Stop Stretching: The Surprising Truth About Pain Relief with Yogi Aaron

WEBVTT
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Hey, before we jump into today's show, I just wanted to say congratulations
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on putting your health first.
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Gaining information is the cornerstone of you becoming an advocate for your
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own health, and that's why we're here.
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The information provided in this podcast is for educational and informational
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purposes only, as well as some entertainment.
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It is in no way a substitute for professional medical advice,
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diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified healthcare professional
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with any questions you have before taking action on anything.
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The views and opinions expressed here are not necessarily mine,
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nor the views of Functional Health Today.
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It's just two people having a conversation, giving you as much information as
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possible so that you can make informed decisions.
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Again, seek the advice of a qualified healthcare professional before acting
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on any of it. All right, let's jump into today's show.
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Welcome back to Functional Health Today. If you are looking for alternative
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health care that puts you in the driver's seat, you are in the right place.
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Today's show is for those of you who have chronic pain in your body.
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If you have frozen joints, if you have muscles that hurt, and you are stretching,
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if you're somebody who goes to yoga looking for relief, you're going to want to listen up.
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Today's guest has a completely different approach.
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He actually says you should stop stretching and start doing something else.
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We're going to get into that today.
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He's joining us all the way from Costa Rica.
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Yogi Aaron, how are you doing today?
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I'm doing great. Thanks for that great intro. I really appreciate it.
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No worries. So let's jump into it. First off, you have quite the crazy backstory.
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Let's go through how did you get to Costa Rica and where did your methodology come from?
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Because you actually, you, you don't, you teach people the opposite of stretch.
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Well, maybe not the opposite, not to stretch. You have a different way about
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going away around curing our muscle problems. So let's jump into that. How'd you get there?
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So I got into yoga when I was about 18. And like most people,
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I wanted to, I wanted to become more flexible.
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You know, I was like one of those typical stiff biffs that, you know,
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when you bend over, you can barely get your hands past your knees, let alone to your toes.
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And so I was like that, like bending over was just impossible.
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And I thought, if I don't do something about this, I'm going to start getting older.
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And like most people, you think flexibility equals better health and it's an anti-aging remedy.
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I got into it. I got into yoga and I very quickly hurt my back.
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And it was the first time, you know, in my life at that point,
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18, 19 years where I had back pain.
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And what followed after
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that was my back pain just got worse so what
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did i do stretch more and stretch
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more and i got into i can get into this and more in depth but i got into some
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very rigorous forms of yoga quote-unquote practice or stretching practices and
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after i would do the practice, I would always feel good.
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Looking back now, the dead giveaway was me waking up in the morning in pain and hardly able to move.
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And then so I would go do more yoga to feel better. And that kind of cycle went
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on for 25 years until I ended up in the emergency room of a hospital with an
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orthopedic surgeon saying to me that I probably would need a spinal fusion in my lower back.
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And it's kind of like I was doing this yoga, this stretching practice to avoid this exact thing.
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Yeah. How did I have to ask, like, how did that feel?
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Were you just, were you just like that? That's not possible.
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Were you in denial about it? Were you angry? How did that feel to have a doctor?
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I mean, basically the reason you're stretching all the time,
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first off, you're going through a cycle, right?
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Like, I'm in a lot of pain. I'm going to go stretch so that I feel better.
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Oh, there I feel a little bit of relief.
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And now you're in the hospital and they're telling you, you know what,
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what you're doing is not working to the point that you're going to need surgery. How'd that feel for you?
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I mean, I was definitely angry and frustrated.
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It was a very humiliating thing because I, here I am a yoga person and a yoga
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person should be healthy.
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A yoga person should be the picture of health and movement and functional functionality.
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And I was completely the opposite of that. I remember when I was walking from
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my car and I was by myself, I didn't have anybody driving me.
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I was walking to the emergency room from my car, which would take a normal person, you know, 60 seconds.
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It took me, you know, 15 minutes because I was just like one foot in front of
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the other. It was a very humbling moment.
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And in that humility, I was able to come to a place and ask the question, what don't I know?
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There must be something that I don't understand or don't know.
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And, you know, going back and looking at my journey, I told hundreds of yoga teachers my issues.
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Every single one of them said basically two things, stretch more and listen to your body.
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And looking back now, I can realize and recognize listening to your body was
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code for, I don't really know what I'm talking about.
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So I'm just going to put the onus back on you.
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Well, I think, I mean, I've gone, I've gone to my share of yoga classes and
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they always say, listen to your body.
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And I think it sounds good, right? It sounds very new age, like listen to your body.
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What's it telling you? Should you stretch a little more into this?
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What? So, I mean, good for you for asking the question that says,
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Hey, there must be something I don't know here because that's the,
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that is the key to any kind of learning. Right.
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We all feel angry when something doesn't go our way.
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I mean, that's maybe I shouldn't say we all feel angry. It's a common,
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common way to go is to feel angry, feel a little bit of shame.
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I put all this time and energy and money into learning this thing and I'm supposed to be healthy.
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And instead you just said, okay, there must be something that I'm missing.
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So what was that thing? What did you discover?
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What I discovered was that I didn't understand anything about functional movement or biomechanics.
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As yoga teachers, we think we understand the body because we're teaching people movement.
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We don't really understand how the body is doing that movement.
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And I had already been introduced to this program called Muscle Activation Technique.
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It was created by Greg Roscoff. It's a way of going in, of doing a diagnostic
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of the body to understand where there's muscle weakness.
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So the whole premise of muscle activation technique and where Greg is coming
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from is saying pain exists in the body due to stress, trauma, and overuse.
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So what a lot of people disconnect from or don't realize, when you have stress,
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the byproduct of stress is inflammation, and the byproduct of inflammation is
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pain. So that's where the pain is actually coming from.
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And so when there's stress in a joint, you're going to have inflammation and therefore pain.
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Why is the joint stressed out? Because the muscles are not doing their job properly.
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And so in the yoga world, we go, okay.
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Muscles should lengthen. So we're very fixated on lengthening those muscles,
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but that's actually not the function of what muscles should do.
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Muscles need to contract and be able to shorten properly so they can do two
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things. They can stabilize joints and move bones.
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And so if your listener is listening to this, take one thing away.
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If you can remember that muscles move bones and stabilize joints,
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you'll know more than most movement specialists, because most movement specialists
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have forgotten this truth, this truism.
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So as I got into studying, I decided to start studying muscle activation technique,
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not because I wanted to be a therapist, but just because I wanted to learn more
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for myself and have another tool in my toolbox at the very most.
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So I got into it and I realized within the first few hours of diving into this
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course, I remember having that moment of going, oh my God, I don't know anything.
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And then I realized if I don't know anything, all these other teachers that
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have been teaching me and that are out there really don't know anything about biomechanics.
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And I want to be very clear about this because a lot of yoga teachers get very
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upset when I make that comment.
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Sure they know something about yoga about
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the spiritual practice but when it actually comes to
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functional movement and in biomechanics
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yoga teachers don't know anything and one of the most common signs of experiencing
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a yoga teacher that doesn't know anything is as soon as they use words like
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okay we're going to open the back up we're going to open your heart we're going
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to and this is my favorite one. We're going to open the hips.
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And so this opening hip business, I had a friend, I'll give you the very short story.
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She was very adamant about stretching. She loved to open her hips.
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She was one of the most flexible people that I had ever met.
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Back in 2021, I pleaded with her, please stop stretching.
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You need to start activating. Your body is a mess right now.
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I just found out she had a hip replacement surgery.
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And I often joke, you know, these yoga teachers that are getting these hip replacement
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surgeries from opening their hips too much are still yelling over their shoulder
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to their students. Don't forget to open your hips.
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Well, they don't. I mean, I, man, there, it's not that they're doing something wrong.
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On purpose to harm you. They think that they're giving good advice.
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So I've actually, I've had chiropractors tell me the same thing.
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They say, you know, it's one thing to stretch.
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It's another to overstretch to the point that you're not supporting the joints.
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And they've, I've heard that from chiropractors that have been on the show.
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So it's really interesting to talk about this.
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Tell me what should you be doing instead
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let's walk through because the yoga teachers
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out there you can make them angry you can say all this stuff but what people
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really want more than anything is a useful body they want a body that is pain-free
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and that does the things that they ask them to do so what did you discover instead
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i had to flip the script in the way that i was approaching movement.
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And so part of that goes, okay, if you're stiff Biff and you're folding forward
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and you can't touch your toes, it's not because necessarily that his back muscles
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are tighter, his hamstrings are tight.
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That's actually a symptom of the real problem.
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The real problem is that his core muscles are not shortening properly.
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And so when we come forward, or if we do a forward fold, a lot of people are
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very fixated on this idea of stretching the hamstrings to do that.
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What we know is that when we stretch a muscle, it actually has a negative effect.
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And there's a word out there that's kind of being thrown around sometimes.
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It decreases the force output of a muscle.
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That means in basic language that the muscle loses its ability to contract and contract on demand.
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And so when a muscle is not shortening or contracting properly,
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you have limitation in range of motion.
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And what shows up as a symptom is that the opposite muscles are tightening.
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And so as we're doing a forward fold, or let's talk about like a side bend,
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you know, like there's that famous yoga pose, triangle pose.
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Again, a lot of yoga teachers are always focusing on stretching the side of
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the body that's elongating.
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But where we need to flip the script is instead of focusing on that,
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focus on the side of the body that's contracting.
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Let's work on activating the muscles. So that goes to answer your question.
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We want to get muscles activated, get them to start working properly.
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How do we do that is through isometrically holding a muscle in its most shortened state actively,
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as opposed to just passively trying to stretch a muscle to loosen it or to lengthen it.
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Okay. So if I understand it correctly, let's say, let's go back to the forward fold.
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When you do a forward fold, then you are going to be focusing on contracting
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your core more than stretching your hamstrings or lower back.
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So how does this, it look, does it look the same?
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Like if I see somebody do it or is it, tell me, how do I actually start to do that?
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What are the movements like? So are you enjoying the show so far?
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We'll get back to it in just a second, but it would mean the world to us if
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and it will change the world. All right, let's get back to the show.
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So there's a couple of things to unpack there. Number one, I wouldn't necessarily
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like jump into teaching a forward fold right away.
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So I would do things to start getting these muscles activated,
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getting these muscles turned on.
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Part of that, Stephen starts to go, okay, well, what are those muscles and what do they actually do?
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So coming back to opening the hips, a lot of yoga teachers are saying, open the hips.
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If you ask those yoga teachers that are saying that what muscles are attached
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to the hips what is their muscle function they will not they won't even be able
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to tell you one muscle let alone three.
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So, so what we need to do is start understanding, well, what are the muscles
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that are causing trunk flexion, AKA folding forward?
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How do we start to improve those muscles? So get those muscles turned on,
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get them activated. How do we do that?
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I can tell you a simple exercise right now. You come onto your back,
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you kind of do what looks like a sit up, but instead of like going to your full range of motion,
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bring your knees above your hips, bring your hands behind your neck,
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and then just kind of crunch up and specifically focus on engaging your core
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and do that six seconds, six times.
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So that's kind of one of the number one magic numbers, if you will,
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in muscle activation, holding something for six seconds and repeating it six times.
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Once we start to understand what the muscles are, we can do different isometrics
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to get those muscles activated.
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And that's what I teach in my yoga program.
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And then I would have people come back and stand up. So to answer your question
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directly, if I was going to teach a standing forward fold, first of all,
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one of the rules in a yama or guidelines in a yama axioms, less is more.
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And so do you need to fold forward and touch your toes?
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And that's one of the questions that we have to answer. There's no reason why
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you need to bend forward with straight legs and touch your toes.
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You know, if you need to tie your shoes, bend your knees, come into a squat
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and tie your shoes or something, there's no reason why you should have to bend
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over and touch your toes.
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So what I would do is I would set it up a little differently.
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I would have people bring their hands to their hips.
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Once I got these muscles turned on and activated, and then just start going
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through inhaling and exhaling, coming forward,
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keeping the spine really long, elongated, and really focused on engaging the
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core as they're doing that and then coming back up.
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So I would have them moving in and out of the pose. I would also have them maybe
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only going to 30%, 60% halfway at most.
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And if you, you know, there's a big difference.
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Like if I asked you and you don't have to do it, but if your listeners are listening, stand up,
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bring your hands to your hips, come forward halfway and notice how much more
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your core is engaged and just stay there for a moment and then come back up
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and then fold forward all the way and notice how gravity starts to pull you down.
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It changes the dynamics of the pose a lot.
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So the way that I approach these yoga postures is to become more dynamic.
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So there's more accountability, aka muscle engagement in the pose rather than
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just kind of letting go into the pose.
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Does that make sense? Yeah, I want to like, I want to get really specific.
00:17:39.769 --> 00:17:45.029
So what I hear you saying is you, you basically you're doing some version of
00:17:45.029 --> 00:17:49.649
the pose, but you're focusing on activating core muscles or the muscles that
00:17:49.649 --> 00:17:54.629
need to pull and you're holding or clenching those muscles to get them activated.
00:17:54.869 --> 00:18:00.369
So let's talk about some of the common pain points. You mentioned frozen shoulder and lower back.
00:18:00.509 --> 00:18:04.349
I think two of those, I think those are things that a lot of people struggle with.
00:18:04.509 --> 00:18:09.109
So what are some simple things that they can do that is not yoga?
00:18:09.269 --> 00:18:13.169
What's the opposite of stretching that we're going to show them instead,
00:18:13.189 --> 00:18:17.369
or that you show people to do that helps them get out of pain.
00:18:17.749 --> 00:18:21.829
Cause that's really what people are after. I know that a lot of people have
00:18:21.829 --> 00:18:25.869
heard this before, but a lot of the core muscles just are not activated.
00:18:26.069 --> 00:18:30.429
The problem is, is that what gets lost in the language is a couple of things.
00:18:30.669 --> 00:18:34.869
One, what are the core muscles? So you have a lot of core muscles.
00:18:35.049 --> 00:18:39.509
The psoas major, which is a hip flexor, could be considered a core muscle,
00:18:39.509 --> 00:18:42.109
but it's never really treated properly.
00:18:42.429 --> 00:18:46.589
And so you kind of have this. And so a lot of solutions that are out there is,
00:18:46.749 --> 00:18:48.189
okay, just do a bunch of sit-ups.
00:18:48.349 --> 00:18:52.169
And that's going to actually probably make the situation worse.
00:18:52.389 --> 00:18:56.349
If a muscle is weak and you're doing a lot of this exercise,
00:18:56.349 --> 00:18:58.429
it actually can make it weaker.
00:18:58.649 --> 00:19:01.409
So we need to approach it more intelligently.
00:19:01.829 --> 00:19:04.689
One of the rules in a yama is less is more.
00:19:06.389 --> 00:19:10.349
So applying less is more. One of my favorite muscle activations,
00:19:10.469 --> 00:19:13.829
and I'll try and talk it through and maybe you'll be able to get it,
00:19:13.949 --> 00:19:15.529
but it's similar to that crunch.
00:19:16.029 --> 00:19:20.469
It's one that a lot of actually fitness teachers use. You're lying on your back,
00:19:20.709 --> 00:19:23.609
you bend your knees, and you bring your knees above your hips.
00:19:23.729 --> 00:19:29.249
And then you bring your hands to your knees, and then the knees are pressing into the hands.
00:19:29.709 --> 00:19:35.069
And as they do that, you'll feel all of your core muscles start turning on.
00:19:35.269 --> 00:19:38.969
It's actually one of my favorite, I call it just a general hack,
00:19:39.249 --> 00:19:42.129
to start getting those muscles firing properly.
00:19:42.489 --> 00:19:46.589
So that's a simple hack that people can do. Another hack, which is one that
00:19:46.589 --> 00:19:50.849
I use a lot myself, because I go hiking and I walk a lot.
00:19:51.029 --> 00:19:54.449
Before I do that, I'll actually just stand, come standing.
00:19:54.829 --> 00:19:58.629
And, you know, like when you see a lot of runners bringing one knee to the chest,
00:19:58.829 --> 00:20:01.689
standing up, and they will hug the knee into the chest.
00:20:02.009 --> 00:20:05.009
Do the same thing, but don't hug the knee.
00:20:05.249 --> 00:20:08.269
Just stand with your hands on your hips or support yourself,
00:20:08.509 --> 00:20:13.069
you know, with one hand on the fence or the car. and you actively bring that
00:20:13.069 --> 00:20:18.889
knee up as close as you can to your chest, that will start activating all of your core muscles.
00:20:19.229 --> 00:20:24.049
And again, I could go through what all those muscles are, but that's just a general hack.
00:20:24.189 --> 00:20:27.929
Those are two ways that people can start activating their core muscles.
00:20:28.129 --> 00:20:34.669
I would say quite confidently that 70% of back pain can be traced back to these
00:20:34.669 --> 00:20:41.249
core muscles, specifically the psoas, which is one of the biggest hip flexors, not working properly.
00:20:42.109 --> 00:20:44.589
And where a lot of people go wrong is,
00:20:45.277 --> 00:20:49.717
they will actually try and stretch the psoas, which has the opposite effect.
00:20:49.937 --> 00:20:53.417
You want that psoas to actually start working properly.
00:20:53.737 --> 00:20:57.617
Muscle tightness is always a sign of muscle weakness.
00:20:57.977 --> 00:21:04.537
And so if you've got tight muscles, that means that some of the muscles are not working properly.
00:21:04.877 --> 00:21:09.157
A muscle, you know, like when you, you, you know, you get a massage and your,
00:21:09.197 --> 00:21:12.057
the massage therapist it says, oh, your muscles are so tight.
00:21:12.337 --> 00:21:16.997
That's because those muscles are not working. And so if you want those muscles
00:21:16.997 --> 00:21:20.397
to relax, they actually need to be turned on and activated.
00:21:20.757 --> 00:21:26.217
And you'll feel the difference like right away. They just actually start to soften a lot.
00:21:27.077 --> 00:21:30.597
Excellent. So you have a whole system that you've designed around this.
00:21:30.677 --> 00:21:34.897
If you guys have found this interesting, we are linking the seven-day pain-free
00:21:34.897 --> 00:21:39.897
series in the notes, in the show notes. Tell us a little bit about what that
00:21:39.897 --> 00:21:41.757
looks like. What are people going to get when they go there?
00:21:42.317 --> 00:21:46.797
People are going to get introduced to these simple muscle activation practices.
00:21:46.797 --> 00:21:51.417
So in the seven day pain-free series, we kind of go through the major pain points
00:21:51.417 --> 00:21:56.637
that people have like back pain, knee pain, hip pain. I think there's one for
00:21:56.637 --> 00:21:58.077
neck pain and shoulder pain.
00:21:58.217 --> 00:22:01.317
So we go through all of these different pain points.
00:22:01.317 --> 00:22:05.057
And then at the end, we give like a general practice that people can do.
00:22:05.057 --> 00:22:09.677
But as they go through that they're going to get like learn about one muscle
00:22:09.677 --> 00:22:12.677
that's in that area that's supporting that joint,
00:22:13.377 --> 00:22:16.197
you know you see like with knee pain for example like
00:22:16.197 --> 00:22:20.157
a lot of people doing these stretches again that's going to make these problems
00:22:20.157 --> 00:22:24.417
worse a lot of people don't think about like there's one muscle that if you
00:22:24.417 --> 00:22:29.697
just got that muscle working probably 50% of your knee issues will just disappear
00:22:29.697 --> 00:22:34.437
so I go through that I give people a general hack,
00:22:35.057 --> 00:22:39.517
And then they can start to practice that and give them a taste of what muscle
00:22:39.517 --> 00:22:43.617
activation should be and what it can be for them in their life.
00:22:44.357 --> 00:22:49.877
Awesome. So we are linking that down below. I want to go through a couple of the questions.
00:22:50.117 --> 00:22:53.597
There's what is the one yoga pose that nobody should do?
00:22:54.097 --> 00:22:58.517
So I don't know if we're on video for your show or not, but I'm wearing this t-shirt.
00:22:58.857 --> 00:23:06.437
You've got somebody in child's pose and it says stop. So stop doing child's pose. Charles pose.
00:23:07.081 --> 00:23:12.041
You know, if you were going to simulate child's pose in a dynamic way,
00:23:12.321 --> 00:23:17.681
come onto your back with your arms out like a T and try and bring your knees
00:23:17.681 --> 00:23:22.981
into your chest and see how close you get and then flip around and do child's
00:23:22.981 --> 00:23:25.021
pose and notice how, you know,
00:23:25.661 --> 00:23:27.321
much more range of motion you have.
00:23:27.421 --> 00:23:30.721
That range of motion is not natural to your body.
00:23:30.921 --> 00:23:36.621
It's kind of a forced stretch, if you will, and it's negatively affecting like,
00:23:37.081 --> 00:23:42.921
five different groups of muscles that are important for stabilizing your trunk and spine.
00:23:43.281 --> 00:23:47.641
So if you do child's pose, you're going to feel good in the moment.
00:23:47.821 --> 00:23:51.141
Like there's no doubt, like it has this effect on your nervous system.
00:23:52.341 --> 00:23:57.901
But it's going to long-term have a very negative effect in all of these muscles.
00:23:58.241 --> 00:24:01.321
For a lot of your listeners, by the way, thinking right now,
00:24:01.581 --> 00:24:04.821
you know, who is this guy in this quack and how does he know that he can,
00:24:04.821 --> 00:24:07.141
these muscles turn off and turn on.
00:24:07.361 --> 00:24:12.881
That's what I'm trained to do. Like we can actually test the force output of muscles.
00:24:12.881 --> 00:24:18.701
And I've, I've tested this on hundreds of people by now where if they,
00:24:18.821 --> 00:24:21.341
you know, a lot of people are strong in the beginning,
00:24:21.521 --> 00:24:26.201
then they go into child's post and they come back out and their muscles are
00:24:26.201 --> 00:24:28.981
like a hundred percent weaker in most cases.
00:24:28.981 --> 00:24:34.941
Like it's just, it's mind blowing to see like how weak people get from doing these stretches.
00:24:35.241 --> 00:24:41.361
So there is, you know, there is a practical side to this. I'm not just pulling this out of left field.
00:24:41.541 --> 00:24:45.321
Like we can actually test if people are stronger or not.
00:24:45.801 --> 00:24:50.421
Okay. So if somebody wants to try this out, they're like, okay,
00:24:50.421 --> 00:24:53.921
I'm a little bit skeptical, but I could see it. I can try it out.
00:24:54.501 --> 00:24:57.721
How long before they start to see some results.
00:24:57.881 --> 00:25:02.941
If they go through your seven-day pain-free series, are they going to start
00:25:02.941 --> 00:25:04.181
to see some results from that?
00:25:04.858 --> 00:25:11.378
They'll definitely see results. I've had numerous people who have been dealing
00:25:11.378 --> 00:25:19.098
with chronic pain just do the seven-day series and email me the most amazing stories.
00:25:20.418 --> 00:25:25.458
I don't think that there ever is a one-size-fits-all. What I try and do in the
00:25:25.458 --> 00:25:30.698
seven-day series is hit some of the major muscle groups of the body and give
00:25:30.698 --> 00:25:32.878
people like quick hacks, you know,
00:25:33.518 --> 00:25:40.058
that in and of itself is a game changer and people will feel a difference very quickly.
00:25:40.058 --> 00:25:43.398
It just depends on what, you know, obviously with everything,
00:25:43.398 --> 00:25:45.818
it depends on how far people want to take it.
00:25:45.958 --> 00:25:48.798
But absolutely, I've had incredible results.
00:25:48.978 --> 00:25:55.018
I've had people come in with like feeling nine out of 10 pain threshold with
00:25:55.018 --> 00:26:02.538
their sciatic pain and after an hour with me, walk away with like one out of 10 threshold of pain.
00:26:02.538 --> 00:26:05.558
So we can dramatically improve it.
00:26:05.838 --> 00:26:11.858
Again, pain is the symptom of stress in a joint because muscles are not supporting that joint.
00:26:11.858 --> 00:26:20.098
As soon as the body feels supported and gets stable, the stress level immediately goes down.
00:26:20.098 --> 00:26:27.938
Therefore, the inflammation immediately goes down.
00:26:28.138 --> 00:26:30.358
Therefore, people are going to feel less pain.
00:26:31.338 --> 00:26:35.018
Excellent. Last question I have around this, because I want people to go try this.
00:26:35.238 --> 00:26:39.998
Here's the thing, guys. There's no downside to trying this. You love yoga. You love stretching.
00:26:40.338 --> 00:26:42.978
Give what Aaron is suggesting a try.
00:26:43.518 --> 00:26:47.698
See how it affects you. The worst case scenario is it does nothing for you.
00:26:47.698 --> 00:26:51.818
It's not going to cause any problems. What is the time commitment?
00:26:52.058 --> 00:26:56.418
How long do these exercises take? I mean, you talked about six seconds, six times.
00:26:56.618 --> 00:27:00.258
If you do five exercises like that, you're talking about 15 minutes.
00:27:00.478 --> 00:27:02.158
Does that sound about right? Or less.
00:27:02.458 --> 00:27:10.958
I mean, it doesn't take much time to get muscles activated and to turn muscles on.
00:27:11.258 --> 00:27:15.538
I mean, people, I always say, if you can just commit to 10 to 15 minutes a day,
00:27:15.538 --> 00:27:19.498
that's going to change the trajectory of your life in a dramatic way.
00:27:20.018 --> 00:27:24.538
If you quit stretching and stop stretching, it's going to even affect it more regularly.
00:27:25.725 --> 00:27:29.445
There's, you know, a lot of people just throw in stretching because there's
00:27:29.445 --> 00:27:32.305
this belief out there that you need to get muscles longer.
00:27:32.305 --> 00:27:39.845
What people forget is that a muscle's ability to lengthen depends on its opposite
00:27:39.845 --> 00:27:42.385
muscle's ability to contract properly.
00:27:42.685 --> 00:27:47.665
So if you have tight hamstrings, it's because your quads and hip flexors are
00:27:47.665 --> 00:27:49.425
not contracting properly.
00:27:50.165 --> 00:27:54.765
And so the body is tightening up as a protective mechanism. It's like if you
00:27:54.765 --> 00:27:59.045
walk on ice, you know, and you step out on ice, you freeze up,
00:27:59.185 --> 00:28:00.445
you literally freeze up.
00:28:00.625 --> 00:28:04.905
And so one of the words that my teacher Greg often uses through muscle activation,
00:28:04.925 --> 00:28:07.185
we can begin to melt the ice.
00:28:07.585 --> 00:28:11.465
And that's going to flip the script a lot. It only takes 10,
00:28:11.985 --> 00:28:14.565
15 minutes a day of commitment.
00:28:15.225 --> 00:28:19.345
You know, obviously you can spend more time and create a whole routine around
00:28:19.345 --> 00:28:24.785
this, but just giving it that much every day is going to be a game changer for you.
00:28:25.765 --> 00:28:29.685
Excellent. Well, guys, we are linking everything down below in the show notes.
00:28:29.825 --> 00:28:31.285
You owe it to yourself to check it out.
00:28:31.525 --> 00:28:34.865
Aaron, thank you so much for joining us from Costa Rica. I appreciate your time.
00:28:35.485 --> 00:28:38.625
Thank you for having me on and the great questions. I appreciate it.
00:28:38.845 --> 00:28:43.245
Yeah, of course. To everybody else out there, make sure you are an advocate
00:28:43.245 --> 00:28:44.685
for your own health care.
00:28:44.805 --> 00:28:48.765
That's what we are here for at Functional Health today. We wish you a great
00:28:48.765 --> 00:28:53.645
day and we'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning in and listening to today's show.
00:28:53.805 --> 00:28:56.925
The information provided on this podcast is for informational,
00:28:57.205 --> 00:29:02.085
educational, and entertainment purposes only. It is in no way a substitute for
00:29:02.085 --> 00:29:04.665
professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
00:29:04.685 --> 00:29:09.585
Before doing anything, always seek the advice of a qualified healthcare professional
00:29:09.585 --> 00:29:11.225
with any questions that you have.
00:29:11.345 --> 00:29:14.945
We'll see you next time here on the Functional Health Today podcast. Have an awesome day.