Movement is Medicine: How Moving Keeps You Mobile

TriDot Podcast Episode 248

Movement is Medicine: How Moving Keeps You Mobile

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Announcer: This is the TriDot podcast. TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries. Our podcast is here to educate, inspire and entertain. We'll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests. Join the conversation and let's improve today together.

Andrew Harley: Welcome to the TriDot Podcast. We're talking about movement today, specifically learning why movement can be considered medicine and how keeping our body on the move can significantly help our mobility as athletes and as people trying to function in day to day life. Here to talk with us about all of this is Dr. B.J. Leeper. B.J. graduated from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine with a doctorate in physical therapy and rehabilitation science. He's a board certified orthopedic specialist, a certified strength and conditioning specialist, and a USA Triathlon Level 1 coach. He specializes in comprehensive movement testing and is an avid triathlete himself. BJ now serves full time as TriDot's Director of Performance Science. BJ, what's up, my friend?

BJ Leeper: Hey, how's it going? Good to be with you, Andrew. It's been a little while since we've been on the podcast and excited to jump in with you again.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, normally, BJ, we have like two or three guests on the show every single episode. Right. And today just, just because what you just said, it's been too long since I've had you on the show, frankly. And so I was like, you know what? I'm gonna be selfish today. I'm just gonna do a one on one with me and BJ and just talk shop and not even invite a third party onto the show. And so it's you and me, my friend, talking about movement and BJ, do you think that you and I, just the two of us can fill a whole hour together?

BJ Leeper: I think we can carry it. I feel confident. Yeah, it'll be great.

Andrew Harley: Well, I'm Andrew, the average triathlete, voice of the people and captain of the middle of the pack. As always, we'll roll through our warmup questions, settle in for our main set conversation about movement, and then wind things down with Vanessa interviewing a coach for our coach cool down tip of the week. Let's get stuff. Let's get to it.

Announcer: Time to warm up. Let's get moving.

Andrew Harley: There are a lot of products on the market in the health and fitness industry that we can use to improve our health, to improve the way our body feels, to improve our movement, whether it's a supplement or something in the gym or something nutrition that you take. Big category here. But BJ, here's what I'm curious about. From every product on the market that is marketed as a health or fitness related product, what was a time that you intentionally or unintentionally used a product the wrong way? BJ, what is this answer for you?

BJ Leeper: This is a tough question. You're good at that, producing all the tough questions. I had to actually think quite a while on this one. But probably two things. I, I guess I would say for one that I used the product intentionally and then unintentionally. And it all centers around the treadmill. Back in the clinic when I was in Kansas City, we used to use treadmills for rehab where we'd, we'd set the incline and we'd just basically have that the patient or the athlete walk backwards on the treadmill, just going against the, the grain of the belt and just kind of. We always called it the Amish treadmill because you weren't really applying power to it. You were, you were the one moving the tread backwards. And so it was a good exercise to kind of get your. We called it terminal knee extension, just quad workout, especially for ACL reconstruction rehab. But, but it was always funny because everybody thought we're going to break the treadmill, we're using it the wrong way, it's not even moving and we're trying to work it backwards. But that was one where we intentionally used it the wrong way. But then another one, I think that may or may not have been me, I won't say. But unintentionally using a treadmill silicone lubricant where I just grabbed the white spray bottle, I was actually taping up an athlete's ankle. A lot of times you'll use that tough skin spray. It's kind of the stick spray to make sure that the pre wrap and the tape doesn't slip around. So it's a very tacky spray. So grabbed the wrong canister, actually sprayed silicone lubricant all over this guy's ankle which obviously made it very slippery. We had to wash them all up and it was pretty embarrassing. So yeah, those are, that was obviously an unintentional use of, of a fitness related product.

Andrew Harley: Did you tell that athlete that you made that mistake or did you just kind of let it, let it run?

BJ Leeper: Oh yeah, it was pretty obvious. It was like, yeah, this isn't gonna work. This, this is the exact opposite effect of what we're going for here.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, well, so this answer for me, BJ, is I, I somehow made it about four years into the whole Covid thing without catching COVID And when I was finally tested positive for Covid, I had a pretty solid temperature on Christmas Eve of 2023. And so on Christmas Eve, I am in the, the, the, the urgent care, just, just making, you know, just seeing what it could be and if medicine could help. And they're like, hey, you, you're positive for Covid. And the doctor told me, he's like, you know, you're, you're young, you're healthy, you should absolutely be fine. The only thing I would encourage you to take is something like an emergency that, that has a, some, some certain vitamins in it. Obviously has a lot of vitamin C in it, but there was, there was something else besides the vitamin C that was in it that, that is why he wanted me to take it. And I'm forgetting now. So I took that directive, BJ, I wanted to kick Covid as quickly as I could, obviously, and enjoy the holidays with the family. And so I get home and I'm quarantined upstairs in our house. The rest of the family is downstairs through the Christmas holidays. And on day one, I think I was probably four or five, six hours into that directive, I had drinking five packets of emergency mixed with water because I'm just taking it like electrolytes, right? I'm just taking it like, like anything else I would mix in the water. And I'm thinking like, okay, I'm just. More is better. And eventually I started wondering, like, how much of this should I be taking? Maybe I've overdone it and I felt fine. But I read the packet and the packet was like, take one packet every 24 hours. And if you do more than that, you can obviously risk getting a pretty severe stomach ache. And thankfully, BJ, I credit this to all the stuff that we take as triathletes, right between the gels and the, the electrolyte powders and whatever else. Like, I had zero side effects of pounding five emergency packets in about a six to ten hour period. But that, that is a case where I use a health and fitness product way out of whack from how I was prescribed to do. So I want to give a quick shout out to my dad. My, my dad is a tried out athlete. He listens to the podcast. So shout out to Robert Fredir, my dad, who lives and trains in central Florida. When we were kids, BJ and this is me kind of giving another answer because, you know, it's just the two of us, he would use Tums as medicine for us. So if we, if we ever came up to him and we're complaining about, oh, my head hurts, I have a tummy ache. And if it was something where, like he knew we weren't sick, but he knew that we thought we should take something, he would give us a tum and he'd be like, oh, buddy. What? Like, like what's, what's wrong? Like, what feels bad? Oh, I got a stomachache. Oh, that's a red one. Oh, my head hurts, I have a headache. Oh, that's a blue one. And he literally would like act like the different colored Tums were four different things. And we were kids, we were idiots. We didn't know any better. And now I know that's for, that's for Harper. But that's, that's a clever way. My dad used a health and fitness related product in a unconventional way. We're going to kick this question over to you, our audience. You have two answers from BJ and two answers from me. I want to hear how have you intentionally or unintentionally used a health and fitness product in the wrong way? Go to Facebook, go to Circle. Find this question out in the wild of tri social media and let us know what you have to say.

Announcer: On to the main set. Going in 3, 2, 1.

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Andrew Harley: In modern Society, it's said that sitting is the new smoking. And depending on your job and your lifestyle, of course, we sit in our cars, we sit at our desks, we sit on the couch. And even for the training triathlete, outside of our training hours, it's not always easy to keep our body on the move through the rest of the day. And here to talk about the implications of that and how we can fix it is Dr. BJ Leeper. And BJ let's start here today. What trends are PTS, physical therapists such as yourself seeing in patients that has led to this notion that sitting too much is a public health adversary right now?

BJ Leeper: Yeah, so this is a big, big topic and why it's an interesting conversation and it really is not just around sitting, it's just in how we don't move as well as we used to. And honestly, just to be quite blunt, in the era, now that we're in with modern technology, modernized civilization in the medical community, we're having serious conversations with doctors, PTs, chiropractors, and the talk is basically on how we're embracing, preparing to embrace and currently embracing the worst movement, dysfunction, population that we've ever encountered in the history of mankind. And it sounds pretty, wow, menacing, but it's, it's one of those things.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah.

BJ Leeper: Interesting, because back in the day, like when we talk about, you know, sitting is the new smoking, back in the day where smoking was just the thing everybody did, but everybody knew it was wrong and, and, or bad for you, you know, we talk about it very openly but, but really in this world of we live in now with modern comforts and how we've gotten soft, it's no longer the chop wood, carry water mentality of back in the day. We've got all these luxuries and comforts now that kind of kick us into these poor patterns that nobody's really having the conversation though, about how serious this can be to our, not just movement health, but overall health and wellness in general. So it's, it's an interesting thing to start talking about, but the key component to kind of set the conversation is really the lens we look at movement through. So I think the biggest thing to understand as we talk about movement is that movement is human. Movement is truly a behavior. And so we know that there's certain behaviors that can build movement and there's certain behaviors that will erode movement, as you alluded to. Like, we know that sitting for too long and being just very stationary can obviously erode movement. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. But really it's, how do we combat that? And it's this couch slouch. Everything is in front of us with our phones and we're addicted to them. And we're seeing it occur at earlier and earlier ages in our kids. And it's not something that just occurred. It's not like just in the last five years we really have started to have this problem. It's been going on for quite some time. And what's interesting is if you Even look back 50 plus years ago, we started to see these trends. There's this study that is often quoted, but it's based on this Kraus Weber test where they used to look at postural fitness. And there's different measures of testing like mobility and stability with human movement. And they looked at this in children like 50 plus years ago, and they tested American children and European children and they found that 60% of American children at that time were failing these basic postural fitness tests, Whereas only like 9% of European children were failing. So it was kind of alluding to this fact that the American civilization, with all the modern comforts that we were wearing, were building in the Industrial revolution, were actually leading us to deteriorate our movement patterns even as kids at a very young age. And we've only gotten worse exponentially since then. So again, it's a problem, and we know this in the medical community, but it's just starting to have the open conversation about what truly is occurring and how do we deal with it.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, we have a pretty strong listener base in Europe and Oceania and South America. And so hats off to those folks for, for, for hopefully being a little bit healthier here as we talk about, talk through this conversation. But BG I think most of us, like when we think about just, just common society and most people, you know, it, it's, it's rarer to be a runner, a triathlete, then it's rarer to be somebody who goes to the gym and actually works out. Once you're an adult, then there's more people that are inactive compared to people who are active. So of course, yes, society as a whole, it makes sense that we are as, as least healthy as ever when it comes to movement patterns. But you would think that triathletes, as much as we train, as much as we move, as much as we're, we're fitness forward and trying to eat healthy, you would think that we would be immune from needing to have this conversation. But here we are. What is Movement, health, and why BJ do triathletes need to be aware of this? Why are we not removed from this conversation?

BJ Leeper: Yeah, and another good question. It, the way I would best explain this issue kind of goes back to this story. And I've probably told this story before on a podcast or two, but it's something that really started the conversation and opened my eyes really to the problem that we have in the triathlon world and something we need to work on. But it was about 15 or more years ago, I guess now. But I was running a clinic in Kansas City and my colleague and I were set out to were going to design the best golf performance facility in the Kansas City metro. And so we were out in Oceanside, California, working with some of the best minds in the golf industry at Titleist, actually. And this was when, for those that might be familiar with Titleist and the Titleist Performance Institute, it was when that was in its infancy and we were with some of the best minds in medicine and health and fitness. And I remember sitting at a table next to Gray Cook, which is, he's a world renowned physical therapist and was working a lot with Titleist at the time. I remember we were sitting at a table, I was next to him, and one of my buddies leans over and asks, Gray, he says, Gray, it's 5:00 on a Friday night. And he knew Gray ran his own PT clinic in Virginia. And he said, it's 5 o' clock on a Friday night. Who's the last patient you want to see walk through your doors at 5 o'? Clock? And Gray turned to us and he didn't bat an eye. And he just said, oh, that's easy. A triathlete or an ultra runner. And it was funny because I had, I had just gotten into the sport of triathlon. I was pretty new to it, but I loved it. I was hooked, like many of us are after our first try. And I was thinking, oh, this is a great sport for me. I'm so health conscious. It's a fitness, it's a great fitness activity. And I was instantly offended when Grace said to triathletes because I was becoming one, right? And I was thinking, you know, why is that so, like, we're like the most health conscious population, right?

Andrew Harley: But we're amazing.

BJ Leeper: He said two things. He said, number one, the triathlete that comes into my clinic, he's like, they play slave to their training. They won't give it up even if I tell them they have to shut some things down to work on whatever they're coming to me for. And number two, they're so driven in one plane of movement, the sagittal plane. He's like, I, I can't break them out of it. It's very, very challenging. And I left that conversation thinking, as I went back to Kansas City thinking, this is a problem in the triathlon world. I would really love to help solve this problem. Like, how do we, how do we get this conversation going with triathletes and understanding we don't really move well? And so I started to, to test it, look for it in the clinic. We worked with age group populations, professionals, and we confirmed like, yeah, this is a big deal. Triathletes don't move well. And so it's not that they're not embarking upon fitness because they're building capacity. They're working on skill with swim, bike and run training. But the issue tends to lie with triathletes especially is that they're trying to solve a health problem with the fitness solution. And as we discuss a little bit further on what is truly movement health, I think the key is to figure out what are the components that feed movement health. It's not always just, you know, a fitness or exercise solution. And we're so good as triathletes, just tell me what to do, I'm going to grip it and rip it, I'll do whatever. But for triathlon especially and triathletes, a lot of it is about not what you do, it's about what you don't do. And there's a lot of things we get into with movement dysfunction that are a lot about what not to do.

Andrew Harley: BJ, I, I know obviously being on staff at TriDot and you're on staff at TriDot now, which is great. And I know some of the kind of top secret things that you're working on in, in the TriDot Laboratories to, to, to do exactly what you said, like just help, you know, that desire to help triathletes improve in movement health. And, and there's some really exciting things coming obviously with you working with TriDot and try that obviously in terms of optimizing training, is looking to optimize this area of our training as well. Well, we may talk about that a little bit towards the end of the episode here today and see what you can reveal to us. But I'm curious, BJ, just in your seat, examining triathletes in this way, what are the differences between a triathlete that has a really healthy approach to movement? You know, it's, it's not like everybody listening to this conversation has unhealthy movement patterns. There are some folks that are really great in this area and really take care of themselves, and there's athletes like me that don't take care of themselves in this area and probably have a lot of issues. So what's the difference between the two? The triathlete who has a healthy relationship with movement and a triathlete that has a dysfunctional relationship with movement.

BJ Leeper: A lot of it comes down to, you know, how we explore the world. Right. And a lot of us as triathletes, obviously we're paying attention to swimming, biking and running, and we're exploring the world through that avenue. But how often, even as triathletes, do we truly let our. Our body rub up against nature, so to speak? You know, it's funny as a triathlete and, and I'm, I'm guilty of this as well. It's like, you know, I'll sit all day at a computer for eight plus hours if I'm getting, like we are.

Andrew Harley: Right now recording a podcast.

BJ Leeper: Yeah. If I'm, if I am training, I'll maybe I'll be like, okay, I got an hour, hour and a half. I'm going to jump on the bike. So I move from a sitting posture to on my trainer. You know, I get my heart rate going, I'm breathing hard, I'm sweating, but I'm not really exploring movement other than my bike posture or if I go for a run, you know, I'm in. I'm in a shoe that has a, you know, stack height of 30 to 40 millimeters. My foot's never really on the ground. It's cushioned, it's got carbon underneath it. It's like there's all these scenarios as triathletes where we utilize technology to train because that's what we're focused on for the skill and building capacity in our sport. But we're really missing the other two fundamental pillars that go underneath that, which are fundamental movement and then movement health, which we'll get into in a little bit. So it's. Again, we get caught up in. We're trying to pursue a fitness solution for our general health, but a lot of times our health doesn't require a fitness solution. It requires a health solution. And I think that's issue. A lot of times we, again, we don't take the opportunity to explore. Like, if you think about, like, I know, Andrew, you've got a daughter who's how old now, Ellie?

Andrew Harley: 15 months old at the time. We're recording this podcast.

BJ Leeper: So you. If you think about this from a development standpoint, like, Ellie is now walking, right? She walking, running, probably harder. Oh, yeah.

Andrew Harley: Oh, yeah.

BJ Leeper: So.

Andrew Harley: Oh, yeah.

BJ Leeper: You think of the phases that Ellie went through to get to the point she is with walking and moving or running or whatever she's doing now. You know, she had to be on the ground, learn to roll, learn to be prone, like in that tummy time position. Eventually, she learned to roll out of that and get to a point where she was crawling. She had to crawl before she could learn to stand, and stand before she learned to walk. But there's fewer times as we get older, unless we are intentional with it now in our modern technology days, that we actually take time to explore even some of those primitive patterns of how. When's the last time you got on the ground and grabbed, tried to grab your feet or tried to roll to each direction or tried to, you know, move in a way that you don't typically move throughout your normal day. And again, as triathletes, we're doing that with a little bit with swim, bike and run. But if that's all we're doing, we're never truly exploring the end ranges of our true fundamental movement capacity, if that makes sense. One, one story I love that just cracks me up. It's a good analogy for the way I think as triathletes especially, we tend to look at movement and exercise. And I'm talking about supplemental exercise, not like swim, bike, and run exercise, but exercise where like, oh, yeah, I'm going to supplement with stretching, foam, rolling, whatever. I have this vision of this scene in Seinfeld. I'm probably going to date myself if. I don't know if anybody watches Seinfeld anymore, but there's a scene in Seinfeld where they've just gotten out from working out in the gym. They're in the locker room, and I think it's like George and Jerry are talking. George is just taking a shower. He's got all his clothes on, and he's still, like, sweating profusely. And. And Jerry turns to him and he's like, why are you sweating? Didn't you just shower? And George says, ah, didn't take. He's just basically speaking to the fact that, yeah, I showered, but obviously it didn't work. I'm still sweating. And I think of that all the time. And I laugh about it because I feel like in our approach to the supplemental exercise of foam rolling, trying to stretch, and again, chasing maybe a health issue With a fitness solution. A lot of times we're doing those things and yeah, it didn't take like we're foam rolling. Yeah. Might work temporarily, but it's not really sticking. We're not hitting save on that document. And a lot of times it's not because foam rolling inherently is bad or stretching inherently is bad. It's just, it's the wrong timing. We're not doing truly or getting to the root of the issue like we need to. So, yeah, I think the key is for triathletes to explore our patterns and then really figure out what it is that's contributing to our poor movement health and, and hitting save on that document.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. I mean, as you're talking, BJ, I'm just picturing a lot of the different, like triathlete archetypes, right? There's a lot of different types of triathletes out there, you know, in, in the triathlon marketplace, so to speak. And there, there are athletes that, you know, they, they go all in and they take care of all of this stuff. Stuff, right. They do their swim, their bike, their run, their recovery, their mobility, their strength. I think of a try not staff member and pro triathlete Elizabeth James. Right. You know, she takes all of her boxes every single week because it really matters to her and she's probably healthy when it comes to movement patterns. And you know, there's some folks that, man, they go all in on the swim, bike and the run, but they neglect, you know, some of this stuff or to your point, they'll, they'll dabble with foam rolling and stretching and, and they'll do it a little bit here and there, but not in the right ways and not really enough to make, you know, a long term difference. I, I've probably been that kind of triathlete more than anything else. And then there's folks that just don't really spend any time doing this, right. And they, they're kind of inconsistent with their training to begin with. And you know, so, so, so regardless of the reason, right. That there's a lot of different ways that people might start forming these bad habits and might just, just sit down too much and be inactive too. We joke about, you know, sitting as the new smoking, but really the problem, BJ, is inactivity and inactivity in a variety of ways that leads to you having healthy movement patterns. So how can we as triathletes combat many of the bad habits you're describing? And really, how can we combat this kind of bend towards being comfortable all the Time that our society encourages.

BJ Leeper: I think it comes back to chasing the right thing, you know, and figuring that out. I think I use the analogy sometimes with food. I'm not a nutritionist, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to think about the premise of this in the right way. But you think about, you know, we're always often chasing the supplement like, okay, I'm taking all my multivitamins, I'm taking the right supplement. But then the nutritionist finds out like, okay, what are your main meals? And it's like, well, I go to McDonald's, you know, two times a day. It's like, well that's, that's the low hanging fruit, right? It's like, I don't care how many supplements you're taking if you're eating at McDonald's every day. Obviously we need to address your whole food issue. So a lot of times in our world as physical therapists, we see this all the time with triathletes and even the running community, is that we're chasing these supplements. Again, we're looking for a fitness solution to the issue and we're not really addressing the whole food areas, the areas that need the attention. And again, sometimes it's, it's about physical activity. But for, as we know, in the triathlon world, like we're, we're physically active. It's not an issue of getting out and burning calories because a lot of times we're, we're tacking, tacking, you know, tackling that the right way and doing a good job with that area. But it's these other areas of movement health that we'll kind of walk through in a second that can really contribute to movement. And, and we look at movement often as a vital sign. So this is another little nugget that, that I think is important to discuss. When we look at the stress recovery cycle of athletes. And the, the question is always like, okay, are you, are you overstressed or under recovered? And they kind of go cyclically. They're, they're, they're combined together. You can't really have one without the other. So that it makes sense that we need to look at that stress recovery cycle. But how is your, your movement health contributing to that stress recovery cycle? Like what are the areas of your, of your world? And we're not just talking about physical activity, but what are the areas of your world that are more stressors in your life? You know, we're look, we're talking about breathing, sleep, nutrition, you know, not just fundamental movement. How are those Contributing as potentially stressors or how are those contributing as potential potentially areas of recovery for you? And again, chasing the right thing. Another funny story that kind of sets the picture a little bit better. I was talking with, well, I had a parent approach me when I was working with a lot of athletes in Kansas City at the clinic there. And he had a six year old daughter that was super into soccer. She was starting to get into soccer year round and, and specializing at a very young age. And he knew that she probably needed some supplemental activity to kind of complement her soccer. He realized like, okay, it's probably not great for her to play soccer just year round. She probably needs some, some accessory strength training or whatever. So he asked me, he's like, BJ, I want you to design a program for her like this off season or in season strength and conditioning program so it kind of supplements her, her soccer activity. And I kind of laughed at him. I said, I'll design you a program, but I guarantee you it'll look like basically you taking your daughter to the playground and letting her explore balance, running, climbing, crawling, all these things that are fundamental. But he was wanting me to prescribe it in kind of this synthetic way. And I told him she really just needs to go play, play tag, run away from somebody, cut, zigzag, whatever, like explore these different patterns. But in our day and age anymore, it's almost like we have to prescribe this in. And what I'm getting to is just as we explore movements, we inherently start to figure out where our weaknesses are. And that leads us to chase some of the better things that we can really spend good time on. So kind of a long winded answer. But I think the key is just recognizing that it's not just a supplement, it's about our whole food needs.

Andrew Harley: I already know I'm super dysfunctional and need this conversation, but a lot of our athletes, maybe they're listening to this and they're freaking out a little bit because they probably didn't start the day questioning if they sit too much. But they're type A. And now we have them wondering really hard. Everyone is in their car, on their bike, they're listening to the podcast. They're asking themselves, are my movement patterns dysfunctional? BJ, what is the best way for us as a person to assess our own movement health so we can know am I in the clear? Am I good here? Or do I have some red flags I need to pay attention to and fix something?

BJ Leeper: Yeah, it's funny, I was kind of in the same boat A couple weeks ago I went and played basketball with my 15 year old and I played basketball in college, but I hadn't played pickup ball for like 15 years. And I've just been, you know, doing some, some triathlon training here and there. And I was amazed at how poorly I was moving, like trying to cut laterally and do all these things. I felt like I was going to snap. But again, it comes back to taking the opportunities to explore patterns of movement. We don't typically get in like as triathletes, like we're saying earlier with the comment Gray Cook made, we're sagittally driven. Like if that's all we're doing, we're going to be very adept at the sagittal plane. But we're not good in the other cardinal planes of movement. So again, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to come back to some of these things to explore because they're fundamental. They're how you got to the point you were by the time you were four years old where you had developed stability in your hips, you could walk, you could throw and run, and you could do all these things by the time you're four years old because you had earn the right to be there by exploring those different positions and postures developmentally. It wasn't that, you know, as a four year old you were being prescribed back squats and bench press and theraband exercises for your rotator cuff. Like you inherently gained that you were born with all the requisite mobility and you gradually learned how to stabilize those areas and you earned the right to get to the next position. Sometimes as adults even we have to go back to those fundamental patterns to explore. And you kind of alluded to something we're working on within TriDot, but we're working on a system to kind of create a standardized operating procedure for how we might evaluate that to guide people. But it's nothing novel. It's not anything that we don't already know. It's getting up off the floor, touching your toes, balancing on one leg, rolling from your stomach to your back. It's, it's fundamental things. And what's interesting is again the importance of this conversation is that these fundamental patterns, if we start to erode these and we, they're degraded because of our behavior and that leads to the degradation of this human movement. It can actually affect mortality rate as we get older. Like there was this study, this is a really interesting study about 10 years ago where it was looking at a cohort of like over 2,000 individuals over the age of 50. And it tracked them over the course of 10 or more years. But basically the test they did was a stand to rise test. And what they're looking at is from lying on the ground or sitting on the floor, how many supports did it take you to get from sitting to standing? Meaning if you had to use your hands or had to use your knees to get from sitting to standing? So the goal was, could you move from sitting to standing without using your hands as support or even knees as support? Like could you just move from lying on the ground to standing with no help, no supports? And what they found was that the people that had no support, they could get up fine and they could move well enough to get up from the floor to standing without using their hands or knees. They had a six times less likelihood of dying within the next 10 years than the cohort of people that had to use both hands and knees to get off the floor. Six times more risk.

Andrew Harley: That's wild.

BJ Leeper: Which was just crazy. So again, not to be morbid, but to come back to the reality that movement health is critical and we need to explore those things. So as a triathlete, try those things. Can you touch your toes, can you squat but to the ground, like rock bottom squat without letting your heels come off the ground? Can you roll from your stomach to your back? You know, can you balance on one leg without wavering even with your eyes closed? Things like that that are, are not performance based. It's not, it's not like you, you need to be strong and have this functional capacity or skill to do those things. These are just fundamental elements of human movement that we should all be able to do, especially as active triathletes.

Andrew Harley: I, I am very aware, like I said, that I'm very stiff right now. I've done zero mobility work in my fitness training in the last 15 months and even probably a little longer than that. And, and, and just, just reality for me, B.J. is, is, you know, there's, there's the having a daughter, right? And my wife and I, we were married for nine years before having our daughter. So when we had her, like, we were just like, we'd had a lot of years just to stick together and we were ready to go all in on being parents. We're excited about it. We're having an absolute blast doing it. And so for us, we both have full time jobs and we are working at our full time jobs or we are hanging out with the family and the baby and that's our life. And I sneak in 30 minute runs here and there, I sneak in 45 minute trainer rides here and there. And that's kind of the extent of my movement right now with the season I'm in, in my life. And because of that I'm very stiff. And I have a very specific idea. I know coming into this conversation I am unhealthy in this way. And it's almost like BJ, it's almost a barrier for me of like entry back into a competitive place in the sport because I know I can't go down to the track and knock out some MAV shuttles without hurting myself. I know I can't hop on the bike and do an FTP test without probably hurting myself. And I've got to get healthy in that way before I can get back to doing the training in the way that I would like to do my triathlon training. Right. And so that's me. I'm aware of that for myself and thankfully I can, I can poke you and have you help me fix it. But for our listeners, once they have a good idea of where they're at in regards to movement, some folks might know they're like me. Some folks are, are, are know that they're a step up from me, but still need some help here. And some folks might think that they're okay and have healthy movement patterns. But what do we do with that information once we know it about ourselves?

BJ Leeper: Yeah. So I think the best thing to do is, like we said earlier, we need to chase the right thing. And I'd love to do an exercise with the listeners at home and maybe you can walk through this too, Andrew, just to kind of play this game and actually tackle these priority issues. Because again, I think that when we talk about our movement health, there's certain behaviors that can significantly, significantly contribute to our movement in ways we might not fully grasp or be aware of. So we're going to play the old game like red light, green light, like when you're a kid, we're going to do it in a different way. But as we go through each of these main domains that can affect our movement health, I would just ask you and the listeners can do this at home too. This area as we talk about it. Are you a green light here? Are you all good? Like, okay, that's not an issue for me. Are you a red light? Like I need to change something dramatically here because this is a big issue for me. Or are you a yellow light? Maybe? Are you in this area that we're discussing? Is this something. Yeah, it's probably something I should get better in, but maybe not a complete red light for me because again, a lot of what we want to focus on is pulling the red flags and then managing the minimums. So the first area and probably the top area that can affect our movement is breathing. So breathing, you know, it's one of those no brainers. It's like, well, if you're not breathing, you're not living. Obviously that's gonna affect your movement. But when we talk about breathing, we talk about even just slight restrictions where some of, some people might have some obstructions or some breathing issues where they get allergies really bad or they've got, you know, sinus problems or something that contributes to poor breathing. Even if it's 10% of an issue, a lot of times that can affect your movement health. I think a lot of times, even as I'm at my desk, my work environment, maybe it's a stressful day and there's times where I realize I've not only sat for eight hours, but I haven't taken a deep breath in eight hours. You know what I mean? Like, I haven't even, I, I've been shallow breathing, everything's in my neck and I just haven't taken a big diaphragmatic breath for a long time. Those are areas that can contribute to poor movement health. So there's the obvious things with like obstructions, but then there's other things like how well do you breathe? Do you take time to do conscious breathing? This is in my opinion, why yoga has so much strength and capacity to help us in so many ways. Because largely it centers around the breathing component.

Andrew Harley: Yeah, true.

BJ Leeper: So from a red light, green light standpoint, how would you address your breathing?

Andrew Harley: This, this might be my only green light. BJ as we get deeper into this, but I feel pretty confident that I don't have any, any issues with, with, with breathing at the moment.

BJ Leeper: Green light, green light for me.

Andrew Harley: Green light, green light for me.

BJ Leeper: Green light there. Good. The next huge area. And this kind of goes hand in hand oftentimes with breathing. People that have obstructions with breathing, sometimes they, they don't sleep well. But the next category is, is sleep. How well do you sleep? And, and oftentimes we're talking about, you know, it's, it's not an issue of like, oh, you're getting seven and a half hours or eight hours, like what's the difference? I'm not going to talk about those details but, but really just what is the quality of your sleep? Do you wake up Feeling rested? Are you yawning all the time throughout the day? You know, oftentimes, and this is another issue of our modern civilization, we give up sleep for screen time. We're on our phones right before bed, and we get caught up, and an hour later, like, we've cut an hour into our sleep time because we gave it up for screen time, you know, and this is another hot topic in the triathlon world. A lot of us as triathletes will give up sleep for training time. And again, it comes down to the question, is that an issue? If sleep is an issue for you, are you giving up something that shouldn't be given up just because they're like, well, I don't want to sacrifice my swim, bike and run time. But if your movement quality is poor and you're building fitness on dysfunction, you could argue that your time sleeping would be better for your performance than extra time trying to get in the pool that morning or whatever it might be. So, sleep, green light, red light. What would you say?

Andrew Harley: Most of my life, BJ, I would consider that a yellow light. I've never been a great quality sleeper. I'm a restless soul. I wake up quite a bit and roll over and all that jazz. And currently, you take the fact that I'm not a great sleeper by default, and you add on all the interruptions to sleep that you get with a newborn. That is a hard red for me right now. Hard, hard red.

BJ Leeper: What's interesting with that, you know, somebody might come into the clinic and see me for neck pain. And this is why the, the quality of these domains and how they affect movement health is so important. Because I could be the best manual therapist, the best physical therapist in every way to address that person's neck pain. But if they haven't addressed the domain of poor sleep that's contributing to poor movement and poor health there, it doesn't matter what I do, it's going to fall on deaf ears. So I will talk to those patients and say, you're coming to me for a better neck. I owe you a better neck, but you owe me better sleep. Because if you don't agree on that, we don't come to that. It doesn't matter what I do. So it's that understanding of if we unburden the system by improving that sleep quality, all of a sudden we're moving better. We didn't have to do foam rolling, dry needling, manipulation to the neck to get that better. Naturally, those movement signals change so this is why these areas are such a critical thing to talk about. So the next big domain moving on is nutrition. So as all of us know, a lot of times that know nutrition, food can poison you or food can restore you. It can be a recovery piece. So as you look at nutrition, would you classify it as, okay, red light, this is a stress in my life. Is stressing my system or green light or yellow light?

Andrew Harley: That. Yeah, I, I'm pleased that I get another green light here. You know, we, Morgan and I both, we, we've always liked healthy foods, and now that our 15 month old is eating real foods and she eats what we eat, we're, you know, doubling down on, on cooking more meals at home and making sure there's a mix of fruits and veggies and grains and, and different proteins. So that actually for, for us might again, might be another rare green light for me on this, on this endeavor.

BJ Leeper: That's good. So you're not doing as bad as you thought. Nice work so far.

Andrew Harley: So far.

BJ Leeper: So far. So, so the next one, maybe the more obvious one, as we talk about movement health, is the movement, the fundamental movement component. And that's like what we were alluding to earlier. How well can you cover fundamental movement patterns? And we're talking about squatting, stepping, lunging, rolling, reaching, all these things that are fundamental. How symmetrical are you? Is there one direction where you rotate that you're way limited compared to the other side, you know, so symmetry is part of that. It's kind of like we alluded to the systemized approach to. Even exploring movement sometimes is helpful. And that's what we're working on, designing a system to do that within the TriDot app. But, but even just at a bare minimum, you know, how are you exploring movement? Can you squat without letting your heels come off the ground? Can you rock back into like a child's pose position without feeling like you're gonna pop? Can you press up on your belly into a cobra position without having pain in your back? Can you roll? Can you balance on one leg, eyes closed, even for 10 seconds? These are fundamental things that we should as athletes easily be able to cover. But if we can't cover those things, we know, okay, that might be the area we need to target. And again, it's not always with a compartmentalized solution because everybody wants to know, like, oh, yeah, my, my hamstrings are tight. What stretches should I do? Are you sure it's your hamstrings? And there's things you need to sometimes explore to Isolate that. But again, you know, and this kind of comes back to the first three things we talked about. Breathing, sleep, nutrition. I always tell this story about some athletic trainers that were working out of college where they were saying early on in the season, like when freshmen would come to college to start camp before the fall season, like with volleyball or football, oftentimes within the first three to four weeks of camp, they'd see a brash of hamstring strains, hip flexor strains, and naturally, the assumption was all these freshman athletes, yeah, they're. They're not in good enough condition coming into this yet. They just need to get, they need to get tougher. They need to build resiliency with all their muscles. But if you think about it, all these freshmen, they're moving away from home, they've got stressors in their life now, being in a completely new environment. They're probably away from home. They're probably not eating well. They're probably eating at McDonald's every night.

Andrew Harley: Sure.

BJ Leeper: They're probably not hydrating, or if they are, they're hydrating with something other than water. You know, there's, there's all these other factors that affect the body physically that are not just musculoskeletal components. So are we checking those boxes first? But then movement can become the thing that we have to look at and address too. So movement. How would you rate yourself? Green light, red light?

Andrew Harley: And this will be obvious for anybody that's listening to the whole podcast. This is a hard red light for me. And, and, and BJ, that, that's, you know, I, I know, you know, some of the exercises. You know, I've been at try Doc camps where you've kind of done some functional movement screenings with the campers. And so I know that the movements that you're listing, you, we, we. You had, you took a lot of athletes through those movements at, at a camp. And at the time I was actively training and pretty fit. And at the time, I think I, I failed like 8 of the 10 movements you just mentioned. And that was when I was actually like, like fitness. And, and so now I might fail all 10 of them right now. So. So, you know, movement itself is a hard, hard red light for me.

BJ Leeper: Yeah. And that's not uncommon. And again, it's, it's. Are we, are we adding fitness to dysfunction when we train, swim, bike, and run? Are we working off a fundamental platform? Because if we're not, if we are adding fitness to dysfunction, it's not a matter of if it's catch. If it's catching you, it's just when is it going to catch you? And that's what we're all after here. We're trying to keep our athletes as healthy as we can. The last domain is really tied up in physical activity and this is an interesting one for triathletes because most of us as triathletes we're physically active, we're training, we're fit, extremely these health conscious activities. But what's interesting is are we doing that in a way that's sufficient for what we are embarking upon with our activities of like, you know, swim, bike and run? But maybe are we overdoing it? And how do we know are we dialed in? Like is, are we overstressed or under recovered? Is that a component? And the nice thing, and this is obviously a plug for TriDot and the training optimization that that the our app does is that it's, it's trying to dial you in to that right amount of stress where you're right along the razor's edge of the threshold of your ability, where you're pushing to improve your performance without overdoing it, without sending yourself in this spiral of you are overstressed and your recovery can't get you there and it degrades your movement quality as a result. So movement again is a vital sign. I don't need a Garmin to tell me if I'm recovered or not, or even my HRV to tell me if I'm recovered or not. If I'm out of the gate first thing in the morning, I can't touch my toes and I'm used to touching my toes nine times out of ten out of the week. But my, you know, my stress and my training has maybe gotten a little bit over the top. That's my instant vital sign to know, okay, I'm probably under recovered, overstressed and something might need to change. So those are the things as triathletes that we need to be conscious of. Is our physical activity adequate? Are we over the top? You know, again, for triathletes, usually it's not the other end of the stick. It's not, were not physically active enough. So again, red light, green light. Where are you on the physical activity domain?

Andrew Harley: Yeah, so, so BJ, there, there is, we've alluded to it a few times there, there's just a, a super secret project being worked on deep in the super secret TriDot laboratories where our performance scientists and data team works. And, and you know, so we've alluded a couple times in this conversation that that something is coming that will help with all of this for TriDot athletes. But, but in the meantime, because that, that certainly is something that once that is ready and it's pushed out onto the app for all of our users, that is something that, that we'll do another podcast on and talk a little bit more specifically about, you know, this, this new updated way of chartered athletes being healthier with our movement patterns. Until that is ready and we circle back and bring you back on the podcast to talk about it. What can our athletes listening today who maybe did red light, you know, green light, yellow light in there, you know, maybe they're like me, they had more reds and yellows than they did greens. What are some things that we can do right now to, to make some improvements but before that's officially part of the tried out system, so to speak.

BJ Leeper: Yeah, and that's the thing. If, if that's, if your biggest red light was in the movement domain, you know those, those things are coming to help equip you more with that. But I would say know your weakest link, know your domain. Like if you went through that exercise with us and you checked some red lights or yellow lights, know what your weakest links are and address those first. Like even though we're talking about human movement, the answer to your equation to unburden your system and move better might not be stretching, it might not be mobility, it might be I need to address my sleep dysfunction, I need to address my nutrition issue, I need to address emotional behavioral stressors in my life. That's another little domain. It's not a little domain. It's actually a big domain that we didn't cover. Like how is stress emotionally in your life? Do you have relationship stress? Do you have work stress? Because that contributes to our physical bodies in so many ways. You'd be better off to address those first. And then come back and let's talk about maybe there's a supplement you can take. Again, it's the low hanging fruit. We address the issue of we're eating at McDonald's in certain ways and these specific domains in our life. Let's check those boxes and then let's come back to the movement fundamental movement equation and address that. You know, go for a walk in your backyard, bare feet, let your feet actually interact with the ground, roll around with your kids, go to the playground, play tag, you know, do things that are outside your swim, bike and run. And I know that that take time, but those things are so key to keeping us grounded, not in just the physical way, but even just in an emotional way, but there's, there's so much power in that.

Andrew Harley: Yeah. And, and, and you mentioned those things can take some time. And, and BJ, I'll, I'll ask this question and, and we'll, we'll transition to the cool down with Vanessa shortly after. But I'm just curious for the time crunch triathlete, which is a lot of triathletes, myself included. Even in the seasons of my tri training where I was just as motivated as possible and I had big race goals and I, I was spending, you know, all my spare time that I could on the training and the fitness, the first thing that would get cut out of the equation or the first thing I would neglect when life got a little busy has always been the strength work, the mobility work, the stretching, the foam rolling, the recovery. You know, we don't back off the swim, bike and run like you said earlier. We back off these auxiliary things that, you know, help us move a lot better. And so for the folks listening that, okay, understand I might have some things to work on. I might understand there's some of the things that BJ's talks about that I need to address. How can we, with how busy we are and how much training we have to do. What are just BJ's top tips for just fitting this into the schedule For a lot of triathletes that historically want to put it in the schedule but just haven't figured out how to.

BJ Leeper: Yeah, the key. I go back to my college days in basketball. I had a coach that he always operated with the kiss principle. He was, he always said keep it simple, stupid. And, and that's really the best advice I give athletes as they're trying to address some of these things physically especially is don't, don't feel like it has to be a 30 minute routine. Commit to something. Again, know your weakest link. If you don't know, go to a professional to maybe help guide you. But once you know your weakest link, commit to just. That's my non negotiable drill and that's something that might take me three to five minutes. For example. I'll give you mine. Like, I sit a lot at work now and I know I have mobility issues with my mid back, my thoracic spine and I know I don't breathe as well as I should. So I will have a foam roller literally sitting in my bedroom. So every time I walk through I look at it and it kind of looks back at me saying, you need to do this. So it gives me the guilt trip. And it's not a foam roller to foam roll in ways most people think, but it's a foam roll to allow me to lie down, to take three to five minutes to work on some mobility drills through my mid back, my, my T spine. And then I focus on some breathing drills for like two or three minutes. And it gives me that opportunity just to kind of hit the reset on the areas I know my body needs. And it doesn't have to be more complicated than that. That little bit of time I know for me allows me to move better in so many ways than if I were to do like a 30 to 45 minute all flow stretching routine. I just know that that's the biggest part of my routine that helps me. So I think the key is knowing your weakest link and keeping it simple. Commit to five minutes of that specific thing that gets you to that reset. Figure out the, the minimum effective dose that changes your movement and then continue with that and keep that as just part of your routine. Build up that we talk about healthy habit stacking. Build up that habit within your routine with something else that you typically do and allow it just to become a habit.

Announcer: Great set, everyone. Let's cool down.

Vanessa Ronksley: Hi friends and welcome to the Cooldown. I'm Vanessa. Vanessa, your average triathlete with elite level enthusiasm. Today's guest is TriDot coach Caleb Chapman, who spends his days as a controller at detail mold and manufacturing and the rest of his time occupying one of these roles. Successful triathlete and coach. Husband to his beautiful wife, fathers to his two young daughters, and a fur daddy to two dogs who are also female. So he has kindly requested that anyone send testosterone over to his house so that things balance out just a little bit. Here are some other interesting things you might want to know about Caleb. And he's too modest to share them himself, so I am very fortunate to get to do the honors. He is a TriDot pool school instructor, certified IRONMAN U coach. He competed in 20, 21, 70.3 worlds, has never DNF'd a triathlon. He is a true believer in TriDot as his 400 meter swim time went from 6 minutes to 5 minutes and he has had to do three marathons to finally beat his IRONMAN runtime. All of that, that entire package, Caleb, is pretty impressive. So welcome to the show.

Caleb Chapman: Thank you, Vanessa. Always happy to be back on the podcast.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah. Now, something that most people don't know about you is that you're a certified solo skydiver. How did you fall into that?

Caleb Chapman: It all started with a bunch of high school friends. You know, of course, being 18, we all wanted to do it, and we wanted to do it without another dude strapped to our back. So we all wanted to go solo. They taught us how to jump out of the plane, pull the chute, but they only taught us how to land, not softly. So the first one was a little painful. We wanted to go back and do it again and get a much better touchdown, and thankfully we did. And after the first one, it gets a lot cheaper. So we, yeah, got hooked on it and had a crazy.

Vanessa Ronksley: So how many dives have you done?

Caleb Chapman: That's been a while. I haven't done any recently, but I think it was over 10.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay. Yeah, that's 10 more than me. I don't think I could actually bring myself to jump out of a plane. So. Good on you for that.

Caleb Chapman: I think it's best to do it tandem. If you're gonna just do it once, let someone else, because then they do all the tricks, the landing, everything.

Vanessa Ronksley: No, that's. That's one hot tip for the day. You do have a hot tip. A second hot tip for today. So what triathlon tip do you. Can you share with us?

Caleb Chapman: Today's triathlon tip is to know your sweat rate and your sodium loss rate. So it's been talked about here before on the podcast, but it's such a crucial topic, and it's not good enough to just know one of them. They go hand in hand. If you know your sodium loss rate is to, say, a thousand milligrams a liter, but you don't know how fast you lose a liter for a given temperature and intensity, how are you going to know how much sodium to take in? Same for sweat rates. Knowing you lose a liter an hour but not knowing how much sodium was in it can lead to hyponatremia, which is too much water in your cells. That can lead to vomiting, confusion, fatigue, cramps, swollen fingers, hands, feet, and worse. And if you feel your stomach sloshing around, you probably haven't taken on enough sodium for how much water you drink. And you don't have to break the bank to know these numbers. You can get a general idea with precision fuel and hydrations estimator, and that's free. The next step up in accuracy would be Gatorade sweat patches you. For $50, you can get a pack of two and they'll tell you your sodium loss and sweat rate to degree of accuracy. But I've found kind of varying results with those. Now, the gold standard is to get a sweat test from Precision Fuel and hydration or somewhere similar, where they put on electrodes to your skin and they make your skin sweat. Then they collect that sample and measure it on the spot. And pretty instantly you get an accurate example of your sweat rate per liter. For sweat tests, you want to perform them often as your sodium rate never really changes, but your sweat rate can change drastically based on environmental conditions, heat, acclimation, hydration, intensity, all of that. So how you do a sweat test is you'll weigh in before your workout, completely naked if possible, and with an empty bladder, and exercise for an hour. Empty your bladder again, get naked again, towel off, and hop on the scale quickly. After finishing your workout, measure the amount of water you consumed, and if so, let's say you lost a pound and a half. You drank 20 ounces, and there's 16 ounces in a pound. So you multiply that pound and a half times 16, add the 20 ounces of water, and you get 44 ounces. So now let's say your sweat test results said 1100 milligrams a liter, and that can be anywhere from 200 to 2000. So it's a very big range. So you're sweating 1100 milligrams a liter, AND your sweat rate's 44 ounces or 1.3 liters. That's the total loss of 1400 milligrams of sodium an hour. The geometry sodium is in a single bottle of Gatorade Endurance that they hang out in an IRONMAN. It's 610. So if you only drink one of those an hour, you're at an 800 milligram an hour deficit. So for a six hour, 7.3, that's 5 grams of sodium that you're below your target. That'll 100% result in muscle cramps or bonking or both.

Vanessa Ronksley: Right. Okay. So this is an absolute must for everyone if they're going to be racing. They need to know their sweat rate, they need to know their sodium loss and to be able to adjust their intake accordingly.

Caleb Chapman: Exactly. And if you can't get a sweat test or something similar done, then just start adding more sodium to your workouts, see how you feel. Did you feel better taking in 500 milligrams than just plain water? Did you feel better at a thousand milligrams and five hundred and see where the benefits stop applying if you can't get that test.

Vanessa Ronksley: How long in advance do you think that this would be a good thing to start doing you.

Caleb Chapman: The sooner you know it, the sooner you can execute your workouts to a higher degree. And you definitely want to practice your nutrition before your race rehearsals. And you want to be able to use your sweat and sodium in your race rehearsals and especially before race day.

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