#75 David & The Foot Collective

(upbeat music) Welcome to the DGR Podcast. I'm your host, David Gray. (upbeat music) Hey guys, David here. Welcome back to the DGR Podcast. This is episode number 75. I hope you're all doing well. I'm sitting here recording this intro. Not the full podcast, that was previously recorded, but I'm recording the intro in a hotel in Vancouver. I feel a little bit like Tile Opel, as if any of you have seen his old YouTube videos. We were gonna record our intro, sitting out in the balcony of our hotel. Maybe with a Lamborghini in the background or something like that. But we were missing the Lamborghini, so we came into the corner of a hotel room instead. For today's episode, I actually appeared on the Foot Collectives Podcast, as a guest, and I wanted to share it here as well on our podcast because we spoke about a lot of things that I hadn't actually spoken about before, probably on this podcast, are not really on any guest podcast that hadn't been asked these questions. So I think it was a really good conversation between both of us, not just me, obviously, between Nick as well. So we spoke about fees, obviously, assessing fee, training fee, working with fees. We spoke a lot of our footwear. We spoke about working with different types of clients and working with pro athletes as well. We spoke about my definition of health, which was a tricky one for me, actually. So that was an interesting question and something that I really had to think about. We spoke about just looking at my notes here. We spoke about college versus kind of continuing education. It's a question that I get asked all of the time. And we spoke about training balance a bit as well. So, and how I think about that. So lots of good stuff here. We just finished our course in Vancouver. I wanna say thanks to Dave Leyland for organizing that and all the guys at Coast Performance Rehab. Incredible groups, so loud. That was actually, that set the record. That's sold out before we actually released the ticket, Dave sold it out to his network before we even made it available for sale. And we've gotten a belt. I think I've gotten at least 20 or 30 inquiries already since that workshop about could we come back and do another one in Vancouver. So hopefully we'll be able to come back again. We had a great course, tons of, it was just fun. I think I'm getting a bit better at teaching the courses as we go along, making them just more practical, showing people different options, different variations of exercises that I use. Not being as, no, I don't wanna say rigid or structured 'cause I'm not the most rigid or structured person, but yeah, just opening up people's lenses to, here's like a key exercise that I use, but now here's 10 variations and 10 options of that that you can start to play around with and just have fun and don't be married to one single thing. So, so yeah, that was great. We have Montreal coming up next weekend. And yeah, apart from that, I think you'll really enjoy this episode, please give it a share if you do. That's really the only way to podcast spreads and gets more traction is true shares because we don't, it's not like we ever toys it or anything like that. So you are probably listening to the podcast 'cause someone else shared it. So maybe you can share it and have someone else who might be interested as well. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed the episode and talk to you guys soon. - Yeah, and what would you say motivates your work today? I mean, you're doing a lot of things, you're doing workshops, you do the podcast, like you do a lot of stuff, it's a lot of energy. What would you say your primary motivator is today and has that, has that been something that's shifted since you first started doing this? - Good question. It's actually something I've been thinking about quite a bit recently because yeah, we are busy with things. We do try to be as consistent as we can with our content and our workshops and programs and stuff like that. So I have taught about this quite a bit recently and I think I have two things that are kind of motivating me. One is, what do I like to admit it or not? It's actually fear because I worked in like the corporate world for a while, I went to did, I did a marketing degree, I worked in sales and I was okay at those jobs but I really did not like them and I really did not make a good employee probably because looking back, I always had a problem, not like arguments or anything like that but I just didn't have a passion for what I was doing and I would love to never have to work for anyone else again in that way. It's not that like, I don't mind being a contractor, I work with different organizations where we're helping an athlete and stuff like that. Like I love that, I love collaboration but just sitting in an office wearing a shirt and toy is just not for me. So yeah, whether I like to admit it or not, I definitely have a fear of that and I wanna make sure that this works so I don't go back to that. So that's one thing, I don't recommend being motivated by fear but it is a good motivator also. It is a good motivator and same in rehab sometimes people will not do anything until the pain gets too much and now they have no choice. So that's kind of one thing, the other thing is, I would really like athlete and just anyone really who wants to move and feel good to not have to go through a lot of the shit that I went through. So I had a lot of issues with my knees and my Achilles and stuff like that and we got to get a lot of clients now that and kind of what took me six years or eight years to try and figure out, we're often able to help people figure that out for themselves in a matter of weeks or months and that and I don't just mean, I don't say that to brag or anything, there's lots of great people that are doing that. So kind of, it started off, it switched a little bit because it started off very much where I was trying to help a lot of individuals and now we're coaching and are kind of mentoring for our coaches and therapists. It seems like that's the best way to reach a lot more people because you train them up and obviously, as you know yourselves, they're able to go and use all these things and they have the tools as well. So two motivators fear and then helping people and I don't know which one is stronger, kind of flips I think. Yeah, that's a great answer and I think the notion that pain and fear might be a type of pain, I don't know. I haven't really thought about that deeply, but the idea that pain is the ultimate tool for transformation and the ultimate motivator, right? It doesn't necessarily have to be and you hope that people don't get to catastrophic levels of pain before they're willing to change but I don't think many people would argue that pain is the ultimate tool for transformation in life. It has been for me and yeah, I can appreciate that fear of living a mundane boring life that just washes you by before you know it is a real fear and I definitely share that fear. So yeah, appreciate those answers. Yeah, and I think, you know, you said at the start, it's like, it's almost like we're going from one world from the old legacy world of the way we treated where it's like, oh, you have a problem. Let's just look at that one spot. Let's strengthen, let's do some mobility and let's just make you feel better. Like it's all revolves around eliminate pain and really just old approaches that are very isolated and really aren't that empowering to this new way where it's like just educate people. And like you said, it's like you've spent all this time in energy talking to so many people, working with so many patients, having this deep experience. You know, the fun part is being able to give people your cheat codes, right? Like you spend 50 hours learning something and you can convey really the essence of what you uncovered in like 10 minutes to give someone a lifestyle change that can literally transform their health. It might sound a bit sensationalistic, but I found that to be quite true. And yeah, I think one goal with this podcast is, I think some people in this space sometimes look at it as like your competitors, right? You have online programs, we have online programs. But the notion that like the foot problem or let's say lower body suffering, lower body related suffering is like a giant problem. And we're all on the same team. And I think we can all learn better by having conversations and actually disagreeing on some things to kind of collaboratively uncover truth together. We can just understand a lot more and be a lot stronger together. So yeah, I mean, we want a foster collaboration and we appreciate people like yourself. We're coming on here and also spreading the word yourself. And the other thing that resonates is like, teach the teachers. That's how you maximize and scale your impact. Like the digital realm is a totally new realm in terms of the amount of people you can reach. But if you teach one teacher and they teach a thousand people in the end, you really scale your impact in a huge way. So I think you're right, Nick. I think the people like the people that we're competing against really is, I think of the amount of people in the world that are taking pain killers for simple issues that they shouldn't be taking. They're going into not even podiatrist, let's say. I know some great podiatrists and I think orthotics can be useful for the right person, right time, all this stuff. But they're going into sports shops and they're just getting on a treadmill and they're just being given an orthotic immediately as a result. So we're also kind of competing with people who are just always relying on manual therapy for everything. There's a lot of people in pain. All you need to do is, and not just pain, just go outside and have a look around and see how people are moving, they're struggling. So I'm the same, we have people on our podcast who some people would say to me, like, oh, you're a competitor of this person. Like we're really not. And what I say, the way I speak about a foot or an ankle or something like that might not resonate with people. The way you speak about it, moist and voice versus. So I think we can all learn from each other, help each other and there's a lot of people out there that need help. there is definitely not, we are not the competition I don't think. Yeah, and we're not going to saturate this either because it's a giant problem to solve that we're like not even touching the surface of. So we need more of us. We need to collaborate more. All right, let's get into some more specific stuff. So I'm always curious to see how people um you know deal with certain topics. So someone comes to you and says, David, I've got plan a fascia. I just I've been told by a bunch of medical people that I have flat feet. Um, you know, what are you telling this person in your first session together and sort of, you know, the notion of planar fascia, I just end quote unquote flat feet. We'd just love to hear your thoughts on that and yeah, how does that first conversation go with that person? Uh, it's so obviously it depends of course it depends, but that's a crappy answer. But uh, I will say it depends on. It depends on what type of person they are. It depends on are they very athletic because I've had some athletic type of people who picked up that issue are super on athletic. So I will always be kind of coaxing them in the direction with my explanation of like what, what I think this is going on. We don't know necessarily, but I'll always be kind of coaxing them in the direction of where I want them to move. If it's you need to learn to, maybe move more, you need to learn to move less. My explanation around my assessment will be, it would be a bit different, but in general how I look at a foot is, aside from the load management stuff, which is you're just doing way too much, I'll wait a little, I look at a foot and just say can it change shape? That's my big question. And that's the question that I try and take people out of the minutia and I love getting into the minutia, but what I'm working with coaches and therapists, I try and just ask them in the beginning, can this foot, that's right there staring at you, kind of change shape. This person brings weight into the foot and back out of the foot, kind of change shape because we wouldn't necessarily be super concerned with someone's neck position, our shoulder position and all these things. We might get information from that, but we would just want to know can it move, can it change shape? And with a foot, whether it's flat or because you could get a very stiff, flat foot, that cannot change shape, you could get a very stiff, very supernated foot, that cannot change shape, or you could get a flat foot that actually can supernate and pronate, it looks like it can move pretty well, but it's just set up in this kind of position to begin with. So that's the first thing that I'm looking at, kind of change shape. And when you're thinking of a plant or fascia, if the foot can change shape, that means that I can move from a more pronated position into a more supernated position and back again and really then you know that the fascia is actually being able to get fully lengthened and fully shortened, or at least lengthening and shortening. So that's my first thing with it with an issue like that. And that really goes for Achilles issues, it goes for sesame issues, it goes for a lack of big toe extension, all kinds of foot issues. My first question is kind of foot change shape and I'm not super concerned around how it actually looks and appears, although you can get some nice information from that, I would love, I would, you'll see some of the best at least in the world. Some of our feet look pretty nasty and they don't change shape that much, but they have, they seem to have enough movement there. They can get away with it and also they've built a lot of strength. So that's my key question, kind of foot change shape and everything else becomes very clear if you ask yourself that I think. Yeah, that's a great answer and yeah, it's definitely a trick question because it's, you know, it's not one template fits all, but I love how you emphasize like function over just the static snapshot. I think a lot of people get caught up with the notion that they as a static snapshot, this is what my foot looks like and it has this problem. And I think a lot of professionals in the medical and rehab world are probably guilty of labeling people with these snapshot related labels. And it's just a really basic, almost lazy way of looking at it. It's like, I want to, I really care of what is your foot capable of doing, not how does your foot look in one specific moment in time. Yeah, appreciate that answer and yeah, I think just the focus on function is something that I was never taught in physio school, right? It was like this, this is a picture of this kind of foot. This is how you treat that. And it said nothing about like what, how does that foot actually move? How do those 33 joints actually articulate? And really that's where the juicy stuff comes from. So feet and or footwear imbalance, I think, you know, to me, it's like, those are two super underrated areas, both in the professional athlete world and also in just the everyday person, the realm of everyday people. How do these two things factor into the patients or people that you work with? Are they on the menu as topics of conversation? How do you, yeah, how do you approach them? Footwear and balance? So on the balance thing, I think, I think balance comes from being able to organize our center of mass over the stance leg. So gate, I kind of break the gate cycle down into like everyone does, stance and swing. So if we've stance and swing, then we can drill into swing phase and start to look at smaller phases within swing and we can drill into stance and look at smaller phases within stance. But just as a whole and definitely for the podcast, I think it's nice to just think stance and swing. And if you can get into right stance and you can get into left stance and particularly mid stance, that's where our center of mass is going to be stacked over that leg. And that is balanced to me. Now, you think about, when you think mid stance, you would think about kind of having a slightly bent knee, having you can start to think about foot pressure. So there's this kind of even enough pressure between the heel, the mid foot and the forefoot and then between lateral and medial, there's even enough pressure there, your head, your ribcage and your pelvis should all be kind of stacked over that, which will allow you to keep your even foot pressure. So I think balance can become quite a tricky topic. Sometimes people confuse things about balance and get into the weeds about balance, but balance ultimately comes from just being able to access mid stance, which is super important. The cool thing about stance and mid stance in particular is it's when you're super compressed on that side. So if I'm in on my right leg, everything on my right side is compressing, which means everything on my left side is expanding and opening up and getting a chance to experience the opposite. And then I switch from one to the other. And really true balance has been able to go from right stance to left stance to right stance to left stance, which is ultimately like pronation, supination, pronation, supination. So that's a super important skill to be able to train with people. Now, there's obviously the earlier phase of stance and then the later phase, but mid stance is a key point where we're going to have a lot of balance. Well, regards to footwear. Again, it definitely depends very much. I like to get people training in their bare feet as much as possible. I particularly like in the gym. I like to get people doing some plyometrics. I like to get them doing squatting and hinging different work under where they have more heel pressure, midfoot pressure, pressure where their heel is off the floor. Just loads of mixture of things, balance drills, everything there. When I try not to change people's footwear too much in the beginning, unless they have like a ridiculous pair of shoes on, which was absolutely stupid. Like I'll get them out of them, but I try not to change them too much in the beginning because I want people for my job for the most part is to help people experience the power of movement and trying to instill great habits into people. Let's say I try to do a couple of footwear-related drills with someone who has a foot or an ankle problem or an Achilles or whatever, but we also changed their shoe. We've done that on the first session. Then they might be able to convince them that it was purely the change in footwear that was the thing and actually the drills that we did were maybe uses. It could have been a mix of both. It could have been whatever. I like to make one change at the time and whenever I kind of are trying to instill good habits around movement and I can deal with the footwear problem like a little bit later on and maybe get them into something with a wider toe box, different things like that. I do like to get people barefoot when we can, but I don't rush towards it and I also appreciate that sometimes a good shoe with an arch support or I don't even want to say support with a little bit of an arch reference in it can be helpful, particularly for people with very supinated feet because if people are super supinated and super locked up feet, particularly around the mid foot, watch a lot of them see is they have a very poor ability to achieve in sense the floor because they can't really pressure or is someone with a very stiff locked up mid foot in a supinated foot. They struggle to get into mid stance which goes back to the balancing and I hope I'm not going all over the place here. They struggle to get in there because that's where our most amount of pronation will occur so they really struggle to get in on top of our foot and pressurize their mid foot and sometimes if you take a shoe away from them, their mid foot, their arch, their medial arch in particular is so far away from the floor that no other brain can sense it at all and so sometimes an arch support in a shoe not to block pronation it's actually the opposite to help the brain feel that middle of the foot feel that inside of the foot so now that they can actually move into pronation can be good and I have seen some people who have been kind of taken away from their footwear put into barefoot shoes or gone barefoot and I've seen some people get worse and it would be more so usually more so the more supernated people, actually stiff supernated foot, rather than a pronation, which I think is counterintuitive to what a lot of people would think. Yeah, and I think with footwear, I mean our approach is always trying to get people to less footwear, but it has to be paired with more foot, right? Like you have, it's really footwear, kind of boils down to load management, right? If someone's used to this supportive footwear and you completely remove that, you might just overload their system or create a bunch of uncertainty, right? And then reaction is put a bunch of spot wells in the joints because we don't know what the hell's going on on the ground. And yeah, it's always a delicate balance of like where is someone at, what's the current level of function, and what are you trying to accomplish? Because like you said, if you introduce 10 variables at once, not only may you confuse the system, but you actually can't isolate like which thing is having the most effect, and that doesn't give me much useful data if I can't actually isolate and figure out what's making the difference. Yeah, I think a lot of people, on Instagram a lot of people think, oh, we just tell people to go barefoot or wear natural footwear. And I think obviously Instagram is not really a place for super nuanced dialogue, but it is nothing can be said outside of context with any level of certainty. Everyone loves to ask, oh, what do I do? What should I do? It's like, well, I need to ask you a whole lot of questions to give you direction, but here are things you can ask yourself to consider, are you ready for this? Do you want to do this? Do you understand the trade-offs you're making? But I think in general, people are just being pushed. It's like, okay, let's put you, you have foot pain, let's put you in a supportive shoe. Oh, your pain came back, let's put you in more support to the point where they're literally wearing like, you know, what aircasts on their foot, and they can't even feel the ground. And then it's like, okay, we got to unwind this a little bit, because you're essentially starting to rely on this external thing, just like a pain drug. And but it is, it's not the why it's the how. It's like the how there's a lot, a whole lot of context to kind of consider. And yeah, and the pro athletes face, it's so, it's becoming more interesting now, like even with yourself, I'd be curious, working with pros, the pro athletes I've worked with have always surprised me in that they are the most gifted and hard working people, but they're also the best compensators. Like they're the hardest ones to give a screen and have like a, make the invisible visible, because they're just so good at, okay, if they don't have it here, they're going to find it from here. They're going to be the most, they're going to be the most, they're going to be the most, they're going to be the most, they're going to be the most gifted and hard work, and they're going to be the most gifted. And so, I think it's a great way to make it happen, and I think it's a great way to make it happen. I have three words for that, I have a compensation, which I try, I try not to use that much anymore, even though it does make sense, but it, I think people start to associate that with a negative, which it's not. It's certainly not in my view, because they are able to still play their sport at a very high level, obviously. Yeah, it's a much better response. Exactly, so I try to, I appreciate the word compensation, and it's not like, it's not like a hard no for me, I use it. But I try to use, I think sometimes a better word is just a strategy. This is how they access their internal rotation, this how they access their externalization, their pronation, their supination, it might be a more eversion than pronation or whatever, different things. And then the other, the third word is amplification. So, if you need, if you're a pro athlete who is moving very, very fast, let's say, you have time constraints on you. So, a lot of sprinters have worked with some really good sprinters who have very, very little ankle dorsiflexion. Like, if you ask, if you look at them doing, if you ask them to do a body weight squat, there is no way in hell they will squat down under heels. They won't get their butt under heels. And it's because they're so tightly wound, because they need a lot of tension in their body, and they need a lot of pretensioning. And the whole scale of, let's say, being a sprinter, is being able to pretension, because I can't wait for my foot to hit the ground to be able to then turn on all of my muscles. So, they're very, very tight, and for a good reason. So, I think a lot of the time you will actually see a lot of very good sprinters, for example, set up with a very pronated foot. It looks like a super flat foot to begin with, because they have such short ground contacts, and for me, at least this kind of mid stance and max propulsive position where we push the most. It's not in the triple extended push-off position. It's where we're working hard, this is where our body is stacked over our foot. And that's where naturally all of us should be in our most pronated state. Before that earlier stance and later stance would be more supination. And the middle is more pronation. Now, if you think about a sprinter, that only has a super, super, super short amount of time, a good sprinter. Not someone crappy like me, but someone super fast. They are going to maybe, okay, I don't have that much time to set up to move from supination to pronation. So, guess what I'll do? I'll set up in more pronation to begin with. My body is set up there. So, now I start to think of that maybe as not necessarily a compensation, even though you might see it as that or where the roll and the outside of the foot off, I might just see it as, this is a way of amplifying the strategy that they're using to get more push and to get it happening quicker and sooner. So, what I see with great athletes is very similar things than everyone else that I work with. Super similar. I think a lot of people will try to come up with fancier and fancier drills for great athletes. And actually often they need the same basic things that everyone else needs. The big difference is that they adapt really fast. They adapt faster. They will learn skills super fast. Now, I still don't think that means you need to rush on to advanced drills and all this stuff. Because the other thing is that they have a very strong stimulus coming from their sport all of the time, which is kind of pushing them back into the direction of the amplification or the strategy or the compensation. A lot of the time, yeah, I just think they're cool to work with. They adapt really fast. They learn really fast. I'm looking off to get, I know there's a mix of athletes obviously different sports, but I'm looking off to get people who are, I don't have to worry about the boy in too much. If I decide like I think we should work on some breathing or some foot mobility or whatever, they've kind of sought, they've kind of sought me out in the beginning. And I have that boy in and I do have empathy with people who maybe working within the organizations or within the clubs who are trying to convince the somebody athletes to do this stuff and they could not care less about it. So yeah, I appreciate that. That can be tricky. But that's sometimes the good thing with having a bit of a social media platform or whatever, where you attract people who are interested in your work and they're great people to work with. Yeah, and the notion of just self-selecting for people who are ready and don't need to be convinced is very attractive because I mean you as a professional as a coach. You know, like when I work with someone, I don't I actually want to learn from every person I work with and I don't want to be wasting my energy trying to get them to do something they don't want to do. I don't want to do any of that anymore. And just this notion that when someone comes to see you, the fact that they're keen and open-minded and curious and willing allows you to actually get data from them to see how they're moving to see other movement changes. And if you're spending all your time trying to get them to do something like pushing a rock uphill, it's not enjoyable for either of you. And it's like, okay, come back and see me when you're ready when you actually want to do this. And sometimes it takes an injury, sometimes that takes like a performance wall that they can't that they can't get over. And yeah, I just I couldn't agree more about the basic drills even for advanced athletes. And what I found is that their kinesthetic awareness in their body is sometimes like really deep. Like really, like you can see them thinking deeply about something incredibly simple. And it's almost like they're mapping their body and really like they get a lot more data from their body than the average person. So even a basic drill given to like, you know, you know, a 50 year old versus a 25 year old professional athlete. They'll get different things from it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that drill is below the threshold of that elite level athlete. They just will take a deeper like they'll go deeper with the awareness and the mental energy that they put into it. So yeah, that's a really. That's really good. I'm really with you. I'm really with you on that. And they often just need to be given the awareness or the space or the confidence or whatever to just actually slow down because their body is well for high performance. It's well for tighting up and pretensioning and co-contractions and the strategy that they're using if they're the tennis player or springter runner or a footballer like that strategy. And those patterns are so deeply embedded into their body and they're used to creating tension a lot of the time. So actually sometimes the most basic quote unquote drills, even though I don't even like using that phrase. They are the best. They just give them a chance to step back to tune into their body in a different way. And it can make a big difference. And this is where like professional sport isn't isn't about health. That's that's important. Like even me playing at an OK level in Ireland in Gaelic football and harling. I wasn't healthy necessarily when I was doing that. I looked healthy. I was in good shape. My heart was strong and stuff. But I was playing in pain all of the time. And a lot of people are and anyone who knows who plays at a good level knows that you're not going to be ever feeling 100%. For the toes, so So sport and health performance and health are not the same thing But there does come a stage where if you push so far towards the performance and you limit your health then your health is gonna start to push back and limit your performance so They need such they often just need small inputs are big inputs in small ways into their body That just brings them back a tiny bit on the health spectrum gets them back in tune with our body gets them to feel things in a slow relaxed manner and That can nudge for forward the performance aspect because what is super underrated on Instagram on social media? I think is just how Important feeling good actually is just how many good things can happen when you just feel good It's not spoken about it's both strength is spoken about mobility is spoken about all these fancy things are spoken about feeling good is underrated I completely agree and I like I like the way you said that because I've always sort of Mentioned that there is a fundamental tradeoff where the at the elite level of sport the tradeoff you're making is actually health because if you're completely healthy And you feel great all the time you're probably not doing what the next athlete is doing to be one step above you in performance But I never thought about it in in the notion that if you go too far towards that side the health deficit actually begins to limit your performance So it's like the balancing that fine line of like you know doing enough on the performance side and acknowledging the tradeoff you're making But not doing it to the point where there's huge consequences on your performance because I mean if you're hurt It doesn't matter how good of an athlete you are you can't play and Yeah, and even back to that sprinter the sprinter who can't get into a you know barefoot body weight squad resting squad position Is that something you address and it's kind of a trick question because obviously it always depends but Yeah, that person comes to you and says I want to be a better athlete. I want to unlock performance. I want to become more durable Is that something you work on getting him or her into being able to do or is that something that you acknowledge like the tradeoff or making to make you a really powerful sprinter Is that you're going to be missing some of these fundamental human movements and maybe that's on the menu for later But is that something you dive into or is I'd love to hear your thoughts on that Yeah, it's a good question and I get asked that a lot every workshop. We're always asked like okay if we do if I do this with a great athlete And we don't just work with athletes. We work with lots of people But if I do this with a great athlete like is it gonna is gonna mess up their sport and I just I actually think it's an e It's an impossible question to answer, but it's also an easy question in some ways because You're not gonna wake up one day So you're not gonna okay, they come in they can't squat past 90 degrees and then you do a drill and the next day They can always squat past 90 degrees. They just have it. I think there's a continuum there and particularly I suppose me I'm lucky because I don't have to make too much of a tradeoff I work a bit more in the rehab space and even the athletes that they end up programming far that are Not injured. I actually get a large contingent to where that kind of injured but not really at least that just I'm Client in general that just come fall in there that don't feel so good and Usually they have things that yeah, I've just moved too far I've lost too much movement in this direction and we need to get it back So it's not really a hard Question for me, but I appreciate that it might be a hard question for someone else that's working with an athlete who They're not really having issues. They're performing pretty well. They just want to push that more Maybe they want to squat a bit deeper to build a bit more strength in those ranges and I would say It's fine if you're not stupid with how you do it if you're not trying to push them You're you're trying to be aggressive and you're negligent towards just a nervous system and a body which Some some people are but I think if you're just a good like a decent coach You're not stupid with things you can nudge people further and further like just along the path, but it's gonna take time you're but I think this is coaching this is training. There's no starter endpoint There's it's a continuum where one day someone comes in they feel a bit tight or they can't get into it in as deep the next day It's a little bit more. It's not read. There's never really a beginning and an end and there's always this little continuum I've just figured out getting to know your client playing around see what feels good Open it up a little bit of space where they hopefully need it Yeah, your feet are like smushed together from where I'm basketball shoes and they're like you're just you're you've you've sprained your ankle 20 times in the last two years Okay, we're gonna work on some ankle drills from gentle dorsiflexion plant reflection drills open up your midfoot Open up your toes a little bit, but they're still gonna be a bit smushed because they're still playing 50 games that season right. I think yeah, yeah, I think they are that our stimulus is Gonna come back to stimulus that you're getting from their sport and from our our lives and Yeah, for respectful of it. I think it's I think it's fine Yeah, I agree. I think there's a difference between wanting to make someone more well-rounded durable athlete without making a trade-off in their performance and over optimizing something that you shouldn't be optimizing and not acknowledging the trade-offs you're making right? It's like oh, yeah, we're gonna get you squatting because it's good for you to be able to squat but now all of your elasticity and Power transfer when your sprinting is gone. It's like well, that's probably not a trade-off they want to make so Yeah, the other thing I found too is when I started you know Involving the people I was working with in my thought process It was a they understood things a lot better and they were actually able to Give me better feedback when they were doing things and it's something I wish I had known way earlier on like two things that looking back As a physio, you know, because I you know what led me to do to create the focus like it was like I don't actually understand I can't even fix my own feet and I'm supposedly the knower This is like creating a really deep inner conflict and I just have to figure it out like I have to erase any notion of me knowing What the hell I'm doing and start from scratch and do my own experiments with a completely blank slate and You know, it was kind of painful right because you realize oh shit I just spent all this time and money learning something that I know is actually ineffective and not true You know one of the things was I used to treat according to school. I used to treat areas in isolation Like I would treat the knee in isolation. I would treat the low back or the ankle and now that I look at any lower body issue as a Now that I look at the lower body as a Integrated system made up of subsystems where no subsystem can be optimized independently of the others I look back and I'm like wow how much time did I waste with people look just doing the the one thing with the one area And that was one thing and the other thing was I just didn't explain to people My process of thinking okay, well this is what because I think people come in and they're like well this person knows everything They're just gonna tell me what to do and what they don't realize is like I'm guessing every time I'm making an educated guess because I may have more information or know what information to get out of you But once I started saying well, okay, this is what I'm seeing. This is what I'm hearing This might be something that works. Let's do an experiment and try this people were so much more open in their willingness to try things and to be involved in the process What is your impression like what's the biggest thing that you've learned or What's your biggest insight since you first started doing this if there is any big one of you know Something you can't believe you used to do and now you do differently. I'm always curious about that Hmm, that's a good question um It's probably it's probably similar to yours. They're anywhere It's just yeah getting people more involved Being very open from the beginning that I don't have all the answers every every single person's body is different and We're gonna kind of fuck around and find out. We're gonna see what happens In our respectful way. Yeah together exactly and I think um Think people are coming in usually It's changing but the medical system the health system the training system particularly medical and health people are trying to outsource their thinking and their body to other professionals and just presuming okay I have this problem you have I have x problem. You have voy answer And we have bought into that as a society and different cultures But I think we're very similar all around the world. I've been to America teaching workshops Australia and every place I go they always say oh it's so shit here. How we treat it's so shit All this stuff work. I'm like it's fucking it's the same everywhere So I don't know if I'm allowed to go to a car spot. That's right. It's exactly it's exact It's the same everywhere. Everyone thinks they have it worse in Ireland We always think like we go to a state to imagine how well they do things. They're so far ahead And then you go over there and you're like no People have the same first place. It's just more expensive. It doesn't mean it's better Exactly exactly so Um, so yeah, just involving people more not I don't want them to outsource their thinking to me or their body to me completely I want us to work together on it and that does come with a bit of experience and also confidence which is tricky to begin with because you want to give your whole self you want to give everything you want to fix someone You in five minutes you want to be the fixer Immediately and actually when you start to strip that away you realize Okay, you are a very complex person with a whole history of injuries of beliefs about movement of training of um Your your life basically and we're going to figure things out as we go along I do have the key skills that I like people to be able to do with their bodies um That I think are generic that most people should be able to do in some way or another but I try to not make assumptions basically is what I'm going to say I try to not assume that this person and going in is going to need distril. And I would have done that in the past. I think I see a shoulder, that's, okay, so I'm going to come in with a shoulder problem, a hip problem, a foot problem. Okay, I assumed I'm going to have this, and I'm going to try to use three exercises. And we're kind of taught to think in that way, and now I'm just trying to make, try my best not to make assumptions, even though I still do, but I try my best. And that's been very helpful for me over the last couple of years. Just like blank slate, let's see what happens. - Yeah. I think it was down to curiosity too, because curiosity, it's almost like an ego check automatically at the door where it's like, if you're curious, then you're partially admitting that you don't know, and you want to figure out, and you need more data to actually make a good, a sort of assessment or decision. And I think some assumptions, like I think pattern recognition and the ability to observe movement and actually get a lot of high-fidelity information is a really powerful skill. So I think not, I think some assumptions are probably valid, especially if you're constantly getting them, you're constantly matching them to reality and saying, that was a safe assumption to make. It didn't actually be me astray. But yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think too many people look at the snapshot, just like the flat foot thing, right? They look at the snapshot and they're like, "Oh, this person's gonna need this, "and this, I've seen this before." But just even something as simple as the baggage someone's bringing in about the terminology that's been assigned to them. If you don't actually acknowledge that and dive into that, they might have that stick on them forever, and it might actually limit their potential to sort of move beyond whatever labels have been applied to them. And these days I try and say as few diagnosis as I can in terms of terminology and just use it as a challenge to explain how do I explain kind of fashion to someone without saying the word "planned of fashion" to you. I just introduce them like they're six years old. And ironically, that's way harder to do. But it's so powerful because that is actually the language people need in order to understand and feel at peace with, like, "Oh, it's not this big medical term "that means I'm broken and I'm doomed." It's actually just this simple thing where I'm overloading here and I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing here. And that is like this action oriented thing where it's like, "Okay, if I start doing those things, "I actually have some sense of agency in changing my body." And I think one thing people underestimate is like the body's ability to change. And I think just the legacy treatments that we do in the disease care system are a great illustration of that. Where it's like, "Okay, you have this thing. "We're gonna apply this fix." It's like, "Okay, but what about like the 100 unintended consequences of how the body's gonna adapt "and align it with that?" Now that that external thing's there. So yeah, I think it's very, the sign of intelligence person is the willingness to change and I think all the smartest people in the space that I've talked to are like not certain about anything but have a lot of experience that contributes to their confidence in truth. Right, it's like, "I'm very confident in gravity "but if someone shows me an instance "where gravity doesn't exist, I'm open minded "to be like maybe I was wrong." Yeah, and it's just like, I think the term, I used to hate the term expert because all the experts I saw were people that were like very book smart and have this title that they self-imposed. And I was like, "I don't actually think "you understand this that deep." But now that I look at it, I think reclaiming the term expert by like through proof of ability, like don't tell me what degrees you have, show me what you've done in your body and how you've helped people. I think that's actually a term that needs to be reclaimed. And yeah, what are your thoughts on just a notion that anyone can become an authority on an area of the body through deep personal experience and the perspective of someone comes to you and says, "David, I wanna get into the work you're doing. "I don't have any formal education. "I used to be a plumber, but my life was transformed, "but we did to me and I wanna get into this space "because I wanna help people as well." What's your take on university degrees versus alternative past to learning and personal experience? Like how do you, you can't tell that person what to do, but Jim the plumber, what do you tell him if he wants to get into your work? And he's like, where do I go next? Do I go to school? What degree do I get? What do I do? Yeah, how do you talk? How do you talk to Jim? It's tricky 'cause there are people that have different phases out there. I kind of went on alternative route around it where I went like studying with all these great people. Then I had to come back and get my certs and stuff like that so that I could actually work with people. So now when a younger person comes to me and it's not just younger, like anyone, but they have to be in the right frame of mind where, okay, I do think it's very helpful to go and spend four years learning to be a physio. And I do think you learn lots of good stuff. You learn some anatomy, not necessarily functional anatomy, but you know the names of stuff at least. Which may be useful to me then too though. It's real expensive to do that in school. It is, in Ireland it's better because we don't spend that much on our education. So we're a bit better, but you will learn to diagnose. You will learn that maybe, 'cause diagnostics is important if you're working with chronic injuries, chronic, or sorry, acute issues or anything like that. If you're working in the sports team, you want to be able to say, okay, this is actually probably more of a hamstring than an ad doctor or XYZ. So diagnostics are important. Being able to put hands on people and having insurance for that is can be very, very helpful. So are you just think, I think the issue, the schooling system is a mess. Like no matter what you do, I went into the business degree when I was younger and I came out and then when I wanted to start this business, I couldn't even open the fucking business. Never mind, run the business. So no matter what, you get experience in the field by learning and meeting people and working and just get your hands dirty and fucking up. Exactly. So you get your hands dirty, that's how you learn. So the schooling system is a mess. No matter what way you chop it, I don't care who wants to argue with me, you will learn better on the job. But that doesn't mean that you might not learn a ton in there and then be able to carry it out and learn more as you go. My issue where it is, people going to four, five, six year degrees is when they come out, believing they know everything. Yes. And you see that a lot. And now it's like, okay, now I'm an expert because I just learned all this stuff, I read all these books and my learning is done. That's where I have the issue. So if someone is willing, 'cause I get this question, pretty much every day on social media, like I would love to work the way you work and blah, blah, blah. And I'm sure you get that as well. I was, and I'm thinking of signing up for this physio course and all this stuff. I would say you don't necessarily have to do that. If you want to use manual therapy and you want to work with a certain type of people, person you may have to, but either way, I don't think your learning will be ruined if you spend four years going there. As long as you appreciate and understand that when you leave, really, you're only getting started then, you're not the finished product. And that is, think a lot of, not just physios, but therapist fall into the trap of believing. Okay, I am the finished product now and I'm gonna walk in here and I have healing hands and they're gonna fix everyone and they get a very rude awakening very quickly and they go two ways from there. It sends them on a learning journey or it forces them to lock up even more and double down on what they thought they knew, but they end up very unhappy, very, very unhappy, not join their job, maybe see in 10 or 15 clients a day or maybe more and imagine doing that, knowing deep down that I'm not really helping people. That is not a good life to live. Not for me at least. I couldn't agree more. And I think the golden handcuffs of having letters next to your name from a degree are, like you said, the notion that you are the knower and that there's no more work to be done to improve your knowledge or deepen your understanding. And also, I think a lot of people get into this scenario where the business model of treating symptoms can actually be something that prevents people from actually moving into an alternate system which is helping people understand how to move and empowering them with being able to understand their own issues and really work within the process of health instead of treating it as these discrete events where like, I have this injury, I do this rehab, I'm good. I get another injury. It's like this weird acceptance that this is just the process, this is the path and there's nothing I can really do to make a more durable body so I don't get injured as much. And yeah, I mean, like you said, that Monday in lifestyle of treating 15 people a day, doing something you don't fully believe in. I mean, like we said, at start, pain is the ultimate transformer and I think a lot of these professionals are starting to kind of understand that yes, it's gonna be painful for me to really acknowledge that I don't know everything and that I might have to change my business. But the pain of staying the way I am is greater than the pain of doing that. Therefore, I'm ready to do some, have an alternative perspective. One question I really like to ask people because I think it's such a subject, it's a term we throw around all the time, it's extremely subjective. We ask this to everyone who joins our digital community. So we've had like thousands of people submit their answers and it's interesting to read everyone's subjective answer but also interesting to see the general threads that we can tease out where it's like, it seems like a lot of people think this is related to that. How do you define health? If you have to do it in two sentences, how would what would David Gray's definition of health be? I won't hold it to you or reserve the right to change your mind anytime you want but I'm always very curious to see how people frame it and what people include in that. Hmm, I'm really bad at these so bad answers. Questions to terrible at them. Every time I've done a podcast, one of these questions at the end, I mess it up. No wrong answer. What is my, yeah, but you wanna be smart because you wanna say something profound. I also think people underestimate the value of a pause. Like whenever I listen to you on Mustard, it's like sometimes like a 30. second pause and I know some magical shit is happening in that cerebral quiz and I'm like I'm not in the rush because I know the longer it takes the more goodness is being created this might be creating more pressure for you but yeah I think I think his pause is because he's tapping into like AI or computer program running along the robot is tapping into the AI database exactly for me health outside of the not being not being sick let's say so I'm not I don't have cancer I don't have a disease I don't have anything like that because you can have all the definitions of health that you want but as soon as one of you you get told like your idea of health is going for a walk every day and going for a swim and all this stuff but you walk into a doctor's office and you get told okay you have this diagnosis and you actually do then your only idea of health really is pretty much not having that anymore and staying alive so I think that's important and I know someone at the moment who is quite sick and like her definition of health now is not having cancer so I think that's important and that helps us be maybe grateful for what we actually do have so I think that's that's the first time I'm gonna put that aside so my definition of health is being being not answerable to anyone else that's probably number one not necessarily like my family and my friends and stuff but not in a job where I have to wake up at this exact time I have to do this and more than anything else being accountable so that if I do good things like I get their awards and if I do bad things I get that's that's on me whereas in other jobs if I did good things like my boss got their awards or the company got their awards and if I did bad things that was also on me so I want I want access to the upside and the downside and I'm happy to take both if there's a if there's an upside and a downside so that's what I want access to that's that's probably a big one I need to be physically and mentally challenged pretty much most days I would say not necessarily every days there's days and weeks where I just need to shut off and do absolutely nothing because I smash myself too much but I need to have some kind of a physical challenge at the moment that's coming in the form of Gigi2 for me which I just started not too long ago and then mentally I think my work gives me that on a very very regular basis and then the only other thing that I really need in my life is relationships with my friends and family and I don't need a lot I'm not someone that needs to have big parodies or anything like that but I am quite family-oriented we lived in Sydney in Australia for a few years and that was amazing and I had friends over there and I had kind of some family over there as well but it wasn't home and we wanted to move home so yeah physically challenged mentally challenged not sick that's the most important thing I think and yeah just mostly really having some good relationships for me that's a healthy life and oh yeah and of course like my autonomy so that's my that's my idea of a healthy life I can happily live with nothing else and I would be good amazing I like to start at that definition because like when you were saying having access the upside and the downside it to me it's like the term that embodied that was just like personal responsibility like I if I do something good I get the benefit if I do something that has a net negative then I am okay facing the consequences because it's a it's like radical ownership and personal responsibility for your experience and I think that is that's a big part of health right that's a big part of why you know people have essentially been sold this thing that you can like you said offshore the responsibility like your health is your doctor's responsibility your health is your physios responsibility and I think it's just like a big lie it's a big scam because they can never be responsible for your well-being and so long as you think that you're always going to be essentially forfeiting responsibility for taking ownership of your experience and what you do with your body what's the biggest thing you've changed your mind on in the past 12 months this is a question I often ask people it doesn't have to be a big thing it could be a small thing but what what comes to mind as like the biggest thing that's meaningful enough to mention that you've changed your mind on past 12 months I'm gonna have to pause again that's okay I don't know that's okay you tell me you answer for me first you might give me some inspiration I mean this was a well my definition of health is the process of learning how to take better care of myself and how to sustainably maintain all six pillars like we use the framework of the six pillars of movement sleep food the mind community and money and just the notion of health being the process of learning how to upgrade those pillars in my life and triage like which one needs the most love and how do I how do I approach this with curiosity about how I can upgrade that the biggest thing I've changed my mind on in the past so this is actually super recent maybe it's just the most fresh in my mind but you know I've always I kind of got pissed at one point where people I would hear people recommend transition shoes like someone's going from a very let's call it a maximal unnatural shoe highly cushioned super stiff super pointed and they want to get to a point where they're comfortable but they want to wean away all this stuff so that they can reclaim a little bit of foot function I would often make it very simple it's like by a pair natural shoes gradually start wearing them more and more and that it's really is that simple right like because I found people got bogged down in the minutia of what's a good transition shoe what's my first transition shoe they ended up buying like 10 different pairs of shoes to get there and it's like well you've just bought a bunch of shit that you actually every single shoe you adopted confused your body a bit more because it was less of this but not quite natural and now your body's been calibrating so that was always my approach and then Jim one of the other leaders at TFC kind of sent me a message even it was like two days ago and he's like he gave me this example it's like okay someone's got really stiff feet they're in a hugely built up shoe is it better that they buy like a foot shape shoe which still has support which still has some cushioning which isn't like the most flexible thing ever that they're actually able to spend like three hours in or to buy a pair of Vivo's that I like wear for 15 minutes and they got to take it off because they're sore it's like I think the biggest thing I'm changing my mind on is I need to take a more nuanced approach in terms of like presenting the transition in natural footwear where it's not just about buy a pair of straight up natural shoes and then progressively start wearing them because the load management maybe not as wise to do that versus maybe not 10 transition shoes but like what's your next step instead of like what's the ultimate step work into that what's the next step that might allow you to spend three hours in those shoes instead of 15 minutes so I think that is and that's what I appreciate about TFC is like I think we've tried to develop this culture where people can feel comfortable disagreeing with each other and never taking it personally and always maintaining an openness in your mindset to be like I don't I'm not certain that I know the truth about anything but I haven't been given good enough information to prove me otherwise and if you do I'm open to hearing it so I think that's one thing I recently changed my mind on is just it's not a simple explanation may not be the best explanation in that case yeah I'm watching that I think I whenever I put up a pair of like Vivo's or so our just a picture I'm wearing a pair of Vivo's or something everyone asks like oh you wear barefoot shoes and I say if you if you came into my like my where I keep on my shoes you would just see such a mix of different things and literally I wake up I'm I just pick up the ones that I feel like wearing that they could have more support less support so yeah I like people to wear things that they're comfortable in if they if they are aware of their body if they're not aware of their body then they don't even know really what feels good for them and that goes for all of their movement they don't know because they have no experience of anything else you don't know how good a hip that actually move could move would feel like because you can't move your hip right so a lot of people don't have good awareness of their feet so yeah they're wearing any kind of thing but when you start to get educated and most of that I think comes from being able to move your feet well being able to move your sorry not your feet being able to move your body on top of your feet well and now you have a selection of shoes maybe it doesn't mean you have to have 20 different shoes but a few different ones different levels of support and you're not going to you're not going to end up in a shitty place but just putting on a shoe with a little bit more support that day you're you're you're just absolutely not you're you just have different things that you can wear at different times depending on how you feel or where you're going and for the most part you're working on how your feet move and you're gonna end up feeling good and some of those options should be a barefoot shoe some of them should be just going barefoot full stop so I'm with you I'm gonna change my mind on I don't know I don't know it's a tool so I didn't drop just to put a pin in that it's like if people just viewed shoes as a tool to protect their feet and to bring them closer to whatever their aspiration is I think it actually creates an intentionality with like I'm gonna wear this shoe this pair of shoes because because this is my intention I think too many people are like I just want the most comfy shoes it's like they're the ones that end up walking around with these giant couches on their feet and it's crazy comfy just like sitting on a couch all they would become people with the minute you got to get up it sucks So yeah, sorry to interrupt. - Yeah, no, I was just gonna say, I don't know what I've changed my mind on. I changed like, just all the time, small little things, but yeah, every single day, I've self-taught with things, not in a crippling way, but just trying to figure things out. So yeah, probably one thing, it's more of a macro thing, but it probably would be, I used to think that my, like our business would grow in the direct relationship to like how hard I worked, and I think that was a very limiting belief, not a bad belief to have, because I'm a hard worker and I try and encourage people to work hard, I think it's important, but it also led me to feeling then, like if we were starting to maybe sell some programs online or something like that, where, okay, I woke up and we sold a few programs, you almost feel like a bit weird sometimes, 'cause I haven't necessarily traded that time for money. So I think that has been a very limiting belief, and I know that sounds simple, and I know that sounds obvious, but actually, when you look at how wealth is created in the world, you don't see people that have that attitude towards things. It's more about just how much value can I give, and again, that goes back to like, there's unlimited upside. If I can give unlimited value, I can give unlimited, I can get unlimited upside back. So that's probably a big one that I'm fighting against all the time that actually, 'cause it leads me to be like, if I have a day where I only have to work two hours in a day, which doesn't happen that often, but I actually need a break, I actually need to not work, I need to go and spend a day at the beach, I feel like I should be doing more, even though our business is in a healthy position where I can take a few days off, and I don't need to work. So that's probably a big one, not necessarily movement related, but something I'm fighting against all the time. I appreciate that. I think that's a really key insight, because it is something you gotta wrap your head around, especially in the digital world, where you can create a program, and if money is an I/O/U, people send you for value you've given them, you create one program, it's one unit of your energy, and 10,000 people at any time of the day, any time of the year, can actually get value from that program with no extra energy input put in by you. And you can view that as well, I'm getting something from nothing, or you can view that as, I'm being really efficient with how I use my energy, and I'm finding these energetic multipliers that allows me to take care of myself, to work on other things, and to contribute other, contribute value in other ways to the world. So yeah, I appreciate you mentioning that, because that is like a, it can be sort of like a glass ceiling, where you self-impose this limit in the amount of wealth that you can bring in, and you know, if wealth is something that needs to be recycled, and actually should accumulate in the most effective value providers in the world, I think there's, you know, almost a stigma where it's like making lots of money is a bad thing, but at the end of the day, if you're recycling that back into, if you're giving true value, where you're not like tricking people in to give you money, but people are actually getting value and are thanking you by giving you money, and you do something good with that money, it's like, I think most people come into a lot of wealth because they've been really good at allocating resources and delivering valuable things to the world. Those people should be given more energy so that they can recycle it back into the world. So yeah, appreciate that, I want to honor our time. Thank you so much for offering your time today. Thanks everyone for listening and joining us today. And yeah, David, if people want to know more about what you do, things you offer, where do they go? And yeah, we'll wrap it up from there. Probably the best place is just to go to Instagram, Nick. I think David Gray rehab is the Instagram account, David GREY rehab, because people might hate me when they say, they might say, oh, he sounds good, and then they see my face and they hate me. So Instagram is a good place. We have some programs available on our website, which you can go and check out from there. Just kind of DIY, a foot one, lower body one, upper body one, and then we have some workshops, which we're going to announce a couple in the States coming up. We have one in Vancouver, that's actually so loud, and we have one in Montreal, close to you guys, I think. So that's coming up in June. And budget, I think Instagram is the best place and people can go there. And I just want to say thank you very much for having me on, really enjoyed the chat. Give me something to think about as well. So yeah, nice to connect, and I hope it's helpful for some people as well. Yeah, I mean, I got, I really enjoyed the conversation. I'm very grateful for your time. Maybe we do this again in 12 months time. We'll see what you change your mind about then, if anything. And I'll note it down on the right. And we'll see what your definition of health is like at that point. But yeah, thanks for everyone for listening. Thanks Dave for being here. Hey guys, David here again. I hope you enjoyed that episode. Thanks to Nick and the foot collective for having me on. They're doing lots of great work. So it was a pleasure. Obviously, if you're, we were talking a lot about feet there, and if you are someone interested, don't make a mystery out of it. We have a foot program, and it'll show you the exact exercises and progressions and program basically that I use with my foot clients, my ankle clients, my shin clients, my achilles, my calf, and even a lot of knee clients as well. So four phases builds people up just from kind of mobilizing, sensing the feet, building strength, connecting the foot with the hip, and then building up to a plyometrics. So it'll be the first link in the show, and honestly, you won't regret it. It will completely change how you move, how you train, how you look at feet, how you assess feet, and how you would treat our coach people who need that as well, which is everyone. So check out the foot program in the bio, and apart from that, thanks again for listening. Chat to you guys next time.