#318 – Dr. Moses Bernard

Sevan Matossian (00:00):

Maybe there’s a button, bam, or live. Maybe there’s a button I can push that makes it, so, um, let me see what this one does. Ah, how’s that been? Yeah, there

Dr. Moses Bernard (00:09):

We go. Much

Sevan Matossian (00:10):

Better. Look, you can see my nose hairs. You can’t see

Dr. Moses Bernard (00:15):

My nose hairs.

Sevan Matossian (00:15):

I know I’m, uh, I’m only five, five Moses. I’ve spent a lifetime, uh, looking at people’s nose hairs. I’ve become, and I’m quite, I, I accept them now with, uh, with, you know, the, the first time I see ’em, I, I was a little, uh, shocked and I’m like, you know what, that’s gonna be my perspective. I’m gonna become a conno of nose hairs, cuz I’m gonna spend my life looking at people’s noses.

Dr. Moses Bernard (00:36):

And what have you discovered about my nose hairs from that?

Sevan Matossian (00:39):

I haven’t I’d I’d have to be how, how tall are you?

Dr. Moses Bernard (00:42):

I am I’m six one.

Sevan Matossian (00:44):

Oh, I’d be staring all up in that. I’m five, five I’m uh, I’m having a guest on the show. Um, next week I’m Armenian and like my whole life I’ve just thought that Armenians were short. And then I went to Armenian. I realized not it’s just me, but I’m having this Armenian guy on the, uh, podcast next week and he oh, 12 inches taller than me.

Dr. Moses Bernard (01:05):

That is very, very large. I, uh, did this program with the NFL players association for retired players and a lot of those guys, like you don’t really appreciate how big they are until you’re around all of them at the same time. And like even small players are like 6, 4, 2 40. So like trying to treat someone’s neck when it’s like this big it’s like, they’re just large humans. So I feel you on that.

Sevan Matossian (01:34):

Yeah. Is it like that? So, so, um, Moses, you you’re a chiropractor. Yep. And, and, and what is a chiropractor?

Dr. Moses Bernard (01:43):

So that is, so my role as a chiropractor is I really focus on just getting people to use their bodies better. Um, traditionally it started with, uh, this idea that bones being out of place, pinched on nerves, and every problem in the body was associated with that. Uh, fortunately, most chiropractors have, uh, extended beyond that mindset. But for the most part, uh, these days chiropractors are musculoskeletal experts that are focusing on getting the body to do better movement based things

Sevan Matossian (02:15):

And muscular skeletal experts.

Dr. Moses Bernard (02:20):

I would hope so.

Sevan Matossian (02:22):

And that’s regardless see if the body’s in movement or sedentary or just the body, just all the, the trials and tribulations that the, the human body goes through

Dr. Moses Bernard (02:35):

In life. Well, yeah, and there’s going to be different expert or different specialties within the profession. So there’s people who are really focused just on and injuries. You got into a car accident, your neck and your low back is blown a disc. And they just really focus on getting out of pain there. Uh, some people like myself focus more on trying to get people who are already pretty healthy to the next level and there’s really everything in between.

Sevan Matossian (03:02):

Okay. Yeah. You, um, I had never seen uhoh. Am I gonna screw this up? I’ve never seen the 10

Dr. Moses Bernard (03:10):

There’s something that, uh, messes up then I’ll uh,

Sevan Matossian (03:12):

You’ll help

Dr. Moses Bernard (03:13):

Me out. Correct. For,

Sevan Matossian (03:14):

Yeah. I’d never seen the 10 Ty spine model. Is that be, is that common or is that still, um, an obscure model?

Dr. Moses Bernard (03:24):

It’s still obscure. There are ones floating around the ideas around 10 Ty, um, have been around for a while. So probably like forties and fifties and explaining human movement and biomechanics here that lens a, the models are kind of tricky to make. Uh, there was this guy in like the nineties and early two thousands who made a bunch of awesome integrity models, like of like the hip and the knee and like the hand and elbow and stuff like that. And you can Googles or there’s a YouTube videos of them floating around, but he doesn’t make the models anymore. No, one’s actually making them. And so the, I have a pelvis one, uh, there’s a spine one that’s floating around that’s okay. Uh, I’ve seen some better ones floating around, but there’s just not that many. Um, but the human body really only makes sense through that 10 model of the body in the tension elements being what’s weight bearing and not the bones in the joints.

Sevan Matossian (04:17):

Say that last sentence again. What is weight bear? So

Dr. Moses Bernard (04:21):

In the 10 model. Yeah. So that model that you’re showing there, I’ve got it here. Oh,

Sevan Matossian (04:26):

Sweet. OK. Yes. Through this picture. Let’s

Dr. Moses Bernard (04:28):

See. Okay. So, okay.

Sevan Matossian (04:29):

So, and I start here because that was one of the, for me just, I, I don’t know, except that I, I live with constant back pain, but when I saw that thing, I was like, and you explained it in a podcast that I, of you. I was like, wow, this, this is, I mean, it all makes sense, but please go ahead.

Dr. Moses Bernard (04:45):

Yeah. So,

Sevan Matossian (04:46):

But I had never thought of it like that.

Dr. Moses Bernard (04:47):

So this is what most people think of when they think of the spine. So we have bone, we have disc, we have bone and the way, uh, the an

Sevan Matossian (04:56):

Could you hold that up again? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when I, um, and then when I put a bar bell on yeah, yeah, yeah. When I put a barbell on there to back squat, those are your fingers and it squishes that thing in the middle. Yes.

Dr. Moses Bernard (05:07):

That’s way.

Sevan Matossian (05:07):

I think

Dr. Moses Bernard (05:07):

This is what, like 99.9% of orthopedic surgeons, chiropractors, exercisers. This is how they think the body works.

Sevan Matossian (05:15):

Yeah. Like water beds in between your vertebrae.

Dr. Moses Bernard (05:18):

Yeah, exactly. And the way the studies, this is, they took a human cadaver and they just dissected stuff away. They got rid of the skin, the muscles, the fat, all the connective tissue until J this is what was left. And then they put this in under like a fourth plate and they saw how much force can this thing tolerate before the bulb happens. Okay. And they get a number and they say any activities that cause more force in that are dangerous.

Sevan Matossian (05:46):

Okay.

Dr. Moses Bernard (05:46):

And that idea kind of makes sense. If we think of the scaffolding of the body, like the scaffolding of a building, that idea does make sense. But when you start measuring what the body can do in the real world, we have to kind of throw it out the window because just leaning forwards. It should be enough force to blow every disc in my back. It should be absolutely impossible for someone to deadlift a thousand pounds yet the human can do it. If we take one of the bones out of the foot, bring it to the anatomy lab, that bone can break pretty easily. So it’s not that much force that it takes to break a bone. If you think of like eating a wing, but bones, not that strong.

Sevan Matossian (06:19):

Um, so it’s logical, but when you reverse engineered, it makes no sense. Yeah,

Dr. Moses Bernard (06:22):

Exactly.

Sevan Matossian (06:24):

Uh, by the way, you know, that’s, that’s sort of, uh, the thing with, uh, climate change too, which is, which is fascinating about, about those theories. You can’t look back, you can use climate change model to predict the, the doom and gloom coming in the future. But when take that model and look backwards, it can’t predict the weather accurately. It’s only like a one way model. It’s fascinating. And I’m not, I’m not taking a position on it, but it’s an interesting Mo it’s interesting.

Dr. Moses Bernard (06:47):

Yeah, for sure. Uh, so yeah, so going back to the human body and the 10 models is when we look at peak forces in jumping or peak forces in landing from a clean, we know that those forces are several times the body weight or several times the weight of the system. So somehow we have a foot bone that can only handle a few dozen pounds of pressure in the lab, but the foot bone, when attached to the system can handle peak forces that are thousands and thousands of pounds. And so this can’t make sense if the bones and joints are weight bearing and only makes sense if the muscles and the soft tissues do the main weight bearing and the bones just help distribute that weight around

Sevan Matossian (07:26):

FA yeah. Fascinating. And, and, and can you show us that,

Dr. Moses Bernard (07:30):

So I’m gonna show you with the pelvis model, cause it’s little bit easier to understand on

Sevan Matossian (07:34):

This one.

Dr. Moses Bernard (07:34):

So this is the pelvis model here. Okay.

Sevan Matossian (07:37):

So those long ones are theoretically my legs dangling. Yeah.

Dr. Moses Bernard (07:40):

Yeah. So these, these sticks on the side, that would be your femur, let’s say, okay. And then this might be like the front and the back of your pelvis. This might be like your assis and your PS, I S part of your pelvis, but for the most part, just think of this as something in your leg, pelvis complex. Okay. But if you have upper body issues, it could be your arms swinging as well. Okay. Okay. So this that we look at here, I’ve got the mirror mode on the, uh, on the video here. So every time I like go left, I want to go right here. And so if I do that a few more times, uh, apologies. But anyways, so you’ll notice in this model here, none of the sticks themselves are actually touching. They’re just floating there in space by the rubber bands, which are your muscles, your soft tissues. So when they are balanced in the right way, there isn’t force actually going across the joint surfaces themselves. So functionally we’re for the most part degeneration proof, if we can find a way to make this stuff balanced enough, the problems come from when it’s not. So it’s not that degeneration is inevitable. It’s that degenerate is the byproduct of this happening for extended periods of time.

Sevan Matossian (08:51):

Go ahead. Go ahead. Go. No, no, you go ahead. I

Dr. Moses Bernard (08:53):

Was gonna say that is, so let’s go back to the spine model and kind of talk about the same things. So in this spine model here, these sticks, none of them are touching. They’re just floating there in space by the rubber bands. And the discs would live in the spaces in between here. And you’ll notice that there is no force actually going through what would be the disc. It’s all being absorbed by the rubber bands, the muscles and the soft tissues again. Right. If things are working normally

Sevan Matossian (09:25):

And, and, and how do things stop working normally?

Dr. Moses Bernard (09:29):

So that is a loaded question. And this is why pain can be a little bit complicated because it’s could be for a lot of reasons. So for the spine, one of the reasons might be you lose the ability to use all the parts of the spine properly. And so when I go to bend and twist, the whole spine should be helping me bend and twist. But let’s say I’ve got a bunch of stiffness in like the top part of my spine and nothing real and all the move happening from the bottom. So now something like that happening.

Sevan Matossian (10:02):

Okay.

Dr. Moses Bernard (10:02):

Instead of that happening. So sometimes when you like, see people doing like the G H D sit up and it looks like they’re just folding from one part of their back. Yeah. That’s what we wanna avoid. Right. And so we want it to look more like a smooth curve going each direction and not just one piece doing everything,

Sevan Matossian (10:21):

Man. There must be some backfit bending videos on YouTube that just make you utterly cringe. Huh.

Dr. Moses Bernard (10:26):

So yes and no. I mean, it’s one of those things where I’ve been around this a long enough that I know that the human body’s pretty adaptable and it can get away with a lot more than most people think. Uh, so I look at something I say, okay, you’re putting more stress onto that part than some other part of your body. Can you handle it? Is the question. Have you trained yourself enough to be able to tolerate that one piece, doing the job of your entire spine? Maybe. Yes. Maybe not.

Sevan Matossian (10:54):

I, I come from, um, the CrossFit world and, um, you know, there’s these, there’s these, uh, strict guidelines on deadlifting right. Foot placement. Um, the, the, the curvature of the back, um, all, all of that stuff. And then within the CrossFit community, there’s people like who are introduced to me at a young age. Oh, thank you so much. My notes. Um, no worries. Uh, and then there’s within the, across the community who are extremely strong, who don’t follow those rules, uh, like, and the first person I saw was like, Rob Orlando, picking up, um, stones. And, and, and at that point I knew that there was, there was some wiggle room and, and, and the belief of how things should be picked up. And then of course, and, and I, and, and he, and he did, he didn’t have back pain and he would completely roll over an arch his back and cut the ball.

Sevan Matossian (11:47):

And he would do these, these, these movements that work wrong, dangerous, but he did them beautifully. He did them in control and he did them over and over. And then when I see the strong man world, and then I saw this on your, and, and I personally love forward folding, I love forward fold. It gives me such relief in my back, especially once I’m warmed up. And I’ve always been told by people don’t do that. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. It’s just Ary pleasure receiving it’s actually exacerbating your problem. But there was something that you do on your Instagram. And I think it is called the, um, uh, Jefferson curl. Oh yeah, yeah. This is it. And I thought, yeah, this is a, I probably shouldn’t start by showing this one. People home. Don’t do this one, please.

Dr. Moses Bernard (12:34):

Don’t like, I, I spent years and years and years working up to this level of ability. So please don’t do this at home.

Sevan Matossian (12:43):

Okay. And so what’s, when you’re doing that, where is Moses, are you in your spine? Like your awareness? Do, do you know what I mean by you?

Dr. Moses Bernard (12:54):

Yeah, no, that, that is a really, really good question. And what I’m really focusing on doing, as I do a lift like this is making sure that I’m feeling the load being distributed to different places. So I’m making sure that as I’m bending forward, it’s like, Hey, do I feel little tension here? Do I feel some here? Do I feel some here, making sure that it’s evenly distributed and I’m not feeling too much tension in any one spot. I know that if the whole spine is distributing the load, it’s gonna be safe. I know that if any one place starts taking on way more stress than it can handle, that’s where things start to get a little dicey.

Sevan Matossian (13:31):

I, I, um, for those of you who are watching this, you need to, one thing, um, very quickly about Moses. Moses has a max back, uh, max deadlift of 600 and, uh, 21 pounds, I believe. And he has a, uh, a triple weight, uh, deadlift of 600 pounds. And he, I, I, I don’t have it here in front of me, but he, he drew a curve, basically a bell curve that, that, um, you know, the, the perfect position, I guess, of a dead lift, I guess what we learn in CrossFit. And then these two, not that they’re called imperfect or wrong, but one that’s like the Jefferson curl. And then the other one that was overextended. Right? Yeah. And if you work on those also, and this should make sense to all CrossFiters, who’ve take in there. Oh, one, you raise the room under the curve. You may not max, you may not increase your max deadlift, but you, but you, my words not Moses is build protection for when maybe you are out of the perfect position.

Dr. Moses Bernard (14:29):

Exactly. Because thi we can’t guarantee that things are gonna go perfectly and CrossFit is to sport where fatigue is a factor.

Sevan Matossian (14:39):

Yeah. If you can speed. Right. Exactly.

Dr. Moses Bernard (14:41):

So if we know that we’re adding fatigue and speed to the equation, we know that there’s going to be times where our spine deviates from that neutral position where we’re gonna be the strongest. And when that happens, we wanna make sure we have some level of resiliency. So it doesn’t end up being snap city.

Sevan Matossian (15:00):

Right. Um, how, how old are you?

Dr. Moses Bernard (15:04):

I’m 39.

Sevan Matossian (15:06):

Oh, wow. You look good. Uh, and your, how’s your, how’s your back? Is your back feel good?

Dr. Moses Bernard (15:11):

My back feels great. Uh, actually, uh, something I’m planning on doing this year, uh, once. So my goal for my training season is a double body weight, Jefferson curl. And I have an MRI from several years ago of my low back. And I want to take an MRI, like the day that I do the Jeff to show that, Hey, just because you’re rounding your back, it doesn’t mean that you’re gonna blow stuff up.

Sevan Matossian (15:38):

You also,

Dr. Moses Bernard (15:38):

That feels great.

Sevan Matossian (15:39):

Yeah, that’s awesome. Um, I’ve maybe it’s time. I don’t accept it. Um, a lot of people have talked to me about it, but I just accept my back pain. And, and, and the, sort of the, the manifestation of my back pain is, um, from, from a young age, I always, I, I, I don’t know, like in my twenties I would have back pain and my back pain would be like, I’d be, I’d be on the toilet and I’d fart. And my back would go out and that would happen like four times a year. Right. Just stupid. Or I’d go to catch a Frisbee and my back would go out. And then I started doing CrossFit. And instead of it going out four times a year, when I was just like putting on my pants, it would go out twice a year. And it would always be from deadlifts, always every single, every, basically every single time, something crazy happened with deadlifts.

Sevan Matossian (16:19):

And, um, and then basically I had kids, I have kids now. And so I stopped doing all, all heavy deadlifts. Like basically I think in the last I stick at 1 35, I just put the one five on after I’m really, really warm and I’ll, and I’ll do, you know, some workout like burpees, deadlifts, and, and, you know, something chill, we’ll chill for CrossFitter. And, um, and I’ve accepted the fact that every morning I wake up, not because I’m done sleeping, but because my back hurts, I have a cup of coffee. I warm up an hour later. My back pain’s gone, but I’m careful then the rest of the day, right. Like, I can’t up because I can’t be stuck in bed. Cuz I got three kids I gotta take care of. But when I, when I read your work and, and I, and I do all my, and in the last two years I do all my, um, exercising with nose breathing. So I, I try to, I try, I never breathe through my mouth while I’m exercising anymore. And I kind of do that cuz um, don’t tell anyone this, but it’s allowed me to dial back my intensity.

Dr. Moses Bernard (17:16):

That is actually something I use as my intensity gauge when I’m doing cardio things.

Sevan Matossian (17:22):

Okay. Tell me about that. Cause I always feel like I’m cheating and no one knows like I’m being really sneaky. I put this other rule in, so I could be a over here. You know what I mean? I,

Dr. Moses Bernard (17:31):

I kind of do the same thing. So I, so my personal approach is I want to do stuff that’s like really, really easy and really, really hard. Okay. And like I don’t have a ton of training time, so I need my training time to be effective. I also need my training time to not crush me so bad that I can’t focus on my job. Like if I absolutely destroy myself and my back’s too sore, like I can’t bend over and treat patients. So there’s a balance between my fitness goals and being able to actually do my job. So I, my cardio stuff, I have been real focusing on keeping my heart rate pretty low and being able to breathe through the nose the entire time. And I noticed that if I feel the urge to start breathing through my mouth, yes, the intensity is too high. I back down a little bit. Now if I,

Sevan Matossian (18:22):

You even do that, like on the rower and on the assault bike,

Dr. Moses Bernard (18:25):

Um, I don’t do those things anymore. So I

Sevan Matossian (18:28):

Don’t,

Dr. Moses Bernard (18:29):

I don’t, um, I ran track in college. I was a 400 meter runner. Okay. And I did a lot of anaerobic suffering and I don’t really want to anymore. Okay. Okay. So right now my fo my training focus is high level strength, performance, and base aerobic fitness. So I really don’t

Sevan Matossian (18:53):

Sorry, go ahead. What is BA tell me about base aerobic fitness.

Dr. Moses Bernard (18:56):

So I look at my fitness goals kind of through the filter of epidemiology in terms of what do we know are the things that are killing us and what are the things we know are creating dis so leading causes of death in America, number one, heart disease like blow, like by far in a way, number one is heart disease. Um, number two is usually, uh, some type of respiratory disease. So having a heart and lungs is the most number one, number two, most likely things to kill you. So I look at my cardio workouts through the lens of trying to make it so that I don’t die of the leading causes of death in America.

Sevan Matossian (19:42):

And, and, and, and so, okay, go on, go on.

Dr. Moses Bernard (19:45):

So with that, it’s just accumulating time. Just accumulating time with a moderate elevated heart rate. Doesn’t need to be 180. It just moderately elevated one gets into performance world. Yeah. You need to get that heart rate up there and get on the assault, bike and stuff like that. But my goal’s not endurance performance. It’s um,

Sevan Matossian (20:06):

What do you do to, what do you do to warm up

Dr. Moses Bernard (20:09):

For endurance? Suffer for strength stuff?

Sevan Matossian (20:12):

Uh, but both let’s start with strength stuff. Okay.

Dr. Moses Bernard (20:15):

So

Sevan Matossian (20:16):

Strength stuff like you personally. Yeah.

Dr. Moses Bernard (20:18):

Yeah. So my warmup is I will do, uh, something called controlled or rotations. So there’s just controlled joint movements. So just trying to work the full range of motion of any joint that’s gonna be used in that workout and try to get just some sense, three awareness into the joint question, and then I’ll start to get into my warm sets.

Sevan Matossian (20:39):

So this, so, so this is

Dr. Moses Bernard (20:46):

We, same shirt is in your post here.

Sevan Matossian (20:49):

It, it says cars live. Tell me what that stands for again.

Dr. Moses Bernard (20:53):

So it’s controlled articulate rotations,

Sevan Matossian (20:57):

Controlled rotations. And what’s interesting is at the end of this video, you have a huge smile on your face. Like you got some endorphins going and you’re sweating.

Dr. Moses Bernard (21:07):

Yep. So the goal of a warmup is to literally increase the core body temperature and prepare the joints for the movement you’re gonna do,

Sevan Matossian (21:19):

Uh, to, to be, to warm the core temp. And, and why is that important? The core temp.

Dr. Moses Bernard (21:24):

So our muscles perform better at a increased core core body temperature.

Sevan Matossian (21:29):

Yeah. So that’s basically, so I it’s, it’s interesting in this, this routine, I think of, of the, of the, um, uh, controlled particular rotations, did I say it right?

Dr. Moses Bernard (21:41):

Yep. We call ’em cars just to make it easy. So make one syllable, instead of many,

Sevan Matossian (21:47):

This there’s a bunch of these on your Instagram. I, I am basically, I, I save this one because I’m gonna do this one today. I’m gonna put it up on my phone and try like to chase you down through this as you do this, but this one’s like, uh, probably 15 minutes and the other ones are a little bit longer that I saw on there, like 20 minutes. But what I, maybe I’m just what I do is I just get on the assault bike and I ride it. I ride a hundred calories in 10 minutes. That’s kind of the pace I go in there. It seems safe. Cuz I’m sitting down. I try not to let my hip go up and down. I try to get, you know, controlled. I try to get into like a little bit of a rhythm. And then after 10 minutes I have some beads of sweat going. And that’s the only reason why I do it to warm up because I can’t touch my toes when I’m, before I get on the bike. And when I get off the bike, I can touch my toes.

Dr. Moses Bernard (22:31):

Yeah. So when your body is more warm, your muscles perform better and you’ve got more flexibility

Sevan Matossian (22:35):

And it, and it’s kind of the lazy version of cars.

Dr. Moses Bernard (22:38):

It is something that is moving the needle the right direction.

Sevan Matossian (22:42):

Right. You’re a good dude. You’re a good dude. Moses, you are a good dude.

Dr. Moses Bernard (22:47):

Like as, so I graduated from school a little over 10 years ago and the deeper I get into my career, the more I realize that it’s about just the tiniest gains possible. So just anything that’s moving you the right direction. I’m a fan of,

Sevan Matossian (23:03):

Right. It

Dr. Moses Bernard (23:04):

Seems I’ve got, I’ve got my, my philosophies about things that are gonna move you the right direction faster, but ultimately F anything you’re doing is moving the needle. That’s working for you.

Sevan Matossian (23:14):

Yeah. Um, uh, I remember Greg used to say that too. He said, one time he made fun of him, uh, some sort of workout. And he said, and his client started crying. This is Greg Glassman. And afterwards he walked up to her and he goes, he, he said, he said he apologized to her. And he said, he’ll never do that again. That he just realize that like, Hey, any movement anyone is doing, you should be like,

Dr. Moses Bernard (23:36):

Absolutely. When we, especially when we look at the data on how much people are actually moving. So if we look at like the minimum fitness requirements of like 150 hour, or sorry, 150 minutes a week of movement, so like two hours in change of just moving your body. So elevated heart rate. Yeah. And at least two strength sessions a week. So something where you’re actually trying to either maintain, excuse me, maintain or build muscle mass. Um, it’s like under 20% of people hit those requirements.

Sevan Matossian (24:08):

Uh, oh, sorry. Now I’m falling into the weeds. Here are pull ups considered, um, trying to build muscle. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah,

Dr. Moses Bernard (24:15):

For sure. So, and yeah, so if you,

Sevan Matossian (24:17):

I live, I live kind of under the pullup bar.

Dr. Moses Bernard (24:19):

Yeah. So if you do a pull up session twice a week and you go for a, the 30 minute walk, every, if you walk your dog for 30 minutes, every day, that’s meeting the fitness requirements.

Sevan Matossian (24:30):

Um,

Dr. Moses Bernard (24:30):

And four outta five people don’t hit those numbers. So anyone who does,

Sevan Matossian (24:35):

Who goes to them

Dr. Moses Bernard (24:37):

Big time,

Sevan Matossian (24:38):

Uh, you have a fabulous website, it’s, it is kind of amazing that you would think Moses Bernard is like a common name, or, but as soon as you type in this guy’s name into, uh, maybe he’s just the big dog of all the Moses Bernards, but, um, this is you, right?

Dr. Moses Bernard (24:54):

Yeah. No, that’s my,

Sevan Matossian (24:57):

A beautiful site, by the way, for those of you who want to see more, you should definitely go over to this site. And, um, there is a huge emphasis on movement and in, in adjusting movement to not alleviate pain, to ban pain, your body right.

Dr. Moses Bernard (25:21):

Pain is complicated, but for the most to simplify it pain is your brain thinking things aren’t safe.

Sevan Matossian (25:29):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And

Dr. Moses Bernard (25:32):

Wow.

Sevan Matossian (25:32):

That can, that’s why sometimes that’s why sometimes you feel the pain when your kid’s running at you and about to jump on you, but he hasn’t quite got to you yet. Yeah. And you start to feel, you’re like, oh, I’m about to feel some pain. Exactly.

Dr. Moses Bernard (25:41):

Yeah. So pain. So in terms of things being safe, the, the factors that really contribute to that is one is the evidence of harm. So if there’s actual damage present, that’s a signal for pain, not guaranteed, but it is one of the variables that can potentially lead to your brain saying, Hey, this is a painful situation. So I got shot in the arm out. It hurts. Okay. But if I’m trained in Navy seal, I might be in the middle of a mission and get shot in the arm and not even notice it until the missions. Oh, over

Sevan Matossian (26:11):

Right. Fighting’s a classic example. Right. When I, I interview a lot of fighters and they say, after the fourth punch, you don’t even, they may even be harder, but they don’t hurt somehow you’ve adjusted to it.

Dr. Moses Bernard (26:20):

Yeah. So the other factor is evidence of safety. So your brain is thinking things work properly. Now, what are some of the things that can make us feel safe? So strength is a huge one. Warmth is a big one. Uh, flexibility is a good, is a big one. And body control is a big one.

Sevan Matossian (26:41):

Mm.

Dr. Moses Bernard (26:42):

So if my back is strong and it has great sensory awareness and it has good flexibility, my brain’s most likely to say, Hey, things are pretty safe here. No need to create pain.

Sevan Matossian (26:56):

Yeah. You actually, in one of the videos I saw you were talking about that I had never heard it explained like that. If that, if you, if you have a, uh, um, Hmm I’m I’m, I don’t even know if I can articulate, but you talk about the joints and being aware of the joints and having healthy joints and how that gives you safety and having awareness there. And I have the exact opposite I have where I have pain in my life. I have insecurity in those joints and I don’t have awareness in the, those joints. It’s kind of like, I it’s kinda like I’m, I’m staring at them from the outside going what’s going on in there.

Dr. Moses Bernard (27:30):

Yeah. Something I like to comment on is think of it like a GPS signal. So you’ve got a GPS signal from every joint in your body, going back to your brain, telling your brain where it is in space and time. I know sometimes you’re like going through a tunnel or in a, like a high overpass. And the GPS signal goes from being a point to being more like a cloud. It’s like, Hey, you’re kind of in this area, but we dunno exactly where when parts of our body aren’t as healthy, that’s what we find is kind of your body’s GPS is more of a cloud than it is a pinpoint. And that cloud says, I kind of know where I am, but not really. So maybe take it easy.

Sevan Matossian (28:10):

Yeah. What is that? Um, I, this hasn’t happened to me in a long time. Thank God. But this used to happen. This is all my injuries. So I would hurt my, I would, I would be deadlifting somewhere. That’d be at the gym at eight CrossFit HQ. I’d be dead. Deadlifting I’d feel something that just didn’t feel right. Like almost like something moved, like some bones and. Yeah. And then I, I would panic. I would go home. I’d dig through like my old Vicodin stash, pop two Vico and pour a huge glass of wine and try to just know myself. And then that night I’d barely stand up and I’d look in the mirror and my torso wouldn’t be over my, like, I, I would literally be crooked. It’s a scary thing. Like, like someone put me together wrong.

Dr. Moses Bernard (28:50):

So what that,

Sevan Matossian (28:51):

What is that?

Dr. Moses Bernard (28:52):

Okay. So that is what we call

Sevan Matossian (28:53):

A, you’ve seen that, right? That’s like all

Dr. Moses Bernard (28:55):

The time. Yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s very, very common. So it is, what’s called a local segmental buckle. So one part, so if we have, so we’ve got my spine here again. Okay. Now, if all, all of my bending is being done just at one spot, instead of evenly disturbing the load through the whole thing, eventually there might be some movement, whether it is I’m tired at the end of a deadlift workout, or I twist the wrong way. If this piece has been doing all of the work, maybe one day, it decides I’ve had enough of it and it tweaks. And when it tweaks, the whole thing can kind of shift a little bit. And then it goes into spasm to try to protect it again, which doesn’t feel

Sevan Matossian (29:39):

Very. And, and when you say spasm,

Dr. Moses Bernard (29:40):

Those are mu muscles spasm. Yep. Okay. So if I’ve strained this, the whole system kind of spasms up to try to protect it so that I’m crook it. Yeah. So what ends up happening is, so think of it. Like you twist an ankle, you hear the pop, the whole thing, swing.

The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.

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