Timestamp Speaker Transcript
00:00:01.78 Tony Fowler And we're rolling.
00:00:04.31 Taylor Kruse Welcome back to the Cruise Elite Podcast. Actually a brand new episode style of the Cruise Elite Podcast. Right Tony?
00:00:12.88 Tony Fowler That's right. That's right. I'm really really excited about the Q&A we're going to do today. um I had a little ah idea though. I was actually I've started meditating again.
00:00:27.55 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:00:28.47 Tony Fowler I don't know if you've ever experimented that much with meditation. um ah got into it years ago and then basically didn't do it at all for like five years.
00:00:36.96 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:00:40.18 Taylor Kruse Sure.
00:00:40.76 Tony Fowler um And recently I've been doing it and and really enjoying the effects of it.
00:00:47.57 Taylor Kruse That's cool.
00:00:47.86 Tony Fowler And I was just thinking about it and I was like you know there's some neuro going on here.
00:00:52.70 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:00:53.30 Tony Fowler And I just thought it'd be fun to just kind of ask you about that real quick. But my my theories are as follows.
00:01:00.95 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:01:01.05 Tony Fowler um When I'm meditating you know one of the things that you do first is you close your eyes. there's some There's a sensory ah deprivation there right? You're you're not stimulating those parts of the brain. so I'm curious what's going on there. But then a lot of what what you're doing um at least in the app that I'm using is you're like scanning and noting.
00:01:24.18 Taylor Kruse okay
00:01:24.44 Tony Fowler So like you might like kind of scan from head to toe and just kind of note okay how's my body feel? Where am I holding tension? Like am i am i is there any pain? Am I loose? And I'm like okay so this is basically training interoception.
00:01:37.53 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:01:38.07 Tony Fowler um And then there's a strong breathing component. You know you're focusing on your breathing you're breathing deeply in through the nose out through the mouth and then breathing regularly through the nose.
00:01:40.83 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:01:47.77 Tony Fowler But you're like really focusing on your breath as kind of like the the focal point of of much of the exercise. And so I'm like okay there's probably like a vagus nerve stimulus going on.
00:01:59.87 Taylor Kruse Yep.
00:02:00.94 Tony Fowler You're probably activating the parasympathetic system. Um
00:02:05.59 Taylor Kruse Yep. You're checking the boxes.
00:02:07.51 Tony Fowler Yeah so I'm curious i'm curious A is what what am I missing perhaps? And then maybe if you have any other insights on and what's going on there.
00:02:15.74 Taylor Kruse Yeah well you you really nailed the the big ones. So anytime you do any any sort of practice mindfulness practice where the goal is to bring your attention in right? You close your eyes you inhibit visual input.
00:02:28.41 Taylor Kruse That usually makes it easier to bring your attention inward.
00:02:28.57 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:02:32.98 Taylor Kruse The body scanning right? Again lots of you know inward attention to different body areas that you normally wouldn't feel like you were focusing on.
00:02:38.30 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:02:44.54 Taylor Kruse right So all all a very interoceptive-based practice. And you also mentioned the breathing and and that does make it a pretty significant difference.
00:02:56.16 Taylor Kruse vagal type of activity too right? Anytime you're focusing on breathing because the vagus nerve is really sensitized with that especially breathing that is more exhalation focused I guess we might say.
00:03:09.73 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:03:10.14 Taylor Kruse So breathing that happens to be more exhalation focused meaning you are essentially drawing out the length of the exhale more than you normally would.
00:03:20.86 Taylor Kruse So let's say the exhale is two or three times longer than your inhales that is going to be more of a parasympathetic style of breathing right?
00:03:33.78 Taylor Kruse So yeah so those those things you mentioned are are right on. And then the one that I mean there's there's actually literature on you know mindfulness practices and what areas of the brain are activated and it's very spread out right?
00:03:48.79 Tony Fowler Right.
00:03:49.02 Taylor Kruse There's a lot going on but the simple explanation is what you mentioned already. And then also I would add the frontal lobe right? Because any anytime you're doing a mindfulness practice and you're you're bringing attention right?
00:03:59.29 Tony Fowler right
00:04:03.74 Taylor Kruse Because there's that key attention and focus from the executive functions that happen at the level of the frontal lobe. it's ah It's a great deal of frontal lobe activity to bring that kind of attention to those body areas and pay attention to your breathing or you know whatever whatever it is that you're doing.
00:04:21.50 Tony Fowler Mm hmm.
00:04:23.25 Taylor Kruse So yeah if we were to name the big ones I would say the frontal lobe the insular lobe and the vagus nerve component would be would be a good one as well.
00:04:36.79 Tony Fowler Yeah that's awesome. um I'm so glad you mentioned the the the cortex because. You know one of the other aspects of of the practice that I'm doing is is you know you have thoughts and they they come in your head and
00:04:50.55 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:04:51.77 Tony Fowler The idea is you're supposed to just sort of note them and let them go and not like get get distracted by them essentially.
00:04:55.52 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:04:58.48 Taylor Kruse Distracted is the key word there.
00:04:59.96 Tony Fowler and And so yeah there's definitely like a ah cortical muscle that you're sort of training there because it's so easy to just let that whole process happen.
00:05:09.56 Taylor Kruse Yes.
00:05:10.17 Tony Fowler um
00:05:10.39 Taylor Kruse well Well since you used the word distraction the other part of that frontal lobe component is remember how the frontal lobe is is very much involved in inhibition of impulsive things.
00:05:22.49 Taylor Kruse So that could be impulsive movements. It could be impulsive thoughts.
00:05:24.63 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:05:25.21 Taylor Kruse It could be anything like that. And so when when you're doing a style of mindfulness and you're trying to kind of tone down the thoughts that might interrupt you and and disrupt your focus it's more frontal lobe activation to do that right?
00:05:46.64 Taylor Kruse Because you are inhibiting something that is more unwanted for what you're doing.
00:05:54.65 Tony Fowler And I suspect so so I often feel in my practice that I'm not very good at this.
00:06:00.76 Taylor Kruse Yeah same here.
00:06:01.75 Tony Fowler um But you know it's still I still notice you know daily kind of effects of like oh I feel a little calmer and smoother and focused.
00:06:09.65 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:06:12.17 Tony Fowler So I think the the act of doing it is still useful. But you know I read about kind of like more advanced things. ah people who who meditate or people who are more advanced in meditation.
00:06:23.77 Tony Fowler And I think i think they sort of get past that cortical part where it's like i you know that that what's the word I'm looking for?
00:06:27.67 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:06:34.94 Tony Fowler um That really deep meditation where like you're you're in that Zen state or whatever whatever it's called.
00:06:40.18 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:06:42.84 Tony Fowler where you no longer have to fight the thoughts coming in and fighting is probably the wrong word but you're you're no longer bombarded so much by these these passing thoughts.
00:06:45.88 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:06:50.51 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:06:53.21 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:06:53.43 Tony Fowler um And and I think that that's sort of like the the top level of that meditative state right? Where you're really just completely present and aware.
00:07:01.85 Taylor Kruse Right. Right.
00:07:02.71 Tony Fowler um And so I wonder if if you get to the point where that that cortex is so locked in that that it can kind of just
00:07:04.18 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:07:10.20 Taylor Kruse You can probably get to that point faster too because it is a skill development. you know People who are more you know more practiced at it it certainly takes practice to be able to do that. But yeah they they can get there faster.
00:07:24.38 Taylor Kruse Things become a little bit more automatic I guess you might say like any skill could. It's interesting. you know It's not something I've played around with a lot. um In fact it's been a number of years since I explored it.
00:07:38.30 Taylor Kruse Like you I can't say I was any good at it.
00:07:41.31 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:07:41.75 Taylor Kruse It was... interesting. i typically gravitate more towards movement than I do. You know I almost think about movement is like a moving meditation for me in terms of what it offers me.
00:07:54.76 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:07:56.18 Taylor Kruse I never got super interested in in meditation although I feel like I might even be saving it for ah different chapter in life if you know what I mean because it is i see the benefit you know.
00:08:05.98 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:08:08.74 Taylor Kruse I did when I played around with it years ago i I don't know I ended up going down a rabbit hole and getting distracted like I do. And I ended up starting to also explore like binaural beats.
00:08:21.50 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:08:22.20 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:08:22.26 Tony Fowler yeah
00:08:22.84 Taylor Kruse And then i I ended up trying some binaural beat app and like a certain frequency like I really enjoyed it. Like it really like I don't know what how to explain it.
00:08:34.10 Taylor Kruse It took me to a different dimension honestly. But man is.
00:08:36.50 Tony Fowler Huh?
00:08:38.84 Taylor Kruse it like I was like hung over for two days after doing too much of these binaural beats.
00:08:47.33 Tony Fowler Oh wow.
00:08:48.02 Taylor Kruse It was weird. Yeah. The only thing I can compare it to that I've experienced and and it makes me think that I basically had a very strong parasympathetic shift
00:08:59.16 Taylor Kruse that you know I overdosed myself. I'm not saying it's supposed to be that drastic but the only thing I can compare it to is one time I saw an acupuncturist a very long time ago.
00:09:04.60 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:09:10.01 Taylor Kruse We were kind of trading skills. He was interested in what we were offering at our studio at the time when Alicia and I were doing more in-person clients at our studio. and and And so he was like hey you know would you be open to you know trading some of you know what you guys are offering and doing teaching me some of this joint mobility stuff and then I'll also you know treat you with acupuncture. And we did that for a bit.
00:09:34.87 Taylor Kruse And he overdosed the heck out of me with acupuncture once.
00:09:38.08 Tony Fowler Mm yeah.
00:09:39.24 Taylor Kruse And I think I had and one of those big like parasympathetic shifts that was essentially too much like change in my autonomics like too aggressive. And man same thing.
00:09:49.33 Taylor Kruse I was like hung over for a couple of days. It was weird.
00:09:52.71 Tony Fowler Oh that's fascinating.
00:09:53.34 Taylor Kruse Yeah so there could be dosage things there too which is interesting. But that was about the extent of my mindfulness serious mindfulness that attempted practice anyway.
00:10:04.92 Tony Fowler So using using sort of some of the models that we talked about is that overdose phase you think do you think there was like ah a raise of threat ah a threat response to it because it was such a shift?
00:10:17.37 Tony Fowler Or?
00:10:17.88 Taylor Kruse No actually the way I experienced it was not so much threatening in terms of like was it was it decreasing my performance and increasing symptoms of any kind? I didn't experience it like that. I experienced it as almost like it was so novel and so different for my brain and body that I just I ended up being i guess a super responder where I responded so much. It was almost like an inappropriate response in maybe the right direction but then because it was such a shift for me it's I felt it as maybe it affected my autonomics in a way that made me feel almost just like too chill for too long if you know what I mean. you know and And chill when I didn't want to be.
00:11:09.78 Tony Fowler Yeah that's fascinating.
00:11:10.58 Taylor Kruse Yeah yeah yeah.
00:11:11.27 Tony Fowler um one of One of my favorite movies growing up was Office Space. Have you seen this movie?
00:11:15.54 Taylor Kruse Yeah yeah yeah. It's been a while but yes.
00:11:17.05 Tony Fowler So for the for the listeners yeah basically this guy he's at a job that he hates or whatever and he goes to this hypnotherapist. And the hypnotherapist is like deep in the middle of the treatment like you're going to relax like you're not going to care like deeper and deeper. And like before he comes out of it the guy has a heart attack dies right there.
00:11:37.85 Tony Fowler And so he never comes out of this like hypnotic state of like being super chill.
00:11:42.48 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:11:42.58 Tony Fowler And so then he goes back to work and he like doesn't care and like nothing matters and and the rest of hilarity ensues. Right. But I think that was you for two days.
00:11:52.04 Taylor Kruse Dude I'll tell you what I was almost hypnotized once for real in high school.
00:11:54.73 Tony Fowler Mm hmm. Yeah.
00:11:56.47 Taylor Kruse But I bailed out. I did not like the feeling of it but we we there was a hypnotist that came to our high school during some event. I forget what it was. And there was like six kids. like So they basically did something to you know the crowd of people there. And if you wanted to participate they took you through the...
00:12:14.23 Taylor Kruse The cues close your eyes do this do that.
00:12:15.32 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:12:16.74 Taylor Kruse If you wanted to participate you could. If you didn't you didn't have to um And I started going through it. And I got to a point where it became very scary because I felt myself feeling like I was losing control.
00:12:23.80 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:12:28.15 Taylor Kruse And I opened my eyes and bailed out. And I'll tell you what I didn't know if I was a believer back then. I didn't ah just didn't know. But I was just i was intrigued.
00:12:36.18 Tony Fowler Yeah
00:12:37.98 Taylor Kruse Man at one point the hypnotist had you know three three students doing some funny things. It was bizarre. it was It was a bizarre experience.
00:12:49.46 Tony Fowler yeah that's what I hear. there's ah like It seems like in ah in a group of people there's always one or two that are
00:12:55.32 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:12:55.79 Tony Fowler uh uh susceptible right?
00:12:58.16 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:12:58.54 Tony Fowler Suggestible susceptible super responders whatever the word might be. Um I've never experienced it but that's that's what I hear.
00:13:05.05 Taylor Kruse Yeah yeah.
00:13:06.68 Tony Fowler Interesting. There there's probably some neuro there.
00:13:10.74 Taylor Kruse Oh yeah i don't yeah i I don't really know what it is but it it's it'd be interesting.
00:13:10.97 Tony Fowler um
00:13:13.91 Tony Fowler yeah.
00:13:16.98 Tony Fowler Interesting. Well awesome. Thank you for for indulging me on that one.
00:13:21.11 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:13:22.30 Tony Fowler Um
00:13:24.95 Tony Fowler But yeah meditation has been a really cool addition to my routine lately.
00:13:30.84 Taylor Kruse Yeah you'll have to update us and see we'll see how you're using it and enjoying it and see if you're improving your skill set of it.
00:13:31.10 Tony Fowler so
00:13:42.10 Tony Fowler So we're going to like you said at the the head of the episode we're going to do something a little different today. um You guys put a post up. on social media on Instagram I think and then perhaps in the in the dojo in the strength dojo or...
00:13:54.50 Taylor Kruse Yep.
00:13:58.84 Taylor Kruse We didn't do the the the our inner community but we went we did get questions from people on Instagram.
00:14:00.44 Tony Fowler Okay.
00:14:07.83 Taylor Kruse So it was yeah we had put out a post and then we had ah a question box up as well.
00:14:08.22 Tony Fowler Awesome.
00:14:12.68 Taylor Kruse So yeah the goal was to gather some of those questions and see what we could take care of here in the podcast.
00:14:14.01 Tony Fowler Yeah so...
00:14:18.72 Tony Fowler Yep yep. I'm super excited. The questions are really great. So thank you to all of you who ah posted questions. And I imagine we'll be doing this again. So um keep your eyes peeled for that.
00:14:27.99 Taylor Kruse Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:31.58 Tony Fowler But yeah to kick us off I'm just going to start reading through them.
00:14:35.32 Taylor Kruse yeah
00:14:36.66 Tony Fowler This is from Aisuluju Linda. what would What would help to release the tension on the whole right side one line from head to the toes?
00:14:50.91 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm. So there's there's stuff to consider just from the statement right and the question because sounds like this person's feeling muscular tension or however they experience it tension stiffness a line from head to toe.
00:14:58.48 Tony Fowler Yep yep.
00:15:10.26 Taylor Kruse So basically one side of their body is too tight let's say.
00:15:14.91 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:15:15.80 Taylor Kruse Okay? so So that in itself is interesting. we can theorize a little bit based on that because that that's something that I would hear somewhat commonly when taking like a health history with a client.
00:15:30.07 Taylor Kruse Yeah so the first thing and and there's several different possibilities here but I'm gonna talk mainly about the one that seems to be the most common when people are feeling all one-sided tension. And I would probably go on to ask
00:15:43.93 Taylor Kruse Like if you feel all that tension on one side of the body do you also have some level of injury history on that side of the body? Because most of the time people will say yes like oh yeah you know come to think of it if this is the right side of my body ah you know i've I've sprained my right ankle more times than I can remember. I had a MCL sprain a couple times on my knee.
00:16:09.56 Taylor Kruse My hip doesn't seem to have a major problem but it just kind of aches me from time to time. And You know they basically have this injury history that they could list from head to toe.
00:16:21.21 Taylor Kruse um Everything kind of sounds like me actually during my athletic career. all All these kind of joint issues muscle issues on one side of the body.
00:16:30.00 Tony Fowler I'm mostly right side I think.
00:16:31.59 Taylor Kruse Aria? Yeah.
00:16:32.06 Tony Fowler Yeah yeah.
00:16:32.09 Taylor Kruse And it's it's quite it's quite a common presentation. So the the common thing about it is usually we would start to consider that that might be what we call a PMRF history.
00:16:46.07 Taylor Kruse And we've talked about the PMRF in several podcast episodes. It stands for pontomedullary reticular formation and that is the brainstem. And so when when the brainstem is not doing its job appropriately or optimally let's say you can develop muscle tone issues.
00:17:07.09 Taylor Kruse on one side of the body. Because you you have a right brain stem you have a left brain stem. right And so these these issues can be one-sided and they often are. right Because as humans were we're not perfectly symmetrical. The way our neurology works is not perfectly symmetrical.
00:17:24.76 Taylor Kruse um Your brain stem is a subcortical region of the brain that is involved in all sorts of automatic processes.
00:17:36.02 Taylor Kruse So that is calibrating muscle tone. So kind of setting global muscle tone with the help of other other structures too like the cortex and the cerebellum.
00:17:50.09 Taylor Kruse But its job is to help set global muscle tone ipsilaterally.
00:17:54.19 Tony Fowler Thank you.
00:17:55.06 Taylor Kruse Ipsilaterally means one side of the body. And you can look even deeper in the PMRF. um it It's involved in in autonomic function.
00:18:07.00 Taylor Kruse So think like blood pressure things like that. And it's involved in posture. okay And um if you go even deeper and look at some of what we know about the muscles it is responsible for inhibiting flexor muscles above the level of T6 on the spinal cord.
00:18:32.75 Tony Fowler Hmm. Hmm.
00:18:33.37 Taylor Kruse and extensor muscles below the level of T6 on the spinal cord. So it these folks that often have this one-sided pain history and tension from head to toe sometimes present with what we would look at as a PMRF posture which it can be happening on both the upper and lower part of the body but for the upper body would be kind of an internally rotated shoulder that is maybe more depressed kind of like sagging down on that side that would indicate more of a loss of tone of the extensor musculature above T6 and maybe increased tone in the flexor compartment in the upper body. So think like the pec region the bicep region even down the arm
00:19:22.81 Taylor Kruse Forearm flexors hand and finger flexors.
00:19:24.56 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:19:25.82 Taylor Kruse Sometimes people can have this almost claw-like appearance when they're walking with their hand. It's fairly subtle in a healthy population but it can be there as well as excessive pronation of the forearm.
00:19:40.15 Taylor Kruse So that's kind of the upper body and the lower body is easier to spot. It's basically your your leg is turned out so kind of the duck. the duck posture with the leg the foot's turned out the hip's turned out. And and that's an indication that there's increased extensor tone kind of externally rotating the lower body and perhaps a loss of flexor and adductor tone again primarily at the hip.
00:20:04.82 Taylor Kruse you know It also affects the lower leg too but that's what you you would call a PMRF posture. So perhaps our this this person asking the question might have some PMRF posture going on.
00:20:19.32 Taylor Kruse So there's there's lots of possibilities for how you might approach it. I'll try to kind of provide some low hanging fruit some pretty you know reachable things.
00:20:28.42 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:20:30.42 Taylor Kruse um I know it's gonna be we're kind of split with our audience right? We've got people the general population who are fitness enthusiasts and wanna know more more about neurology but they haven't taken our courses so maybe they don't know all the lingo yet. And then we're gonna have some of our students listening to this who are gonna be hearing about the PMRF at a very detailed level from me all the time.
00:20:50.78 Taylor Kruse So I'm kind of trying to strike a balance here in terms of how we might be able to excite both both groups. But the first idea is kind of an odd one.
00:21:02.20 Taylor Kruse It would be to perform complex nonlinear movements on the opposite side of your body to where you're feeling the tension. So if you're feeling the excessive tension on the right from head to toe
00:21:14.78 Taylor Kruse making your practice your movement practice a little bit asymmetric not even a little bit maybe a lot maybe doing like 70% of your movements on the left side of your body for a an amount of time right?
00:21:21.35 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:21:29.93 Taylor Kruse So this could be this could be four weeks of practice six weeks of practice where you're you're doing more with the opposite side of the body. um pre you know My preference for that would be complex nonlinear styles of joint mobility like I'm always talking about and teaching on social media circular motions things that require a great deal of accuracy taking joints and muscles through their end ranges of motion but in a more sophisticated way than just linear movement.
00:22:02.64 Tony Fowler Yep.
00:22:03.22 Taylor Kruse And so we've got drills from head to toe that that we teach people um that you know are great ah is a great tool set for working with the PMRF.
00:22:16.02 Taylor Kruse So that would be my my first recommendation. and And that can go a really long way for people. And it's very important. interesting and weird when someone learns that let's say ah the right side of my body is chronically tight. So you would assume I have to target the right side to deal with the tightness. And and maybe you got to do some localized stuff there but a lot of the time if you go to the opposite side of the body because when we exercise the opposite side of the body
00:22:46.07 Taylor Kruse That voluntary movement is activating the ipsilateral cerebellum so that means same side of the body cerebellum but it is also involving the contralateral which means opposite side of the body cortex especially the frontal lobe
00:23:04.87 Taylor Kruse and the frontal lobe fires down into the brainstem. So we're back to the PMRF and it's ipsilaterally so if I'm moving the left side of my body and activating my right cortex as a result of that my right cortex is gonna fire down into my right PMRF and help it do its job better.
00:23:12.15 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:23:26.87 Taylor Kruse Which what does that mean? Well it could mean better balance of muscle tone between flexor and extensors. And that's essentially what we're talking about there is balancing muscle tone. It also could mean inhibiting some pain because the brainstem can do that through some anti-nocesceptive pathways that get activated when you start working with the brainstem.
00:23:53.37 Taylor Kruse So you get the idea. You can even affect autonomic function on that side of the body. So that's that's the first idea. then and then Some other possibilities would be literally doing some exercises. Remember we talked about the brainstem. We talked about the T6 dividing line.
00:24:13.11 Taylor Kruse So extensors above T6 flexors below would need some work.
00:24:16.66 Tony Fowler about About where is T6 on the spine?
00:24:18.68 Taylor Kruse I mean if you find your sternum you know if you kind of palpate your you know at your chest and work down into your sternum um think like
00:24:19.25 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:24:28.76 Taylor Kruse Nipple line I guess would be a good yeah you could go if you have that in in mind that's a reasonable landmark to give you and you know close enough.
00:24:30.62 Tony Fowler Sure.
00:24:37.84 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:24:39.61 Taylor Kruse And if you do look this is where you could now think about it in a more localized approach where you could do some specific muscle activation of extensors above T6 because remember they might be lacking the tone.
00:24:58.81 Taylor Kruse And then in the lower body you could do more flexor and adductor work below T6.
00:25:05.89 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:25:06.46 Taylor Kruse so that So what does that mean? It means well do some muscle some sort of muscle activity work whether it's you know strength training some form of strength training isometrics right and target it towards those muscles. So we're exercising your you know good starting points would be exercising your your mid and upper trap um and like your rear deltoid area even your lats.
00:25:37.43 Taylor Kruse Okay triceps right? your ah Even your finger extensors could possibly be be useful there but you get the idea.
00:25:50.68 Taylor Kruse um And then on the lower body exercising your hip flexors right? And your adductors which are very commonly weak areas for a lot of people.
00:26:01.88 Taylor Kruse right So however you might approach that could be really really valuable.
00:26:04.31 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:26:05.52 Taylor Kruse And then if you combine that idea and maybe that stuff is done more linearly like more traditionally like whatever you're doing for a activation for your mid and upper traps and lats that could be linear strength training.
00:26:20.82 Tony Fowler Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:26:21.21 Taylor Kruse right um But then on the opposite side of the body you're doing the complex nonlinear stuff. it's more It's more complex to to feed this pathway that we're talking about this loop.
00:26:33.30 Taylor Kruse That right there is a phenomenal starting point for postural issues and complaints of muscle tightness on one side of the body if in fact we're talking about a PMRF issue.
00:26:46.20 Tony Fowler Yeah I think most people would start or assume to start with the second part right?
00:26:50.94 Taylor Kruse Yeah let me...
00:26:51.12 Tony Fowler It's like oh if i'm if I have postural issues let me strengthen the muscle. um
00:26:55.61 Taylor Kruse let Let me mention why that might not work good because this is actually very important.
00:26:59.27 Tony Fowler Okay.
00:27:01.34 Taylor Kruse I'm glad you said that because this is more of a traditional approach right? If you tell ah you if you go traditional physical therapy or something and you mention being tight head to toe and you start pointing out areas on that side that are bothering you you're probably going to get localized exercises for those areas.
00:27:05.19 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:27:17.75 Taylor Kruse or you're going to get some sort of technique performed on you some sort of let's call it manual technique performed on those areas.
00:27:26.89 Tony Fowler Yeah. Massage trigger points.
00:27:29.30 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:27:30.30 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:27:31.16 Taylor Kruse Yep. Here is why that now don't get me wrong it could it could actually create temporary relief and and I'm not even going to say temporary relief is a bad thing. Temporary relief is temporary relief. Anybody who's ever been in pain would like temporary relief.
00:27:46.42 Taylor Kruse So it's not like hey that's only temporary relief but if you want to start solving this stuff a long time here's here's why the the approach could fail. So when you look at What we know about well let's start with voluntary movement. Remember what I was talking about with the loop. So if I was trying to affect a tight right side I might do left-sided complex nonlinear movement.
00:28:09.66 Taylor Kruse That activates the opposite cortex. So if I'm only exercising the tight side because of that loop I am now activating the wrong side of the brainstem.
00:28:22.20 Taylor Kruse Because if I if again if we're talking about a right side of the body head to toe that's tight and I start exercising the right side to try to deal with that tension I'm now activating my right cerebellum and my left cortex more so which is going to fire down into my left PMRF.
00:28:38.46 Taylor Kruse That's the wrong side. So...
00:28:41.02 Tony Fowler And so the the imbalance might increase.
00:28:43.32 Taylor Kruse Increase. and And that is why sometimes when people do a targeted approach to the tight areas yeah they might it might feel good to do it but in the long run they might start feeling an increase in tension
00:28:44.45 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:28:59.00 Taylor Kruse because the imbalance might be getting larger. So you know it doesn't always get larger. Sometimes just doesn't work right?
00:29:04.66 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:29:04.70 Taylor Kruse And you're like well I feel i feel temporary relief but nothing sticks.
00:29:04.85 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:29:09.00 Taylor Kruse And that might be you know what's happening if you have a PMRF issue. and And it's really the same idea with sensory stuff like manual therapy because we know that for the most part this rule is pretty close enough.
00:29:23.38 Taylor Kruse All sensory input goes to the contralateral cortex except smell. So that means if I get a massage on the right side of my body where my muscles are tight yes I'm getting localized stimulus to those receptors but that ah that information eventually gets processed in the opposite cortex.
00:29:43.61 Taylor Kruse So if I get a massage on my right side of my body we're activating the left cortex which then activates the left PMRF.
00:29:43.64 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:29:52.34 Taylor Kruse Once again it's the wrong side. So this is just why the localized approaches often fail for this pattern right? It's for this pattern. So ah yeah that's a good thing to know.
00:30:07.06 Tony Fowler Yeah so just to summarize try complex nonlinear movements on the opposite side. So she's got a tight right side of her body.
00:30:14.84 Taylor Kruse Yes.
00:30:17.59 Tony Fowler Maybe she's doing windmills with her left arm and knee circles with her left leg.
00:30:20.53 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:30:23.00 Tony Fowler Or you've got a plethora of probably better and more varied exercises um on is is YouTube probably the best place to look for that or
00:30:29.75 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:30:32.73 Taylor Kruse Yeah YouTube's good. Yeah YouTube's good. It could be better but it's good. you know I've got a ton of exercises over there but many of them are just demonstrations and not tutorials.
00:30:36.89 Tony Fowler Sure.
00:30:42.21 Tony Fowler Right.
00:30:42.33 Taylor Kruse but But if you're resourceful and you don't mind just watching a video and trying to mimic it I've got so much there hundreds and hundreds of videos.
00:30:49.78 Tony Fowler Great. Yeah.
00:30:50.17 Taylor Kruse you know But it just depends on the type of person. Some people get mad at me and they say there's no audio with this. And I say it's just a it's just a demonstration because you know for our students that want demonstrations but other people don't mind it right? Because they they can follow it and figure it out.
00:31:06.46 Tony Fowler Yeah and then the other thing you would add to that is is right side more traditional and just strengthening of the yeah.
00:31:12.34 Taylor Kruse Of those muscles yeah. The extensors above T6 flexors below.
00:31:13.82 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:31:16.46 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:31:16.73 Taylor Kruse that could go That could go a long way. And you know my students that listen to this are going to be like there's so much more. There's so much more. And I'm just going to say um you you should explore vision and vestibular exercises.
00:31:25.56 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:31:32.16 Taylor Kruse And and we we can't get into the nuances of that now because we'd have to teach a seminar
00:31:32.18 Tony Fowler Yep.
00:31:38.78 Taylor Kruse to teach people all of the pathways involved with an eye movement or a canal movement meaning a movement of the head. But here's the thing you you actually don't need to know sophisticated neurology for that stuff to help a PMRF issue.
00:31:47.59 Tony Fowler Yep. Yeah.
00:31:55.16 Taylor Kruse it And it's very effective in doing so. So again I've got tutorials on YouTube. It would be worth your time to explore vision and vestibular exercises even if it's done in a general way because even doing them in a general way will address will I should say activate the PMRF as well.
00:32:15.13 Tony Fowler Yeah. And if you're listening and you're like why the heck would training vision have anything to do with this? We've got an entire episode on that. And then same with the vestibular system.
00:32:23.93 Taylor Kruse Yes.
00:32:27.13 Tony Fowler So if you want to do a deep dive on either of those there's a podcast for that. And and that'll be pretty much the theme for every everything that comes up going forward.
00:32:31.86 Taylor Kruse Yes yeah. we Yeah we're starting we're starting to stack them up.
00:32:36.55 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:32:36.82 Taylor Kruse Yeah we're we're starting to get a nice and nice layout so people people can go and learn about this stuff.
00:32:37.71 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:32:41.38 Taylor Kruse Do we do we have one about the brainstem too? Do we do something about the brainstem? Or is autonomic function?
00:32:45.34 Tony Fowler ah we We did one on autonomic function. So a lot of times we'll like come at it from different ways. But yeah we did one on autonomic function.
00:32:51.48 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:32:53.60 Tony Fowler And then I did i do think we did um ah cerebeum the the cerebellum.
00:32:53.82 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:32:59.48 Tony Fowler So that's not quite the brainstem.
00:32:59.83 Taylor Kruse Yep we did that as well.
00:33:01.20 Tony Fowler But...
00:33:01.50 Taylor Kruse Right so that'll give that'll that'll describe some of the complex nonlinear aspects to what we discussed. And then ah the autonomic function one will actually go into the brainstem.
00:33:11.43 Tony Fowler Yeah so it's all there and we're we're coming at it from different directions. But yeah best yeah vest of luck with the that right side tension.
00:33:16.57 Taylor Kruse Cool. is a good Thank you for the question. It's a good one.
00:33:25.21 Tony Fowler This one is from Meadow144K.
00:33:29.14 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:33:29.95 Tony Fowler Bossman greetings. My question is pelvic left side wallet sitting years before and now I see the effects.
00:33:40.92 Taylor Kruse Yeah. I'll be honest. Out of all the questions we got this one made me really... this i was the most unsure about this one.
00:33:51.74 Taylor Kruse um i could ah could kind of approach it in several different ways. um you know if Basically you know can sit on your wallet for an extended amount of time. Obviously it's going to impact your alignment.
00:34:08.54 Taylor Kruse Right? One side of your pelvis is going to be essentially hiked.
00:34:13.78 Taylor Kruse You know my first question would be well how long do you do this for? It sounds like because they're asking they they have a long history that they're wondering about.
00:34:20.22 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Years.
00:34:21.69 Taylor Kruse Yeah years. You know he's probably got a big fat wallet too.
00:34:27.23 Tony Fowler I know old school.
00:34:27.29 Taylor Kruse You know it's one of the old school me too.
00:34:28.24 Tony Fowler I used to do that. I used to do that.
00:34:30.49 Taylor Kruse Me too. I mean gosh old school is your wallet's an inch and a half thick you know?
00:34:36.51 Tony Fowler Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:38.50 Taylor Kruse It's like now we're just carrying around a card debit card or something and a license.
00:34:44.09 Tony Fowler And I'm not sitting know? Yeah.
00:34:46.71 Taylor Kruse Yeah yeah right right.
00:34:47.06 Tony Fowler you know
00:34:49.85 Taylor Kruse I did that too um a bit anyway. could Could it impact pelvic alignment and and cause could there be consequences to that down the road? i think there could be. Again it would have to be like how much sitting did you do? You know was it super chronic? I mean we know that based on the said principle alone specific adaptation to imposed demands we know that the brain and body get better and whatever it is that you do.
00:35:12.39 Tony Fowler Yep.
00:35:17.25 Taylor Kruse For better or worse your brain is not your brain and body doesn't care if something is optimal for your health or not.
00:35:18.87 Tony Fowler yup
00:35:23.87 Taylor Kruse You're just going to get better at what you do. if If what you do is you sit a lot expect to get better at sitting. and And that's kind of the scary part about adaptation you know?
00:35:36.63 Taylor Kruse So could you essentially adapt posturally to wallet sitting? I think you could. I think you could if you were if it was something that you did for a long period of time and your sitting was never counteracted in in ways maybe that were we're healthy.
00:35:55.99 Taylor Kruse maybe Maybe you could develop develop develop ah SI issues. Obviously there's going to be possible upstream downstream consequences to that through the spine or whatever.
00:36:09.30 Tony Fowler Yeah I was going to say maybe a minor scoliosis or something.
00:36:12.34 Taylor Kruse Yeah it would have to be i mean again in my mind this has to be like really chronic you know?
00:36:17.82 Tony Fowler can can i Can I offer another example and and see if that people looking at their phone?
00:36:20.09 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:36:24.15 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:36:24.82 Tony Fowler You know that posture with the head down the skull kind of forward and then you develop kind of like a bump on the back of your neck?
00:36:26.20 Taylor Kruse Yes. Forward head carriage.
00:36:33.08 Taylor Kruse Yep.
00:36:33.66 Tony Fowler I mean is that due to just holding your head forward or were people doomed to have that posture?
00:36:38.26 Taylor Kruse I... think there's more content I think there's more factors to consider but yes this is the same idea. Sitting in front of a screen that is changing your well see what's sitting and being in front of a screen the visual system's a big part of it right? Because you're looking at a screen so that means your eyes are converged chronically for an extended amount of time and they don't get a break from that. So convergence is when your eyeballs AD duct so they they go inward towards the midline to look at whatever it is that you're looking at your phone your computer screen whatever.
00:37:16.86 Taylor Kruse Adduction neurologically or I should say convergence neurologically will kind of encourage more of a flexor-based posture.
00:37:29.56 Tony Fowler Yeah you kind of lean forward when you squint right?
00:37:30.81 Taylor Kruse Yeah that's right. Yeah exactly. and And neurologically it's interesting too because like the the cranial nerves involved in the skill of convergence come from the midbrain.
00:37:44.25 Taylor Kruse So especially like we're thinking ah like ocular motor nerve is a big one to consider there cranial nerve number three which is going to be involved in a convergence. So is cranial nerve four if it's a trochlear nerve if it's kind of like a down and in with the eyeballs which it often is right?
00:37:59.63 Tony Fowler Right.
00:38:00.40 Taylor Kruse As you're looking at your your phone in your hand or something that's going to encourage more of a flexor-based posture because by design it makes sense right?
00:38:10.84 Taylor Kruse Our body kind of mimics what our eyes are doing. Right and and flexor tone a large amount of our flexor tone actually comes from the top of the brain stem it's called the midbrain and that is where those cranial nerves originate which is interesting.
00:38:28.18 Tony Fowler So back back to that brainstorm yup.
00:38:30.58 Taylor Kruse Yeah yeah so yes this is kind of a similar idea I think. I mean an extended like if you're practicing a certain position for a long period of time
00:38:43.03 Taylor Kruse I think that yeah there could be consequences to that eventually structurally if you have enough practice with it. So again I don't know this person's history. We don't we don't have a lot to go off of.
00:38:55.16 Tony Fowler Right.
00:38:55.99 Taylor Kruse But yeah my answer is yeah it's it's a possibility. um Also realize that you know we're not so fragile.
00:39:08.50 Taylor Kruse Like somebody might oh no I wear my wallet. You know I stood on my wallet. I'm doomed. I mean we're not so fragile that this would happen in the short term. Like it's this would have to be pretty pretty long-term pretty chronic.
00:39:23.73 Tony Fowler Yeah I mean i i have no idea the age of of the person asking the question but for our purposes why don't we just assume they're 60 plus and they've had a wallet since they were 12?
00:39:36.28 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:39:37.27 Tony Fowler You know like then what?
00:39:38.01 Taylor Kruse Yeah. Right right. Big fat wallet just causing you to...
00:39:45.05 Tony Fowler Just full of money.
00:39:46.30 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:39:46.39 Tony Fowler ah
00:39:48.06 Taylor Kruse Yep.
00:39:49.08 Tony Fowler So so what how how might you how might you approach...
00:39:49.14 Taylor Kruse ah Yeah.
00:39:52.86 Tony Fowler you know of a postural issue like that.
00:39:56.92 Taylor Kruse That started more structurally than than anything. Yeah. So first thing I'd probably be doing there is mobilizing the joints involved. Right. So learning how to move the pelvis.
00:40:08.79 Taylor Kruse you know We have a whole pelvic tilt series anterior posterior pelvic tilts lateral tilts circles very isolated to the SI joints. So it's a very small movement.
00:40:17.45 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:40:20.37 Taylor Kruse More re-education of spinal mobility training the lumbar spine with some of our our lumbar circle type drills thoracics
00:40:30.62 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:40:31.14 Taylor Kruse thoracic glides forward backward side to side circles. i mean each joint area for the spine we have a whole series for as far as mobility goes and the neck. So you know the a lot of times the pelvis and the neck are very interesting the way that they sort of there's a connection there. we should we you know we might say where
00:40:55.88 Tony Fowler It's almost like a Z right?
00:40:56.09 Taylor Kruse a lot
00:40:56.98 Tony Fowler Like if one part bends at the top the other part bends the other way on top.
00:41:00.18 Taylor Kruse yeah Yeah and and we can even look at like opposing joints because... the pelvis opposes the cervical spine which is interesting.
00:41:09.26 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:41:09.56 Taylor Kruse and and And so moving your neck can help you move your pelvis better.
00:41:10.16 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:41:15.50 Taylor Kruse Moving your pelvis can help you move your neck better. um Bottom line is if in fact this wallet sitting had you know structurally affected this person I'm basically doing joint mobility head to toe but I'm spending a lot of time focusing on the SI joints the pelvis the lumbar thoracic and cervical spine.
00:41:35.59 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:41:35.93 Taylor Kruse No question. And here's the thing though when when a change like that has been created structurally um I should say breathing too rib cage mobility you might think about it that way rib cage mobility. So when when a change like that structurally has taken place we we still we do have to possibly consider the visual system.
00:42:01.17 Taylor Kruse you know the visual system and our posture very much connected. um And yeah i would I would be wanting to look at some basic visual skills convergence divergence especially.
00:42:14.68 Tony Fowler So the the through line that I'm kind of getting from this is like if if someone's kind of trained their body to hold itself in a certain way and maybe their head's slightly tilted now or whatever and so your your visual system has responded to being slightly tilted and your vestibular system has responded to being slightly tilted all the time and you know that's the baseline for your brain now basically what you're trying to do
00:42:29.48 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:42:39.51 Tony Fowler is promote elasticity right to change those patterns back to a healthier alignment right? And so everything you're saying is like well it's not so much that like we're going to have like an instant kind of neuro reaction that's just going to fix this.
00:42:57.80 Tony Fowler It's more like we need to train your body to remember it's okay to hold itself in a straighter line and and not default back to this position it's so used to.
00:43:03.16 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:43:05.75 Taylor Kruse Yeah especially...
00:43:08.92 Taylor Kruse Yeah especially if we're talking about like a long-term structural change that has been developed over time. Because now we are talking about tissue remodeling around the structure.
00:43:13.88 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:43:19.94 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:43:19.99 Taylor Kruse So sometimes we call that like fascial winding you know where your connective tissues have now remodeled themselves to well it's all in an attempt to help you.
00:43:23.18 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:43:30.51 Taylor Kruse It's just that there's long-term consequences to postural change you know with your mechanics and that kind of thing. So You know there's there's joint mobility is a great place to start for all those you know areas that we talked about.
00:43:44.66 Taylor Kruse And I think I probably would also be looking at breathing ribcage mobility and possibly some more sustained um positions with breathing. So call it stretching where we're actually trying to ah in in we're talking neuro here um we don't just say
00:43:56.01 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:44:06.23 Taylor Kruse fascial work we we talk about the receptors involved. So C-fibers would be we want to train the C-fibers through longer duration type positions if you want to call it stretching with breathing.
00:44:21.82 Taylor Kruse So there's an active component to it and that can be quite useful especially throughout the trunk and spine region. pel pelvis as well.
00:44:30.53 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:44:30.65 Taylor Kruse So we have exercises for that that we like to use called our opener series which is just basically a you position your body almost in like a lunge and there's basically like an extension-based posture where you're you're curving your body backwards to open the front of the body.
00:44:30.68 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:44:49.27 Taylor Kruse um With breathing we have different breathing drills that we might stack in there. And then lateral openers kind of the same idea almost like a lunge position. bending to the side possibly adding in some small rotations depending on you know what you want to do and the the body the person's body.
00:45:05.78 Taylor Kruse again stacked with breathing. Really useful tools. Longer duration holds and kind of using breathing to mobilize different areas around the pelvis and rib cage which essentially feels like a a pleasant stretch right?
00:45:10.01 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:45:24.47 Taylor Kruse Which is something that we're going for when we want to activate C-fibers.
00:45:30.58 Tony Fowler So if this person and again we don't have much context right? But if this person was largely sedentary because they're sitting I'm just going to assume that for the purpose of this question.
00:45:35.32 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:45:43.46 Tony Fowler um General strength training do you think would be helpful in kind of just re-educating the body as well and like getting good movement in?
00:45:51.86 Taylor Kruse I think strength training is always a good thing. The only thing with strength training is that one of the biggest threats to anybody's strength training is pelvic torsion.
00:45:54.01 Tony Fowler Yeah. Yeah.
00:46:00.79 Taylor Kruse so So I don't know what we're really talking about here with this person like how asymmetric is their pelvis from this.
00:46:05.24 Tony Fowler Sure.
00:46:08.50 Taylor Kruse a pelvic torsion is very threatening for especially bilateral strength training um because your pelvis your your the shape of your pelvis can be quite different.
00:46:22.50 Taylor Kruse And I'm not saying that it should be perfectly symmetrical because very few people has that you have that but when the imbalances get too great especially when we go under loads
00:46:26.42 Tony Fowler Nobody really is yeah.
00:46:35.29 Taylor Kruse in sometimes deep positions as well sometimes there's more threat there with bilateral training. So we might in that scenario let's just say okay this is could be a pretty significant postural thing pelvic torsion of some kind more unilateral strength training is generally more ah received better by the body without any problems.
00:47:03.19 Tony Fowler Awesome. Awesome. and And yeah I mean with all of these questions you know it's ah one one of the IT guys I worked with once I think I told you this before he was like ah you know doing IT t remote is kind of like giving a haircut over the phone.
00:47:19.19 Taylor Kruse yeah
00:47:20.26 Tony Fowler It's just like really hard to know exactly what the person on the other end is doing and what's actually going on.
00:47:22.97 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:47:26.35 Tony Fowler But we're trying to just give you some some breadcrumbs to follow you know ah to to find some solutions here.
00:47:30.38 Taylor Kruse Definitely.
00:47:32.03 Tony Fowler Yeah. All right next question. This is from Sarah Giles 93. Any hints for keeping the brain strong from dementia using neurophysio?
00:47:47.80 Taylor Kruse Yeah. um Well so... I'm not the most qualified person to talk about dementia because I don't study the disease and it's not my job to right? So I get tons of questions that sort of every day that sort of cross into more of like the medical world. And it's like we talked about before right? People when they hear the word neurology they assume lab coats and doctors.
00:48:16.77 Taylor Kruse And here I am in you know a sweatshirt talking neurology.
00:48:20.66 Tony Fowler Doing Taekwondo kicks and...
00:48:21.98 Taylor Kruse yeah Yeah exactly. ah Yeah. So um it just is what it is. Things are changing fast. Luckily we have amazing access to this kind of information but it's just you know it hasn't caught up. And so so I get a lot of questions that are more medical.
00:48:39.35 Taylor Kruse um And obviously i I have to pick and choose you know what I can answer or how I might answer. um So for me you know this one like I'm not as qualified to talk about dementia because I don't study the disease itself.
00:48:51.96 Taylor Kruse But my my stance is yeah yes. The answer is yes. Keeping you know keeping the brain strong ah can you keep the brain strong? um to you know i'm no i'm I am not in a place where I can say if you do this you will not get that.
00:49:09.66 Taylor Kruse like There's no possible way I can talk like that.
00:49:09.76 Tony Fowler Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:13.21 Taylor Kruse um But I can mention some things that come to mind that that theoretically make sense. okay the The first one is cardiovascular exercise.
00:49:28.38 Taylor Kruse Like nothing fancy necessarily but just engaging in cardiovascular exercise. And there may there's probably kind of a laundry list of reasons why that might be a good idea but the the thing that I'm thinking of the most is circulation right? I mean we know that in order to keep a structure healthy it has to have good blood flow.
00:49:53.78 Taylor Kruse but no matter what structure we're talking about. And when blood flow issues you know you know become a thing well then the health of whatever tissue is not receiving as much blood flow as it needs to will go down.
00:50:07.49 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:50:07.54 Taylor Kruse So we want to keep your brain healthy. and other parts obviously cardiovascular exercise is a good idea. okay um And on that note as far as like blood flow fuel CO2 tolerance training if if our listeners aren't familiar that is like a form of breathing work.
00:50:30.94 Taylor Kruse that is quite useful in improving circulation. So yeah it's like air stuff yeah exactly.
00:50:35.58 Tony Fowler Is this air hunger? Is this what you would refer to as air hunger?
00:50:39.06 Taylor Kruse It's like along the lines of air hunger exercises which may reduce your breathing pretty significantly so that you feel air hunger as you're doing the exercise.
00:50:49.91 Taylor Kruse We can even do them completely breathless where you exhale hold your breath and then maybe you're doing some kind of movement just nasal breathing with some sort of cardiovascular challenge that it that is enough of a challenge to bring you to a state of mild air hunger but not such a challenge that it forces you to mouth breathe.
00:51:15.47 Taylor Kruse That's like one of the easiest lowest hanging fruit types of CO2 training that is unbelievably healthy for people.
00:51:21.00 Tony Fowler Right.
00:51:24.28 Taylor Kruse just sustain the nasal breathing during the work. And it it prevents you from doing high intensity stuff unless you like really train. like if you are If you really love this idea of CO2 tolerance training like there are people who take it you know levels and levels and levels up where they have now actually got to a point where they're effectively training their brain and body not to rely on mouth breathing as soon as maybe it did before.
00:51:54.74 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:51:55.32 Taylor Kruse That's the tolerance piece. And some people even report like not needing to mouth breathe during pretty ah strenuous athletic movement which is quite impressive.
00:52:09.18 Taylor Kruse That takes a lot of work. you You don't necessarily need to do that to get the health benefits of this technique. So yeah I always start people with the nasal breathing technique.
00:52:20.94 Taylor Kruse idea with cardiovascular exercise. Whatever your form of cardio might be that could be a stationary bike. For some people this might start as walking. it It might be hiking but only nasal breathing which is probably personally my favorite way to do it especially if you know your hike is...
00:52:28.65 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:52:37.75 Taylor Kruse on just enough of a incline that it's challenging you your heart rate is up you're sweating you're working but you're not needing to default to mouth breathing. that's That's fantastic. So you can use almost any kind of you know activity as long as you can sustain the nasal breathing. That is so healthy for the brain it's ridiculous.
00:53:00.26 Taylor Kruse Yeah. So that was kind of at the top of my my thoughts. And then um obviously just plain old strength training right?
00:53:08.90 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:53:09.00 Taylor Kruse You just cannot get around this.
00:53:09.01 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:53:11.48 Taylor Kruse um I don't I cannot believe how many people do not strength train. I can't believe it. I also can't believe how many people think they strength train but actually don't in terms of what my definition of that might be. Like in terms of like how much resistance are you working with?
00:53:30.07 Taylor Kruse You know I just can't believe it because we We are so sure at this point that strength training and cardiovascular exercise is like basically the healthiest thing you could do
00:53:41.62 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:53:42.48 Taylor Kruse We're so sure at this point that um it has become boring to talk about but we're also shocked at how many people still don't do it and even don't know about it or something.
00:53:55.74 Taylor Kruse it's It's amazing but just basic strength training so healthy work with enough resistance to challenge yourself continue to challenge yourself progressively safely over time man that will really pay dividends for for um you know anybody in their health long-term.
00:54:15.86 Taylor Kruse um to And then to add kind of a couple of neuro things here we've got vision training as a big one. Vision training is unbelievably useful for activating a person's cortex.
00:54:35.41 Taylor Kruse There's a lot of brain areas at the cortical level that are involved with vision. Too many to even name but um like we think about a lot of times people just sort of think about the occipital lobe as being kind of the home of visual processing.
00:54:52.22 Taylor Kruse which is a simple way that you can look at that brain area. But the area the areas involved in vision exercise um or visual you know taking in visual stimulus and processing it is very widespread throughout the cortex.
00:55:07.99 Taylor Kruse So vision training you don't need to know anything special. You just need to know the exercises. right So I've got a lot of those on the YouTube channel. Pencil push-ups is a great one to start with where you follow a target in towards your nose and back out.
00:55:22.30 Taylor Kruse And from there just basic eye circles smooth pursuits you know tracking you know tracking a moving target different shapes whatever you wanna do with that. Again I've got ideas there on YouTube.
00:55:36.89 Taylor Kruse Those are great starting points for vision training. It goes way further than that but just moving your eyes training those muscles keeping them healthy really really important thing.
00:55:48.02 Taylor Kruse And then the piece that's worth mentioning that could be added to an exercise routine especially on this topic of exercise staying strong in terms of hopefully reducing the possibility of dementia.
00:56:04.09 Taylor Kruse um Cognitive loads. right adding cognitive loads to training which most people have never ever done ever.
00:56:16.18 Taylor Kruse And that could mean a couple of different things. It could mean that we need more decision-making happening in our exercise program. you know Everything becomes very boring and linear and you can almost especially if you're following kind of the same program all the time you can almost check out mentally as you continue to exercise.
00:56:37.82 Taylor Kruse And you don't want that right? You want enough novelty and decision-making happening in your training. So we need to bring like more athletic qualities into our training. And that's one way to think about it. So becoming more reactive like reacting the visual stimulus not in everything but spend some time doing it right?
00:56:58.97 Taylor Kruse Be more athletic move around jump land spin roll you know get up get down off the floor in different ways. um Respond to external things like maybe hand-eye coordination drills with a ball
00:57:18.17 Taylor Kruse learn to juggle all that fun stuff. We can throw vestibular stimulus in there with all the you know jumping and jumping rope. Amazing. So those those things that have kind of gone missing from traditional fitness are super important.
00:57:32.52 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:57:35.22 Taylor Kruse The athletes are still doing this stuff right? Because it's kind of They get it right? they need They need to move athletically in their training. But as you get out of athletics it's harder and harder to maintain some sort of athletic activity or athletic movement in your training.
00:57:54.52 Taylor Kruse you know So um to take it even further and they do this even in like rehab settings whether it's post-concussive or even working with dementia is literally adding cognitive loads in the sense that you're exercising your heart rate's up you're doing work but maybe at the same time you are being asked certain questions you're being asked to sequence certain numbers or um what is what do we call it? It's like memory recall.
00:58:26.04 Taylor Kruse So you're exercising and somebody gives you a sequence of numbers or words or letters or something and and maybe in five minutes you have to repeat the sequence.
00:58:40.25 Taylor Kruse right That's a very demanding kind of cognitive load especially while you're tired. there's so many things you yeah yeah There's so many things you could do in regard to like cognitive loads with training but those are things to think about right especially when we're we're talking about dementia.
00:58:44.83 Tony Fowler Temporal lobe.
00:58:59.22 Tony Fowler One of the ones that you mentioned in a previous episode which I which i liked the idea of was like ah you might be doing a drill and then you might flash like a color and also on the colors printed a word and it's not the same color.
00:59:10.46 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:59:14.78 Tony Fowler It's like it might say red but the color is yellow.
00:59:14.90 Taylor Kruse Oh yes. Nice. The Stroop test.
00:59:18.41 Tony Fowler The Stroop test there you go.
00:59:19.13 Taylor Kruse Nice. Good one.
00:59:19.66 Tony Fowler And so you have to decide like all right we're going to do just read the text not the color or say the color not the text.
00:59:19.97 Taylor Kruse Good one. I'm glad you thought of that.
00:59:26.55 Tony Fowler And of course while you're performing a movement that that becomes that much harder right?
00:59:31.96 Taylor Kruse Yeah I've done stuff like um like in my own training. i haven't done this in a while but I played with the stroke test for a while because I'm kind of terrible at it. ah Again it's that it's that lot of frontal lobe lot of temporal lobe you know a lot of inhibition right?
00:59:47.70 Taylor Kruse Especially when you're tired right?
00:59:48.05 Tony Fowler Right. Don't say that the that the thing that the first thing that comes to mind.
00:59:50.30 Taylor Kruse is
00:59:51.13 Tony Fowler Be more discriminating.
00:59:51.19 Taylor Kruse Exactly.
00:59:52.25 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:59:52.50 Taylor Kruse Yes. And what might be easy sitting down at a table doing a Stroop test might actually be really hard when you're in real life doing something strenuous. So like you can swing a kettlebell and at the same time do a Stroop test.
01:00:03.76 Tony Fowler Oof.
01:00:04.50 Taylor Kruse You know so you're being taxed with something that's challenging assuming you know how to swing the kettlebell and you're safe to do it while you get essentially distracted with a different cognitive load. um But you could pick anything. You could jump rope. You could jump rope while doing a Stroop test.
01:00:19.51 Taylor Kruse But yeah that kind of cognitive load to the training is very challenging and I think very useful.
01:00:28.18 Tony Fowler It's so interesting that ah you know so many questions regarding health. come back to the same things. It's like do your cardio do your strength training.
01:00:35.48 Taylor Kruse All the time.
01:00:37.17 Tony Fowler And then if you're ah you know privy or it you know informed about a applied neurology also do your basic vestibular visual uh training um which is which is i think the part that most people just don't know about you know
01:00:44.20 Taylor Kruse Yep. Yep.
01:00:53.18 Taylor Kruse Yeah it's true.
01:00:53.85 Tony Fowler um
01:00:54.52 Taylor Kruse It does always come back to a lot of the same stuff. With neuro it's yeah there's always especially the way that we are approaching it and teaching it there's always the basic things that should be happening all the time. The joint mobility the neuromechanic drills the generalized vision vestibular activations.
01:01:12.92 Taylor Kruse And then with neuro it's like the more targeted your goal becomes the more specialized your goal becomes then the more specialized the application of neurology becomes.
01:01:20.76 Tony Fowler Right.
01:01:24.34 Tony Fowler Yeah. We have an episode on the low-hanging fruit. of applied neurology. And so it's just kind of kind of your basics if you want to just start training all of these different elements of ah the nervous system you know that might be missing from your traditional exercise program.
01:01:36.13 Taylor Kruse Yep.
01:01:43.86 Tony Fowler um We've got some good ideas there.
01:01:46.33 Taylor Kruse Nice.
01:01:46.46 Tony Fowler And then you know the only other thing I wanted to ask about with this particular question um is novelty for a novelty's sake.
01:01:54.52 Taylor Kruse Yep.
01:01:56.02 Tony Fowler um What do you think about you know ah learning a new skill or learning a new sport or
01:02:01.98 Taylor Kruse Absolutely. It's a good thing to bring up.
01:02:05.33 Tony Fowler Hmm.
01:02:06.22 Taylor Kruse Novelty is fantastic. Learning something new fantastic. I mean that there's so much value in that. um there's always a debate about novelty especially in the fitness industry.
01:02:17.23 Tony Fowler Hmm.
01:02:17.82 Taylor Kruse It actually you know there there is such thing I think as you know maybe using too much novelty in your training because then you don't get the basics done. So there's always that.
01:02:30.10 Taylor Kruse but But if you can strike a nice balance it's fantastic. Learning new things being exposed to different ways of moving and learning new skills whatever they might be. Yeah huge value.
01:02:44.92 Tony Fowler Awesome awesome. um Yeah that's our first Q&A episode for Cruise Elite. How'd it go?
01:02:55.26 Taylor Kruse How many did we do? Four? of
01:02:57.52 Tony Fowler I think just three.
01:02:58.62 Taylor Kruse Just three? Okay.
01:02:59.45 Tony Fowler One hour three questions.
01:03:01.46 Taylor Kruse Wow. Just like you said would happen.
01:03:05.56 Tony Fowler You know you see these questions and it's like one sentence and you're like oh man we're just going to blow through these.
01:03:10.33 Taylor Kruse I know. That's exactly what I thought was going to happen.
01:03:11.35 Tony Fowler um Yeah yeah.
01:03:14.04 Taylor Kruse ah
01:03:14.81 Tony Fowler Turns out we're nerds.
01:03:16.98 Taylor Kruse Yeah yeah. Well that's good. I'm glad we started this. i I am hopeful that the listeners will enjoy this and want to keep going with it and I do.
01:03:28.02 Taylor Kruse I think i think it could be a nice addition to the lineup of episodes.
01:03:31.21 Tony Fowler Yeah. Yeah. So yeah do do look out. um If you have questions of your own that you would like answered on the podcast um Taylor will be posting about it in the future again. And yeah we really appreciate all the questions that came in. We've got more that we haven't gotten to. So definitely look forward to more episodes as well.
01:03:54.97 Taylor Kruse Yeah. Thank you everybody. I will yeah keep your eyes peeled. Like on Instagram I think is a really easy place for me to put up the question box.
01:04:05.10 Taylor Kruse And with the posts that we put out there sometimes we'll ask people what questions they have in the post but not everybody sees the posts right?
01:04:12.41 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:04:12.78 Taylor Kruse So yeah hopefully um I think most of the the folks who are really highly interested in what we're teaching are usually looking at the Instagram stories. So that's a good place to to see it as well.
01:04:25.31 Taylor Kruse But All right. Well thank you again everybody. if If you get a moment we would be really grateful if you could if you could give us a review on the podcast.
01:04:38.49 Taylor Kruse you know We're really trying to just improve this and get it out there and all those little things that you do that kind of help out the algorithm. Well that goes a really really long way.
01:04:48.53 Taylor Kruse And it it is really the only way that we can really get the podcast out there and and find more listeners like you guys.
01:04:50.78 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:04:55.53 Taylor Kruse So yeah If you would be so kind to give us a review at least on on one of the platforms whichever one your favorite one is where you listen that would be that would be an amazing help for us.
01:05:07.99 Tony Fowler Yeah. Thank you so much.
01:05:10.20 Taylor Kruse All right guys. I hope you enjoyed this and we will be back soon.
