Movement Logic: Strong Opinions, Loosely Held: Recent Episodes
Dr. Sarah Court, PT, DPT and Laurel Beversdorf
Welcome to the Movement Logic Podcast, with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beversdorf, and physical therapist Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong ideas, loosely held – which means we’re not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we’re here with up-to-date and cutting-edge tools, evidence and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher. Music: Makani by Scandinavianz & AXM
Welcome to Episode 67 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss what current science, versus outdated advice and conventional wisdom, have to say about the causes and solutions for sacroiliac joint (SIJ) pain. Learn what research says about whether or not the SIJ is an inherently robust or fragile structure, whether things like lots of stretching in yoga or joint laxity during pregnancy contribute to its instability, and what therapists can and cannot reliably know about the causes of SIJ pain.
You will learn:
- The anatomy and biomechanics of the SIJ.
- How Sarah differentiates between low back pain and SIJ pain with her patients.
- What joint incongruency is and what therapists can and cannot know about joints through palpation.
- What amount of force is required to dislocate the SIJ.
- What SIJ form and force closure are, and how they are used to explain SIJ pain.
- Some common explanations, assessments, and treatments for SIJ pain that lack evidence.
- Why muscle testing is an unreliable way to assess muscle strength or weakness.
- The problem with muscle imbalance theories.
- How upper and lower cross syndrome theories —the idea that muscles can be “locked short” and “locked long”— has since been replaced by more contemporary research.
- What evidence-based tools we have to address SIJ pain.
And more!
Sign up here to get on the Wait List for our next Bone Density Course in October 2024! It’s the only place you’ll get a discount on the course.
Episode 21: Is the SI Joint Painful Due to Instability?
Evidence-Based Diagnosis and Treatment of the Painful Sacroiliac Joint
The sacroiliac joint – Victim or culprit
A radiostereometric analysis of movements of the sacroiliac joints during the standing
Clinical tests of the sacroiliac joint.
Effects of mobilization treatment on sacroiliac joint dysfunction
Association between the serum levels of relaxin and responses to the active straight leg raise
High-velocity, low-amplitude manipulation (HVLA) does not alter three-dimensional position of sacroiliac joint
Effects of mobilization treatment on sacroiliac joint dysfunction syndrome
Welcome to Episode 66 of the Movement Logic podcast! This episode is Part 3 of our Dismantling Long and Lean series. In this episode, Sarah and Laurel discuss the origins of Pilates, Barre, and yoga, and the connections between each movement method’s origins and the concept of a Pilates body, a Barre body, and a yoga body.
In this episode you will learn:
- The Pilates origin story, including its clear cut relationship to ballet and the ‘dancer body’
- The problematic origin of the dancer body in the 1960s in New York and its influence on Pilates and barre
- The Barre origin story and the Lotte Berk Method
- How Lotte Berk’s approach was sanitized for future iterations
- Whether the teacher and the teachings can be separated
- Laurel and Sarah’s experiences with the yoga body in their teacher trainings
- Some essential differences between the yoga body and the Pilates or Barre body
- What we can all do going forward to dismantle this patriarchal dominance over womens’ bodies
And more!
Sign up here to get on the Wait List for our next Bone Density Course in October 2024! It’s the only place you’ll get a discount on the course plus fun free bonus content along the way.
Reference Links:
Maintenance Phase: Pilates episode
1962 Sports Illustrated article
The Predatory Genius: what do we do when great artists are also moral monsters
Pilates Anytime: What is a Pilates body?
Lotte Berk Website
GX United: The down and dirty history of barre fitness
NY Times: From Shimmying to Standing on Your Head
The Cut: The Secret Sexual History of the Barre Workout
Dance Magazine: The Cult of Thin
Welcome to Episode 65 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah is delving into the topic of exercising while injured. Should you? Shouldn’t you? How do you know when, how much, and what kind to do?
She takes you through a decision making strategy that will make this an easier question to tackle next time you are injured. Sarah also made a PDF Injury Decision Tree that you will receive as bonus content if you sign up for the 2024 Bone Density Course Wait List!
Caveat: This episode is not medical advice and should not be taken as such.
In this episode you will learn:
- Acute vs Chronic injuries - what’s the difference when it comes to exercise
- How different types of injury will impact your movement choices
- Your body’s mechanism of injury response at a tissue healing level
- The tissue healing timeline and what can speed it up or slow it down
- The role pain plays in injury and how it’s not a 1:1 ratio of injury to pain
- Situations where the best option actually is to rest
- What types of exercise are best depending on your level of injury
- Red flags to keep an eye out for that would require medical intervention
And more!
Sign up here to get on the Wait List for our next Bone Density Course in October 2024! It’s the only place you’ll get a discount on the course. You’ll also get the PDF Injury Decision Tree in a future email to the list.
Reference links:
Episode 1: Movement vs Exercise vs Sport
Episode 30: Mastering Physical Literacy with Dr. Chris Raynor, MD
Episode 62: Make McGill Make Sense
Welcome to Episode 64 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel is joined by non-diet kettlebell coach Damali Fraiser to talk about what it means to be an inclusive kettlebell coach. We also discuss why a coach's life experience and skills (and not their body) are their real business card. Finally, we get into silly certification tests that limit diversity in an industry that desperately needs more of it.
In this interview you will learn:
- Why kettlebells are excellent tools for cultivating strength, power, and endurance.
- How the shape of a kettlebell makes it uniquely effective for training stability and moving in multi-planar ways.
- What it means to be a non-diet kettlebell coach.
- What building body trust means, and how grasping at some ideal, future body can sabotage some people’s ability to relate to and trust the body they currently have.
- What intersectionality is, and how understanding this concept can help us teach and coach in a way that is inclusive so that more people feel welcome in fitness.
- A critical look at a popular kettlebell certification system, StrongFirst, and a test they impose as a barrier to entry for certifying coaches—the 100 kettlebell snatches in 5 minutes test.
- How the fitness industrial complex negatively impacts folks who don’t conform to societal ideals and what we can do about it.
And more!
Sign up here to get on the Wait List for our next Bone Density Course in October 2024!
Reference links:
Damali Fraiser's website
Welcome to Season 4 and Episode 63 of the Movement Logic podcast! This is part 2 of a much requested series titled Dismantling Long & Lean. In part 2, Laurel and Sarah discuss the phrase "long and lean" from a science-based, as well as sociological and racial perspective. They cover whether or not you can actually make anyone’s body “longer” and/or “leaner” through formats like Pilates and barre. Additionally, they unpack the harm that appealing to this narrowly, aesthetically-idealized body shape has on students and teachers.
You will learn:
- Common code words used to show preference for thinness in exercise.
- Is there a way to make limbs or muscles longer?
- How do we change the shape of muscles?
- Can we make muscles tone without making them bulky?
- How hypertrophy works and whether or not Pilates or barre are particularly effective for building muscle.
- What does it mean to be bulky versus lean?
- The constrained energy model for metabolism and how it explains why exercise is a poor tool for weight loss and why it’s more complex than calories in and calories out.
- How human metabolism is a product of evolution, not engineering and more like a business on a budget rather than a car that runs on fuel.
- How the science of metabolism explains why exercise is so important for long term health and longevity.
- Whether building muscle makes you burn more calories at rest.
- That fast and slow metabolism doesn’t mean what people think it does.
- Whether or not you can burn fat specifically from “problem areas” on your body.
- How the transatlantic slave trade and the rise of Protestantism influenced the way we think about fatness and thinness.
- How fatphobia and a preference for thinness has been used to craft and reinforce racial, sexual, and socioeconomic hierarchies over the centuries.
- Why “long and lean” is to the 1990s and 2000s as “white and nordic” was to the 1800s and 1900s.
- Why using "long and lean" as a marketing ploy does harm to the teaching profession of Pilates and barre.
And more!
Sign up here to get on the Wait List for our next Bone Density Course in October 2024!
Reference links:
Episode 60: Dismantling Long & Lean Pt. 1
Burn: New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories…Episode 43: Nutrition Facts vs. Fiction with Dr. Ben House, PhD
Fearing the Black Body…
Welcome to episode 62 of the Movement Logic Podcast. In this episode, Sarah and Laurel discuss the recent interview of Dr. Stu McGill on Dr. Peter Attia’s podcast, The Drive. This interview has sparked a lot of internet commentary, so we’re breaking it down for you into what we’re calling Make McGill Make Sense.
You will learn:
- Who are McGill and Attia, and why Attia is interviewing McGill
- McGill’s rigid (pun intended) views on powerlifters vs yogis and what each group should and should not do
- Why McGill “doesn’t believe” in non-specific low back pain, a well documented and researched phenomenon
- How the biopsychosocial model of pain doesn’t exist in his world view
- Why his fearmongering and moralizing approach to movement has been so successful
- How and why he leans into storytelling vs data around low back pain
And more!
Sign up here to get on the Wait List for our next Bone Density Course in October 2024!
Links:
Episode 29 The Cues We Use Part 1
Episode 31 The Cues We Use Part 2
Episode 34 The Cues We Use Part 3
Episode 45 Injury and Safety in Strength and Yoga
Episode 54 Alignment Dogma: Spine
https://peterattiamd.com/stuartmcgill/
https://www.backfitpro.com/
https://rheumatology.org/patients/joint-replacement-surgery#
Lancet Study age of hip replacements
Evidence for an Inherited Predisposition to Lumbar Disc Disease
Adam Meakins on Instagram
McGill Big 3 on YouTube
Welcome to Season 4, Episode 61 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel explores whether strength training alone suffices for health and longevity. She compares training stress, intensity, and adaptations of strength training versus high intensity interval training (HIIT) versus cardiorespiratory endurance training. Discover how both HIIT and cardio are forms of conditioning, and why both strength and conditioning are necessary "weekly human maintenance habits" for preventing chronic disease and promoting longevity.
Sign up here to get on the Wait List for our next Bone Density Course in October 2024!
You will also learn:
- What counts as exercise?
- Does HIIT promote strength or cardiorespiratory endurance or both?
- What is aerobic versus anaerobic conditioning?
- What role does cardiorespiratory fitness play in our strength gains and what role does strength play in our cardiorespiratory fitness gains?
- How strength training, HIIT, and cardio compare when considering the following: typical length of a session, work to rest ratios, relative intensities, common limitations to performance, and the specific adaptations each promotes.
- Is strength enough for health and longevity?
- Is walking conditioning?
- Can the fatigue cost of HIIT interfere with our ability to exercise enough throughout the week?
- What should we pay attention to specifically if we want to build strength with HIIT?
- What’s the best way to structure weekly strength and conditioning workouts, specifically when we want to do both on the same day?
Reference links:
Episode 6: How Much ‘Should” You Exercise
CDC guidelines on exercise
Talk test
High-intensity interval training for health benefits…
Episode 37: Plyometrics—Get More Bang For Your Bones
Episode 46: How Often Should You Strength Trainlll?
Episode 32: Load & Volume…
Episode 9: What Are The Best Exercises for Strength?
Episode 23: Do We Really Need 10,000 Steps…?
Welcome to Season 4 and Episode 60 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this much requested first part of a three-part episode series, Laurel and Sarah discuss the phrase long and lean from a historical and sociological perspective. They cover the idealized image of women through art with a historical gaze, then unpick the narrative around becoming long and lean, how diet and exercise became front and center for this impossible ideal, and where we are today with social media, photoshop, and AI in the mix.
You will learn:
- How bad Medieval artists were at drawing human bodies
- How the Renaissance ideal form was the exact opposite of long and lean
- “Ideal” female forms through the 20th and 21st centuries
- The inherent misogyny, internalized anxiety, and social pressure of long and lean
- Whether the diet and exercise boom of the 1980s had anything to do with health
- Why GOOP is indeed a four letter word
- How ‘problem areas’ keep us busy objectifying our bodies and how this is a feature of our modern capitalist society
And more!
Sign up here to get on the Wait List for our next Bone Density Course in October 2024!
Reference links:
The Toast Looks Back: The Best Of Two Monks
Met Museum
https://greatist.com/grow/100-years-womens-body-image#1
https://www.worldometers.info/weight-loss/
Diet Drugs
Fitness in the 80s
https://fitisafeministissue.com/2014/10/01/cankles-more-broken-body-parts-you-can-feel-bad-about-or-please-lets-just-stop/
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/beauty/fitness-wellbeing/news/a37546/problem-areas-your-body-fat-explained/
Latoya Shauntay Snell
Roz the Diva
Roz was a guest in our podcast - listen here
@fatbodyPikates
Damali Fraiser
Welcome to our supersized Episode 59 of the Movement Logic podcast and the final episode of Season 3! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss certifications for movement professionals. Are they necessary? Are they useful? Do they help promote you, or just the brand? Should you be focusing on it so much?
You will learn:
- Do certifications in the movement industry function to a means to ensure quality control and accountability the way that the equivalent does in a regulated industry
- Do the tests measure meaningful and important qualities of a movement teacher or do they measure what is easy to measure
- What are some drawbacks to certifications
- What are some positive aspects of certifications
- The differences between regulated and unregulated industries
- Does promoting a course as ‘safe’ require any proof in an unregulated industry?
- Can a certification course really claim to be a safer form of movement than any other?
- Why are many teachers looking for certification in their continuing education classes?
- The value of longer form, apprentice/student to teacher/mentor relationship versus a weekend training
- That Yoga Alliance is not the evil overlord that so many seem to think it is
- Does having letters after your name make you more credible or trustworthy?
Episode 48: Alignment Dogma - Pelvis
Episode 54: Alignment Dogma - Spine
Episode 58: Alignment Dogma - Shoulders
Visit our website www.movementlogictutorials.com for more paid and free education!
Get on our mailing list to be kept in the know about upcoming courses.
Welcome to Season 3 and Episode 59 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss dogmatic beliefs and myths around the shoulders from the yoga, Pilates, and strength training worlds. We also discuss how given the fact that shoulder joint is a “complex” of many bones and joints, it’s much more useful that teachers keep their approach to teaching this area as simple as possible (and stop micro-managing their students shoulders!)
You will learn:
- The bones and joints of the shoulder joint complex
- Mant shoulder “fun facts”
- The directions of movement of the shoulder
- What horizontal abduction and adduction are
- What scapular tilt/winging is and why it’s not a problem
- How scapular movement often mirrors where we are reaching our hand to
- What scapulohumeral rhythm is
- That the shoulder blade’s path across the rib cage is curvilinear.
- Simplifying how we talk about shoulder movement and function to either a push or a pull.
- The relationship between shoulder posture and alignment and shoulder pain and injury
- How it’s hard to think scientifically and very human to think un-scientifically
- Why “shoulders back and down” is often (but not always!) an inefficient and counter-productive way to cue the shoulders
- Why micromanaging shoulder posture doesn’t change posture long term.
- Why “fixing” someone’s alignment in chaturanga doesn’t help them acquire the strength they’d need to build to be able to do chaturanga with optimal alignment
- How scapular dyskinesis and scapular winging are different
- The fine line between using movement to solve movement problems (which is inside of a movement teacher’s scope of practice) and then diagnosing problems for students and prescribing movement to fix it (which is outside of a yoga teacher’s scope of practice.)
- How upper and lower cross syndrome is an outdated (but still very influential) model for explaining posture and offering solutions to that posture.
Visit our website www.movementlogictutorials.com for more paid and free education!
Get on our mailing list to be kept in the know about upcoming courses.
Check out our Movement Logic Shoulders Tutorial
Shoulder Girdle Video
Note: we cannot source the origin of this video. If you know the origin, please let us know!
Arthroscopic subacromial decompression for subacromial shoulder pain… randomised surgical trial
Subacromial decompression surgery for rotator cuff disease
Acromiohumeral distance and supraspinatus tendon thickness in people with shoulder impingement syndrome…
Scapular dyskinesis
Welcome to Episode 57 of the Movement Logic podcast. In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss the fact that lifting heavy is not automatically a strength sport and that more people would feel invited to lift heavy if the media didn’t fixate so much on barbells as equipment for large, young, competitive male lifters and instead represented people that look more like everyone else and shared goals beyond competitive ones.
You will learn:
- The difference between powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, body-building, and lifting heavy weights.
- Why large, young men are over-represented in the media’s depiction of lifting heavy weights, and how this has been a deterrent to other groups of people (especially older women) who potentially have more to gain from lifting heavy weights than large, young men do.
- How competitive athletes often have to take their training to extreme levels, but how everyone else who wants to see enormous benefits to their health can train with a far more moderate approach.
- Sarah and Laurel’s first impression of lifting heavy weights growing up.
- How being an elite athlete can often mean sacrificing non-insignificant aspects of health.
- How when women start lifting weights they also start saying no to toxic bullshit in their lives.
- Risk of injury is often higher amongst more experienced/elite lifters.
- How women’s fear of getting “bulky” is understandable given that in our patriarchal society, women are often rewarded for a small and thin appearance.
- Ironically lifting heavy, despite what conventional wisdom might have us believe, is not typically the best way to bulk up.
- Everyone assumes that old age means getting frail, gaining weight, and becoming less capable, but it absolutely does not need to.
- Standing up out of a chair becomes a non-issue if older people are regularly squatting heavy.
Sign up for our Bone Density Course: Lift for Longevity before the October 8th deadline!
A 4-Year Analysis of the Incidence of Injuries Among CrossFit-Trained Participants
Episode 1: Movement vs Exercise vs Sport
Episode 16: Training the Non-Traditional Athlete with Rosalyn Mayse, AKA Roz the Diva
Episode 45: Injury and Safety in Strength and Yoga
Episode 11: Let's Stop Fragilifying Older People Already
Does Menopause Cause Weight Gain?
Welcome to Episode 56 of the Movement Logic podcast. In this episode, Sarah is talking about hypermobility, and what if any connection exists between hypermobility and osteoporosis.
You will learn:
- Hypermobility, EDS, and Marfan’s Syndrome, explained
- Is there any agreement in the research around hypermobility and osteoporosis
- Why research quality always matters when we’re trying to determine a connection between conditions
- What does ‘statistically significant’ mean and why it matters for research
- What criteria matter when we’re looking at research studies
- Why hypermobile people should be lifting heavy weights, regardless of what the research shows
Alison Lloyd Instagram
Prevalence of generalized joint hypermobility, musculoskeletal injuries, and chronic musculoskeletal pain among American university students
Beighton Scale
Hospital Del Mar Scale
Ehlers-Danlos Society
The Marfan Foundation
Hypermobility syndrome increases the risk for low bone mass
The Relationship of Joint Hypermobility, Bone Mineral Density, and Osteoarthritis in the General Population:The Chingford Study
Ultrasonographic, axial, and peripheral measurements in female patients with benign hypermobility syndromeBone Disease in Patients with Ehlers-Danlos SyndromesSign up for our Bone Density Course: Lift for Longevity before the October 8th deadline!
Welcome to Episode 55 of the Movement Logic podcast. In this episode, Laurel answers two questions that she gets regularly from folks online. They are: How can I get started with strength training? And, how can I “learn more about” strength training? Spoiler: the best way to get started with strength training (the doing and the teaching) is by…wait for it…strength training!
In this episode you will learn:
- The three most important elements of strength training—exercise technique, programming, and coaching.
- Why yoga and Pilates teachers are already generally well-versed in exercise technique, but without the added component of external load and the goal of strength.
- Yoga and Pilates teachers are typically not well-versed in programming, which is how we apply the principle of progressive overload to work toward building strength.
- Coaching is key for deep understanding of both exercise technique and programming.
- Laurel’s evolution from teaching yoga to becoming a strength coach.
- The plusses, minuses and trade-offs of DIY program templates, group classes, one-on-ones, and more.
- How yoga and Pilates teachers are accustomed to learning in a live, follow along format, and given then, how it can be a rude awakening to discover that programs in strength are often delivered in PDF format and personal trainer certifications mostly ask you to read a textbook and pass a test.
- Why personal trainer certifications do not provide very much practical know-how for how to be a personal trainer.
- How the Bone Density Course: Lift for Longevity delivers on the three most important elements of getting started with strength and learning about strength training—exercise technique, programming, and coaching.
- How the CSCS is widely considered the gold standard of personal trainer certifications but that it almost exclusively caters to competitive athletes (who make up a fraction of people who resistance train.)
- How being a dedicated student of the thing you eventually want to teach is the most valuable way to prepare yourself to actually teach something.
- How strength is defined, the systems in the body involved, and what the main adaptations (or changes) to your body are when you build strength.
- That we can be strong in many ways,so it’s helpful to have a specific performance goal.
- Why specific, performance goals are the best way to reach health and aesthetic goals.
Sign up for our free info session all about our Bone Density Course: Lift for Longevity Thursday, Sep. 22nd 12 PT/ 3 ET
Sign up for our Bone Density Course: Lift for Longevity before the October 8th deadline! We won’t be offering this for another year.
The NSCA textbook is used to study for the CSCS - Essentials of Strength and Conditioning
Effect of Online Home-Based Resistance Exercise Training on Physical Fitness, Depression, Stress…
Association of Efficacy of Resistance Exercise Training With Depressive Symptoms…
Welcome to Season 3 and Episode 54 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss dogmatic beliefs and myths around the lower back, upper back, and neck from the yoga, Pilates, and strength training worlds.
You will learn:
- That the spine is made up of over 360 joints so maybe we should move it in all the ways (instead of keep it neutral all the time).
- That people are really bad at determining what position the spine is in just by observing (says research).
- That movement variety and movement preparation > “fixing” someone's alignment in a movement.
- Most yoga teachers never learn how to help their students progressively overload the strength they'd need to actually do the poses they teach.
- Pain causes people to adopt certain postures, but then what happens is people often flip this in their mind and say that it's the person's suboptimal posture that caused them the pain.
- Posture neither causes nor predicts pain (says science.)
- Lumbar flexion is demonized while sitting (don’t schlump) or bending forward (don’t round your back!) but research has been unable to connect flexing the lumbar spine in these scenarios with low back pain or injury.
- Deadlifting and squatting have been fearmongered to people who flex their lumbar spines in these exercises, but laboratory equipment has shown that even when it looks like someone has a neutral spine in these exercises, their lumbar spine is actually quite flexed.
- Any exercise is better than no exercise for low back pain, but no particular exercise is better than any other for low back pain.
- Why thoracic/upper back “hyper” kyphosis (a rounded upper back) is not a pathology.
- That back-bending is probably just flat bending in the thoracic spine.
- That “tech neck” does not predict neck pain.
- The neck is not a crane, and so we cannot apply the same physics to predict how a forward neck will respond to holding the load of the head forward of the body that we’d use to predict how a crane will respond to holding a load forward of its foundation.
- People who force their necks to be neutral have more pain than people with tech neck posture.
Sign up here for the Live Strength Training Webinar on Sept 14th with 30 day replay
Research mentioned in this episode:
Spinal Degeneration in Asymptomatic Populations
Intervertebral disc herniation: studies on a porcine model
To flex or not to flex? Is there a relationship between lumbar spine flexion during lifting and low back pain?
Arthrogenic neuromusculature inhibition: A foundational investigation of existence in the hip joint
Effects of load on good morning kinematics and EMG activity
Posture and time spent using a smartphone are not correlated with neck pain
Is neck posture subgroup in late adolescence a risk factor for persistent neck pain in young adults?
Welcome to Episode 53 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah and Laurel dissect a few research papers that studied the effects of various rest periods between loading bone, and how these rest periods can impact the efficacy of our bone density building.
You will learn:
- Osteoblasts and osteoclasts, defined
- Why bone building reminds Sarah of Fraggle Rock
- What does your bones’ mechanosensitivity have to do with its response to load
- Why bone cells remind Laurel of herself (they’re easily bored)
- What parameters create an osteogenic response in bone cells
- Why yoga, Pilates, and other bodyweight exercise will never be enough to generate progressive bone building
- What makes a good study (hint: having a control group matters)
- What is cellular accommodation and why does it rely on path dependence
- Where bones get the most input for the changes they make
- How do we take advantage of periodization and programming for greatest effect
- What is a training block and how should you use it for your workouts
Sign up here for the Live Strength Training Webinar on Sept 14th with 30 day replay
Cellular accommodation and the response of bone to mechanical loading
Mechanosensitivity of the rat skeleton decreases after a long period of loading, but is improved with time off
Recovery periods restore mechanosensitivity to dynamically loaded bone
Welcome to Season 3, Episode 52 of the Movement Logic podcast. In this episode, Laurel and Sarah are joined by seven other guests for a panoramic, multi-perspective answer to the question “why don't more women lift weights?” Our seven guests (all of whom are movement professionals) weigh in on their previous objections to strength training. Of course they also share their impetus for starting to lift, and how it changed their lives.
Sign up here for the Live Strength Training Webinar on Sept 14th with 30 day replay.
Sign up here for our Free Barbell Mini-Course + our Free Barbell Equipment Guide
Our guests on Instagram:
Maryann Thompson @maryannthomsonpilates
Diana Romero @insprana.yoga
Naomi Gottlieb-Miller @conscioushealthymama
Lisa Schwarcz Zlotnick @lisazlotnick
Kathy Dodd @kdnaturalyoga
Trina Altman @trinaaltman
Alex Ellis on Instagram @hollaformala on Tik Tok @aewellness
Episode 47: Our Oopsie Stories from the Teaching Trenches
Sarah’s barbell equipment Post 1 and Post 2 on Instagram
Books about fitness culture:
Deconstructing the Fitness-Industrial Complex: How to Resist, Disrupt, and Reclaim What It Means to Be Fit in American Culture
Butts: A Backstory
Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession
Welcome to Episode 51 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss myths around osteoporosis and osteopenia, including why yoga and Pilates are poor choices for bone building (yes, we’ll talk about THAT study, again) and ultimately how weight training and impact training are both safe options when applied with the proper dosage and programming.
You will learn:
- Osteoporosis and osteopenia, defined
- Why so many people with osteoporosis are afraid of falling
- What the fear-mongering messaging around osteoporosis is disempowering people with osteoporosis
- Why strength training is not only tolerable for people with osteoporosis, it’s essential
- How no progressive overload in weight training is like staying in kindergarten forever
- Why the myth that yoga reverses osteoporosis from the Fishman study prevails to this day, and why this is proof that we need to keep a critical eye about research
- Why the Fishman paper does not prove what it claims to prove
- How yoga asana might help bone density for a very short time, but strength and impact training are your best bets overall
- What is cellular accommodation and what does it mean for your bone density building
- Types of movement classes for osteoporosis and their respective claims around their safety and efficacy
- Is Osteosteong a good choice to build bone density?
- Do Osteostrong’s claims match up with what research has found so far?
And more!
Sign up here for the Live Strength Training Webinar on Sept 14th with 30 day replay
Episode 5 Does Yoga Asana Build Bone Density?
Episode 38 Got Bones? Yoga Asana Isn’t Enough
Twelve-Minute Daily Yoga Regimen Reverses Osteoporotic Bone Loss
https://osteostrongla.com/
BonES Lab at University of Waterloo Video Questions Efficacy of Osteostrong Program
Is OSTEOSTRONG Misleading Vulnerable People Regarding Claims of High Increases in Bone Density?High-Intensity Resistance and Impact Training Improves Bone Mineral Density and Physical Function in Postmenopausal Women With Osteopenia and Osteoporosis: The LIFTMOR Randomized Controlled Trial
In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss bracing and breathing. Why are we all so confused about our breathing mechanics and convinced we’re doing it wrong, no matter what we’re doing? When is the right (and wrong) time to brace when lifting something? What’s the difference between bracing and bearing down? And is navel to spine even doing what we think it’s doing?
You will learn:
- Is there a right and a wrong way to breathe
- How social media influences our sense of right and wrong breathing
- Breathing vs bracing in yoga, Pilates, and strength training
- Common postural tension that can impact breathing
- Sarah’s favorite injury
- How Sarah teaches breathing in the clinic
- Anatomy of breathing
- What bracing for a heavy lift actually entails (hint: it’s not bearing down)
- When to use bracing in strength training
- The value of trunk stability and what navel to spine is actually doing
- Whether pranayama techniques should be done all the time
- How to cue diaphragmatic breathing
- Whether pranayama is the most efficient way to challenge the cardiovascular system and increase breath capacity
And more!
Sign up here for the Live Strength Training Webinar on Sept 14th 10am PT/1pm ET with 30 day replay
Season 1 Episode 10 Is there a Right and a Wrong Way to Breathe?
Season 1 Episode 19 Oh NO! Nose Breathing and Nitric Oxide
Email Apnea article
Welcome to Season 3 and Episode 49 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss the common tendency for people (not just women) to under load when lifting weights to build muscle and strength. In fact, it’s likely a slight majority of people in the gym are either not lifting heavy enough or taking sets close enough to failure to make changes to their muscle mass or strength!
You will learn:
- If left to their own devices, the average lifter gravitates toward sets of 10 with 50-55% of a 1 repetition max, which would not be stimulating enough to make a change to muscle mass or hypertrophy.
- That research has shown people are likely to leave too many reps in reserve (ending the set too soon) and why this will not make your muscles bigger or your body stronger.
- That research has shown that a slight majority of people select weights that are too light for a given rep range and why this will not make your muscles bigger or your body stronger.
- That if a slight majority of people with access to a fully equipped gym are prone to underloading, then people working out at home with more limited equipment might be even more prone to underloading.
- How heavy, moderate, and light loads are defined according to exercise science.
- A working definition of “serious lifters” which is people who track their workouts and correctly apply the principle of progressive overload to their training protocol. AKA, people who see results from their training!
- How laundry detergent can explain why people are so stuck on doing 3 sets of 10.
- How strength training is a lot like yoga in that it is literally ALL about listening to your body.
- How feelings can explain the tendency to underload, like avoiding feelings of discomfort or avoiding feeling embarrassed if you cannot lift a weight successfully.
- Getting close to failure is key for success in strength training.
- That healthy boundaries for women includes learning your no, but also learning your yes, especially when it comes to saying yes to loading sufficiently to build muscular strength and bone density.
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Article by Stronger By Science - Most Lifters Train Too Light
Self-Selected Resistance Exercise Load: Implications for Research and Prescription
Are Trainees Lifting Heavy Enough? Self-Selected Loads in Resistance Exercise: A Scoping Review and Exploratory Meta-analysis
Episode 32: Load & Volume: When is Enough Enough? When is it Too Much?
Episode 39: RPE, 1 RM, 3 sets of 10, oh my?
Welcome to Season 3 and Episode 48 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss dogmatic beliefs and myths around the pelvis from the yoga, Pilates, and strength training worlds. We also discuss how correlating pelvic position with safety or pain is not backed by research, and thus what value teaching pelvic alignment may or may not have.
You will learn:
- Natural variations on the AFAB and AMAB pelvises
- How there’s a variety of ideas on where neutral pelvis is, which tells us that nobody knows what a neutral pelvis actually is
- That anterior pelvic tilt is not a pathology and we need to stop acting like it is
- Alignment cueing has value - let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater
- What place does mula bandha have in our pelvis
- Literally, where is mula bandha as there seems to be no agreement
- Is “butt wink” a bad thing or an inevitable thing?
- What does “navel to spine” actually do to the pelvis
- Ultimately, how should we be thinking about our students’ pelvic alignment and how much do we need to be doing about it
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Laurel's Body of Knowledge Course
Movement Logic Hip and SI Joint Tutorial
Movement Logic Pelvic Floor Tutorial
4 Types of AFAB Pelvis
Paul Grilley Bone Images
IG post comparing Sarah and Laurel’s internal and external hip rotation
Matthew Remski’s Practice And All Is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics, And Healing In Yoga And Beyond uncovers rape and sexual assault by Ashtanga Yoga’s creator Pattahbi Jois on his teachers and students
Study showing 75-85% of people have anterior pelvic tilt and no pain
Anterior tilt not correlated with low back pain
Lumbar lordosis not correlated with low back pain
Welcome to Episode 47 of the Movement Logic Podcast—our last episode of season 3!
In this episode, Laurel and Sarah reflect on their most cringe stories from the teaching trenches and the big and small lessons they learned from them. You will belly laugh at their mistakes, and also learn vicariously through them!.
DISCLAIMER: the language in this episode gets a little salty so you may want to listen when there are no children around.
You will learn:
- That making mistakes is a crucial part of getting better at something, and in fact if you aren’t making mistakes, you probably aren’t learning as much as you could be.
- Why Laurel dislikes the phrase “in the trenches” to describe teaching weekly classes or privates.
- Why the only way to learn how to teach skillfully is to teach—and there will (or must be) mistakes!
- The difference between people who are excellent versus mediocre at something often comes down to how many mistakes they made—people who are excellent at what they do have often made a lot of mistakes and have learned from them!
- What Sarah’s oopsie taught her about what she was looking for in a studio to teach for, as well as what kind of teacher she actually wanted to be.
- How the concept of somatic dominance helps both Laurel and Sarah better understand their mistakes in retrospect, and how much the yoga and fitness community has changed (and hopefully continues to change) on a systemic level since.
- Mistakes often involve multiple different lessons, some of which can be learned immediately, and others that might take years or decades for us to realize.
- That shame is a normal human emotion, we can experience shame while also not letting it shape our identity and prevent us from learning and growing.
- The mistake that taught Laurel she was teaching people not poses.
- How making big mistakes can sometimes fast track really important lessons that might have otherwise taken much longer to learn.
- How story-telling can transform shame and help you process what happened in a healthy way.
Episode 36: Somatic Dominance
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Welcome to Episode 46 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel discusses frequency, or how often to strength train per week. Laurel unpacks the concept of frequency its relationship to volume, as well as what research suggests is the “minimal effective dose” to get certain benefits from resistance training, like increased longevity and strength. By the end of this episode you will understand why workout frequency matters enormously, but why it cannot matter separately from weekly volume or the individual who is training.
You will also learn:
- Why the common prescription for frequency—3x/week—is empty advice devoid of context to make it useful.
- Why any amount of resistance training is better than none (according to research).
- What the minimal effective dose of resistance training is for older adults (people over age 65), and what amount might be too much.
- Why it’s important to control for volume when researching workout frequency and its role in strength.
- Why there’s no right optimal dose of volume or frequency for everyone.
- Why fatigue and recovery play an important role in determining optimal training volume and frequency.
- That science still can’t point confidently to specific causes of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).
- What types of individuals, muscle groups, and workouts might require more recovery time than others.
- How to use frequency to increase volume in a safe way.
- How maintaining strength is different from increasing it, and what research shows is enough volume to maintain the strength you've built if you have to spend time away from training.
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Essentials of Strength and Conditioning
Chris Beardsley Articles
What determines training frequency?
What is training volume?
How does training volume affect muscle growth?
What causes delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS)?
Stronger By Science Articles
Training Frequency for Strength Development: What the Data Say
What is the optimal dose of resistance training for longevity?
A Guide to Detraining: What to Expect, How to Mitigate Losses, and How to Get Back to Full Strength
Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - General Physical Activity Guidelines
Welcome to Episode 45 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah talk about pain, injury, and safety in strength and yoga. We discuss what an injury is and how definitions of injury differ in research. We also discuss pain and how it is different (but also overlaps) with injury. Then we look at what research suggests about the overall likelihood of sustaining an injury in strength training and yoga. We’ll also discuss what safety is from a health standpoint, and about the relative risks to our safety that exercise versus being sedentary present. Toward the end of the episode, we offer you some valuable tips to “stay safe out there people” with strength training especially if you are just getting started.
You will learn:
- The difference between overuse vs. a traumatic injury
- How pain does not always indicate that there is an injury
- How injury does not always mean that there will be pain
- How the variety reasons it’s difficult to make conclusive statements about how injury occurs in exercise
- The difference between acute vs. chronic pain
- Why normalizing pain might be a more effective way to reduce pain than communicating that pain is abnormal and always something to avoid
- How many people conflate the perception of effort with pain
- Sarah’s experience working with clients with a team of doctors giving them contradictory advice about exercise.
- How research unequivocally suggests that the benefits of exercise outweigh the risks of being sedentary
- Why alignment in exercise is often less important than tissue capacity via adequate preparedness
- The markers of physical fitness and which we target in yoga vs. strength training, as well as how neither improve cardiorespiratory fitness (meanwhile cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide.)
- What “failure” versus “technical failure” is and how maintaining an appropriate distance from failure is important.
- How to use RIR (reps in reserve) as well as RPE (rating of perceived exertion) to avoid pain and injury with strength training.
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Papers
Are Injuries More Common with CrossFit Training Than Other Forms of Exercise?
A 4-Year Analysis of the Incidence of Injuries Among CrossFit-Trained Participants
Relative Safety of Weightlifting and Weight Training
The Safety of Yoga: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
CDC - General Physical Activity Guidelines
Stronger by Science - The Science of Autoregulation
Welcome to Episode 44 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah and Laurel talk all about their favorite strength training equipment: the barbell! Why do so many people (including Sarah until very recently) have such a mental block around creating a barbell set up at home?
We also discuss:
- How you will need to move to barbells if you want to continue to strength training for injury prevention, bone density, and lean muscle mass
- How barbells are not an “advanced” training equipment but in fact easier to use than kettlebells
- How a home barbell set up can be cheaper than you think
- How a home barbell set up can be more space saving than you think
- What you need to get and why
- Online and local purchasing options to save money
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Extreme Training Equipment (LA County Equipment Supplier)
Offer Up
Craigs list
Welcome to Episode 43 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode Laurel sits down to talk with nutritional scientist, Dr. Ben House, PhD who has been working in nutrition and fitness for over 15 years, and has published many articles in peer reviewed, scientific journals. In their conversation, Ben and Laurel talk about the intersection between nutrition and fitness, specifically for women between the ages of 40-65 who may exercise and eat with a number of related (but different) goals like performance, health, and aesthetics.
You will learn:
- Why food fear spreads like wildfire on the internet
- Why Paleo, Keto, carnivore diets, and veganism have more in common than they have different.
- That muscle can prevent hyperglycemia and inflammation.
- The difference between macro and micro nutrition.
- How the energy from food (listed on food labels) does not correspond with how your body metabolizes and gets energy from that food.
- That low carb diets, like keto go back to the mid 1800s and then resurge every couple of decades.
- That body-building is not just about aesthetics.
- Why thinner is not automatically healthier and what the “cost of leanness” is.
- How fat is responsible for the evolutionary success of humans.
- What sarcopenic obesity is.
- What apophenia is and how it is responsible for lots of myths about weight gain and menopause.
- Why 8,000 steps/day and the CDC’s physical activity guidelines will move the needle a lot further than Andrew Huberman’s litany of “protocols”.
- Ben’s research-supported recommendations for daily dietary intake.
- What body recomposition is and how it could help people maintain weight loss.
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Article in New York Times - What We Think About Metabolism May Be Wrong
Articles on Deconstruct Nutrition:
How Bad are we at Calorie Math?
Does Menopause Cause Weight Gain?
What Percentage of Americans Are Metabolically Healthy?
Articles in Stronger by Science:
Stay Shredded
Research Spotlight on Metabolic Rate
Dr. House’s Nutrition Course - https://broresearch.com/
Welcome to Episode 42 of the Movement Logic podcast! Laurel goes it alone this episode to unpack six common myths that still inform the way movement teachers and even clinicians think about and talk about the body, to potentially harmful effect.
You will learn about:
- The Magical Low Back Exercise Myth
- The Poor Body Design Myth
- The Posture Predicts Pain Myth
- The Scapegoated Isolated Muscle Myth
- The Fragilista Warning Label Myth
- The Muscles As Modeling Clay Myth
- How questioning your own beliefs as a teacher helps you be a better teacher.
- How challenging your student’s beliefs may not be as productive as actively listening to them, and creating motivating, positive, and enjoyable movement experiences for them.
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Book Explain Pain to recommend for your clients
Papers
Does unequal leg length cause back pain?
No relationship between the acromiohumeral distance and pain in adults with subacromial pain syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Paul Ingraham -
The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain
Should We Stop Teaching Yoga for Low Back Pain?
Complete Guide to Plantar Fasciitis
Physio Network -
The McKenzie method for (sub)acute non-specific low back pain
Posture and time spent using a smartphone are not correlated with neck pain and disability in young adults: a cross-sectional study
Is neck posture subgroup in late adolescence a risk factor for persistent neck pain…
Greg Lehman - Do our patients need fixing? Or do they need a bigger cup? and How to Better Treat “Shoulder Impingement”
Ian Griffiths - The myths of foot orthoses
Julie Weibe - To Kegel or Not to Kegel?
Welcome to Episode 41 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this solo ride, Sarah gets even deeper into the ins and outs of motor learning. Specifically, further components that can be easily brought into your class to help your students’ and clients’ motor learning.
You will learn:
- What is motor learning (a brief review)
- Motor learning stages: cognitive, associative, automatic
- 3 New methods to improve motor learning separate from cueing
- How Harry Styles' dancers displayed phenomenal skill at dealing with contextual interference at the Grammys this year
And more!
SITE WIDE SALE ON NOW!
Sarah Court Motor Learning Presentation
How to Dance the Funky Chicken
Harry Styles Grammy Performance 2023
Welcome to Episode 40 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this fourth BONUS episode about cueing, Sarah sits down with Trina Altman to discuss the role creativity can and should play in our cues.
You will learn::
- What are the essential components of creativity
- How teaching is an inherently creative occupation
- Using constraints to develop creativity in movement
- The freedom of giving yourself permission to use what’s available in novel ways
- Why simple cueing trumps flowery cueing for students
- How your other movement methodologies can refresh your using language
- Why the best solution is the simplest solution most of the time
- Why showing up as yourself is the most creative act you can do as a teacher
- The value in teaching the same sequence multiple times to the same group
- How studying a different modality can refresh your creativity in your teaching and cueing
SITE WIDE SALE ON NOW!
Study with Trina Altman
Welcome to Episode 39 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah takes a trip back in time to find out: Where did the ubiquitous 3x10 come from? It’s a wild ride that takes her down more than one rabbit hole and brings us face to face with 1RM, RPE, RIR, and everything else with an R in it.
You will learn:
- Where did the 3 x 10 protocol come from
- How 3 x 10 has changed over time, in a significant departure from what it originally contained: progressive overload
- How long held beliefs around effort level and pain created a rehab emphasis on volume over effort
- Where RPE came from
- The RPE - RIR relationship
- Pros and Cons of using RPE - RIR versus 1RM in your strength training
And more!
3 Sets x 10 Reps The History Logic and Reasoning on Physical Culture Study Website
Thomas L DeLorme and the science of progressive resistive exercise (abstract)
Progressive Resistance Exercise excerpts on Dave Draper Website
Exercise in Education and Medicine by R. Tait McKenzie (full digital download)
RPE In Powerlifting on Progressive Rehab And Strength Website
RPE vs Percentage Based Training Explained on Barbend Website
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Welcome to Episode 38 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode about bone density, Sarah and Laurel talk all about what kinds of exercise are indicated by research to improve bone density, and almost more importantly: what isn’t (including yoga).
We also discuss:
- What is bone density and how do we measure it
- Why women are at more risk for fracture than men, especially following menopause
- How to interpret DEXA scan results and its relationship to fracture risk
- What lifestyle and medical factors can contribute to bone density loss (osteopenia and osteoporosis)
- Why so many people believe that yoga can improve or reverse osteoporosis
- How an often-repeated yet very flawed study convinced a lot of people that claim about yoga
- How the media coverage of this study contributed to the problem
- How heavy weight training and impact training are proven to improve bone density
- What other exercises may or may not possess the necessary qualities to improve bone density
12-Minute Daily Yoga Regimen Reverses Bone Loss
LIFTMOR Study
Video of women doing LIFTMOR Intervention
1 RM calculator
Harvard Health Article
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Welcome to Episode 37 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah talk about the connection between plyometrics, impact training, and bone building.
You will learn:
- The difference between plyometrics and impact training.
- What we need to consider if we are using plyometrics and/or impact training to increase bone density.
- What the stretch-shortening cycle is and why it is important for plyometric exercise.
- The phases of the stretch-shortening cycle, and why the amortization phase must be short for an exercise to be plyometric.
- The differences and similarities between ballistic exercises and plyometric exercises (according to scientific and non-scientific sources).
- The mechanical and neurophysiological components of the stretch-shortening cycle.
- Exercises that utilize the stretch-shortening cycle and whether or not they are conducive to bone-building.
- Exercises that are not plyometric, but still build bone density.
- How to modulate intensity in plyometric exercise.
- What the appropriate volume is for plyometric exercise for beginners.
LIFTMOR Study
Video of women doing LIFTMOR Intervention
Essentials of Strength and Conditioning
James Lederach, MS, CSCS on Instagram
James Lederach’s gym Heavy Athletics
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Welcome to Episode 36 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this listener-requested episode, Sarah and Laurel discuss somatic dominance, a phrase coined by author Matthew Remski to describe the manner in which teachers of movement, and yoga specifically, can come to exert control over their students, and the potential for abuse of this control.
Content Warning: This episode contains references to physical and sexual abuse.
We discuss:
- The definition of somatic dominance
- How some teachers use somatic influence, purposefully or not
- Sarah’s experiences as a Jivamukti Yoga teacher and practitioner, including the famously aggressive physical adjustments, the culture of explaining away behaviors and pain as karma, and whether Jivamukti Yoga can be considered “cult-lite”
- How we can all monitor and adjust our teaching methodology to avoid unconsciously creating unwanted somatic influence over our students
Matthew Remski book: Practice and All is Coming
Remski article on Sharon Gannon’s Somatic Dominance
Conspirituality Podcast
Remski article on Michael Roach, Christie McNally and Ian Thorson
NY Times article: Michael Roach and Christie McNally
NY Times article: Diamond Mountain University and death of Ian Thorson
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Welcome to Episode 35 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode Laurel sits down to talk with an old friend and colleague Dr. Caitlin Casella, DPT. In their conversation, Caitlin shares about her journey from yoga teacher to movement teacher to physical therapist. Laurel and Caitlin get into a multi-faceted discussion around the goals of rehabilitation, and how unfortunately sometimes the rehab process can fall short in fully preparing people to get back to the activities of their life after injury. Laurel & Caitlin discuss why this happens, and then ways that Caitlin works to help her patients better bridge the gap between rehab and getting back to the activities that give their lives meaning.
You will also learn:
- What exercise intensity is and how, as a physical therapist, Caitlin gauges the appropriate intensity for her patients, which tends to be a lot higher than they expect!
- What the concept of graded exposure is and how it’s both similar and different from the concept of progressive overload.
- What it means to see the human body through an anti-fragile lens.
- How the beliefs people have about their joints like “I have bad knees” or “there will be wear and tear” has made people afraid of exercise and rehab modalities like strength training and impact loading.
- How Caitlin works with two types of people: those who get hurt because they did too much too soon, versus people who get hurt because they are deconditioned.
- That working with some level of pain is better than movement avoidance, a sedentary lifestyle, and the deconditioning that brings.
- How Caitlin motivates patients to get moving even with some amount of pain.
Caitlin’s PT clinic in NYC Practice Human Physical Therapy
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Welcome to Episode 35 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode Laurel sits down to talk with an old friend and colleague Dr. Caitlin Casella, DPT. In their conversation, Caitlin shares about her journey from yoga teacher to movement teacher to physical therapist. Laurel and Caitlin get into a multi-faceted discussion around the goals of rehabilitation, and how unfortunately sometimes the rehab process can fall short in fully preparing people to get back to the activities of their life after injury. Laurel & Caitlin discuss why this happens, and then ways that Caitlin works to help her patients better bridge the gap between rehab and getting back to the activities that give their lives meaning.
You will also learn:
- What exercise intensity is and how, as a physical therapist, Caitlin gauges the appropriate intensity for her patients, which tends to be a lot higher than they expect!
- What the concept of graded exposure is and how it’s both similar and different from the concept of progressive overload.
- What it means to see the human body through an anti-fragile lens.
- How the beliefs people have about their joints like “I have bad knees” or “there will be wear and tear” has made people afraid of exercise and rehab modalities like strength training and impact loading.
- How Caitlin works with two types of people: those who get hurt because they did too much too soon, versus people who get hurt because they are deconditioned.
- That working with some level of pain is better than movement avoidance, a sedentary lifestyle, and the deconditioning that brings.
- How Caitlin motivates patients to get moving even with some amount of pain.
Caitlin’s PT clinic in NYC Practice Human Physical Therapy
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Welcome to Episode 34 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this third episode about cueing, Sarah and Laurel discuss a specific subset (that’s a circle within a circle) of cues: feedback. Namely, we focus on when and how your feedback cues to your yoga, movement, and strength training clients can be most effective, and how there’s a strong chance you’re not helping them with that all important goal: motor learning.
We also discuss:
- The three stages of motor learning that all practitioners of movement are going through, whether they know it or not
- How the timing of your feedback may be the most important part (possibly even more than the content)
- In what ways your current feedback habits could be getting in the way of your students’ learning (it’s not your fault!)
- What three components you should pay attention to when you are giving feedback
- How to transform your “motor performers” back into “motor learners”
Sarah’s Motor Learning Presentation
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Welcome to Episode 33 of the Movement Logic podcast! Today, Sarah is flying solo - good thing she’s spent a lot of time working on her balance. We tend to think of balance as a precision activity to strive for, but in this episode, Sarah flips the script and shows you why balance is a non-falling event.
You will learn:
- The 3 systems in the body that contribute to balance
- The difference between static and dynamic balance, and which is more important
- What types of exercise improve functional balance, and which don’t (you might be surprised)
- The real reason older clients are afraid of falling
- How to challenge the 3 balance systems for your clients and students in a fun and playful way
- Why Sarah is obstacle course obsessed!
Balance System Challenge Table
Movement Logic Hips Tutorial currently on sale - 25% off!
Sarah’s Obstacle Course Demonstration
Long-term strength and balance training in prevention of decline in muscle strength and mobility in older adults
Lower-extremity resistance training on unstable surfaces improves proxies of muscle strength, power and balance in healthy older adults: a randomised control trial
Welcome to Season 2 and Episode 32 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel discusses a topic that is important but poorly understood—training volume. Too much too soon leads to pain, injury, and burnout. Too little too late leads to frustrating plateaus and boredom. It’s important to understand volume, as well as its relationship to load, progressive loading, and changing up our strength training routine with well-timed variety. In this episode, Laurel also discusses:
- The concept of load is not new to folks interested in strength training, but the concept of volume may be.
- Why understanding volume is important for beginners who end up doing too much too soon and more advanced lifters who plateau and don’t know why.
- How understanding load and volume can ensure we’ve allowed adequate time to recover.
- What intensity is and the difference between intensity of load and intensity of effort.
- What fatigue is and what it isn’t.
- What volume is and how it’s defined.
- What work capacity is—how it’s like a sink—and how it’s a bigger topic than strength.
- The role variety plays in keeping our body responsive to a strength stimulus so we can continue driving adaptations toward increased strength and work capacity.
Episode 29: Pink Dumbbells and the Shrinking Female Body
A 1RM chart to determine intensity of load
The Science of Autoregulation, on strongerbyscience.com all about measuring intensity of effort using RPE and reps in reserve
How to Increase Work Capacity and Bust Through Plateaus, by Greg Nuckols on strongerbyscience.com
What is Training Volume? by Chris Beardsley
Strength Training Frequency, by Paul Ingraham
Episode 9: What Are the Best Exercises for Strength?
Listeners can use code PODCAST20 for half off your first month of membership to Laurel’s Virtual Studio. More details here.
Get the Movement Logic Hip & SI Joint Tutorial ON SALE NOW (save over 20%)
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Welcome to Season 2 and Episode 31 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss three types of cues movement teachers like yoga teachers and strength coaches use—verbal, visual, and tactile cues. Namely, we look at the differences between these three ways of cueing, and the plusses and minuses of all three types. We also discuss:
- What deeper understanding we need to have about our students as well as the movement we’re teaching before we cue at all
- What a verbal, versus a visual, versus tactile cue is.
- The timing of verbal cues and how it relates to motor learning.
- A debate in the yoga community about whether or not teaching using verbal cues (only or predominantly) is preferable to demoing while teaching.
- How Laurel & Sarah’s teaching has changed with respect to cueing.
- Different ways of stage and contextualize a demo.
- Why highlighting the difference between what a movement looks like versus what it feels like can be helpful.
- Whether to use first person or second person pronouns (or even to talk at all!) while demoing.
- 3 main ways you can give tactile cues, tips for teachers when giving tactile cues, and the benefits and drawbacks of each way of giving tactile cues.
- Why obtaining consent is crucial before touching students.
- The perils of “creepy hands”.
- How trying to teach too many things means not teaching much at all.
- The importance of using multiple types of cues—verbal, visual, and tactile—and aligning them toward a clear movement goal.
Sarah’s Motor Learning Presentation
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Mastering Physical Literacy with Dr. Chris Raynor, MD
Welcome to Episode 30 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah is joined by Dr. Chris Raynor, orthopedic surgeon, sports medicine specialist, and founder of Human 2.0, an integrated healthcare and fitness facility in Ottawa that holds a “Movement Is Medicine” philosophy.
Sarah and Chris discuss how he managed to avoid surgeon stereotypes, why avoiding pain at all costs is not the answer, how to determine if surgery is the right approach, PLUS your Instagram questions answered!
- The difference between discomfort and pain, our tendencies to interpret all pain the same way, and the need to better interpret this “low level language” to make better movement choices
- Whether myofascial manual techniques are really making as much difference as we think they are
- How and when he steers patients away from surgery and towards strength and mobility work instead
- The frustrations he faces with non-musculoskeletal doctors who instill fear of movement in their patients through their own lack of knowledge
- How the conservative world of orthopedic surgeons is slowly changing with the newer generations to emphasize mobility and strength for themselves and their patients
Human 2.0
Dr. Raynor’s YouTube Channel
StableKneez (Dr. Raynor on Instagram)
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Welcome to Season 2 and Episode 29 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss the cues movement teachers like yoga teachers and strength coaches use, and then what research has to say about them. Namely, we look at the difference between internal and external cues, and what both types of cues are good for. We also discuss:
- What motor learning is and how it’s different from motor performance.
- What motor learning versus motor performance look like in the context of teaching and learning movement.
- What attentional focus is and how attentional focus affects motor learning.
- The difference between internal and external cues and what specifically defines them.
- Which type of cue is better for enhancing sport performance.
- What the mind muscle connection is and how it can enhance muscle growth.
- How internal cues can enhance the mind muscle connection.
- How the goals of yoga are different from the goals of athletics, or even the goal of improving skill within the asanas, and why that matters for the cues we use.
- Why internal cues have value both within the context of yoga and rehabilitation.
- Whether metaphor and analogy are internal or external cues.
- Tactile cues and what category they live in—internal or external cues.
- Constraints and what category they live in—internal or external cues.
- Lots of example cues in the context of yoga, strength, and kettlebells that illustrate the nuances between these different types of cues.
Attentional Focus and Motor Learning study
Enhancing the learning of sport skills through external-focus feedback study
Standing Long Jump Performance With an External Focus of Attention Is Improved as a Result of a More Effective Projection Angle study
The Language of Coaching book
Internal Cues Don’t Affect Muscle Activation With Explosive Lifting article, by Greg Nuckols
Can the Mind Muscle Connection Enhance Hypertrophy article, by Chris Beardsley
Amanda Tripp website
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Welcome to Season 2 and Episode 28 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss how women have been hoodwinked into believing that strength training is not for them - when in fact it’s the most protective and valuable training for women to do, in particular for bone density for women post-menopause.
- The history of weightlifting and bodybuilding in the US, including the influence of Jack LaLanne and Arnold Schwarzenegger
- How the myths of “lifting weights make you bulky” and “you’ll injure yourself if you lift weights” are deeply detrimental to women’s health
- The importance of your training environment and how many gyms are off-putting to women and other people who have been subjected to somatic dominance
- How weight lifting has a PR problem
- That women’s muscle mass and bone density both benefit from heavy lifting
- What are the parameters for heavy lifting and why is there so much confusion around the terms
Jack LaLanne
Pumping Iron
www.sarahcourtdpt.com for a free guide to squat/deadlift/chest press with weight
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Welcome to Episode 27 of the Movement Logic Podcast! This is our last episode of the season!
In this episode, Laurel and Sarah reflect on their top three takeaways from season 1 of the Movement Logic Podcast. You’ll have to listen to the episode to hear what they are! We also discuss:
- How podcasting for the first time went for both of us, what was challenging, specifically.
- How science asks us to hold ideas loosely and remain a student (rather than fact holder and disseminator of facts).
- Why the language we use to talk about our bodies or our students’ bodies—and the re-education around using more positive, optimistic language—is so crucial to our ability as teachers to actually help our students feel better.
- The problem with all-or-nothing type thinking when it comes to better understanding a topic or finding the truth.
- Why publishing your learning process can be the best way to learn.
Reference links:
Episode 19 Oh, NO! Nose Breathing & Nitric Oxide
Episode 20 Pelvic Floor In-Depth with Stephanie Prendergast, MPT
Episode 16 Training the Non-Traditional Athlete with Rosalyn Mayse, AKA Roz the Diva
Episode 12 Movement Fads and Myths: Interview with Jules Mitchell MS, CMT, E-RYT 500
Episode 7 Is Pain Automatically Bad?
Episode 8 A Perimenopause Perspective with Trina Altman PMA, E-RYT 500
Episode 17 Pros & Cons of Using Resistance Bands
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Watch the video of this conversation at: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast
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Welcome to Episode 26 of the Movement Logic Podcast! In this episode, Sarah discusses her experience with cancer treatment, and the guidance (or lack thereof) around how and when to exercise. She covers:
- The current exercise recommendations for people going through cancer treatment
- The most recent research around strength training and cancer treatment, specifically chemotherapy
- What going through chemotherapy is like, and how it can be difficult to figure out what to do when in terms of exercise
- Her personal experience using strength training during treatment and how it changed everything for the better
References:
Sarah’s website and mailing list
High-intensity strength training improves quality of life in cancer survivors
Effects of resistance exercise on fatigue and quality of life in breast cancer patients undergoing adjuvant chemotherapy: A randomized controlled trial
Long-term follow-up after cancer rehabilitation using high-intensity resistance training: persistent improvement of physical performance and quality of life
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Welcome to Episode 25 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this solo episode, Laurel shares her history with yoga butt, or, proximal hamstring tendinopathy (high hamstring pain.) This episode is packed with tendon and muscle physiology. It also busts the big myth that yoga butt (and any yoga-related injury) is because we’re all woefully “overstretched”. At the end, Laurel shares a 3-step approach to nipping yoga butt in the yoga bud using strength training knowledge and tools.
Additionally Laurel examines:
- What yoga butt is (hint: a pain in the butt right at the sit bone more technically referred to as proximal hamstring tendinopathy).
- What a tendinopathy is.
- Short and sweet hamstring anatomy.
- Why yoga students might be more likely to experience PHT.
- That a typical vinyasa or Iyengar-inspired asana class involves a whole bunch of passive forward bends/hamstring stretching and why that makes managing and overcoming yoga butt tough for students in those classes.
- How Laurel nipped her yoga butt in the bud.
- The contradictory advice yoga teachers (including Laurel!) gave about what to do about yoga butt.
- How proximal hamstring tendon compression (rather than tension) plays a role in causing or exacerbating PHT.
- How strength training can help students overcome and avoid yoga butt.
- Why the narrative that we’re overstretched is illogical and a distraction away from the solution.
- What motor units are, what muscle recruitment is, and how understanding this aspect of muscle physiology can explain why yoga asana won’t make your tendons stronger but strength training will.
- A 3-step process to overcoming yoga butt as well as encouragement to see a clinician if what you try doesn’t seem to help.
Reference links:
Get the Hip & SI Joint tutorial before the cart closes this Sunday 11/27/22: https://movementlogictutorials.com/movement-logic/hips-tutorial/
If you want to stretch your hamstrings please continue to do so
Ebonie Rio - Isometric exercise in tendinopathy
Putting “Heavy” into Heavy Slow Resistance
Do we need to think about connective tissues when strength training?
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Welcome to Episode 24 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel is joined by her friend and colleague, Jesal Parikh. Together, Laurel and Jesal discuss the topics of cultural appropriation, biodiversity, and accessibility. Jesal offers clear examples and anecdotes to help listeners relate to and understand these topics within the context of everyday practice and teaching. She offers simple, actionable tips to yoga teachers to help them bring a greater sensitivity and understanding of these topics directly into their teaching. Laurel and Jesal discuss:
- That cultural appropriation is a form of theft and commodification.
- How cultural appropriation shows up in the yoga community.
- The difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation.
- Why cultural context and Yoga’s roots matter when “thinking critically” about Yoga.
- The effect of culture, genetics, and many other environmental factors on our “signature of movement”, or, the way each of us as individuals moves differently.
- How accessibility is different from adaptability when we take into account how social issues (not just biological issues) affect who can and cannot participate in a Yoga class.
- What connects cultural appropriation, biodiversity, and accessibility.
- Science’s tendency to discredit indigenous practices, rename them, and take “scientific” credit for them.
- Tips for teachers who want to honor Yoga’s roots, make space for biodiversity, and make their classes more accessible.
Guest Bio:
Jesal Parikh is an Indian-American yoga teacher, movement educator, podcaster, author and disrupter working on creative solutions for equity in Yoga. She co-hosts the Yoga is Dead podcast and offers movement education through the lens of social justice.
Jesal’s aim is to uplift those who are feeling isolated and marginalized by the yoga industry. Pronouns: she/her/they/them.
Reference links:
Visit Jesal’s website
Devdutt Pattanaik TED Talk East Vs. West, The Myths That Mystify
Hips Tutorial link: https://movementlogictutorials.com/movement-logic/hips-tutorial/
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Thanks for listening!
Welcome to Episode 23 of the Movement Logic Podcast! In this episode, Sarah outlines five practical steps you can take as a movement teacher when you have a client or student who is injured. She discusses:
- Whether “just don’t do this pose” is a valid and useful answer for some teachers
- Why memorizing a billion modifications can work, but there’s an easier way
- What to do with a student when you don’t have any experience with their condition/injury
- How to think critically in the moment when you are teaching so you can offer the most logical solution to their issue
- How to relate to someone’s unique anatomy such that it might cause them pain or discomfort in a pose that you don’t experience
- A logical step-wise approach for any student
New Movement Logic Hip and SI Joint Tutorial now available!
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Welcome to Episode 22 of the Movement Logic Podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah ask where the 10,000 step benchmark came from (you might be super surprised!), and if every person needs the same number of steps to receive the same amount of health benefits. We also discuss:
- What are the parameters that change your number of steps
- How do you “get your steps in” without becoming totally obsessed about it
- How where you live might determine how much you walk (versus take the car)
- How the pandemic changed a lot of people’s overall fitness and activity levels
- Whether it’s more valuable to track your general activity level vs number of steps
- How it’s useful to focus less on how many is enough to how many is too few
- How a workout doesn’t cancel out the negative effects of a day of sitting
- In what ways do strength training and cardiovascular exercise support each other
- How to get more movement into your day overall
Reference links:
Step Trackers available to purchase
Daily Steps and All-Cause Mortality: A Meta Analysis of 15 International Cohorts
Daily Step Counts for Measuring Physical Activity Exposure and Its Relation to Health
The relationships between step count and all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events: A dose-response meta-analysis
Guardian Article by David Cox
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Welcome to Episode 21 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this solo episode, Laurel shares her history with sacroiliac joint (SIJ) pain, and how no less than shifting her identity as a teacher, the way she thought of her SIJ, and the way she moved her body on a regular basis is what was required of her to get herself out of pain.
The SIJ is an area of the body that is surrounded by misinformation and tainted by a rather pessimistic outlook on its stability and robustness.
These fragilizing, pessimistic attitudes often result in triggering language around the SIJ that can lead people in pain to believe that their SIJ is unstable, out of place, or moving in the wrong ways.
This episode combines some anatomy and biomechanics along with plenty of human psychology and even human evolution to examine the power that words have over shaping our beliefs and identity, and how our beliefs and identity, in turn shape the language we use.
Laurel invites teachers to examine their beliefs about the body and question the words they use as thoughtfully as they choose their sequences, exercises, props, cues, and alignments. Additionally Laurel examines:
- Prevailing myths around the SIJ in both the movement and PT world.
- The problem with ideas around right and wrong alignment or good and bad exercises with regards to SIJ pain.
- A walk down memory lane to remember all the poses, alignments, and whole approaches to practicing the asanas that we demonized and blamed for our SIJ pain.
- Four reasons the SIJ is inherently stable, robust, and awesome.
- What pain science can teach us about SIJ pain and more and less effective ways of addressing it.
- What human evolution suggests about the SIJ and its stability.
- Why looking for a specific faultily-functioning mechanism to “fix” the SIJ is often less helpful than casting a wide net and making the body, or a general region of the body, more tolerant to loads.
- The scope of practice of a movement teacher when helping their students with painful SIJs feel better.
Reference links:
Sign up for a FREE mini course about the Hip and SIJ from Movement Logic co-creators Laurel Beversdorf, Dr. Sarah Court DPT, and Jesal Parikh.
Changing the Narrative in Diagnosis and Management of Pain in the Sacroiliac Joint Area
Diagnostic Accuracy of Clusters of Pain Provocation Tests for Detecting Sacroiliac Joint Pain: Systematic Review With Meta-analysis
The Physio-Network
Born to Walk: Myofascial Efficiency and the Body in Movement
The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease
Explain Pain
Pain is Really Strange
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Welcome to Episode 20 of the Movement Logic Podcast! In this episode, Sarah interviews Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist Stephanie Predergast, co-founder of the Pelvic Health and Rehabilitation Center, about everything and anything pelvic floor related. Stephanie also answers your questions from Instagram! Here’s what we cover:
- Understanding the mechanics and function of the pelvic floor and how it’s different than other muscles in the body
- Why strengthening your pelvic floor is not always the goal and how it might make your incontinence symptoms worse
- The difference between stress incontinence and urge incontinence
- Why dyspurnia (painful sex) and vulvodynia (vulvar pain) are treatable but might get misdiagnosed as an ‘incurable disease’
- When pelvic floor muscular dysfunction gets misdiagnosed as a UTI, depending on which kind of practitioner you see
- The efficacy and safety of hormone therapy for menopause symptoms according to NAMS (North American Menopause Society)
- What is GSM (Genitourinary Symptoms of Menopause) and how is it treatable
- Pelvic floor concerns for people with male genitalia, a chronically underserved population
- Why people with low back or hip pain very often have an underlying pelvic floor issue
- What are some signs that a movement teacher can look out for with their clients to indicate they may need to see a pelvic floor specialist (and a screening questionnaire included below)
- What is the female pelvic triad and how teenage athletes may need help
Reference links:
As the Pelvis Turns Newsletter
NAMS position paper on hormone therapy
Pique Health for online care for pelvic floor and sexual health
Poise Impressa for incontinence support
Speax by Thinx for incontinence support
Quick Screen for pelvic floor PT
PHRC YouTube page
Pelvic Health and Rehabilitation Center (they’re hiring PTs!)
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Thanks for listening!
Welcome to Episode 19 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode,Sarah discusses nose breathing, mouth breathing, taping your mouth shut (only at night), and best practices for breathing while exercising, sleeping, and every time in between.
- What’s the difference impact on our physiology between nose breathing and mouth breathing - and why it might be really important to try and nose breathe
- Are we breathing too shallowly either way
- How do you train yourself to nose breathe
- What is the impact of nitric oxide on our bodies
- Why it might not be as simple as “get rid of as much CO2 as you can when you exhale” but we don’t have a clear answer for that yet
- AND a very special breathing practice we can do together at the end of the episode
Reference links:
Breath book by James Nestor
Medical tape
https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/breathing-videos
Sinusology
Could nasal nitric oxide help to mitigate the severity of COVID-19?
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Welcome to Episode 18 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss teaching privates, why we didn’t use to like teaching privates, and why we like it now. This episode is full of awkward, funny, and frustrating stories from our past as private yoga teachers. We end with helpful tips that will help you enjoy teaching privates more.
- Where to meet with one-on-one clients/patients
- Charging differently based on how much commuting is involved
- The big reason we didn’t like teaching privates: no clear understanding of the goal.
- Students who talk too much and aren’t focused on the movement
- Students who have expectations but you don’t like teaching that way.
- Students with persistent pain and questioning your scope of practice.
- The game changer for Laurel: training strength clients with clear, trackable goals.
- The benefits of talking less and observing more.
- Admin is a bummer. How we avoid back-and-forth emailing and tracking clients down.
- Our top 6 pet peeves about teaching privates, and tips we share to avoid these and love teaching privates!
Reference links:
Work one-on-one with Doctor Sarah Court, DPT
Work one-on-one with Laurel Beversdorf, E-RYT 500
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Modern postural yoga utilizes bodyweight as a form of resistance, but within the context of modern postural yoga, is bodyweight sufficient load for building strength? If not, does adding resistance bands to the practice mean we can build strength? Welcome to Episode 17 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel discusses the best kept yoga prop secret—resistance bands and unpacks what she sees are both the pros and the cons of using resistance bands, both for strength training as well as for practicing yoga.
Here’s what this episode covers:
- How resistance bands lower the barrier for entry for someone to start adding external load to their movement practice.
- What research has to say about bands effectiveness for building strength and muscle mass, as well as some caveats to consider.
- What are some of the main limitations resistance bands present when looking to build strength?
- Why do some people use free weights and bands together in the same exercise? What’s the point of that?
- What constitutes a heavy weight versus a moderate weight versus a light weight and where do resistance bands and bodyweight tend to fall on this spectrum?
- The difference between resistance training and strength training and how the goals of both can be very different.
- How strength endurance and strength are different variables we can train, and why both are important.
- Why physical therapists might use resistance bands when rehabbing their patients.
- How resistance bands are like other yoga props, as well as their unique advantage.
- How resistance bands can help hypermobile yoga practitioners, people in pain, or people who are just bored with their practice and looking to change things up.
- Why resistance bands might not be necessary and why people might not like adding them to their yoga practice.
Reference links:
Chris Beardsley’s article What do you think you are doing by adding bands or chains?
Laurel’s Yoga with Resistance Bands Teacher Training
Laurel’s Virtual Studio
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Watch the video of this episode at: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast
Welcome to Episode 16 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel is joined by multidisciplinary movement teacher, Rosalyn Mayse aka Roz the Diva. Laurel talks with Roz about how she went from always being picked last in gym class to building a successful career as both a personal triner and a pole dance instructor, and the often exclusionary industries both pole dancing and strength training occupy. Throughout, Roz shares stories of how she built a successful career (in her words) as a, “dark skin, semi-bald, overweight, outspoken woman running around NYC half naked.” Roz shares her humor and wisdom around what inclusivity actually looks like, as someone who understands firsthand what it feels like to be excluded.
Here’s more of what Roz and Laurel discussed:
- The different yet complementary fitness cultures of pole-dancing and strength-training
- The positive impression it made on Roz when she got to see female athletes that looked like her
- The benefits of an artistic focus in a movement practice
- How pole dancing helped Roz overcome guilt and shame about her body and exercise agency, self-exploration, and self-expression
- The fact that people in bigger bodies have to be stronger to overcome more body weight than slender people
- How Roz defines the term athlete. Spoiler: more broadly than the mainstream
- How Roz connects with clients who are skeptical about exercise after negative mainstream exercise experiences
- What the general public thinks pole-dancing and strength training are vs reality
Reference links:
Dangerous Curves New York Times Documentary about Roz
Roz’s website
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Watch the video of this conversation at: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast
Welcome to Episode 15 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah discusses the lima beans of learning: research. But guess what? Reading research doesn’t have to feel like a chore, and the more you understand what different aspects of research mean, the more interesting it becomes.
- Three easy rules to follow for quoting research as if it’s facts
- Why we get so excited about some studies - and why we need to pump the brakes
- How to know the quality - and thus the value - of the research you are reading
- Why it’s important that movement teachers quote research responsibly and what can go wrong when studies are not good quality
Reference links:
Power Posing Study
Get Up from Ground Study
Yoga Reverses Osteoporosis Study
WHI Study
YouTube video of SRT test
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Watch the video of this conversation at: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast
Welcome to Episode 14 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss burnout: what is burnout, how do we avoid it, what do we do when it happens, and why do we see so much of it in the yoga and movement world.
- Does everyone experience burnout in the same way
- What does it mean to be emotionally labile
- Why do so many yoga and movement teachers go through burnout
- Can a teacher in a big expensive city make a living on group classes?
- How do we create boundaries that keep us from trying to ‘solve’ our students’ problems?
- What’s the best kind of relationship to have with your students?
- Some practical tips to prioritize yourself and preserve your own time
- What does Work Smarter, Not Harder actually look like?
Reference links:
I Know How She Does It by Laura Vanderkam
Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Talib
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Watch the video of this conversation at: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast
In this episode, Laurel answers a listener’s question of whether or not it’s within a movement teacher’s scope of practice to help people with their posture. Her answer is yes and no depending.
Here’s what else this episode gets into:
- How Laurel formerly identified as an alignment-based teacher and why she no longer does.
- The difference between “default-mode” alignment versus deliberate alignment.
- Alignment less in binary terms of good v. bad and more as a neutral tool for helping to restore variability and influence adaptations toward specific skills.
- Theory-induced blindness and the difficulty of noticing flaws in theories that inform your professional work.
- How our beliefs about posture can produce a nocebic effect.
- How Laurel sees posture and alignment instruction as well within a yoga teacher’s scope of practice, but how she also sees movement teachers stepping outside of their scope of practice in providing instruction.
Reference links:
Paper: Therapists Perceptions of Optimal Sitting and Standing Posture
Paper: To flex or not to flex? Is there a relationship between lumbar spine flexion during lifting and low back pain? A systematic review with meta-analysis
Paper: Posture and time spent using a smartphone are not correlated with neck pain and disability in young adults: a cross-sectional study
Paper: Is neck posture subgroup in late adolescence a risk factor for persistent neck pain in young adults? A prospective study
Paper: Clinical measures of foot posture and ankle joint dorsiflexion do not differ in adults with and without plantar heel pain
Todd Hardgrove: Great New Paper on Targeting the Brain for Treatment of Pain
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Watch the video of this episode at: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast
Welcome to Episode 12 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah is joined by the one and only Jules Mitchell, to talk about myths and misbeliefs around strength, stretching, and how to really understand how research applies to our teaching.
- What are other models for movement beyond soft tissue - and can they coexist
- Does it matter if your teaching still “looks like yoga”?
- Should you call yourself a movement teacher instead of a yoga teacher?
- How accurate is it to make claims about strength in yoga?
- How teachers misinterpret research and why it’s happening
- Does age reflect interest in different aspects of yoga
- Should we still be stretching? Is it possible to overstretch?
- What movement trends are we moving towards in the future
Reference links:
Yoga Biomechanics: Stretching Redefined by Jules Mitchell
Jules Mitchell WebsiteTwelve-Minute Daily Yoga Regimen Reverses Osteoporotic Bone Loss - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4851231/Sign up here for the Movement Logic Newsletter for course discounts and sales and receive a free mini Pelvic Floor course!
Watch the video of this conversation at: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast
Welcome to Episode 11 of the Movement Logic Podcast! In this episode, Sarah debunks the commonly held beliefs around aging, strength loss, and frailty, where these beliefs come from, and what we should be doing for people 65+ instead (spoiler: once again, strength training FTW).
- What is the narrative around falling and why do people become so afraid of it
- How the fear of falling creates a self-fulfilling prophecy around age-related decline in physical performance
- When does muscle mass loss start as part of the aging process
- How strength training improves not just muscle mass but many other aspects of performance including balance
Reference Links:
Quantum Leap Community (Sarah’s mentorship group)
QLC: The Library (Sarah’s recorded classes)
Strength Training for Seniors (book)
Strength Training past 50 (book)
Multicomponent Exercise Program Reduces Frailty and Inflammatory Biomarkers and Improves Physical Performance in Community-Dwelling Older Adults
MRI comparison of active vs sedentary 74 year old
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Watch the video of this conversation at: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast
Welcome to Episode 10 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah and Laurel tackle the question of whether there is a right or wrong way to breathe, whether or not someone needs help with their breathing, how to help various populations explore their breathing, and whether it’s always bad if our clients and students have pain.
- The problem with belly breathing
- What the respiratory diaphragm is
- Effective tactile cueing to help people to use their diaphragm effectively
- The problem with cueing people to breathe deeply
- Why creating a safe space to downregulate the nervous system takes priority
- Why some people benefit more by externalizing (rather than internalizing) their focus
- How to breathe during strength training
- Breathing and the pelvic floor
- Pranayama versus cardiovascular endurance training
- Should we breathe through our nose or mouth?
Reference links:
Adam Meakins, The Sports Physio
All about Nitric Oxide
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Watch the video of this conversation at: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast
Welcome to Episode 9 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel tells you what the best exercises are for strength (for busy people). Here’s what this episode digs into:
- Exercise prescription versus program design
- Training muscles versus training movements
- 8 different types of movements you can train strength within
- A simplified list of 4 movements to train strength within
- Why multi-joint exercises are more bang for your muscles than single joint exercises
- Why multi-joint muscles also strengthen the torso
- Do a full body workout rather than a split routine
- Choose your order of exercises strategically
- “Rules” for putting strength exercises in order
Reference links:
Train with Laurel in her Virtual Studio
Train with Laurel one-on-one
Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning book
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Watch the video of this episode at: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast
Welcome to Episode 8 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel is joined by her friend and colleague Trina Altman. Together, Laurel and Trina discuss Trina’s experience with perimenopause. Trina shares her personal story along with tons of resources for women going through this change of life.
- What is perimenopause?
- Doctors have a tendency to minimize women’s suffering
- Brain fog and hot flashes
- Challenges women face when navigating the medical system
- Finding a doctor that spends more time with you AND is evidence-based AND is current on the research
- The Women’s Health Initiative and fear they created around estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) and hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
- Weight gain and perimenopause
- Scope-appropriate advice for movement teachers working with perimenopausal and menopausal students
Guest Bio:
Trina received her training through STOTT Pilates® and is an E-RYT 500. She created Yoga Deconstructed® and Pilates Deconstructed® to show teachers how to take an interdisciplinary approach to foster an embodied understanding of yoga and Pilates in relation to modern movement science.
Trina has presented at Momentum Fest, the International Association of Yoga Therapy Conference, and Kripalu. She also created and taught a Pilates continuing-education course for physical therapists and was part of the faculty for the Brain Longevity conference at UCLA. She was the co-creator of Equinox’s signature program Best Stretch Ever, which utilizes the mobility stick to improve functional range of motion, body awareness, and total body strength.
Trina was a finalist in the Next Pilates Anytime Instructor Competition in 2017. Her work has been published in Yoga Journal, Yoga International, and Pilates Style magazine and her classes have been featured on Yoga International and Yoga Anytime. She is also the author of Yoga Deconstructed®: Movement science principles for teaching, which shows yoga teachers how to integrate modern movement science into their classes and is published by Handspring Publishing.
Reference links:
North American Menopause Society Doctors
If there are no doctors local to you, this website is all telemedicine North American Society Menopause Doctors: https://gennev.com/
Research on HRT and the risk of breast cancer
Estrogen Matters
Menopause Manifesto
Dr. Heather Hirsch podcast on breast cancer and HRT
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Welcome to Episode 7 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this solo episode, Sarah tackles the tricky subject of pain, and whether it’s always bad if our clients and students have pain. She discusses the situations in which pain might be acceptable, and gives concrete tools and approaches for you to use with your clients who are having pain.
- What’s the difference between acute and chronic pain?
- When might it be ok - and when would it not be ok - for your students to have pain?
- How to avoid generating fear for your students around their pain experience
- How much pain would be acceptable for someone to have?
- How to tease out different sensations to help your client have greater discernment around what they’re feeling in their body
Reference links:
Smith BE, Hendrick P, Smith TO et al. Should exercises be painful in the management of chronic musculoskeletal pain? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Br J Sports Med 2017;51:1679–87.
Malay MR, Lentz TA, O’Donnell J et al. Development of a comprehensive nonsurgical joint health program for people with osteoarthritis: a case report. Phys Ther 2020;100(1): 127-35.
Explain Pain by David Butler and Lorimer Moseley
Pain is Really Strange by Steve Haines and Sophie Standing
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Welcome to Episode 6 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss the question that seems hard to answer: what is the right amount for people to exercise? We also look at ways to motivate people to want to exercise, and why a lot of yoga asana practitioners end up overdoing it.
- What are the government guidelines around exercise? Are they useful?
- How do you get people to stick with exercise long enough to reap the benefits?
- How do we know how hard to work with strength training – and does yoga count?
- Why did #yogaeverydamnday become a thing?
Reference links:
CDC guidelines on exercise
1 Rep Max Calculator
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Welcome to Episode 5 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this solo episode, Laurel addresses the question of whether or not yoga asana builds bone density, where the belief or claim that it does might have come from, and then concrete, evidenced-based ways to improve bone density, as well as how yoga asana fits into these efforts. Here are specific points discussed:
- Where did the idea that yoga builds bone density come from?
- Why is bone density important and why should we want to build it?
- How do you find out if you have osteoporosis or osteopeonia?
- Who is most at risk of developing osteoporosis?
- How does osteoporosis happen?
- How do bones remodel and become denser, stronger, or more resilient?
- What activities build bone?
- When is the best time to work on building bone?
- What are the obstacles to building bone?
- Shoulder older adults lift heavy weights?
- The LIFTMOR study
- What role does yoga play in the conversation around bone density?
Reference links:
Twelve-Minute Daily Yoga Regimen Reverses Osteoporotic Bone Loss
Estrogen Matters
The Physio-Network
The LIFTMOR study
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Welcome to Episode 4 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah is joined by her former professor from PT school, Dr. Ben Cornell, to discuss all things feet related from balance to running, and why you might want to start high-fiving the trees when you’re out for a run or a walk!
- Why shoes and bedcovers cause problems for not only feet but the rest of the body
- Why plantar fasciitis can be so challenging to treat and heal from
- How much can we change the bony structure of the foot – and does it matter if we can’t?
- Why a “window of neutral” is a better goal than a singular “neutral” position
- Connecting increased foot rigidity to fall risk for older people
- Why pronation isn’t a dirty word in running and there’s no single way for people to run
- The importance of giving your students self-efficacy and understanding their motivation
Guest Bio:
Dr. Ben Cornell, PT, MPT, PhD, OCS, is an Associate Professor at Mount St. Mary’s University and serves as the Musculoskeletal Clinical Coordinator in the program. He oversees the student-run, pro bono physical therapy clinic at the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles which provides physical therapy care to the homeless population. He has 17 years in clinical practice and is a board-certified orthopedic clinical specialist as well as an avid runner.
Reference links:
Born to Run
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Welcome to Episode 3 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss massage and self-massage, common (accurate or otherwise) claims about their benefits, and what the research has to say (it’s not what you might think).
- What is massage, and how is it different than manual therapy in PT?
- Can massage increase proprioception?
- Does everyone benefit from massage, or do some people not need it?
- If there really is a problem with our fascia, is massage the answer?
- What therapeutic benefits does massage have?
- What role does massage play in helping trauma-affected populations?
Research Article: Affective Massage Therapy
Research Article: The effectiveness of massage therapy intervention on reducing anxiety in the work place.
Research Article: Massage therapy as a workplace intervention for reduction of stress.
Research Article: Failure of manual massage to alter limb blood flow: measures by Doppler ultrasound
Research Article: Evidence of the physiotherapeutic interventions used currently after exercise-induced muscle damage: systematic review and meta-analysis
Research Article: Adverse events and manual therapy: a systematic review
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Welcome to Episode 2 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah and Laurel discuss Scope of Practice and how it impacts our work as movement teachers and the choices we make when taking on clients. Here’s what we talk about:
· How do we define Scope of Practice, and how does it define our work
· What does a top down “macroScope” vs a personal “microScope” look like
· How do we decide who to work with and who to refer out
· Are there any pitfalls to having a scope of practice
· Do yoga teachers have to comply with the Yoga Alliance Scope of Practice
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Welcome to Episode 1 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah set the stage for the episodes to come. We discuss the philosophical and actual differences between movement, exercise and sport; the problems with over- and under-moving; and of course, naming your robot vacuum (it’s the law).
· What’s the difference between movement, exercise, and sport
· How does yoga fit into these categories
· What problems do we have as a society with movement, exercise, and sport
· Lack of daily movement and ADLs (Activities of Daily Living)
· How exercise without a goal becomes a chore
· Yoga as a cathartic practice that includes movement
· What is Movement Logic doing to address these topics
· Movement Logic exists to help non-clinicians improve their skill set
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Watch the video of this conversation: www.movementlogictutorials.com/podcast