Uh, awesome. Welcome to Fit Me. Turo fitness podcast today's guest, I have a Thomas Wales. It's a part two, and in this episode, I personally have been waiting for this for for long time. So Thomas in last year, I believe it was in October, November. So that's seven, eight months ago. My guest and, and we had a amazing conversation about Tom's own personal journey, what he is doing and, and if you haven't checked out, if these topics like this is more kind of for athletes and recovery, and about his Sam scan nervous system so and so. First of all, welcome to my show. Tom, thanks for having me again. Turo, so before we get into topics, just those who didn't listen Episode One, could you shortly introduce yourself, who you are, what you are doing, and then let's get into topics. Yep, so I'm a physiotherapist, strength coach, athletic trainer. Up here in Canada, we own a clinic, 5000 square foot rehabilitation, sports performance clinic with my wife, 30 staff grown that over the last 13 years. I'm an educator, where to solve my own problem of disorganization and increasing effectiveness in my own practice, and then elevating the standard of practice in those around me. Created the advanced movement therapist certification, and then a couple other coaching tools for both, you know, strength coaches as well as athletes, to create better self awareness through self assessment so that they can bulletproof their body and essentially, potentially mitigate injury before they become a problem. So, you know, when we're, you know, I always tell people that the, you know, the research says that the greatest predictor of an injury is an old injury. I agree with that, if it's the same area, but I see the greatest predictor of an injury is actually a lack of self awareness. People not realizing they're moving inappropriately or repetitively in certain ways, or certain body parts are not moving, so therefore forces are transmitted across, causing overuse problems someplace else. Well, if you realize that the neck wasn't rotating and you're rotating in your lower back. The the cause of your low back was the neck, because the next rotation joint and the lumbar spine is not but you figured out how to compensate, to check your shoulder, to make a cut, to turn your head. So if you're turning and moving forces into areas that are not designed to do certain movements, well, now we've got compression issues, overuse issues and degradation of tissue. So to kind of sum it all up, I want to one help the clinicians and coaches organize and optimize their results, as well as improve self awareness for our athletes, so that they don't need us for all the little aches and pains that they occur. And just a little bit about your background. Still, you work, obviously, with many high level athletes. I know you probably, I don't know if you can share some names. For example, I know I work with ice, okay, women's national team, but do you have some names you want to mention or or with who you have been working Yeah, so one of the most recent ones is Mitchell Hooper, World's Strongest Man. So I've been working with him for the last two years. And what's fun with working with such high level athletes is when you find all these little imbalances in the body and the nervous system. Eye tracking issues durable tension. When you correct those, those problems, their potential unlocks their their nervous system releases the brakes, because, because he's moving such massive loads in such massive volumes. You know, this is like I got right groin, right low back, right knee. Well, you can't den on the left leg. And what's causing that is, anytime he looks up, his glutes shut off. We call that positional inhibition, because everything's tubes and wires. So as soon as we bring his neck into a better position, as soon as we get his eyes tracking to the left a little bit better, and as soon as we get him rolling to the left to correct whatever deficiency has on the left side, all of a sudden, single leg balance clears up, and then the next day, he's like, Oh, I can squat 800 pounds for four reps, no problem with no pain. I said, awesome. So I use that as an example, because those are technically rehab exercises. But when you apply rehab exercises to someone of high performance to correct the problems or the pain issues or imbalances or whatever's happening, well, now they're performance exercises. It's no different than Well, we have the 80 year old lady who's got balance issues, posture issues, she's afraid of falling, she's weak. Well, what do we give her? We give her deadlifts. We put her in the agility ladder. We work on balance right now, you could say that those are high performance exercises, but in the context of the individual. They're rehabilitative and restorative. And then the rehab exercises that we gave the elite athlete, they're actually high performance. So it doesn't matter. We can't categorize rehab and performance exercise and say that they're different things. It depends on the individual that we're working with and what they need. And the key thing is you have to assess fully as a as a human being, like you have to look at all the structures, neurological, biological, anatomical. You gotta look at all the systems. And if one of the systems isn't working like it's supposed to, well the other systems drive up, and then they fatigue, and then performance goes down, and then injury happens, right? So we have to look at what the individual athlete, what the client needs, regardless of where they are in a an athletic spectrum, if they're a one year old baby or they're an 80 year old woman or the World's Strongest Man, you assess, you look at how we were designed, you look at the order in which we were designed, you look at what's priority, and then you move from there, and the body will show you what's not working, what's moving and what needs to be addressed. And you we talked a little bit before we start this recording, so you told something about the assessment, and like you have, you, you had you mentioned briefly, or Sam scan briefly in the last episode. So can you go a little bit deeper and tell exactly explain what it is, how it helps athletes and how everyday people can build that self awareness? Yeah. So we, I mean, we can build self awareness with just setting up a standard or a baseline. People get fixed. So the SAM scan I created for my athletes, because when they're training repeatedly, especially as they get older, they have, they come in with, Oh, I'll have 20 different corrective exercises. Like, well, how do you know you need all those like, if the injuries healed, and you've been doing these, then there shouldn't be any problems anymore. You shouldn't need to spend 2030, minutes on just, you know, doing your your rehab, corrective work. So when an athlete comes into like, Oh, I got this tight hip, or my shoulder feels tight, rather than me spending time to assess it, because that's going to eat into our training time, I developed the tool in which they can self assess, called the self awareness movement scan, or Sam scan. And it takes, I take three components from our neurological assessment that are cerebellar, so our sharpen Romberg a fucuta test, and like looking at coordination. And if those three are clear, then we move on to to the global movement scan. So we want to make sure that there's no top down control problems. Then we look at cervical spine. Can you flex? Extend, rotate, global flexion. Toe, touch, back, bend, rotation, side, bend, single leg, balance, squat. And then you look at the shoulders and the hips. And we're looking for what feels different and what's moving different, what feels Oh, that side doesn't move the same as this. Okay. Well, we gotta figure out, why is it a rotation issue at the thoracic spine? Is it a hip rotation issue? So then once, we start to figure out, well, you know what, the ribs, the rib cage, isn't rotating that. Well, that could be why you're pinching your lower back, because you're moving into your lower back. So now, okay, let's go do some foam roller rib lifts. Let's do some band openers. Let's grab a cable, let's do some rotation rows, and then we'll check it again. Oh, cleared up, great. Because if we left that rotation problem deficiency in in the thorax, and all the rotation was moving into the lower back. Someone kettlebell swings, they jump, they do a deadlift, they squat, when they get into those wound up positions, they might start rotating into the low back in inappropriate ways. Now, all of a sudden, we added load and velocity on top of movement dysfunction. Now we caused an injury. So if we can clean up some of these little imbalances that just naturally happen, it's fine, but we're catching them before they become a bigger problem, and the athletes now have a tool so they don't have to run to the therapist or run to the coach. And hey, can you can you solve this problem for me? No, no, you can do it yourself. You have the assessment tool that takes less than three minutes. And then now the the assessment tool guides you as to which exercises we need to clean that up, which is maybe another three to five. So now you've spent eight minutes instead of 30 minutes, to clear up all of these little, you know, aches, pains, tight areas, and now we can get to training. So does it? Does it take a little more time on the front end to learn? Yes, like everything does, but once you learn it, you can move so quickly through it, and then you'll you'll start to realize, Oh, I know exactly what I need to do for this. So I did. People aren't doing the same exercises all the time just because they were told to do that two years ago, and then they created this collection of exercises over the course of time. Well, this therapist told me this, and this coach told me to do this, and this person over here, so like you're well, how do you know? Unless you assess you. You got to check in. You got to make sure if the problem is cleaned up. Why are we still doing these exercises? It might be a different issue. Yeah, no. Makes so much sense. And it sounds so logical when you when you explain it. So what is when, when you use this Sam scan for your athletes? What are, what are some most common imbalances or asymmetries you see while athletes are using it? So we often see, because athletes are loading their spine, they're twisting. There's a lot of torque coming through, and as strong as their core is this, the spine can get compressed the dura. The Dura is the covering of the spinal cord. It attaches to the tailbone. All the nerves come out of it, and it's the inner covering of the inner skull. Now this dura is supposed to slide up and down the spine, so if someone comes in this and this, you'll see this with young athletes, especially young boys, who have growth spurts. All of a sudden they can't touch your toes. Oh, well, you know what? Like, you know, you went through a growth spurt, and your your your bones outgrew your muscles and your tendons. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Muscles are very flexible, but you know what? Doesn't stretch very quickly. Neural tissues, nerves don't stretch. So also in their spine gets a little longer, and the nervous system is like, ooh, like, there's some tension in here, and so I'm just going to tell these muscles all to lock up to protect because nerves don't like to be stretched. Now, if we get that dura to start sliding and pumping up and down, and then the sciatic nerves start to slide a little bit better, and then the peripheral nerves in the arm start to slide a little bit better. Well, all the tightness in the body, it goes away. Now the kid can touch their toes now their straight leg raises better. They don't have tight hamstrings. Now they can sprint safely, because if you've got all this neural winding and the nerves aren't moving around, well, guess what they're telling the muscles to do? Protect because the muscles do what the nervous system tells them to do, and the nerve tissues take priority from a survival perspective. Why? Because if we tear a nerve, everything that that nerve supplies is gone. You tear a sciatic nerve, that whole leg is dead. You can't run away from the Tigers anymore. So your nervous systems is like, well, you know what? I'd rather tear a hamstring than a nerve. So I'm going to just tear this off to put you to stop you from hurting me any further. And we can create some compensations around the torn muscle, but we can't create compensations around a torn nerve, so it's a very common thing. I just worked with an athlete. D1 football player here in Jersey, and can't touch his toes. He runs 21.8 miles an hour, but he's limited. And his dad's a professional sprint coach. He's a speed coach, and he's like, we can't figure out, like, what's going on here, so can't touch his toes. I was like, okay, straight leg raise is limited on the right side. But the interesting thing was, you know, I'm looking at his body. I was like, Well, what's this scar here? And his abdomen? Uh, oh, he had, uh, he had a surgery when he was one years old, and as soon as I put my hand on that scar, his straight leg raise went up because my input on the scar the nervous system's like, yeah, you need to do something there. And nobody addressed it. And when I'm feeling it, it's deep. It runs all the way deep into the fascial system. So and he even reports, he's like, yeah, when I lift my right leg, my right ABS won't fire up because he's got this horizontal scar that's been there for 21 years. Wow. I said, so I got the data like, feel this. It's keloid. Like, it's very thick. It's not moving. I just did a simple myofascial scar mobilization. Showed him how to do it moving the planes of the fascia, unwound. It straight, leg raise went up. Guess what else he could do? Could touch his toes. Wow. And nobody addressed the 21 year old scar, and he's been seeing back specialists. I said, okay, cool. Now, let's work on segmental because he does not want to bend his lumbar spine. He will not let it go. He's been taught. He's like, I've had back issues, and he just he guards, but that doesn't make you a very fast sprinter. You gotta be able to create tension, release tension. And he's just locked down. He's a young kid, so he's been compensating well. But then once we got his dura, we went after the next thing we did was we got his legs up on the wall. We did a Dural decompression exercise just with breathing. Touch the toes, Great. Now let's do some segmental curl ups. Ooh. Now he's getting palms to floor. Now go do a couple of glute bridges to fire up the glutes. Now he's just, he's bouncing all over the place. He's like, Oh my God, I've never felt this before. But I used my I used the systematic approach. And I looked at and like, Okay, what do I gotta look at first? I gotta look at Central neurodynamics first. Yeah, you're tight everywhere, but I want to know what the nerves are doing. I gotta check your myotomes, his his myotomes, which are nerve conduction testing, where you test specific muscles, they were shutting off. I said Dad, look what happens when he flexes his neck. His hip flexor shut off. Look what happens when he puts when he puts the slack on. Oh, it gets better. He's like, oh well. His sprint coach says, you know, like he's trying to get his head down, but he can't do it. And he automatically lifts his head. He's taking neural tension off the system because of his back and then so now he can touch his toes. Now he can maintain a stronger neck position when he sprints. I took the brakes off the system. That's all I did. Wow, because the nervous system is protective, right? It's a brake system. When the nervous system feels safe and it feels good, what do you do? Everything feels lighter and you have more energy the brakes are. You know, your potential improves. But when there's a little bit of this doesn't feel safe. There's tightness here. The nervous system puts the brakes on. It's going to it's a dampener of power output. Now, once I went after that linchpin, which was that old scar, his nervous system started to reorganize, and it took the brakes off. And this is one session, yeah, and he's been seeing, you see this one back specialist, expert in the world for five sessions. They couldn't figure it out, because he's just looking at the back right, seeing all these other therapists always stretch your hamstrings. I'm like, It's not the hamstrings, it's, it's the neural tension, but it's also the guarding and protection of that scar. So, so, yeah, so it makes so much sense, like, when you the way, how you explain it. So thank you so much. What about then, for like, like, now, if you, if you think like I'm as a strength coach or or athletes who might be listening this, how you can implement that sense, can without over complicating it. So the once you once you know the order of the exercises, it's very simple, like we start in standing. It's just three standing tests. They take 30 seconds. It's 10 seconds, 10 seconds, 10 seconds. Then it's think top down, okay, because what's more important, the neck is more important than the low back. Why? Because the brain, it's closer to the brain. So anything close to the brain takes a little higher priority. Can you touch your neck down? Yes or No, any pinch pain, pull, any pull here, any pinch here. So you can see, my neck is a little bit limited. Right rotate chin to collarbone. Yes or No, any pinch pain, pull. So it's very simple. Can you do it yes or no, and is there any pinchiness? Is there any stretch, okay? Or is there any pain? And those are going to tell us, potentially, what we need to do at that area. So if I turn my head to the left, I get a pinch on the left. So I might need to do some towel mobilizations, because I have a little bit of a joint issue on that side, if I have limited rotation. But it's stretch, maybe it's weakness. Maybe I just need to do some isometrics. And also, oh, there we go. Maybe I just need to do some isometrics on the short range, and all of a sudden it frees up. Just applying an input, right? Because we don't take our next Can you touch your toes? Yes or no. Now, if you can't touch your toes and you're feeling kind of tightness down both hamstrings, to me, that's usually nerve tension. It's typically not a tight hamstring. Hamstring, just if we remember that, if we think that muscles are dumb and they're only doing what the brain tells them to do, and it's often to protect, stabilize or compensate, then we start to ask the question, why is that muscle tight? And then we start to look at more important things, like neural structures. So, you know, we do a little L dolla, or we do some nerve flossing, and all of a sudden, oh, hamstrings are loose. Now, okay, cool. Global extension. And again, you know, we just think, flexion, extension, side, bend, rotation, what? How does it feel? And is one side different than the other? That's all we're looking for. That's it. We're not we're not measuring the goniometer. We're not trying to complicate. We're trying to make it as simple as possible. And then we look at the hips. Do the hips rotate with the favors test? Do you got a straight leg raise? What are the shoulders doing? Okay. But we take care of when we have multiple areas. We go on the we treat in the exact order that we assessed. So if we have flexion issues, but the neck is tight, treat the neck first, right? And if it cleans it up, great. And if not, then maybe we go after the lower back or the nerves. And if it's global extension, well maybe it's the T spine, go after that first, if not, go after the hips. So in the in the little that athlete, Sam scan, course that I created, it's an algorithm, and depending on where you fall into the algorithm, where your restrictions are, it branches off to the corrective exercises, but like anything, it just takes a little bit of practice in the beginning. Because once my athletes did this proficiently, they were so quick at it. You know, I'm not teaching therapists this. I'm not teaching coaches. I'm teaching athletes, yeah, but once they get it, they're like they they're empowered. They don't need to run to the therapist and coach to fix every little problem that occurs. And you know, for them, they're like, Well, this is a ton of value, and it's saving me a ton of time. And as the coach, how much time is that going to save you to not have to, oh, I, oh, you, you have this. Oh, I better check that. Or, Oh, you have this. Like, now you have to assess five athletes that came up with five different type things when you could have just, you could have screened the entire team at once, and they know exactly what to do. But my point is, like anything, when you're learning something new, you're going to suck at it. It's going to be uncomfortable, but like a martial art, or like any. New skill once it's built, it's easy to apply, right? So I don't it's it's designed to save time in the long run, but it takes a little time up front. Yeah, no, absolutely. And of course, every every athlete, every coach, knows whatever you are trying to do. When you first start something new, you will most likely suck at it. It takes some time, time to do it. But then, like you mentioned, mentioned, like, is this something like this system to doing, like with the team settings, like you said that you could assist the whole team at the same time, or is it like one tool? Nope, do the entire the entire team at the same time, right? So I'll work with elite gymnasts in Ontario, so they'll bring me out for their kind of assessment evaluation camp, and we'll have different age groups and different levels of gymnasts coming through, and we'll get a group of them for a half an hour. I take these young girls through the entire Sam scan, and then I'm like, check. But for them, I have a little bit of higher test for them, okay, everybody do a full back bridge, right? Because their extension is is going to be extreme, and do your front splits and see which side feels tighter. And always there's one side tighter, yeah. So my girls, who are left. They rotate left, they spin left. You know, I said, Where am I? Where are my left spinners? My left rounder offers. Oh, over here. Let me guess your left hamstring or your left front splits more limited, yeah. How did you know? Because when we rotate to the left, it's an extension that facilitates extension. So what do I get them to do? I have them do a lot of right rolling patterns to fix the issue. And guess what that does? It unlocks their splits. It has nothing to do with their tighter hamstring. Now, they got even front splits, okay, but like, you can do this with a team. You just like, Okay, what did you guys get? Yep, you got that. You got that. Great. You guys are going to roll this way. You guys are going to roll this way, and then you're going to check your work. But it's easy to do with the teams, and once you've gone through it a few times, they start doing it on their own. But it takes it takes repetition over time, and you just build it slowly, right? You just, you know what? Today, let's just do the cerebellar scan. Let's just check these and play with these who who had some falling, who had some balance issues, nobody. Okay, great. Let's just go do our regular stuff. All right, today we're going to do, let's just do the spinal stuff, flexion extent who had, who had a tight toe touch. Okay, let's go do some nerve flossing. Let's go do some rocking and rolling and then see if it fixes it. Like, you don't have to be like, oh, I need to nail this the first time. Just take components of it and sneak it in there as the coach, because nobody wants to do something completely new. But you're like, hey, I want to try one thing today. Yeah, everybody can you touch your toes? Oh, you can't. Okay, check your straight leg raise. All right. What do you got? Oh, I feel tangent. Okay, great. Let's do some nerve pumping. And then they start to feel the differences. And then like, Oh, wow. Okay, great. Let's go train today. Next day. Let's go just do extension. Pick one part, that's it, and then you're you're teasing it in there, and they're seeing the changes happen with one test, one exercise, and now you've got buy in. And then all of a sudden, they're familiar with all the components. Hey? So yeah, over the last two weeks, you know how those pieces? Let's see if we can do it all together. Make it a challenge for the team. Does everybody remember that? Oh, yeah, I remember that. Okay, great. Take us through the neck. One great. Take us through this. Take us through the hip. Oh, that's such a great idea. How to implement it like it's not thinking like that. You have to get a full hour of workout or 30 minutes to explain everything, just starting with the one thing at a time, or two things at the same time. And if for those who have some issues, then starting to implement those correctional exercises and see how they feel. So when it, when you, when you are someone who is starting like, like me. I have went through all this course, and I really find it so valuable, which movements you would start or which movement let's, let's put it this way, which movements you think that athletes, like ice body players, should do regularly, like, if you could choose only one or two, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with nerve mobility, because so the rotating that, you know, the hockey players, especially, you know, they're kind of the neck up position, so they're going to compress. They might compress here. They get tight low backs. If they get tight low backs, they've got tight groins. But you start looking at that entire tube, and you just get them legs up on the wall, Dural decompression, a little bit of like, I think I have one exercise in there called teacup drill, right? Okay, hey, everyone, balance your phone on your hand and don't drop your phone, right? Oh, yeah, because that's that I, by the way, sorry to interrupt you. Like, this is the exercise. What my I have been doing with my athletes. But do you use. Phone. I use a glass of wine here in Italy, it depends on if they're wine drinkers, they definitely won't drop the y. That is, that is usually a phone is a good example. But then, like with my normal like, not athletes, athletes may not get it, but normal people like this exercise is one of my favorites. Like, yeah, holding trying to keep your wine glass full. And then if somebody is failing, and I say that, you are not a big drinker anyway, so no, so. But what we know that teacup drill, there's so much going on. There's spiraling, it's nerve, it's nerve mobility, because you're going after ulnar nerve, median nerve, radial nerve, right, all the all the nerves in the upper body. I have to move and bend and twist my spine. I have to be aware. And because I'm rotating, the cerebellum is paying very much attention to what's going on, because the eyes are tracking right. I'm moving in these very Cir, these big circles across the body. So now you're, you're you're taking care of all the coordination, cerebellar stuff. So it's kind of pick off, you know, Oh, I see majority of these athletes are having this issue, pick off one or two fun exercises for them to do, because then they'll do it and then, but always check against whatever your whatever you've measured. Always check your work to show them the changes that were made. Because if changes were made now, now they got by and like, Oh my God, my balance is better. My back doesn't hurt anymore. I don't have that tight pack, you know, because they just flossed and mobilized all the nerves from the neck all the way to the hand. So we don't have it's like, my, my my advanced movement therapist. Course, it's a total, there's two levels, but it's a total of 20 hours. You're not going to go through all of it and and nail it at the first time. When I work with students, when in the course, I tell that, I tell whoever's taking it, look, get what's the first component of every interaction. Just get really good at asking questions. That's it. Build that trust, build that connection, right? Create the safety. Get really good and think about the that entire person in front of you. Get to know their history and ask all the relevant questions. Because that taking care of that psychology component is going to be a big deal for a lot of people, because they're going to feel heard. They then trust you, and if they trust you, their nervous system shifts into a more safe rest and digest. And now you can make changes regardless of what you do, right? Get good with that. The next is, let's just get good at looking at posture. You know, what's the body doing? What's the snapshot? What is it protecting? What is it avoiding? You know, any muscle imbalances, any atrophy, any spasms, any rotations. Then get good at that. And then you go, then, then get good at the global movement. Scan, check their neck, check their toe, touch, back, bend, right? This is what I tell my students. So you can't learn everything all at once and apply it. You just build on one on top of the other when you get when you get comfortable with one, start on the next, and then stay there. It's like exercise, you know, add a little weight to the bar. Add a little bit more variety. Don't go and crush yourself first time. And, you know, try and squat 200 pounds. Start with 20. Oh, yeah. But you got to build it up, because there is a big learning curve. And if you try and do too much, too quickly, you're like, oh, there's too much. I'm just not going to do any of it, right? So just one, yeah, and so you emphasize nervous system regulation a lot. So, yeah, why it's such a critical piece in training and recovery. The longer I've been doing this. So what the primary system that runs everything is our nervous system, because we are it is a threat detection machine, which is why the news is so good at keeping our attention. And the reason it does that is it's putting kind of scary stuff up there, because our brain is always looking for threats, right? It ignores it. Oh, is it? Think the world is good, alright, I can just, I can ignore stuff, but if that looks scary, I'm like, Oh, you got my attention. But the nervous system is constantly scanning the environment for threats. Our heart when we breathe in, when we breathe out, when we breathe in, our nervous system slightly goes sympathetic. When we exhale, it goes parasympathetic, so it's constantly shifting and scanning, which is why breathing is so important, because if someone's breathing like this, they're shifted into sympathetic, but if I'm two second inhale, six second exhale, well I'm three times longer and parasympathetic. So the nervous system controls everything. The brain controls everything. The brain interprets all the information, both internal and external constantly. It is evaluating, like I said, the internal and external environments. It's perceiving pain and discomfort. It's perceiving pleasure. That's all nervous system stuff. So if we understand that the nervous system controls. Rolls the body well. Now we can use the nervous system as a as a way to communicate with the body. So, for example, with with my with my football player, you know, I use, anytime I place hands on body, the nervous system is going to going to evaluate, does this feel safe? Yes or No. Do I like it yes or no, because it's an on, off. It's a go, no go system. And when I placed my hand so his straight leg raise was like 45 degrees, I said, Okay. When I place my hand over his scar, his nervous system let that hamstring go, reorganize in a in a meaningful way, and his leg raise with 8080, degrees I got. How did I get 40 degrees, 40 plus degrees of straight legrate. I didn't stretch his hamstring. All I did was it applied an input that the nervous saw as desirable, and it took the brakes off. So now immediately, I'm like, Oh, the nervous system wants me to treat this. It wants me to do something here. Now I've had times where, you know, you look at Rib flares and and you're like, Ooh, you know, tight neck. And I'll do, I'll do an active straight leg raise to, kind of, you know, get a baseline, and then I'll put my hand on some place, and it gets worse. Nervous System saying, don't touch that, at least not yet. So it's an amazing way. When you use the nervous system, you can use motor output, muscle output as a form of feedback to guide what you need to treat, to guide what you need to train. And it's and it's going to provide you that feedback loop of effectiveness, because if you did the right movement, you applied the right modality, you treated the right area, movement gets better. Muscles turn on. Nervous System reorganizes in a good way. But if we treat the wrong thing or we move inappropriately, you know, pain comes on, tightness comes on, and movement shuts down. So when I talked about the nervous system, you know, I talk about it in a way that we can remove a lot of the guesswork out of what we're doing as clinicians and coaches. Because when we see somebody move, you're like, Well, let's try these exercises. Well, how do you know what they need? I mean, you can look at, well, they're not moving here very well, and this, that and the other. Or you can be a little more precise, but in order to do that, we gotta spend a little more time on assessing, so that we're not spending a ton of time on the back end, guessing right? It's going to save a ton of work on the back end, a lot of guesswork and a lot of frustration, because at the end of the day, what matters the most results. And if you're not getting results fast, that athlete is going to go someplace else to find someone who can get the results that they want faster. So I want the coaches that I that, that I'm working with to just get fast results and not get stuck in, oh, well, this is this, I only want to stay in the performance side of things, yeah. But you have to understand neurology, and you have to understand a little bit of you know when you're sticking a lacrosse ball in something, or a band on something, and know if you're sticking in the right spot to unlock movement performance and potential so that you can go do the performance stuff. When, when I left physio school, I almost failed physio school because of neuro I almost I was failing neuro and and I was like, oh my god, I'm getting a 58 we're gonna I'm gonna fail anyway. I I passed the exam. I just studied my ass off. Got a 95 and neurophys. And I'm like, you know, I left physio school. I'm like, I'm never touching neuro again. And the longer I've been doing the or I'm just like, I'm just gonna be orthopedic guy. I'm gonna be a movement guy and the trainer guy. And the longer I've been doing this, and the more I've been learning about the body and all the different systems, like shit, everything is narrow, because once I once I learned neuro, all the orthopedic stuff got way better, way easier, and the results are way faster. No, it makes so much sense. And thank you so much for for sharing all those like, very, very valuable. And also for like I'm, I gotta say, from my background, like I'm, I'm getting into it now, and it makes us such a big difference with all these tools, what you have been teaching, what I have been through with your courses, and implementing them with just my regular people or athletes, and but one thing, what, what is, what I'm really curious is also about breathing work. You mentioned it a little bit and and like you said that if you spend like as I heard in somewhere like and I have been implementing it like it for like, your breathing, that it helps drastically. So for example, like you mentioned that if you take breathing, then that's the kind of time correct me, if I'm wrong, like that, then you are basically increasing your heart rate, heart rate. And you are kind of, if you are in a situation that you know you need a coffee, or you need to Baking, baking yourself up, then you focus more on inhaling longer and exhaling little bit shorter. Yeah, and then on the opposite, if you feel like it, you are too nervous. Or to full of adrenaline you need to calm down, then you focus more on breathing out slowly. Yeah, yeah. So breathing, you know, it touches upon two, primarily, two, two primary pillars that we talk about in the AMT system, which is neurology and chemistry. So when we're over breathing, somebody comes in like this. You can see their shoulders moving up and down. Well, we take about 24,000 breaths a day, and from an neurological perspective, one, it's shifting us in that sympathetic state because, because we're breathing heavy, the nervous system's like, Well, is there a tiger around the corner that we have to prepare to run for. So it keeps the blood pressure, heart rate and everything on a high alert, just in case. But we can't live there. When we're in that state, there's no recovery, there's no detoxification, there's no down regulation. You know, we can't we can't live there, and that's that chronic state of stress. So just by breathing like that, it's going to release cortisol all day long. Well, now that's going to reduce insulin sensitivity. Now we're more pre diabetic. We're not digesting food effect like there's so many things that it shifts us from a neurological perspective in the wrong direction. But the other thing it's doing is, when I'm breathing in too much oxygen for a long period of time, hemoglobin in our blood will not release the oxygen in there we actually go more hypoxic. So hyperventilation actually reduces blood flow to the brain by 50% now imagine that. So then you get fatigued and tired, and everyone's like, they don't know why I need a coffee. Now, well, if we did something simple, like, a little bit of a breath hold right, and we built up a little bit of carbon dioxide. Well, carbon dioxide is the molecule to help you signal breathing again. But what that does in the bloodstream, once the receptors in the bloodstream is like, oh, CO two is a little bit high, we better release this oxygen from hemoglobin into the tissues. So the it's, it's interesting research where, you know, when people are unconsciously hyperventilating, they show a reduction in in blood flow to the brain, but 50% but when they do some intentional hyperventilation, and then you do some breath holds, they get a 300% increase in oxygen to the brain. That seems paradoxical. You're like, well, you're holding your breath, yeah, but carbon dioxide was the molecule that signaled release of oxygen to the tissues, right? So this is there's a there's two components there. And the great thing with breath is it's the bridge between the nervous in the nervous system, between sympathetic and parasympathetic state. When we're sad, our breathing changes when we're happy, our breathing changes when we're angry, our breathing changes now, if we're aware that our breath has changed with our emotions, we can change our breath to affect our emotions and how we feel. So by simply checking in, I'm angry and frustrated, okay, I'm just gonna lengthen that exhale. Breathe through the nose, breathe through the nose, breathe into the belly. And what does that automatically do? Shifts you so we have conscious control of it. It's unconscious and subconscious, or, sorry, it's unconscious and conscious, as long as you're paying attention to it and you're self aware of what state you're in. Oh yeah, yeah, that's, it's all about becoming awareness. Like it's, it's like, not only okay breeding, but whatever you are doing, like, first you become aware various to what is the what is actually happening, and what I in order to change it, what? What are there some quick tools or quick ways of addressing so what is, then, for athletes who like your to go, like a breathing drills, if someone like, for example, after a hard workout or a game or or match, you need to start recovery quickly. And what are your to go? Exercises, sit, five minutes, quiet, nasal breathing. That's it. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that, and it's just a focus on where are you breathing and how are you breathing. So the where is, you know, one hand on your chest, one hand. And athletes can do this, sitting, laying down. I like laying down because then it removes the tension off the shoulders, you know, and then even adding on, put your legs up on the wall to to help with blood return and fluid return, but also decompress the spine. It's a nice exercise for that. And they just sit there and lay there for five minutes breathing into their belly, two to three second inhale, six to eight second exhale, and that's it, because just by simply doing that and lengthening their exhale, they're going to shift their nervous system to parasympathetic within five minutes. Well, if they left the gym, you know, right after the workout, and they didn't do any down regulation, their body's still and their body's still in a catabolic state, still breaking down, they're still stressed, the stress hormones. So now that's gone on for another two three hours after. The gym, well, that's two three hours that you could have been recovering and digesting food, right? Because digestion slows or stops when the body's in a stressed out state. So now that post exercise recovery meal that you just consumed, it's rotting in your stomach, and it's not being assimilated and digested to help start repair and on the opposite end, we can use breath work to up regulate the nervous system before a heavy lift, right? So it's there you go. You can do some intentional hyperventilations increase the oxygen, and then, all sudden, you can push more for longer because you've pre loaded the system with oxygen. Yeah, you're going to get less lactic burn because you have more oxygen available. You've kind of, you know, stored it up, and then when you got to that lactic acid threshold that you would normally hit, you could push longer because there's more oxygen in the system. And then you quickly in between sets just down regulate. It makes so much sense, and it sounds like all athletes or coaches, I highly recommend to try this. So like we, I can tell from experience, like we did, like we when we, for example, last year in the world championships, when it's very tight, you have a back to back games. You have, often less than 20 hours or 24 hours before next game starts. And of course, in those moments, you want to take all advantage out from recovering, starting that recovery right away. So, of course, you know that you gotta get some fuel back to your body, or some eating something. Then you do that your five minute breathing work. So you start recovery right away and not give that to another like 234, hours. It was, it's, there is only so many hours time before you have to perform in your resume. And this is example what you said about squatting or or doing exercising. Just a couple things to what you can implement basically before every set. And for sure, I know that some athletes, you will forget it most of the times, but once you remember it's never you know it's not end of the world if you forget it once. But just like we talked earlier, it's all about implementing these strategies into own regime and then seeing what it what happens. Yeah. So what is, I want to talk a little bit about injury prevention and off season. What is your general framework for reducing in injury risk in explosive sports like ice hockey? So we're gonna there's prerequisites to different types of movement skills. So if we're talking about power, we need to make sure one the range of motion is available. So if hockey players are, you know, they're they're skating, and they got that nice big, long stride, if they've got hips or glutes that don't work very well, they don't have a trunk that controls rotation very well. They don't have good spinal erectors or good positioning or posture while they skate. Well, power is impaired. So with off in the off season, again, we're going to assess every single athlete. What imbalances occurred for you what injuries happened over the season that may be impairing movement or restricting certain things. I want to know what parts and pieces aren't moving, because if certain parts or pieces aren't moving, well, the body's going to ignore those and it's going to transfer forces and energy to other parts of the body, which could potentially accumulate causing injury, right? Because if we look at injury as a physics problem because of poor force distribution. Well, we can just simply make sure does the athlete at least have sufficient range of motion to some degree of symmetry through their body, and if they do, Great. Now let's create control and strength through those full ranges of motion. Well, if they have strength and control, and they can isometrically hold and they can move quickly in and out of those positions. Now we can load them right. Now, let's add some load, and if they can load them, now let's move that load a little faster. So one of the things that to simplify this is, you know, posture, position sets up the pattern. The pattern creates the power, right? If it's practiced enough, if you've got a perfect pattern, and we're going to say perfect and you know, there's always going to be very but we don't move in the exact same way. But if the nervous system and the brain is very, very proficient, it can fire at a higher rate that those that myelin those nerves are, are they have greater, bigger coatings, so that they have more insulation, they can fire faster. So again, we're coming back to the nervous system and neurological drive. Because, you know, the person can hit the position, they can get the pattern. They get the posture is really good, and it's consistent. Well, it's just reinforced. Right? So now neurologically, they can be more efficient. With that, they can fire at higher rates. And also, if we removed a lot of the restrictions in their body because of these imbalances, scars, or what have you, now, the nervous system takes the brakes off too. It feels safe in the system. Because, again, if the nervous system doesn't feel safe with a certain movement or a certain position. It will never take the brakes off to allow you to move quickly from that position. So it comes back to fundamentals. You know, it always comes back to movement quality, movement control, and then speed power, skill. So how you then balance that strength and kind of that movement quality in your off season programming? Oh, I just, I just do like a two, three week block where, you know, they give the guys a couple weeks off, right? Okay, just go enjoy and then the first phase, first couple weeks, it's just, let's get on the ground. Let's Well, we've assessed stuff, of course, but let's just get on the ground. Let's start moving around. We'll rock, we'll roll, we'll transition. We crawl. Just to see how well they do down there, how well do they transition from the ground up and back down? I want to know what is their relationship with gravity. Because if they're holding their breath in a shin box to stand up without their hands, I was like, Oh, we got a problem there. Because it should be zero effort, but if they're showing a lot of struggle and effort with basic movements on the ground, there's probably a lot of resistance happening or a lot of inefficiency when we get into standing and and standing on knives on a slippery surface, right? So, and make it fun. You know, nobody likes to do corrective exercise, that's fine. Let's just, we'll create little obstacle courses. We get over the hurdles. We crawl under the hurdles. We do front rolls. We do back rolls. We get on. We go to the beach. You know, we'll, we'll look at different, you know, forms of movement. You know, for hockey players, if you've got sand, if you got a beach to train on, that's awesome, because I find that there's a lot of carryover, especially when we do sprints and cone work that is more translatable to hockey. I know of some some coaches, it's like, well, you know, you don't get the ground reaction forces, blah, blah. I'm like, Yeah, but for hockey players, there's no ground reaction forces, yeah, like, it's very different. But, yeah, like a track a football player, yeah, it is different. It's nice. It trains the feet differently. But, you know, from a from a contact foot position, yeah, you're not getting the ground reaction forces for propulsion. But for hockey players, you get them in a sandy area and do some work in there. That's super fun. So, you know, I always make it fun. We do lots of card drills, one drill that you you can do with them, especially with hockey goalie right now, get a deck of playing cards and throw them at them and get them to try and catch it out of the air. Because now that's convergence. Now, it's reaction now, and if they're not catching at least make hand contact, right? But they love it. It's so fun. Get a little tennis ball, put some letters on it, throw it at them, have them call out a letter before they catch it. Get them juggling on a balance beam, right? Have them hold water in their mouth. Get on a balance beam and juggle. Have them hold their breath and stand on one leg and juggle. Right? Like there's a lot of things. Once you get those introduced then, and they're having fun, they will let you, they trust you. They'll be like, you know, and they're feeling good, and their nervous systems are all firing up, and they're organized. And now, okay, let's go lift some heavy weights. Because I know a lot of athletes, they just like, wait, the weight training is boring. But if I pepper in these fun little things, they forget how boring the heavy lifting is, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I, what I feel often is that athlete, like a hockey players, they are like, kind of, it's still like, I used to be the same, like, and this is kind of like, what is, what has changed, also my opinion or my way of thinking as your coach, like it was that mental, it is always that if training doesn't feel hard, it's not going to be effective. So if you go, you need to do like, something like, what is like, mentally, really devastating, in order that to be effective. Yeah? Yeah. I um, can you, can you rephrase that question? Or no, just, just the question is, like that Coach, what I, what I have seen, it says the athletes, often they have that mindset of, like, not working smarter, just instead of, oh, yeah, yes, yes, yeah, there, there's, there's some athletes. They just want to grind. They're like, just just crush me, just kill me. They feel like harder is better. And the problem with that is, you can dig a hole you. That they can't get out of. I'll give you an example. So I had a Muay Thai kickboxer, and his mentality is I need to be killed every single workout. I said no, because you're causing with a workout, we're actually causing destruction in the body to a degree right to cause a stress. Adaptation to the body becomes stronger. But I'm like, if you are still crushing your body every single workout, you're not giving your body enough time to recover, and you can start to get into over training, overreaching situations. So I scale it. I ask them, you know, they come in, hey, what's your energy today? One to 10? Oh, it's like an eight, great. How much sleep did you get last night? I got like, eight hours. Great. What's your stress like? Oh, it's like a two. Great. Stress is low. Energy is high. What's your mood like? Zero to 1010? Being the highest. Oh, feel great today. It's like a 10. And then I'll measure like, grip strength and and, and blood pressure, heart rate. And if a nervous system is good and their psychology is good, hey, we're gonna go crush a workout today. Oh yeah, if, if their sleep was shit, their stress is high, their durability is low, that's another thing I ask. I have, I have a, what's called a dark you that they fill out every single time. If their energy is low, if their sleep, stress energy, mood is low, and then their blood pressure is high and their heart rate's high and their hand grip is weak. I was like, it's a red day. We're going to do some recovery stuff, but it's making them realize that they're not firing on all cylinders today. So we're not going to do the heavy lift. We're not going to do the plyometrics. We're not going to do the high intensity stuff, we'll we'll shift that to tomorrow. It's okay, because your body, your nervous system and your psychology are saying, telling me something different, and if I try and force this program on them today to continue to crush them now, we're in a deeper hole that we have to dig out of now. They need two days off potentially, or what if they get hurt, because what's a strength coach job prevent injury? If there's a lot of injuries on a team, who's the first one getting fired? Yeah? Yeah, strength coach. The strength coach's job is to build resiliency, with the weight room, with the strategies, so that the athletes stay on the ice and they perform. But if the athletes are getting hurt on the ice and they're constantly in rehab, and then they have to restrengthen, well, now I'm questioning what, what's going on with the programming, because the program is the thing that's the insurance policy that's supposed to make sure that the athletes don't get hurt. So coming back to your question of you know more is better. I gotta show the athletes where they are. I gotta show them like, today's not a more day, today's a less day. We're still going to get work done, but we're just not going to hit the intensity that that you want to. And another psychological component of we can try and tell ourselves or convince ourselves, you know, this pain that I'm in is so good for me and I'm crushing it and that, uh, well, there's going to come a time where you're just like, I don't want to do that today, right? You know, your nervous system will tell you, I don't want to do this. And if you're leaving in pain all the time, subconsciously, your brain will find reasons not to do that, but if you leave feeling good, better than when you started, your brain's like, I want to do that again tomorrow. I feel amazing. So it's highlighting the we're looking for the good feeling, not the crushed bad feeling. And if we get to crushed and bad, we either did too much today, or we've done too much over the week, so tomorrow's going to be a lighter day. But the point of it is, we're supposed to get a little bit better every day, and if that means doing a lighter day so that the next day is even better, fine. But again, I build that self awareness in my athletes. I have them fill out this form, which I'm happy to give to you so you can can go through it and they again. This is another way that they can measure their their output and how they're feeling, and then you can quickly look at it. You're like, Oh, good. Like, sleep is good, neurology, physiology is good. Alright, let's crush it today. Or, you know what? Your mood is not good. Your nervous system saying you're okay, that might be more of a, let's ease into this kind of thing. We might need a little bit more of an activation. And if all the numbers are screwed on the psychological side and and the numbers on the neurological physiology side are not good, it's going to be a red. It's red, so we're on a lighter day. Yeah, no, make some sense? I would love to love to get that kind of those tools, and always to see like I'm I'm so curious to learn and implement all these different kind of strategies and and those are, are life changing. So our it went way too fast. I have a feeling got started, and I will. Have so many questions still or topics, but that was the last question. What I was you are? You are deeply passionate about helping others? Yeah. How do you keep your own high like training and everything, taking care of yourself as a high performers leader and a family man, prioritize it. You know, I'll get my workout in earlier in the morning if I have to, if I know I have a busier day and or if I can do my workout later in the day, I need to do something in the morning. I schedule it so if I if it's in my schedule, it gets done, right? I have the because I prioritize it, I make sure it gets done, you know, because I got sick again. Like I said, all these doctors said the only reason you're still here is because of how healthy you came in, but that's because I prioritize my health, and when my health is in check, then I can show up and be the best version of myself for everybody around me. But if my health isn't good, I don't have the energy, I don't have the focus, I don't have the desire to you. Just don't have your cup is too full because you don't have the resources to share. But when your health is good, you can share yourself to everybody else and share that energy and share that passion. So, you know, it's prioritized, what you what you preach? Yeah, no. And it applies, I think, for all areas in life or or not only in fitness or strength coaches. It's basically for everyone who like, which I have a feeling like nowadays, it's all about its hype is, like, more is better that you know you gotta work. Maybe that's the best person ever who is making like 20 hour or 16 hour days in office. When through this that if you would prioritize your own health, you would get the same amount of done. Be better leader, better worker for and so up for your family in a different energy when you take care of yourself 100% so where the last wrap up questions and what is the one thing if a listener could do Today to improve their their movement recovery or performance, even without fancy equipment. The the easiest entry point, I think, for a lot of people, is, you know, if they're intimidated or they're not sure, you know, doing squats, lunges, even with callous action body weight, get on the floor. You know, sit, work on different postures. Sitting on the floor improves posture and opens up the hips. You stretch things. Nerves get mobilized. Think about how we learn to move as babies, they crawl, they rock, they roll, they get up, you know. And while you're down there, you can do some glute bridges, you can do some push ups. You can do, you know, some supports. You can do some climbers. So, you know, even in the standing positions, people's like, wow, when I lunge, my knees hurt, okay, cool, go to the floor, like, work on some movements down there, because that's where we first learned how to move. That's where the core starts to dial in. That's where the posture dials in. That's how the shoulders start to become stable. That's how the knees and the hips start to become strong in a squat position is through crawling patterns. So there's lots of variety down there. And just spend five minutes doing it, set a timer, just explore the floor. That's it. And then as you start to feel good, you're going to have this inkling of, you know what? I want to do, some squats. Oh, I'm going to squat from this position. I'm going to do some step ups. I'm going to because, again, if people are feeling good, and the nervous system is like, I really like that. I want to do more of it. Want to do more of it. It will find reasons to do more of it. But if it hurts, if it doesn't feel good, your subconscious will find reasons not to do it. So what I tell people, regardless, all my athletes, they do some kind of floor work, they're always crawling. They're always on a balance being they're always doing their hip transitions because it's very restorative, and it's a nice transition to build a relationship with the ground again, in case we end up there, but also it helps reorganize our structures and our nervous system. Awesome. Then, where can people learn about more about Sam scan or that in the empty certification. Yep. So AMT certified.ca. Is the website, so the courses will be up on there for I have got my YouTube channel. It's got longer format videos on there. I just did a video on top five exercises for athletes over 40. Wow. And yeah. So yeah, it's, it's one that I've, you know, continue to use, but it's actually helping me develop the tension in my body to get back to my gymnastics and whatnot. But so that's Tommy swales. Instagram is swales.com. Facebook, LinkedIn, in. Is Tom swales, and I think Tiktok is the AMT guy. All right, amazing. I will put those links to show notes so you can tick, tick everything from there. And thank you so much for being in my Showtime. Happy to be here. Thanks, Turo. Thank.