This week's topic is what is the right strategy for back pain exercises? Last week the topic was the wrong strategy, so I found it appropriate to follow that up with what is the right strategy? What's the best way that we could approach back pain exercise, and also just in general strategy over the long term period of approaching the exercise progression and the protocol for getting out of back pain. And so we'll be talking mindset. We'll be talking strategy. So let's get right into it. Just as a little introduction. The right strategy for approaching a back pain exercise is going to be primarily mental a mindset approach. And so if you're looking for the best exercise to do, that's not what we're going to be talking about today. I do implement the best exercises that I believe for back pain to help with back pain in the Core Balance training program. So that's where you would find the best exercises. And just to be clear, it's not so much the exercises that are the solution. It's the relearning how to do them in a healthy way. And so we'll talk a little bit more about that today. But, uh, I strongly believe in movement retraining as the solution and exercises as the tools to accomplish the goal of retraining healthy movement and core based movement. So best strategy for, you know, approaching back pain exercises. I titled this tune in Turn On. And so we'll talk more about what that means. I was slightly inspired by a documentary I watched this week where they talked about the counterculture movement and back in the sixties and 70s and their their phrase was, turn on, tune in, drop out. So we're not saying the same thing here, but we are saying the same words with a little bit of a different meaning. So tune in, turn on. What does that mean? That's going to be more specific to your mindset when you are doing an exercise. And so it's it's about, you know, feeling your body, having your mind go inward and focusing on what you feel in your core, specifically your deep core, rather than outward external to, you know, to your environment. We're not so much focused on, you know, how high you're lifting your legs or how far you're able to do this, or how much weight you're able to do. We're more focused on what is the feeling that I'm generating in my body while I do this. Am I able to feel my spinal support muscles, my deep core muscles, and am I activating them? Am I turning them on, and are they remaining active? Are they participating in the entire movement? Are they engaged and protecting my spine and supporting my spine? From the moment I initiate the movement all the way through until I finish or, you know, lower from the movement. And so that's the tuning in. It's much more of it's comparable to meditation than anything else that I can think of. And so that is what I mean by tune in and turn on would be the goal of turning on those deep spinal support muscles. So that's just the title I was talking about. But let's take a few steps backwards. And we're going to talk about the approach from kind of a high level perspective of of, I will say, the protocol, you know, of overall strategy of progressing through an exercise routine. What is your approach, what is your mind frame for that. And then we'll kind of zoom back in from this zoomed out view. So the first bullet point I have is long term game. This is the way that I, I believe is the best way to look at the goal is this is not about doing a whole lot in one day to try and make drastic changes in one night and try and race to the finish line. As I've spoken about in several previous streams and especially last week's stream, the wrong strategy, that's exactly what that is. That's not a successful strategy to try and go faster and do more and go harder to get more benefits. And so if you want to learn more about that, you can refer back to last week's stream, which is called why pushing it Harder is the wrong strategy for back pain exercises. So we want to look at this as a long term game that the body likes to make changes gradually rather than drastically. And so we're looking you know, our goal is, is for all of our tissues and cells and nerves and communication between the tissues to make changes. And it takes time for all of those tissues to adapt. So looking at this as a long term game just makes it mentally easier to frame the goal as something that's not going to be overnight. It's going to be, you know, weeks and months of progress to achieve what I believe is very well worth it, which is permanent changes in the body and the way that we relate to the body and reductions in chronic pain. So it's a long term game, and the next one is going to be very related to that. Consistency is key. So rather than trying to do more in a short period of time to accomplish to gain more benefits, it's much more effective, much more successful strategy to spread out that effort and that energy over time and put in the same amount of effort, but just in little bits each day. So consistency is much more effective, much more powerful for making change than high intensity or high quantity of work done in a short period of time, because it allows the body to make those adaptations appropriately and do it, you know, the right way with strong Tissues. And so if you are one of those people that wants to do more and do a whole lot and work really hard, that's great. That's really great quality for a lot of things in life. But when we're trying to make changes to the body. My recommendation to you is to take that passion and spread it out and apply it to committing every single day for a little period of time. And if that's just fifteen minutes a day, every day, then it's highly effective for making long term change. All right. So that was the second bullet point. Consistency is one of the most important things. Is much more effective than doing a whole lot in one day and then doing nothing for a few days, and then doing a whole lot again in one day and having that kind of pattern just divide up your drive, your passion and your energy into into a little bit each day. Okay, so we're now going to the third bullet point, which is also very related to this second bullet point. Quality over quantity. So I was just saying that it's much more effective to do a little bit each day than to do a whole bunch of quantity in one day. Well, it's also much more effective to focus on when you do something each day. If you have if you're committing fifteen minutes a day or thirty minutes a day to your routine, and you're doing it consistently every day, it's much more effective to really just spend your time and energy focusing on how you're doing the movement and focusing on the quality of the movement. And if you're, you know, if if that takes a lot of energy, it takes a lot of focus. And so if you feel like, you know, you're running out of mental energy and focus and fatigue, it's much more effective just to use that energy up on on focusing on the quality of your movements for a shorter period of time and then finishing for the day and getting back to it tomorrow, then doing less quality movements and just prioritizing, getting to through the thirty minute or the one hour workout. And that's not necessarily true for all exercise if you're just exercising for general health, I wouldn't say that's the best strategy, but for specifically for movement retraining, when we're trying to regroup new patterns from our brain to our body and regroup those communication channels, it's much more important that we are. Grooving those channels in the right way, then just doing it kind of haphazardly. So that's a strategy that I would suggest specifically for movement, retraining and doing exercises, using exercises as tools to accomplish the long term goal of relating to your body in a healthier way when you move. So we're doing the exercise and say you're laying on the floor connecting to your back anchor, which is, you know, one of the very first lessons in the program, in the free trial and what's going through your mind? What is what is tuning in actually mean? And this would apply for all the exercises and movements in the program. But we'll start here because this is really where the program is. You know, it's it's really meditative in the beginning. And then once we kind of get more familiar with this tuning in. Then we start applying it to more complex movements and eventually get to, you know, fully functional movements. Day one I believe we're in the back anchor position and we want to tune in. And so I what I would recommend if you feel comfortable doing it and you already watched the lesson and you kind of know what to you know, what the goal is is to close your eyes. I um, more often than not close my eyes when I'm doing these first phase or first couple modules of the program, and it just allows me to tune in and feel my deep core a little more and make sure that it's on. And so imagine your eyes closed and your focus, your mental focus is in this region, and you're trying to feel these muscles activate. If you have trouble activating them, then we can use this forceful exhale trick. You know, just by forcefully exhaling will activate all the deep core muscles and you can get a sense of what that feels like. And you can use that at any point in your journey doing any movement. Say you're doing a squat and you want to make sure that it's all turned on. You can use a forceful exhale and feel what that feels like, and then try to maintain that on the inhale. So focusing on breathing, breathing deep into the core, into the pelvis, into the lower back. And just all of the focuses in this region here in the beginning. And so that's what I mean by tuning in. And if we were going to come up into the bridge we can just visualize, you know, connecting to the back anchor and elevating the pelvis with the abdominals, completely focusing on these Abdominal muscles participating in the movement and even being the main driver of the movement along with the glutes. And so the focus is not on anything that could be measured from an external perspective. If I could be measuring it here, then that's not something you should be focusing on. You're focusing on the things that I would not be able to see, and which is what you feel on the inside. And breathing. So that's what I mean by tune in. And the goal of tuning in is to turn on and turn on these muscles and learn how to start moving your body with these muscles as part of your daily life. And again, this applies not just to the to module one, but all the movements that you do even after the program, if you are doing a new activity, a complex movement, say you're playing tennis, you know, in the first couple hits or first couple Pull moments of warm up, trying to focus on the same thing, which is my core involved in this game that I'm about to play, and I can really make a huge difference. I'm seeing a post from Heidi, so I'm going to read this says I look back when I started week one that I would never get the back anchor, and one day it really just clicked. Yeah. So yeah, that's hard for me to explain to students early on. Heidi. And you're very far through the program. You've been, uh, one of the best students that I've had. And, um, especially in, you know, in this year. And, um, so it's hindsight's twenty twenty. It's it's when you look back, um, it kind of gives you a different perspective. Um, but when, when it's in the moment and I have new students in the program and it hasn't clicked yet. Uh, it's hard for people to believe that. That one day it's just there's the two nerves are going to connect and the communication channel forms and and something clicks and things change. It's true. Consistency and sticking with this program will pay off. Thank you. Heidi. That's, um, excellent advice. Um, and I appreciate that sharing that for any other students who are catching this on the replay or in the future, that, uh, sticking with it is just one of the most powerful things you can do. So we'll move on to the next one. I kind of did a whole stream on this at one point. I think it was one of the first streams, uh, this year. It's not about what you do. It's about how you do it. And so really, it goes along the lines with exercises not being the solution. They are not inherently the solution to back pain. There is no one exercise that you could post on YouTube and say, everybody, I found the solution to chronic back pain. If you do this exercise, you'll get out of back pain because it's not about what exercise you're doing, it's about how you're doing that exercise and how you're relating to your body and how you're using your body while you're doing it. And it could actually be almost any exercise that you do that can get you out of back pain, as long as your movements are originating from your core. And it just so happens that there are certain exercises that are easier to learn that with. And if you're going to start out with a complex movement like a squat, it's probably going to be quite a challenge to learn that skill when there's so many things happening at once. So learning how to do things the right way is easier when you start simple, and then you move to more complex. And once you get to the point where your movement is, you know you've integrated core, deep core engagement into all your movement. Um, or if we're talking about the program, when you've integrated the core anchors into your movement, then it's true. It really doesn't matter what you're doing. You can be doing yard work or fill in the blank, and that if you're doing it in a healthy way and engaging with your core, that actually can be your maintenance. It can be. What keeps you out of pain is just moving through daily life in a healthy way. And these tools, these exercises that we have in our back pocket, don't need to be done every day to stay out of pain, and they can be more like as needed type tools to where you only pull them out when maybe after a long car ride or after, you know you've kind of abused your body a little bit. Sitting at a computer all day and you need to pay your tissue debt is what I like to call it. You pay your tissues back for using them, just like we do with brushing our teeth. We use them and then we clean them up and pay them back. And so that's how I look at these exercises as ways to pay your body back after using it in a kind of an unhealthy way, uh, for a while. So let's go to the next bullet point, which is this one here, less is more. And so this is a little bit of a different point than what I've kind of already said here. You know, already I've said quality over quantity, which could be interpreted as less is more. But I kind of mean this one in a different way where if you. I guess I'm going to kind of make a general rule here. I don't recommend introducing too many new things at once. And I would say actually, at maximum the rule is only introduce one new thing per day. And so doing less actually in the quantity of the different exercises that you do in a single day is much more valuable than doing a whole bunch of different things in a day, especially if they're new things. Because when it gets to tomorrow and you're extremely sore, or you you feel like you did something wrong or did too much or whatever, it will be really difficult to know what the problem was, what exercise it was, if you did ten new things yesterday. And so this is kind of like a it's kind of like a doctor's mindset, a doctor's approach when we're trying to diagnose, uh, through treatments. That's and physical therapists do that a lot. We, we use treatments to learn. And so doing just making one change at a time will give you the answer. Because if the next day comes and there's a new soreness or a new symptom and you only made one change the day before, then we can point to what that might have been. And so less is more in that sense as well, where we want to just introduce the body to one thing at a time and focus on doing it really well. And then the last bullet point is listening to your body. And so we have a whole stream on this, which is a skill. I called it one of the most valuable skills for getting out of back pain, and that is in the future. Reflecting back on what you did based on how your body feels. So if you're having a really good day, take a little bit of time to reflect back on what you did the day before and and then do more of that. And if you're having a really bad day, same thing. Take the time, take a little bit of time and say, what did I do yesterday or this morning or earlier? That is May. That may be causing me to have a bad day and do less of that. So another general rule is do less of what's not working, what's hurting, and do more of what's working, what's helping. And so that is my overall strategy from start to finish is, you know, the way that you approach this whole progression from in the back pain cycle to getting out of that spiral and just zooming in on how to approach each exercise and then also reflecting back. And so you can learn, uh, what to do and what not to do in the future. Okay. So that's kind of the topic and the lesson for today. So we'll switch gears into the student Q&A. I see coming in the chat from Sherry says it took me over a month to get the back anchor and progression down, but so totally worth it. Awesome to hear Sherry. I'm so happy to hear that from you. And and I'm proud of you for sticking with it. Like that's that takes a lot of commitment. That takes a lot of dedication to yourself, to your health, and to your body. So honoring you for that sherry and keep it up. There's a lot more to come, as you know. And then, uh, let's say I'm feeling better than I have in several years. Oh my gosh. Wow. That's makes me very happy. Sherry, thank you for sharing that. And I hope that inspires other students as well. We get a lot of comments like that. And I hope that people are listening, because I know there are people that give up too early, but especially this example from Sherry. You know, sometimes if you give up even a day or a week too early, you could be missing out on major improvements. And so it's just even more powerful and meaningful when you can stick with it like that for day after day for a month and maybe not feel much progress. And then when it clicks, when whatever happens in the body that I don't fully understand, that change happens. It's a breakthrough and it's totally worth it. So Heidi in the shoulder opener active stretch. So this is like a I think it's a module or a module probably a module eleven lesson. So I chose Triad Marching in phase two as I really like how it makes me concentrate on my core connection. And phase three I chose hip rotation control. It's a new exercise I've never done before this program, and my hips feel heavenly without any twist in my spine. Yes, not only does it make the spine feel better, but it makes the hips feel better. It's like, I don't know, at least for me. I was a baseball player and I think for I played ten years of baseball. And I think for that whole time, most of my rotation, you know, and swinging a baseball bat was happening in my spine. And it probably contributed to my problems. Um, but the day I figured out how to rotate from my hips, everything started feeling better. The hips are designed to rotate. It's a ball and socket. And so yeah, it just feels great. And I. I am not surprised you chose that one. That's one of the ones I do, uh, before warming up for, for surfing. So for shoulder opener active stretch, are your hips heavy on your heels like in child pose? It was hard to see in the video. For someone who is still in recovery from shoulder surgery, this would be a good one to add to my rehab program. My lats certainly need a good active stretch, so. I don't believe that my hips are even like sitting on my heels in that one. It's not so much about that position or like anchoring your hips down as it is, finding whatever leverage allows you to get deeper into the stretch. And so what I mean by that is like sometimes it can be more helpful to keep your hips high, which allows you to push more into, uh, push more of your body weight into the downward, uh, motion of your, your thoracic spine, your chest and your thoracic spine towards the ground. And that will allow you to get deeper into the stretch. And so it doesn't matter to me if your hips are on your heels or not. But I would recommend is just finding whatever position allows you to get the most leverage and get the deepest into that stretch, because we want to get to the end range. Normally in a healthy shoulder And then we want to train at that end range. But if one of your shoulders is still recovering from surgery, then your guide for how far to go is going to be pain and how it feels. So really listening to your body with that one. And you know, if you get to a point of feeling pain in your shoulder because you're deep, you're real deep into the stretch, then you'll want to just back off to right before the pain and then then do the active training of the muscle right there at that edge. And the goal is, is to push the threshold of being able to get deeper without pain. Do you mind sharing what kind of shoulder surgery that you had? Heidi. And I'll go to your next question. How do you feel about spine rotation exercises? Like, if you're lying on your back knees go to one side and you look the opposite. Since going through this program, I'm realizing it's not the best as it creates too much force on the spine. So yeah, I think that for the most part, I don't do those kind of stretches, mainly because they're not really functional. They can have the benefit of feeling good in the moment, but there's not really a use case in our daily lives where we are actively doing that motion. And so in a movement retraining program, there's no reason to do something like that. But if it just feels good and it doesn't have a negative effect, then it may not be having, you know, a harmful effect. It may not be a bad thing to do. It would be up to you. The other thing that in some cases it may have a harmful effect. You know, repetitive rotation, especially if the disc is already compromised, it can potentially cause more friction and more degeneration. And so it depends heavily on the condition of the spine as it is. So it's not really a strong opinion on it. It's just that's my answer is personally, I don't do like passive rotation. And I try to get to train my body to get more of the rotation in the hips rather than training the spine to rotate. All right. So we're looking at the answer to the shoulder question. Sphero A and the AC joint okay. So it's more of a shoulder girdle surgery okay a little bit more complicated because of the bicep. Did he put a screw in there. Was it like a bicep tendon or I mean anytime a shoulder surgery is not inside the glenohumeral joint or the shoulder joint, that's a good thing. We're not messing with the capsule and stuff like that. So I hope it was going well for you, Heidi. And yeah, the AC joint can be really painful, but luckily it's not super complex joint in itself and you can get it nice and strong once you're able to. I would be doing a lot of weight bearing exercises like push up position, plank position, and if you can't get there right now, then like incline push ups or wall push ups, just get it nice and strong. Okay. No screw. All right. Well, thank you for sharing. So yeah, just to reiterate spinal rotation exercises, it can kind of go either way. You got to listen to your body. It's not a functional application. If I were to do spinal rotation and, you know, on occasion I will. I'm much more focused on rotating my thoracic spine, the part of the spine that tends to get stiff and trying to get the rotation to go into there. And so if I'm laying on my back and knees go one way and, you know, the shoulder, the arms and the head go the other way. Really focusing on the rotation, going into the thoracic just to take the load off of the lumbar spine and maintain the stability that I've developed the core, you know, the spinal stabilization. So yeah, I think your realization is somewhat accurate. It's not like the best thing you can do, but it may offer a little bit of relief if that's what the body wants. Okay. One of the best things you can do for shoulders is closed chain exercises. So that's anytime your hands are connected to or fixed to something like the floor or the wall or the back of the couch, and you're doing weight bearing on that because it encourages co-contraction. So all of the shoulder muscles, everything around the shoulder is contracting at the same time, and it creates stability for a joint that is prone to instability. So yeah, I'm always recommending closed chain weight bearing stuff for healthy shoulders. Okay. So I have another question from Marcy. And this one is in the lesson chair pose for spinal lengthening. And she says I'm assuming all anchors are engaged. The video makes it look like your front rib cage is flared. So thank you for pointing that out, Marcy. That's some good feedback for me. Yes. You're right. All anchors are engaged. And I probably could do, you know, um, work on that and get a little improvement and keep my front keep my rib cage anchored down. I see where you're coming from. I think it might be more of my shirt that appears to be like sagging. I can't tell if it's really my rib cage flaring or not. It may be, but it seems like it might be my shirt flaring out. So hard to know, but I probably can improve on that. I have extremely tight lats from surfing and rock climbing, and so tight lats do tend to pull the rib cage. So if I put my arms overhead and I have really tight lats, they're pulling up on the rib cage and you're probably experiencing that too. Heidi, because you said your lats could use a good stretch. Uh, yeah. After surgery, um, that can be a factor. And so getting the lats nice and long, um, will help with ribcage positioning to be able to keep it anchored down. And, uh, actually, one of the things that I started implementing into my practice over the last year, or maybe a year and a half is hanging, and I intend for that to be a lesson, a future lesson in the program, learning how to hang in a healthy way and just staying connected to your anchors while hanging and be able to get that lengthening of the lats and the shoulders and the decompression of the spine. That happens. And it doesn't require an inversion table which has its pros and cons as well. All right. Marci has another comment that says her Si area sacroiliac is sore today. She's not sure. And this post was in Running Man. She says I'm not sure if it's the typewriter running man or sitting in a car for a couple of hours. I had done two days of typewriter. One day running man. I rested yesterday and used a patch to settle things down. This is the first pain I've had in weeks. Might have to slow down a bit. Okay. Yeah. Marcy, let me tell you a little bit about what I know about si joint pain. So si can be very reactive to certain body positions, especially if they're passive positions. So if you have, like a Si joint instability, which is really common in the posterior ligaments, they can become irritated from, say sitting cross legged or a butterfly stretch. Anything with a real extreme hip opening hip external rotation abduction, especially if it's passive. And so if you did any like sitting on the floor cross-legged or butterfly type stretch. Figure four stretch deep squats is another one where you're kind of hanging on the ligaments if you're doing a full like, uh, you know, but to heel squat where you're sitting on your heels, um, muscles not necessarily engaged, but resting on those ligaments that can kind of irritate them. And, uh, also any kind of asymmetrical extreme movements. So single leg movements where you're going to end range, um, or even standing on one leg, like if people are like standing like this on one leg or, you know, people shift their weight onto one leg. And if you did that for a really long period of time, that can irritate it too. Uh, sitting is not necessarily something that irritates. See, if you're sitting symmetrically like on both sit bones, but, um, so sitting in a car, um, isn't gonna it necessarily irritate the the sea itself. But if you were to sit in a car for several hours and your hip flexors tighten up, and then you get out of the car and moving around with really tight, or like especially if it was one hip flexor, like the driving leg, hip flexor, the gas pedal leg, hip flexor tighter on one side than the other, and then you move around. That can start to irritate it. So there is a factor about sitting, um, and especially if you're sitting asymmetrically or leaning to one side or something like that. So with that said, um, I would imagine it could more likely be Running Man if it were between the two typewriter or Running Man. That may have irritated it, especially if you're going real far deep into it. And it could also be a combination of those things. Or if you're doing a real deep typewriter squat, uh, that could as well. but it also it's what it usually is, is a combination of things. And it might be a combo for you of the long car ride, especially if you were driving and using that gas pedal. You know, one leg driving's a pretty asymmetrical activity, especially if it's an automatic transmission. And then also doing the exercises with that situation. So that's those are my thoughts, Marcy. But yeah, taking a couple days off never hurts. And then getting back to it as your body lets you. And even going back to the basics during that little break because the sea can be really helped with the bridge and the sea joint stabilizer progression of the bridge, which I call the butt buster. So I'd recommend getting back to that and kind of locking that in lock in the back of that pelvis, in with the butt buster, and then and then doing that to warm up for these more complex exercises. So moving on. Hopefully that helps. Marcy, we got a couple more just comments. One is from Mary. It says in module one assessment says I had been trying to maintain a good pelvic tilt prior to lessons. Good to have the anchor muscle. Tips to help fine tune posture. Thank you for that feedback, Mary. Yeah. So, you know, trying to artificially hold your pelvis in a tilted position, whether that's like trying to maintain it in a posterior tilt by squeezing your glutes isn't necessarily, you know, if you're using your glutes to do that is not very sustainable because we can't walk around and do life with our glutes squeezed and trying to hold our pelvis in that position. So what the anchors kind of teach, and what the ultimate goal is to change the resting position of those muscles. And so by connecting with our anchors, we're teaching our muscles how to operate and getting more centered in our muscles. And it allows those other, more surface muscles to relax and lengthen and get out of that protective position. And the body can kind of more rest in a healthier pelvic tilt, or not necessarily rest, but just the normal tone of the muscles lives in a more neutral pelvic tilt. And that all comes from, you know, centering your source of power and your source of stability. So, yeah, thank you for sharing. And let's see, I see another comment from Heidi. I don't know if you're still here, Heidi, but this one is in hip rotation. Active stretch says today I chose Buster Bridge in phase one and Hip Hinge phase two. By the way, if you're not this far into the program, Heidi is talking about how we choose different exercises from the program to just put into a maintenance routine. And so she's letting us know which ones she chose. Hip rotation felt pretty good. I can almost get both sit bones down on both sides. That's awesome. Have a little difficulty raising my front foot off the floor. I feel like I want to lift my whole leg, which I know is not right, right? So we're not lifting the whole leg. We're rotating from the hip. And so that works. Those tiny little deep hip rotators. P Gogo Q there's six of them. And yeah, this one takes a lot of time. This is one of the hardest ones for me. The hip rotation active stretch in the whole program is one of the hardest ones for me. I could spend the most amount of time working on this one. All right. So here's a student question that just came through admin. It says this is not really is not really a program related question. So I'll answer that one last. Uh, here's one from Stacy, and it says, I just started your program and completed day five. I'm still doing a PT program of machines isolating my core. Probably not deep core and back. I have had some improvement over six months that I can now bend down in the morning and tie my own shoes. Uh, that's great to hear, Stacy. I have incredible stiffness and pain while trying on, while lying on bed, attempting to sleep and upon waking in the morning. I am really at a loss of how to improve my symptoms. Should I stop my current program? Should I be stretching? Should I get a new mattress? I notice tightness along my spine and to the right of my spine all day long. I have had pain for one point five years and have tried many things for pain relief. And now looking into r a. This is so depressing and frustrating. Thank you for your time. So Stacy, I appreciate you reaching out about this and honoring you for, you know, continuing to search and, you know, try to take responsibility. And, you know, you found this program and you're trying it. And I just want to first honor you for that. I do believe that this program works. I believe in it with all my heart. So I hope that if you stick with it, that you can experience that. And I'll try to guide you the best I can along the way. So your first question was, should I stop my current program? So you're doing physical therapy. We are answering should you continue your PT right. So that's what you're doing. Or maybe it's PT meaning personal training because physical therapy doesn't usually do core like machines. Usually, physical therapy is more like therapeutic exercises that are more body weight. But who knows, maybe it's personal training, or maybe it's physical therapy. There's always been a kind of a confusing acronym between those two. So if it's personal training and you're doing machines, Stacy, I would say it wouldn't be a bad thing to take a break from it because especially with machines, if there's a muscle imbalance going on, and I'm assuming there is, especially because you say you notice tightness mostly on the right side of your spine and not the left. And most people with chronic back pain have a front to back imbalance. So front of the body, back of the body imbalance. If you're doing high intensity exercises like machines or weights, you could be strengthening the imbalance. You could be strengthening the muscles that are already too strong. The compensatory muscles. We compensate with certain muscle groups to accomplish things, especially high intensity things. And that allows other muscles to just kind of be turned off. Um, so that's what could be happening. If you're doing like a routine of weight training or machines, you may be strengthening the imbalance. I talk about this a lot in there's one lesson in the program all about this called the ten percent rule. And there's also, um, multiple past live streams where I talk about this concept as well. So it wouldn't hurt if this is a personal training program to take a break from it. If it's PT, then I'm going to put my faith in the profession and hope that your physical therapist is doing good things for you. Um, we're not all created equal, so I don't know for sure there are people at the end of their career that are burned out and just going through the motions. And there's new, fresh students that have the latest research, and then there's everything in between. So I can't be sure. But if you trust your PT and you're doing low intensity stuff focused on training your core, your deep core, then I would say, why not keep doing it and apply core balance training to it? And if it's just like ab machine doing sit ups and whatever, then that's probably not helping. So you can continue doing it and just turn down the intensity way low and go back to the beginning of this stream. And where I talk about the best strategy, where you tuning into your core and do those exercises with a different mindset, a different approach, and you can continue doing them. So yeah, that's kind of my opinion on that, but a lot of people just do the program and they have great success, and a lot of people keep doing what they were doing before, and they add the program to it, and that works for them, too. Uh, the things you're going to learn in the program are going to help whatever you're doing, uh, on the outside. And so the goal, you know, my goal for you is to apply the concepts of core balance training to whatever you're doing and just don't overdo it. The worst thing you can do is overdo it. Uh, that was last week's stream. Uh, the wrong strategy and underdoing. It is not going to cause you any harm, as long as you're just sticking with the daily routine of the program. And that could be enough right there. It just takes time. It's a long term game, as I said in the beginning of this stream. So next question was should I be stretching? Uh, no, you don't need to be stretching. Nope. And we talked about that later in the program. More towards like the end of the program. There's a module on stretching and it's, uh, I do talk about why passive stretching. It doesn't really have much benefit other than feeling good like immediately, but it's not going to really have long term effects, especially for back pain. And there's a possibility that it could be having a negative effect. So you don't need to be stretching in the sense of the term stretching where you are lengthening muscles and feeling a stretch in the muscles. I know that some people call all exercises stretching, so I just want to make clear about that where it's just passively lengthening muscles. Uh, should I get a new mattress? Okay, so this one, I've answered. One of the more common questions I answer is on sleeping positions Mattresses, almost like last week's stream. I answered this same question, so I'm going to refer you back to that. There's chapters in every stream, so you can just find the chapter that's about sleeping and then also in previous streams as well. But for a quicker answer, if your mattress is soft then yeah, you should probably get a new mattress. If your mattress is like medium firm, not firm, but like one level below, which is a really common thing for mattress makers nowadays. They're making they're making one called like like medium firm. That's pretty good. Like that's ideal medium firm or firm. Then I would say probably that's not your solution to get a new mattress, because that's what I would recommend to get. But if it's soft or medium like not medium firm but just medium, you may consider getting a new one because if you sleep on your back, that could be causing a problem. If you're a side sleeper like primarily almost all the time on sleeping on your side, then it's not going to be quite as harmful to have a softer mattress because it's beneficial for the shoulder to a softer mattress. And, uh, it's just not causing like, the sagging in the middle of the spine that sleeping on your back would. And if you sleep on your belly, then definitely you're going to want a firm mattress as well. So it depends on the mattress you have. And then pain during while sleeping and waking up can also be caused by other things. It could be caused by what you did. You know, your muscles just being extremely tired and sore from the day before. And so that sleeping time is the time for the body to do some healing. And sometimes when you do, your body is attempting to heal. It gets really sore and stiff when you try to move again, because it's either not done healing or it's just been so repetitive, cyclical that, you know, it's just the body is a little bit unhappy from the condition that it's in. And so by going through the program, what we're doing is we're improving the condition of the body, the balance of the body, the balance of the musculature. And it's possible that just improving what's happening during your waking hours of the day could help how you feel when you're sleeping. Probably will. Most likely will help while you're sleeping and waking up. So that's my genuine thought about that is, you know, medium firm mattress is better. And if you're looking for a sleeping position, you can try the legs elevated with a bunch of pillows, like a whole pile of pillows under your legs or a bolster and and see if that helps as well. But if you have a soft mattress, that's not going to be not going to be beneficial. And if you're a side sleeper then pillow between the knees could help. But I'm sure you've already tried that I would imagine. All right. And then you mentioned the tightness along the right side of your spine. Uh, in the program, we address the front to back imbalance. It's called sagittal plane imbalance. First, it must be addressed. We must have sagittal stability before we can address left to right imbalances. And so that is just something I want you to know that we will get to addressing left right imbalances later in the program I think module eight. But before we do that we have to develop the front to back plane, the sagittal plane so that it's you have to have it before you go left. Right. Because otherwise you try to correct the left right, and a twisting kind of thing happens. Um, so just want to let you know that Stacy. And. Yeah, I hope that you stick with it. If you didn't watch this whole stream, there were some comments in the chat that I hope you read from current students who are farther through the program, and just hopefully they'll give you hope that that this stuff works. And if you stick with it, that it will be worth it. So I'm going to get to the last question for the day, and this one is not program related. This is from Guillermo. It says, hi, I just reviewed and commented on your feedback. Thanks a million. My family and I are going to Costa Rica August fifth through twelfth. I had to change some of the activities due to my back. Don't know if you are doing any outdoor stuff and I do not want to pry into your personal life, but how do you feel about tubing on a river? I'm planning on doing this along with some hiking. Any feedback or recommendations would be appreciated. Uh, cool. Guillermo. So your first question was, how do you feel about tubing on a river? It depends on the river. If it's a lot of rapids and your back is really sore, you know, then I don't know. It's kind of like off roading, right? It's really bumpy. So I would imagine if it's a smooth, you know, not too many rapids, but more smooth river, you'll be totally fine. But I would recommend, like giving yourself a day a couple days before doing the tubing after your flight and all your travels, because just all the driving and the flying and then the driving again of traveling can kind of bring the body out of whack. And so take a day or a couple days to do your core balance training, do your bridging, stabilize your core and get ready for the tubing. And I think you should be fine. I don't believe it's going to do any crazy harm. And so, uh, just stay connected to your core and your anchors while you're tubing and enjoy yourself. And if you're a little sore afterwards, then it's a learning experience. And you can always, um, you know, take, take the time to let your body recover. And then you learn from it. And you might want to even test something similar out before you go. So I don't know if you can go kayaking or something where you live in New York. Uh, but but something like that might give you a kind of a glimpse into what the tubing will be like. And then, uh. Yeah. Hiking. So you said you're going to plan on hiking. That's awesome. Uh, best thing you could be doing for yourself, especially in this phase where you're at in core balance training is just lots of walking and hiking and connecting to your anchors. And then any feedback or recommendations I have. So I've spent the majority of my time in the southern part of the country, all in this one spot where we're surfing every day. A really good wave called Pavonis, and I haven't really done a whole lot. I did the years ago, a long time ago, two thousand and six or five, I did the zip line. So that was up in the high cloud forest somewhere near like Monteverdi. And that was awesome. I still remember it today. So fifteen years later or something, where are we like seventeen years later? I still remember it. And and so that's really cool. It's like you're really high up. Hopefully you're not afraid of heights because you're really high up and zip line really far. And then, yeah, everything else I kind of done in this country is surfing related. That was the only non surfing thing I've done. So those are my recommendations zip line and then like animal tours if you can go hiking and find a guide to help you find the cool animals. It's always really worth it. And then you have the Caribbean side as well with which has more clear water. It's nicer water over on the Caribbean side. So, uh, if that's what you're going for, then I would go that direction. So, yeah, that's my recommendation. And, uh. Yeah. Uh, thanks for for reaching out and asking about that. And I hope you have a great trip, Guillermo. So thank you for tuning in. Thank you for committing to your body. And thank you for believing in core balance training. I appreciate all of you. I'm super grateful for this opportunity to help people and guide people out of this back pain cycle. So until next time, get down on the floor and connect to your core and give some love to your body that does so much for you. Thanks again for being here and I'll see you guys next week.
