Timestamp Speaker Transcript
00:00:02.55 Tony Fowler And we're rolling.
00:00:04.28 Taylor Kruse Welcome back to the Cruise Elite Podcast. What's going on Tony?
00:00:08.15 Tony Fowler Good morning Taylor. You know I ah have these glasses. have a couple colors right? um
00:00:16.70 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:00:18.14 Tony Fowler Inspired by our talks here. I got some red glasses and then I tried to get some green glasses but they sent me blue ones. And then I have the pinhole ah glasses where it almost looks like you're looking through a screen door.
00:00:30.65 Taylor Kruse Yeah. Yep. Yep. You got a good collection going.
00:00:33.69 Tony Fowler yeah so I was just messing around. I've got some some blue light blockers. um Anyway so I was just messing around with that. I was editing yesterday. And similar results as before.
00:00:43.79 Tony Fowler The red ones stressed me out. i didn't want them on for more than like a minute.
00:00:47.32 Taylor Kruse Sure.
00:00:48.82 Tony Fowler Which again it's just like i it's interesting to feel that so strongly.
00:00:52.92 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:00:53.34 Tony Fowler um Blue was kind of all right but think it's a little too dark.
00:00:58.34 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:00:59.54 Tony Fowler And so you know i was thinking i was like man I wish I had green. And then I realized I have these green LED lights or I have these smart bulbs all over down here in the in the studio.
00:01:05.10 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:01:07.61 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:01:09.91 Tony Fowler And so I turned them all green and was just editing like that for a while. And I was like yeah this feels pretty chill.
00:01:16.38 Taylor Kruse Nice.
00:01:16.60 Tony Fowler Like I feel pretty relaxed. So I wonder ah what you think about the idea of using like ah external light colors versus a filter for colors.
00:01:24.73 Taylor Kruse Totally. Yeah fantastic. The light stuff is fantastic. I mean you can use it in the same way. um i don't really know.
00:01:32.72 Tony Fowler Okay.
00:01:33.58 Taylor Kruse i haven't had any experiences that lead me to believe that like the light is better than the lenses or the lenses is even better than the light. Generally what I've found is just when you test colors with glasses or with light
00:01:47.16 Taylor Kruse I mean if you test well you can go with it. And and i've I've gone as far as like using lights myself. like I have little um wand lights.
00:01:58.84 Taylor Kruse you know They're like six inches long and you can change the colors and you can light up backgrounds for like vision exercises too.
00:01:59.26 Tony Fowler and okay
00:02:08.38 Taylor Kruse So like sometimes if I have a client that is struggling in a certain way with vision training but we know we need to do it we can use light as a way to decrease stress. Or we use light for specific reasons to make the vision the challenge a little bit easier for them.
00:02:27.70 Taylor Kruse So there's there's different like reasons why you could use it. And like you said just finding a color that you feel helps you but more with like focus I mean that's a totally legit thing.
00:02:41.85 Taylor Kruse And yeah it's it's cool to have the lights that you can switch colors on and you just test it. Super simple.
00:02:47.93 Tony Fowler Yeah it's crazy that I hadn't thought of that for so long because because when we talked about it's always been with lenses right?
00:02:48.73 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:02:53.86 Taylor Kruse Yep.
00:02:54.86 Tony Fowler Like filters.
00:02:55.99 Taylor Kruse It's funny you mentioned that. I literally just posted i reposted an old post of mine on Instagram. I think it was yesterday on using the colored lenses for um well it was a demonstration on how colored lenses can impact flexibility.
00:03:12.95 Tony Fowler Mmm.
00:03:12.95 Taylor Kruse So right now as we speak the trolls are out and they're arguing now with each other.
00:03:18.04 Tony Fowler Sure.
00:03:19.10 Taylor Kruse They've moved on from they've moved on with from arguing with me. Now they're arguing with each other.
00:03:25.56 Tony Fowler sure
00:03:26.21 Taylor Kruse it's That post always triggers so much. People just don't understand. you know When you take something that looks so seemingly simple how could color glasses?
00:03:43.47 Taylor Kruse $11 colored glasses from Amazon make an impact on anything.
00:03:46.53 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:03:47.87 Taylor Kruse So it's people just don't get it. They don't understand the nervous system in the brain. They don't understand that we are just walking receptors. that's what That's what we are as humans and we have so many different ways to take in information in light information.
00:04:06.55 Taylor Kruse It takes up such a large portion of our cortical maps it's ridiculous. So it makes sense that if you use it strategically whether it's light or lenses it makes sense that brain function will change.
00:04:25.21 Taylor Kruse And anyone who understands how changing brain function with inhibition or activation will always result in some kind of change in output
00:04:36.92 Taylor Kruse then it's it's no longer like mysterious like why color could could impact your performance or help you feel more relaxed or even decrease your pain. So yeah it's funny now I'm just sitting back watching as not everyone but a lot of people are he's he's trying to trick you he's ah he's a grifter he's he's trying to trick you into taking his courses there's no such thing as using light to improve flexibility you and oh look he cut off he's using a certain camera angle so you can't see that he's trying you know it's just endless it's like oh yeah yeah endless people will uh go to great lengths to to try to figure out how am i trying to trick you or mislead you it's uh yeah color is a ah big one it always it always makes people go what but it is um it is powerful stuff
00:05:09.00 Tony Fowler Oh wow.
00:05:20.84 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:05:29.18 Tony Fowler Yeah I'm a I'm a fan of healthy skepticism especially nowadays where there is so much um bad information flying around um fake information flying around.
00:05:36.50 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:05:39.25 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:05:39.62 Tony Fowler Right. um So I get the impulse.
00:05:40.66 Taylor Kruse Totally.
00:05:42.71 Tony Fowler And even as you were describing it it's like if you understand X and you understand Y and you understand Z yeah you know it's like I think it's
00:05:49.46 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:05:54.64 Tony Fowler It's a lot for people who have never been exposed to this stuff to you know to get from point A to point Z. um And so you know part of the the goal of like this podcast I think is to illuminate that stuff and to let people spend time and really understand the concept so that it doesn't so that you can you can connect the dots and you don't have to come up with a conspiracy theory about it.
00:06:01.95 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:06:09.40 Taylor Kruse Totally.
00:06:17.77 Taylor Kruse That's right.
00:06:20.07 Tony Fowler you know
00:06:20.22 Taylor Kruse Exactly. That's exactly right. The podcast has been great for that. it's It's the same type of person every time. It's basically someone who doesn't follow.
00:06:29.88 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:06:30.46 Taylor Kruse right They're they're seeing it likely seeing it for the first time. And those are the people that get the most triggered. Sometimes it's a follower but not much. And even so you when it happens it's obvious to me that they don't actually lean in and follow what's happening with what we're teaching.
00:06:48.46 Taylor Kruse It's not like they're hitting up the podcast or even watching all of our posts or going to YouTube. It's just they they happen to follow they see something that triggers them and then they respond to that because they don't have the context.
00:07:01.88 Taylor Kruse They don't understand it. Yeah so ah that's how it's always been for me honestly since day one. I've always been teaching something. I've always been teaching something that is not widely accepted or understood.
00:07:16.86 Taylor Kruse you know um Which really is a good segue into our conversation today.
00:07:23.80 Tony Fowler Okay all right. So yeah um something that maybe also is not that common or understood. ah You know you used to do something a lot called aquatic training.
00:07:37.34 Tony Fowler and And you talked about this when you gave us kind of your your history and like what what brought you to this point as a coach and what brought you to applied neurology.
00:07:37.37 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:07:46.73 Tony Fowler And I think that was one of the very early episodes of the podcast. um
00:07:49.85 Taylor Kruse Yeah it was like one of our first episodes together I think.
00:07:52.68 Tony Fowler OK yeah yeah.
00:07:53.46 Taylor Kruse Yeah real pretty far back there.
00:07:54.17 Tony Fowler um So yeah if if you're listening and you want to know you know what made Taylor Taylor and what brings him here today that's a great episode to go back and check out.
00:08:05.43 Tony Fowler But in it you mentioned you know aquatic training and it's come up several times again in the podcast kind of in passing.
00:08:08.31 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:08:14.02 Tony Fowler And so today what we're going to do is do a little bit more of a deep dive on what it is you know what. Why why you would do it and why maybe you wouldn't do it. And yeah just give people that that context and understanding.
00:08:31.03 Taylor Kruse Yeah that's great. it's it's It's one that I think is kind of near and dear to my heart because it's how I got started really in the industry.
00:08:41.38 Tony Fowler Hmm.
00:08:42.07 Taylor Kruse And it's... ah It's something that I don't engage with as much anymore for some specific reasons but I still advise people on it you know particularly like athletes and stuff.
00:08:58.88 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:08:59.32 Taylor Kruse But yeah this this idea of aquatic training I guess I'll give i'll give our listeners ah sort of some brief history on how I got started with it.
00:09:10.01 Tony Fowler yeah
00:09:10.84 Taylor Kruse Because it's we're going to be talking mostly about the aquatic part of you know what i what I used to do in sort of the first generation of my career how I look at it.
00:09:23.93 Taylor Kruse when And so it all it all actually goes back to when I was studying a system that I was introduced to called the Burdenko Method.
00:09:35.38 Taylor Kruse And the Burdenko Method is a Russian system of rehabilitation and conditioning. And it's really unique.
00:09:46.18 Taylor Kruse It's ah man it was incredibly unique at that point when I first discovered it. This would have been when I was in college. And it's still unique.
00:09:57.11 Taylor Kruse There's not really it's one of a kind. There's not really anything out there like it which is which is pretty neat. But what it is essentially is using a combination of both land-based exercises and water-based exercises.
00:10:13.59 Taylor Kruse And what I mean by that is when you put together training or rehabilitation for somebody using this method called the Burdenko method a portion of what you would be doing would be training on land right? So that could be a number of different things. The system is very unique in the fact that it it focuses a lot on some of the foundational qualities of of fitness like like balance coordination and flexibility slash mobility. That's kind of the foundation of the system.
00:10:46.42 Taylor Kruse And there's still other you know qualities involved right? There's still speed and there's still endurance and there's still strength but the foundational ones always take priority.
00:10:59.03 Taylor Kruse And so the training looks very unique very dynamic and some of it would be done on land. And then the idea was after you do the land portion of the training if possible you would go right to the water.
00:11:15.19 Taylor Kruse So you go train hard on land then you go to the water. Training on land could be anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. And then if you can you immediately go to the water where you're spending at least 20 minutes on something that in my mind is more recovery-based.
00:11:37.27 Taylor Kruse And or you know depending on how you're using it you could you can do conditioning in the water right? You can really train hard in the water if you want to if that's your goal. You can also use it as more of a medium for rehabilitation or it's most known with this system anyway for going into the water to deal with injury.
00:11:59.12 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:12:00.12 Taylor Kruse So land water you combine the two focus on balance coordination flexibility and mobility as well as other things. And this is kind of the essence of this idea this this system called the Burdenko Method.
00:12:16.54 Taylor Kruse And i was introduced to it originally in college. my ah My first mentor for this was someone I talked about in that podcast we did together Barbeau who are really has really lived this method um and is a master at this method. and and I through...
00:12:38.14 Taylor Kruse i went through Training with him kind of he was my original mentor with this. And then I went through training with Igor Burdenko who was the innovator of the system. And then eventually I was master certified.
00:12:51.83 Taylor Kruse And the like I was saying the first generation of my career was based on using the Burdenko method a lot for helping athletes but then also for creating more general fitness kind of post rehab training for people that may have had an injury or may have had a surgery and they needed somebody to kind of bridge the gap between what is rehabilitation and what is getting back to an active healthy lifestyle right? So I was still working in the same space that I'm working in today.
00:13:25.72 Taylor Kruse I was just using different tools at that point. So the water and and that's really the most unique part about it.
00:13:37.15 Taylor Kruse And it's a little bit difficult for people to visualize what we're going to be talking about. So i'm going to be trying to be as descriptive as possible when I explain it.
00:13:49.02 Taylor Kruse But more or less if you were to see somebody engaging in this form of aquatic exercise most of the time it's done in the deep end of a pool.
00:14:00.34 Taylor Kruse okay And most of the time a lot of the exercises are done in a vertical position. So when you say like aquatic exercise most people jump to thinking about swimming.
00:14:12.57 Taylor Kruse This is not swimming. It's nothing like swimming. Imagine somebody in the vertical position floating Now floating is the key word here because in order to do this correctly you would wear buoyancy on your body.
00:14:27.06 Taylor Kruse And there's lots of different ways to do it.
00:14:27.23 Tony Fowler I see.
00:14:28.58 Taylor Kruse You could have a belt around your waist. They make water exercise belts that are foam that can keep you floating. So you might have that. Sometimes people wear buoyancy again foam like ankle cuffs around their ankles.
00:14:43.99 Taylor Kruse Sometimes it's both ankle cuffs and around the waist. They ah even make like special neoprene vests that kind of distribute the buoyancy a little bit better throughout the midline of the body.
00:14:57.08 Taylor Kruse So there's still kind of foam involved in the vest and belt. And those those work quite well too. And there's even like wrist cuffs. So the main thing to understand is that it's the buoyancy that really helps you achieve this vertical position so that when you're exercising in deep water
00:15:17.93 Taylor Kruse you're actually able to relax. You don't have to tense to try to stay afloat. So when you have the right amount of buoyancy on your body you can float like a cork.
00:15:27.09 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:15:27.32 Taylor Kruse And basically the water would essentially be like the surface of the water would essentially be somewhere around your collarbone. That's how you know you have enough buoyancy.
00:15:38.68 Taylor Kruse And then... Once you have the enough buoyancy you are able to move and exercise and go through all these wonderful exercises that I learned through the Burdenko method. And it's not always vertical but I want to keep pointing that out because that truly is the most unique part and ah part of this water training but also from a kind of said principle standpoint that vertical position is quite important right? Because we're we're moving vertically rather than horizontally to kind of mimic where as a human we're going to spend the most time in a vertical position. So there's still exercises done horizontally. There's even still exercises done in the shallow end where you do not need as much or even any buoyancy.
00:16:26.78 Taylor Kruse But again most of it is done in deep water vertically.
00:16:33.66 Tony Fowler So you said two things so far that that ah are a bit surprising to me. One is that the aquatic training there's an emphasis on training on land first.
00:16:44.54 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:16:45.30 Tony Fowler And I kind of imagined in like a ah rehab sort of situation you would do it the other way around right?
00:16:50.48 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:16:51.94 Tony Fowler You would take kind of like the softer form of aquatic training and then graduate to to being able to do it on land. So that's that's one thing. And then
00:17:01.98 Taylor Kruse Well that's a great thought. um
00:17:04.70 Tony Fowler um
00:17:05.37 Taylor Kruse Yeah go ahead with the second one.
00:17:05.59 Tony Fowler yeah. Well no let's let's let's pause there for a moment then.
00:17:08.54 Taylor Kruse well Well that's so that is like anything right? you There's basic fundamental principles but then we shift those principles depending on the situation.
00:17:20.12 Taylor Kruse So in more of a rehab context where someone is not yet ready for conditioning let's say using the principles of the Burdenko method you might only do water.
00:17:32.25 Taylor Kruse It may start there. That's a great thought.
00:17:34.18 Tony Fowler Interesting.
00:17:34.63 Taylor Kruse So it might start in deep water. and then it might progress to shallow water.
00:17:40.44 Tony Fowler interesting
00:17:40.47 Taylor Kruse And then eventually from that combination of deep and shallow work you might then go to land. So you're kind of graduating and getting yourself to land where now you can deal with gravity more you can deal with your your body more.
00:17:54.14 Taylor Kruse And then eventually the combination of the two is more kind of where it goes. It's kind of like the end game that you're trying to get to that works amazing. It's just such a nice combination to stress your body on land but then decompress in the water.
00:18:16.22 Taylor Kruse So that's kind of the end game. You're trying to get there but we can shift things depending on on the situation.
00:18:23.74 Tony Fowler So it kind of seems like there's a a sliding scale then because because the other thing I was thinking is like OK well if if aquatic training isn't like horizontal like swimming and it's in the deep end so it's not like a water aerobics.
00:18:38.81 Tony Fowler Like sometimes you see classes and they're like in the shallow end.
00:18:39.17 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm. Yep.
00:18:41.69 Tony Fowler People are doing aerobics but with with the added resistance of of water. Right.
00:18:47.08 Taylor Kruse That's right.
00:18:48.15 Tony Fowler um It seems like there's a sliding scale where it's like okay I'm not basically loading the body at all in the deep end.
00:19:00.06 Tony Fowler In the shallow end I'm loading.
00:19:00.10 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:19:02.06 Tony Fowler There's a little bit of gravity that i'm that I'm pushing against with the floor of the shallow end. And then on land you're 100%.
00:19:07.21 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:19:09.66 Tony Fowler There's no buoyancy whatsoever.
00:19:11.66 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:19:11.86 Tony Fowler And so you have that variable that you can kind of slide depending on what you need. um
00:19:17.80 Taylor Kruse Definitely.
00:19:20.76 Tony Fowler So that's that's one variable right? But then there's there's others it seems because like I said with a like water aerobics part of what it seems like they're doing is they're using the resistance of the water as opposed to the the lack of resistance of air right?
00:19:33.27 Taylor Kruse Mm hmm.
00:19:36.71 Taylor Kruse Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
00:19:37.50 Tony Fowler And so that kind of skews the other way. Like the more water the more submerged you are the more resistance there is. And the less submerged the less resistance. So those are kind of like a going in opposite directions.
00:19:51.70 Tony Fowler Is that a variable that you guys are thinking about in in this context?
00:19:51.86 Taylor Kruse Yeah. yeah Yes it is. Yes it is. And we should probably discuss some of the qualities that the water is providing because it's like people see it.
00:19:59.99 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:20:02.56 Taylor Kruse So water aerobics is actually water aerobics is one of the main reasons why what I was teaching during that part of my career was actually very difficult to get buy-in on.
00:20:14.37 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:20:14.78 Taylor Kruse Because when people especially athletes and I was working with a ah lot of athletes at that point when athletes see people in their 70s doing water aerobics right and dancing to music and bouncing around and splashing they're not impressed right?
00:20:32.43 Taylor Kruse They're not impressed. It's like why would I wanna do that? I wanna do athlete stuff right? So there there was always actually a difficult selling point to get people involved in the water stuff but then once you did
00:20:44.89 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:20:47.96 Taylor Kruse They got it right? And in the the number one thing that really provided the buy-in was that their body felt better. Because the the recovery that you get from exercising in the water is very very good.
00:21:01.27 Taylor Kruse It's still to this day probably the best environment that I've experienced for just global recovery from exercise. No question. Better than all the all the stuff that we're all trying right?
00:21:15.29 Tony Fowler Yeah. Yeah.
00:21:15.62 Taylor Kruse um Maybe obviously um not as important as sleep right? being Always being number one. But as far as like all the stuff people are doing red light therapy and all the gadgets that people are buying and Water work was always one number one for recovery.
00:21:41.05 Taylor Kruse and And it was the most important like the reason I even got into it in the first place is because it was the first thing that I was introduced to in my life that gave my body a sense of relief from chronic pain and just training stress back in college when I was training a lot.
00:21:41.33 Tony Fowler yeah
00:21:57.92 Tony Fowler Hmm. Yeah.
00:21:59.74 Taylor Kruse i mean that was the selling point for me. right is is i I met Tom he got me you know I took his classes in college and I was very intrigued by the way that he blended balance coordination flexibility brought bringing in strength bringing in speed bringing endurance. I was very excited about the blend.
00:22:23.00 Taylor Kruse But then when I got into the water it was kind of like eh what is this? Why am I doing it? But then immediately whoa I'm actually getting something from this that is helping me feel better. And back then recovery was just a conversation that was it was almost not even happening anywhere.
00:22:39.42 Taylor Kruse i mean back in college there was no such thing as even a foam roller at that point. Like people weren't thinking about what could they do to make their body feel better.
00:22:50.99 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:22:51.86 Taylor Kruse The water was that for me and that's how I used it. So kind of circling back to some of the qualities that the water gives us. So it's it's unique. So i I talked about this vertical positioning being very key for for the exercise.
00:23:07.38 Taylor Kruse And there's some reasons for that. So wearing flotation around the waist if you can imagine wearing a flotation belt and how you sort of need to balance
00:23:21.20 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:23:21.30 Taylor Kruse in the water if you're trying to maintain the vertical position because the buoyancy of the belt is trying to constantly force you out of alignment. And you have to balance that with all these little micro adjustments.
00:23:36.38 Taylor Kruse And you can really understand this when you put a buoyancy device on a child who is still learning how to handle their own body on land
00:23:47.32 Taylor Kruse And then in water it's like whoa and they're trying to like keep themselves vertical and really stabilize and figure out like where does my center of balance need to be in order to find the sweet spot where I can just maintain position.
00:23:57.09 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:24:02.39 Taylor Kruse Well this is what's happening all the time when you're exercising in the water with the flotation on which is one of the benefits of kind of the body awareness piece where you have to learn how to maintain ideal vertical alignment while you move.
00:24:17.82 Taylor Kruse And you don't end up using large muscles really to do that. It's a lot of small postural muscles as you make those adjustments. And the cool thing about it is and this is really the value of any good training device it's feedback.
00:24:32.92 Taylor Kruse Because when you're not doing a good job you lose the alignment and possibly you're in this situation your feet come out from under you and you float back to the surface of the water.
00:24:41.30 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:24:42.46 Taylor Kruse And it's like whoa. This is harder than I thought. I've got to figure out how to really find the right alignment through adjustment right and maintain it as I move.
00:24:54.78 Taylor Kruse So we've got this pelvic stability quality that's coming from this style of exercise. And really the whole the whole system with the Burdenko Method is built built on this idea of developing better pelvic stability.
00:25:11.80 Taylor Kruse right which is just essential for basically everything you wanna do. So that was kind of the first that whole pelvic stability thing for me when I was first introduced to this was kind of the first nerdy thing that I was introduced to.
00:25:29.53 Taylor Kruse Because remember I'm coming from i'm coming from the strength world at this part point right?
00:25:29.95 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:25:36.86 Taylor Kruse i'm I'm coming from goals of wanting to deadlift over 500 pounds right? Bench you know is Get to 400 pounds on a bench. like these are my These are my weight room goals at that point in my life. Pack on the muscle.
00:25:53.50 Taylor Kruse And I wasn't thinking or hadn't been introduced yet to anything like so dynamic like this. And so at that point for me it was always like muscles strength strength.
00:26:05.88 Taylor Kruse move weight on the bar and now all a sudden I'm learning hey pelvic stability is actually the thing that's gonna help you access more of what you want to be better at.
00:26:18.62 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:26:19.19 Taylor Kruse right so it's the first like nerdy thing I ever learned. So with the water when you're floating vertically in the deep end you get some interesting things happening that the water is creating.
00:26:33.62 Taylor Kruse So you had mentioned resistance. So obviously the viscosity of water adds resistance. So when you're moving the unique thing about water training is that you get resistance in every single range of motion that you move in.
00:26:47.98 Taylor Kruse That's very unique. Every vector okay? It's not a lot but it's there. And if you are using specific tools that have buoyancy like we often do because sometimes we hold like foam barbells and things
00:27:03.94 Taylor Kruse It's more resistance and actually can get quite challenging. So you have w risk resistance in every range of motion even though it's not a lot which is very useful for rehab okay?
00:27:15.04 Taylor Kruse However you also have support because of hydrostatic pressure.
00:27:18.44 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:27:21.34 Taylor Kruse So the pressure that you feel in your ears when you dive down into the deep end right? That pressure is pushing against your body again from all vectors. So we have this combination of resistance in all ranges of motion with essentially pressure or compression and that can be very supportive for joints.
00:27:43.80 Taylor Kruse So once again you're moving against resistance maybe you need to rehab at injury and at the same time you're getting this kind of sense of joint stability that's being added by the hydrostatic pressure.
00:27:56.87 Taylor Kruse The last thing here is that you have buoyancy forcing your body up because you're wearing the flotation belt. And you're still dealing with gravity right?
00:28:09.17 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:28:09.30 Taylor Kruse Gravity does not go away. So you have this kind of nice combination of gravity forcing you down buoyancy forcing you up. And this is the piece that was thought to be very useful for spinal decompression.
00:28:26.78 Taylor Kruse And it is used the water work is often used for different spinal injuries. And what we find is that there may be this tractioning that's happening because of buoyancy the relationship with buoyancy and gravity.
00:28:41.18 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:28:41.37 Taylor Kruse And that might be useful for a lot of different things. Rehabbing from spinal cord injury which it is used for. And then also i mentioned recovery.
00:28:51.86 Taylor Kruse So certain athletes that put their body under a lot of load a lot of stress especially on the spine will often get really good results in terms of their recovery because of using the water for decompression.
00:29:12.06 Tony Fowler So um I'm trying to I'm trying to put the pieces together here for recovery.
00:29:15.90 Taylor Kruse Yeah. Mm hmm.
00:29:17.06 Tony Fowler Right. So you mentioned decompression um all of those like stabilizers those micro movements to stay upright. ah
00:29:29.78 Tony Fowler i mean I imagine that that's going to be like forcing blood all through the body and around the body and like different places than maybe when you're just walking around on land.
00:29:41.40 Taylor Kruse Yeah there is there is a good blood circulation quality that comes from the water work.
00:29:47.50 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:29:48.54 Taylor Kruse It's hard to know exactly what's happening with that but it's there i think. um However one of the main factors is that ideally especially in a rehab situation the water needs to be warm enough you know and And this is actually one of the obstacles that sometimes people are up against because finding a warm pool is not easy.
00:30:17.43 Taylor Kruse In fact finding a pool with a deep end these days is also not easy.
00:30:22.01 Tony Fowler Yeah true.
00:30:22.46 Taylor Kruse Yeah these these are some of the obstacles that I ran into trying to have a business teaching people this stuff because I used to do a ton of one-on-one work with athletes or small groups.
00:30:34.01 Taylor Kruse And so I had to locate pools that had what we needed. And I was always asking hey what's the temperature and do you have a deep end? The temperature is a big part of the rehab slash recovery piece. You can still do this work in cold water but you won't be in there for very long because I believe it sort of gets counterproductive at some point.
00:30:53.05 Taylor Kruse So and there's there's some good research that I was exposed to at that point about using water training at the right temperature to help manage pain issues in individuals that had like chronic
00:31:10.62 Taylor Kruse ah joint issues circulation issues arthritis that kind of thing. So yeah i think blood circulation is actually a big piece of why it can be such a useful medium for healing and recovery.
00:31:26.39 Tony Fowler Yeah because that combination of that hydrostatic pressure that compression and then also all those micro movements where you're you're you know it's a very light resistance in all directions right?
00:31:31.16 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:31:38.36 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:31:38.48 Tony Fowler But you're still probably getting getting more movement
00:31:38.93 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:31:42.36 Tony Fowler in more places than you would normally just sitting around. Right. um And so I feel like that combination maybe is is part of the magic here.
00:31:52.47 Taylor Kruse Yeah well so here if I was to name one thing that really was the magic I mean why the the reason why this is so neat is because when people thinking about it from like more of a rehab perspective when people have injury you know known injury tissue damage they've had a surgery there's always this period of time where you're told you can't move.
00:32:18.60 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:32:18.71 Taylor Kruse And even if you want to move sometimes you can't because of pain and limitation. The unique thing about the water is i've never so I've never seen a situation where I put somebody in the water and they were not able to access more movement than they could on land with less pain.
00:32:41.66 Taylor Kruse That's the value. So imagine having had a surgery you get past a certain amount of time where now you're able to access water. You can't really do much on land yet because of pain and swelling and whatever else.
00:32:56.22 Taylor Kruse But when you go in the water wow all of a sudden you have the freedom to move. And that idea right there fundamentally is what the Burdenko Method was actually built on.
00:33:07.74 Taylor Kruse Because when I read about and hear from Igor Burdenko when he tells the story he originally got involved in this kind of work because when he was a very young boy in Russia his father was severely injured in World War two And ended up making it home. And I think the story goes that when Igor was a young boy in school ah he was like one of three people in his class of 40 kids who actually whose father actually came home from the war.
00:33:43.45 Taylor Kruse but his dad was um very yeah had a lot of significant injuries in his limbs and and his I think it was his stomach. Anyway the story goes that his father previously had had a lot of experience in swimming.
00:33:59.74 Taylor Kruse And for some reason it drove him to want to go to the water during his recovery time. And Igor says he doesn't even know how he accomplished it because he was so young but he physically helped his dad get to one of the local ponds where they used to just play and fish and swim.
00:34:17.59 Taylor Kruse And he would do that every day with his dad because his dad figured out that that environment was the only environment that allowed him to actually move because at home he couldn't and he knew he had to move in order to rehab.
00:34:32.57 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:34:33.24 Taylor Kruse So Igor tells the story great and he as a young boy was able to help his dad get to the water each day and kind of intuitively his dad started doing movements in the vertical position.
00:34:48.57 Taylor Kruse little things with his limbs things he could do where he could be pain free. And I think Igor had that experience and it just really he just really downloaded that in his mind.
00:34:59.93 Taylor Kruse and And Igor you know as he grew up he he became highly educated. he He became one of the people that was actually in charge of writing the physical education books for i think it was around 16 years in Russia.
00:35:17.37 Taylor Kruse that you know that children used at school. And anyone who knows the Soviet background of physical conditioning and rehab you know that the Soviets were so far ahead of us in in this field it was not even funny.
00:35:37.14 Taylor Kruse And we're still taking all the little we're still following the breadcrumbs. right from what they did in terms of training and rehab and and still discovering things that they were doing a long time ago that we're now pulling into training and rehab.
00:35:53.27 Taylor Kruse And so Igor comes from that background and had a really big part in setting the stage for what physical education was which it was tremendous stuff for kids at that point.
00:36:06.42 Taylor Kruse And you know in his research and you know his study and he wrote several books and after doing that physical education education stuff Eventually he came to the United States I think it was like around 1981 and it sort of all unfolded for him.
00:36:26.52 Taylor Kruse All of his experience kind of came together to form what he was calling the Burdenko Method. He had done some research on um water training and just really in a really neat way just kind of pulled together all the things that he had been exposed to and learned to form this system of exercise that was both land-based and water-based.
00:36:48.95 Taylor Kruse So it's the water as I said I've never seen a situation where a person could not move more freely in the water. And that's what everybody wants when you're sore and tight or you're feeling pain or you're restricted because of an injury or surgery.
00:37:05.82 Taylor Kruse Everybody wants to be able to move. And the water allows you to do that.
00:37:12.17 Tony Fowler Yeah. Is this a good time to talk about maybe some of the neuro that might be going on in this situation?
00:37:22.52 Taylor Kruse Sure.
00:37:24.57 Tony Fowler um so So two things jump out to me immediately. I'm curious what you think. One is vestibular stimulation right? Like that that balancing all those micro movements keeping yourself upright
00:37:42.38 Tony Fowler That's probably a ah pretty strong vestibular stimulus. And then the other one is just the hydrostatic pressure is just like a dermal a really light dermal thing all around the body right?
00:37:47.54 Taylor Kruse Yep.
00:37:52.54 Taylor Kruse Nice. Nice.
00:37:56.15 Tony Fowler Just just a little bit of ah pressure on the skin. Yeah.
00:38:01.10 Taylor Kruse That's huge. That's huge. um We'll start right there. So that that pressure at the dermal level right that can be a sensory stimulus because the cool thing about moving in the water is you feel every movement you make.
00:38:13.97 Tony Fowler That's
00:38:14.42 Taylor Kruse That can be really valuable for somebody. That dermal pressure like you're saying affects the lymphatic system too right? We just did our episode on the lymphatic system.
00:38:24.54 Tony Fowler right
00:38:25.24 Taylor Kruse And maybe perhaps this should have been mentioned but water training excellent for lymphatics. So that is one of the things that is actually quite easy to quantify in the experience that I've had because I put so many people in the pool with a big swollen joint right from surgery or injury and the result afterwards is it's always smaller.
00:38:51.38 Taylor Kruse right And so there's actually a really good there's really good evidence in my experience that moving in the water is really good for you know dealing with fluid dynamics in the body when you're having a lot of swelling.
00:39:05.30 Taylor Kruse So yeah it's that's ah that's a really important one. back to Back to vestibular. So certainly this is where it gets interesting okay?
00:39:16.20 Tony Fowler Hmm. Hmm.
00:39:17.59 Taylor Kruse um This is funny because back when I was doing all of this it was a time in my career where i think a lot of people go through this in our industry becoming over-devoted to something and believing in something too much right? And and just you're not trying to but you're excited.
00:39:47.73 Taylor Kruse And that's what this was for me. right It was different. I saw it helping people. There was also a little bit too much mystery involved and a little bit too many unanswered questions that to be honest at that point in my career drew me in even more.
00:40:08.63 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:40:08.98 Taylor Kruse Because sometimes when we don't have answers to things but we know what we're doing is powerful and useful it sort of adds to this feeling of
00:40:20.15 Taylor Kruse man this is cool. We don't necessarily need to know but this is cool. But I'll be honest it sometimes skews the way that you view what's actually happening.
00:40:32.54 Taylor Kruse and And at that point in my career I didn't have the observation skills that I have now and I didn't even know what the vestibular system was.
00:40:39.48 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:40:40.09 Taylor Kruse okay So I knew I was helping people move in a more healthy way. And the water was the thing that I was able to use for the problems that I couldn't solve.
00:40:53.34 Taylor Kruse Pain issues um you know chronic pain. I knew it was good for people and I knew I saw call it acute results but with actual pain problems
00:41:08.41 Taylor Kruse it was kind of like is this really doing what I needed to do? And I may have believed that it was too much at the time only because of what I didn't know.
00:41:21.43 Taylor Kruse So there are some reasons why this water stuff may not be the right thing for an individual. And it does come back to the vestibular system some of it and the spinal cord and how we orient ourself against gravity on land.
00:41:42.74 Taylor Kruse Because here's the important part to understand training in the water is nonspecific for where we actually need to be most of the time.
00:41:48.55 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:41:52.38 Taylor Kruse So thinking that we can use a nonspecific environment to train ourselves to be better movers on land is a little silly. right? The said principle is a real thing. If you want to be good at handling your body on land on two legs like a human and do human things like display good locomotion right? Or just any kind of contralateral biped type of movement the water is not specific to that.
00:42:26.14 Taylor Kruse right It's not specific to that. And so you have to consider that. It's a tool like anything else. Now this is where I learned maybe there's more to learn. I was working with a woman who was living with and she...
00:42:43.42 Taylor Kruse and she described to me she found me more for the neuro. This is early on for me pretty early on as I had made this transition from exclusively doing teaching the Burdenko Method to now discovering applied neuroscience.
00:43:01.53 Taylor Kruse She had found me for the neuroscience stuff. And she had kind of in a roundabout way been referred by somebody that I used to work with a lot who also taught this water exercise.
00:43:17.27 Taylor Kruse So she was kind of like meeting the people that I knew and then it led her to me. And one of the things that she said to me was I love the water stuff. It it always felt good i was as I was doing it but I got so much worse afterwards.
00:43:34.10 Taylor Kruse Like I got like and i was like well what in what way? Like I was like really? And I was again this is a point where i'm I'm starting to see this myself. I'm starting to understand how this might not be the right tool for certain people.
00:43:44.89 Taylor Kruse She said my balance would be so much worse after the water session. She'd get out of the pool. Now remember she she's living with MS. She already had very serious balance issues at this point.
00:43:56.25 Taylor Kruse And one of the things that was the reason she was looking looking for help and the reason she found me is because she was having life-threatening falls three well maybe more than three at that point four or five times a year scary fall not good.
00:44:05.76 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:44:12.98 Taylor Kruse And it was frightening to her because even though she could move well in the pool she'd get out of the pool walk you know start to walk on the pool deck and she'd have to be holding onto things. She felt very lost in space basically.
00:44:28.18 Taylor Kruse And I remembered that and I was like man I think I know why. think I know why I understand now because I had done enough neuro testing on this woman to understand her balance issues. She had a lot of inner ear issues. She had a lot of vision issues and your vision and your vestibular systems are some of the primary drivers for helping you maintain posture for helping you orient yourself in the world and for helping you know where you are.
00:44:52.60 Taylor Kruse Right. A lot of spatial mapping and then integrating those things into what is proprioception. Okay. So her inner ear was already sending confusing signals to her brain.
00:45:07.32 Taylor Kruse And so when she went in the water and started dealing with what is essentially an unstable surface right? She's kind of like bobbling around trying to find her alignment trying to find ideal posture and it was challenging for her.
00:45:23.13 Taylor Kruse Her vestibular system wasn't really sure about what was happening almost like a sensory mismatch.
00:45:28.14 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:45:28.76 Taylor Kruse she did She no longer had the same proprioceptive inputs that she would get in a land-based situation like under her feet. That is very threatening for someone that has a balance issue.
00:45:42.81 Taylor Kruse And she may not have had the stability midline stability requirements to really be able to easily maintain vertical alignment in the water without it it basically becoming such a difficult multitask that eventually it turned into something threatening.
00:46:00.12 Taylor Kruse So she was the individual that experienced worse balance afterwards which was very dangerous for her. As we our work together unfolded we did a lot of vestibular work with her on land. We did a lot of vision work with her on land.
00:46:16.09 Taylor Kruse And then I ended up finding one of the major culprits of her life-threatening falls was actually wearing mono-vision glasses. So she had her she already had sensory mismatch It's already present.
00:46:29.59 Taylor Kruse Some of it had nothing to do with her glasses. Like I said she had inner ear issues. But when she wore the monovision glasses where one eye is doing something completely different than the other eye that tipped her over the edge in terms of sensory mismatch.
00:46:48.06 Taylor Kruse So now imagine putting those glasses on and going into an environment like the pool you are adding to more threat by increasing the level of sensory mismatch.
00:47:01.78 Taylor Kruse And a brain does not like confusion. It wants very clear input so that it can predict what's happening and what's coming next.
00:47:06.61 Tony Fowler Right.
00:47:10.01 Taylor Kruse The more you skew that input and it's no longer clear the worse people move and the more pain they feel. And so I downloaded that into my mind and I was like wow okay this is interesting.
00:47:21.82 Taylor Kruse So maybe it's not good for everybody. right It is a tool. And i went on to meet some other people. that had experienced a similar thing. One guy in particular had a very serious spinal cord injury following some very serious brain injury.
00:47:39.64 Taylor Kruse He was and again someone who had a very difficult time walking and maintaining posture on land. lot of joint stability problems from his injuries. He did extremely poorly in the water. He mentioned the same thing worse balance after the sessions and more pain.
00:47:57.85 Taylor Kruse So those things really made me think and really made me understand like here we are everything's a tool. Are you using it the right way for the right person?
00:48:11.03 Taylor Kruse And sometimes we if we understand what we're doing enough we can... tweak the way that we are delivering it to a person to take advantage of the good qualities that do exist and maybe counteract some of those negative ones which I do believe you could do probably to some degree with those two individuals.
00:48:31.96 Taylor Kruse Perhaps more shallow end work perhaps adding more stability to the equation shorter sessions
00:48:33.62 Tony Fowler Right.
00:48:40.82 Taylor Kruse Yeah there's there's lots of things I may think about that but really it was not a specific enough environment to teach them how to move better and handle their body on land.
00:48:52.92 Taylor Kruse So it was just it was a breakthrough for me to really understand that.
00:49:05.75 Tony Fowler So one thing that I'm curious about is how you would use it for an athlete versus for like rehab prehab person.
00:49:17.34 Tony Fowler Is it mostly the same stuff or are you actually doing doing some really different things?
00:49:17.30 Taylor Kruse Yeah nice.
00:49:20.79 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:49:24.02 Taylor Kruse so So it's mostly the same stuff. The exercises were always this very similar.
00:49:30.59 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:49:30.74 Taylor Kruse It really came down to like training variables and intensity. A lot of times for the athlete when you're using it for recovery it was more or less a rehab session. You know is is it low intensity for the most part?
00:49:45.43 Taylor Kruse And just focusing on quality of movement full ranges of motion. You know one of the qualities that i failed to mention early on that is an important one to think about is buoyancy helps you reach a full range of motion or a fuller range of motion. It's like you have assistance moving through the water.
00:50:07.29 Taylor Kruse which is kind of a neat thing to think about which I think that by itself is one of the reasons why it's useful from like a mobility standpoint when somebody has been restricted for you know by pain injury surgery buoyancy will help you move through a greater range of motion than you could before. And you get to do it with support and against some resistance which gives the brain some level of stability.
00:50:34.39 Taylor Kruse right? So that's that's important to mention. But as an athlete the best way to use it is for recovery which is more or less just a rehab session. But sometimes we would take advantage of the water from more of a conditioning standpoint where the intensity would be higher than just a more recovery type session.
00:50:43.98 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:50:57.27 Taylor Kruse That was always fun and very hard. So The way that you would design training for an athlete with this system if you were being if you were really respecting how the system was delivered to the athlete it's interesting. You spend and and this is again this is a lot of this is coming just from that Soviet research.
00:51:24.44 Taylor Kruse um You spend a whole week focusing on a single quality. So for example You might have a balance week where however many days you train in a week the primary focus is balance.
00:51:42.71 Taylor Kruse But each day is blended with another quality. So there's a primary quality for the workout in the week but there's a secondary quality each day.
00:51:54.23 Taylor Kruse So the system was based on these essential qualities of fitness balance coordination flexibility speed endurance and strength.
00:52:04.89 Taylor Kruse So if you are in a balance week the first day might be balance plus coordination.
00:52:11.98 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:52:12.63 Taylor Kruse And that's what you focus on primary quality balance secondary quality coordination. We are really challenging your coordination but also your balance. Second day rather than focusing only on balance coordination it might be balance flexibility right? And you continue to move through what is in a visual the pyramid that makes up the Burdenko method where you're moving through the qualities attaching a secondary quality to the primary quality for a week.
00:52:43.93 Taylor Kruse And then it changes. Instead of a balance week you then have A coordination week.
00:52:51.45 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:52:51.48 Taylor Kruse Primary quality is coordination. We attach all the secondary qualities to that. So coordination balance perhaps right? Coordination flexibility.
00:53:03.83 Taylor Kruse And it goes on. Coordination speed coordination endurance coordination strength right? and you're working through all the qualities. And so you'd follow that same template in the water too.
00:53:16.98 Taylor Kruse And for a more experienced athlete you would increase the intensity to some degree so that there was kind of a training element to it.
00:53:25.07 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:53:25.08 Taylor Kruse Still getting recovery but you're training.
00:53:25.21 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:53:27.41 Taylor Kruse And so it just depended on what quality you were working on. But when you got to endurance week watch out because the form of endurance that you could do in the pool is brutal if you want to make it hard.
00:53:42.42 Taylor Kruse Yeah it's because our the reps go up right? The reps go up. Typically in the Burdenko Method you know there's some different thoughts around this but more or less in a training context you're going to do 10 repetitions slow 10 repetitions at a medium speed and 10 repetitions at a fast speed.
00:54:04.98 Taylor Kruse There's speed variability built into every exercise. This is a very unique part of the system. Okay almost nobody understands speed variability still to this day and how important it is. In most general fitness is the same speed all the time. People get locked into their what I know now is their internal rhythm where they exercise at the same time at the same speed no matter what they're doing.
00:54:29.53 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:54:30.26 Taylor Kruse You become highly deficient in being able to move at other speeds and handle your body at other speeds. You don't want deficiency in speed because it shrinks your movement box over time.
00:54:43.42 Taylor Kruse And the receptors that are giving your brain and nervous system feedback on the speed become deconditioned. So now from a sensory perspective you're not moving as well you're not sensing as well as if you were somebody that was constantly exposed to different speeds which is why there's so much value in doing different activities.
00:55:08.25 Taylor Kruse that require different speeds right? But we should build it into our fitness too right for the most results. So that's a really unique part. And and that piece is something that was really valuable for the athletes. And you would do the slow medium and fast in the water as well.
00:55:22.32 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:55:23.22 Taylor Kruse And on an endurance week the reps go up. So instead of 10 10 and 10 you might do 30 30 30.
00:55:31.70 Taylor Kruse right And so for a full week you're focusing on that level of endurance. And man that can be hard in the pool. Very very hard. And then we did some fun stuff too. Running so we have this exercise.
00:55:45.11 Taylor Kruse called tether running okay? And you're still vertical in the pool but you've taken surgical tubing which offers light resistance. So it's it's a band and it offers light resistance and you anchor it to the pool wall.
00:55:55.88 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:55:59.51 Taylor Kruse And the so now you have two ends of a band with loops on them and you can put those loops on your ankles or your arms your wrists But you run against the resistance of the surgical tubing trying to maintain vertical position. And obviously the bands are trying to pull your feet. If they're attached to your ankles they're trying to pull your feet out from under you.
00:56:22.90 Taylor Kruse Ridiculously hard. And maybe you're doing that for... timed sets. Maybe it's one minute or something 30 seconds to one minute and you try to run out there against the resistance. And maybe we have a cone set up on the pool deck and you're trying to keep your position as you're running against the resistance of the water. And you're you're looking out the corner of your eye to make sure you're still at the cone. Oh
00:56:47.51 Taylor Kruse Oh unbelievable endurance training. So the point is when you're utilizing the the principles of of this method you're you're you're getting a ah wide variety of training stimulus coming from these different qualities.
00:57:04.79 Tony Fowler Very cool. um I often think of water polo as one of like the great endurance um sports.
00:57:09.30 Taylor Kruse Oh my gosh yeah.
00:57:12.63 Tony Fowler um so So one significant difference from water polo to this is the lack of buoyancy right?
00:57:18.30 Taylor Kruse Yeah right. Oh my gosh.
00:57:20.25 Tony Fowler and And so they're always fighting to to stay above water. And i think what you mentioned earlier is the main difference there is that they're the the tension in their body needed to just constantly be treading is different than what you're doing when someone has buoyancy and then they can they can actually kind of relax in the water.
00:57:33.19 Taylor Kruse Right. Right.
00:57:42.90 Taylor Kruse Yeah exactly. And there were times I should say where we purposely took all the buoyancy off to make it harder.
00:57:47.22 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Yeah.
00:57:50.30 Taylor Kruse So here's another unique way to use water. And this is something that was very useful for me as an athlete because particularly particularly at one very specific case during my college wrestling career I sprained my ankle really bad.
00:58:07.00 Taylor Kruse I remember my ankle being a mess for six months. And when you have an injury like that There's this fear for the athlete where you're like I'm gonna lose cardiovascular fitness right?
00:58:20.55 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:58:23.15 Taylor Kruse Can't have that right? So you can't really do cardio on land when you're dealing with an acute ankle sprain. How you gonna do that? I mean maybe you could pedal a bike maybe maybe not.
00:58:37.50 Taylor Kruse You certainly aren't gonna go for a run right? Yeah you might be able to dabble in some other machines but the unique thing about the water is I was able to go into deep water even with an ankle sprain and I was able to push myself extremely hard using that tether running.
00:58:59.28 Tony Fowler It's
00:58:59.70 Taylor Kruse or doing intervals of vertical running. So remember this is all about pelvic stability. This is not leaning forward where you're using the water to like really support you.
00:59:11.07 Taylor Kruse This is about maintaining proper well ideal I guess we'll say alignment vertically.
00:59:16.33 Tony Fowler upright in alignment yeah.
00:59:16.87 Taylor Kruse Yeah upright. Running hard against the resistance of the water getting your heart rate up super valuable when you don't want to lose cardiovascular fitness. And so...
00:59:28.44 Taylor Kruse I learned that early on in college from that experience. And when I coached high school wrestling and we had to deal with athletes that got ankle sprains or anything else and you knew they they were gonna be back but the question is if we got them to a point where they could come back before the season was over was their fitness going to decrease so much that it wouldn't matter?
00:59:49.80 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:59:50.46 Taylor Kruse And so but you know we always had and let's one to in a bad case maybe one to four athletes that had sustained some kind of usually minor injury.
01:00:04.22 Taylor Kruse And so after practice they get in the car with Coach Cruz we go to the pool. And i was able to put them through a session that focused on all those qualities we talked about but also focused a lot on the endurance piece so that they could get their heart rate up enough. That way when they came back and they were healthy enough to compete again they hadn't lost all that cardiovascular fitness which was great.
01:00:30.97 Tony Fowler Mm hmm. Are there instances where there's an injury that's exacerbated or like what's the word I'm looking for that? Yeah that's that's ah that the resistance of the water actually causes more pain.
01:00:49.24 Taylor Kruse Yep. Great question. Glad you mentioned it. Learned that the hard way myself. So there is another instance nerve injury.
01:00:54.46 Tony Fowler Hmm.
01:00:59.45 Taylor Kruse You sometimes have to be quite careful with a flared up nerve injury because remember what I said you have buoyancy helping you find a larger range of motion than you could on land.
01:01:14.58 Taylor Kruse So even though you have resistance and hydrostatic pressure supporting you through the movement it almost can be kind of a recipe for a disaster if let's say you have like sciatica which is an overstretch injury.
01:01:26.95 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:01:29.46 Taylor Kruse Now the environment that you're moving in is encouraging you to move through a larger range of motion in which case it might feel good at first but then overstretch your already overstretched sciatic nerve.
01:01:43.64 Taylor Kruse And the same could hold true with nerve injury in the upper body. Now here's where it gets a little bit challenging is that the water has also been known to help with nerve injury in many instances.
01:01:55.64 Taylor Kruse So it's sort of like you have to be aware of this and you have to change your tactics in how you're exercising in the water so that you don't overstretch an overstretched injur an overstretch injury.
01:02:11.10 Taylor Kruse So that is important to keep in mind. Movements then have to be more controlled smaller ranges of motion and you may have success that way. But still if you don't then it's a clue and perhaps that's not the right environment yet.
01:02:29.91 Tony Fowler I had a case myself when um you know after I'd injured my knee I actually would went snorkeling once. And so you actually have the big fins on your feet um which probably adds to that resistance.
01:02:39.46 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
01:02:43.54 Tony Fowler But I remember you know in paddling my feet in the water and we're we're horizontal right kind of ah on on the surface of the water but your your feet are submerged.
01:02:50.94 Taylor Kruse Right.
01:02:53.56 Tony Fowler um It would bother my knee.
01:02:56.42 Taylor Kruse Uh
01:02:56.63 Tony Fowler um at that it I don't know which part of like the flipper ah movement.
01:03:01.57 Taylor Kruse huh. Mm hmm.
01:03:03.38 Tony Fowler And so I can just imagine just that extra force. And I imagine the flipper added even more force on the ankle which would pull kind of at the structures in the knee right?
01:03:11.38 Taylor Kruse Right. Yeah yeah. So you'd have to yeah you have to be mindful of level of resistance level of buoyancy. All that stuff can come into play as you're trying to kind of tactically navigate how to use that medium for you know to be best suited for you know your goals.
01:03:31.53 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. So one problem one problem I think you kind of alluded to is in in prescribing this stuff is that there's not a lot of warm deep pools for people to use.
01:03:45.40 Taylor Kruse I mean man it's frustrating. So obviously you can go to your local pond your local lake your local river. You're gonna get colder water in most cases for some people anyway.
01:03:56.47 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:03:57.61 Taylor Kruse That's fine. we I've done that many times. It's tough harder to find a pool that's suitable. um Those obstacles are some of the things that drove me out of using this stuff with people right? Because finding a pool was always hard.
01:04:16.28 Taylor Kruse Once you find the pool big deal you gotta find time for the pool right?
01:04:20.43 Tony Fowler Right.
01:04:20.47 Taylor Kruse You gotta you gotta rent it right?
01:04:21.97 Tony Fowler Yeah. Mm-hmm.
01:04:23.01 Taylor Kruse i had to rent it. And I'd have to have slots where I could put people in individuals or groups. Well now you're renting competing with other people and your clients have to be able to use the slot that you can get.
01:04:38.04 Taylor Kruse Now you have scheduling issues right? Sometimes the pools were cold. You knew that might not be ideal for a certain situation. um Some people just don't want to get in the water right?
01:04:50.68 Taylor Kruse um There was a lot of obstacles but... there was always a select few people that loved it. And And they wanted they really embraced it because they gave it a chance and they felt the value.
01:05:07.28 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:05:07.45 Taylor Kruse right Even if there's little obstacles like the temperature doesn't have to be perfect you know like big deal. um Yeah so it's those things became challenging. you know And my interests gravitated more into applied neuroscience anyways because I was able to...
01:05:31.29 Taylor Kruse I was able to help more people with very specific problems versus generalize their training and use the land and water stuff. That's still amazing. it's just not where It's just not where my interests were. But here's the thing. If I was coaching any kind of sport this would be a part of it no question. If I was consulting with a professional athlete
01:05:58.42 Taylor Kruse okay I always make sure to introduce them to this because they may have access to a pool. And guess what? A professional athlete has many many hours during the day to figure out how they're going to use those hours to do the things that they need to do to train or recover.
01:06:19.19 Taylor Kruse um If I were an athlete myself a competitive athlete It would be a non-negotiable thing for me at least twice a week.
01:06:27.51 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:06:29.91 Taylor Kruse At least twice a week from a recovery standpoint. You know it's that good. So it's like like I said at the beginning of the episode it's near and dear to my heart because of all the cool experiences I had with it all the people and mentors I've had that kind of guided me with it.
01:06:48.15 Taylor Kruse but also because I still know the power of it. And it's just that it's that thing that is not something it's like i i moved away from it.
01:07:00.18 Taylor Kruse And it wasn't because wanted to necessarily it was because of other obstacles and then finding new passions but it's still there. It's still there and I see it there and it's like yeah I see you and I'm gonna use you when I need you.
01:07:15.13 Taylor Kruse You know it's still this exciting thing. um It always will be.
01:07:21.82 Tony Fowler Yeah very cool. If someone were to go to a pool and just try to experience something like this kind of where would you have people start?
01:07:32.63 Taylor Kruse Yeah sure. So first you have to have the courage to walk up to that big bin full of all the water aerobics equipment that you never wanted to go near. Okay.
01:07:44.54 Taylor Kruse And then you have to have the courage to look silly when you start putting the flotation on your body. Okay. So the flotation is key.
01:07:51.77 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:07:53.68 Taylor Kruse Don't go to the water and do this without flotation and then be like yeah I listened to that podcast and I don't really get it and I didn't really enjoy it ah You will not enjoy it if you're not floating.
01:08:04.25 Taylor Kruse Okay so let's let's get that piece out there. You can buy flotation belts and stuff. Most pools have them. Most pools have them. So you put the belt around your waist you jump in the pool and the first thing I want you to do is walk.
01:08:19.93 Taylor Kruse Remember you're in the deep end so walking is gonna feel like vertically swimming.
01:08:21.70 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:08:24.92 Taylor Kruse But you're gonna coordinate your limbs the same way you would when you were walking on land opposite hand opposite leg. And you're gonna do that and try to maintain nice vertical alignment moving through a good range of motion allowing nice full ranges of motion you'll be amazed. Your heart rate will go up. You'll start to feel oh this is challenging and I've got a balance at the same time.
01:08:48.60 Taylor Kruse And after you walk forwards one of the fundamental principles of the Bernanke method is everything you do forwards you also do backwards. And this is another unique training principle that I didn't fully understand back when I first learned it.
01:09:04.44 Taylor Kruse Back when I first learned it it was like yeah that makes sense. If you don't do enough backwards movement you'll be deficient in backwards movement. Now I understand it as you'll be deficient in backwards movement but you're also very deficient in a very important vestibular stimulus.
01:09:21.14 Taylor Kruse So the backwards movement is very ideal to get some and that's why try to balance the forwards and backwards movement. So you're gonna walk forwards in the water and you're gonna walk backwards in the water.
01:09:32.95 Taylor Kruse And that's where it starts. That's where it starts. You could do that for several minutes and you gotta focus on the coordination and that you'll get feedback because if you don't coordinate it right. and you you break the principles of opposite hand opposite leg and you start trying to go same hand same leg you're not going to go anywhere.
01:09:50.87 Taylor Kruse And you're going feel very silly.
01:09:50.99 Tony Fowler Hmm.
01:09:53.22 Taylor Kruse You're going to get the feedback that it's not working because there's so much to feel in the water. So that's where it starts. And you know I have an old YouTube channel.
01:10:05.12 Taylor Kruse It's like almost embarrassing to point people to this but I'm going to all right? This is a top secret YouTube channel top secret. Back first generation of our business was not Cruise Elite. Well actually we went through the names.
01:10:20.18 Taylor Kruse It might've been Cruise Elite originally. Then it ended up the Movement Project. This is when we were doing a lot of one-on-one work and I was focused on a lot of the land and water-based stuff. And I had a YouTube channel If you search the movement project Taylor Cruz you'll find it.
01:10:37.37 Taylor Kruse okay And you'll see a lot of demonstrations of water exercise on that channel. You'll see a really silly video of me when I'm much younger talking about all of this.
01:10:50.46 Taylor Kruse um And yeah it's just one of those things where you watch it and you're like oh my gosh you're like kind of cover.
01:10:55.85 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:10:56.59 Taylor Kruse It's just like a face palm. It's a face palm. It was yeah it's just at that beginning stage. um But I've got lots of great demonstration videos demonstrating these exercises all my favorite ones really.
01:11:12.34 Taylor Kruse Some people I know still use that channel when they're putting together workouts in the water. right They just they go through it.
01:11:19.62 Tony Fowler That's so fun.
01:11:20.56 Taylor Kruse Yeah so that might be fun for someone that really wants to follow the breadcrumbs and go check it out. um Other than that yeah find the flotation get in the water do some walking.
01:11:32.31 Taylor Kruse That can be very enjoyable if you have a... a warm enough body of water near you out outdoors you know? alicia i Alicia and I used to do that a lot. We we lived in Massachusetts. We were able to walk take ah a pretty long walk. along so So we had some local railroad tracks that then brought us to a local pond. And it was awesome. We'd bring the equipment right? And we'd do some exercise in the water in the pond. Yeah it's nice.
01:12:01.50 Taylor Kruse So yeah.
01:12:04.70 Tony Fowler Very cool. Very cool. Any final thoughts about aquatic training?
01:12:11.89 Taylor Kruse Just give it a go. Like you yeah give it a go that's all.
01:12:14.67 Tony Fowler Yeah?
01:12:17.21 Taylor Kruse um Entertain the idea especially if you are that person that I described that's you've had an injury or a surgery and it won't let you move the way that you want to on land.
01:12:32.36 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:12:32.98 Taylor Kruse Go to the water. That's what the whole thing was based on. Remember the story with Igor and his dad who was injured.
01:12:38.08 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:12:40.11 Taylor Kruse That's it. right and And you'll be you'll feel a lot better. you You get a lot out of that in that situation. It's a situation you don't want to be in and you just start feeling the stagnation that happens with your body.
01:12:58.52 Taylor Kruse when you're not really allowed to move and that starts to bleed into your mental health doesn't it? You know that's what I always could see from my clients in the water in that situation is the water allowed them to move and mentally and emotionally they were better for it too you know?
01:13:18.62 Taylor Kruse So yeah give it a try.
01:13:21.91 Tony Fowler Very cool. Very cool.
01:13:26.33 Taylor Kruse All right I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. It was kind of a I don't know it was it was a detour but it was a cool one. you know It was fun to talk about.
01:13:37.37 Taylor Kruse I hope that you guys found it interesting and and give some of these things a try. um In the meantime you know because we're always really focused on applied neuroscience here.
01:13:50.23 Taylor Kruse if If you guys want to go deeper into applied neuroscience and some of the things that we're constantly teaching here on the podcast but also based on the things you're seeing
01:14:01.27 Taylor Kruse me do on social media you can still watch our free masterclass right? That's still available to you. You can find the link for that in the show notes or find it you know through our social media. That masterclass is just a ah great place to land for some of the more important foundational educational lessons that we're putting out there to help people understand applied neuroscience. And then you'll also pick up some drills hopefully a few high payoff ones too that start moving the needle in the right direction for you whether it's a mobility problem a balance problem or a pain problem.
01:14:34.46 Taylor Kruse So give it a try. And thank you all for your support here on the podcast. We will be back soon.
