So welcome to fit me to a fitness podcast. Today's episode, I have amazing guest, Tom sway. So before introducing Tom or telling so amazing things, I'm just not saying it. I really mean it. I'm very, very excited to learn from Tom. So first of all, welcome to my show, Tom, and shortly introduce yourself and and you have a quite a surprising story. So if you mind a little bit sharing about your story and background. Yeah, thanks for having me. Turo, so my name is Tom swales. I'm the founder of com physio in Barrie, Ontario. It's a 5000 square foot facility. My wife and I started it and grew it into 27 employees, creator of the advanced movement therapist certificate, where, over my course of 20 plus years and taking all the courses, trying to remove confusion and organize my practice, with regards to, you know, rehabilitation and performance kind of brought it all together. We have two young children, 10 and eight years old, and last year I almost died. So I really got to test, you know, put my money where my mouth is, with regards to what I know and and the system that I created. So to add a little bit more context onto it, last June of 2023 I got sense. Put in the idea for what's called invasive strep A and the Streptococcus bacteria that typically causes a sore throat, but in both streams, somehow quickly started shutting down my organs. I had heart failure and put me on dialysis. I had rhabdomyolysis. I had clotting issues. My hands and feet went black. And the first seven days, my wife had to sit there in the ICU and was told to get her affairs in order, because not many people make it out of this type of situation. So after 10 days in the ICU, I went to the rehab floor. My ankle got infected, so they had to, they had to do surgery on the ankle, so that, you know, losing 50 pounds of muscle. And I went in at 220 pounds. I came at 170 I never learned how to walk. I couldn't stand. I had no strength to do anything from being independent and everybody relying on me. I had to rely on everybody to do everything for me, which was a big eye opener, and not taking for granted my health, my function. He's like, Oh, less than 20% I was like, Oh, wow, I was sick. He's like, You are super sick. So, and then with all the things so they, they even shared with me, there was four other people that went into the hospital that year with the invasive start with less stuff going on, make it I was one of five. And you which is, you know, I'm free five for 35 years really paid off. Wow, wow. That's a such a, such a amazing story. So what, what realizations you made that was for your health, like, like, obviously, to survive come out from this kind of thing. It's, it's amazing story. It's, it's, but it, it stops you for sure. So what? What made this? What made you, what you realized after this all, what happened? Well, my wife and I realized that life is short, and, you know, you can't take for granted what's been given to you or what you work for, because you can quickly take it away, excuse me. And so this year we we traveled with the kids more we made more time for the kids. You know, we also learned that our, you know, our amazing staff, that that runs our business, helps runs our business. They didn't, they didn't need us there, which is awesome. The leadership that took over. They just said, No, Kylie, you you stay with Tom. We're okay. We don't need you guys here look after him. So you know, it took me some time to get back, but you know, I really had to use my system and use what I knew to rebuild my body back, because I couldn't. I needed help standing up. I couldn't get down to the floor. I couldn't walk on my own. I couldn't do anything. It was very humbling experience. And you know, being in the hospital and. And, you know, chronic pain, I can understand chronic pain now, because everything I did hurt. It's like a bomb went off in your body, and every single, every single tissue and cell is just kind of screaming at you all at once. But, you know, I did what I could, a little bit of workouts. I was all crooked because I had to have IDs in the right side of my arm, because the left arm was full of clots. So, you know, my my colleagues would come over and do a little bit of manual therapy on me, what they could I was seeing osteo friend. I've seen my physio colleagues I was seeing, and then I eventually saw my Chiro, a friend of mine who's a Chiro, to straighten me out. And I did a lot of IV therapy. I did, you know, methylene blue. I've seen a functional medicine doctor aflame acid. And, you know, for three weeks, you know, he got all my metrics. He was getting all my blood work from the hospital, and everything was just trashed. And he was funny. He's got a traditional Chinese medicine background, and he's just like, so, a bomb went off in your body, and I have to be the cleanup crew. And you know, he prescribed the first couple weeks with methylene blue, ozone therapy, acid iron, because I was super deficient, and an adrenal support. And within three weeks, my blood work changed dramatically. So like my testosterone went from 173 nanograms per debit to 717 that quickly in three weeks. So, you know, everything started moving pretty quickly, and that's the importance of kind of the chemistry behind our bodies is when the chemistry is off, we don't have the right molecules. Our cells can't function like the mitochondria. So, you know, doing breath work, doing cold plunges. Everyone talks about mitochondria health for sports and performance. I'm like, well, but it's the thing that's keeping us alive, is our mitochondria center. And if they're poisoned and toxin because they were ancient bacteria, you know, we can't produce energy. We can't recover, we can't, you know, we can't accommodate to stresses in our life. So, you know, kind of using all the biohacking stuff that I've been learning for the last decade also came into effect, along with my understanding of neurology, biology, chemistry, physics and the human body on rehabilitation and then moving to hyper forms again, is there? Do they? Do you know what caused that? Or is it just a random thing, like, I have no idea again, that I assume most of the my audience don't have, what is, what kind of what is causing this? What happened to you, and is there some reason behind it? Or, yeah, the only thing they said it, it was very strange. The only thing I can think of was the week prior, the Sunday prior, had a little bit of a sore throat. I was working in the heat. It was 32 plus degrees with humidity. I was working outside, and I'm like, I got a little bit of a sinus infection. And then the next day kind of moved into my throat. I'm like, Okay, I have a little bit of a sore throat. And then, you know, that was the Monday, Tuesday felt premy, kind of like a little bit of a low grade fever. Wednesday, felt fine, worked out, outside, went to work Thursday. By Thursday, at the end of the day of the work day, I was chilled. I was freezing cold. It was 30 degrees outside. I'm like, this is weird. Went to bed at four o'clock in the afternoon, woke up eight o'clock the next day, felt pretty sick, rested all day, and then come Saturday, by the time I'm like, I get up and I'm like, I can't move my neck. I thought I had meningitis, so I told Kylie, my wife, and like, you need to call an ambulance now. And they took me in. By the time they figured out what's going on, crashing pretty quickly. So they got me the right patients. I saw all the right doctors, so they were able to kind of stop the septic shock in its tracks so, so it didn't progress any further, but my body was already shutting down so quickly. They were, they were pretty fearful of, you know, me not making it. So, yeah, they don't know how it got in. There's theories. They just know that that's kind of what caused it. And then they had to put me on hard antibiotics, ivi antibiotics, you know, because of the ankle infection, I had to go home with IVs. So it was like I couldn't eat. Are you still hearing I you? I lost the last 10 seconds. I couldn't hear what you said. Okay. Oh so, oh yeah. So I had that. I had the hard antibiotics going through my system, and it's, it's pretty hard, you know, it's kind of the most potent stuff. Did you turn off my video to keep the connections. Okay, I wasn't sure if that was your name. It's it's just that, of course, audio quality is at the moment, it's a little bit stronger. So I thought that it's right might be helpful. So what like you mentioned this, this kind of situations, they are like that, hitting, hit on the face and. And, you know, like you said that, I'm sure you thought about, like, what is actually important in a life like we are, we are trying to push our business, do everything what we can. And then in the end, like, like, I'm sure you should say to like, sometimes, you know, we kind of take things granted and focus our own health and and what? What this made you realize, or those people who were, who are close to you, what they were thinking, or did you see any any changes in their behavior? Yeah, so a lot of my friends like we had such great support from family and friends. They're coming over. They're calling my wife, you know. Hey, do you need me to help you out with anything? You know? She she's like, she didn't trust me being home by myself. She's like, I have to go out for two hours. Hey, Andrew, can you come over and babysit my wife? My husband for a bit. I was like, I'm gonna, like, do something stupid here. She's like, I don't trust I'm like, Okay, fine. But it really, it really showed us that, you know, as hard as we were pushing into the business, you know, to try and make it grow and be the best it can, and we we didn't have to push so hard, especially now, because we have such great systems in place. We have great staff, and we have great culture like it. Those three things are in place, and it allows the business to run, and now it also has given us some freedom to grow other businesses that we can also, you know, bring that staff into, potentially, to to look at other ventures or grow as professionals, or, you know, you know, travel with their families. So, yeah, it's, it's allowed us to take a step back and one prioritize our time towards our kids more. So it's not like, Oh, my dad, are always working and Okay, yeah, yeah, I lost you again a little bit, but yeah, that's, that's what you what you learn, like, it's, it's kind of sad to say, but that you learn through these kind of things, and you think that does this really need to happen, but at least I think that, yeah, everything in life, it happens for a reason. And like, of depending, like, how you take on things and, and think, if you think that, if you are, like, not taking, kind of the victim role and telling that, you know, this is happen, happened for me, for a reason. And yeah, and then, you know, you like, I'm sure you learned also like that, how actually, how amazing friends you have, how much, how great, amazing, supportive wife you have, family, how important they are. And then, you know, it's not that just to take, not take credit and thinking like that, even those workouts. And it's kind of same with, like, it's not the same but, but, like, kind of my background when my father passed away and and only at age of 70, and that, that was for me when he lost his health at the age of 60, and then basically didn't get out of out from hospital, though that was for me moment, even it was a sad moment. But then, on the other hand, I think that it was for me eye opener that this is not going to take forever. And now being bought, it to myself, if I start to think like that, if I have like, 15 years, maybe I have 20, but if that is all, what I have left, that how I'm going to spend it, if I'm going to like be in my debt bit, who knows when it when that moment will come? But if I look back that, what I'm proud of, what I'm thinking people think about me or something, they don't think like that, you know, if I did great business or or just focus on growing business and but it's also like to how what kind of person you are, and also like that my own health, even even everything is now, I would say pretty okay, at least so far as I know. But do not take it granted, and to know that it's the work that to be that in that way, like obviously, you never know what is going to happen, but, but to make sure that at the moment, when I look back, that I can tell myself that I did everything possibly I could, I couldn't, I wouldn't change anything. I would do exactly the same things I'm not thinking like in, who knows, in 1015, years from now, and think that, what if I would do this or or, yeah, I would change things. Because often it's when things happen. It's already kind of already late, and until everything is going okay, especially like in, I feel like. Can age of 30 something, 40s. You know, things are, things are are getting busy. They are busy, and so many things are going on. And then, you know, it's always so easy to forget our own health and and that's, that's something what really made me stop and think that, you know, it's I'm doing okay, even if I don't make the most successful business or don't work for 15 hours per day. Yeah, no, I've always been a big believer in, you know, whatever you prioritize, you'll prescribe. You know, you practice what you preach. We all hear that. But you know, coming from an athletic background myself and just enjoying lifting weights and learning movements, gymnastics, you know, kettlebells, anything I can get my hands on, you know, and then prescribe that to my clients, not just from a rehab perspective, but from a performance perspective. You have to, you know, if you're not going to prioritize that in your own life, why would anybody else? They for me, you know, if I've done my workout in the day, I'm like, okay, great. I checked that one, I pulled out one, and from there, everything else is easy, because I now have the energy and resiliency to manage stress. Ever let my health and get up with my walker, walk to the couch in the living room and sit down and read a book that is it that was the first three weeks of being home, four weeks. And then when I finally got off the antibiotics, then I could finally start to eat food. And I started slowly putting on weight. Then I had more energy. I would still try and go out in the into the, you know, into the backyard with my gym out there, and do like, little push ups on the bar, you know, with standing push ups wall push ups. So I would try and do something. But, you know, it was just the very bare minimum, and then it would just, I'd be exhausted. But again, I wanted, I felt like I needed to do something, and if I had something in the tank that could enable me to to do what I needed to do, to kind of keep pursuing my health back and get it back to where it was that was it. So, you know, it hurt. It hurt every day. It sucked. And I just like the pain, the pain of not doing it, the pain of not, you know, getting back to doing the things I love hurt more than the pain I was experiencing in that moment. So that was my motivator to to suck it up, push through the pain, and then, you know, rest as best as you can, and then do it again. Yeah? No, that's I'm thinking like that if, if somebody like this is like, I'm like, a former athlete like myself, as you, you too, like, if somebody is taking away what you kind of love the most, enjoy the most like, apart from, obviously, family or something. But if somebody's taking that away, what kind of pain that creates, that's, that's like the biggest, biggest penalty she can get, or, or how to say, yeah, it's, I think it's a lot of forward thinking. My babka, she's my grandmother, who's polish. She's 97 she lives independently, and she's got, you know, chronic foot pain, all kinds of other health issues, but she moves and walks every day. And, you know, she moves and walks, even if she can't get outside. She walks around the house. And my mom's like, well, if it hurts so much, why do you why do you walk? She's like, because the thought of me never being able to get up and walk on my own and be independent hurts more than my feet. Yeah, I'm like, That's awesome, because she's a farmer. She's 97 she's got all of her affections for like, smart as a wit, still fit, and she just has physical body pain. She could easily just sit and watch TV. Oh yeah, she still farms. She still doesn't have garden as much as possible. But he goes past that, that pain, that physical pain, because the emotional pain of losing everything, her independence hurts more. Oh yeah. And when my mom told me that I'm like, Bob is awesome, yeah, yeah. Oh, but this is, this is, this is one of the best things I learned, too, like that, when that, when your reason why you are doing is when. It's more painful like for you, it's losing more living your family alone or or not able to do those things. For me, it was pain of seeing my dad suffering and that I feel like that. That pain is greater than that pain of actually doing the work, then you have a very good chance being more consistent. Oh yeah, yeah. So let's get into that was amazing story to hear. Even I didn't mean to derail your you know what you wanted to go over today, but yeah, no, that's, that's, you know, these conversations. We don't, I don't plan this too much ahead. We go where it goes and, and, you know, to hear this kind of story like, wow, that's that's such a great life lesson. And, but today, actually, what I wanted to talk about, it, yeah, is about ice hockey and athletic performance in ice hockey. I like I mentioned, I'm, I'm, you are a specialist in this area, and yeah, and like myself, I know I don't share it too much in publicly. I'm also strength and conditioning coach myself with the Italian women's national team. And we, yeah, it's awesome when we are, when we are recording this, we are just about to start the training scam in November here in Italy. And okay, this coming home Olympics in 2026 so there is that time is getting all the time closer and and we are trying to get make a obviously, most likely we won't win the gold medal or medal, but so it's to make make our country proud, and that's the main goal. And obviously there's a lot of lot of work to do before that, but let's talk about those unique demands of isocking on athletes body and how understanding these requirements shapes training and therapy. Here, okay, no, oh no, okay, good. All right. So it's important to to understand, you know, individual sports and athletes demands on their bodies with regards to moving patterns, what stresses are they putting on how do we optimize kind of their recovery? But I think, you know, I always take a I take a step back and I look at the human athlete before the specialized one. And meaning, does my athlete this very highly specialized, high output human being? Can they do basic things? Can they bend forward and touch your toes? Can they lean back without any back pain? Can they stand on one leg? Can they squat? What are their shoulders doing? Do they rotate symmetrically to one side versus the other? And something like hockey, you know, you're you're standing on knives on a slippery surface, is what I tell people, and you're doing it in casts, so the feet aren't working like they're supposed to naturally. And then you're on a surface that doesn't move naturally. And then, and then for dry land. Now you expect them, okay. Let's get out of these. Pick these things off your feet, take this thing out of your hand, and let's start moving symmetrically. The problem that can occur, especially with any kind of rotation athlete who's kind of rotating or shooting or striking in one direction, is it creates a twist. It creates torque in the system, and that can create imbalances from the visual system, from the vestibular system, from the cervical spinal system. So for example, if I'm a if I'm a right shooter, the left I look, you are cutting. You are cutting. I completely hear you. Where did I? Where did you lose me? Yeah, just on the rotational stuff. Okay, yep. So, because we, because hockey rotates dominantly to one side, we have to look at, well, when they're out of their skates equipment, can they rotate to the other side more? Because if they have difficulty rotating back the other way, or their body's twisted, or their posture is kind of rotated towards that dominant side. When you put a barbell on their back, or you give them, you know, a deadlift or a bench press, or something symmetrical, it's going to create torque in the system. Now, anytime there's asymmetry in movement or strength, the nervous system doesn't really like that, so it put tends to put the brakes on. So if I can balance out their bodies, then I take the brakes off their nervous system. Because the the primary job of the nervous system is survival. It's PROTECTION OF THE. Individual protection of the species. So anytime there's discomfort or there's some kind of asymmetrical movement pattern that's occurring in the body, the nervous system doesn't feel safe with that and will immediately put the brakes on or start to inhibit force output. So the first thing I try to do with any athlete, regardless of hockey, golf, you know, doesn't matter. I want to make sure that they have these fundamental patterns. Can you move with some form of symmetry? Because if they can't, if I load them, it's going to reinforce that, and then it's going to cause overloading of tissues. It's going to cause overuse, misuse or abuse tissue issues. So the first thing I want to do is make sure that they can move with some form of symmetry. So once they, once they once they have this, then I start to look at, okay, well, what athletic positions or postures Do they require? And with hockey players, it's typically kind of like a two footed athletic stance, like setting up for a deadlift and and lunges with any of my NHL hockey players, I never have them back squat because one, they don't need to do it. And two, a lot of them have such crappy ankle foot mobility, hip mobility, thoracic extension mobility, that loading them up not giving them it's not setting up their nervous system in an ideal way. So I use an example I had. I was worked with Matt bileski for a number of years, nine years, I believe, and big boy, but very stiff, and he was not a squatter, just physiologically, anatomically, he could not squat. And I'm like, Okay, well, guess what? We're never doing. We're never squatting, but we're going to do a lot of hex, bar deadlifts, we're going to do a lot of kettle swings, and we're going to do a lot of lunges and step ups. There's your push pull for your lower body as your primaries. So we need to kind of tailor our programming. And then I would have some hockey players who squatted really well, but I couldn't load them up very much because they have these long, tall spines, and they and they had, some of them have very long legs and like this is not giving you the force output that you need. So I would tailor a lot of their programming based on one, what's their anatomy, and two, what's their sport demand? Okay, so, and if the nervous system likes those things, guess what? They get stronger. And if the nervous system doesn't feel safe with those movements, guess what happens? We get inhibition, and the nervous system starts shutting down. Now, all of a sudden, we're plateauing. Oh, they're getting these little aches and pains. Oh, well, that's weird. We're, we've been doing deadlifts. Well, are the deadlifts up high enough? Because maybe, maybe they can't touch their toes, and maybe we're loading the bar in too low of a position that's compromised in their back. Maybe their femurs are too long where it's pushing their center of gravity, or their bar too far away from their center of gravity, and they can't, they can't hinge effectively. So these are just aspects of just general performance, but the sport itself is going to take care of a lot of the a lot of the sport specific things. You know, you can condition somebody. You can get them pushing a sled, doing ropes, doing shuttles, doing agility ladders, like you can kind of get them doing a bunch of conditioning stuff. But nothing matches the conditioning like playing hockey. Yeah, you know, if I have a soccer background, and I know I swing kettlebells and I push sleds and I do this stuff, and then as soon as I start playing soccer, I'm like, holy crap. I'm gassed because it's taught, like, because your brain is just like, we haven't done this in a year, and now I have to work on coordination, and all this chaos is going on around me, and I'm standing on one leg, and I have to bounce around, and I have to juggle, and now I have to accelerate, decelerate with players like all that input is not familiar with my nervous system, so the nervous system is going to create fatigue. So it wasn't that I wasn't fit, I just didn't have the capacity to manage all the inputs. And anything we do, from a strength coach or rehab perspective, it's always inputs, and the nervous system is always evaluating, hey, does this feel safe? Yes or No. If it feels safe, and I'm familiar with this, Hey, I'm going to increase output. I'm going to let that heart rate go. We're going to increase acceleration. If something feels unfamiliar or unsafe, the nervous system is like, yeah, I don't quite like this. I'm going to start making creating excessive muscle tension to protect and guard. I'm going to reduce muscle output, creating inhibition and decreased power, and I might make your heart race a little bit more because we're panicking. So now it seems like we're not fit. So I would step back away from, you know, the sports specific, and look at the human specific first, and then if that human athlete is all set up for success, hey, let's get super specialized now. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Well, that is the specialization is like, obviously. Think. Have changed. Like, I'm I'm 42 I used to train back home in Finland. That's like, Yeah, over 20 years ago, at the time, it was basically just doing things you just mentioned, doing heavy squats, two leg squats, like a power lifting, programming. And there's no like, really, or not too much, like specific, specific ice hockey training and now, like the first thing, first thing, when I look now and think that how hockey players now, how they train now, it's totally different. Like, it is very different. Yeah, it's, it's all about, like, single joint, like, how you are playing the game, like, you know, you are not using both legs, like movements obviously getting stronger squats are great thing, but happy You never used to, or barely never used two legs at the same time, like, and it's, it's then, like you mentioned, lunches, things like that. Those are the closest ones. Or steps up step ups, that leads what you basically need the most. And there you can load things, yeah, but that is, that is a very good point that you know that kind of nervous system, that if you are lacking some like mobility or or flexibility, that you can't get full range of motion. And then how that affects your nervous system and and you compensate it with some something else, so you don't feel the exercise how you should be feeling it. So that's such a such a great point, yeah, and even, you know, in kind of the third phase where we get more to speak, would you mind repeating, I lost you again. Tom sorry. Still can't hear you. Oh no, no, hear me now. No, yeah, good, okay, when we get into the kind of the third phase, right before season starts, you know, we're getting into a little bit more power, more speed, more skills. And I would combine and create these circuits that combined all those things. So, for example, we they would do heavy, uh, hex bar, deadlift drops. Then they would do some hurdle jumps, they would quickly sprint across the gym. Then they would hit an agility ladder, some kind of pattern, and then they would grab three tennis balls, put water in their mouth, and then walk across the balance beam and juggle. Because what we did is we increased power speed, we gas them a little bit, and now I gotta get them to slow down and calm down, so that their mind doesn't get away from them. So they're holding water in their mouth breathing, which forces them to breathe through their nose. They're walking across the balance beam, so they have to slow their steps, and then they have to do something very complex with their eyes and their hands. But if they start to panic, they drop a ball, or they fall off the beam. So it's, it's kind of ramping them up with with high intensity, and then that get them to calm down really quickly. So it's shifting between that sympathetic, parasympathetic and manipulating some of the the neurological inputs and forcing them to Hey, like you're going to do something under fatigue in a very complex situation at a very high skill, you better not freak out, right? So it's kind of playing with those things, and once you understand how the visual system, vestibular system, breath work, how to upregulate, down regulate, how to prime the nervous system with heavy lifts. And then, like once you understand all the fundamentals, you can get very creative, and you can stack them all together. So then they're doing a ton more work, but a lot less time. Like my guys, they didn't work out more than an hour, but they got they got a crap load stronger. They got a lot faster, and their bodies didn't hurt because I wasn't overloading their tissues. They would do something similar. Every single workout was kind of always a full body with either a lower emphasis or upper emphasis, but the other emphasis, like like a light lower or calisthenics or ground movements, crawling, agility, whatever it is. So we were training the full body every single workout, but they never got sore and but their their their muscular endurance went up, their strength went up, their power went up, and the vertical and their speed went up. So which tells us, I'm like, okay, because it's hockey, like any sport, it's not, hey, let's go train legs. Yeah, but now your legs are gas for the next two days, and they're useless. So how's that going to translate over into skating? It's going to suck, like they're going to be slow. So, and this is kind of how I approach a lot of like, I just worked with the World's Strongest Man and helped him with sort out a lot of issues. So he didn't he titled again with everything. And then alpine skier, Olympic alpine skier, it was always, I'd always start with an assessment to see what the Movement deficiencies are, where they're breaking down. Is there any kind of top down, center out problems? And then I would build it out from there. And. When you think about how we developed as children, right? Embryologically, we're a bunch of tubes, everything starts to organize in specific layers. And then when babies out into the world, where does baby start to learn to move? It's on the ground, moving its arms and legs. It starts to roll, starts to crawl, starts to sit up. You know, world Strongest Man, for example, he couldn't stand on his left more than three seconds, having all these right coin, right knee, right low back issues. So I look at a squat shifting to the right side. I'm like, well, because your nervous knows the height is unstable. So you know, first time I saw him, we decompressed his dura. We got his his neck was actually causing a lot of issues, so he had a top down problem. Anytime he looked up, he lost his glutes muscle testing. I'm like, your glutes are turning off. And then we did, we did some rolling patterns to left, because he couldn't roll to the left. Three exercises, he texted me the next day. He's like, I just PR my back squat for four reps with no pain. I'm like, awesome, because we organize his we organize his structure, and we organize his nervous system. And the nervous system said, Hey, I feel safe with this. Now, let's take the brakes off. So I use that as an example, because somebody like that, he's lifting 1000s of pounds, right? World's Strongest Man, and he felt an immediate difference, and he saw that quick of a change in his output the next day, and simply because we kind of recalibrated or we reorganized his nervous system, make the structure feel safe. Nervous System said, Yep, I feel good here. Let's go, wow. So we just took a model of, hey, he can't do these fundamental things. He can't stand on the left leg, and he can't roll to the left. Let's clean those up. Let's give him back a better neck position. And all of a sudden, his power in his lifts went through the roof. I was like, well, that's cool, yeah. So it was not just working harder, it was working smarter. And yeah, at risk, they work hard, like these professional athletes, they work the hardest, yeah, and then they come into these little aches and pains, and they're like, I don't know where this came from. I'm like, okay, but if you start breaking down the fundamentals, and you'd be like, Hey, you can't do this very simple thing that we used to do as a baby. Maybe we clean this up, and then we go back up and retest and see if it worked. So I hate guessing. I want to look at a squat or a deadlift or somebody running and be like, Hey, your glutes not turning on. Okay. Well, why? Because movements very individual, you can't say. What's a glute medius problem? Yeah, maybe. Or is it the foot turning off the hip? Or is it the neck that's turning off the hip? Or is there a spine rotation issue, or is it a lumbo pelvic you don't know. So when you start going back down through kind of these fundamental print, these fundamental patterns, and be like, Hey, you're breaking down at this one. Let's clean this up and work our way back up. So now you're rebuilding movement from the ground up, just like we learned how to do it as babies. Yeah. And we all, as humans, we all abide by the same rules of biology. We all the same rules of chemistry. We all work on the same laws of physics, gravity, friction and movement, patterning, right? Yeah. Do you have like this is such an interesting topic, at least for me as a as a coach. So what kind of strategies for you use for incorporating this nervous system evaluations and into the regular training routines. Like you mentioned that you kind of combined kind of everything at the same workout. Yep. And do you have any other like strategies? Yeah. So I teach, I also teach the athletes how to stand themselves. Because, you know, the primary job of the strength coach is making sure the athletes don't get hurt. Because once they get hurt, well now they got to go into the rehab side of things, which is now the PTS job. But as the strength coaches, our job is to make them as resilient as possible, so that if they're not getting hurt, they can train more. If they can train more, they perform better. So it's hard to kind of sit there and, Oh, I gotta assess every single athlete. I'm responsible. How many athletes do you have? I have? It's 25 to 30, right? So impossible to sit there and assess every single athlete from an individual perspective. So what I did is I streamlined kind of the advanced movement therapist assessment into a three minute scan. It's called the SAM scan, which is self awareness movement scan. I teach the athletes how to do this on themselves. And what it does is the top three tests, it looks at the cerebellum. The cerebellum is the part of the brain that looks at rate, rhythm, force and accuracy of our movement system. So it looks at movement coordination. Looks at movement quality. So the first three tests they do is they're clearing out their cerebellum because, maybe because they wrote they've been rotating to the left so many times, maybe they've got a right cerebellum inhibition. So they do the three cerebellum test, and then they look at. Top down, they look at the neck. They look at global flexion, which is the toe touch. They look at back bend, rotation, Side Bend, single leg balance, shoulder mobility. And they look at some stuff. And what they what they do is it takes three minutes to do, but they pick off where their problems are or where their imbalances have occurred, and then they can self correct. So now, rather than you as the coach saying, all right, Kathy, we need to do Sam scan. Oh, we gotta do now. Now she needs 1520, minutes of your attention to fix the issue. Oh, sorry, we'll pause for a second. They got they're doing an announcement on the ship. This is your captain speaking. Thank you. We're departing too. So you know, I'd have my I would teach this to every single athlete. My NHL guys would come in, they would they would fill out what's called a dark Q, the how they're feeling, how much sleep they got, what's their energy, zero to 10, what's their stress, what's their durability, blah, blah, blah. And then they would check grip strength and blood pressure, heart rate. And then what they would do, what they would do is they would do the SAM scan. They would do this top down assessment, look at how their nervous systems, how their their movement system, is working, the movement brain, and then how the structures. And then they would find, oh, my hips not opening up with this favors test. Now they know, okay, I need to go do the banded hip mobility work. I need to do some some Shin boxes, and then some fire hydrants. Okay, great. Go check it is it cleared up? Great. Go do your warm up. So that three minute scan gave them two minutes of corrective exercise, and then now they're all balanced out, you know, potentially reducing injury, because now they don't have an imbalance, and they can go and do their workout. Now their nervous system is kind of happy with how they're moving. And now the brakes have been taken off, and they're like, oh, wow, I can squat better. Oh, wow, my balance is better. Great. Now go do some deadlifts and kettle swings and runs. But if they can't stand on one leg with their eyes closed for 10 seconds, how do you think running is going? Probably not going well, right? Or, how do you think your strides going to be in hockey you're not, you're not going to turn really well on that. You know, you're, you know you're making a turn. You can't load up that leg to load the load the skate and get a proper edge. Your nervous system is going to shift to the stronger leg, but that's going to throw you off balance, and it's not going to be a sharp right? So teaching the athletes how to look after themselves, and how to scan their bodies to look for imbalances before they come in angry, is, for me, probably the biggest tool you can give them, because then whatever you program for them, it's not going to hurt them, it's going to help. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's absolutely and that's we. We were talking about it a lot. I can send that to you. Yeah? No, that's, I'll send you. Samcan. It's all videoed out, yeah, and then let me know how it goes. I would definitely test it right away. Yeah, put it into action. Because this is, this is something like, because this is a kind of that athlete's mentality, like, I'm sure you know it, and all athletes know it like, because it's especially, like, I would say 90% of athletes, like, especially hockey players. You know, it's still that mentality that if training, if you are not, especially women, if you are not sore, it wasn't a good or effective workout, yeah, or if you if you don't feel tired. It was not enough, yeah, and that is, like, that is, that is, like, I still try to you are laughing, but somebody, yeah, women's team is listening this. They are laughing, yeah, but it was not, it's it could be harder, of course, it could be harder. Of course, it could be at coach's job. It's the easiest of any coach is to make someone someone sore or tired. Yep, I tell people, I'm like a monkey with a stopwatch. Can Make You sore like all you got to do is overload somebody enough and give them very little rest to recover. And yeah, you can make anybody throw up with a with a hit workout. Or you can make anybody sore if you give them enough volume and intensity in one session, that's not the point. The point is to keep building the body. Why? Why do you need feel like you need to break down the body every single time, and then you go into a workout, you're so sore, and then the next day, well, you're still sore, so the body hasn't recovered. So are we building up by adding more, are we causing more destruction and pressure Heart Rate Every Time pressure is high before a workout and their heart rate's High, they probably haven't recovered from previous days workout. Yeah, right, something as simple as that. I mean, you could use force plates if you got force plates, yeah, do do vertical, you know, do vertical jumps to see their force output. That's another metric we use with the ski team. But for home, I'd have them fill out that form and then check blood pressure, hurry. And then I would look and be like, oh, man, you got a crappy sleep. You're stressing. Very high. Your resilience sucks. Your energy is low, and you have high blood pressure, low grip strength and high heart rate. Guess what today is, it's a light day. We're not going to do heavy plios. We're not doing heavy lifts with a lot of explosiveness. We're going to do we're still doing a workout, but we're going to do a little bit more calisthenics, mobility, neural activation, and then tomorrow, if your nervous system says, Yeah, I'm good to go. Great, we'll do that workout then. So adapting, adapting our plan. You know, we have to be adaptable with with our plans. We can't it's not set in stone just because we have a heavy lift day. But if they're, if their nervous system and the body's not ready for it, or it could hurt them, right? You're either going to dig them into a hole or you might cause an injury, and then your job as a strength coach is now failed, because your main job is to make sure they're resilient, and also the mentality of, hey, I'm not sore enough. Guess what? You feel really good after this workout? Guess what you're going to want to do tomorrow? We're going to want to do another workout. If you're so sore and in pain, you could try and convince yourself, hey, this is good for me. But subconsciously your nervous system is like, I never want to do that again, because you just cause pain to me, and now I'm going to find every reason for you not to do this to me again. So now it goes in protection mode. Yeah, so, but if you feel good, you're like, hey, I can do more. Great. We're going to end on a good note, because then tomorrow, you're going to come with that. You're going to come with that same mentality to work harder. And now we're building we're never breaking down. Yeah, no, that's, that's such a great point, and it makes so much sense when you say, so. Is there some any like, for especially to how to optimize nervous system functions? Like, is there some specific training or recovery techniques? Do you recommend? Sorry, I guess you got that. Okay, sorry, yeah, okay, go ahead. Good. Now, so it's all about states. So this the nervous system, the sympathetic you have, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, right? Yeah. Right? Our listeners, for our listeners, are sympathetic, fight, flight, freeze or faint, which is that high output, you know, we're going to run away from something. We're stressed out. We're going to fight something, you know, it we're kind of metabolizing things, and we're getting ready to for action. And then your parasympathetic is your rest test, rest, digest, recover and and there's another one in there, but I won't say that with the audience, but the parasympathetic state is all about recovery. It's all about rebuilding the body back up. If we can manipulate those two states and transition between them quicker, then we have an advantage. So for example, we're doing a heavy workout. We want to increase sympathetic tone, meaning we want to get the heart rate up. We want to get the blood pressure going. We want to get the body ready for stress. So we can do some breath work, so if you do hyperventilations, great. What does that do? Increase the sympathetic tone? Good. Now go lift something heavy. We can juggle. We can do some eye exercises, like taking your thumbs out in front of you and flicking your eyes left to right. Walking across the balance beam, your eyes shifting left to right is going to increase and stimulate the what's called the six cranial nerve. It has a sympathetic ganglion on it. It's going to make the cerebellum pay attention walking across the balance beam, because now you're on a slight height and your feet are coming to the midline, your cerebellum, which is that movement brain is going to pay more attention, juggling balls, catching cards. There's lots of things we can integrate to kind of ramp up the nervous system and then, okay, great, the brain's not paying attention. Now let's go lift some heavy things. Let's go jump over some stuff. Let's go do some front rolls. When, when we're done with the stress state, we want to quickly move into the parasympathetic state again. We can use breath work, very calm, slow breath, doubling the exhale, so it's three seconds in, six to eight seconds out, right? Doing kind of that coherent breath work, anything where it's slow and controlled and nasal, we can shift the nervous system back into that parasympathetic, rest and digest. There's, there's this one famous power lifter. He would do some heavy breath work. Go, lift up, go, let do his heavy lift, and then go sit in the corner for two to five minutes and do slow, quiet breathing. So he would ramp up, do the thing, and then recover very quick, because when we're in that recovery mode, then we can ramp the system back up again. So we can do this from an acute state using a lot of breath work, some visual stuff, some vestibular activation, rolling back, rolls front, rolls anything where we're kind of getting upside down that will make the brain pay attention. And then anytime we want to kind of calm the system, down into that reverse thing, changing position, laying down can cause more relaxation, more calm. And you know, anything, what we're looking up close kind of that we can utilize, what's the third cranial nerve where we're creating convergence and doing some breath work. I. Can also help bring the system back down. And another thing too, and it seems silly, is if you've ever seen anybody tapping Qigong uses tapping on the on the occiput or on bones or muscles, and then bouncing up and down on your heels can cause a quick relaxation state. It actually calms down the amygdala. We see it on functional MRIs calms down the amygdala and actually decreases blood pressure and heart rate pretty quick. Heart rate pretty quickly. So there's lots of things we can do, from a neurological perspective, to either up regulate or down regulate. It's just knowing what state do we need to be in at the right time, and then what inputs we can apply quickly to kind of get us there. It makes so much sense and and, thank you so much for explaining it, like, what type of exercises, why they are important, because it's this is coming from someone like you, explaining like, why, like, goes, at least I got a comment, like, especially in a men's hockey like, doing some pre exercises or something, it's, at least it was, I don't know now, maybe now it's little bit somebody's already getting their understanding how important it is and what kind of difference it makes. But this makes such, so much sense to when you explain it to the why it, what happens during the process, why it's important, and because it's, it's, again, one of those things, like with athletes, usually they are overlooking because, you know, it's just breathing, like, what it's called lift heavy or work hard, you know, it's, and it's not what, what some breathing exercise is going to do for my performance, yeah. I mean, breathing is, it's, it's the lowest hanging fruit you can do. It's, it's taken for granted. Oh, well, I breathe, Yeah, but how your breathing matters? Because there's so many different forms of breathing that we can utilize to our advantage for recovery or performance, but it's knowing, and you don't need to know them all. Just need to have a handful that you know work for you and that you can quickly do. And that's it. You know, people coming in with low back issues, one of the things that we I mean, we look at posture, we look at movement. I also look at breathing. If they're breathing up into their neck and their ribs are flaring out, I know they're compressing their back, but what they're also in is they're in a stressed out sympathetic state. I need them to get them to slow down their breathing, teach them how to breathe into their diaphragm, which then shifts their state from that stressed out state to a relaxed state, and when they're a relaxed state, now they can learn, because when we are stressed, we don't create those neural connections when we are in a kind of focus status state where we're, you know, we're in that parasympathetic state. Now we can create those new neural connections for learning, but we can't do it when we're stressed out. It's just survival time. So somebody comes in, they got back issues. I'm like, let's mine. Let's go after your breathing, because the diaphragm is a core muscle, and it's the first core muscle we use when we come into this world. So we need to get that on first, and then once you figure out what your diaphragm is, now you can activate the transverse abdominis and and get the pelvic floor to kind of close everything down for you. So we need the inner core before the outer core. And so many people are used to bracing and holding their breath. I'm like, that's great when you need to lift up something heavy for a very short period of time, but it is a terrible strategy to use all day long, right? So getting people to shift in the state. It's just making them aware of also what they're doing. Yeah, yeah. Because it makes obviously, if you try to create normally and lift something heavy, not the best idea. But also the same thing, if you want to do something fast and you are kind of under stress and holding your breath, probably not the best strategy, either. No, yeah, exactly. So, is there any like, what kind of course, this is, if you want to, if some athlete want to maintain optimal nervous system health, is there something like a daily practices, or something, what? Or, sorry, no, yeah. This is, this is like, is it like, what kind of is this like a breathing exercise? Like, how you would if it's like, just an evening or or would you do it like a before practice, after practice? Or when is the best time to do, and what kind of practical routine, how it would look like? So in the morning, you know, for those who kind of don't like early mornings who need a little burst of energy doing some simple Wim Hof breathing, some hyperventilations, some Sufi breaths, where you're stacking breath on top of one another, creates a little bit of hyperventilation. That's great for building energy. That's great for shifting us into that, that sympathetic ready, ready to stay Sorry, sorry to interrupt you. How? How you do it? That you breathe through, through your nose. Nose, yeah, so the Sufi, yeah, there's a Sufi technique where you take three to four breaths through the nose, and you stack so it's hyper, hyper inflating the lungs. It's popping over, open the alveoli, and then you're doing a hard. And exhale. And you do that three to four times. It will, if you're not used to it, it will cause a little bit of lightheadedness. But what it does is it helps over oxygenate the blood. It puts us into a little bit of a sympathetic state because of and it also increases the alkalinity of the blood, so that forces us to wake up and pay attention right after a lift, you know, right after training, get the athletes to sit in a quiet place, and you just do very slow breathing through their nose, so three to four seconds inhale, very quiet, almost where you can't tell that the breathing. Six to eight second exhales do that for five minutes. Just doing this mindful breathing will shift them from that fight or flight sympathetic, where they needed to use it for training, right into parasympathetic, where they can start recovery. If they go right from training, and they go eat a meal, and then they're running around, doing chores, and they're doing they've never left the sympathetic state. They so their body's still breaking down, right because the point of training is to cause a stress where there needs to be an adaptation, but if you haven't turned off that stress response yet, then the body can never shift into recovery mode. So now, what was a one, one hour workout now became a six hour workout, and they don't start recovering until they get to sleep, but now you've wasted six hours of recovery time simply because you didn't shift from the stressed out state to the relaxed recovery state. And it's very simple, all you gotta get them to do is breathing just five minutes. Sit down, do some slow, quiet breathing, set a timer, listen to some music. Whatever it is that get them to down regulate. They might not think that they're stressed out, but their physiology is and our job, we want to get them, because if they got a second training session, if this is a morning training session, and they have an afternoon one, you know, and they don't down regulate, well now they haven't even started to recover from first session, and now they're compounding more stress on top. And now we're going to get into overreaching and potentially over training, if you let that go long enough. Oh, yeah. And this is, it's such a, such a great like, especially, like, I want to apply it right away. Like, was, you know, it's, it's a situation training camp, like a short event where you practice two times a day and, and it's obviously some athletes, they are not used to it, and how to speed up recovery. This simple exercise is, is going to like, obviously, it's for all athletes. You don't have possibility. You don't train every day, every time, two times per day. But when you do it, and it's, it's happening like, kind of occasionally, these kind of things. Or if you have a, for example, games back to back, games like, and, of course, like, body is full of adrenaline after the game, the body is under stress, and then to kind of sitting you down, like was the something, like what I used to struggle. I still struggle. Like, if you, if you do late night some sport, you can't fell asleep very easily. And obviously mind is going through, like, everything what happened in the game, or whatever, and then getting that away from that, that is definitely some exercise. What I'm trying to do myself, but also with my athletes. Yeah, and experiment you as the coach, before you start implementing anything new, you know, experience it. Know how it works with your physiology, how? Because then once you have an understanding of you doing it enough, then you can better explain it to them, and then there's going to be better buy in every single workout I've given to any of my athletes I've done myself. Because in my head, I'm like, Well, this makes sense, and most of the time it's right, but there's the odd time I'm like, I have some combinations x's. I'm like, the force outputs down. Doesn't feel right, and I have to make adjustments. So I always experiment on myself first before I prescribe anything. Yeah, and this is the I'm exactly the same. I Great, I love I'm not just in the beginning of my career. I would probably just take exercises, put them together. But now you know, more experience, more you think about these things, and obviously I want to try it myself too. Like to know how it feels like obviously I'm not going to feel the same way as somebody else. But still, I have an idea if that makes sense, or if it's just a very bad idea, or or even I know that some workouts maybe you know you it's not something what you probably naturally enjoy. But then when you feel, you go through some pace, and then you know how it makes your body feel and what is like, because it's always kind of thing the bigger picture and but obviously, I'm definitely with you with this one that going through and trying myself first, and then implementing some of those things to athletes, or obviously it could be something different, but by myself too. So the breathing right after performance, and then the next thing to kind of get the nervous system to shift is, is have a meal, right? Yeah, first, because if you never shift, the Rest Digest, and all of a sudden, all blood and. In the muscles and no blood in the gut. A bunch of food in there. Yeah, eat the food in there. There's no blood, so there's no digestion. So now the food's running in this thing. So you can see the importance of any order and where that needs to happen, because if they go run off eating a meal, well, all the blood still and muscles, and you haven't brought it back to the center yet, because you haven't shifted states. And then the third thing is obviously sleep. You know, it's tricky, travel time zones, you know, late games, you know, the we want to look at quality and quantity of sleep, the architecture of sleep. But also, you know, trying to get them on a on a similar routine of going to bed and waking up at the same time, not always, you know, reasonable, especially in season because of the travel, but optimize that sleep. I mean, you read anything with Dr Matthew walker or any kind of sleep experts? Yeah, it's your number it's your number one. It's your number one performance enhancer. Sleep is so critical. Oh, yeah, you know. And, you know, recovering in the hospital, I that's what I did. A majority of his is sleep, yeah, yeah, no, but it is, it is Matthew Walker, that is, that is such a great book, such a good book. And sleep is something like where I have still feeling like I was for sure when I was younger, underestimating it. And now, you know, when you always really having kind of Arcadian written. Obviously it's not always possible, but when, whenever it's possible, it makes such a big difference in how much more you can practice. And obviously there are always factors, like we mentioned, games, something, but combining these all things, things, then you know you, at least you know you are doing everything you can to maximize that recovery and bring it back. Yeah, thank you. That was such a helpful I think we have been talking now over already, over hour, and I have a few we could keep going for another hour easily, and for time reasons, kind of stop this now, I hope to get you to do a second episode at some point. Happy to do, yeah, happy to do a part two, for sure. I would love to do part two with you so but before going to talking about part two, when to do it, would you mind sharing? Where do people can find you? Where? What is your social media handle? What is the best way to reach out if someone questions? Want to start coaching certification with you? Yep, feel free to share everything the the best, the best place would be you go to www. Dot, AMT certified.ca. That's the advanced movement therapist certification. This is the kind of culmination of 20 years of and hundreds of courses, and kind of distilling it down into a complete system of orthopedic assessment, neurological assessment, into high performance. And then you can get, there's a free webinar on there, eight neuro hacks on how to reduce pain and move better. So you can feel free to sign up for that. There's a newsletter, lots of free information there. But if you want to start getting into the coaching side of things, the certifications there and available, and it's, it's on demand. So as soon as you as soon as you sign in. You can start today. My Instagram is swales.com my YouTube channel, lots of free stuff on there, orthopedic testing, high performance stuff is Tommy swales would also have YouTube is the AMT guy and, yeah, Facebook is Thomas Wales, so lots of different channels. I post lots of free content up there. And yeah, we're actually starting our live coaching. So it's a digital course, but we're actually starting one week, 12 week coaching session, group coaching, starting January of 2025 where it's it's going to be a small block of students who have gone through the AMT system digitally, or who are working through it, and then it's going to be live Q, a examples, but it's a 12 week, once a week coaching online that people can get access to to ask questions, get clarification and enhance their practice. Amazing. I'll put all links to show notes and Yep, thank you so much for coming sharing your wisdom. This was such an helpful episode. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Turo, you.