Ending pain without medication or surgery with Shane Warne

Introduction

On episode 663 of the 40+ Fitness, we meet Shane Warne and discuss how you can resolve pain without medication or surgery.

Hello

[00:01:22.870] – Allan

Hey, Raz. How are you?

[00:01:24.670] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:01:26.920] – Allan

I feel good. As we're recording I finished that launch of my new program, and it was good. I feel good about the process and what we did, what I was able to do, and where I am right now. I'm coming off of that, though. It's like, now, so now I'm getting back. I got to get back in my routines. I got to get things normal again. And then, yeah, because things happen. They're always going to happen when you don't want them to happen. But I think our water pump went out, so we have no water in our house today. Oh, jeez. So as soon as I off this this morning, I've got to go back over to Lula's and try to get the rest of my day worked over there, which I was not intending to do, so that we can make sure we get that pump replaced, because we've got all six of our rooms. They're checking in tomorrow. It's a group of vets that's here to basically do all these charity clinics for spay and neuter and other things. And all six rooms. They're going to this group of vets, and it's been on our books for a long time.

[00:02:27.610] – Allan

And then, yeah, the water pump goes out the day before, and so we got to get that fixed today. So I'll be headed home here shortly to supervise getting that fixed. But how are things up there?

[00:02:41.520] – Rachel

Oh, beautiful, actually. The fall is just starting to show signs. Some of our plants are starting to… The leaves are starting to turn colors. I would like to say that the weather is cooling off, but it is not. But I know it's coming, so just getting ready to enjoy the fall season.

[00:02:57.720] – Allan

The trees are saying something, but-They're You don't believe them.

[00:03:02.230] – Rachel

They're ready. I'm ready, but we'll see what happens.

[00:03:04.670] – Allan

But you know the work that's coming because you guys start doing that syrup stuff.

[00:03:09.660] – Rachel

That'll be later. But yeah, we're keeping an eye out for that, but that'll be later in the season.

[00:03:15.310] – Allan

We're gearing up for it. It's coming.

[00:03:16.980] – Rachel

Yeah, getting ready. All right.

[00:03:20.600] – Allan

Well, are you ready to talk about pain with Shane?

[00:03:23.070] – Rachel

For sure.

Interview

[00:03:40.220] – Allan

Shane, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:03:43.090] – Shane

Thanks, Allan. Good to be here, mate.

[00:03:45.460] – Allan

Yeah. So you and I met through an organization that's called Online Trainer Mentorship, and you're there as a coach. I'm there as a mentor. One of the things that's interesting to me is as you get older like I am, you start realizing realizing there's a lot you don't know. And the older you get, the more you realize, the more you don't know. So I just know when it comes to pain management, I know a few things, but I don't know everything. And I know I don't know everything, which is why I wanted to bring on someone like you that this is what you do all day, every day, is help people in pain get their movement back. And I think your slogan is from pain to freedom, or I saw that somewhere on your social media. And so I'm glad to have you here, because as we get older, there's more pain if we're not doing things right.

[00:04:35.690] – Shane

There most certainly is. Just to follow up on that comment you just made there as well, I actually had one of my followers on Instagram message me yesterday, tell me what he liked about my messaging in some of the comments on posts was how humble I was, because I told someone when they asked me questions, I'm not really 100 % sure. This is what I would do to go and find out. So there is way too much going on with the body for anyone to say that they know everything. I'm quite happy to admit when I don't know anything, because if I can't admit what I don't know, how am I ever going to know what I need to learn? So I think that's a really important aspect of that. But to your point, yeah, this is what I do. I help people get out of long term chronic pain, so that they can get the freedom back in their life. And for me, freedom means a few things, right? Freedom from pain itself. But freedom to do the things that bring us joy, because we only get one shot at life. At the end of this, it's whether there's an afterlife or a reincarnation, or whatever, we're not going to remember it.

[00:05:43.830] – Shane

This is life. So we might as well make the most of it that we can. And that includes doing the things that bring us joy. And for me, that's lifting heavy weights. It's going to jiu-jitsu, and it's treating my body very poorly doing those things and hurting it. But for a lot of other people, It's just playing with the grandkids, getting down on the floor and doing those things. One of my clients, Ashley, it's getting in the hoop and doing aerial arts that was taken away from her for eight years. So that's what freedom is to me. It's a freedom to just to do the things that we want, that bring us joy. But then a little bit further to that, it's the freedom to do whatever you're doing without thinking at the same time, how is this going to make me feel tomorrow? And that's a huge, huge It's a huge thing, because I've been there where everything… I have multiple pains all the time, and I didn't realize how much of a difference it made to me. But at almost 45, life has a childlike quality to it, again, because when I'm doing the thing, I'm immersed in that.

[00:06:52.170] – Shane

That's all I'm thinking about doing. So I'm really getting the most out of it and not thinking, how am I going to feel tomorrow? Is this going to hurt me? Is this going to make something And that, to me, is why having a functioning, healthy, pain-free body… I mean, pain-free doesn't mean we're never going to hurt. Obviously, I still get injured and things like that. But the most important thing is having a pain-free body, a body that does the things we want it to do, allows us to just have a better quality of life, and do the things that we want, and get the most out of it, and do those things with the people we love to.

[00:07:32.020] – Allan

Because that's the thing is person in pain is probably going to not do things that they think will hurt them or it will make them feel worse. And so they miss out. They miss out on a lot of things because they just don't want to further the pain. So yes, if we can improve things and they're effectively pain-free, they can do so much more and have a much more fulfilled life doing those things. Now, I went through for this conversation, and I picked out four key areas where I'm dealing with clients all the time that basically say, Well, I got this. And my role as a trainer, because most of them are trying to also lose weight, is to basically say, Okay, well, let's figure out, from my perspective, how to work around it. What can we get done without hurting this, without exacerbating this? And so from a strategy perspective, it's half That's the answer. And I acknowledge that. You should. We've got to figure out this low back pain. We got to figure this knee pain, because if you don't resolve those, always going to be in that pain, and you're never going to want to do that thing.

[00:08:45.180] – Allan

And as a result, you're not going to live the fuller life. Now, I can help you from a health perspective. You lose the 30 or 40 pounds, and you feel great. We get you moving in ways that you can and feel good about. You get stronger from that. But some of these things can severely limit how far you can go in improving your health and fitness. The first one I want to talk about, and this is probably the most common one, is lower back pain. So if someone has lower back pain that they're suffering with fairly regularly, what are some basic things that you would encourage them to consider as they move forward to resolve that or at least reduce the pain they're feeling?

[00:09:23.350] – Shane

One thing, and this isn't actually something that I do, but obviously you brought it up, and it's one of the things that you help people with. A lot of the times, if someone is quite a bit overweight, their body, all their joints, everything is just dealing with having to carry around this load that it wasn't really designed for. So that may literally be the solution. Get moving, lose So I get the body functioning, strengthen it up a bit. That may actually be the long term solution. And for a lot of people, those simple things actually are. For people that have tried those things, though, and done the conventional I've got a sore lower back, so I've strengthened my core. I've lost some weight, I've strengthened my core, but they're still having issues. They're generally the people that I work with. I've had pain for quite a while. I've tried the conventional things. What I find is, lower back pain comes down to… There's two things that I will assess. So every time I bring on a new client, I'll do a physical assessment, do it via Zoom. There's usually a few things, but two non-negotiables are the The hip mobility, and in particular, how much their leg rotates in their hip.

[00:10:36.050] – Shane

And then the next thing is, how does their spine segment? Can they move their spine at the individual vertebrae? And there's two very specific things. I heard Steffie Cohen, she did a master's degree in low back pain. When she was going to college, she was, I think she was a 25 times world record holder power lifter, was going to college, hurt her back, no one could help her. And this was literally the place where people are learning to help people like that. And I heard her on a podcast with Tim Ferrace once say that about 85 % of lower back pain, there's actually nothing mechanically wrong with their back. One of the things that happens with our back is if we get a perceived problem, or a little problem, or even a perceived problem by our nervous system, Our nervous system will protect us. And it protects us just by seizing the muscles up around that area of the spine where that perceived problem is. What we then do is we get scared, we brace our core, and we stop moving. So we've got a lot of muscles that run up and down our spine, that control our vertebrae, the multifidae, loads of muscles in there.

[00:11:54.180] – Shane

But what happens is if we are actively bracing our core and staying still, or staying braced and staying upright all the time, we don't really use those muscles. All of our tissue have little sensors in them that are effectively a communication module that's talking to our nervous system, so our nervous system knows what it's doing at the time, which is why if I close my eyes and move my arm, I know where my arm's going. I know what it's doing. And that's how our body knows what it's doing, where it is. But like everything else in our body, if we don't use it, we lose it. So if we stop using those tissues that control our vertebrate, those signals stop being sent. Now, this isn't going to happen in a day or a week. It might happen in months or even a few years. But at some stage, there's a whole section of spine of a few vertebrate where that signal has stopped being sent to the nervous system. So the nervous system one day realizes, I don't know what my spine is doing. What the nervous system does is a And the reaction to that is it tenses up all around the spine because it's like, I don't know what my spine is doing.

[00:13:06.190] – Shane

I better protect it just in case, and then it seizes up. So that's actually a super common reason for back pain is just tightness around the spine because the body doesn't know what it's doing. And we can test that by checking whether you can move your individual vertebrae or not and segment that vertebrae. And that will be step one, is actually getting access to that tissue. Then we start using those muscles, the muscles start working again, start sending signals, the nervous system now feels safe, and then the pain goes away. That's a fairly lengthy process, if it's been years and years and years that you haven't used the tissue. The next thing is the hips. So One really big cause of lower back pain is simply immobile hips. So obviously the hip is like a ball and socket joint. Really simply, for the hip to work, there needs to be enough space in the capsule of the joint itself to allow for the hip to move around. Because unlike a normal ball and socket joint, obviously, that a bone is in a symmetrical thing, the femur has a bend on the end. So as you got to lift your leg, that ball in this ball and socket starts moving around in the joint.

[00:14:27.050] – Shane

The problem is, if you have limited space in the joint, That femur is going to hit on the acetabulum, so the ball is going to hit on the socket in this ball and socket joint. That's a really big problem if that happens, because then you've got bone rubbing on bone on the inside in the middle of your joint. The good thing about that is that your body knows that's going to happen. Once again, the tissue in the joint is sending signals up to your nervous system all the time. So you got to move your leg, then your nervous system realizes, wait, if I let it move, that bone is going to rub on the other bone. So it wants to stop us doing that. So it just tightens up everything around the hip to stop that moving. What muscles are each individual going to tighten There'll be quads, hamstrings, glutes, hip flexes, lower back. That all pertains to that hip. So over time, that prolonged tightness on the hip and lower back is going to cause issues. So We can test how much space is in the socket or the capsule of the hip by testing rotation.

[00:15:38.300] – Shane

So how much can you internally and externally rotate your leg in your hip? So that'll be So that's one of the two things I test. How well does your hip rotate, and how well can you segment your spine? Generally speaking, I'll find an issue with both of those things with most people, and then we work on those. And then when We can then increase the rotation in your hip, therefore increase the space in that ball and socket joint. You now have a freedom of movement. Your body has no need to actually protect you from yourself. So it stops creating the tightness. The tightness goes away, so does your pain. And that's step one. We then want to strengthen up that tissue because it's tissue you haven't used in years and years and years. But that's step one.

[00:16:25.570] – Allan

Okay, cool. So now the next one, this is a hard one because Because all pain is nerve-originated. But the sciatica tends to give people a huge problem. It's not a small pain, and it's not a pain that necessarily comes on and goes away. For a lot of people, once their sciatica starts hurting, they hurt all the time. And a lot of them end up going to medication. So what are some things we could do to know what might be causing the sciatica problem? And we could do about it.

[00:17:01.730] – Shane

Yeah, it's an interesting one. So sciatica, technically speaking, sciatica actually starts in your spine. So you've got a nerve being trapped because you've got a bulging disk or something like that in your spine. And then that nerve runs down your leg. For most people that say they have sciatica, what they really have is they just have tight glutes, and that is putting a constant pressure on the sciatic nerve in the glute, and then that runs down their leg. And there is a very distinct difference between the two causes. But in most cases, I have found that… Because I actually had sciatica myself 10 years ago. My right hip. The first time I got it treated, I went to my physio. She's amazing. She dry-needled my glute, and the glute spasmed and released, and instantly the pain was gone. That was it. It was just tightness of my glute. But then in a couple of weeks time, it was back. And that was the process I went through. We all know that merry-go-round of releasing the pressure and the tightness and the pain for it to come back. So what I was doing was effectively dealing with the symptoms.

[00:18:21.880] – Shane

So that's what I find… So this is back to the lower back pain and the tightness in the hip. I actually find in most cases, if we People with that sciatic pain, they've also got exceptionally tight hips. They have very limited rotation in the hip. They have very limited space in that capsule. So the body is literally just protecting us from ourselves and creating a tightness to stop our leg moving in ways that the body knows it's unsafe. And that continual tightness on that nerve is what's actually causing the pain. So if we can, once again, create enough space and get that hip working properly, the body no longer has to protect us from ourselves, will no longer create that tightness, and the tightness goes away, and when the tightness goes away, so does the pain. You do want to get that tested, obviously, because if the pain is coming from your spine, and It's literally your nerve being pressed on in your spine. You want to go and get a test and a scan on that to see what's going on. If that's not an issue, then it's most likely just your hips and your glutes.

[00:19:29.200] – Shane

And either way, even if it is coming from your spine, releasing your hips or getting your hip to work properly so that you don't have all this tightness around your glutes and hamstrings and lower back is massively going to impact how much pain you're going to be having there anyway. Because if you can imagine, if your hip doesn't move properly, flexion… So hip flexion is if I lift my knee towards my chest. Most people cannot get their leg up to about 90 degrees of their hip because they're restricted in movement. But every single time we put on our shoes, we need better movements than that. Every time we use the dustpan and brush, every time we get out of bed, every time we go to the toilet, me sitting down right now. So if my hip doesn't move, well, my spine has to. There's no other option. So by having hips that don't move properly, I am putting pressure on, or I'm asking my spine to move, where it probably won't have or shouldn't have to. So if I do have an issue from sciatic there, the more I can get my hips to move, the less pressure and stress my spine is going to be under on a continually daily basis.

[00:20:53.800] – Allan

Now, the next one that this is extremely, extremely common is knee pain. I don't know how many clients I've had that come to me and say, Okay, I can't squat. A doctor told me not to squat. And I'm like, Well, you actually squat every day when you go to the bathroom. But let's not go there right now. When you do the squats, tell me what you do. And then usually, it's the one-half squat. And I'm thinking to myself, No, you want to go full range of motion because if you don't get down below parallel, you're using quads to break and then restart the movement. And that's probably what's causing your knee pain. If you can let your glutes fire, you're probably going to have less of that. Now, that is the one thing that I know from years of training is losing the weight and getting your body where it can move through the full range of motion in a squat, even if it's just a bodyweight squat, is usually good enough to stop them from feeling that knee pain. But in the cases where you're dealing with knee pain, because this is chronic at this point, what are some things that you see that could cause it and that they could do some things about?

[00:22:06.220] – Shane

Once again, obviously, hip is going to play a role. Hips and ankles. So if anyone comes to me with chronic pain, the first thing I'm going to do is assess every part of their body that is remotely connected to where that pain is, because a lot of the times where the pain is isn't necessarily the actual problem or the cause. It's where the symptom is. So I need to assess how the body moves and to determine where I think the actual problem is. So effectively, the knee only goes where the ankles and hips tell it to go. The knee is not figuring out anything of its own. So if my ankle If my muscle doesn't rotate or move properly, if my hip doesn't rotate properly, then all the different movements I'm doing, if I'm squatting and my knees maybe will be caving in or whatever, then I'm putting just a constant stress on my joint that it wasn't really designed for. Now, once again, in a week or so, it's not going to be a problem. But years down the line, that's going to cause a problem. So the first thing I'm going to do is check all that.

[00:23:11.320] – Shane

Let's assume, though, that there's no issues with hips and ankles, and then we go to the knee. So one thing that people, almost no one I ask or speak to has ever looked at how much their knee rotates and how much their shin rotates in their knee. For a properly functioning knee, your shin has to rotate, plain and simple. So back to the space in the hip, the same thing happens with the space in the knee. The knee capsule itself, as I flex and bend my knee, if I don't have enough space in that capsule, there's not enough space for that movement to happen. I'm going to have not necessarily bone pushing on bone, but we've got tendons and ligaments and everything in there, and it's causing a lot of stress if there's no space. So we want to have enough space in the joint so that as I'm flexing and bending my knee, the two heads of those bones can actually move around without rubbing on things. So we can test that by the rotation of knee. So that's the first thing that I would do. Can your knee rotate or not? It should rotate a little bit internally and then a bit more externally.

[00:24:26.160] – Shane

If it can't, that is literally step one, because if you don't If you don't have enough space in the joint, you are going to have problems no matter what, because it's just not functioning properly. And it's just putting too much pressure on all the tissue in the joint itself. And then outside of that, it's training it through its full range, and full range of motion. So a lot of my training will start with getting the range of motion that we deem that your body needs, so that other parts of your body don't need to compensate. And then the second Second thing is training the connective tissue of that joint. Once we've got those two things done, then I will progress on to muscle strengthen and whatnot. Generally, as a rule of thumb, the way to target connective tissue is I need to target and strengthen and train the tissue while it's at its completely lengthened position. So I don't have to do this with a squat to start with. I can literally sit on the floor So grab my shin, and then passively, so I'm not using my leg to do this, I'll just pull my shin in or my heel as close to my butt as I can.

[00:25:41.760] – Shane

And I'm just going to go as an acute angle as I can get before pain exists. So I never want to be doing this through pain. And I'll get to there and I'll isometrically load that tissue because I want to start using all the tissue, all the connected tissue that runs over the in front of that knee, and I want to train it at its fully lengthened position. So I'm sitting on the floor, so my body feels safe, my nervous system feels safe, and then I'll isometrically load it, which means I'm contracting the muscle, but there's no movement happening. So if you can imagine, I'm sitting on the floor, I've got my hands wrapped around the front of my shin, I've pulled my heel in towards my butt, I will hold my hands on my shin and start putting pressure from my shin into my hands. So I'm effectively trying to straighten my knee, but there's no movement happening because my hands are holding it tight. I'm going to start super, super light. I'm going to do it at a five % intensity. So just starting to use the tissue, because I want the tissue to start being used at its fully length and position, and then we'll progress from there.

[00:26:55.080] – Shane

So we'll progress in intensities in durations of time. Then we'll get to some eccentric work But the safest way to do it is to sit there in as as as as as as as as fully flexed position as I can, and then isometrically load the tissue into there. Because realistically, rule number one there also is I want to get the space. But the reason I want to start using all this tissue is tissue requires nutrients and proteins to repair, plain and simple. We know that we have protein because it's the building blocks of everything. But I need the tissue to be used for the tissue to get the nutrients. When I use that tissue, that's what's causing the nutrients to actually go there. So as I sit in this position while I'm using it, you'll feel maybe a little bit of heat, a little bit of change there. You'll feel the nutrients, you'll feel some blood. And that's all the goodness and building blocks are required to go there, which is the reason why staying away from something that hurts is maybe an absolutely necessary part in a rehabilitation process. But if that's the only thing we do, it's a really big problem, because it means the actual tissue that needs the help isn't getting any nutrients to repair because you're not using it.

[00:28:18.440] – Allan

Okay. Yeah. Now, the other one, and this was one that got me. I didn't get this, but I had a client that got it. It hit him fast. And suddenly, he's in that position. And his doctors couldn't do anything. His physio couldn't do anything. And obviously, it made it impossible for him to really train anything other than machines and legs with machines. And he was trying to lose some weight, and he knew he needed to move, but he was in so much pain with this. It was frozen shoulder. And from the reading I've done on frozen shoulder, this is a pretty common thing for women over 50 to get a frozen shoulder. So this is not just something that happened to one… Yeah, I've had lots of clients, but I don't have one client that's had experience with it, but it's happening to a lot of, particularly women over the age of 50. If someone finds themselves starting to struggle with frozen shoulder, what are some things they can do to try to maybe limit how frozen it gets or improve their mobility or their movement with their shoulder at all? Because he was completely stuck.

[00:29:31.670] – Shane

Yeah, this is a rough one. I've had frozen shoulder myself, but once again, this was many, many years ago in almost a previous life. I broke my collarbone playing footie, like rugby league in Australia, and I had to get it operated on. There was a problem with the wound, so I had to literally keep my arm still for four weeks without moving it. This is before I knew anything. So I did what I was told and then ended with a frozen shoulder. But that came on acutely after four weeks. It took a fair bit of training to get rid of it. I haven't worked with anyone with frozen shoulder before, so there's only so much I can say here. But yeah, I think for women, they don't deal with enough as it is. They get menopause and now they might get a frozen shoulder. Just another thing in the list. But realistically, we're talking about a restriction in the joint capsule. So the rule of thumb is the same as the, if I want to see a joint move properly, I need the joint to rotate, because how much, in this case, my humerus, my arm, rotates internally and externally in the shoulder joint itself, will dictate the amount of space I have in the joint.

[00:30:53.080] – Shane

So what I would be doing without a shadow of a doubt, is I would be working on internal and external rotation of the shoulder. So the same way that I mentioned how I would get set up with my knee flexion, I would get into as much flexion as I can. I'd hold super still and then isometric If I were to physically load that tissue. I would do exactly the same thing with my shoulder. So generally speaking, it'll more than likely be an internal rotation issue more than external. So there's a position called a sleeper position. So you You'll lay on your side with your arm out in front of you. And say I'm sitting on my arm, I'm laying on my right side, I'd get a phone roll or yoga block, a little pillow for my head so I can be comfortable while I'm doing this. And then I would passively internally rotate my arm. So passively just means a stretch. So I take my left hand, put it over my wrist, and then get into as bigger internal rotation stretch as I can on that, say, right shoulder in this case. Once again, I'm doing this pain free, so I'm not stretching through the pain.

[00:32:10.150] – Shane

I'm getting to the point of pain and then backing off a little bit. So I want to be as far as I can go before that pain starts. And then with my other hand, I'm going to hold super still. I'm going to hold myself still, but I'm going to isometrically load it because I want to start using the tissue as soon as I can, but as safely as I can at the same time. So if my left hand is over the top of my right wrist, I would then try to rotate back into my hand. Once again, I'm going to get up to an intensity of probably about 60 or 70 %, or before pain starts, whichever one comes first. If I get to five % and that's where pain is, then I'll drop back down to two %. I just want to have some sensation. And I'll do that for… It depends on the intensity and the time and how it feels. But up to probably 30 seconds. And then once again, I'm going to hold my arm still as I try to rotate back the other way. But both of these contractions are happening isometrically, so there's no movement happen.

[00:33:10.960] – Shane

And then over time, I'll be increasing that. My goal will be to increase the intensity up to that 60 or 70 %, but still holding super, super still. I would definitely be doing this with someone else, if you had a frozen shoulder and you weren't sure, because this can be something that's quite concerning and worrying. And there's a big difference between being uncomfortable and a pain that's actually bad. And learning the difference between the two can play a huge role in pain management, because obviously the nervous system is all constantly trying to protect us. And a lot of the times pain signals, it's just our body telling us that there's something wrong. So understanding the difference is really, really important. One, to make sure we're doing enough work to make change, But also to make sure that we're not doing too much work to make it worse. But that would be where I would start. But also neck, scapular and spine movement are going to play a huge role there as well. And that's where I would start if it happened to me or if I brought a client on board.

[00:34:22.230] – Allan

So Shane, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest, and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:34:29.680] – Shane

The first one for me, particularly from obviously pain-free viewpoint, is move every joint through its fullest range of motion at least once every single day. I have what's called a morning routine. It's a functional range conditioning morning routine. Takes five or six minutes, and it goes through my neck, scapula, shoulder, elbow, wrist, spine, hips, knees, ankles, toes. Takes roughly five or six minutes, and I treat it like it's brushing my teeth for my joints. I don't particularly enjoy brushing my teeth, but the few minutes it takes me, it's well worth it. And this is what it is. It's literally just moving our joints through its full range of motion. It's bang for buck from a time perspective. It's getting, once again, all the nutrients and proteins to all the tissue that we can through those joints. So that would absolutely be number one. Get a a daily routine to get your body moving. And in my case, it's individual joints through their fullest range of motion. The second strategy is the same way that we train our muscles, and that we also want to train Our joint space and the connected tissue by joint space means to do your joints rotate properly enough to indicate that you have enough space in the joint itself for the joint to move.

[00:35:57.980] – Shane

Because if all of your joints have that, Your body no longer has the need to create tightness to protect you from unsafe areas, and then train the connected tissue as well. As I mentioned with the knee, it's training it at its length or to its length, as opposed to just doing half movements. And then strategy number three is, there's a lot of roads that you can take to get to the same destination. One person's perfect thing, find the thing that you enjoy doing. The most important thing is is that you're moving, that you're getting some exercise, you're staying fit, you're staying healthy. You're never going to do that if the exercise protocol you've been given is something you don't enjoy doing. So find something that you enjoy that will get you moving on a regular basis, because if you don't do that, the other stuff doesn't matter anyway, because you're just not going to do it.

[00:36:54.700] – Allan

All right. So Shane, if someone wanted to get in touch with you, learn more about what you're doing, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:37:01.000] – Shane

I run everything through my Instagram profile, my Instagram page. So that's Shane Warne, S-H-A-N-E-W-A-R-N-E_fitness. Everything's in there. So if you give me a follow, on there. You can reach out and say hi, or I'll reach out and say hi before you do, possibly. So I do like to just introduce myself to people as they come on board. But everything's there. I try to portray on there all the different exercises and things that I do, how I like to help people. So it's a really quick, simple way for people to go and have a look and see all the exercise and things I do, and also just allows me to have a chat to people there as well.

[00:37:43.930] – Allan

Awesome. So you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/663, and I'll be sure to have a link there. Shane, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:37:55.650] – Shane

It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Summary and Discussion

[00:37:59.330] – Allan

Welcome back, Raz.

[00:38:00.800] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. That was a really fun discussion. I understand I get it, lower back pain and sciatica, or knee pain, and even a frozen shoulder. Very popular areas of injury or concern. But I think there's a lot of this information about pain. We were talking about that pain is a signal. It's telling your body to do something. But the misunderstanding comes in when people feel pain, they want to stop everything. They want to just protect that joint, do no movement. And it sounds like that's exactly the opposite of what we should do.

[00:38:32.800] – Allan

It can be. When I tore my rotator cuff, I kept training. I couldn't do any pushing, but I kept training. And it allowed me to continue to move my arm through the full range of motion so that after surgery, my recovery was a lot faster. And I have a similar story. When I was young and I was playing volleyball, I turned my ankle really bad. So we had an X ray, and it was not broke. This is not broke. Okay, But three weeks go by, and it hasn't healed. So I go back, and I go to this time, go to a sports doctor, and he's like, It's broke. He just looked at it and says, It's broke. And then he did the X-ray, his own X-ray, and said, No, it's not broke, but he said it would have been better if you broke it. Oh, no. And so then I go across to his PT because I hadn't gone to PT before. They were just like, Stay off of it for three weeks. And so I come into the PT and elephant foot, my My ankle's as big as my head, and I go in there and the guy sees me coming in with the crutches.

[00:39:35.610] – Allan

He's like, Why aren't you wearing that brace in your shoe? I'm like, Dude, I can't get my foot in a shoe. What are you talking about? He's like, Well, you will when you leave here. So they got me down, and this little brace thing was actually just set to seating your shoe and compress the joint. But he said, You need to be walking around with this. You need to be walking, and that's going to help heal that ankle. And I really do believe that a lot of the limited mobility I have in that joint right now is because that first doctor told me to stay off of the ankle, and I did for the first three weeks. Then I like, I don't believe that doctor anymore. I'm going to go to an actual sports doctor. And when I did that, he sent me to the right person and the right person to solve my problem. But we need to move. The joint needs to move meant to heal. That's all a part of it.

[00:40:33.340] – Rachel

Well, it's interesting. You were just talking about a joint being inflamed, which takes up a lot of space, which prohibits the joint from getting a full range of motion. But instead of putting it in a sling or another immobile boot, like I've been in a boot for my foot before, moving it helps move all of that stuff around and brings in the nutrients that it needs for healing. It's not very I would have.

[00:41:01.210] – Allan

No, because, again, if we have, like what Shane was saying, we have limited range of motion right now, and moving on the periphy of that, that's where we feel that pain hit. And again, if we're eating and we've got other inflammation going on in our body, so you're eating bad foods, you have leaky gut, too much sugar, those cause inflammation throughout the body, and particularly in these joints now that are already restricted in volume, a size, and movement range. Now you're putting more inflammation in there, too. That's just taking up more of that space. It's creating consistent, constant pain because now you're at the end of the range of motion everywhere. And so movement is important because that's going to allow the nutrients to get in there. That's going to allow the inflammation to go down. And then also watching what you eat and making sure that you're eating a lower inflammatory diet will help reduce the overall inflammation in your body, and that will allow you to heal properly. So it's all interrelated, and it's sad that, I think we've talked about this, this doctor focuses on this and doesn't realize that holistically, it's all related.

[00:42:19.360] – Allan

It's all one system. We're one animal. It's a lot. We're one body. Yeah. And so you can't just say, I'm going to work on shoulders, and I'm going to work on ankles, and I'm going to work on this. You got to work on You got to work on your nutrition. You got to work on your movement. You got to work on your stress management. And if you're doing those things, then your body will get better.

[00:42:39.090] – Rachel

The other thing I just wanted to mention real quick is that I appreciate Shane's, one of his techs Like he mentioned was to move every joint through the full range of motion every day, and I think that's important as well. If you do it at night, that little bit of stretching might help you sleep better. If you do it in the morning, that little bit of motion might help you get active better for the start of your day. I just And it's important to know which muscles are tight so that you can loosen them up a little bit. I think that was a great tactic.

[00:43:06.070] – Allan

Yeah. And the other side of it is, again, if you're moving a joint and the movement itself isn't causing any pain, it's going to help get nutrients there. If there is pain in the joint and you start moving, one of the interesting things that happens is it's the same nerves that are messaging back and forth. And so if you're telling your muscles to move, that's It should be dampening the pain aspect of it a little bit. And you might notice that the pain reduces a little bit as you're going through that movement. And so that's part of that inner relationship of the way all of our body works. And so Yeah. Anything you can do to keep a full range of motion, get your body moving, get nutrients going to those joints that don't get enough, because it's really hard to get blood flow to your legaments and tendons. They don't have. Oh, right. And so they're dependent on you doing this. And then all the fluid that's inside a joint, when you're moving, you're getting that fluid in there, moving around, warmed up. And that's always going to help you have better range of motion and feel better.

[00:44:13.220] – Rachel

For sure. That was a great discussion.

[00:44:15.850] – Allan

All right. Well, I'll talk to you next week.

[00:44:17.940] – Rachel

Take care, Allan.

[00:44:18.940] – Allan

You, too.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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