223: Charlie Reid on a Learner-Centered Approach to Performance and Dissolving the Term of “Corrective Exercise” | Sponsored by SimpliFaster

Today’s podcast features personal trainer, massage therapist and musician, Charlie Reid. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area for 8 years of my life brought with it the opportunity to meet and learn from many wonderful and knowledgeable coaches and trainers.  One of those that I met was Charlie, who I met at Pat Davidson’s “Rethinking the Big Patterns” seminar. Charlie and I later were able to both spend time at Kezar stadium learning sprint and movement philosophy from Adarian Barr, while having plenty of conversations on training. Charlie is one of the smartest and wisest coaches that you may not know.  His base of knowledge is massive, as well as the range of those coaches and systems he has spent time learning from.  If there is a system of thought out there in the world of movement and human performance, there is a good chance Charlie has experience with it.  Charlie is not only a strength coach, but also a certified massage practitioner, and spent years as a professional musician. On the podcast today, Charlie helps us “zoom out” our views on things like stretching, corrective exercise and motor learning.  At the core of our chat today is an extended discussion on the redundancy of the term “corrective exercise” and how to look at the body in a manner that leaves us wondering what truly needs to be corrected.  We also get into a learner-centered approach, and how facilitating that approach may differ from working from novices, up to more advanced athletes. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage Timestamps and Main Points 5:50 What Charlie learned from a silent meditation retreat, and what he learned from that in regards to exercise and the body 9:50 The relationship between long isometric holds, fatigue and heart rate variability 17:00 Charlie’s experience with the Egoscue method, and what good could possibly come from holding a passive stretch for such a long period of time 23:20 Ideas on Feldenkrais and the body’s ability to heal itself, as well as teaching individuals to help themselves as the highest order priority in coaching 36:05 Charlie’s take on corrective work and rehab based on a learner-centered approach versus a structured approach 48:05 How being a massage and body-worker has helped Charlie to acquire a better understanding of the body and how to train individuals 57:20 How Charlie puts together a rehab/training program based on common principles and concepts 1:01:20 Where respiration and breathing has landed for Charlie and how he integrates it “As soon as we get the slightest bit of discomfort, we cringe up, and tighten up, instead of softening around the pain” “I wonder if you could look at someone’s HRV score, and correlate that with their ability to tolerate long isometrics” “Two of the most common reasons why bodies get better is novelty and graded exposure” “Feldenkrais never told you what to do, you got to come up with your own solutions, that is the highest level” “When you give constraints for a beginner, maybe it’s better to create more structure first” “The consumer really drives (which coach) gets the dollars, and that’s really frustrating (in light of a “position driven” versus “learner driven” approach to training)” “I’m less and less a fan of “corrective” exercise, it’s kind of a popular word, I know language is important, but I don’t know if we are correcting anything.  They are low-force, inner directed mindful exercises to generate some awareness around something” “I’m always asking the questions, say you are doing a side-clam for your glute medius, but show me where that goes, show me where that’s eventually going to lead to” “I don’t love the term “corrective exercise”, it’s all just gradations of movement” “I will do quote-on-quote on corrective exercises if I have to; but only if I have to” “Anything that has a name like a “fascia blaster” I am probably not going to subscribe” “If you are feeling the need that you need to foam roll 30 minutes before the workout, maybe let’s talk about what’s going on, and maybe we can save you some time” “Foam rolling and doing low-level exercises is no guarantee that you are going to avoid injury; I’d rather you go home and take a nap” “I start there with all my people, learning how to get a rib-cage stacked over a pelvis” About Charlie Reid Charlie Reid B.S., CSCS, CPT, is a movement educator, coach and massage therapist based out of San Francisco, CA. His passion lies in helping others realize their physical potential through training smarter and learning to move their bodies in the most efficient way possible. He believes that physical health and well-being can be distilled from learning to master one's own body through guided discovery and consistent practice.  When he's not coaching one-on-one, teaching workshops, or hosting seminars in the Bay Area, he is most likely drinking too much espresso whilst torturing a bass guitar. Some of Charlie’s certifications and education includes: B.S. in Kinesiology (San Diego State University) National Strength and Conditioning Association_-Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (NSCA-CSCS) American College of Sports Medicine-Certified Personal Trainer (ACSM-CPT) Functional Range Assessment Certified (FRA) Functional Range Conditioning-Mobility Specialist (FRCmc) Functional Range Release-Upper, Spine, and Lower Limb Certified Dynamic Contraction Technique and Ki-Hara Resistance Stretching Certified Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certified Transcripts: Joel Smith: So you were just telling me about a silent meditation retreat, and I'm curious, what did you learn on that? And in the sense that you could relate it to just things that perhaps we do in the gym or in rehab or quote-unquote corrective type work. Charlie Reid: Yeah. I mean, a little bit of backstory. I toyed around with some meditation things and I had done this thing called MBSR, which is mindfulness-based stress reduction. And it culminated in a one-day meditation retreat and it was kind of like a collection of different mindfulness techniques. So you got a little bit of exposure to different things, whether that's yoga, walking, meditation, sitting meditation, body scan meditation. But really the one day retreat, which was six hours long, was like the most powerful thing for me. So, you know, my brain was like, I want to do, what's like the Navy seals boot camp of meditation retreats? And talking with some friends and colleagues and whatnot, they said, Oh, the 10-day vipassana, you gotta do that. And so, my stepfather sadly had passed away in 2018 and I was like, kind of in this existential crisis. Charlie Reid: And I decided that this was the year that I was going to do this. So that's how I arrived as a little bit of the backstory there. But what's interesting. And I think for movement professionals, coaches, fitness professionals, we're such movement-oriented people. So I would say as it relates to movement and fitness, that taking some time to not move and just to sit is probably very, very challenging. At least it certainly was for me to be at this meditation retreat, having to, you know, you're meditating for 12, 14 hours a day and there's no talking, your exercise is basically walking in between, you know, hour-long or two hour-long sits. So, that was probably the most fascinating thing to me was kind of getting away from this idea of moving and starting to just sit with yourself. Charlie Reid: And also as we were discussing, just a moment ago that, sensations in your body physical sensations are transient a lot of times, they come and go. So they come and go into your awareness and they're not always permanent. So maybe as it relates to something like pain, oftentimes sensations of pain that you would feel in your body, or if you define it as pain are just a sensation like any other. And so you'll, for example, be sitting and I would experience like incredible back pain, but if I would just sit there for long enough, oftentimes it would go away. And what actually made the pain worse was like trying to want to be somewhere else other than with the pain, which could be a valuable lesson for people. Because we just, as soon as we get a little slightest bit of discomfort, we're just like, Ooh, no, we cringe and tighten up around the pain as opposed to softening around the pain. So those are just some of the many lessons I think that could be gleaned from that, but I'm sure everybody has their own experience and should have their own experience going through something like that. But yeah, it was a very, very cool experience. Joel Smith: I think in our general culture, we just don't tend to take much time period for anything that involves prolonged time periods of sensing and just being forced to sit with ourselves. It definitely takes some intention to do that. Was this before or after you and I were hanging out at Kaiser talking about extreme ISO lunges? I forget. Charlie Reid: That's a good question. I think it was afterwards or might've been right afterwards. Yeah, I can't remember. But I had been doing like isometrics... That actually be interesting to see, like if I did some isometrics beforehand and then did the 10 day sit and just see how the quality of that felt, or maybe I could sit with it for longer. I can't recall. Joel Smith: I think there's a lot of things to be learned out of like just the extreme isometric lunge, holding a prolonged, full stretch lunge position for time. And I think one of the thoughts that has crossed my mind is where is this pain coming from? Or what is this? And actually, I should say the most extreme,