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Is Stretching Really Beneficial? Yogi Aaron Challenges Conventional Fitness Wisdom
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Jan 1, 2025
#YogaInsights, #StretchingMyths, #FitnessRevolution, #MuscleHealth, #YogiAaron, #FlexibilityDebunked, #WellnessJourney #crazyfitnessguy #weeklymotivationwithcrazyfitnessguy #crazyfitnessguyhealthylivingpodcast #jimmyclare Welcome to our latest episode where we delve into the surprising insights shared by renowned yoga expert, Yogi Aaron. In this thought-provoking video, we explore a topic that challenges conventional wisdom: the notion that stretching might not be as beneficial for our bodies as we've long believed. Prepare to embark on a journey that will reshape your understanding of flexibility and muscle health. Where To Watch?📺 Watch our show live on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch or on our website at https://www.crazyfitnessguy.com/ About The Guest A trailblazer at heart — I’ve journeyed from the wilds of Canada to New York City where I started the global movement of ‘Men’s Naked Yoga’ — to the sacred Himalayas where my leg was crushed by a boulder in a freak accident while trekking — to the untamed jungles of Costa Rica where I built a thriving yoga retreat center Follow Guest: https://yogiaaron.com/
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guy welcome to another episode crazy Fitness guy healthyland podcast weekly motivation with crazy Fitness guy uh
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who says come content creation free I have a bill that says otherwise I
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go to Crazy Fitness guy premium podcast to get behind the scenes access listen after free and more subscribe for 3.99 a
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month or $30 a year and I just realized that I had to change those links but
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don't pay attention to those links the links will be in the show notes the exact the the ones that that says with
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the headline that says buy share and something else it's I just I just
2:47
recently changed it I forget what it was I saved it though so it it is what
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it is and that is that and whatnot so today's guest his name is Yogi Aon who's
3:01
a trailblazing yoga teacher who is leading a global Rebellion against the
3:06
harmful practice of stretching oh this is sounds very interesting he pioneered
3:12
the the groundbreaking approach to yoga that shows how people how to live pain-free by activating muscles through
3:19
applied yoga anatomy and muscle activation oh I'm looking forward to
3:26
this one I just started getting into yoga uh I can only do certain amounts but we'll
3:32
go uh of yoga but we'll get into that conversation at some point too and uh
3:39
just a shout out to my new f app listeners sorry I cannot go live on the show at the moment because uh my phone
3:47
is about to die and I need it for a conversation later with my with my parents and my brother
3:54
so we uh yeah and my charger is like this long thanks good so give me a Long
4:01
charger anyway I'm uh just cracking jokes about companies these days or not
4:07
or serious whatever but let's welcome our guest out hello hey there hi
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Jimmy how are you thanks for that introduction it's nice to be here thanks
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for having me on your show well I'm glad you're here uh so before we get started
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can you tell us a little bit about who you are what you do how you got started and why you got started sure I I'll give
4:36
you the short story feel free to ask me any questions uh I've been teaching yoga
4:41
for more than 30 years I got into yoga when I was 18 and I got into it because
4:48
I felt like I should stretch and one of the things that I kind of battled a lot
4:54
with as a kid um and even in my teenager years was uh ad
5:00
um I didn't know what it was at the time but I had a real hard time concentrating in school to the point where my
5:06
parents um you know tested me a lot had me getting had me get tested a lot you
5:13
know different um um uh exams and and
5:18
what have you and when I got into yoga what really started to attract me to it
5:23
was that I was able to actually Focus for the first time in my life and I felt
5:29
like I could um get things done and um and put my attention on you know getting
5:37
making life happen so I got as I got into the yoga Journey more and more
5:44
I obviously was stretching and um and one of the things that started happening
5:51
to me as soon as I got into yoga um and I should really qualify it by saying stretching yoga uh was I really hurt my
5:59
back and I remember the first time it happened it was like my whole back
6:04
seized up and I could barely move and I was so young at the time I thought is this what it's like to get
6:12
older and so pardon here's a sneak peek yeah
6:18
here's a sneak peek and so I immediately thought to myself I've got to stretch
6:26
more so I did and when I would tell yoga teacher like you know more senior than
6:32
me about some of my problems they would always say the same kind of story you need to stretch more you need to stretch
6:39
longer um I did that and then like I said to make a long story short I ended
6:46
up in the emergency room of a hospital um about six years ago where an
6:52
orthopedic surgeon said that he wanted to do an a spinal fusion in my lower back and that was sort of like an aha
7:01
moment like a wake up to Jesus moment because I thought if I've been
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doing all of this stretching yoga for the past 25 years to stay healthy to
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stay young and Mobile in my body then what am I doing here at the age of like
7:22
45 facing down a spinal fusion so that
7:28
kind of led me into this whole world of of a couple of things but primarily muscle activation like understanding the
7:35
role of muscle function um how to get muscles working properly what happens
7:42
when muscles don't work properly and and what is the result of muscles not
7:47
working properly so that that really in
7:52
informed my understanding of the human body but more than that it started to
7:58
radically shift the way that I look at exercise the way that I I view yoga and the way most more
8:07
importantly the way that I teach yoga and practice yoga of course so it it has
8:12
changed a lot of things well there's a few things I had
8:18
to pick up from under there the first one is
8:24
uh I can sort of relate a uh
8:30
of of having issues with certain things like uh I have spinos stenosis in my
8:37
upper neck three fuse discs as well and
8:43
I can only do certain yoga poses like for instance I can't I can't do like I
8:52
think they call the pretzels a bow or something not too many people can do the
8:58
pr pretzels Jimmy I feel like it's a 70
9:04
song do the pretzel but I mean I can't uh so I can't
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do that um and I let's just say some of the back bends
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like I can't do I did to the best of my ability but only to a certain point uh
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I try not to do anything that will hyperextend my neck or anything else
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yeah and uh because well let's just
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say basically my my new neck doctors said that if it got
9:50
worse uh I would have to like literally take a rotor router and
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just uh open up your spinal cord and like
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ew like nothing thanks and so I I've lived with it for 30 uh years
10:10
of my life and I was like I hope it never gets worse and so I modify stuff
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when I need to modify so like if I'm uh in karate three times a week I'm if we
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doing hyp extensions I'm either holding a plank doing
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push-ups or um I'll do squats I'll do uh
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burpees uh but I can't do hyperextensions to put puts too much
10:44
pressure on the neck I don't even do uh I don't even do shoulder presses for my
10:49
shoulders anymore uh so there's a lot of things I took out but I modifies here
10:55
and there when I need to I still got a good workout in but it just like
11:00
okay I can't work something oh no I'll try something else that does the same exact thing that doesn't put pressure on
11:07
my neck and then other thing the other few things I want to dissect
11:13
was my my question for you is you can actually hurt yourself in yoga I thought
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you I thought we're supposed to be stretching and Loosey Goosey get hurt yoga what the
11:27
hell well I think that that um I think that the idea of stretching like a lot
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like so yeah you're right when you go to yoga class they say the first rule in yoga is like Do no harm you know it's
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one of our our you know Commandments if you will of
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of spiritual practice um
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but when we're stretching the body and this is what I came to learn through muscle
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activation is that there's a feedback loop going on all the time or should be going on it doesn't always happen but in
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in a healthy neuromuscular system there's a feedback loop going on all the time between the muscles and the brain
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and so another word for that is proception like your nervous system knows where your muscles are in space
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and so the two are always communicating with each other but then when you um
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stretch you literally cut that communication system so that the nervous system no longer knows where the muscles
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are in space and I just want to speak a little bit to some of your issues that
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you're facing and you know there's a couple of things I can comment about it
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because I have dealt with severe neck issues myself um I have some
12:52
discernation going on at inst stenosis at C5 C6 and it has caused immeasurable
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pain uh in my life um I've I've dealt with it a lot knock on wood I haven't
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dealt with it since 2020 that was the last time I really H confronted it um
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and it's just gotten a lot better since then thank god um but I do a lot of
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rehab for my neck and when I say rehab um part of that rehab is actually moving
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it like going through all ranges of motion and for me um I dealt with a lot
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of neck issues and of course before and so I limited uh my neck movement I was
13:42
always like you know uh trying to keep my neck in sort of a flex state to
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protect it and one of the things that I learned and have learned not just with my neck but with my back and and all
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areas of my body is that I've modified so many things over the years that I
14:04
just became weaker my my muscle muscular system overall just started to become
14:10
weaker because anytime we start to compensate um that compensation is going
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to create more neuromuscular weakness anyways short story long story short I
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actually got the muscles stronger in my neck and one of the reasons why we have
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pain and I know that stenosis is p olical there's a pathology behind it so
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there's you know there's a formation um um of the bone that's
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pressing into nerve etc etc but one of the things about muscles that we don't
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we we sometimes forget you know muscles play a really important role in
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stabilizing joints and they have to do that by Contracting they
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contract uh to stabilize a joint when they don't contract properly that join is just sort of hanging out
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and um and can become unstable and so when the Verte just in your neck just
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move or in your back you know move even one millimeter uh which isn't a lot that
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could be enough sometimes to press in on a on a nerve which is then causing pain
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which then causes more inflammation so it's really important to get the muscles
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the body working um and that's kind of where I'm flipping the script in what I'm teaching where yoga says well not
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yoga where people are saying stretch um you know and you got to
15:39
stretch those hamstrings got stretch the muscles in your shoulders etc etc I'm actually saying no let's do the opposite
15:46
let's actually improve muscle function by improving the muscle's ability to
15:52
contract and contract unto man that's interesting because uh like
15:59
you said many people tell you stretch and do this and do that and I don't have
16:05
a problem with stretching and I think because like you know a lot of the stuff
16:11
that I do like speaking wise are getting ready for a speak speaking engagement is
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like uh I'm writing at my desk and I'm sitting down at my desk uh I don't have
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a uh standing desk I don't have money for a standing desk and uh and so I was like okay so I have
16:34
a lumbar pillow on my in my on my chair I do move my head and I can move my head
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but let's just say I'm
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not when I was get when I when I was looking to get an m on my neck to how to
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go through uh six weeks of physical therapy just to get the approval
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thanks to amazing Insurance oh crap
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that's I can do a whole episode on that but I'm not going to but there's uh so
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so during the so during that last six weeks of physical therapy it it was very
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uncomfortable for my neck because my neck has always been stiff
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and I do move my neck a lot because I'm either driving in my um in the car by
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myself and I can drive myself places and whatnot and so I to turn my neck here so
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it I don't have any problems with it but during the physical therapy let's just
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say a lot of them some people like push it to more than it can really be pushed
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to a more of a 90 degree angle and it's like is so damn uncomfortable especially
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with the stenosis and whatnot and like this will help you it's like I don't think so it's like it feels very very
18:08
unstable at the moment and like it feels like my neck is going to just crumble uh
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how I hav't I actually saw the x-ray of my of my neck and it's like you could
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see how like fused it is and see how like narrow it is and whatnot it's like
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geez that's like a very narrow like Cliff if you wanted to uh really give a
18:34
really great example on that or I mean imagine imagine of that and so I was
18:39
like this doesn't feel comfortable at all and I said to my parents like I hope
18:46
whoever my new neck doctor is could tell me who can get me out of this crap once
18:54
I uh get another MRI in the next year or two because like if I if anybody puts me
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through that like it's like it's going to get a lawsuit up its ass it's like I
19:06
was uh I F I actually had a fight with my insurance company H and we actually
19:12
had a hearing too it's like was like do you want to take it to the state it's like oh I would love to really really
19:18
would love to it's like let me show you how I really feel but uh so uh but so there was
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uncomfortable for that but I actually been getting into yoga more on
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Saturdays because I know that with karate and just working at weightlifting
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my body gets very sore and I I it feels
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good to stretch it out but not stretch it too far where I was like oh here's a muscle
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pop and it's like ow does always feel good
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no like my dog's trying play playing to of War trying to yank your arm out of your socket he like
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ah well I would highly suggest you know checking out some muscle activation
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practices I can send you a couple of things that has helped me normous in my
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neck um again um you know there's there's like a lot of things that you
20:33
can do to really help it and so as one person that's been through the ringer
20:39
with their neck issues um you know I would be more than happy to help you out
20:45
so just let me know I'm here for you definitely I would appreciate that and
20:50
uh so my next question for you is what does some of these neck
20:56
activation kind of look like like uh is it easy to do it doesn't need extra
21:03
equipment or no absolutely not um the uh the
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exercises just you just need your body you just need to be anywhere in
21:17
space and you can do any of these exercises these muscle activations you
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know one of the things that we want to do when we're doing muscle activation um practicing is is basically
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it's just isometrics and you're kind of doing isometric exercises practices and
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the idea is to um use little to no
21:41
weight so ideally actually not using any kind of weight or resistance most of the time um resistance often is just
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gravity uh so gravity provides you know enough resistance and the general idea
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is then to hold things for six seconds and do them six times so you were saying earlier like you don't do a lot of
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extension um which is probably a great thing like not to do passive extension
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but it is really good to get those muscles of the back working in neck as well um so one of my favorite um kind of
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exercises and this would be great to do before you do your karate classes um you
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said karate right or martial arts and before you do your Martial Arts like you
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do a pose called sup I call it sometimes Superman so you come and lie down onto
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your stomach and you know you lift your legs and your chest up as high as you
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can um and so lifting those up you're going to start to shorten isometrically
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shorten the back muscles and uh so as you get those back
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muscles shortening there that isometric contraction starts to stimulate
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this neuromuscular connection so it starts sending messages or or information to the brain and so it
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reinforces that feedback loop so that when you are doing your karate when you
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are doing you know your movements that your muscles are working
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they're ready to work they're ready to get to work and so you would lift it up for six seconds and then repeat that for
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a total of six times another great one to do uh before you do your Martial Arts
23:29
is to get your core muscles and some of your hip flexors activated so there's a couple of ways to do that but one is to
23:38
just line on your back or you can do the standing actually but line on your back just bring one knee into your chest and
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using your muscles not your hands your hands are out to the sides using your
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muscles you squeeze the knee into your chest so those are do that six seconds
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six times the those are two muscle activation practices that you can
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do to that don't require any um equipment the great thing about muscle
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activation and isometrics you don't need any equipment you don't need to spend thousands of dollars to do it all you
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need is your body your breath and Away you
24:21
go so my next question for you is why do some why do a lot of trainers and
24:28
everyone else say you got to stretch you got to do this you got to do that and when
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now now you found out that yoga can even uh hurt you too so and before you answer
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that so I just want to run down list real quick so sitting is bad for you
24:49
drinking alcohol is bad for you drugs are bad for you uh eating too much sugar
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is bad for you and and then also
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uh OV exercising is bad for you and now
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yoga is bad for you and just stretching is bad for you great I've I've never
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heard that over exercising is bad for you I think there might be a little caveat to that um but but but I I get
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your point um you know with the stretching thing I can't speak to all of
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the other things you know I enjoy a glass of wine you know three four five
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six seven times a week um I don't feel like I drink that
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much I definitely don't eat sugar um sugar you know I think there's enough sugar in many things but you know with
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it's kind of like smoking in the 50s you know it's it's like people who have seen that series um on AMC I think it was
25:54
called or or one of those channels uh Madmen you know and they would be smoking like chimneys uh you know and
26:02
also Downing a few cocktails at the end of the workday oh heck it wasn't even the end of the work day it was just 11
26:09
o'clock in the morning and so but they would smoke and and I remember like
26:15
especially in the first and second season one of the kind of plot lines or
26:20
topic lines was how they did these advertisements to convince people that
26:25
smoking was good for you and the Surgeon General of United States said smoking is
26:31
good for you you know and and we said that until we smartened up and realize
26:37
no it's actually killing us and I think it's kind of the same thing with stretching it's just people just keep
26:43
saying it and just because you say something is true doesn't make it true we actually know scientifically um it's
26:51
been proven over and over again that stretching actually makes you weaker and and the reason for that is because it it
26:59
decreases or it lowers the force output of a muscle comes back to what I was
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talking about before where it ruins
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or it gets in the middle or in the way of that feedback loop between the brain
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and the muscles so we want to um avoid stretching if we want to stay strong and
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even a lot of the sort of athletic science journals are starting to come out saying actually don't stretch before
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you work out if you're going to stretch stretch after your workout so they're still on the stretching B bandwagon
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afterwards which doesn't make sense to me quite frankly but they're actually saying don't stretch before you work out
27:47
or before you run or do any Athletics or before you do
27:52
karate because you're going to actually lower your muscle strength your you
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decrease your muscle your Force output of your muscles your muscles basically
28:03
lose their ability to contract and contract on demand now there's different studies showing how long it lasts for uh
28:13
one study out of Lennox Hill Hospital showed it was about 30 minutes um there's been other studies that have
28:20
shown UH 60 to 90 minutes you know and then I would add to those studies and
28:27
just say that most of those studies are done with young adults when I say young adults I'm talking about people that are
28:34
16 to 20 22 years old so we know that
28:39
when we start getting 25 26 27 that are healing and regenerative power goes down
28:47
a lot so if you get somebody that's 50 doing some of these stretches in in yoga
28:53
classes you know their muscles may never return to normal um their Force output
29:01
of their muscles may never return I was just speaking to a gentleman earlier who
29:07
is an athlete who teaches other athletes how to be athletes um who uh just tore
29:15
his Achilles heel and when he was going through rehab one of the things that he
29:21
the they found was he had I'm just gonna say dead glutes like his glutes
29:28
no one's home the no sensation in the glutes he he
29:35
just his glutes weren't firing at all and so I was saying to him like do you
29:41
think that might have been the cause of your K heel issue because if the glutes
29:46
which are a major mover in the body they do hip extension um they're also the shock
29:54
absorbers so anytime you if you're a runner you're pounding the pavement if your glutes aren't working which are the
30:01
suspension system of the the body that shock is going to go down through the joints and into the heel joint what's
30:08
supporting the heel joint the Achilles heel so um or Achilles tendon sorry so
30:16
it's it's it's really like you know you're creating more problems by
30:24
stretching and it's just something as you going back to your point people just aren't talking about enough which is why
30:31
I'm on this podcast talking to you and talking to anybody who will
30:37
listen stop stretching start activating
30:43
so in a perfect world how so how does
30:48
people warm up then because I know if I don't warm up before karate I'm going to feel like a punching bag or punching a
30:55
brick wall and I I there was a few times where I didn't
31:01
do anything before class and I was like uh oh I was like I feel like I'm gonna
31:07
break something well I would say that you felt
31:13
like you were going to break something because um your muscles weren't
31:18
activated so you probably might have felt a bit stiff um and
31:24
immobile one of the things that we don't talk about enough or that's never talked
31:29
about quite frankly is what is the cause of muscle tightness so why do you think
31:34
your muscles have tightened up uh sitting driving in a
31:41
car uh just tense um so when we're sitting when we're
31:48
sitting in the car for a long time what starts to happen is our muscles start to
31:54
shut down that's why that's why they say like you shouldn't really be sitting for
32:00
long periods of time you know get up every 25 minutes move your body walk
32:05
around that sort of thing um so if we're if our muscles are
32:11
shutting down our body at a neurological level is going to sense instability if
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our muscles aren't Contracting to stabilize you know your joints to stabilize your lower back to stabilize
32:23
your hips the response of the body then is to tighten up so muscle tightness is
32:31
a biomechanical response um to go to put yourself in a
32:38
protective State it's a biomechanical protective State and the worst thing
32:43
that we can do then is to stretch those muscles to try and make them uh longer
32:49
because our body is actually tightening it up to to keep it stable to keep it
32:55
protected if you kind of think about it another way if you're stepping out on ice like if
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you step on ice or something what does your body do it tightens up it freezes
33:07
up and so what we want to do then is to start activating the muscles and like I
33:15
said to you earlier like doing Superman pose you're going to notice a huge difference just by doing that pose
33:22
because you start activating all of your back muscles and as soon as muscles start turning on the body starts letting
33:30
go and stops being so tight
33:36
so are there any other like activation exercises that people can do
33:43
if they didn't want to do Superman
33:48
or that's always that's a funny question to me um I don't want to help my body
33:54
you know so is there anything else I can do yeah exactly isn't there a pill I can take
34:03
isn't there a sugar drink I can have
34:09
so there there's many there's many exercis I mean one of the problems you're coming back circling back to your
34:16
neck is that your neck is probably not being supported properly by the muscles
34:22
that should be supporting it now there's kind of what we call Global
34:28
muscles that should be supporting your neck one of those global muscles is the lower traps and sort of mid traps they
34:34
don't actually attach to the neck per se now your upper traps do of course but so
34:41
and then we look at your pets and then we're going to look at the serratus anterior so let's come back to the
34:47
trapezius so if you just bring your arms up like a V and um and then just kind of you know
34:55
your thumbs are pointed back behind you and then if you just bring your arms
35:01
back you're going to feel your lower traps Contracting they're going to start engaging and so that's one that you can
35:07
start to do from a seated position um if you don't really want to do Superman um
35:14
although you should uh it's actually the Superman pose is my favorite pose of all
35:19
the muscle activations um you know that's one another one if you wanted to get into
35:25
mid traps bring the arms out and just squeeze your arms back and you're going to feel the mid trap starting to
35:33
isometrically contract so that's one of the ways that we start to you know get
35:38
these muscles working there's a lot of different muscle activations just shrugging your shoulders like this could
35:44
be a great one for you is just shrugging the shoulders bring your shoulders towards the ears for six seconds and
35:52
then relax and do that six times that's a great one for you because one of the
35:59
muscles that moves the shoulders up is the upper traps and the upper trap is
36:04
responsible for holding the curve of the neck in place and so that would be a
36:10
great one for you to also do is there any ones for like uh the
36:18
legs and whatnot um sure there's lots for the legs um again Superman pose
36:28
the one that you're trying to avoid um exactly so so but there's there's lots
36:35
for the legs one of my other favorite ones is bridge pose um when you lie on your back you bend your knees your feet
36:41
are sort of close to your hips or your butt and then you uh bring your arms out
36:47
to the sides and then you lift your hips up as high as you can and so what's
36:52
lifting the hips is your hip extensors your hamstrings and your glutes that will start to get those muscles working
36:59
as well um line on your back uh lifting one leg to 30 degrees and doing that six
37:08
seconds six times that's also a great one to start getting the quads working and the rectus morus working so yeah
37:15
there's a lot for the legs that you can do as well for sure yeah everything you're saying seems
37:23
like it's uh the opposite that we all learned of working out over the years it's like
37:30
don't do this now you have to do this now you have to go do this and yes now now you should avoid stretching this is
37:37
sounds so crash down weird it is weird isn't
37:43
it I learn everything that you did oh crap well it's it's kind of like you
37:50
know I I mean I'm so sorry because I think like so much of this is just
37:55
common sense but you know what they say about common sense it's not that common
38:00
um and you know I taught yoga for 25 years before I was like what am I doing
38:07
wrong what don't I understand I keep getting hurt now I'm in the hospital with an orthopedic surgeon saying he
38:14
wants to do spinal fusion in my lower back you know what don't I know and if
38:20
you take a sort of a a wide look at all the people that are stretching all of
38:25
them are stretching to get out of pain but they wake up in the morning either
38:31
in the same pain or with more pain and so you know a lot of us don't go well if
38:38
I'm stretching every day you know maybe this isn't working maybe I need to look
38:43
for another solution so that's one thing to put a pin in another thing to put a pin in is the fact that we need to ask
38:52
ourselves what is muscle function what are muscles supposed to do well muscles
38:57
do do two things basically they move bones and they stabilize joints and so
39:04
how do muscles move bones and stabilize joints they need to contract and
39:09
contract on demand they need to be able to um contract they need to shorten
39:15
that's what happens when a muscle contracts it shortens what do we do when we're stretching muscles we're actively
39:23
and dynamically lengthening that muscle uh forcibly lengthening that muscle so
39:31
when we force a muscle to lengthen we're actually contradicting what muscles are
39:36
supposed to do and unfortunately not a lot of people
39:43
are kind of understanding that basic um idea and so we've been kind of fed this
39:51
lie that stretching helps prevent injuries it actually increases your rate
39:57
of injury um overall um and and a lot of people that perpetuate this notion do it
40:04
without really any kind of real understanding of either a what muscles
40:09
are supposed to do or B um you know cite like the fact that no there's really no
40:17
evidence to support that claim so my next question for you
40:24
is so by doing all this muscle activation in your opinion how do how do
40:31
you feel when you get out of bed in the morning actually I feel great I don't
40:39
have pain I'm 52 years old I was since I was
40:44
18 I was having pain getting out of bed almost every morning back pain neck pain
40:52
hip pain sometimes knee pain um
40:57
ever since I started doing muscle activation I don't get out of bed with pain anymore what about stiffness nope no
41:06
stiffness no stiffness here can't touch this stiffness Can't Touch
41:13
This you should you should trademark
41:19
that you can be like the new tayor Swift you can trademark everything now exactly
41:26
no or any of her fans I just yeah I could L name any celebrity out there who
41:32
probably trademarking every look little nooking cranny out there so it was just yes it was just the first thing that PO
41:39
into my mind because she's been all over the headlines lately so it was just I
41:44
don't know it was the first thing I had thought of my bad not picking on any tops we're not we're not punching down
41:51
on anybody here no I just use it as an example that's all exactly I didn't say
41:58
it was the wrong thing to do I just was just make an observation yes but at least at least put it on a
42:08
t-shirt can't touch this I can see that you can start your
42:14
own clothing line
42:20
so yes so uh what
42:28
so back to so my next question for you is
42:35
uh do you think trainers will start adapting to this kind of stuff um
42:42
eventually and and the reason why I asked that is because uh one of my platforms I the
42:49
platform I used to work out at home with is called fit on and they started there
42:56
was this trainer who is actually in a wheelchair and they they uh had him uh
43:05
train uh on the platform make videos exercise videos and everything and I
43:11
thought it was interesting because and I and I I played that video and worked out with the trainer and whatnot and I'm not
43:19
in a wheelchair but I thought was I thought it was cool to have be part of a
43:25
platform that allow someone in the wheelchair to be a person
43:31
to be a trainer to and he knew his stuff he know how to modify stuff and I was
43:36
like I've been saying this so many times on different people's podcasts and whatnot and it's like this is kind of
43:44
cool that this is like the first platform that I've SE that is doing this
43:50
and I thought it's cool and so so I was curious if if you think there's going to
43:56
be more trainers adapting this in the near future well we see some trainers already
44:04
starting to adapt kind of some of the principles of
44:09
muscle activation we see it in this kind of thing that's called
44:14
Dynamic stretching so a lot of trainers are starting to move away from what's called passive stretching or static
44:22
stretching to more Dynamic stretching Unfortunately they don't understand the princip of dynamic stretching so it's
44:29
not being implemented or taught properly um so that's one thing to put a pin in
44:35
um I even saw a doctor on on Good Morning America and I was so embarrassed
44:41
for her um because she had no idea what she was talking about she's talking about Dynamic stretching and she just
44:48
had absolutely no idea at all it was kind of embarrassing for her um and so
44:54
we see these kind of like myths that are being again propagated but we also starting to see
45:02
trainers coming back to some wisdom that actually I learned when back in the 80s
45:09
when I started working out one of the rules was do the first set or two with
45:16
really low weights and really slow and um and then practice engaging
45:23
your muscles as you're doing it and that is actually one of the ways that we can
45:28
start intelligently um getting the muscles to start working properly is just by doing
45:35
slow movements doing very lightweights so if you normally like curl I don't
45:42
know 30 pounds 25 pounds or something maybe the first set you're using five or
45:48
10 pounds and just going super super super slow through the first set and um
45:57
and then really engaging the muscle as you're doing that that is going to start waking up or the muscle or reinforcing
46:05
that feedback loop um and and you are starting to see trainers stop stretching
46:12
before the workout and adding it sort of at the end which they shouldn't do at
46:17
the end either but that's another story um so we are starting to see it it is
46:22
creeping in there albeit very slowly as far as I'm concerned uh but it is
46:28
getting in there the more you and me start to talk about it the more it will become part of the common
46:35
[Laughter] language what what I find uh interesting
46:42
as well uh I happen to have said it uh about
46:51
working out needs to be more inclusive for everyone because somebody was in a
46:59
wheelchair can't do burpees can't do lunges can't do this can't do that they
47:04
need to be able to work out too it's like all these trainers is like oh uh
47:09
you need to be able to Jumping Jacks do this do that and it's like and I've said over the years of
47:17
running the show and being on other people's podcast it's like it needs to be more inclusive and yes and then when
47:25
I saw fit on about the the trainer in the wheelchair I was
47:30
like okay this is kind like I say it's cool to me in my opinion because it's
47:36
like I wonder if they took my idea I'll never I mean I'd be happy that they took
47:42
my idea uh at least give me some for it
47:49
but uh even it's not monetary credit but uh just a nice shout out thank you uh
47:58
I have no proof if they did listen to it or whatnot but I was like yeah you know
48:03
what I'm glad a part of a platform that uh supports this because even though I'm
48:09
not in a wheelchair it's like hey you maybe the next person will uh modify for
48:14
for the next person with uh whatever or everything Etc and as like yeah we need
48:22
more trainers like this or or somebody along in the video to for everyone to
48:28
work out because think about it if you go to the gym you're paying a membership to get into the door and then there's
48:34
more and then most people in the gym who are just starting to work out is overwhelmed it's like well how do I work
48:42
out and have proper form because I seen when I used to go to the gym that I no
48:48
longer do anymore just because I got tired of waiting on every single piece of equipment that I want to use and the
48:54
people Bunch staring at the some in the mirror he like look how good I'm at and
49:00
and then they're taking selfies and M's like get out of my
49:06
way but one of the things that that annoyed me the most or ironically
49:12
annoyed me the most is that I saw people uh lifting so like super super heavy weights and
49:20
like oh look at me I'm lifting super heavy and yet they were going back and forth swaying back and forth and you and
49:30
there was there was a point in my time in my life where I wanted to go say tell
49:36
everyone it's like you're doing this wrong he like I'm not I'm not a personal trainer but I was like I'm pretty sure
49:43
there's no swaying in this move whatsoever unless if you doing kettle bell swings but they weren't doing
49:50
kettle bell swings they were having two dumbbells in their hands and they like I know you can do uh Swings with the bells
49:56
in your hands too but they were doing bicep curls and yes or hammer curls and
50:04
I'm like it it amazed me that that these people like you guys are
50:12
going to get hurt and then I'm gonna still be in the gym and then months later you're G to come back and it's
50:17
like and I'm gonna be like where have you been and then it's like I hurt myself I'm like gee I wonder why
50:28
yeah I like duh see Common Sense swing back and
50:36
forth great idea it's a great workout what's that gonna do for your muscles try yeah not too much yeah try
50:45
resistant bands you can't cheat with them I try
50:50
yeah I mean I literally tried it's like oh this is so heavy I was like holy crap
50:55
this is I like I can't cheat a dumbbells you can cheat at resistance
51:02
bands very hard to cheat at I try well J Jimmy I hope um you'll pass
51:11
on uh to your uh listeners I have a free 7day series they can try it out um it
51:18
doesn't cost anything they don't need any special equipment you won't be swinging any
51:24
dumbbells throwing any d [Laughter]
51:30
too but it will it'll it's something I think a lot of people will get a lot of
51:36
benefit from and at least start to you know give people a base to start living
51:43
you know more without pain or more without any stiffness like you don't
51:49
have to wake up and out of you know wake up every morning stiff if you're waking up stiff every morning that's a really
51:56
good sign that there's something wrong and that needs to be addressed and you
52:02
know you can avoid Superman pose you know you cannot well let me rephrase it this way let me rephrase it you can
52:08
either do superpose every morning or get you know a spinal fusion later on in
52:15
life sound so did I sell
52:24
it the mystery shall un told at some point yes so my last few questions for
52:30
you is who's your favorite podcaster and why and feel free not to say
52:38
me I don't know that I have a favorite podcaster but if I had to
52:45
choose these days it's Barry Weiss on on her podcast honestly she's one of my
52:51
favorite sort of um reporters and she just gets like really interesting people
52:58
and has very interesting discussions I'm trying to get on her podcast so if anybody's listening and knows Bary wise
53:05
put in a plug for old Yogi Aaron here her name's Mary Weiss Barry Barry
53:13
Weiss Barry Weiss yes yeah I G have to
53:18
look her up because I the podcast is called honestly honestly okay I'm I'm gonna
53:25
check that out because I uh I would love to be on our show as well and
53:32
uh uh and my last question for you is where can people follow you find you
53:37
learn more about who you are and what you do um go to my website yarn.com
53:44
um or uh find me on Instagram yarin you know I'm there I always get back to
53:51
people um and uh so if anybody has any questions or wants to learn more please
53:58
message me I'm I'm here to help people live their best pain-free
54:04
life well I'm I'm glad you uh uh came on the show I would love to be able to stay
54:11
in touch with you and I I'd love to have you back again in the future oh thank
54:16
you so much Jimmy I really appreciate it have uh wonderful evening and thank you
54:23
so much for uh giving me a chance to share this with you and and with your listeners and I'm never doing Superman
54:36
pose that's cool brother it's okay it might me later but oh
54:45
well have a good rest of your day thank you so much Jimmy be
54:51
well so that's all the time we have for today if you like the show leave a review
54:57
uh share it with your friends followers listen and anywhere and family
55:03
members and anyone else who would enjoy this episode and in the meantime stay
55:09
safe stay healthy and stay motivated and I'll be back for another brand new episode of crazy fantas guy Health
55:16
podcast SI Rec motivation with crazy fantas sky in the meantime peace
55:24
[Music]
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