355: Stiffness: The Good and The Bad

This is the real life runners podcast, episode number 355. Good stiffness versus bad stiffness. What's up runners? Welcome to the show. Today we are talking all about stiffness, because oftentimes when we think of stiffness, we think of it as a bad thing, but it can actually be good. So today we're talking about two types of stiffness. One that's unfavorable and one that is favorable, and how we can increase the wanted levels of stiffness and decrease the unwanted levels of stiffness. And this is a good episode. I mean, I've got. Feelings of stiffness all over the place post surgery. And I, we're going to highlight why those showed up and how we can all deal with different areas of stiffness and why some are actually beneficial. Right. And so our goal with this podcast, like with all of our podcasts is to give you information so that you can understand, okay, this is actually a good thing. This is one of the things that I'm going for here, because oftentimes when we feel different sensations in the body. Sometimes our brain goes on high alert and wants to tell us that something is wrong. And that is not always true. Sometimes these different sensations that we feel in our bodies are a good sign or a sign that our training is actually working and our bodies are making the adaptations that we're going for. Okay. So if we kind of take it all the way back to the beginning, what's the reason that we train in the first place? We train to try to make our bodies stronger. We train If we want to run longer or run faster, our bodies need to adapt because where you are at the beginning of your running journey is not where you are when you are standing on the starting line of a marathon, for example, you have to go through training to get your body stronger and improve your endurance and make yourself actually able to achieve that feat of running a marathon and your body needs to go through different levels of adaptation to make that happen. Yes. And it's not all just adaptation of, uh, stretching a little bit more, which I hear, I don't know, almost every single person that I've ever talked to about running have always asked, Oh, you must stretch all the time. They asked me if I've got hurt a lot and then say no. And they're like, Oh, do you stretch a lot? I used to run, but I always felt sore. So I don't think I was stretching enough. And then they asked me about shoes. It's pretty much how that conversation goes. So, so many people do blame stretching or think that the solution is stretching. And as you're going to see today, that I don't think I even mentioned stretching. Oh, actually I do mention a little bit. It is one line item in today's episode, but it is not stretching. the highlight by any means. Okay, so let's go into the two different types of stiffness. So I categorize these pretty plain and simple as stiffness is quote unquote bad and then stiffness. That's good. Okay, so let's talk about stiffness. That's bad. So when I think about quote unquote bad stiffness, I think about When you are stiff and sore, getting out of bed in the morning or changing positions, and this is a lot of that, you know, like when you see somebody stand up and kind of put their hand on their lower back, right? Or like their hands on their knees and they're kind of, it's like almost like you can hear that like, Crickety, crickety sound when people are getting up out of a chair. Yes. I think I just saw this on a, on an Instagram post of signs that you're getting older. You make noises when standing up from the couch and that's this one. Yeah. But I would argue with that because I have been making sounds with, with movement ever since I was like 11 or 12 years old. No, you snap, crackle and pop all over the place. The suggestion was like, you audibly sigh. when you get up. Oh, gotcha. It's that noise. Okay. It's like, oh. That's the one. It's, it's like more of that like moan versus a sigh. Yes. Yeah. Um, so this is one of the things that we often think of as bad stiffness. And when I think of this type, type of stiffness, a lot of times people think of like joint stiffness. Sometimes people think of muscle stiffness, but really I think of this as joints as you know, there's really a lack of range of motion or a lack of mobility, which is our body's ability to move smoothly through a given range of motion. Okay, that's what mobility is and mobility is made up of both range of motion. And strength. Okay. So when I say range of motion, is that pretty clear or do I need to go into that in a little bit more detail? To me, range of motion is how far extremities can swing. So that that's my definition. If that works, then I think we can move along. If you want more than that, I I'd expand on your end. It works for the most part. It's just more than extremities. So it's also your core, like for example, your spine, there's different joints in Also need to be mobile and stiff. So for specifically talking about like lower back, um, when we think of the spine, the spine is actually made up of vertebrae, individual vertebrae, which are like building blocks, one on top of the other, and there's motion that happens in between each of those segments or that should happen. Um, but stiffness often happens when there is a lack of motion that should be there in between those segments. Then, and the segments kind of move as, uh, A big block of like five kind of all moving together instead of five individual pieces. Yeah. So then they're, they're just not, it's like a snake that if you imagine a snake, like ate a, a really stiff straw, so it can't just kind of slither along. There's just like a part of it that won't bend and curve kind of how your, your spine gets going is too many segments get glued together. Kind of. Yeah. We'll, I mean, we'll use glue for lack of it, but that's a good analogy. Like it's a good way that we can kind of think about it. That's not like there's, They're not actually glued together. Of course, it's all metaphor. Of course. Yeah. Anything that I say comes not from a doctoral perspective. So, yeah, but basically it is, so range of motion is the amount of motion that is available to you in a given joint. And those joints could be your shoulder, your knee, your ankle. But it can also be the joints in between your, you know, the vertebrae of your spine. There's lots of different joints in the body and a joint is simply where two bones meet. Yes. Okay. So I never really thought about two bones meeting as two different vertebrae, but I actually had this one just the other day. I couldn't turn my head to the right all the way. Well, I could just, it was uncomfortable. I could turn to the left, I could turn to the right, but when I turned to the right, it was less comfortable. That's a mobility thing, right? It's kind of, you feel that like pinch in your neck. Yeah. Oftentimes when you feel that pinch, it's because there, there's like a joint that's kind of stuck. Um, so it can be stuck, closed or stuck open. So if you, you know, there's ways to kind of figure that out. And so the answer is marry a physical therapist. Yes, exactly. But essentially our bodies are made to move. And so when we are losing mobility, when we are feeling sick, stiff. Like when the way that most of us think of stiff stiffness, it's essentially a loss of mobility. It's a loss of a smooth range of motion with for a given body part. Okay, that I mean, that makes sense. I'm good with that. But then when you move on here, And this is, I think is why we're not getting into stretching because we're not talking about a stiffness in muscles. You're talking about within the joint itself, and that's not where muscles are. Like, muscles are along the bones. If I'm pulling back, you're the doctor here, but if I'm pulling back from my high school anatomy class, muscles go along the bones. And you're talking about where two different bones connect to each other. Right. And I mean, muscles go in lots of different directions, not just along bones. They can go, you know, In all sorts of directions in the body, but yeah, I mean, there can be muscle stiffness as well, but even if your muscles are stiff, stretching is not actually the answer. Stretching would be the answer if your muscle is too short. Okay. That's really the only time that you actually need to stretch, um, to perform what most people think of as stretching, which is static stretching, where you move into a position where you feel a pole and you hold it for an extended period of time. That is really if the muscle is too short and the shortness of the muscle is limiting your range of motion when we talk about stiffness. A lot of times it's more of a soreness. Um, and it's a lack of motion in the joint. So let's talk about what causes stiffness. stiffness, specifically in joints. So the first thing that causes stiffness in joints is a loss of synovial fluid, which is the fluid that is supposed to be in our joints. So essentially there is this fluid that is present in all of our joints and it's essentially like lubrication. So I think of it as WD 40 for our joints. So that's exactly what I was going to say. I think we've got this. I think we're, we're on the same page with the metaphor so far. Excellent. So, There's a certain level of synovial fluid that is supposed to be in our joints that just basically makes everything move nice and smooth and glide and roll smooth along each other the two bones, right? Because that's a joint is where two bones meet. So as we get older, we tend to lose synovial fluid. We can also lose synovial fluid through things like dehydration, um, because that is obviously a very important part of water, you know, having enough water in the body because water is a large part of what makes up synovial fluid. There's also other proteins and different things in there as well. Loss of synovial fluid definitely happens with aging, especially if our activity levels decrease as well. Okay, I mean, this seems like a whole lot of like interwoven components here is we're getting older therefore losing synovial fluid, but we might have dehydration and losing synovial fluid. Lack of activity might then lead to Not staying as hydrated as much because it's like, well, they didn't really do anything. I don't really need to drink much liquid, but then you're possibly losing synovial fluid. Yeah. So it's all tends to be a vicious cycle. So I know that when I talk to him, when I talk to my patients, um, in the clinic, oftentimes, like say for arthritis, right? Arthritis is a, an inflammatory joint condition. And as people get older, they often times like stop drinking water as much. And when I ask them why, it's often because they want to, they don't want to go to the bathroom as, as often. Because it's painful for them to get, to change positions. So the more they have to get up to go to the bathroom, then every time they get up, they have pain. And then they have to go to the bathroom. And so they don't want to drink water that's going to make them get up and go to the bathroom more. But by not moving and by not drinking water, then they're actually decreasing, you know, the liquid that's in their joints, which is actually making it more painful for them to stand up. So by not wanting to get up and go to the bathroom more, they're actually making it harder for themselves to get up and go to the bathroom. That's funny. Okay. So like in a couple of days post surgery, I was drinking as much water as I could, um, for, for various reasons. But one of them was literally, I wasn't able to move that much. Like I couldn't go out and exercise. We tried to walk that one day, definitely overdid it and was like, no, no, no. We could go around the whole Lake. We should not, we should have cut halfway on the bridge, but that's a different story. So I just, I kept drinking because my main activity was literally like. From bed to couch, from couch to bathroom, back to bed. Like that was my main movement involved trips to the bathroom, which involved getting up and down and up and back down somewhere else. And that alone was kind of challenging to me. But I knew that that was ultimately my main movement throughout the day. So I'm like, I should probably do this as often as possible. Right. But you also had a light at the end of the tunnel, you were recovering from surgery. So a lot of times people that have chronic, more chronic conditions like arthritis or chronic pain, they have a hard time thinking of this because they're like, well, this is just going to continue to get worse for the rest of my life. There's really not a light at the end of the tunnel unless they find a really good physical therapist that can teach them that their arthritis is not a death sentence. Well, okay. So you've got the arthritis is not a death sentence, but couldn't just drinking water just slow the downward spiral of arthritis? Yeah. Um, kind of, or this just this vicious cycle of you're dehydrated. So you don't move much because movement hurts, right? And then it just kind of keeps going. So there's obviously a lot of different factors at play here. So I, I'm not going to say here that, you know, drinking more water will improve your arthritis because that is not a claim that I'm going to make. It's not supported at all by science. Um, but I will say that yes, being hydrated does help to improve the synovial fluid. Then. If you're listening to this podcast, you're most likely a runner or want to be a runner, and regardless of your age, like maybe you do already have some start like arthritis, some stomach arthritis starting into like in your joints. Um, and that's fine. It's not, again, this does not mean you have to stop running. It means you just have to start doing things a little bit differently. Um, because arthritis does not mean that your life is as you know, it is over that you have to take a back seat to all the movement. It just means you have to do things a little bit differently and more intelligently. So, um, That's one thing. So synovial fluid is a reason that we have, um, lack of mobility and stiffness in our joints. The other thing that happens as we get older, um, and also just from excessive physical activity is decreases in cartilage and also dried out cartilage. And again, hard hydration levels do have, um, an effect on the hydration levels of our cartilage because cartilage absorbs fluid. All right. So is this the one? where your classic response to well, I don't want to run because it's bad for your knees. Is this the decreases in cartilage? Cause theoretically running should continue to impact on your legs and cause all the joints to sort of squeeze together. And I'm not saying this happens, but in theory, like it makes sense in my head that if I land on my leg, my lower leg, my upper leg are going to squeeze together at the knee and shrink down the amount of cartilage cushioning I have. So that could be, I, you know, a reason that people may say that. I don't quite know all of the reasons that people say that running is bad for your knees because it's a lie. Um, I can tell you all the reasons that running is not bad for your knees and that The way that, um, multiple research studies have shown that running actually has a protective effect on your knees because Cartilage is a dynamic structure and that means that it responds to the forces being placed on it So when we place more forces on our cartilage within reason, of course, then that's why I said before excessive physical activity excessive Weardown of cartilage excessive physical activity can definitely cause Wear down the cartilage in our joints, specifically in our knees. But if you're doing things in moderation, if you're doing things following an intelligent plan, it can actually improve the hydration in, in your cartilage and also lead to more cartilage growth. Because again, cartilage is a dynamic structure. Okay. So when you say excessive, is this actually just kind of. Less the volume that you're putting on yourself and more making sure that you're getting enough recovery between exercise bouts. There is a saying out there that there's no such thing as over training. There's only such thing as under recovery. I love that saying. So kind of, yes. Right. Because you, there's a lot of your, our bodies are amazing. They are so adaptable as long as we are doing things in a way. It is going to lead to less breakdown, well, more buildup than breakdown, right? So during recovery our bodies build back up, we've said this a million times on the podcast, um, and during workouts we tend to break down. So as long as our buildup and our breakdown either match or build up, In theory, and you know what we really want is that build up is outpacing our breakdown, right? Because we want we break down then we want to build up even stronger than we were before then yes So what was the original question? I kind of got off track. My question is if you're recovering enough except that's why excessive training is Very subjective because it's really just a matter of making sure that you have enough recovery, which is Incredibly individual. Well, so I There's other ways that training can be as excessive as well. It's, we're not just talking about mileage because, you know, if you go in to the gym and you've never lifted a weight before, and all of a sudden you try to deadlift 500 pounds, like you could just tear something, right? Like you could do like, Uh, and, and that would be excessive activity, like you're trying to lift an excessive amount of weight that your body's not prepared to handle. I mean, that seems like an acute injury. Can we take this to like a running, like if you're like us, we live on a pancake. So if we go someplace that is suddenly has some elevation and trails, you're one, you're going to get more, you know, uneven surfaces. You're going up and down hills. So even if you're used to going out for like 45 minutes, suddenly that could be a massive change in. The amount of training that you're doing because you're going up and down and the impacts on the body are definitely different. Definitely different and also It changes your effort levels automatically as well. And so if you are, you know, continuing to run at the same volume and also now all of your runs include Hills, your training load has just gone up massively. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense because your training load is both the number of miles that you are running and also the difficulty of those, those miles. Right. So if you're trying to maintain. The same pace, but suddenly you're running up a hill. That's definitely not the same effort, which is why you should just stick with the same effort and maybe you slow down on the hills. Exactly. So, um, so that would be like another reason. So we're talking about, we talked about synovial fluid decreases in cartilage and dried out cartilage. The other thing would be the stiffening of the joint capsule itself. So. Each joint where bone meets bone is surrounded by a joint capsule of connective tissue, and, um, again, with the loss of synovial fluid, with dehydration, with difference, there, there's actually, you know, changes in cartilage that happen as we start to get older, especially if we aren't doing things to try to counteract them, that can lead to a stiffening of the joint capsule itself, and a lot of this can be either from too much activity, too little activity, or inflammation. And inflammation can be caused again by too much activity or too little activity. Um, inflammation can also be caused by our food choices and that is different for everyone. It's not that, you know, there's a lot of people out there that will tell you that there are certain foods that are inflammatory and that there are other foods that are anti inflammatory. And that is true for some people, maybe even for the majority of people. But, you know, you might be an individual where There's a certain food that is supposed to be anti inflammatory for most people and it causes inflammation in your body, you know Some people that are not able to eat spinach for some reason, you know Or people that are not able to eat certain fruits or vegetables like vegetables in general are considered anti inflammatory, but there are some people that can't process them or that have reactions to different Vegetables, specifically like nightshade vegetables, tomatoes, bell peppers, those kinds of things. And so, food choices can definitely have an effect on the levels of inflammation in our body. And all of these different things that increase inflammation can cause increased stiffness in our joints and in our body. All right. I have a question to go back on this, this food choices. You pointed out some things of inflammation, the, the, you know, I'm sure that on most, every time I check the weather, one of the ads that pops up says this, this food is the crazy inflammation food, and then it shows some weird picture of your stomach. And it turns out it's a tomato. Um, but the. The issue I'm thinking of when you're trying to relate like over activity levels and people who are not eating enough Now you're you're causing this issue of you're not giving enough recovery that can't be helping anything like if you're training at a higher level and You're not fueling your body because you're trying to avoid certain foods because they might be more inflammatory foods and you end up just literally under fueling your body and Is that connected to this or is that going to hit us in a different way? Is that not necessarily going to give me stiffness that might just lead to longer term injuries because I'm just generally under fueled or is that at all connected to, uh, like this whole. mobility issue. I wouldn't say that under fueling has a direct effect on stiffness. I would say that maybe indirectly because you're breaking down muscles and not giving your body the fuel and the building blocks to build and back up stronger. But I wouldn't, I would say that would, that's kind of a stretch. Okay, so our direct thing is certain foods may be inflammatory for certain people and make sure that you're drinking plenty of water. Those are a big Yeah, and the other treatments for this type of stiffness would be intentional movement. So you want to make sure that you are moving your body through these range of motions, because there is that principle that many of us, probably all of us, have heard before, which is, use it or lose it. And that principle, Tends to be true, especially as we continue to get older when we do not go and like intentionally put our body through different movements, we start to lose the ability to actually do those movements. So yes, use like using movement as medicine, using movement in a very intentional way to stretch into some of these, these Movements or perform some of these things that we don't do on a normal basis with our just normal daily activities, you know Like there's a lot of things that we don't do and there's a really funny Instagram account I'll have to try to find it and maybe link it in the show notes and he does these videos where it's like, if our daily activities mimicked the movements that we do at the gym, you know, and then it shows him doing like a single leg squat, uh, like a pistol squat to like pick up an object on the floor, right. Or like do these funny things. It's like, we do all these kinds of crazy movements in the gym that we don't perform in our normal daily day to day lives. No, we just don't. And so there's certain movements that. That we can't, we're not used to. And so, if, uh, one of the big ones that is hitting me lately is, I can't do the move, like, if I was trying to kick a ball to my left or right. Like, if I was trying to basically take my right leg and swing it across my left leg. That is super, super painful and uncomfortable for me. Because it's not a movement that I've done and post surgery It was movement that I specifically tried to avoid doing because it was super super painful And so now it's just really uncomfortable. I'm not doing damage when I do it, but it's just a really Uncomfortable Sometimes it catches me with pain. Sometimes it kind of makes me wince if I do that, but I'm trying to do like slow karaoke kind of movement because Under your suggestion. Yeah. Use it or lose it. And I don't normally walk that way. Like if I'm going from my classroom up to the front office to make some copies, I don't walk in that manner. It will be super awkward. It would be really fun if you started doing that. I really think I might actually just to try and gain that movement throughout the day. Yeah. And then like people would just look at you in the hallway and be like, what is Mr. Brown doing? They already think I'm weird. So it's just going to be fine. Totally fine. But the other thing that I want to point out is, and this is one of the reasons that. exercises are not always functional exercises because a lot of the movements that we do in the gym tend to be isolated, single joint types of movements. Unless we're looking at compound movements like squats or deadlifts or those kinds of things, especially if you are someone that goes to the gym and uses machines, oftentimes we're looking at one, like a movement, a very isolated movement in one Plane of motion, and that is typically not what our everyday lives look like. Most of our movements in our everyday lives involve all three planes of motion and In combination with each other right even just like getting up and out of a chair like if you think about getting up from the dinner table, you are both like standing up which is like in the vertical, you know, vertical range of motion you're twisting probably to get out of your chair and it's not like you first like, First, we only twist. First, we twist to the side and then we stand up. It's all like a combination movement of where all planes of motion kind of go together. And unless we're trying to do those things intentionally, that's not often how we train ourselves in the gym. You definitely very intentionally do each individual range of motion when you are trying to recover. It's like, well, the twisting is super uncomfortable. But suddenly it makes you Yeah, when you have a stiff joint or a painful joint, you for sure are doing them like one at a time. Because suddenly you're aware of how many movements and how many different directions you are trying to do things because, well, you might be able to go up and down, maybe you can't go side to side, maybe you can do up and down, side to side, but that twisting is suddenly too much for you. And so you're going to be like, I can do up, down, side to side. And then I have to really focus so I can now do the twisting part. And it's just, it's weird. But. I learned way, way back when I was still in high school, where there was a guy at the gym that I would go to with my dad. And he said, This is a good rule for always, but especially you as a younger kid getting into lifting, try to avoid the machines. Is this still good takeaway advice decades later? Yes. Great. Yeah. I don't really like machines. I like machines for rehab because you are trying to isolate. One or two muscles in a very controlled plane of motion so machines can be great for rehab Especially at the early stages because you are trying to avoid Irritating some of those sensitive tissues, but for generalized strengthening Yes Like dumbbells are definitely the way to go because your body has to stabilize itself In order to perform those movements. So it's like you get the stable and the strength, stability and strength training in one, um, but it becomes a problem when people try to lift weights that are too heavy and they don't have the strength and the stability muscles to support them. All right. So, so, so in general, the machines. Can, can decrease your risk of injury because it allows you to lift heavier weight. So if you're someone that is so focused on the numbers and are like, I bicep curl 50 pounds, you know, the, on a machine, it's like, well, that's not really functional, but great. Congratulations, you know, like it can be, uh, machines are, can be a good tool to kind of help build you up, especially in the beginning. Um, but in general, they're not. They're not super functional. So, but they're a decent start wave, whether it's rehab or whether you're really trying to get into a strength training and the dumbbells might be too much for you, but if you do it on a, on a machine, sometimes it makes the lift a little bit easier. So you can use it as a, as a starting point. It's like, uh, bumpers when you start bowling or, you know, forever when you go bowling, it's just, it's nicer with the bumper, sir, your score is automatically higher. Um, so yeah, so the ways that we can treat. The, this joint stiffness, intentional movement, making sure that you're actually taking your body through these movements in a smart way. Like if you're, I'm not saying that if a movement is painful, you should just try to like push your way through and like, it's okay. No pain, no gain. Like, no, like you can gently start to push into that. Range of motion restriction and then pull back out of it and then you push into it and pull back out of it I've done this a million times with my rehab patients, you know after surgery that have very stiff joints We have to when I do range of motion types of exercise I will move them into that painful place where I would like we start tell me when it starts to starts to hurt We kind of move into it and then we come back out of it. We move into it. We come back out of it So it's not like I just take them up and like go Okay, it's starting to hurt. Okay, good. I'm just gonna keep pushing and like let's just keep going and there are therapists that do that and you know, especially for certain conditions, but And that's a whole nother story. Um, so yes, intentional movement, strength training definitely helps when, when it comes to stiffness, because again, mobility, when we're talking about mobility, it is a combination of range of motion and strength. You have to have not only the available range of motion, but also the strength to be able to move through that entire range of motion. So strength training is a very important part of, you know, trying to help decrease overall joint stick stiffness. And also. When your muscles get stronger through strength training, you're also supporting the joint more. So that can actually help to decrease the inflammation that often happens if the joint is unstable because when the joint is unstable and the bones are rubbing together in an uncontrolled way, it can actually increase the inflammation in the joint. When your muscles are stronger and they're supporting the joint more, then you have that more fluid, more coordinated movement. There's less of that like, Kind of rubbing and side to side motion that the joint our joints don't like well I mean that also goes right to that strength training that is Actually functional strength training where you're not on the machine on the machine You're like, all right I'm gonna get this muscle really strong and then I'm gonna get this muscle really strong and then this muscle really strong and in theory They should all work together to help you do what you need to do Whatever the motion is, but you strengthen them all individually. So now you have to coordinate those three exercises. Whereas there's probably a functional thing that you could do that would strengthen all three simultaneously and game coordination with it. Right. And you know, this is, this is a conversation I think for another day too, because there are benefits of strengthening things individually and then coordinating them. Because if you're trying to both strengthen and coordinate all at the same time, like The progress is going to be a little slower. So there are places, especially in rehab for both things. Um, but that's, you know, a conversation for another day. So let's just like, I want to wrap this up and move on to our, our good stiffness. Um, so a couple other things that you can do to help treat this bad stiffness in your joints, um, Running and walking, like I said, are both very good and can help to increase the fluid and the cartilage health of your joints, um, and dynamic stretching and mobility. So when I talk about stretching, I'm not talking about going into a position and holding it for an extended period of time. I'm talking about going into a position, kind of finding that, um, Limit of how far you can go when it starts to feel a little uncomfortable Holding it for a little bit for maybe five to ten seconds and then coming back out of it like going back in and Coming back out and you'll find if you do that like ten repetitions of that You're gonna probably be able to go further on that tenth repetition than you were on repetition number one Yeah, I've done this before I do this all the time But it is again helpful to marry a physical therapist or join the Academy. So you have one on call at all times Also a good choice Um, and if you want to join the wait list, head over to realliferunners. com forward slash academy and put your name on the priority list today so that you know when we're opening up the doors. That was like a little soft toss. I know. That's why I kind of liked it in that special voice. Um, all right, so let's talk about when stiffness is actually a good thing. Okay. And the number one. What reason or time that stiffness is a good thing, especially for us as runners is when it comes to our tendons. Okay, now take it back a little bit. A tendon is what attaches the muscle to a bone. Okay, so we're not talking about stiffness in the muscle itself. The muscle is kind of like the belly, like you think of it like the meat, but the tendon is like the white part that attaches the muscle to the bone. And we want to think of tendons like a rubber band. So increased stiffness actually allows for greater energy return. So, Why don't you kind of give us an example, the metaphor of using a spring here, because that's how I like to think of tendons in our body is they're like springs and that's why increased stiffness is a good thing. So physics teacher, why don't you put on your physics hat and kind of explain that to us? All right. So if you've got like a really deep tendon, Tough, tightly coiled spring. So to try to stretch it out is very difficult to try and take the spring and compress it is very difficult. If you compress that really difficult to squeeze spring, when you let it go, it's probably going to go firing across the room. Okay. I did this. I made a little catapult it. Well, it looked like a cannon that we had in our classroom and you could pull back on it. It was a really tightly, uh, it was a hard to pull back spring. And so when you let it go, it shot the ball really fast across the room. If I replace that with this really loose, very kind of easy slinky. Yes. If you replaced it with a slinky and tried to do that, like, Oh, I want to pull in the slinky and let go. Nothing's happening. It's not even recoiling because it's so easy to stretch out and to push back together. So you're not getting any actual return off of this. That's my metaphor. So another way that you can think of it, if you're not really sure of like the springs, it would be a rubber band. Okay. So the same kind of concept applies here. If you think of our. A rubber band. If you have like a really thick rubber band that is. really hard to stretch. That is a stiff rubber band versus the one that you've used a million times. Ladies, you know, we all know this with our hair ties as well, right? The ones that have been used a million times and are stretchy, they're not going to hold our hair in place as well when they're all stretchy. And if you were to, again, stretch them and try to shoot them across the room at people, the stiff one is going to go a lot further than the loose one. I like that you went to hair ties. I went to the elastic in the pair of boxer shorts I have. That is right running shorts, right? Or running shorts. Running shorts would be another good one. So when, so what we want with our tendons, okay, so think of our tendon, your, your tendons either as a rubber band or a coil, whichever one makes more sense to you, we want that stiffness because that actually helps to improve push off and energy transfer. Transfer. So essentially with every step that we take when we're running, we are compressing. Let's think of the Achilles tendon. Everybody knows the Achilles tendon, right? It's down at the bottom of our foot and ankle. Um, at the down at the end of our calf muscle. That's what attaches the calf muscle to our heel bone. So when we step down, like when we land on our foot, our Achilles tendon becomes compressed, kind of like pushing that spring down and our, if the spring, the Achilles tendon is nice and stiff, it will push back up against the ground and propel us forward. So this is a really good thing because it's actually decreasing the energy that we need to run, because this is all just, Automatic. Like this happens automatically. It's just the mechanical property of the tendon itself, right? Literally. As soon as your foot lands on the ground, whatever the ground is, your foot wants to spring back off of it. As long as the tendon is nice and tight, you get this natural spring back effect. As soon as your foot lands, it springs back up and it happens really quick. It's why we don't want to take these slow plotting steps because if you land and then your foot's on the ground for so long, it gives it time for the, the. rubber band, the, the, uh, the coil, the tendon in this case to sort of be like, all right, now I'm compressed and now I'm just going to relax back to where I was in my compressed state. And so we don't get the spring back off of this. The nice quick steps allow us to actually spring as we run down the road. Right. And this is one of the reasons that cadence is so important because the quicker steps that we take again, will help to improve that natural energy transfer. Because if our tendons are. Less stiff like a loose rubber band. It takes longer to transfer that energy and when it takes longer than energy is often lost in that process as well, which means that we need more force to be generated from our muscles. So now our muscles are working harder, which uses more energy. And that means that we're going to fatigue sooner as well. But if we can take advantage of this natural, mechanical advantage, the way that our tendons are built and just transfer energy more quickly and more efficiently by having stiffer tendons, we're going to fatigue less quickly. Our muscles don't have to do as much work and we're going to be able to run faster and longer with less risk of injury. Or we can cheat the system and buy stupidly expensive shoes with carbon plates inside of them. Well, and I'm glad you brought this up because that's exactly what they're based on. Yeah, which is why they're fantastic. Don't get me wrong. They're, they're phenomenal and completely changing the entire world of running. For the right person. For the right person. For recreational runners, they're actually showing that these carbon plated shoes Is actually significantly increasing energy risk. And there's a whole, I mean, I feel like that's a whole separate episode that we can go into. Yeah. Maybe we're going to have to talk about this after we stop recording on this one, cause that sounds exciting. Um, in like a super nerdy running way, but the, the. In theory, the concept behind this is instead of worrying about your Achilles tendon giving you this appropriate springback effect, the companies have designed this piece of carbon fiber inside of it and says, this is going to give you amazing springback. So as your foot lands, it essentially flattens out the piece of carbon inside of the shoe, but it wants to be in a bent Wave. And so when you land on it, it flattens. It immediately wants to curve back to the wave. And then by doing that, it pops your foot off the ground. That's the theory behind it. And for some people it is unbelievable and it is dropping world records. Like you can't believe. Right. When, when you're running form is already super efficient, like elite runners and professional runners are like, they've worked for years, some of them for decades on. Optimizing their running form and optimizing their muscle strength and all these other things you put a carbon plate under their foot and all of a sudden they're like you said, just breaking world records left and right, right? When you put that same thing on a recreational runner that still has a lot of work to do and, Is definitely not optimized yet. And they're just trying to cut off some time from their marathon or half marathon by putting some, some shoes on their feet. Like it can lead to a lot of problems. And you know, maybe we can do a, an episode about that. All right. I got a quick, quick metaphor on that one. This is sticking me behind like a hot rod. Like you should not have me be like, you know what we're going to do? Let's stick you behind this. You have 7, 000 horsepower engine in front of you just to hit the gas pedal. It's going to go great. No, it's not. That is not going to go well for me. I am not going to be able to drive in a straight line. I'm quickly going to peel off to the left and crash into that wall. And I feel like that's the setup that some of these have, especially some of the really early carbon fibers where the companies were just like gobs of foam and let's stick a plate and then we'll charge an extra a hundred dollars for it. They were so unstable and they were just a setup for disaster. Yeah. Yeah. And so. In other words, you know, don't just go into a carbon plated shoe. Like make sure that it's right, it's the right choice for you. Um, and ease into it and our future episode will help you figure that out. So, okay. The other thing that I just want to point out, um, is that. As we get older, we tend to lose tendon stiffness automatically. So we actually need to be more conscious about trying to do things that will improve the levels of stiffness in our tendons so that we don't lose as much as, you know, just kind of typical age related things. Stiffness loss. Is there a reason for that? Lots. Okay. So we don't, we don't really need to go into all of the like details, but just knowing, I think that it's important that, you know, as we get older, we tend to lose stiffness of tendon. It's a combination of all the things we've really already talked about, right? Like activity levels, hydration status. The, um, amount of weights that we're lifting, like there's a lot of things. And so we're going to kind of talk about that now because I want to tell you guys how to improve your tendon stiffness, because this is something that we can train. Yes, to an extent, there is a genetic component to this, right? We've all probably met that person that can, uh, Put their hands in like, uh, link their hands and then loop their, their arms over their head. And they can jump rope, their arms, jump rope, their arms. Right. Or like that can touch your thumb to your forearm. I definitely can't do that. We learned all sorts of fun things about each other in physical therapy school. Like when we were learning lots of different concepts, like I still can tell you which one of my PT classmates, you know, were hyper mobile and able to bend themselves into all sorts of different shapes. And I have guesses. Yeah. So, um. So, yes, if, if you are somebody that is just super, super flexible, you are going to have just a naturally, natural decrease in your tendon stiffness because your tendons are just naturally looser, your joints are looser, um, and so it will be even more important for you to try to do things to consciously to try to intentionally try to improve your tendon stiffness level. All right, so let's get to that. How do we, if this is the good stiffness, how do we get to the good stiffness? Number one is resistance training. Okay. So with resistance training, we've looked at different research studies. Resistance training can actually increase a couple of different things in your tendons. So tendons are made of collagen. That is one of the main components of tendons and resistance training actually has been shown to increase the number, the diameter, and the density of collagen fibrils. Okay, so when we think of fibrils, I like to think of them like spaghetti, right? So if you have like a bunch of spaghetti, you're both increasing the number of spaghetti strands that is there in your tendon, you're increasing the diameter, so the size of each individual strand of spaghetti. So it went from angel hair to actual spaghetti. And then the actual density of spaghetti. The, um, the, all the spaghetti strands together. So there's more whole wheat or the spaghetti screens don't have as much, you know, it's a little chewier. No, there's just more in a given area. So there's no gap in between one piece of spaghetti to the neighbor. Like that little, like if you held up a bunch of spaghetti and you look through it, you could see through, cause there's going to be spaces that don't get filled in. You're saying it actually just fills up. Fills those gaps in, well, that's going to be a really, really tough rubber band. Exactly. So you get increases in number, diameter, and density of those collagen fibrils. And what they've shown is that heavy lifting is better than low repetition, lightweight type of lifting when it comes to trying to increase these, or, you know, make these adaptations in the tendon. I saw that one coming. I just knew it was going to be strength training and lift heavy. I'm like, dang it. That is going to be the answer. All right, so strength train, heavier lifting, the super low weight high rep, I think we've, in general, we've moved past that. It's no longer the early 2000s. It's good at the beginning, especially for rehabbing. Again, the rehab. Again, there are always times and places for most things, right? Like, but it's about knowing when to use them. And that's really when experts come in, or if you really love reading scientific research, you know, go for it. Um, but that's one of the benefits of having experts in your corner is that you can understand that there is a time and a place that one thing, is, would be better for you than the other thing based on what your goals are. All right. So heavy lifting, if we're looking to improve our tendon stiffness. Okay. And the other thing that when we're talking about weight lifting and resistance training is focusing on the eccentric contraction versus the concentric contraction. So. The way that this works is there's two phases of muscle contraction. So I usually like to use the bicep as an example of this because it's a very easy one for all of us to visualize. So if you just kind of let your arm hang down by your side, your arm, your elbow is straight when you are, when you bring your fist. When you bend your elbow and bring your fist up towards your shoulder, you are actually shortening the bicep, and that is called a concentric contraction. And when you are slowly lowering your hand back down and straightening your elbow, that is a controlled lengthening of the muscle, and that is called an eccentric muscle contraction. So, what these research studies are finding is that eccentric muscle contraction Strength training actually strengthens the tendons and improves the stiffness of the tendons more than concentric strength training. Okay, so when I'm doing my bicep curls so that I look good as we head to the beach, because we covered this a couple episodes ago. Does concentric training actually make my bicep bigger though? So I actually want to do No, eccentric does. Still, still eccentric? Eccentric is always the way to go. So what is the benefit of concentric training? Well, you can't do eccentric into like without concentric. I get that. Like you have to do one without the, I mean, you, you could, you could get onto a machine and just do it one direction, but, um, but when they look at eccentric muscle can train, like when they compare eccentric and concentric training for. So many things eccentric usually outshines concentric muscle training wins almost every time. Well, it, cause it, it helps to improve lots of different things. Like right now we're talking about tendon stiffness. It also helps to improve like muscle hypertrophy. If you actually want the size of your muscle to get bigger, eccentric training is also better for that. Well, okay. Yeah. So that's kind of what you were talking about, the actual size of the muscle. Okay. So, In order to do this, obviously, like you just said, if you're doing bicep curls, we'll stick with that one because it's very easy to visualize. You can't do the lowering unless you've actually lifted the bicep, the weight up to your shoulder. Right. And the best way to do eccentric contractions is to do them slowly. So a way that you would do this would be to lift like up, you would lift the weight up. More quickly. So like a two second up and then a four second down so that you would slowly lower the weight. So it's like that time under tension is going to really, um, increase the difficulty of the exercise. You will notice that if you start focusing on eccentric types of lifting motions, it's going, you're probably not going to be able to lift as many repetitions or as heavy of a weight because it's much harder to do those. Okay. Let's go to a muscle and tendon area that we were talking about earlier Achilles This seems like it's gonna be relatively straightforward to explain an exercise because it's gonna be calf raises so to pop up onto your toes is Concentric. Yep And so this is the idea of like get up onto your toes relatively quickly and then get back down to flat ground in a very slow process right or even Go one step further, and do it off of a step. Yes, that's, I'm so glad you went there, cause that's, I used to do this. I used to like, I would put a weight on the ground, and then stand on the weight, so that I could dip lower than that. That works for me? Very good. Great! Yes, very very good. Um, um, As long as you work up to it again, right? Like you don't want to just jump into all these things. Like I'm going to do single leg, eccentric calf raises. And then all of a sudden you're like, darn you, Angie Brown. You gave me Achilles tendonitis. Like, no, you have to, you know, be smart, right? Like work yourself up to it. First you start with double leg, then you do double leg off a step, right? Like there's a. There is a progression to all of these things so that you don't get hurt. And that's really how all of our strength, um, circuits in the academy are designed is to help progress people through this in an intelligent way. It's funny that you mentioned just jumping right into single leg eccentric calf raises, because I'm looking at the next bullet point and it says jump training. This is also super helpful. We can do plyometrics. Yeah. So like this will be the last thing that we kind of wrap up here. Um, but yes, plyometric training is another way that you can help to improve the stiffness of a tendon. So very basic plyometric training that you guys can think of would be just like double leg hops. So like a jump rope, basically. That's what I was going to say. Like on this one, easing in is literally jumping rope and you don't even need a jump rope, you could just pretend that you're jumping rope at the beginning because then you don't have to coordinate and, and possibly stop yourself every like third jump because it hits your foot again. Yeah. Air jump rope for the win. Nice. I like air jump rope for the win. I can totally pull that off. Um, once I'm cleared, maybe you'll say I'm cleared soon on that one. Um, but this one works. Why does this one work? Is it the speed of the jumping? Kind of. So plyometrics work the stretch shortening cycle of the muscle. So this is also related to the eccentric and concentric contractions that we were just talking about. Basically, with plyometrics, when you're doing this jump, is that you, when you come down, you're putting, so if we think about a jump rope, right? You come down onto your foot, and you, Lengthen that muscle and then you bounce up quickly and concentrically like contract the muscle, right? So it's like going from eccentric to a quick and powerful concentric contraction. You're you're working that stretch shortening cycle So the stretch is the eccentric and the shortening is the concentric and when you can do that more quickly you're working on You know, efficiency of movement, coordination, the tendons, like lots of different things that you're doing. So plyometrics are a great way to help with tendon stiffness as well. Does this kind of go back to the first thing is it's going to, you're essentially practicing springing off the ground and by practicing springing off the ground, you're going to get better at springing off the ground. Right. And so this is again, make sure that you're doing this in a progressive way, like starting with double leg hops, something that you can then go to would be single leg hops because that's essentially what running is. Running is essentially jumping from one leg to the other over and over and over again, single leg. So, um, that is a good way for us to, to functionally practice this. So maybe some calf raises and then maybe some easy. Two legged hops, and then we can progress up to there, and then maybe start doing things on one leg. And eventually, one legged pistol squats while doing a 360 in between them. and jumping at the top. Got it. Nailed it. Yeah, exactly. With with dumbbells over my head. Perfect. Alright. So, hopefully, you guys now understand the the difference between the the quote unquote bad stiffness and then the the quote unquote good stiffness um that we want and what we can do to help mitigate and decrease. The unwanted levels of stiffness in the body, like the lack of mobility and range of motion and improve the good stiffness in our tendons to help make our running more efficient and help us work a little less to get even better results, right? That's really what we want. Yeah, it's, it's the built in bonus of, of landing and springing back appropriately. All right, you guys. So if you found this episode helpful, can I please ask one. thing of you. Can you share it with someone? One of the best ways that we can help grow this podcast is word of mouth. So you can either hit that share button on your podcast player right now and text it to somebody that you know would benefit. You can take a screenshot and share it to your social media and tag us in it. Or you Or you can leave us a rating or review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, whatever player you like to listen to, um, share this with a friend, share this, you know, share your thoughts about this episode with us so that we know, yes, this is content that I'm really enjoying. That's really, I'm finding helpful and it's helping me to improve my running. And you can share that with other people around the world, which would be super awesome of you. Um, and thank you for in advance for, uh, for watching. Any of you that do any of those three things, and as always, you guys, thank you for joining us. This has been the real life runners podcast episode number 355. Now get out there and run your life.