Welcome to episode 62 of the Movement Logic Podcast. In this episode, Sarah and Laurel discuss the recent interview of Dr. Stu McGill on Dr. Peter Attia’s podcast, The Drive. This interview has sparked a lot of internet commentary, so we’re breaking it down for you into what we’re calling Make McGill Make Sense.

You will learn:

• Who are McGill and Attia, and why Attia is interviewing McGill
• McGill’s rigid (pun intended) views on powerlifters vs yogis and what each group should and should not do
• Why McGill “doesn’t believe” in non-specific low back pain, a well documented and researched phenomenon
• How the biopsychosocial model of pain doesn’t exist in his world view
• Why his fearmongering and moralizing approach to movement has been so successful
• How and why he leans into storytelling vs data around low back pain

And more!

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Links:

Episode 29 The Cues We Use Part 1

Episode 31 The Cues We Use Part 2

Episode 34 The Cues We Use Part 3

Episode 45 Injury and Safety in Strength and Yoga

Episode 54 Alignment Dogma: Spine

https://peterattiamd.com/stuartmcgill/

https://www.backfitpro.com/

https://rheumatology.org/patients/joint-replacement-surgery#

Lancet Study age of hip replacements

Evidence for an Inherited Predisposition to Lumbar Disc Disease

Adam Meakins on Instagram

McGill Big 3 on YouTube

Welcome to Season 4, Episode 61 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel explores whether strength training alone suffices for health and longevity. She compares training stress, intensity, and adaptations of strength training versus high intensity interval training (HIIT) versus cardiorespiratory endurance training. Discover how both HIIT and cardio are forms of conditioning, and why both strength and conditioning are necessary "weekly human maintenance habits" for preventing chronic disease and promoting longevity.

Sign up here to get on the Wait List for our next Bone Density Course in October 2024!

You will also learn:

• What counts as exercise?
• Does HIIT promote strength or cardiorespiratory endurance or both?
• What is aerobic versus anaerobic conditioning?
• What role does cardiorespiratory fitness play in our strength gains and what role does strength play in our cardiorespiratory fitness gains?
• How strength training, HIIT, and cardio compare when considering the following: typical length of a session, work to rest ratios, relative intensities, common limitations to performance, and the specific adaptations each promotes.
• Is strength enough for health and longevity?
• Is walking conditioning?
• Can the fatigue cost of HIIT interfere with our ability to exercise enough throughout the week?
• What should we pay attention to specifically if we want to build strength with HIIT?
• What’s the best way to structure weekly strength and conditioning workouts, specifically when we want to do both on the same day?

Reference links:

Episode 6: How Much ‘Should” You Exercise

CDC guidelines on exercise

Talk test

High-intensity interval training for health benefits…

Episode 37: Plyometrics—Get More Bang For Your Bones

Episode 46: How Often Should You Strength Trainlll?

Episode 32: Load & Volume…

Episode 9: What Are The Best Exercises for Strength?

Episode 23: Do We Really Need 10,000 Steps…?

Welcome to Season 4 and Episode 60 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this much requested first part of a three-part episode series, Laurel and Sarah discuss the phrase long and lean from a historical and sociological perspective. They cover the idealized image of women through art with a historical gaze, then unpick the narrative around becoming long and lean, how diet and exercise became front and center for this impossible ideal, and where we are today with social media, photoshop, and AI in the mix.

You will learn:

• How bad Medieval artists were at drawing human bodies
• How the Renaissance ideal form was the exact opposite of long and lean
• “Ideal” female forms through the 20th and 21st centuries
• The inherent misogyny, internalized anxiety, and social pressure of long and lean
• Whether the diet and exercise boom of the 1980s had anything to do with health
• Why GOOP is indeed a four letter word
• How ‘problem areas’ keep us busy objectifying our bodies and how this is a feature of our modern capitalist society

And more!

Sign up here to get on the Wait List for our next Bone Density Course in October 2024!

Reference links:

The Toast Looks Back: The Best Of Two Monks

Met Museum

https://greatist.com/grow/100-years-womens-body-image#1

https://www.worldometers.info/weight-loss/

Diet Drugs

Fitness in the 80s

https://fitisafeministissue.com/2014/10/01/cankles-more-broken-body-parts-you-can-feel-bad-about-or-please-lets-just-stop/

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/beauty/fitness-wellbeing/news/a37546/problem-areas-your-body-fat-explained/

Latoya Shauntay Snell

Roz the Diva

Roz was a guest in our podcast - listen here

@fatbodyPikates

Damali Fraiser

Welcome to our supersized Episode 59 of the Movement Logic podcast and the final episode of Season 3! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss certifications for movement professionals. Are they necessary? Are they useful? Do they help promote you, or just the brand? Should you be focusing on it so much?

You will learn:

• Do certifications in the movement industry function to a means to ensure quality control and accountability the way that the equivalent does in a regulated industry
• Do the tests measure meaningful and important qualities of a movement teacher or do they measure what is easy to measure
• What are some drawbacks to certifications
• What are some positive aspects of certifications
• The differences between regulated and unregulated industries
• Does promoting a course as ‘safe’ require any proof in an unregulated industry?
• Can a certification course really claim to be a safer form of movement than any other?
• Why are many teachers looking for certification in their continuing education classes?
• The value of longer form, apprentice/student to teacher/mentor relationship versus a weekend training
• That Yoga Alliance is not the evil overlord that so many seem to think it is
• Does having letters after your name make you more credible or trustworthy?

Episode 48: Alignment Dogma - Pelvis

Episode 54: Alignment Dogma - Spine

Episode 58: Alignment Dogma - Shoulders

Visit our website www.movementlogictutorials.com for more paid and free education!

Get on our mailing list to be kept in the know about upcoming courses.

Welcome to Season 3 and Episode 59 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss dogmatic beliefs and myths around the shoulders from the yoga, Pilates, and strength training worlds. We also discuss how given the fact that shoulder joint is a “complex” of many bones and joints, it’s much more useful that teachers keep their approach to teaching this area as simple as possible (and stop micro-managing their students shoulders!)

You will learn:

• The bones and joints of the shoulder joint complex
• Mant shoulder “fun facts”
• The directions of movement of the shoulder
• What horizontal abduction and adduction are
• What scapular tilt/winging is and why it’s not a problem
• How scapular movement often mirrors where we are reaching our hand to
• What scapulohumeral rhythm is
• That the shoulder blade’s path across the rib cage is curvilinear.
• Simplifying how we talk about shoulder movement and function to either a push or a pull.
• The relationship between shoulder posture and alignment and shoulder pain and injury
• How it’s hard to think scientifically and very human to think un-scientifically
• Why “shoulders back and down” is often (but not always!) an inefficient and counter-productive way to cue the shoulders
• Why micromanaging shoulder posture doesn’t change posture long term.
• Why “fixing” someone’s alignment in chaturanga doesn’t help them acquire the strength they’d need to build to be able to do chaturanga with optimal alignment
• How scapular dyskinesis and scapular winging are different
• The fine line between using movement to solve movement problems (which is inside of a movement teacher’s scope of practice) and then diagnosing problems for students and prescribing movement to fix it (which is outside of a yoga teacher’s scope of practice.)
• How upper and lower cross syndrome is an outdated (but still very influential) model for explaining posture and offering solutions to that posture.

Visit our website www.movementlogictutorials.com for more paid and free education!

Get on our mailing list to be kept in the know about upcoming courses.

Check out our Movement Logic Shoulders Tutorial

Shoulder Girdle Video

Note: we cannot source the origin of this video. If you know the origin, please let us know!

Arthroscopic subacromial decompression for subacromial shoulder pain… randomised surgical trial

Subacromial decompression surgery for rotator cuff disease

Acromiohumeral distance and supraspinatus tendon thickness in people with shoulder impingement syndrome…

Scapular dyskinesis

Welcome to Episode 57 of the Movement Logic podcast. In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss the fact that lifting heavy is not automatically a strength sport and that more people would feel invited to lift heavy if the media didn’t fixate so much on barbells as equipment for large, young, competitive male lifters and instead represented people that look more like everyone else and shared goals beyond competitive ones.

You will learn:

• The difference between powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, body-building, and lifting heavy weights.
• Why large, young men are over-represented in the media’s depiction of lifting heavy weights, and how this has been a deterrent to other groups of people (especially older women) who potentially have more to gain from lifting heavy weights than large, young men do.
• How competitive athletes often have to take their training to extreme levels, but how everyone else who wants to see enormous benefits to their health can train with a far more moderate approach.
• Sarah and Laurel’s first impression of lifting heavy weights growing up.
• How being an elite athlete can often mean sacrificing non-insignificant aspects of health.
• How when women start lifting weights they also start saying no to toxic bullshit in their lives.
• Risk of injury is often higher amongst more experienced/elite lifters.
• How women’s fear of getting “bulky” is understandable given that in our patriarchal society, women are often rewarded for a small and thin appearance.
• Ironically lifting heavy, despite what conventional wisdom might have us believe, is not typically the best way to bulk up.
• Everyone assumes that old age means getting frail, gaining weight, and becoming less capable, but it absolutely does not need to.
• Standing up out of a chair becomes a non-issue if older people are regularly squatting heavy.

Sign up for our Bone Density Course: Lift for Longevity before the October 8th deadline!

A 4-Year Analysis of the Incidence of Injuries Among CrossFit-Trained Participants

Episode 1: Movement vs Exercise vs Sport

Episode 16: Training the Non-Traditional Athlete with Rosalyn Mayse, AKA Roz the Diva

Episode 45: Injury and Safety in Strength and Yoga

Episode 11: Let's Stop Fragilifying Older People Already

Does Menopause Cause Weight Gain?

Welcome to Episode 56 of the Movement Logic podcast. In this episode, Sarah is talking about hypermobility, and what if any connection exists between hypermobility and osteoporosis.

You will learn:

• Hypermobility, EDS, and Marfan’s Syndrome, explained
• Is there any agreement in the research around hypermobility and osteoporosis
• Why research quality always matters when we’re trying to determine a connection between conditions
• What does ‘statistically significant’ mean and why it matters for research
• What criteria matter when we’re looking at research studies
• Why hypermobile people should be lifting heavy weights, regardless of what the research shows

Alison Lloyd Instagram

Prevalence of generalized joint hypermobility, musculoskeletal injuries, and chronic musculoskeletal pain among American university students

Beighton Scale

Hospital Del Mar Scale

Ehlers-Danlos Society

The Marfan Foundation

Hypermobility syndrome increases the risk for low bone mass

The Relationship of Joint Hypermobility, Bone Mineral Density, and Osteoarthritis in the General Population:The Chingford Study

Ultrasonographic, axial, and peripheral measurements in female patients with benign hypermobility syndrome

Bone Disease in Patients with Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes

Sign up for our Bone Density Course: Lift for Longevity before the October 8th deadline!

Welcome to Episode 55 of the Movement Logic podcast. In this episode, Laurel answers two questions that she gets regularly from folks online. They are: How can I get started with strength training? And, how can I “learn more about” strength training? Spoiler: the best way to get started with strength training (the doing and the teaching) is by…wait for it…strength training!

In this episode you will learn:

• The three most important elements of strength training—exercise technique, programming, and coaching.
• Why yoga and Pilates teachers are already generally well-versed in exercise technique, but without the added component of external load and the goal of strength.
• Yoga and Pilates teachers are typically not well-versed in programming, which is how we apply the principle of progressive overload to work toward building strength.
• Coaching is key for deep understanding of both exercise technique and programming.
• Laurel’s evolution from teaching yoga to becoming a strength coach.
• The plusses, minuses and trade-offs of DIY program templates, group classes, one-on-ones, and more.
• How yoga and Pilates teachers are accustomed to learning in a live, follow along format, and given then, how it can be a rude awakening to discover that programs in strength are often delivered in PDF format and personal trainer certifications mostly ask you to read a textbook and pass a test.
• Why personal trainer certifications do not provide very much practical know-how for how to be a personal trainer.
• How the Bone Density Course: Lift for Longevity delivers on the three most important elements of getting started with strength and learning about strength training—exercise technique, programming, and coaching.
• How the CSCS is widely considered the gold standard of personal trainer certifications but that it almost exclusively caters to competitive athletes (who make up a fraction of people who resistance train.)
• How being a dedicated student of the thing you eventually want to teach is the most valuable way to prepare yourself to actually teach something.
• How strength is defined, the systems in the body involved, and what the main adaptations (or changes) to your body are when you build strength.
• That we can be strong in many ways,so it’s helpful to have a specific performance goal.
• Why specific, performance goals are the best way to reach health and aesthetic goals.

Sign up for our free info session all about our Bone Density Course: Lift for Longevity Thursday, Sep. 22nd 12 PT/ 3 ET

Sign up for our Bone Density Course: Lift for Longevity before the October 8th deadline! We won’t be offering this for another year.

The NSCA textbook is used to study for the CSCS - Essentials of Strength and Conditioning

Effect of Online Home-Based Resistance Exercise Training on Physical Fitness, Depression, Stress…

Association of Efficacy of Resistance Exercise Training With Depressive Symptoms…

Welcome to Season 3 and Episode 54 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss dogmatic beliefs and myths around the lower back, upper back, and neck from the yoga, Pilates, and strength training worlds. 

You will learn:

• That the spine is made up of over 360 joints so maybe we should move it in all the ways (instead of keep it neutral all the time).
• That people are really bad at determining what position the spine is in just by observing (says research).
• That movement variety and movement preparation > “fixing” someone's alignment in a movement.
• Most yoga teachers never learn how to help their students progressively overload the strength they'd need to actually do the poses they teach.
• Pain causes people to adopt certain postures, but then what happens is people often flip this in their mind and say that it's the person's suboptimal posture that caused them the pain.
• Posture neither causes nor predicts pain (says science.)
• Lumbar flexion is demonized while sitting (don’t schlump) or bending forward (don’t round your back!) but research has been unable to connect flexing the lumbar spine in these scenarios with low back pain or injury.
• Deadlifting and squatting have been fearmongered to people who flex their lumbar spines in these exercises, but laboratory equipment has shown that even when it looks like someone has a neutral spine in these exercises, their lumbar spine is actually quite flexed.
• Any exercise is better than no exercise for low back pain, but no particular exercise is better than any other for low back pain.
• Why thoracic/upper back “hyper” kyphosis (a rounded upper back) is not a pathology.
• That back-bending is probably just flat bending in the thoracic spine.
• That “tech neck” does not predict neck pain.
• The neck is not a crane, and so we cannot apply the same physics to predict how a forward neck will respond to holding the load of the head forward of the body that we’d use to predict how a crane will respond to holding a load forward of its foundation.
• People who force their necks to be neutral have more pain than people with tech neck posture.

Sign up here for the Live Strength Training Webinar on Sept 14th with 30 day replay

Research mentioned in this episode:

Spinal Degeneration in Asymptomatic Populations

Intervertebral disc herniation: studies on a porcine model

To flex or not to flex? Is there a relationship between lumbar spine flexion during lifting and low back pain?

Arthrogenic neuromusculature inhibition: A foundational investigation of existence in the hip joint

Effects of load on good morning kinematics and EMG activity

Posture and time spent using a smartphone are not correlated with neck pain

Is neck posture subgroup in late adolescence a risk factor for persistent neck pain in young adults?

Welcome to Episode 53 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah and Laurel dissect a few research papers that studied the effects of various rest periods between loading bone, and how these rest periods can impact the efficacy of our bone density building.

You will learn:

• Osteoblasts and osteoclasts, defined
• Why bone building reminds Sarah of Fraggle Rock
• What does your bones’ mechanosensitivity have to do with its response to load
• Why bone cells remind Laurel of herself (they’re easily bored)
• What parameters create an osteogenic response in bone cells
• Why yoga, Pilates, and other bodyweight exercise will never be enough to generate progressive bone building
• What makes a good study (hint: having a control group matters)
• What is cellular accommodation and why does it rely on path dependence
• Where bones get the most input for the changes they make
• How do we take advantage of periodization and programming for greatest effect
• What is a training block and how should you use it for your workouts

Sign up here for the Live Strength Training Webinar on Sept 14th with 30 day replay

Cellular accommodation and the response of bone to mechanical loading

Mechanosensitivity of the rat skeleton decreases after a long period of loading, but is improved with time off

Recovery periods restore mechanosensitivity to dynamically loaded bone