Greg Doerr | Functional Soft Tissue

Dr. Kevin Rindal | Vimocity

Your back's stiff, your shoulders ache. Your knee just doesn't feel right, so you take some ibuprofen, crack a beer and push through.

Stiffness, tightness in a muscle, an ache that maybe you're not used to feeling in some way, shape, or form. Those are warning signs. Yep, those are flags that are going up.

Dr. Greg Doerr spent 25 years keeping elite athletes on the field. And he sees working athletes the same way today. He breaks down exactly what your body is trying to tell you and why ignoring those signals is the fastest road off the job.

Is it kind of like a fire alarm going off and you're just taking the batteries out?

You have two choices. Take care of it now or really be hurt later.

This is the WorkReady podcast.

Greg, you've spent 25 years working with the best athletes in the world, and when you look at a lineman or an iron worker who's been in the field 25 years, do you see an athlete?

Everybody's an athlete just in a different face. The people listening out there that are doing the work day after day, at some point their body starts talking to them, and so when a field worker starts to feel those aches and pains, the sore back, the stiff shoulder, the knee, that just doesn't feel right anymore.

What's actually going on in there and what's the body trying to tell them?

Alright. When you're talking about these things, those are warning signs. Yep. Those are flags that are going up. Like we talk about what's the difference between injury and pain? You know, if you go into the gym and you work out and you get sore, well that could be pain, but is that an injury?

It's not injury. When you're talking about repetitive strain jobs, one of the challenges that we're always gonna deal with is what is really the first symptoms? What are the things that I'm supposed to actually pay attention to? Where do I actually start saying, Hey, something's going on here. And I always say this, the first incident of probably going down an injury pathway could be stiffness, tightness in a muscle.

An ache that maybe you're not used to feeling in some way, shape, or form. And those are usually the first signs. Now you don't run to a doctor because I felt tightness, soreness, or an ache. There's a difference between adaptive and progressive. An adaptive pain is healing. So that's like we go to the gym, we work out, we get sore.

The next time we go to the gym, we do that workout. We don't get as sore. It's not as intense. It doesn't last as long. And eventually we get to a point where we don't get sore until we change the intensity level, and then it starts happening all over again. That's adaptive. That's called healing, getting stronger.

That's called getting. It injury is, I get that soreness, I get that ache, I get that stiffness, except this time it lasted like the day and it went away the next time. How come it's two days? How come the intensity's increasing? Oh my God. I just feel like crap every morning when I wake up. When, which is our recovery time at night.

Those are bad signs. That is an injury cycle. You are breaking down and it will eventually become something that's gonna limit your ability. So that's the way I've always tried to approach pain or those flags as they start showing up. And what is sharp pain telling you? If somebody like steps and they feel like that jolt or they reach a certain, like, what's, what's going on there now?

Now, once again, is it a single time thing where, you know, every now and then we may have just stepped wrong and gotten a sharp jolt? Or is it something where you're saying, I got that sharp jolt, but that sharp jolt jolt is becoming more and more prevalent. Sharpness is never really a good sign. Okay. That, that, that's when you're talking about like burning, burning with fatigue.

Okay. Different story. You know, training burning is a different story, but those kind of like sharper sensations, more intense, stabbing, um, radiating shooting pain, tingling, numbness. Like unless you sat on your foot, your foot shouldn't go numb. All of those things are definitely starting that injury cycle.

You know, if you wake up in the morning and your hand is numb, you know, we might say, well, we just leaned on it. I'm gonna tell you right now. It's not just leaning on it, especially if you're the one who likes to sleep arm overhead. Those are things that are telling you you're probably developing a tightness in tissue that is compromising either the blood vessels or the nerves that are going to your arm.

That's mechanical stuff that should be fixed. Now we can also talk about that and say, well, we can look at athletes, athletes that have gotten the surgery, like baseball players to get a thora, uh, thoracic outlet surgery. Well, oh, they had a cervical rib, an uh, an extra rib in their neck. Yet they had that their whole lives.

That isn't why these symptoms came on. Their mechanics changed. The flags were all there and they didn't address them. Now, all of a sudden, they have an injury. You get the surgery done, the next thing you know, they're no longer a baseball player. So we wanna look at this and say, how do I, as you just mentioned, how do I actually recognize those flags as something important?

You get a sharp sensation. Alright, look, if it was a one-time thing, you could have stepped wrong and you just tweaked the tendon, so to speak. Let's just call it, you felt it in the back of the heel, like the Achilles. Alright, fine. Does it become more than a one-time thing? Every single time I seem to take this awkward step, it happens.

Then all of a sudden it becomes like I just step a lot and it happens. Then it all of a sudden it becomes every step it's happening. Once again, we're hitting an injury. You just made a a quick, quick overload of that tissue and you got a sharp sensation, which is your body telling you, don't do that again.

I'm warning you don't do it again. Or you could already have an injury occurring and you hit it at just the right angle 'cause it's a minor injury. And your body alerted you with a sharp sensation. So sharpness again is to me, that's not something you ignore. You monitor it closely. And I think there's this temptation, and I mean, for good reason.

I mean, people have to provide for their family. They have to show up to the job. And so there's this tension that they feel every day of like, Hey, I got, I still have to show up to work. And so, you know, you start taking vitamin I, ibuprofen, uh, you know, daily be because you want to try to minimize the symptoms.

Or maybe it's a six pack of beer at the end of the day because you're like. I just need to deal with it. What is the problem with ignoring these, these signs? It's, is it kind of like a fire alarm going off and you're just taking the batteries out? I can tell you right now, you actually just said it.

You're worried about, I don't wanna miss work. I have to provide for my family. You will hit a point where you can't, you have two choices, take care of it now or really be hurt later. And really being hurt might say, I may still be able to work through my injury, which. Everybody knows I'm gonna bring it back to an athlete for a second, but it, it's the same thing like I just told you.

Everybody's an athlete just in a different phase. You have a choice of being able to continue to play. And my way of putting that is you have two weeks with me. If in two weeks you're not able to adapt through these injuries and continue progressing, guess what? Now, all the time we're talking about modification and if modification doesn't work.

Now we're talking about limitations and when limitations don't work, we're talking about excluding. You don't wanna get to exclusion. Exclusion at the level we are talking about means income isn't coming in. So we wanna make sure they never get to that level. And the way not to get to that point is either spend a little, either financially to have somebody take care of you.

Now that, that's of course where we come in, but also spend a little on yourself. Meaning take the extra time. When I have a patient that tells me I don't have the time to do what you're asking, I can tell you right now, I don't design anything that doesn't take more than 15 minutes for a home if it's over 15 minutes.

I agree. I don't have time either. Alright, but 15 minutes. If you can't find 15 minutes in your day, I want you to start putting on timer every single time you put on the tv, every time you start scrolling through your phone, every time you open up the beer, like you just said, I want you to count how much time that is and then tell me you don't have 15 minutes.

And Greg, one, one thing I want to emphasize too is because a lot of people, they're hearing you talk about this symptom pattern and they're like, man, I, I can relate with that. And I, I think for a lot of people, they've never just been exposed to rehabilitation, especially soft tissue rehabilitation.

They're like, man, I might have to have surgery. But I mean, I think you and I can both vouch for. Like literally, it's probably like 3% of cases ever need to go to that direction. When they get the right soft tissue rehabilita, uh, treatment. It's unbelievable that the outcomes that people can have and some of those things that seem really bad, you know, if treated properly, don't have to go to that level.

And I oftentimes tell people that, you know, most of us have been taught more about how to take care of our tools, our vehicle, and our home than our own body. Yet we only get one body. And so let's, let's talk about that prevention aspect. And so, uh, because athletes have something that workers never had, intentional preparation, let's give it to 'em right now and let's, let's walk through what people can do.

So, an elite athlete has a training staff that prepares their body before every competition. Field worker may only have a, a parking lot in 10 minutes before their shift. So what are some high value things that they can do in that window that will set them up, uh, to prepare for that activity? Alright, so first and foremost, and I don't think there'd be a single practitioner or even somebody who's just generally health conscious that doesn't think that doing some sort of daily cardio is beneficial.

Now, that doesn't have to mean I have to go and do a three mile run that literally could be a 20 minute walk every day. So that's number one. And, and that doesn't have to be done before the shift, but that's something that everybody should try and adopt into their life. 15, 20, 30 minutes a day of literally just doing something to get the blood pumping.

Okay. So that now that pre stuff that you do shift's about to start, you got 10 minutes, what's your job? Obviously all of that makes a difference. What is it that you're really trying to, uh, keep going? I'm an advocate that one exercise hits 3, 4, 5 different body parts. I don't wanna do one exercise for one and then another, and another, another.

You give somebody five exercises, do, they're not doing them. You give somebody two exercises to do, they'll do 'em. Here's a real simple one. Having a simple band, little elastic band. Most people know what a hip hinge is nowadays. Okay? Getting yourself in a good core posture, tightening the stomach, squeezing the butt, and just angling into slight flexion at the hips, like bending a little bit forward at the hips.

Knees are bent, but you're gonna feel just like your body seems to be secure, right? You wanna make that a core exercise. Step on that band I was just talking about and have 'em. Both in the hands. Start with your hands at your side and literally raise them up. I'm trying to get my hands somewhere in there, but raise them up straight armed so that they come maybe to chest level, but you don't even have to go that bite.

It's where do you feel your glutes, your stomach, your back, all start contracting when you feel that stuff happening. Beautiful. Do you feel your shoulder blades locked down? That one simple exercise is hitting lower extremity hips, core shoulder blades, rotator cuff, one exercise, hitting everything. Do 30 reps of those.

Now, if 30 reps is fatiguing you, not a good sign. I'm not talking about lifting 70 pounds. We're talking a light resistance band to neurologically, meaning we use our nervous system to wake everything up. Alright. You get blood pumping, but you're using your nervous system to start waking up those muscles and preparing you for one exercise.

Just hit everything. Okay. Real simple. I love that. That's such a, a great exercise too. It's, it's one of the core, um, movements and patterns that we try to teach people and it, it's amazing. So many people don't know. How to connect their brain to their muscles so that they can actually bend at the hips instead of bending at their lower back.

But every lift, every, every movement that we do that requires physical exertion usually involves that hip hinging pattern. So that's, that's so helpful. With animosity, utility leaders are cutting injuries by up to 50%, keeping crews safer, empowering, stronger operational readiness teams stay engaged. Your safety impact scales across every work group, and you gain the insights to prevent serious injuries before they happen.

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Let's talk about the difference between dynamic and static stretching and what you would recommend from a warmup perspective. Alright, warmup, definitely dynamic. Uh, neurologically, it's more sound, um, vascularly, meaning blood supply, more sound, uh, and it also gets you moving. So again, that could be, I don't know, a jumping jack.

You know, l legitimately, if you're trying to get full body, a jumping jack is a dynamic warmup. You do a squat with just some arm circles at the same time, that's getting your whole body, uh, everything is gonna start waking up neurologically. You're gonna start moving. It's, it's, it's, it's changing the oil in the car.

Alright. Except you're doing it on a daily basis. And the difference between a dynamic movement and a static stretch. A static stretches, yeah. Can you maybe explain? Yeah. So static. There is something interesting and I, I hate to get research geeky on you, but I'm gonna do it anyway. There is evidence in the literature that says that if you do static stretching, it actually makes you more prone to injury prior to competition.

Alright? So, I'm sorry if you think you're an iron worker and not, I, I, I know what you guys do. I know if you're a pipe fitter, I know what you do. I take care of you. I know your jobs. If you are literally doing those jobs and doing nothing but static, static stretching prior, you are the same thing as the athlete in the research study.

You are making yourself more prone to injury than less prone to injury. So you wanna be dynamic prior. You wanna move prior after work static. You're not gonna go and do something crazy. All you're doing with the static stretching afterwards is then just reestablishing the normal length of that tissue.

After you've just spent the last 8, 10, 12 hours tightening it all. Alright, so static stretching is a great thing to do. Post activity, dynamic warmups do not have to be structured. What do you do for a living? Reproduce the activity without load or under very light load for, again, 30 seconds, a minute and a half, just to get the body ready to do that activity.

That's a dynamic warmup. Again, it's not brain surgery. What is your job? Reproduce your job under light load controlled movement and you have just tuned yourself. It's as simple as that. We don't have to make it complex. I think that's one of the biggest problems. 'cause everybody's going like, oh, I don't know how to do this.

I'm gonna hurt myself. I do this. What is your job? What is your activity? Reproduce the activity under a higher repetition, lower load for a short duration, and you've neurologically tuned your body already. It's really that simple. Greg, we've talked about dynamic warmups, uh, static stretching. What role does fascia play in this whole equation when it comes to how the body moves?

How long a muscle is, uh, you know, scar tissue that. Impact range of motion. This is one of the most complex conversations we ever have, so I'm gonna do this as simply as I humanly possibly can. Yeah, please do. Fascia is the bag that surrounds everything. Okay. That's how extensive it is. Fascia is almost like if you look at a suspension bridge, fascia is what really holds the bridge up.

Okay. It's the cables that are really supporting that structure that everybody's driving on. It's not the structure that people are driving on that really is the support. It's all those wires that are holding up the bridge fascia is what's holding up our body. It actually gives us greater mechanical advantage.

The problem with fascia is a lot of people used to think of it as inert connective tissue, meaning like it, it's not dynamic, it doesn't do anything. It's just kinda like there. That is extremely inaccurate. It's got a massive blood supply. It's got a massively uh, nervous system. It's got tons of nerve receptors that are sitting in it, sensing stuff at all times.

So it's a really fascinating structure. If your fascia becomes restricted, I want you to think if you have a muscle that can go a foot long and expand a foot wide, if the fascia's restricted, it will never be able to go a foot long or a foot wide. It's gonna restrict. So now your muscle's ability to actually do its activity or generate force has been reduced.

Well, that's fine. You're saying. Okay. Well, my bicep is only at 90%. Yeah. Except no. Your bicep might only be at 90%, but what effect does that have everywhere else in your body that the bicep coordinates with? When was the last time all you did was just bend your elbow to use your bicep? Yeah. That's not when body move.

No. You know, we don't just do this. That's not how the body moves. We have to move, coordinate movements. So if the biceps not moving properly, now all of a sudden your forearm flexors don't move properly. Your wrist isn't moving properly, your fingers aren't moving properly. All of this is, you know, we call it the kinetic chain, but its simple way of thinking of the kinetic chain is dominoes.

One domino gets screwed up all of a sudden that that thread the thing that we spent hours setting up as a kid. Now it doesn't continue. All those forces start generating a single area. Why do you think we tend to get hurt in a single area? It's not because that area all of a sudden is the only thing that got hurt.

It was probably an issue that's occurred within what we just said, that kinetic chain, that list of dominoes, that eventually we stop being able to transmit force properly through the body. We stop being able to move properly and all those forces starting to collect in a single area, and that's the area that tends to get injured.

I think a key point here is that that connective tissue connects one muscle to another. So like let's say I. I feel like I have a muscle knot in my calf. That muscle knot in my calf could potentially be pulling into my hamstring, could be pulling into my lower back. And so the problem that I'm having with my lower back may be something that's further up or down the chain.

Is that kind of what you're saying there, Greg? Yes, absolutely. Again, uh, I want you to think that almost every movement we do is a, a threat of dominoes, and that's exactly right. We can, if we remove one of those dominoes, our muscle coordination isn't gonna continue. It's not gonna be done properly. And forces are gonna eventually start collecting at that area that we have that dysfunction.

So you can have something as simple as my first toe doesn't work well, and the next thing you know, it affects your shoulder. If you literally were gonna go and throw a ball, which leg do you step with? Which arm do you throw with? You know, we tend to step with the opposite arm that we throw with that's a kinetic chain.

So. If that foot or that ankle mechanics isn't functioning properly, eventually those force changes are gonna work their way up and it's gonna start affecting your shoulder. Let's just say your knees hurting. It's been achy, it's been stiff. I've been ignoring it. Well, if your knee is hurting, I bet you really quickly, your back's gonna start bothering you pretty soon after that.

'cause you're not gonna walk us the same. The gait between one leg and the other is not going to be the same. The amount of force you put on an injured leg versus a good leg is not gonna be the same, and now all of a sudden your back starts taking those forces. It's the domino that was taken out and now all the force is collecting in that one region.

So this is how we end up having an injury show up in an area. Because of an asymptomatic problem somewhere else. You can see these things real time. You tell the patient over the, you know, text message, you're going like, I need you to put a band around your thighs. Uh, I really need you to focus on squeezing against that band when you drop into the hole.

I need, uh, a plate underneath your right foot because I can see your foot's turning out, your knees buckling in. Like, all of these things are normal kinetic chain issues that eventually affect you. Um, and it is, it's, it's, it's fascinating. It's one of the things I still love about my job after almost 30 years now is I still love the Sherlock Holmes.

I love looking at the stuff that's not symptomatic and why the injury is there. 'cause it's easy just to say, Hey, your shoulder's banged up. Treat the shoulder. Well, we have to treat the shoulder. It's not, it's banged up. But if it's a recurring thing, the person says, yeah, I usually get this every couple years.

It starts coming back again. Well, there's something else going on now. That's your job to figure it out. Greg, in the early days of animosity, we did about 3000 functional movement screens on, uh, line workers. So these are, you know, people who work on electric power lines, they're doing overhead work, and there's a, a significantly or statistically significant correlation between people with dominant arm.

Shoulder restriction and lower back pain on the opposite side. Absolutely. And so when you think about someone who has restricted shoulder range of motion, they have to reach overhead. If they can't get that range of motion through their shoulder, they're gonna rotate their back. Yes. They're gonna hyperextend, they're gonna do anything that they can lower down that chain to try to, to cheat to, to get more, more range of motion.

And so again, it reinforced us, help somebody improve their shoulder mobility. And it actually helps reduce lower back pain, and you just wouldn't think that there would be a correlation until you start to put that whole kinetic chain together. The interesting thing is that most people in their twenties and thirties in particular have some of the best adaptation mechanisms you will ever see.

In other words, I've been doing it wrong for 20 years. How come it started showing up in my forties? You started to lose your adaptation mechanisms. You did the same repetitive motion 40,000 times. That was the first time. That's the one that eventually the final straw that breaks the camels back. Your body couldn't adapt to the strain anymore.

Bam. That's the threshold stuff that we'll talk about. So let's talk about soft tissue mobilization and can you explain a little bit more of, of what soft tissue mobilization is? Okay, so there's three ways we should actually look at soft tissue mobilization. A neurologic reset, real simple of talking about it, balancing sea sauce.

Okay, one muscle stronger than another. One. Muscle's weaker. So we want to balance sea sauce. Second is actually pro-inflammatory, so when we actually want to create micro inflammations controlled focal inflammations in the body. And then the last way is actually anti-inflammatory. I know that sounds crazy.

It's like what a spectrum. Most of what we do with soft tissue is actually a neurologic resetting. In other words, balancing those seesaws. Um, how do we know we've done that? Uh, I'm sure people have seen this. If even if you just took the time and rubbed your skin, you'll find if you rub it long enough, you're gonna get some red on the skin.

It's underneath your skin. You get a, a dilation of blood vessels. The interesting thing is the blood vessels. Actually cause dilation. Uh, so you see that red, you know, slap your wrists, you get that red, those same nerve endings in the skin that cause the dilation of a blood vessel are the same nerve endings that reset muscle firing patterns.

Hmm. So we, we really started focusing on how to over or increase the stimulation of the neurology to the nervous system regarding body part motions or, or, or tissues. So that's, that's the first one. The second one is the pro-inflammatory. There is only four times in our body that we are really trying to be pro-inflammatory, and this is one of the biggest problems.

Go on YouTube. Go on YouTube and watch somebody scraping the crap outta somebody else. Whatever you do, that's wrong. I'm just letting you know that's wrong. Don't do that. And when you say scraping, you're using a metal tool, like metal instrument and they like this. This is one of the problems with social medias nowadays.

Everything is shock and awe. Nobody wants to see, Hey, by the way, my skin just got a little red. They don't care about that. They wanna see this red dotting like somebody's got ma magic marker on every single inch of their body. That is not the goal. It happens sometimes when soft tissue, we talked about fascia.

When fascia gets really restricted, this can happen. That is not your goal. You look at a lot of these YouTube videos and they basically just beat the crap out of each other. Um, that is not, that's pro-inflammatory. When you have literally red dotting on your skin from your elbow to your wrist on the forearm, that should not happen.

You might have a line of red dotting somewhere or somewhere or somewhere. That's normal, but not the entire. It shouldn't look like a sweater. That's somebody who's being pro-inflammatory when they shouldn't be. The four times to be pro-inflammatory are tendon injuries, ligament injuries, post-surgical, or traumatic scarring.

And when we get those deep fascial knots. Everybody knows what a knot is. What a knot is is literally a densification or a thickening or a matting down. Think of chewing gum between paper layers that's happening in the fascial layers of the body. That's a densification. And you know, not to get crazy within the science stuff, but the people who actually discovered this better than anybody else were actually the stuccos who developed fascial manipulation.

They're the ones who actually found the physiology, the pathophysiology of what's going on here. It's literally like layers of dense, deep fascia that are nodding down. That's what's creating the knots. So those are the four times we're trying to be pro-inflammatory. Otherwise you should not be going that aggressively.

And now anti-inflammatory is the whole unique thing. You could be either feather light walk with a treatment like a bursal inflammation in the shoulder or on the side of the thigh, or it could be an ankle sprain and you're pushing the swelling out. Now, slightly different. The pushing the swelling out is a little bit more forceful, but it's very slow controlled and you're only doing it over swollen areas, whereas like the bursa is feather light.

It's like brushing over that area, inflammation, that person that's in such bad personal inflammation. But then four treatments, it's gone. I don't really send for cortisone injections anymore. Because anti-inflammatory soft tissue work pretty much takes care of it really quickly. One to four treatments, it tends to start dissipating.

If it doesn't, I don't wanna say inva, but normally there's something else that's really significant going on. A calcification within the tendon is one of the most common ones. Uh, that doesn't allow the bursa to calm down. Those people might need a cortisone injection. But again, what is that? You were talking about 3%, 5%.

Actually need to go to that level. 95 to 99% of the people don't. They just need a little light work over that region and that we talked about that pinking on the skin, that pinking on the skin opens up the blood vessel. So help pulls those metabolites of inflammation away, helps the burst the calm down.

It's relatively light and calm work so. Greg, I'm gonna describe this in a way you can check me if I'm misleading anyone, but sometimes I describe fascia as it's elastic. So it's the connective tissue that's very elastic. So imagine if I had sweatpants on, there's elastic material in those sweatpants. So if I squat down, I'm not gonna have any restriction.

If I put Carhartt pants on, there's not much elastic material in there. So if I squat down. I may be limited in my ability to squat, not because my joints don't wanna move or my muscles don't wanna move, but because of the fabric of my pants is restricting me. Now imagine again, I have sweatpants on the elastic, uh, material.

I get a tear, I put a patch of Carhartt material on my sweatpants. Now all of a sudden, every time I squat down, there's. Pulling around where that patch is because the materials are different. So when you're talking about that matting down the laying down of tissue or the muscle knot. Yes. It's really the fascial adhesions that are kind of like a patch that are restricting the range of motion in that area.

And so that, that's a range imaging. Okay. And so with Factor, it's a metal instrument. This has been around for thousands of years. The Chinese called it Guha. But basically you take a metal instrument and you scrape on the skin. And when you do that, what's happening is it's realigning. Fibers in realigning the fascist so that that patch basically gets broken down and the elastic elasticity can return to the tissue.

Is that a good summary? Exactly. Right. And then what factor does is let's just say the person saying like, Hey, I turned my head this way and I just feel this massive restriction or pain. It could, it could be that sharpness that we were talking about earlier. The great thing when you're doing the instrument work is it's not just stay there and let me do the work for you.

It's getting the patient involved. I want you to turn through that restriction while we're treating you. Number one, it's pulling against those fibers that have been matted to help separate them better, but neurologically, it's also retuning the muscle to remove in that direction again. And we all know, simple example, smack your thumb with a hammer.

What do you do? Right? So that's stimulating different nerve receptors so you don't feel pain. What happens when you stop moving? You go, like your thumb starts going to Bugs Bunny cartoon and it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Well, when we're moving through these pain patterns, we're actually short circuiting the pain as well.

So now all of a sudden you're gonna see that person is just moving further and further as you're going through treatment. Part of it is obviously what we're talking about, Ree, establishing proper motor pathways of the muscles by stimulating those nerve receptors in the skin and the fascia. The movement is creating the same thing.

Um, and mechanically it's helping to splay and separate the tissue at the same time. And that was the game changer, I think, when you help co-develop these concepts, is that motion wasn't added to the, the treatment, um, with the instrument assisted. And so you're, you're exactly right. I mean, when I was working with the US Olympic swim team, it's like people would come out before their, their races and they'd, they'd move and they'd be like, oh, I'm getting caught just a little bit here.

People can start to tune their bodies to a level of like maintaining that range of motion, removing the pain, and it's, it's instantaneous when you apply the motion with the tool. And so game changer. And, and so like I said, thank you for, for bringing those concepts to people, but not everyone has a clinician in their back pocket and so.

So what are some tools that we talk about? Self soft tip, tissue mobilization. So things like a foam roller, um, you know, they're the percussion guns, they're, they're all different types of tools. What are your thoughts on, on those other tools in the way that people can leverage them on their own? These devices are phenomenal and actually literature based at having good results in recovery.

So you don't stay as sore as long. Your tif uh, tissue length is better. You maintain your body. We're talking about tuneups. This is your way of tuning up your car. Your body is using things like foam rollers using things like percussion devices, but it has to be immediate. This is a big thing, and if we're gonna talk about recovery, and I think we should take at least a minute on this, recovery has to happen immediately.

You don't go home. Eat dinner, have the beer, watch 30 minutes of a TV show and say, you know what? I better start stretching. No, it's the first thing you do as soon as you're done with your activity has to be. Otherwise, you're already allowing for the neurologic reset. If the tissue's supposed to be here and during work, you did this and you waited three hours to go and reset yourself, this is your new norm.

It's not going back to this without intensive work. You wanna do 10 or 15 minutes of, of. Um, post work recovery, it better be after work. And I don't mean two hours after work. I mean after work. That is where you're going to get your results from. If you decided to sit down and let everything set in and your brain reset everything to this new norm, that's not recovery anymore.

That's praying. And guess what? Your prayer will not be answered. I'm just letting you know it's not gonna happen, man. You have to devote. The recovery time to immediately after work. You know, I get it. Traffic, things like that. Hey, if I get out right now, I'm gonna lose 30 minutes of traffic. Fantastic. Get home quick, then I get you.

But as soon as you get home, it's the first thing you do. Okay? If you're going like, doesn't make a difference whether I leave now or in 15 minutes, do your recovery then. So when you get home, you're with your family, period. That's it. You got your home, your night set, you're good to go, but it's gotta be done immediately.

Otherwise it's not as effective. So for under 50 bucks somebody can buy a handheld massage roller lacrosse ball or, or something like that. Walk us through using those tools first for preparation, preparing the body for activity and the impact, and then also as part of the recovery plan. And, and this goes, this is really, this is very important too, especially since you said before.

I think one of the biggest things that people do, and again, I I'm not trying to harp on CrossFit. This isn't my intention. It's just like history more than anything. You heard the term mashing in CrossFit initially mash the ITB mash, the quad mash, the calf mash, the no. Mm-hmm. It's not, they, they don't work that way.

It should be light. Remember we're talking about reding on the skin. You're tr talking about tuning the body to prepare for an activity. Aggressive work inhibits. If I do a pro-inflammatory treatment on you, you're not playing the sport that day. Like you need hours of recovery after pro-inflammatory work, mashing creating an eight outta 10 on a lacrosse ball that is creating an inhibition of the tissue.

You're not preparing yourself to work. So that is light work. You should be going there saying, I like to say this, somewhere between a four and a six. If you got a tender area of four to six, don't go crazy. And again, it's short duration, 30 seconds, a minute of just getting yourself rolling. And again, we're talking about pre-work.

We're not talking post, but pre-work. It should be about light. Light intensity, shorter duration for tuning. Okay. Post-work, we can do longer durations, more intense. Again, I think unfortunately with lacrosse balls as an example, I actually prefer a tennis ball. I prefer I, I prefer a tennis ball any day of the week because user error becomes less user error with a lacrosse ball.

Too late you go aggressive on a lacrosse ball. 'cause you try to get in something that was deeper in the tissue. Oh boy. Yeah. Now it's bruised. Now it's sore. You got days of recovery time, things along those lines. A tennis ball gives a little bit. So if you error and go like, oh, I was on it too long. I was too aggressive, I was what?

Less likely to create the long-term soreness. And guess what? Tennis ball's cheaper than a lacrosse ball. So it's even better. Remember, most of the effect of what we're doing is neurologic, and most of that neurology is actually in the skin level, not deeper than that. Now, there are times that deeper is better, but I would rather you learn that from a practitioner than try and figure it out for yourself.

At Ity, the way that we teach, uh, frontline workers to prepare for activity is. Light rolling. Exactly what you said. Four to six outta 10. Just get some blood flow to the tissue. Uh, start to loosen up the fascia, and then do a dynamic movement afterwards, because then you can actually improve the range of motion.

You now you get that blood flow, uh, you know, flowing. And then, like you said, the harder stuff afterwards. So any thoughts in terms of like using. A roller before dynamic movement right before a shift. No, you're absolutely right. And it's the same thing that you, we we've just already talked about is what you're doing is when you see that pink happen on the skin, okay?

Granted, you might be wearing clothing, but, and the, you understand how much force it will take. You've seen it on your own skin before. You want to get that almost like a warmth sensation. When you feel the tissue's getting warm, that's blood. Okay? And understand that blood is only at the skin level.

That's not below, that's not in your hamstring. But that's now improved the superficial fascia, which now has prepared the muscle for a more intense activity. Okay, so everything that you said there is dead on. We work superficially to prepare deeper. So, Greg, you're a chiropractor. I'm a chiropractor. Let's talk about when is chiropractic care appropriate for, for injuries, or maybe even just for performance?

The simple reality is I tell patients if you have an injury, something happened, you tweak something 48 hours later, you're going like, eh, I really don't like the way that feels. I've iced it. Icing. Didn't seem to help it. I've been stretching. Didn't seem to help it. If you hit 48 hours and nothing's really helping it, don't wait four days or four weeks to find out you didn't get any better.

Okay? Because maybe it is something that's basic. But I would rather you find out that it's something basic than wait four weeks and now have a complicated case going on. Remember we talked about adaptive versus injury? Injury is, it's lasting longer. The, it's not a two, it's a four, it's a six, it's an eight outta 10.

Uh, it's no longer a tightness. Now it's a soreness. It's no longer a soreness. It's a sharpness. Those are all injury signs. Intensity increases intensity are things you gotta be concerned about because that's the stuff that eventually goes into modification, elimination, and eventually, hey, by the way, you're crippled.

Alright, Greg, we're moving into the rapid fire section of, uh, this interview. So question number one, what is the best thing to do in the first five minutes of a shift for a frontline worker? Uh, I think we've discussed that neurologic tuning some kind of a body motion that actually mimics what it is that they do for a living.

Great. Number two, what's one movement that protects the lower back on repetitive lifting days? Hip H foam roller or massage gun, which do you buy first? Oh man. Foam. Roller cheaper. One sign of worker should stop pushing through pain and see a clinician. When? When? When either soreness, tightness. Any of the symptoms that they're feeling or experience, the ache starts increasing intensity or increasing in the duration that they experience it after an activity.

Great. What is the biggest mistake workers make that turns a small problem into a bigger one? Ignoring it? Absolutely. It is ignoring. So, Greg, if Thank you, you, this has been an awesome interview. I so appreciate it. I think our, our listeners are gonna get so much outta this. And so for the workforce athlete driving home right now or finishing a shift, if, if they only take three things away from this conversation about their body and their career, what should they be?

Uh, number one would be making sure you're prepping your body in order to do the daily activities that you need to do. Two would be making sure you're actually recovering after your job. And number three is understanding the difference between an adaptive symptom of, I had a hard week, a hard strain, more work, or something like that where it was just an increased intensity versus a progressive symptom that is starting to become an injury that's gonna limit their ability to function or work.

And Greg, are there any final thoughts that you'd like to leave our listeners with? Yeah, I can. I can tell you this flat out. If you ignore your own health. As much as people have said this over and over again, ignore your health, it will disappear. Well, I'm gonna close here with some final thoughts and then Greg, I wanna make sure that people are left with, uh, some resources that they can follow up with.

So you are a workforce athlete, and this is not a matter for, it's a fact. The NFL has team physicians and recovery specialists because they understand that the body is the asset. You've been performing at that level your entire career. You just have not had the same tools. Today you do. So, Dr. Dora, thank you so much for bringing this science to the highest level for sports, uh, from sports for 25 years, and bring it to the frontline athletes.

Uh, our audience deserves it just as much as, uh, the professional athletes out there. So, Dr. Dora, people wanna find more about your, uh, training methodology, the treatments that you talked about, um, or just you in general. Uh, what's the best way for them to find you? But probably again, my, my teaching aspect is@functionalsofttissue.com, especially if you're looking for literal true instructional videos on how to do a lot of methodology, I'm talking about, whether it's soft tissue taping or rehab.

Um, you can also go to our website, bergen chiropractic.com, which has a lot of our podcasts, which we do ourselves, um, as well as our Instagram, Bergen Chiropractic, which has, I got really bored about COVID. It has almost all of our rehab exercises, um, online, so you can actually find them themselves, like our core progression, our shoulder exercises, ankle, foot, basically everything under the sun is there.

And then again, you could also, you know, if, if somebody has a real pointed direct question, not that I don't get 300 emails a day, but you can get me at gdo, R-D-O-E-R r@bergenchiropractic.com, and then I'm available there as well. Yeah, and I've been on your Instagram, uh, page quite a few times. There are tremendous resources, so definitely ignore my 25 and under year old staff that like to post silly videos.

Love it. Well, hey, thank you so much and for our listeners, make sure to follow or subscribe to the Work Already podcast. This is a place that you can, um, get. You know, these type of conversations on a weekly basis. Every Tuesday we drop a new episode, so please subscribe on YouTube, apple Podcasts or Spotify.

And if this changed the way about how you think about your body or your career, make sure to share it with someone on your crew. And until next time. Take care of yourself. Take care of your people, and stay work ready.