiological reasons. Even the whole thing of stress and anxiety in people tell you stress mix it, and it can make the pain orders and anxiety and all that. And people automatically think, Well, that means it’s just skin my head and I can think through it… That’s wrong. Stress and anxiety have physiological components, you have cordial release, noradrenaline, all of these things, creating physiological changes which feed back into everything else, so I think that’s also really important to help to people about… When we’re talking about pain, talking about it as a mechanism for that, it’s very real, it has very real physiological underpinnings, and even just saying that to people help because they don’t want someone to go, Oh, here’s your pain, but it’s really just these nerves doing this thing, right, if they don’t have that understanding that you and I have, they’re gonna think, Well, this guy is just telling me it’s all in the head… Right, and that’s not what we’re saying. Yeah. Well, not what you and I are saying.

Sure, and there’s a component where if you don’t have that positive mindset, that’s crucial, you have to believe you can get out of pain in order to even move in that direction, but if you’re coming at it for, well, I’m just gonna think myself out of pain… Well, you’re… I think that’s delusional. That Tasha absolutely is.

So then this is a really nuanced thing, we’re talking about mindset, we’re talking about that positive mindset and the growth mindset, but we’re also saying that is gonna help you do the real change, you need to do it not that you have this mindset and your pain is gonna go away, right? No, that’s not right. With this mindset will give you, is it will give you that impetus and the understanding to do the work that you need to do to get yourself out of pain, and I think that’s a really good point, Bill.

Yep, that’s awesome. Okay, I’m looking at my notes here. What I put down and make sure we’re keeping on track, one of the components here is, I took a quote, it says, no body part works in isolation. I completely agree. I would love to hear your in depth talking about that.

So this kind of goes back to what I said earlier, I… Early on, when we provide rehab and provide therapy for people, we can go, Oh, this is a knee coming in, right, ho, I’ll look at my schedule. And then you look at your schedule. Me, back, neck, right wrist. And so it can be really… You can have blinders in just from that, right. Your person’s coming in and they have me, of course, you should work on their need, of course, that’s what they’re coming in for, but you shouldn’t be so blank or that you go… You think of this person as a Neeson, the ankle. And I think people that maybe are listening to this that have had that experience, either as a patient or maybe they are our provider, listen to this, they know what we’re talking about, you sort of have it in your head, or is this low back person or this disc person, and automatically that puts you in a bad place, right? When you’re just thinking, Oh, it’s a knee. So I have my three favorite knee excercises… You’ve done this so much. Sure. And the doctor script tells me that it’s a MCL brain and all that stuff, and it’s true.

Absolutely, but how is this person walking… How is this person getting up and down, how are they spending life… Are they sitting down ’cause the desk worker or are they in a job where they’re continually having to get up and down off the floor. My favorite examples are plumbers or I have to kinda go in these really enclosed spaces, we had a client who emailed the… And this is one of my favorite stories, and this is a thing where he was responding to people that say, Oh, you don’t have to stretch, you can just do this, and he’s like, I have to stretch when I’m trying to change out this toilet, and there’s like literally a foot between me and the wall and all that, I have to be able to do this. And so when I do your program, I do your exercise and I stretch, I just can do my job better, I can feel better, I can do all these things. So that’s what I think we met when we’re saying Nobody part works in isolation, we have to look at what you’re doing throughout the day, who you are, what your needs are, and you can’t just go…

Your ankles like this, so I’m gonna give you here’s a stair stretch, there’s no anti-circle here, some things like that. Yes, you do that, then it’s sort of like… You always have to zoom out and as soon as possible to really understand what that patient that client is coming from.

And I think it ties right into what we were just talking about a minute ago, regarding if it’s all in your head, it’s not all in your head, so it has to be in other parts of your body, and it also can’t just be in the part of the body that hurts. Right, absolutely. So having that ability, it’s almost even more than a three-dimensional, like multiple dimensions of looking at knee, hip, back, shoulder neck, my mind, how is your mind playing a role, how’s your emotions playing a role, how is it all kinda coming together into this package of person that’s showing up before us, it’s asking for help. Right.

Exactly. And I think, again, we can go right now where I know we’re speaking in general because they’re trying to help people understand it and to get really specific is hard, but I think one good example, and again, they bring it back to real… I think people can… Like when we can say, Okay, here is the biological reasoning for it, the physiological reunion for it, and before, we’re not before, but even right now, sometimes that got to rank, for example, let’s go back to the Medicare, the Nee group, and let’s talk about the misuse is such a common thing, people say they have Michener tie things. And so the meniscus, as you know, is for cushioning sort of football bearing, and only the older third has enough blood supply to heal to heal if it’s torn. So when doctors tell patients that and they say, Well, it’s torn all the way through, but only this little bit can heal, so probably is gonna be torn forever. Sure, you’ve heard doctors tell that and You… How does that make you feel? Hopeless, right? Might as a make you feel when you say, Oh, it’s… And it’s terrible, but you have to go on, but they don’t get the next part of what of the information, which is that it doesn’t have to physically heal for you to get out of pain, like that issue doesn’t have to magically get to 100%, because there’s lots and lots of people with Tom, and this is all the way through.

Or this guy misuse and this guy… You got me, you’re the physical therapist in a… Get tripped up on that. But there’s lots of people that are living great lives, no pain, you’ve seen it, I know you… Is being able to do everything they can. So why is that? Is because everything around them, the him, the way you’ve changed that pattern, changed information so that your body goes, Well, that’s not really a problem, it just exists. And you can put that throughout the body, disc changes, arthritis, and your set, you talk about when people say bone on bone, and that is such a bad statement to make to… How does that make you feel? Right. And so giving our patients clients and understanding of, yeah, that’s true. This X-ray does say that, MRI does say that. And we have to know that so we can work around it and do all these things, but it’s not like a death sentence. It doesn’t mean you’re done. Right, and don’t go on.

One of the… Yeah, gosh, it had to have been at me a bit longer… I’m losing track of time here. Sometimes… Maybe four, five, six years ago, there was a study that was done with meniscus tears. They did a placebo on half of the group with meniscus tears, they were like, Okay, half of the group is going to actually have meniscus surgery, the other half of the group is going to just have incisions put in their knee and they’re not gonna do anything. And then they’re gonna do the physical therapy afterwards, let’s see how the group turns out, and there was like… I believe it was no difference in terms of how the knee was in terms of in pain or out of pain.

Right. Yeah, you couldn’t tell it so important for people to see that, and that’s not saying that that means you never get knee surgery, because there’s a difference, right? So first, yes, absolutely. And that’s replicated in the shoulder has been replicated the shoulder for rotator cup, they’ve even done it with… And this got me ’cause I only just recently learned this like a few months ago, even lumbar fractures, so there’s compression fractures and… We’ll just go back. So the population is, as you get older, the osteoporosis, all these type of things, your bone density decreases, especially in women, just sort of the way it goes, and compression fractures at the thoracic spine, so we have our vertebra compression fractures or compression is when… We have a love on our back, and maybe you fell on your butt and then you just kinda get crunched… Right, so compression fractures within the body of the vertebra, you could… Very painful, absolutely. Because it just can go out, there’s nerves, the traditional intervention is to inject into the bone… I think it’s a solution. I’m sorry, I don’t know it specifically, but it heals the fracture and build it up, they actually did studies on people that had that procedure done versus not having it done, and it’s the same thing that you said with the missus, the pain was the same.

It was decreased across the board, and so I think it’s important for people to understand that you don’t have to have full healing, but… Okay, so let’s do that with saying, Oh, don’t ever get surgery at all… That’s not true either. I mean, we have to talk about nuance in particular with the knee, the ACL is a good example, as there are people with no ACLS, full tears, and they’re doing good, they’re walking around, they don’t have pain, I’m sure you’ve seen it and you’ve done it, but also too, it’s still unstable. It’s still unstable for activities where you really need it, for example, if you are gonna be playing soccer at a higher level or you’re gonna be skiing, you probably should get that agree because if that is what it is. But if you know you’re not really gonna do that, right? If you just know you just wanna walk around and do your normal activities, maybe you don’t need to, and I think that’s important to tell people… And this is hard because I think it’s easier to understand, plus people want to have very black and white answers. Right. Oh, no surgery at all.

Or, yeah, you should get certain every time… When really, it’s very dependent on who you are or what your needs are, what your goals are, and what you can handle. Right. And that’s a hard sell, right? It’s a hard sell to someone like that…

There’s a list of NFL football players that don’t have ACL that have played their career without an ACL, so it’s possible power really appreciate what you’re talking about today is the quality of nuance in the conversation that needs to be had that lines up with the outcome that you want.

It. And so with those football players, that’s a great example, because that’s their job and they are so let’s say they decided not to have a surgery, that means they are working their asses off to be as strong, as stable and aware and have that motor… I have that flexibility so that they can do it. Now, you transfer that on to someone that has their own job or of family responsibilities, their own time, their own… Will they be able to do all the things they need to do to do that and play? And then go ski every season for a couple of times, or go play their recover, maybe. Maybe not, maybe not. You have to be able to acknowledge that for yourself, but… That’s a great example. Yeah, I know that I had even friends that… A friend of mine, she played volleyball pretty competitively, and she had failed a… I think three of them, some people, it just doesn’t take… And then finally, she’s just like me, I’m done, I don’t wanna keep on getting… And then she ended up being fine because you put in the work he did on everything that she need do, but…

Yeah, that was really instructive to me. I was like, Oh man, how are you doing this?

Yeah, that was… Yeah, that wasn’t my experience. That’s how I got into all of this. I dislocated my left in four times, and I believe I partially tore it three times, and as my body would compensate for it, I would tear a different piece at a different end, ’cause the body was shifting to adjust for that, and finally… I remember on the last throw to first base, scooping up the rounder and throw to first base, I just went pop, and I was on the ground, face planted, it was like… I didn’t know how I got there, and then I was like, Oh, I better go to the doctor. And sure enough, it was only 30% attached on one end it, so it’s just amazing, amaze me how my body had shifted for that, so I get it, and I wasn’t at a place in my life where I was ready to make that commitment of figuring it out, I was like, Okay, you, the surgery. And of course, my mindset at that time was, I get the surgery, I’ll be right back out on the jetties. I had this whole mechanical idea of how the body worked and then all these other things, this nuanced conversation on the other side of the surgery, the physical therapy, I was going…

Well, this did turn out like… Billet was a long slog from there to figure out… It’s 23 years now that I’m figuring this stuff out. Oh.

That’s great. So yeah, I think it lend itself to… Where are we coming from? It… I think we have to have some base, so when we have your example, you were actually… You were physically capable, you’re doing things, you were working on something that only a 30% Pass somehow. It’s still doing it, right, right, right. But at the same time, like you’re still… You’re in sometimes that example I gave and I’m like, Okay, you’re doing it, and we were saying I always all on your head and you can do it, then look at Bill, he was able to do this 30%, but your body finally said, That’s enough. It was turning up the alarm system, hiring hires, like, What do I need to do to tell you to stop Humberto through the ground. There’s a… You collapse yet, and I think everyone listening to this is… Has some of that example like, Oh my bad, so then Leah just collapse ’cause my back as he’s out or whatever, or my knees out, I think that’s just an example of your body going… Turning up that Dallas, highest can… ’cause it’s just like, What the hell are you doing? Listen to me, listen to me.

And I think that happens to a lot of people that are like, Okay, I can do this, or I’m trying to ignore it. The body is gonna catch up with you, and it’s not because of is ’cause your potty is going, your brain is going, I hold up now. Or what are you doing to yourself? It’s trying to protect you. What it is.

Did you have… Getting into all of this, did you have any of that… The injury that kinda guide you…

So that’s interesting. That’s a good question. Back when I was in PT school, a lot of my classmates have that they got into therapy because as kids or teenagers, they have surgeries or ACL tears and all… I didn’t really have that. Right, I just sort of liked it and went into it, but of course later on as my 20s and 30s, I started doing more and more… I’ve had back pain for a long, long time, low back, made back, and so that’s sort of instructive to me too, ’cause once you’re really in it, all of this theoretical stuff, it’s just like, Okay, now that you’re dealing with it yourself… Yeah, I think understanding that has helped me, and it’s really hard to do it yourself, so I always have my friends help me, have all these things, but really the mindset and for example, recently, and this is… So I’ve been… I work out a bunch, but I’m 46 now, almost 47, and age does matter here is not because you can’t do things anymore, but it matters because you can’t do as much for as long and is intensely… Without taking a break even, I was just thinking about this even say 10 years ago, I was able to do so much more within a short amount of time, I like to say that I can still do the same things, but they started drawn out of the right I’m sure you have that same experience.

Yes, right, so a couple of months ago, I was starting a new listing program, I was like, Oh, I get back in the lifting weeks, because we’re quarantine, I wasn’t teaching my classes. Right. I say, I’m gonna do that. And it was great, I was doing good, and I am starting something new, Delft squats, and I felt great. Awesome, right, but then that weekend, I actually had to teach a lot of my women’s self-defense seminars for my friends, it was great, we were outside Mad Max and everything, but it was called and within an hour of teaching, and I use myself as a dummy, so they’re hitting me, I think. And it’s great. Great, yeah, and then all of a sudden something happened in my back, I just went for a… And I was like, What the hell is that? And it wasn’t anything in particular. But I think it was the combination of things. I was tired, I was cold, I wasn’t warmed up. And it was this kind of shocking thing, I was ready for it, ’cause they’re hitting me, but it’s still something that happens. Right. And so in that Miliband up, and I was like, What is going on? And if I didn’t understand all of what we’re talking about, I would have been laid out, so I got home, I’m driving and it’s worse when you’re driving, you’re sitting down at…

Is a half are at home. And I got home it worse like rap, but I kinda call myself down and did my stuff, simple movement saying, Okay, I know what’s happening, I don’t hurt myself, I hurt myself. It was just my body go in, something happened. She out and within a couple of days. A day and a half. Back at it, and I was fine.

Right. So it was strictly from that place, ’cause it’s a great example, the only way… I always learned so much better when I’m in pain and I can discipline myself to get out of pain. Absolutely. Was it specifically movements that you did to draw yourself out of pain.

It… I did, I didn’t have access to anyone. It, I’m like, Oh, I don’t wanna go to my friends. It was like Sunday, I was into… Sunday did use some heat, keeps my sees always nice. Right. But what I did is I took myself through a series of very easy motions, I don’t wanna say fully pain-free ’cause that’s not true, right? Have to go a little bit into it, back off, a little bit into it and back off. And that’s what we mean, you and I mean, when we say convince our body that it’s okay to do a thing, so I didn’t ignore it and like, okay, that through that, and I’m gonna go back and do the my garage and dead lifting right now, still, but at the same time, I can just lie down on the couch and go, Okay, I’m gonna leave. So what’s gone? Right, right. So these are the extremes. Right, and it’s pretty natural, right now if I would have a falling or it was that somebody gave me in the back or something like that was totally obvious, maybe I would have just kind of relaxed for me, but I knew that it was a muscular spasm, probably multifocal spasm.

Just because your body… My body was like, Something’s happening here. I want you to stop it. So I acknowledge that I’m like… That’s probably not… I didn’t tractor anything, I didn’t do anything, so I’m okay. In doing some movement, what does that man? The body, and especially in nerves like blood movement and space, right. That’s of circulation and got the roofline, so was like, Okay, I’m a walk, I’m gonna try and walk, I’m gonna try and do some simple stretches, a movement at goes through our space, meaning… Okay, if, for example, I didn’t have that, but say you have some kind of symptoms going down to your leg, well, one of the things is you wanna be able to… It’s not necessarily anything is pinched it, but maybe there’s a little bit of swelling, maybe there’s a little bit of the nerve feeling like it’s getting poked on, so you do some sort of opening its… You do these types of things, and it’s great because sometimes walking does all that custom, sometimes doing very simple needs a chest and again, being bad, ’cause you sort of what… You and I have gone through this, you sort of examine where you are, so you move one way.

Right, that was very hard to… Not.

That way. Right, right. Yeah, I get it. Well, cool, talk about… Let’s see. The pain is being a threat, the pain… We’re exploring movement. I was just saying, you go this way, oh, I know you don’t wanna go to a… Go to the other way. Can you talk about how the body perceives the movement as a threat or articulate its nuance to discoveries…

So one of the things… And you would ask like, What’s healthy movement? So this is good. So what’s healthy and what’s unhealthy, what would be perceived as a threat and what wouldn’t be from your body… And one of the things I like to think about it, it’s not so much that there’s a correct way to move or there’s an incorrect way to move, it’s all about our particular current capacities, so a healthy movement would be something that… Oh, here’s one. You hear these things like, Okay, when you squat, don’t let your inwards or outwards or don’t let it gave in, and that’s true if you have problems doing that, but a great example is you look at Olympic weightlifters lifting hundreds of pounds, and you see them at the bottom of the squat and their needs… And they do, right? You’re like, Oh man, that will bust my name wide open and it would… But they have worked up to that capacity… Sure, and most of them are fine. I’m not gonna say all the refine most of the… At least not. In wheelchairs. Yeah, and that’s because heir physical capacity lets them do that, right? Okay, yes.

Their physical capacity. Less than do that. So for me, the definition of the healthy movement is within your current capacity that can either maintain or in this case of getting better illicit adaptation, so that you can do more and more and more, as the healthy movement would be something that is beyond that. Right, and we’ve seen that the time, right, someone wants to get into exercise again, the whole weekend warriors in, and they do it and then they’re just going as hard they can… Right. And the next day they’re toast, and they’re like, Oh man, but that… Does that mean what they did was unhealthy? Well, it was unhealthy for them, but that same routine or same physical activity that their friend Did right next to them, maybe you can even say that they’re almost twins, they’ve same height Same weight same strength and they were fine the next day, so why was that healthy for them and why was that unhealthy for this other person is because they just don’t… I always think of it, that’s kind of a capacity, their attributes, they just couldn’t handle it, so that’s the nuance there, so with the threats or pain being a threat response is our body has a history…

You can go go and go on your body mind matrix, and all of that has a body, but it’s true, our bodies have a memory of things that happen. It was very smart. And that’s why I always like to say that it is a good thing. Your body is trying to protect you. It remembers things. But that’s the trouble. I can remember good things and I can remember bad bad things. Yeah, right. And so, to me, I think that’s the way I look at it and trying to explain to patients about what does a threat mean? Well, what it means at this point in time, your brain, your nervous system is saying That’s not good, for whatever reason, either because it has a memory of stuff that happened before, or something right now physically is going… Oh wait. So for me, then my example of what I was teaching outside, maybe it was the temperature, maybe it was just sort of subtle vibrations and maybe he was even the memory of getting hurt doing the same thing, ’cause that’s happened. Just happens, right. But everybody still remembers it, and I’m not gonna be able to think…

I wish I could have thought my way, I pale that I would have been like, no spasm to it. Stop it. I would love to be able to do that. I can’t do it.

Yeah, believe me. If you figure that one out, I’m gonna have you on the podcast and we’ll go deep into that, I have noticed my own experimentation with it in you, you talked about it was around the fear that can build up in the body as a result of that, so the back spasm for someone that doesn’t have experience with the pain would immediately go, Oh no, and start to work, worry about it in their mind is now throwing them into this this and their week and a half out and they’re still in pain, it… Whereas someone like yourself, where it’s like, Oh, you’ve got this experience, years of experience, a drawn of working with the body, nuanced movement, you go home, you do the self-care thing to begin to get that moving correctly, you don’t hold the fear around it, and then day and a half later. You’re back on.

Right. That’s a really good one. When you talk about that… So I had just taken this past year, were quarantine, all that stuff, I decided to take this pain specialist, their certification, it’s through evidence and motion, so it’s a physical therapy group, and it was great, I did six months through it, it was awesome, I loved it, and it was all in line. It was something I was interested in before, but I didn’t go through shave to go for a different time to the physical locations and I just… My schedule, I deal, but now they’re offering it all in line anyway, they had all this information. It was great, I loved it. One of the research that the studies that they talked about was about pain response and people that as in their history, they did sports as kids, team sports, specifically, I think it was soccer in American people, and this is the part goes to part the fear thing, you’re talking about when kids play sports and it just happened, they get here, they’re playing football and not necessarily injured, but they’re just a rough house, they’re used to it, their response to the pain and their way of getting out of it.

And their understanding of it is much better because they’ve had the experiences of actually… I don’t wanna say getting hurt, but being rough and doing all the things much better than kids that didn’t have any of that, and I remember I was like, Yeah, that makes sense, ’cause I hear patients coming in that had no pain in their lives at all… Right, you’ve had that… No pain. So now that this thing happened, it was so brand new and it’s normal to fear something that’s so out of the blue, and then you have to reassure them giving this information versus someone that you know they’ve had this before, they’ve done all this thing on all this stuff, and then they come in. My shoulder hurts and just… For example, on that other extreme, when I was an intern at Trooper Army Hospital over in Haiti, I was only 24 at the time. I grad school early than all these things, but I had a patient that was a Navy SEAL, and I think he was only like 19, so I’m just a year older in this Conan comes in and he was just a work… And you look at his chart like, Oh, he just look at the shoulder to do this, and he was…

Yeah, I’m fine though. But I looked at all the gambling, man, this guy is just like, he just saying five was a… Did all this stuff, but somebody else, somebody else, who didn’t have his experience of caring or all that rough training and just like all this stuff the seals have to do, and they would have the same thing and they would probably just be a… So gardener, it’s not about your experience as a Miramar IL arts. Right, that’s another thing too. I’ve used to get her out doing all these things, so it was not a big deal for me now, and again, let’s go back to saying, we’re not saying ignore the pain, we’re not saying ignore it, it’s not real, it’s not whatever, we’re saying that your experience of having it and dealing with it. Changes how you can get yourself out of it. That’s what we’re saying.

And this is great. You wanna wrap this up here in a little bit, is there anything that we talked about, like the thread that isn’t connected, isn’t connected in what we talked about that it’s like you would have liked to finish up, and what we talked about today…

I think we went through the most important parts, and I think that’s what it is, especially for me and learning more and pain science, especially over the last 15 years, is I see too much of the extreme, I see too much people taking… What’s real good information? Like for example, your meniscus surgery versus sham surgery, where they just did a little thing and just running with it and going, Look, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter that you have this injury or this… You’re fine. Just deal with it. That extreme is just ridiculous, and you know who it’s from is from people that actually… That don’t work with clients and patients… Yeah, it is right. If you are working really with the people around you trying to help them, and you have that attitude… You’re not the last one. Yeah, it was gonna come to you. Right, and it’s the same thing the other way where the other… I’m just a big fan of saying, Stay away from the extremes, then you have… And this is another unfortunate thing that’s very common, you have someone going to a doctor, orthopedist, that’s gonna go, well, we’re gonna have to cut you open it…

It’s just the way it is. Look at this, mine gonna go in a fix you, right? So those are the two extremes that I really wanna caution against it, and it’s really easy to rail against the health care industry, I look at this person, they want you to get surgery, look at this, they want you to be on drugs, yeah. But the other extreme is the people saying, You don’t have to do anything at all… Thank you. Wait, right. Pains in your head. So who is the devil, who is the double that you want to be with? Say none of them.

Yeah, I think essentially, the person is empowered with the choice of educating themselves and working in conjunction with people that empower them, I think that’s a big piece.

Is massive, and that’s why when I was looking through what you offer and your site, I’m like, Yeah, I get it, this is what he’s saying. We’re trying to help people say, figure it out for themselves, but understand themselves and understand what’s happening, and being very real about it, being very real in a way that unfortunately, they’ve been disappointed by other healthcare providers or the information out there, and it’s just what you said earlier, you don’t know what you don’t know. So hopefully, we can help as many people began to get a little bit more information, and it’s feeling of empowerment for sure.

Jailer, the bonus. For the best of this you gave away, I just, I was blown away by what you offered, it’s like a 80 page… I didn’t even get a chance to get through the entire thing, got through a lot it…

So a few years ago, I put together a bunch of material because people were always… In our company, we always get emails and comments about on my back is this when he is this, and we decided to put together some resources, just kinda explaining, for example to me is just a really nice overview of… These are ligament, these are the things that could be happening to you and explaining pain just like what we did today, and explaining some self-care things that you could do, and so we call it the body means guide, and it has the back… And all of these types of things, again, it’s not like, Oh, just Read this and you’ll be fine, but it is, is giving you a good start and giving you some information as to how I can proceed doing this, and also giving you a little bit of a glimpse of what it means to work on yourself in a way that’s healthy. In a way that you don’t have to… How they say it, you don’t have to feel that you’re this kind of fitness superstar, working out four hours of a type of thing, if you can…

That’s great. Sure, maybe it’s great. Yeah, I don’t have the time.

Yeah, so this bonus covers the spine, the hips, the shoulders and knees, the feet and the ankles… Yeah, that’s what I had made some notes on, so you can check that out on the bonus link below the video, or if you’re watching the video, this is also gonna be on audio as well, July work with clients individually or what is your structure? Is it…

Yeah, I don’t do that as much anymore. So in our company… So if you’re interested, is that GM bio and we offer online programs specifically for… We do a lot of full body local motion work, so people will call them admins or crawling and all of that, that’s a good example, but what it is, it really is, it’s just different movement patterns that you can explore… Right, and it’s very good because you can retake a person from scratch, and before the whole pandemic, we used to have lots of in-person workshops and we have trainers all over the world, and there… There’s a lot of online stuff where you can do zoom in, that’s great, but hopefully we can get back to in-person learning as soon as possible.

Sure, so what I’ll do is I’ll include the link to your website where in the show notes where they can go to your website and check that out, maybe either sign up for one of your programs online, or they can connect with one of your trainers, whatever, and.

We have lots of other information articles in our blog and video is under youtube channel, all that stuff. I hate saying, Don’t buy our stuff, but you don’t have to… You don’t have to feel at too, but we have lots of people going through our material that just been really grateful to have positive feedback, and they’re using it to help themselves feel better and complement whatever they’re doing, whether it’s martial arts or recreational… Other recreational sports and you know what you like. Right. We identify as martial artists, that’s our thing, but a lot of times we need things to supplement that to make us better at it, but also sort of… If we just did that, maybe I would be putting ourselves into those own bad pattern, no matter how a comprehensive and great, we think our particular Marshal, mark, there’s all the way. Some gaps, right, right. Yeah.

So Jarlo I wanna thank you so much for being on the podcast. It’s been a pleasure to draw your expertise and share it with other people is… Right. To meet you. Like the work you’re doing, thank you. Thank you very much. Any closing? Closing anything. I think that’s great. Thanks so much for having me, I really appreciate it. And yeah, I love talking about this stuff, and it’s very important if one person hears this and gets a kind of a light bulb moment and it starts working themselves out of their pain pattern, then it’s all worth it at a… Worth it, absolutely. Okay, Jarlo, I’m gonna wrap this up and then we’ll be in touch soon, yeah.

Thanks so much, Bill.

Okay, so this bill parravano, the knee pain guru, thanking you so much for being here. Thinking Jarlo, for being on the pain education podcast, sponsored by The comella Foundation. Thank you so much and we will see you on the next one.