Sheree 0:00
Hi, beautiful souls. Welcome back to another incredible episode of The Wild and wild collective. I am truly excited to be bringing a dear friend and colleague of mine onto the podcast today, Robert Scott, or Robbie, as we love to call him, is an incredible personal trainer from Auckland, New Zealand with 11 years of experience in the fitness industry, in Robbie's business Robert Scott fitness, he specializes in something we call state regulation, and I cannot wait for us to be diving into this, breathing, mechanics, biomechanics, and helping his clients move away from pain and discomfort and towards building resilience and performing at their best, both in and out of the gym. Now, when I say Robbie is not your cookie cutter. PT, I couldn't mean it more deeply. Robbie actually has an approach to training that is far surpassed any kind of physio trainer, anyone in the industry that I have seen, and it is such an honor to not only work alongside him, but actually have learned from him, myself as a trainer, and so when you come into this episode, I encourage you to put a little curious hat on and start to look at training from a really different perspective. The perspective that Robbie shares is quite phenomenal, and although we don't necessarily see a lot of it when you're doing the podcasting, if you do check out his Instagram and his YouTube, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. This isn't your standard type of training. This is training at a whole new level, and in a way that really, really supports you your body, and actually gets to healing at the root cause, which is another thing we're all about here at the wild and wild collective. So without further ado, I am so excited to welcome Robbie onto the podcast. Welcome Robbie. We are so excited to have you here. Thank you for giving up your time this morning to join us.
Unknown Speaker 1:56
No thank you for having me.
Sheree 1:58
We are going to dive right in, as you guys would have heard in the intro, Robbie and I actually work alongside each other, but I have learned so much from him, and so do all of his clients. I know because I see it firsthand. I'm wondering, Robbie, can you tell us a little bit about how you really got to where you are? Because I think there's this stigma around personal training, like we always joke, you can pretty much get a personal training certification out of a cereal box now, and so there's a whole lot of different levels when it comes to pt. Do you want to dive into what really brought you to this level?
Speaker 1 2:29
Yeah, thank you. Yes. That's exactly right. Like when I first started, probably 1011, years ago, as a PT, all I knew was bodybuilding, and that's how I trained myself, and that's how I trained every single person that came to see me, kind of regardless of what they were there for, because that's just all I knew. And I quickly learnt for myself and for them that people have injuries, you know, people have pains and discomforts, and I just wasn't or like, at least the PT certification doesn't really equip you for that. They kind of give you this impression of or this way of. Here are these few things train people like this and with the expectation that people move perfectly. And that's just not the case at all. So there's just so as I was going for probably, what, two, maybe three years of training people like that and myself, and just kept running into roadblocks. Of, you know, it's nobody good for business when they're constantly either getting injured or they've got discomfort. As basically I was going through pains of like, back pain, sciatica, shoulder pain, neck pain, fatigue, all of this stuff just kind of accumulated, and it would go through the usual foam rolling, stretching, do all the things that are supposed to help. And we just never really found anything that stuck. So where it really went was that she the big change for me was flying to Los Angeles, and I had this big plan of training at Gold's Gym, going to be spend a week there and have fun, and the 13 hour plane ride just absolutely wrecked me, where I couldn't walk sciatica again. So anyway, I went to a chiropractor there, got some X rays done, found out that I had this mild scoliosis, so they just kind of painted the picture of what was going on. I finally had a had an answer, and that just led me down this rabbit hole of how the body moves, why we feel pain, and why the body will pick up compensation patterns along the way to in a way, to keep us moving. So I look at it as a it's like a safety feature that we have that the body will do things to keep us moving forward, because that's really what it just wants to do. It
Christa 4:55
is really interesting how the body compensates. I've had really like we. Ankles for a long time, and it's interesting how even that will affect the knees, will affect the hips, will affect even shoulder pain, right? Like just understanding that, I think it's really cool that you understand more, almost like a physical therapist and personal trainer taking the key to the next level of having kind of both and integrating. How did you educate yourself, though, on more of the actual physiology of the body? Like, did you do further training beyond just like what Cherie said, like, how so many people can learn how to be a personal trainer pretty quickly. But it obviously takes a bit more intention and focus to kind of expand that and really enhance how you present yourself as a personal trainer, what you offer, yeah,
Speaker 1 5:46
so maybe it must be about four or five years ago, I stumbled across PRI just postural Restoration Institute, and their concepts, or their their research is what really resonated with me. They speak a lot about breathing, mechanics, our state, our nervous system, our environment, how we perceive things, what our how our brain perceives things, is going to going to dictate on how well we move and yeah, our strength. All of this comes from our nervous system, rather than the more of the common focus of what are our muscles doing? So yeah, PRI is different. Definitely the way that's opened my eyes to it, and then I've gone down other little avenues from there, it's always
Sheree 6:35
what happens, right? Like, I think you go through your own journey, you then stumble across some research, or some people that are leading the way in the industry, and then you find yourself down a rabbit hole and testing and trialing. And I think the beautiful thing with science is that it's there. It supports everything. But then we also have that almost anecdotal evidence. We have that evidence where you're actually able to see firsthand when you're out in the field and you're practicing. And you know, Kristen, I see this with nutrition, and I know you see it with your clients, and it's like, suddenly you say, okay, like you said, the body's not moving correctly. Why is it that even this bicep curl looks wrong? Or they can't do a seated row, or now their squats are looking funny, and we don't really know what's happening. Or they come in one day and the person that you know used to really have incredible form. They haven't injured themselves, but suddenly they're not performing at their best. So you brought up nervous system regulation, or nervous system and state that you're in. Can you dive into that and how that really affects our training? Because I think we quite often will have this pressure when we show up to the gym that we have to perform exactly the same way, and we expect, you know, to constantly be improving and progressing, and there's nothing wrong with that, but there might be a reason why we're not. Yeah,
Speaker 1 7:47
yeah. So the way I look at things is people are very overstimulated and under recovered, and that just and that changes day to day. So that reflects in how, again, how we move. So obviously, we have these stresses each day, like work, stress, relationship, financial, all of these things that accumulate and hold into the body, and people don't well, people don't realize the effect that it actually has on the way that we move. I think we we think more to for stress, of blood pressure, heart health, that sort of thing. But just the one thing, especially in a consultation, that I look out for, is I want to kind of see where, what's their state like? Are they more shifted towards a sympathetic state, or they're just relaxed? Where I'll look for things like their breathing cadence. And another thing will be, what are their eyes doing? Like, how are they relaxed? Or are they kind of looking all over the place? And, you know, that's a couple of big signs for me. Well, obviously, in a gym environment, it's going to people nervous. So there's a percentage of that that's going to come into it. But basically, if the brain doesn't feel safe, then it's going to restrict movement. It's going to restrict our gait pattern, and it has a massive effect on our breathing cadence and breathing mechanics, which in turn has a big effect on the way that we move. Whereas our bodies are an air pressure system, or at least our torso is an air pressure system, and if that isn't expanding and compressing where it needs to be, that will affect the way that we move and the way that we even down to the way that, again, like our state, if we're locked up, especially around our neck area, got all those cranial nerves coming down through the small, small passage at the base of our cranium. The vagus nerve has been a big one that if all of that is inhibited in some way, it's so hard to regulate ourselves.
Christa 9:47
Yeah, this is amazing that you have integrated some of this. And I'm really curious what is stage one of with your patients, like, I say, patients, clients, with. Is this something that, I mean, obviously, while you're working out, I'm assuming that you're giving them feedback, like how they're breathing and things like that. But how do you counsel them? Like, where do you start? Is this something that they need to become aware of, like, day to day, like throughout their day, so that their posture is different? Yeah, talk us through a little bit of how you're I mean, obviously you don't have to give us all of your secrets. But what's step one for people? Because I think a lot of people feel, let's say, joint pain, or after they work out, they're really sore, and I think this is really fascinating for people to maybe become more aware of, yeah,
Speaker 1 10:35
number one is breathing mechanics, bringing some awareness to that. For sure, it can differ person to person, but that's where I really tried to start, because there's something that they it's, to be honest, it's probably just bringing awareness to it, like people just don't have any awareness. Breathing is just an automatic thing that we do, and so I always start a session off, or at least, sorry, the I would say the consultation process. You know, I'm doing assessments and seeing what's more specific for them, but I will most likely always go back to teaching this person how to breathe correctly and more of the mechanics of breathing, cadence of breathing, probably if they need it, if someone is more of a rapid breather, but their breathing mechanics, in terms of that, how that's going to affect it with their posture. Because if I'm seeing, for example, they're laying on the floor, and I'm seeing a flared rib cage and a pelvis that looks up, it's very tilted forward. That tells me that person is in a very sympathetic state. So the first thing that we can do to try to get them to shift out of that sympathetic state is to work on their breathing mechanics, getting them to expand their torso, which will put them into what's called more of like a neutral position, which can get you working or moving as a starting point for getting them to become a bit more reciprocal, alternating in the way that we move as humans. But yeah, I would say, definitely. Say teaching someone awareness of their breathing, how they're breathing, and where they should breathe at the beginning of a session.
Christa 12:14
Yeah, and what's the most appropriate? I mean, first of all, I do think it's very interesting to when you realize that a lot of people are on computers, like most people do have to work with a computer. And there's been studies that show when we're concentrating, people will hold their breath more. And so when people are on the computer, so you're hunched over, you're stressed out about whatever you're working on, you're also holding your breath. I mean, that is kind of a recipe for stress, head, neck, shoulder pain, I'm assuming I oftentimes with my patients also, or, like, tell them start to get curious and be aware of, like, where you're holding tension in your body. Where do you feel that? And then taking deep breaths? But can you talk us through what's an appropriate deep breath? Or, if they're becoming aware, where should we be focusing the breath? Like, what should we be visualizing? Maybe.
Speaker 1 13:03
So just touching on that, with the computer and the desk working our a lot of that is is layering on so much sympathetic dominance of when we're in small spaces, whether it's like a cubicle, like an office cubicle, or just a small room, all the time, and we're so focused, our eyes are so focused on a screen that's all sympathetic layering, where we as humans, we love, or our brains at least, love, big, wide, open spaces that keeps our brain relaxed. And we need to utilize our peripheral vision to stay relaxed, to be in a parasympathetic state. So like a lot of this is unavoidable. We this is how we work, or how a lot of people work, in a desk setting, office setting. So the best thing you can really do is getting, if possible, getting up every little while and going for a walk in a big, wide open space. But that's not realistic for a lot of people. So what I like to tell a lot of my clients to do is, when they're in, when they're seated at the desk all the time, make sure that they can feel both feet flat on the floor and in front of them. Make sure you can feel your sit bones, and then when you're breathing, trying to breathe into the back of your rib cage, you're trying to create some space in the back of it, and not letting air just go forward into your belly or forward into the front of your chest. Because when we're doing that's obviously sending air forward, but that's putting us in this very tall, over extended position, which, again, that's great for things like if we're running, if we're in a sport, and if we're in danger, that sort of thing. It's a very, again, a sympathetic position that we're in, a sympathetic posture, is this tall posture, but if we can get into more of a relaxed just relax your your posture. Not slouching necessarily, and just work on expanding our rib cage more posteriorly. But if we can get that expansion everywhere, followed by lung exhales. Now obviously, again, when you're working it's that's not something you're going to be thinking of all the time, but if you can do that every 2040, minutes, something like that.
Sheree 15:23
It's so interesting because I think there was this huge phase and huge movement, if you've like, looked in holistic health and that sort of thing, to calm the nervous system down, or to switch us into parasympathetic we were constantly told, belly breathe, belly breathe, belly breathe. And I think that was one of the like mind altering, or like my opening moment is when you know you started to teach us about this Robbie, and you breathe breathing into the back. And I think we've had this misconception for so long that our posture, like I can still remember my mom and most people you talk to, it's like shoulders back and down, open up the chest. That's how you should be standing, and that's how you should be sitting. And this idea that, you know, most people are breathing really shallowly. Most of them are breathing into the chest, and they're not even breathing into the belly. So breathing into the belly can be hard enough to teach, but breathing posteriorly, and then, like you say, opening up through the entire torso can really start to change that state. Now we start with the breathing, and then we move into the actual training, right? And this is something where you look at things really differently. And I'd love to highlight that you talk about human asymmetrics now for people, because we don't even know what we mean by that. But can you touch on what that is? Because this is where my mind really started to get blowing, like the fact that we've got different organs that are heavier on different sides of the body, and how all that interrelates. Can you touch on that and how that affects how we move? Yeah,
Speaker 1 16:47
so this is just something human asymmetry is something just for training. Specifically, I just I take into consideration where internally our organs we have we tend to be heavier on the right side because the placement of our organs. We have two diaphragms, our right diaphragm being roughly two times the size of our left diaphragm, and then we have a liver on top of that right diaphragm, which helps keep that right diaphragm domed, just with the placement of where that liver is so automatically that diaphragm is set up to just receive air a lot better than what our left diaphragm would do. Now a lot of these asymmetries, everybody obviously has them, but not everyone's going to be affected the same way from these asymmetries, and it's not going to be reflected in the way that they move in, everybody, but some people, for whatever reason, it could be accumulated stresses, they can start to get affected by it, where, for example, air will more than likely just go to The right diaphragm. And when that happens, we get this cross effect where the bronchi chambers are opened up into the opposite lung. So if we're pumping air into our right diaphragm, we're more than likely to get more air into our left lung. That's just happening between our what 20 to 25 to 24,000 breaths per day. That's just a constant dominance of that one or, yeah, dominance of that one diaphragm. So what we what I look out for is, can I see that reflected in them when I'm doing assessments? Does that pop out that they do have quite, quite a difference on either side? So whether that's whatever, I'm testing something in their pelvis, in their range of motion, their shoulders, even just physically, just seeing them laying down and seeing this flared rib cage, but then I might see that left side just popped up a little bit more. And then where are their legs centered when they're laying down? Is their right leg just a little bit more centered compared to their left side. Now it can happen on the opposite side, but from all the heaps of people that I do consults with, more than likely it's going to be a right sided dominance. So taking that into consideration with their training. Now, if I'm seeing this that what I the way that my brain goes is, I'm not going to give them, at least for now, the same version of, say, split squat. So if I'm, what I'll see is a right foot that is supinated and a left foot that is pronated. So that's telling me what position is the pelvis in. So likely that's going to be a right hip that's going to be internally rotated, and a left hip that's going to be more external rotated. So if I'm going to give them a split squat, say for their left leg will be elevated on a step in front of them, and they go through the split squat there, because that's going to achieve more internal. Rotation of that left hip, and then for their right hip, I want a bit more external rotation so that I might choose something like a kickstand squat or a rear foot elevated split squat, where their right leg is in front of them, but their left leg is elevated behind them, because that's going to give them more external rotation at their right hip, just little things like that that I'll take into consideration, at least for a certain amount of time before just giving that everything starts to balance out a little bit. What I'm
Sheree 20:28
really hearing is we go into it. If we train, we quite often, we'll train really bilaterally as well, right? Squat, deep lift, you know, we might chuck some lunges in there. We'll do a bench press, like everything. We're moving the same way on the same like on both sides, or even if we do some unilateral training, we're not really being specific, like you said, and it's quite interesting. I think we have this idea that if we do one thing on one side, we have to replicate the same thing on the other side to make us, quote, unquote, even and so when we're thinking about that in terms of human biomechanics and the way that we should be training, is there an element when we think about how we typically move, or how we moved even decades and centuries ago, we were constantly running, we're constantly moving in a way that was, you wouldn't really stop squat and move, like bilaterally a lot. So how does all of that kind of come into play? Yeah,
Speaker 1 21:18
like, I think where a lot of this bilateral training, which I do it myself, and I do get clients to do, are using barbells that fix position or fix bars. I feel that powerlifting has had such a big influence on just general fitness, because, yeah, people just gravitate towards those things. I don't know exactly why, whether it's, you know, again, the probably the power of social media. People see big, strong people fit people using barbells all the time, and you pull a generic program off of the internet, and most likely it's going to be barbell pressing barbell, back squats, all that sort of stuff. They're not exactly bad things, or they're not bad things, but it's just not exactly how we move. And if that's affecting somebody, if that's causing somebody pain and discomfort, I feel that they need to bring you, need to bring them back to somewhat basics of how is a human supposed to move. Can this person do that? They can do it now. Cool. Let's start playing around with using some barbells again and all that. But if we're thinking, I just if you look at a powerlifter in a gym, you see them walking around. They don't exactly walk. I think anybody can really point that out. They don't exactly walk like how a human walks. They kind of walk like a this big, blocky one, one unit thing. So I think if when everyone starts training like that, when they're already on top of they can't move well, it just reinforces a lot of these poor movement mechanics, and in some ways. So just for one example, you see a lot of people sitting up for pressing, and the most common thing is push your chest up and you want to arch your back and you want to squeeze your shoulder blades back as much as you can. Now, for powerlifting, that is absolutely fine. That's perfect, because that's what they need to do for their competition, but for your general person, I just don't see that as such a good way of pressing the thing that you're instilling into that body is again, the sympathetic dominance of this tall posture, this very extended spine. And when we have all this extension, we lose the natural rotation of our body. We need flexion in our spine to be able to rotate our spine.
Christa 23:47
So do you recommend working out then? And I'm just asking this question, for people who don't have the benefit to have you watching them and looking at them, would you recommend then more work with dumbbells where you're working kind of one side, or, you know, the Russian squats. What is that split squat? Bulgarian? Bulgarian, the split squad that you described before, where you're kind of working and stabilizing one body side versus the other, versus doing a full squad. I mean, how? Yeah, do you recommend more of the individual like dumbbell work or band work or body weight work.
Speaker 1 24:23
Yes, I like even if someone just sprinkles it in their training, of using dumbbells a bit more often, or using cables, using alternating exercises with dumbbells, for example, not just pressing both at the same time. They're going to do one at a time. That's going to encourage at least the sternum to start moving a little bit split squats that that's something that's a tricky one. Where, yeah, that's great to do, but most people don't realize that when you're split squatting, we need the pelvis to start to orientate and start to move independently on each side. So just having awareness of that is. Great for somebody just on my pelvis, can move, can face another direction. It doesn't need to be square on the whole time, but that's exactly what I would encourage people to do, is just put that in your training somewhere, kind of no matter what you're training for, whether you know a sport, CrossFit, bodybuilding, powerlifting, just put a little bit of that in there, and I think it will really benefit your training overall. And
Christa 25:24
I'm curious your take on heavy weights, low rep versus high reps, lower weight in terms of maintaining or decreasing injury and joints, and especially if someone's trying to work out on their own, and maybe we're not doing it right. I think there's a big push for Hey, lift, heavy lift, heavy, lift, heavy, and I appreciate that. But when you talk about just time under tension, does it really matter? Super heavy, you know, could that be almost a more of a detriment? Heavyweight, doing it, you know, inappropriately, because you're doing it on your own and you don't have someone kind of navigating, you know, your form, versus doing higher reps lower weight and just having that still time under tension. What's your philosophy on that and how for people trying to maintain and build muscle?
Speaker 1 26:14
So this really comes back to that PT cert, where they kind of give you a sheet that says, if you want strength, you need to lift between, I think it was one to three reps. You Want to Build Muscle 10 to 1212, to 15 reps, and that sort of thing, where, what I love doing is creating a baseline for people where, again, no matter what their goal is, that baseline is around five to eight reps. And then you play around with the intensity level in there. So you could be, for example, five reps, but the intensity level is about six out of 10, so that's nowhere near pushing to failure. That's just more kind of feeling out that movement or that exercise that they're doing. And then, if you're going 10 out of 10 and five, then obviously, when you get to about that fifth rep, you're really, really struggling to do that. So I'll play around with people for however long they need, between five and eight reps, and just play around with the intensity levels in that when they need it, and then from there, like I just think that it's a great base level, when you start putting on too many reps, even 12 reps, for someone say, or probably say a press, if you give someone straight away, they've been experiencing some type of pain, and you go, Cool, let's do 12 reps. That'll be fairly light ish, but the repetition of that tends to create some irritation on the shoulder, whatever, yeah, whatever it is, some irritation where, at the end of that set that most likely holding that shoulder because they just can't maintain whatever it's posture or air pressure for that certain amount of time, at least at this stage, where, when you're doing something like five reps, six reps, eight reps, it's far easier for them to maintain the form that they need, the amount of air pressure, the way that they pressurize their torso. You're able to maintain that within that rep range. So and then once they've kind of got that down, packed, then it's like, cool. What's their goal? What's the actual reason they're here? They want to build some strength. Cool. Now let's start trimming those reps down to one to three and really ramping up that intensity. Or they want to build a bit more muscle. Maybe we'll start raising those reps up and keep that and play with the intensity. But now they can handle those reps, because they've just got a good base level of being able to have an understanding of how they're breathing during exercise, how they're maintaining pressure in their torso. Yeah,
Sheree 28:51
I mean, even from personal experience, they know, like, having had knee surgery twice and having to do a lot of rehab, and then you go down the path of, like, cool, I feel like my body's in a really good space, and then you push it up and you overload it. And it's amazing when you take this philosophy and this application to your own training, how much you when you are keeping in that small rip range, like, say, the five to eight, and you're learning maybe an exercise that will engage muscles more, like I remember doing one not too long ago, like when I got my new program and I was shaking, I barely, I think the heaviest weight that I picked up that entire session was a four kilo. Now, for those of you listening like that, is a real blow to my ego. I love lifting really heavy stuff and but I'd never felt my glutes in the same way that I did during that session, I'd never felt my hamstrings engage. And I think you know, to go back to what we're talking about right at the beginning, those compensation patterns that we're walking around and have absolutely no idea. Then we go into the gym, we load ourselves up. We're either doing high reps or high rate, high weight, or we're going combination of both, and we're just reinforcing, like you said, Robbie, those poor. Biomechanics, those poor movement patterns within creating injury. But when we come back to this clear, building up our foundation, reactivating and actually turning on the muscles, one of the biggest things that I know you talk about and we teach as trainers is really turning on the muscles you're about to use. I think a lot of time, you'll come into the gym, you'll jump on the bike, and you'll then go and do weight training, or you'll come into the gym, you'll walk on the treadmill for a bit. That's technically your warm up. But to me, the way I looked at it since is like, well, you'd warm up on the treadmill if you were going to go for a run, because those are the muscles you utilizing. So how does that look differently? I know we've talked about breathing being one of the key things to get you into a really good state. But how does it look like in terms of training in that?
Speaker 1 30:47
So you just cut out just a little bit on that last little bit, sorry, so kind of
Sheree 30:51
talking about that warm up situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1 30:54
exactly. If you come in in with these postures that the body's holding on to, and you're just going straight into exercise with that, oh, sorry, you or you jumping on the treadmill and thinking that's your warm up. You just, you're not changing anything about the way that your body's moving. So if you're like, exactly what like, what we do, coming into the gym, spending about 1015, minutes by maximum, on the floor, where you just, you're bringing awareness inside. It's the big thing. Everything's outside, for a lot of people to bring it inside. What's happening with my body? What position is it in? Where am I breathing? Can I feel things like my hamstrings? Can I feel the floor beneath me? So that's the vital thing that I think, is using that time to bring awareness in inside, and that's when even people might pick up that. Oh, I feel this today. I feel that today, and then you can act accordingly. If you know, if you were the trainer, you can act accordingly from there. But that's just a far better way to prep yourself for exercise than just blindly going on a piece of cardio equipment to basically internally warm yourself up, warm your temperature up, which, yeah, to me, just doesn't sit you know, it doesn't align well with what you're trying to do at the task ahead. Oh, I
Christa 32:21
love that. So not only should I mean because warm up has its place, but to to use that as like integrated with being more in tune with your body, being more in tune with how you're feeling internally, your breath, being more in tune with how you feel in your body alongside because I know for me, I warm up on my peloton, or I'll warm up on the trampoline, kind of moving all the parts that I'm about to be moving. But I love that to really integrate, not only the warm up or your heart rate is up and you are kind of warming up your muscles literally, but also just really being intentional about feeling your body. It sounds like both of those are very important, rather than just blindly getting on, you know, yeah, the treadmill at an incline when you're going to be bench pressing arms anyway, but kind of having both moving your body and being more in tune with, like, how your neck feels, how your shoulder feels, how your abs feel, how your quads feel, like being kind of connected to your body, so that when you're doing the movements you're more engaged, is that what I'm hearing? Yeah,
Speaker 1 33:22
yeah, exactly. Like, a funny thing is, like, after you found a people that I kind of have, like, you know, you say to them when they land on the floor, place your hand. Place your hands on your rib cage. And there's that blank look on their face of, oh, I have a rib cage. Where's my rib cage? Like, that's just the big thing is not having awareness of So, yeah, if you can just do and it just, it really does connect well with exercise itself,
Sheree 33:52
yeah, and, and I think to take that almost away further and bring in some of the biomechanics even more, because I know this is an area You shine, one of the funniest things is watching people connect with their feet. So again, like when Krista was talking right at the start, she was saying how her ankles have always been relatively weak, right? And then you were saying how that then affects the knees and the hips and then even up to the shoulder. And you couldn't have been more accurate in describing that right, because everything typically does start from the feet. And I know so often you'll watch a client, you'll be like, cool, so push through your big toe, and then suddenly they don't actually know where their big toe is, or their heel starts to lift off the ground. And you're like, just because you're pushing through the big toe doesn't mean the heel needs to lift up. Or we're told all these cues, like push through your heels when you squat. And there is just that lack of, I guess, mind body connection. You know, we're quite often told when you're doing something, okay, well, from squatting, push up, feel the glutes, and there's a layer so much deeper to that, where you've got that level of awareness. And can you talk a little bit about, like, probably some people's worst nightmare, but like, book mechanics and. And how that can really impact your entirety of your training. Yeah,
Speaker 1 35:05
so to me, the foot, or at least the position that a foot presents, is or posture that the foot presents is going to tell me how well their pelvis is moving, and then that tells me how well their torso and their spine is moving. So the like, a flat foot is probably one of the things that people think, oh, it's such, such a bad thing, but it's just a it's just a phase, or it's a posture that person's very stuck in where they to me that that says that they can't find internal rotation at their pelvis. They don't they struggle to produce force, because they don't have that internal rotation at the pelvis, where we do create force, we do produce a lot of power, but the foot will tell me other things, like how this person manages their center of mass. So again, a flat foot is likely their body weight has come all the way forward, and if their feet are just collapsing underneath all of that, and they don't know how to bring themselves back, they don't know bring their center of mass back so they're more comfortable on their heels, and they can start to create a little bit of an arch, like anyone can do that, even like right now, if you push all your weight forward, you probably feel your foot collapse all the way down. When you bring your weight back, and you feel your heel a bit more, it starts to create a bit of an arch. So it really just tells me how well do they manage the center of mass? What's going on in their hips, and when we go through our gait cycle, we the foot has to move. The foot has to create an arch. As we strike the heel, or strike the floor with our heel, we have a little bit of an arch. And then as we come down to more mid stance, we have that arch that which then starts to collapse into what people would say like a flat foot sort of position, or at least pronating. And then we go back into a four start to form an arch as we go into toe off and push off from there. So if you can't go through all those stages, or your foot is stuck in one of those stages, that's going to affect the entire body. It's going to affect the way that the hips are moving, the way that you can rotate through your sternum, even the way that your cranium starts to tilt and rotate on its axis.
Christa 37:29
Wow. And have you would foot inserts help that? Or is that simply something that, like physical therapy is needed? I mean, how do you correct things like that, especially when you see your kids early on, kind of pronating a little bit, you know, I think it's important to kind of catch these things early. What do you recommend when you see somebody, just their biomechanics are in that way?
Speaker 1 37:49
Yeah, so a good shoe is the big one. I years ago, I went straight to barefoot shoes, which it can help for some people, but I wouldn't say it's the answer for everybody. It might, from a sensory point of view, the amount of sensory receptors we have in our feet that's just relaying to the brain how what it's feeling, how it feels the ground, how it interacts with the ground. So those barefoot shoes can be good, but they can also lock up a foot, or they completely allow foot to just collapse because there's not much support at all. So a good shoe with some sort of reference around the heel, where you've got a good support on the heel and a little bit of support around the foot arch, but I don't tend to recommend it's a little bit out of my knowledge of recommending a like an insert, because the ones that I have seen, the inserts and issues of can be very stiff, and because all they're trying to achieve is a foot as an arch in that foot, it's trying to raise that foot up, which is great, but if it's so stiff that when they're walking along, that's inhibiting the way that the foot pronates, then that's going to have an effect as well. So a good shoe, but something that does move, especially around the arch and the toes. But the way that I would do this is in their training, I'm going to if there's someone that does have a center of mass that is so far forward, I'm going to give them things that encourages the center of mass to come back. So come back to a split squat. The there's so many different variations of a split squat that you can do, but if someone has a very flat foot, if I just give them a step to elevate their foot on, or a little heel wedge to put their foot on, instantly, that will start give them an arch, so that will give them a good starting point. So then from there, when they come down into the split squat, I might get them to either track their knee back behind their foot. It, which will further encourage that foot arch to stay or form an arch and and keep that the whole time. And they'll often notice that they feel a lot of heel pressure when they come up and down out of that squat. Then if I want them to start to move that arch and start to pronate and collapse it, then I'll just get them to start tracking their knee forward a little bit, so maybe in light, their shins just in line with their ankle. And then after that, it would be working on tracking the knee all the way forward so that they're getting a full pronation of that of that foot. Those are strategies that I would do in a training session, where, over time, that's just getting the foot moving a bit better. It's opening some space for that foot. And, yeah, just instilling some different postures of their foot. I have a question
Christa 40:49
about a couple of things. Two things, those little mini BOSU balls. Do you know what I'm talking about? They're kind of, they're flat, and then they have a little dome on the top, yeah. What's your take on that, on doing, you know, some Exercises Standing individual foot on that, if that helps the foot muscles or a detriment, my second question is the popularity of toe separators, like walking around barefoot with toe separators kind of spread the foot out. What is the benefit of either of those things? And is there a benefit the
Speaker 1 41:20
toe separators, I remember that's something that I used to do for a while, and I don't really know if I felt much benefit, if anything, depending on the size of those separators, that could again inhibit the way that the foot should naturally move, it can probably create a little bit of freedom for Some people, just depending on how locked up that foot is. I personally didn't find so much benefit myself in it. I never got clients to really use them, but I definitely spent a few months wearing them around the house and got a few funny looks. But yeah, I just think coming back to getting the foot moving how it should, and then seeing a lot of separation, or at least even spacing between the toes from there, especially something like bunions and all. That's a big one. Of getting that first metatarsal moving around that big toe, and getting that foot to pronate, and then just being able to see that that big toe start to come out and space out where it should be. And in terms of BOSU balls, the first thing that my mind goes to is create, you're creating an unstable surface that is going to make the brain feel unsafe, and it's just going to lock up the body. I haven't read any research on anything like this, but I've, I know that me and Phil, the one of our personal training manager at the gym. We've played around with ourselves, and we've played around with other people using this of like, this is, this is try this out. So we'll do range of motion tests, we'll do neurological tests, and then we will get them on a BOSU ball, doing whatever it's squats, standing on one leg, anything, just balancing. And then Let's retest, do those things. And from memory, every test got worse. And then we would do some intervention. Let's try and calm the system down. Let's do whatever it is, we retest. That's all come back. We go back on the boast of ball again. It's got worse, and that's just what we see, and that's just the first thing that my mind goes to is unstable surface that's
Christa 43:26
so interesting to me, just the like the objective evidence you have of how the body is the unconscious mind, like we don't even know, and that person might not even know they're in kind of a fight or flight state, But the body knows, it's so fascinating to me, and then it's coming out. The body is stressed, and so in an until you know, in a test, a psychological test, it'll come out. It's so fascinating to me, how you can see that even with exercise and types of exercise, and I think this might be veering a little bit off topic, but how you know when people are under a lot of stress in their personal life, in business and finances, what have you it is important to pay attention to what types of exercise you're doing. I think exercise is beneficial no matter what, but it's the same type of exercise is not beneficial for even the same person at different phases of life, because if they're overly stressed and their adrenals are really stressed, and then you're challenging yourself to, you know, doing squats on a BOSU ball and hit workouts and all of these things, they're actually doing more of a disservice to their body overall, because it sounds like you're reactivating that sympathetic even in something that you think might be beneficial to your body. It's actually not at that moment in your life because of the stress response.
Speaker 1 44:40
Yeah, exactly like, like, exercise is great, but exercise is a stress. So if we've all the body's already stressed, we're just piling on more stress on top of that. So and then it's like, I'll ask especially clients that I know that maybe are a bit more susceptible to stress. I will ask them each time I see them, like, man. How's everything going anything I need to know, how's life basically, and I will on the fly just, you know, take into account what they're saying, and then maybe adapt their program that I've either got planned out for them or just intentions of what we were going to do. I might adapt that right there on the spot, because it's probably not the best thing for them at that moment. And you know, your general person that doesn't have a train, or does, you know, have awareness of that they like, as you said, they're just going in and they're just doing what you know they think is right, and it's probably not the best thing for them, and you probably just piling on more and more stress that their body can't handle at that time.
Sheree 45:41
Yeah, it's a huge thing. And I think we forget that exercise is a stress. And I love that you brought that up because it you are going into sympathetic and it's not that when you're doing the work that you're talking about, you know, the warm up, the like the intentional warm up, the proper breathing, the getting your body into a great state. It's not that you're then shifting out of that sympathetic in terms of your training is going to be super light and super easy like I think the key thing to understand here is it's setting up that baseline. It's getting your body into a really primed state so that you can go and perform in the way that you want to perform, so that you can embody the athleticism, so you can produce the power you want to produce, so you can produce so you can produce the strength you want to produce. Like all of this is setting your body up for success. It's setting you up for success during a training, but it's also setting you up for success so you're not in aches and pains during your day to day, so that you don't really creak and groan and moan getting out of bed in the morning. And I think there's this concept that,
Unknown Speaker 46:40
oh well, I've
Sheree 46:41
just turned 30, or I'm turning 40. It's just old age. And you know, one of the things I love sharing with my clients is like, I am obviously the oldest I've ever been. That's what happens every single day. But I am like, my body moves, and I know you're the same, like, it's actually probably the fittest and the healthiest it's ever been, regardless of our age. I move with so much more ease, like, there's no pain in my body, like, and so it's this idea that we're sitting so much, we're adopting these postures so much our body, even if we go back to what you were talking about with the bunions and the shoes and the toes separators, and that, how many women spend all day with their whole feet kind of squished Up in heels, and then we expect ourselves to rock up to maybe a pump class or even a hit session or something. You're trying to you're not really intentionally going to be thinking about spreading your feet out and pushing, you know, driving through and activating the right parts of your foot when you're then going through your movement, you're thinking, okay, cool. I've been stressed all day. My feet have been crammed up in my shoes. Now I'm going to go and try and throw myself through this workout, because that's what I'm quote, unquote, supposed to do. And so I think the the beautiful thing that I hear you sharing is it's, it is that layering that foundation and getting the body moving right, and then being able to train in a way that you really love and that really serves you,
Speaker 1 47:58
yeah, definitely, like, I don't necessarily, like, you know, the your average person's probably rushing from work after an incredibly busy day. They've sat in traffic getting to the gym. They quickly chuck on their their gym gear, and they jump into exercise. So you've just gone stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, like, yeah, and that's it. Like, just, just like, even the things that we do, even like, I can get quite specific on with a client, like working with, oh, they need this. They need that. But sometimes just the thing of getting them to spend 510, minutes of just working on good airflow and getting that out of that sympathetic state into a parasympathetic state. And then they'll cool. Now we can start to add more sympathetic stimulus on top of that from the exercise, yeah, oh,
Christa 48:53
that's interesting. So almost a calm down before the rev up. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 48:57
yeah. I
Unknown Speaker 48:58
was just
Speaker 1 48:59
saying there's something that I find myself, that I can really almost like a switch on switch off for me, that you know, whether I just finished a few hours with clients, and then it's now my turn to train and to switch that off, to get bring everything down, and then go and do something intense, like some sort of strength training or explosive stuff that I do. And then in between those sets, let's bring it back down again. So I'm constantly revving myself up for the set that I'm about to do. And then in that break in, that rest period, is just bringing it all back down again. Control breathing, go for a little walk, whatever it is, just to switch back so you can take yourself in and out of those sympathetic and parasympathetic states.
Christa 49:45
I love that. That's really fascinating. I think everything that you've shared has been really interesting for our listeners. What would be like three takeaways that you would say everybody needs to do? What are some tangible things that people could be I'm hearing focusing on broad. Breath and breathing into the back, yeah, just share, like the top three that you would say to everybody that where they could start, especially working on their own top
Speaker 1 50:08
three, I would say, spend time on the floor. Learn to exhale all of your air out and feel your rib cage come down. So if you're on the floor, say, with your knees bent, with feet flat on the floor, and you can feel a little bit of a gap, an arch between you and the forward, between your middle, mid to low back. See if you can close that by not using your abdominals and in more of a strength way, by bracing down, but just by exhaling through your mouth, letting all of your air come out and just feel your rib cage drop down, feel your pelvis tuck back. And then once you've got that and you can feel that gap close up a little bit between you and the floor, learn to breathe in and expand into the floor. That's probably the big one of the biggest things that I would say is beneficial for somebody. It's just being able to do that without letting your rib cage pop back up, letting some expansion happen posteriorly. Number two would be, if you're in front of screens all the time, or you're indoors all the time, make sure that you can either get outside into big, wide open spaces to allow your your brain, to just have this peripheral access. And if that's not possible, then doing things by just accessing your peripheral vision, by looking to the side, without letting your head turn, just to open that up again, it's a power, very powerful one, that can really let the body relax and just shift you into a parasympathetic state. And it's, I believe, that's from a some Vagus Nerve Stimulation. It's a Vagus Nerve Stimulation exercise to create freedom throughout the cranium. And number three would just be incorporate alternating exercises in their gym programs with so if you're so used to pressing dumbbells both at the same time, just do one at a time. So you're allowing some movement through your rib cage. And yeah, this is probably the biggest one is, is allow some alternating exercises in amongst your bilateral exercises, in your training,
Sheree 52:23
amazing. Oh, thank you so much for your time. Robbie, where can people find you hang out? If they're like, oh my gosh, I need this guy to come and assess my movement. I know you do work online as well as in the gym. So where can they find you? What's the best way to get in touch, or if they just want to see what little bit more of what you're all about?
Speaker 1 52:38
So best way would be Instagram, at Robert Scott fitness. In my website is Robert Scott fitness.co, dot, but the best way to contact me and see everything I do would be through Instagram. Amazing.
Sheree 52:51
We'll pop that in the show notes as well. As your I think you've got a YouTube channel as well, and and your website, so go check that out. Honestly. Can speak from first hand experience here too. Larry is incredible at what he does. So thank you again for your time, and we hope you all got something incredible out of that I still learn every time I talk to you. So thank you.
Unknown Speaker 53:11
Thank you for having me. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
