Podcast #124: Tendons with David Grey

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jacked-athlete-podcast/id1462537296?i=1000693117364

Knee clicking: “I know everyone says the noise doesn’t really matter, but when it’s sore or when it’s more inflamed, there’s more kind of clicking and cracking in there.”

Patellofemoral Pain and Frequency: “Maybe twice a week loading and then fill up the buckets of all the other stuff that you can do as much as possible. just, especially if it’s a bit angry, one, you do seem to need to let it settle down and stop trying to fix it. Just fucking stop. Just leave it offloaded. And two, it seems to need and like and want much less frequency of loading than the tendon. So that’s kind of where I’m at with that as well. And three,
It seems to like avoiding, not just me, but a lot of people we have got a lot of success from almost completely avoiding loading in full knee extension. just pretend that that first 15 degrees does not exist. Do not go there for a little while. And that seems to work really well. And if we need to try and keep our strength up in that, cause we get a lot of like ACLs and different people who
Sometimes they pick up like a bit of a fat pad impingement or different people that come to us. And we’re just trying to avoid that extended position for a little while, particularly in the open chain. Closed chain seems to work a little bit better for the extension, but usually we just avoid it for a few weeks, let it settle down, load the mid range much more and that seems to work well.
Jake (05:56)
When you say not extension, are you talking just on a leg extension or extension in general?
David Grey (06:02)
We probably like definitely the leg extension, not definitely, but probably leg extension. And yeah, even in our split squats and stuff, try and not, we just leave away, leave that last 10 or 15 degrees. I think that’s, there’s a lot of load going through the patella femoral joint at that stage, but you don’t seem to get like.
I know if it’s worth the squeeze in terms of how much quad you can get in that top range rather than just kind of staying out of that range and keeping the tension on the quad for longer, you know?
Jake (06:39)
Yeah, I had mine, my worst case I think was in California for like a month and a half. And it was like my, the outer quad, I don’t think it was IT band, like my vastus lateralis, was just every time I moved I could feel that thing just tensed up. Tried foam rolling, I don’t know if I did giant eating, I did a lot of things. But I think the, when you talk about the heavy loading, I was still trying like patellar tendon rehab and I was loading leg extension daily, I was doing heavy squats.
I think I was doing all these things that were making that Vastus lateralis even more tense. But when you say only like twice a week loading, that’s like heavy quad and knee loading. You’re still doing knee stuff on the other days.
David Grey (07:22)
Yeah,
as much as you can of everything else, as much as they are willing to do, as much as you can, as many days as you can. But we would probably start with twice a week, like Tuesday and a Friday, let’s say, for someone. And it gives them at least a couple of days in between those two days. that seems to let, especially if it’s a bit angry, that seems to let it settle down. There’s nothing worse than, especially for
I found like a patella femoral joint going into a session where your knee is already a bit sore and a little bit angry and you’re going in and you’re trying to load your quad and it’s like, is this good or is this not? So I’ve seen that that extra day does seem to make a difference. And then we could try and before I would try and like keep pushing the intensity of the exercises, I would try and I would nudge that forward, but I would just try and add in that extra day then.
So like push, we’ll bring it back to two days. We’ll try and find some suitable exercises, suitable loads, push that for a little while and then see if we can add in the extra day there rather than starting with three days. Because adding that extra day early on, and this is obviously a general recommendation, but it seems to me that adding that extra day early on can mess up all three of the days, if you get me.
I’m kind of sore all the time rather than just having two really high quality days where I’m just loading that knee.
Jake (08:47)
Mm-hmm.
What do you, so with the patellar tendon, it’s like, can pretty much, I mean, you pretty much know you have pathology in the tendon, you can look at.
the swelling and the nerve in growth and all this stuff and be like, okay, this is the pain in the patellar tendon and like the pathology might not change, but let’s just condition the tendon to be better to handle the sport. But how do you look at patellofemoral pain? I’ve talked to so many people and I’m still like, what are we like structurally what’s going on? What is the pain? Like how are you looking at patellofemoral pain?
Or do you not care and you’re like, let’s just, I think you said this recently about the rehab should like focus on, if the rehab is focused, I think it was on one of your podcasts. If you’re focusing on performance in the rehab, then like you’re gonna be good. Cause you’re trying to to the, you’re trying to get back to sport. But if you’re.
If you’re focusing on maybe more of the rehab type ideas, I’m really butchering what you said. It was so good what you said and I can’t remember it now. But like if but it was, man, it was good. It was all, was about focusing on performance in rehab, like trying to get stronger, trying to get more powerful and not worrying about these, maybe like a gait analysis or something along those lines. But if you’re focusing on performance, then we get rid of a lot of these arguments of like, well, do I need a two times bodyweight squat or do I need to do split squats?
David Grey (09:57)
I don’t know either.
Mm-hmm.
Jake (10:19)
It’s like this I’m training you for a performance. This is an issue I’ve had with people with patellar tendon I’ll post things on on Twitter on patellar tendon and I’ll be like you need strong quads for patellar tendon rehab and the physios the evidence-based people would be like well strength doesn’t really You don’t really need quadriceps strength for patellar tendon the patellar tendon is gonna heal on its own But I could have I could have won that argument if I would have said well this guy’s trying to dunk a basketball So we’re yeah, so yeah so
David Grey (10:44)
Exactly.
You know
what most of these like evidence, but I consider myself evidence based by the way, like I pretty much do what the evidence says, but most of these people are working with 60 year old whoevers who like they’re not even getting patellar tendon clients in the door because their clients don’t jump. So it’s such a stupid argument. Like would this person who has so much atrophy in their quads
in that quad on that patellar tendon side be better with stronger quads? Yes, of course they would because they want to jump better because they want to be able to decelerate and because yes it’s probably likely that that’s going to take a little bit of load off the tendon as well if your muscle is bit stronger or whatever the mechanism is. Are you better off you should just ask them like flip it around so would they be better off having weaker quads than they do now? No.
Jake (12:00)
Yeah, the muscle thing, man. The muscle thing, it seems like a paradox. Now obviously, have your left knee hurts, your left patellar tendon hurts, that quad is wasted away. It’s like, let’s get the quad back. But I’m like, this idea that the muscle is protective of the tendon, I think it is. For example, when you land from a jump.
I think that energy goes into the tendon and then if the muscle is more, cause the muscle has to dissipate the energy, the tendon can’t. If the muscle can do it better, then I think it sticks in the tendon for longer. So maybe that’s a more protective role. But this, I’m also like, if the muscle is stronger and more powerful, now you’re jumping 40 inches and not 30 inches. So it’s like now it’s more damaging on the tendon. How have you wrapped your head around this, that whole thing?
David Grey (12:54)
I don’t know. think that the body can find ways of doing things regardless. So if you look at, you work with great athletes, changes your perspective. So you can see great athletes who are clearly avoiding using certain areas and they still jump forward. Like they’re a different athlete and they still jump 40 inches now than they did five years ago.
but they’re doing it in a different way. You know what’s a good example of this? Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods now can still absolutely smack a golf ball. He just can’t walk in between and he can’t use his right leg, I think it is. Like he is generating the force now through his spine and through all different parts, but he can still absolutely smash a golf ball. And it’s because the goal of, let’s say the nervous system, part of the goal,
It’s not about exact. This is this is a stored movement pattern of exactly how I hit the ball The goal is to connect the head of the club with the ball in this way or the goal actually Really the goal is to get the ball onto the green so his body can self-organize in a different way to get that job done But he basically doesn’t use his right leg anymore, and I see the same thing with athletes who like
your quad is completely wasted away on that side, but you can still dunk the basketball. So I think, yes, they can avoid using the tendon a little bit and the quad a little bit, but they’re still beating it up. They’re still landing from there. They’re still smashing into it. So, yeah, I don’t know. It’s tricky when I don’t have a great answer, but I just can’t see a negative in not bringing that up. And really, again, like if you ask the athlete, OK, you can jump 30 inches.
and your tendon is going to be a bit sore maybe or you can jump if we make you stronger with the muscle now you have the potential to jump higher and maybe that beats up the tendon more like i don’t think that’s a realistic question even because they’re still going to find a way to jump just as high regardless it’s just what they’re using so yeah i don’t know
Jake (15:15)
Yeah. Yeah, no, no, no, that does make me think. I’ve thought recently on when people, I mean, I use the analogy of of NBA, like Vince Carter and Blake Griffin and some of these guys in the NBA who they jump much stiffer as they get older. But maybe this is a different argument, but I’m thinking of the quad that’s wasted away and.
I would think the person would have a movement pattern that looks like it’s more beating up on the patellar tendon, which would be like more of a shallow, a shallow jump, not a deep knee angle. Cause he can’t use, I would think at least maybe you have, maybe you have a movement pattern because that, that quad muscle is doing nothing. Maybe your movement pattern is just like so heavy on the tendon with the jump and the land. And then you get the muscle, you do, you become a meathead and you get them and you start training the muscle. And now it’s like, you become more of a power, like deeper, deeper position jumper.
David Grey (15:46)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jake (16:08)
would take many years to get to that point, but.
David Grey (16:11)
have to say personally, my personal anecdotes for someone that’s had both patellar tendon and Achilles tendinopathy is nasty. Is when I’m training the quad more for my patellar tendon, I am running and jumping a bit better and my knee feels better. When I train my calf more in a good smart way, I’m running and jumping and changing direction better and my Achilles feels better.
Like I am more, a little bit more explosive and it feels better because it seems like the muscle is doing more. That’s just my anecdote. But there was a cool study a couple of years ago released Jake. I don’t know if you saw it where they did, they had people do body weight squats and they had a motion capture analysis around them. And then they put in, they did like a nerve blocker on the glutes on one side. Did you see that study? And.
Jake (17:03)
I don’t think so, no.
David Grey (17:04)
and they retested their body weight squat. basically, effectively what they did was, now it’s just a body weight squat and there’s definitely limitations and hopefully I’m not butchering the study, show me a body weight squat, motion capture, so that they can see exactly how you’re doing your squat. Nerve blockers on the glutes on one side. So effectively they’ve literally taken away your glutes on one leg and they ask you to squat again. And…
the surprising for me at least is that the squat actually looked almost identical after. So these people were just, despite having no access to a very important muscle group, they just made the movement look the same. Now this is a short term thing. if, like, maybe if,
You said, I’m going to put in a nerve blocker for the glutes for six months. Maybe the squat would look different or maybe if it was, okay, we’re going to keep loading the bar and see like, when does this break down? Or maybe if it would be probably more a better study if you looked at a gait analysis or a single leg jump, because you’re you’re doing the you’re looking at the glutes on or you’re taking away the glutes on one leg. So maybe that kind of lateral or frontal plane stability might be missing. But just in that study,
the squat look the same, which is astonishing to me, to be honest, that you can like people take people. Then we have physios around the world who are like, you have a one millimeter hip shift. Like you’re not your glute medius isn’t activating. Like, no, these people didn’t have a glute medius and they fucking squat look the same. So I don’t know. That just really struck home to me that people can make things look good or good is no good is wrong word. They can make things look, yeah, quote unquote, good.
But doesn’t mean they’re using what you think they’re using.
Jake (18:56)
Yeah, the I was gonna say something It’s totally gone now. Man, okay. So let’s go on let’s go on to the Achilles. It’ll come back to me. I get I’ve probably got thousands of questions Hey Achilles tendon rehab and I’m message back David Gray so tell me Tell me about your Achilles like
I’ve kind of talked many times of my jumper’s knee journey. Mine was just created out of necessity. None of the rehab worked for me. I was a strength coach. I had the education on physiology. I just pieced it all together to figure it out for myself. Then I released a program on it. What’s your story with the Achilles? Why the Achilles?
David Grey (19:34)
Mm-hmm.
Well, my Achilles started on my right side, the same side as my patellar tendon. And my patellar tendon was so cooked that I basically was running without bending my knee anymore as far as like, yeah, for all intents and purposes. And I think that my that’s probably what started my tendinopathy journey with my Achilles. And as much pathology was in my
my knee, would say at that stage, achilles, how sore my knee was when I had an achilles tendinopathy, it limited my function much more because I like, I just did not want to even walk anymore on that side. I didn’t want to do anything on that side when it got really nasty. And I had it for quite a few years. And then I took a break from sports for a while. And then I came back into sport, like competitive sport.
And that’s when I tore my Achilles and I was a perfect, it was a perfect combination of like what you would tell someone not to do basically, which was stop playing sport, stop loading. like lose muscle mass and lose strength, put on other types of mass, fat, and then go back to a previous level of sport that you did before, train for a week.
And then manager comes to you and says, will you play a game this weekend? And say, In the warmup of the game, feel like you might have hurt your Achilles and then say, I’m going to play anyway and fucking tear your Achilles. So like a perfect cocktail. So yeah, tore my Achilles, didn’t really rehab it, to be honest, just kind of, just kind of left it, put it in a boot.
for a little while took the boot off went for a swim there was big waves the sports doctor was like do not take this boot off like you have to keep this on really nice day in ireland we don’t get too many go for a swim get hit by a wave like kind of tear my achilles again so a lot of a lot of stupid stuff but in terms of the practical side of things i i hated calf raises
I basically stopped giving a lot of my Achilles clients calf raises, my Achilles tendinopathy clients calf raises for a while. And there was a couple of reasons. One, I was just all I was ever given was calf raises and it didn’t, it never really helped me to be honest. And two, I was seeing elite athletes all of the time who had been, had really nasty Achilles tendinopathy for years and were doing calf raises for years and not getting better. So.
we stripped back quite a bit on the calf raises and I started to see a lot of people improve. And what I realized, no, what I didn’t realize was actually calf raises are a good exercise, a really good exercise, but most people were overdoing them in terms of frequency and really underdoing them in terms of intensity. now, and there’s a couple of reasons they underdo them with intensity. One is,
can actually be a little bit difficult to load especially in a standing straight knee position. kind of need a Smith machine to use to really feel like you’re stable and you can push. That’s one reason. The second reason practically is that people try to do a full range calf raise and
the calves are not, you’re not very strong in your top range of plantar flexion. You’re way weaker in your top range of plantar flexion at the top of a calf raise than you would be in your kind of neutral or dorsiflexed range. And this would be like, let’s say doing a leg extension where you can lift a, you can hold an isometric or you can lift a weight in a leg extension and
but you’re choosing a weight that you can lift for an entire range of the rep, all the way into flexion and all the way into extension. But we don’t really do that with a leg extension isometric, let’s say. We would choose the heaviest weight possible that I can hold in a range that allows me to hold it, so that we can really get up to like max voluntary contraction type of areas. And we miss that in a calf raise when we try to go for full range, cause you’re so weak at the top.
So people choose a much lighter weight because they think that if I don’t get to the top of the calf raise, I’m not performing it right. So we make sure now that we drive intensity through the roof and we bring frequency down quite a bit, but intensity goes super high when we’re doing our calf work because we load them into the bottom of the range. And I don’t really care if they get a whole lot of past neutral, to be honest. And I make sure they have a nice kind of pause at the bottom. So.
We will do a single leg calf raise like that and we will do four sets of eight or eight sets of four or something like that and they absolutely smash it. We’ll usually do that once a week, particularly if I think it’s like there is a bit of pathology there, not just, quite a bit of pathology and it’s quite chronic. If it’s a bit, like if it’s a little bit of a newer thing, not an acute thing, then I’ll usually just attack the inhibition with some like.
just isometric holes and try and burn out the muscle and see, and that tends to help with pain a lot. But if I really want to hopefully make some changes and really build a lot of strength, then we’ll usually go for super heavy reps with just from the bottom range to just above neutral once a week. We’ll usually go for a two up, one down, a really heavy eccentric with like a five second eccentric once a week. And then we’ll usually go for
an overcoming isometric push in like up into a barbell like Alex Netero’s one, but we kind of go from this position where he has two positions. has like a hopefully I’m not wrong now, but he has heel on the floor and he calls it a knee iso push. And then he takes his heel off the floor where he pushes into the barbell and he calls it an ankle iso push. But I think the ankle iso push, think the heel is too high.
And again, you’re in too much plantar flexion and you can’t push hard enough there. So we just kind of go in between both of those where we have a tiny bit of knee flexion. We take the heel just barely off the floor and we push really hard there. So we might use that as the third day of the week. So does that am I going too fast there or is that OK? So I was talking to a professional footballer on the phone there on
Jake (26:28)
No, keep going.
David Grey (26:35)
What day was it? Yesterday or the day before? And he was telling me about his calf rehab actually. So I kind of approached it similar to an Achilles rehab for him, tendinopathy. he had a soleus tear and he had a little bit of gastroc as well recently. And actually side note on this, he went to three different sports docs all to read his scan and
One of them said it was going to be 12 weeks. The second one that he went to was supposedly their best in the world, their very best in the world at calf rehab and like sports doc wise. And he said it was going to be a four week rehab. He classified it very, very differently. And then he went to a third guy and the third guy said it was going to be a 10 week rehab. So, and it turned out to be
roughly around 12 weeks and he still wasn’t right. So this is just a complete side note. Like, don’t know what’s going on with reading scans. I’m not someone that reads scans, but like, Jesus Christ, you can get very varying results from people reading scans and you might be, yeah, you should get a second opinion, I think. But anyway, so back to him. So he is gonna do,
the overcoming ISO three times in the week And he’s gonna do the regular calf raise up and down single leg twice a week and he’s gonna do that eccentric once a week, so And then Tim Riley actually I was on the I did a call with him the other day and he has had a little bit of a flare-up with his Achilles and yeah, we’ve done a he started off with the overcoming ISOs and He just wrote to me this morning saying his Achilles has never felt better. So
we use the more I go on, the more I’ve learned, the more that overcoming isometric position that I’m describing there seems to be just so, so good for people. seems to work really well. and I think a lot of the reason is that people don’t use enough intensity in their calf and Achilles rehab. And sorry, back to the football guy. What I was, the reason I brought him up was so he said, I said, how many times are you training your calves a week? Cause his, his rehab isn’t going as well as it could be.
how many times do you train your calves a week? And he said, three times. And I said, okay, like what kind of intensity? And he said, I’m going to failure. This is a strong guy now. This is he’s six foot two, like professional athlete. I’m going to failure. And I was like, okay, what does that mean? Okay. And he said, I’m doing, so this is where you have to question people. Like you can’t just trust them that they’re doing what you think they might be doing. I said, sets and reps wise, what are you doing? And he said, I’m doing four sets of 12, three times a week. And I was like,
Okay, it doesn’t sound terrible. And I said, what kind of load are you using? And he said, just body weight. And this is 12 weeks into his calf rehab and he’s not using any additional load. And he’s working with professional physios, working at professional clubs. So yeah, like that’s just not gonna be enough. That’s just not intense. He probably got the frequency part right in terms of.
stop doing this every single day you don’t need to do it every single day especially if your intensity if your intensity is high you don’t need to do it every day but what he’s doing he could do that every day probably
Jake (30:11)
okay, I had this question on I’ve wondered this recently I get I started posting about these you you did I think you’ve done those overcoming seated Or whatever it is three second five second isometrics Like fall commercial in his group. There was like their way to improve ten and stiffness, but People ask me. are these better than the 30 to 45 seconds and still I’m like
Part of it is I’ve had thousands of people on my program that have gotten better. So I’m like, I don’t want to change things, but I also, don’t want to risk changing things. I don’t want to be like leg extension, five seconds, improve stiffness. Like because I think it’s going to blow people up. Like I’ve blown up people, I’ve blown up people with a 45 second leg extension, isometric mid range. They even might go a little bit higher and it still blows their knee, their patellar tendon up. So I’m like, I think it’s just too much strain, too much elongation on the tendon. Let’s go a little bit lighter, hold it for longer.
They do that, they feel better, I decrease the time over time. But I don’t have the Achilles experience. And I think that my idea that longer ISO is gonna be less strain on the patellar, gonna be less likely to blow it up. If you go heavier, you’re gonna blow that thing up. But I’m like, with the Achilles, with bad Achilles, can you get away with the really short ISOs and feel better? Like in Tim’s case, is it more likely that the Achilles is gonna respond better to super heavy ISO or is patellar and Achilles kind of the same?
David Grey (31:35)
I would definitely be more cautious with giving people the shorter isos with the knee joint than the Achilles. I feel like it’s harder to blow the Achilles up in the gym just generally. I feel like it’s close to impossible to really, really flare the Achilles up in the gym unless you’re slamming.
two times body weight, like fasty centrics on a barbell or something like that. But I feel like a single leg waltz, a double leg waltz, could flare someone’s patellar tendon up if they’re just not ready for it. So I think you can, much more likely you can go more aggressive earlier with the Achilles. But I still, someone like Tim, I think he’s fine. I’m like, fucking try the high intensity thing straight away. If, you know, like.
He doesn’t mind if I mess him up. I don’t mind if I mess him up. And most likely, I know he has a high training age and like most likely he can go there straight away and he’ll know if it’s okay or not. So that’s why I would give that to someone. But yeah, I usually do the same as you where I start with longer sets. So three sets of 45 seconds or five sets of 45 seconds. And then I have a mid range one where I go to
7-10 reps of 7-10 second overcoming pushes. I really like that mid-range one, or kind middle tier one, because it gives people a little bit more time to build tension. I do want them to push hard as quickly as possible, but realistically it gives them an extra second to build that tension up.
and maybe build that tension back down again. And I think that’s a really nice kind of bridge the gap area for people. And then I’ll bring it down to like four sets of five reps of three to five second push. And that’s what I was doing with a sprinter who was with me today from Switzerland. She came in and we were doing that and she’s had a lot of foot problems over the years and we were able to like, that’s the highest intensity exercise.
That’s the only exercise because she can’t sprint right now. She can jump. She can do POGOs. She can do, yeah, like hurdle jumps and stuff like that, but she’s not sprinting. So there’s no exercise in her program because it’s a foot problem where there’s like a hundred percent push through your foot. Every POGO is a little bit. It’s just submaximal. Every jump is submaximal. So that’s the one exercise where we can get at least intensity and intention to be
push 100 % and it’s very safe and think the foot and the Achilles can handle that cos it can handle so much load. But Tellur tendon I would definitely be more cautious.
Jake (34:37)
Have you thought of why that is? I’ve thought if I did a three to five second leg extension, I’m just gonna blow up my patellofemoral. That’s what I feel like I’m most sensitive to. do you think it’s like, so like the Achilles longest, I don’t know, the longest, strongest tend of the body, like patella is shorter and fatter. Patella can also get calcific, like calcific at the…
I guess you get calcification at the Achilles, but yeah, still am like, what is the reason why you can really go hard at the Achilles and not the patella? Is it because of, I don’t know, is it because of the Achilles you just use in everything you do? And patella you’re not really using unless you’re like, well, I guess if you go up and down stairs, but you can walk around and do things day to day and not really use the patella. I still am like, I’m glad you cleared that up.
David Grey (35:30)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (35:34)
because I’ve just been like giving that suggestion but then I’ve been wondering okay people with Achilles are gonna think they have to do 30 to 45 seconds and a part of me is like I don’t think they do I think they can go a lot harder but yeah do you have any speculation on why
David Grey (35:44)
No, I don’t think they do either.
Nah, I’ll leave you figure that out Jake. You’re… You’re… I think… No, I’m kind of with you on that. That like… I feel like even when I say… If I say the words like… Overcoming isometric three seconds on the leg extension. Even from my patellar tendon side… I get like a shiver in my body. I’m like, oh my knee is gonna be sore. But like…
Nah, is my ankle going to be sore when I do an overcoming isometric into a fixed barbell? It’s like, no, it’s not. Unless I do it in a stupid range of motion. nah, I just feel like it’s much, it’s probably much easier to direct load into the calves and everything else feels fine around the foot and the ankle versus, I don’t know, that knee just, that knee just wants to take over. One more point. Oh, go on, go on, go on.
Jake (36:37)
I wonder if…
David Grey (36:43)
This is my one was off topic. you go.
Jake (36:43)
Okay,
yeah, I was wondering if so when you talk when you’re doing like in any the calf raise or isometric at the ankle, like the only thing you’re looking at pretty much the only structure is like the Achilles tendon, the stress and the strain of the Achilles tendon. When you go to the knee, you’re looking at stress and strain of the patellar tendon, but you’re also looking at patellofemoral joint stress. So you have like two things you’re competing with at the ankle. It’s just one thing.
David Grey (37:12)
Well,
it’s more than that because there’s a lot of other planter flexors at the ankle as well.
Jake (37:20)
Well, I guess, yeah, yeah,
yeah. But what I’m getting at is you have like another structure there, the kneecap that like could be, could be making, yeah, you have another structure of, yeah, you have another bone there. So it’s like, there’s maybe like, it’s more complex to get into a knee iso than it is to get into an ankle iso, because it’s like, you’re just really trying to pull on the Achilles versus if you’re trying to pull on the patellar tendon, it has to go through the kneecap. And I feel like, I mean, you were talking about that swelling you get, and I feel like,
David Grey (37:26)
yeah, okay, yeah, like bone-wise, let’s say, yeah.
Jake (37:50)
if it’s like synovial swelling or what’s going on with the knee joint. But when that thing swells, I was actually doing, I think I was with the first time I was ever with Tim Riley in Austin. He was, he was doing like hack squats, like really deep hack squats. And he was saying how good they feel for his knees and how I’m going to feel good doing them for my knees. And it just made my knees feel way worse. Cause I think they were just like, had swelling already in them. And it’s like, this is not, this is not good for me. So, um, yeah, that’s, that’s what maybe, maybe that’s what’s going on is the, the patella makes things a bit different.
David Grey (38:07)
Ha
I’m not sure. That’s your next project.
Jake (38:22)
What was your
sidetrack, though?
David Grey (38:25)
Yeah, the curveball with the Achilles is because we, guess we have at the moment, we have with our team, we’re rehabbing two patella ruptures. Both are, no, one is a professional basketballer, one is a GA player here in Ireland.
Jake (38:46)
I think I know
the guy. Do I know the guy?
David Grey (38:49)
Don’t know, do ya?
Jake (38:50)
We don’t need to talk about it. I thought I thought I had DMed him and maybe we anyways go ahead
David Grey (38:55)
Maybe you do. I don’t know. Maybe you do.
Jake (38:57)
I think it
was in the past I was helping him and I think he ruptured because that will happen.
David Grey (39:03)
Okay. I don’t know. don’t know. and then the, do I’m rehabbing one Achilles rupture, another professional basketballer and the Achilles rupture one, this one in particular has been kind of tricky because he had several years of Achilles tendinopathy, but it was insertional tendinopathy, right? And he has a Haglund’s deformity there and he eventually ruptured and
the surgeon obviously repaired it, but he didn’t do anything with the Haglund’s deformity. that’s still there. And we’ve rehabbed it, but we’ve had to be, when you’re rehabbing a rupture of an Achilles, you have to be so careful with lengthening the tendon. You really want to be careful with that for a long time. So that throws in a massive curve ball in terms of ruptures because…
how you’re going to make the calves stronger. Like the calves are going to be stronger and you’re going to load them more in a more dorsiflex position. But after a rupture, you’re trying to avoid that dorsiflex position. So now you’re trying to get load into those areas in more plantar flex position where there’s more active insufficiency there and less of the calves are going to be working hard. So this has been a really tricky one for us along the way. I’m so I’m really careful of one, we don’t want to lengthen that tendon too much.
And two, I don’t want to aggravate your insertion like Hillies like before, because probably the reason or part of the reason you have it in the first place is this deformity there. So that’s been tricky. And that’s where I’ve used tons and tons and tons of, again, that those overcoming isometrics in that kind of mid range just barely heel off the floor, knee tiny bit flexed, because that’s really the only way we can.
absolutely smash him in those ranges and we can’t really go deeper and hold a stretch position or anything like that. I found that, yeah, rehabbing a patellar rupture, a patellar tendon rupture has been easier. Or maybe the Achilles just, it just throws a little bit more curve balls in at you in terms of rupture wise. But again, yeah, that’s just off topic, but that’s.
another reason I’ve adopted so much of the overcoming ISOs it just works so well for the Achilles in particular.
Jake (41:29)
Yeah, it’s, I want to stay on that, but it’s my first time trying the seated. I’ve read the full commercial and I try the seated calf raise heavy as I can. And it’s like, it feels like my calf muscles are going to like, I guess my sole is, it feels like it’s going to pop. Like the contraction is so hard. feels like it’s going to pop. And I’m like, I wonder if this is the level you need to train at to get strain out of the Achilles tendon. And if you’re doing like a 30 second ISO,
I think the strain is dropping after like five seconds on the tendon because the muscle is not pulling as hard. So I’m like, yeah, you really want to get some load through the tendon. How much are you getting on the Achilles with the 30 second? And probably because the forces going through the calf and Achilles are so high in sport. How much higher than patellar? Quite a bit higher.
David Grey (42:17)
I know. You hear all kinds of stuff. I don’t know. how does it how does that happen where like all these different studies say there’s different amounts of forces going through like vastly different. So I don’t know. I’d love to just have a number like it’s it’s probably this amount when you run at this speed or jump at this high. But I don’t think we have that.
Jake (42:18)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
I look at the soleus too, and there’s some anatomy studies on the soleus, and all of the aponeurosis, there can be so many aponeurosis in the soleus, so I just look at that and I’m like, that’s not a muscle that’s gonna, the muscle fibers are probably not gonna be big, like eccentric, isometric. I would think it would be more like an isometric muscle. And also from deer hunting, I don’t do the cutting up of the meat. My mom and sister, they like to do that, but she left a whole.
whole thing of meat one day in a jar or in a bowl and they were all gone and I’m like, cool, I’m gonna cook some of this up and it was like scrap meat that’s full of fascia and like aponeurosis and all this and I tried cooking it, it was disgusting, I gave it to the dog because that’s the stuff we grind up for hamburger meat. So I’m like, I think a lot of hamburger meat, if you consume hamburger meat, you’re probably getting a lot of collagen because there’s aponeurosis that they’re grinding up and there’s fascia and there’s all this nasty stuff that you can never eat like as a steak.
David Grey (43:26)
Aha.
Jake (43:35)
It’s just disgusting. But I look at the soleus and I’m like, the way that thing is built is like, maybe that’s a reason why the forces you talk about how high the forces are. I’m like, that is such an isometric muscle that it would be a terrible meat, a terrible muscle to consume. If you were a cannibal, I would think that would be a nasty thing to cook is like a piece of steak because it’d be so it’d be so chewy. Every so it’d be so rough. mean, but I wanted to go on this. That was complete sidetracked.
David Grey (44:02)
All the fascia
bros are going to be eating more hamburgers now.
Jake (44:09)
Yeah, I think I was gonna say on the the the lengthening of the Achilles I don’t know if I’ve ever asked anyone this so like yeah That’s a big thing post rupture is they don’t want the Achilles are gonna naturally lengthen and that’s a bad thing because when it lengthens There’s nothing you can do to get it to shorten again except for get another surgery Patellar tendon rupture does is that not lengthening does that not have the same risk of that tendon getting longer or does it?
David Grey (44:34)
Yeah, of course. But I think the, if you think about even just going for a walk with the Achilles, like how much you could, that’s why they’re so careful when they put you in the booth that they have like the wedge that you can like adjust by a degree or whatever it is every week. So it’s just so easy to.
Lengthen your Achilles in a max length instantly in a stupid way. So you have to be very careful with that, extra careful with that.
Jake (45:10)
I want to talk about your Achilles again, but do you ever watch Mark Ripitell? You know, Starting Strength? Are you familiar? You’re familiar? Okay. Dude, some of his takes are so good. I love the guy because he’s, he’s, he had one piece, it was spot on. He’s like, if what you’re seeing in the real world disagrees with the literature, the literature is wrong. And I forget the way of philosophy. was like, what is, there’s a certain branch of philosophy that is.
David Grey (45:18)
No, but I know he is, yeah, but no. Yeah, yeah.
Jake (45:38)
based around that but also that but he he tore his achilles
David Grey (45:41)
Hang
on, hang on, do you agree with what he said there?
Jake (45:45)
Yeah, completely. If the literature is telling you a certain thing and then what you see in the real world is different, I’m like, the literature’s wrong. You know?
David Grey (45:54)
What if
what you’re seeing… What if you’re not seeing what you think you’re seeing?
Jake (46:00)
Okay, I guess we need like a case. What case are we talking about?
David Grey (46:03)
Let’s go back a thousand years where they did bloodletting and someone got better. What they saw was that they did this treatment and someone improved and they assigned the improvement to this treatment.
Jake (46:19)
Okay, okay. I think it’s getting at, did it work? Yes or no? And we’re not trying to look at the mechanism. So like the blood lighting could work, but it could be a placebo and we’re not even trying to explain away the placebo. Yeah.
David Grey (46:27)
Yeah, but the
Mm-hmm, yeah.
See, that’s, yeah. Look, fair enough. On an individual level, you wanna do things that improve your own client results. But on an industry level, we need to have good explanations for how things work. So that’s where the research is. And to be honest, the research is trash because you don’t get…
Jake (46:48)
Yeah. Yeah.
David Grey (46:56)
Yeah, they just tell you what they did. don’t, they don’t really, it still isn’t telling you like why something worked to be honest. It’s such, so surface level really. So we want to know why. So tell me why it’s working, not just, I did this and X amount of people got better and X amount of people did. Like, excuse me. Like I can do that myself in clinic. I don’t have to, you know, I can tell you who got better and who didn’t. I can’t tell you exactly why or I know we can’t say exactly, but.
Give me some reason, boy.
Jake (47:26)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it’s, I enjoy it, cause I’m like, I’m always trying to find mechanisms for things. And it’s like, I go back years later and I’m like, I’m probably wildly off on the mechanisms. But it’s just, it’s just enjoyable for me to try to dig deeper. It’s not fun to be like surface level, but at the same time, I love the surface level of did your squat go up a hundred pounds on, like I use it for clusters. Cause I’m like eight by five clusters.
David Grey (47:30)
Anyway, back to your point.
Jake (47:54)
It would disagree with the hypertrophy research, hypertrophy optimizers. And I’m like, screw you guys. I got a thousand, I got thousands of people who got jacked on hypertrophy clusters. So that’s why I’m like, what I’m seeing in the real world is people getting jacked and the hypertrophy optimizers would be like, well, that’s not the best, the optimal setup for hypertrophy because you’re not within the reps and reserve and whatever. It’s like, I don’t care. This program worked and there’s something to say about not intellectualizing something and just seeing the way, having the experience.
David Grey (48:22)
I agree.
I agree.
Jake (48:24)
But so
Mark had a video, cause he had a video on tennis elbow, golfer in tennis elbow. And his, his method was to do, think like pull-ups every day, like, like 10 sets of 10 pull-ups underhand, overhand, something like this. And I think he’s had some good success with it. Just, just aggravating the tissue and then it maybe desensitizes over time or something like that. Maybe you’re working muscles around the area, but he tore his Achilles tendon. He ruptured his Achilles tendon years ago and he was telling his story and he went to the doctor and I think, I think they repaired it.
And then they told him to get in the boot and stay in like plantar flexion, like don’t stretch your tendon. And immediately he’s like, screw you, screw the medical system. I’m throwing the boot away. And he went and he said he went and did like rack pulls with like 400 or 500 pounds. And he was completely fine. He’s like, I’ve been fine ever since. You don’t need to listen to doctors. And I was like, okay, that’s cool. But like, you’re just this fat old dude who’s doing deadlifts and squats. You’re not jumping and sprinting. So you don’t have the risk of rupture. If you’re to tell an athlete to do this,
David Grey (49:15)
Yep.
Jake (49:22)
You’re gonna go rupture, re-rupture an Achilles. So like terrible advice, like just look at what you do with your life. You don’t do the things that the people that rupture the Achilles, if that’s like an NBA player, you’re gonna re-rupture. You’re gonna re-rupture that thing right away. We don’t need to avoid over-stretching the tendon.
David Grey (49:39)
Yeah, that was gonna
be my… If you didn’t say that, that’s what I was gonna say. was like, I presume he’s not running or jumping. He’s just lifting something off the floor, which you know what? Maybe he actually did the right thing because he will have a bit more range of motion than if he listened to the doctor, but he ain’t never doing a pogo. Nevermind fucking a dunk.
Jake (50:01)
Yeah. When you did your Achilles, was it a full rupture?
David Grey (50:05)
Nah, it was just a tear. Bad enough tear, but not a full rupture. And my, funnily enough, my brother had ruptured his Achilles, I think 12 weeks earlier. I don’t know the exact time, but so when he ruptured his Achilles, I got the phone call to go and pick him up from training. Went up and picked him up and he was like lying face down. All the team were there. I walked in and I just looked at him.
and he was just shaking his head and like they were all the physios were looking at his calf and like poking it and I was just like shit so anyway I brought him home blah blah blah blah he got his surgery he got his boot so then 12 weeks later Ciara was bringing me home from my game when I had torn my Achilles and I rang Tony my brother and I was like never guess what I just did and I was like I’m on the way to the hospital to get a boot
And he said, no, you can have my one. I’m going to take it off. I’m just cleared to take off my boots. So, so yeah, it was, it was fucking. And that was the first time we had trained together, like played on the same team for a decade, the same sport, the same team, the same training. And like nothing like that happened to us. And then that year we both played for different teams, different training, different gym, different everything. And we both did our Achilles.
So like, you know, if we were training together that year, everyone would have said, it must have been the load or the volume or whatever you were doing in the weight room. But actually, no, it was entirely different for the first time in a decade. And we still both and we both are Achilles. So that’s that’s where we could have been like causation versus correlation. If we trained together, everyone would have said like you both were doing something stupid at the same time, but we weren’t.
Jake (52:00)
I sometimes wonder genetics, if your brother did it and you did it, I don’t know any immediate family member that’s ruptured their Achilles. But also they’re probably not athletic in doing things like that, so maybe that has prevented it. They also have never…
David Grey (52:12)
No, I think genetics,
yeah, I really do. He was freaking out, because he’s had like, he’s had Achilles, he’s had problems with his elbows, like tendons, he’s had lots of tendon problems and so have I. And he was like, I think I’m sick, I took off this and that. I was like, nah, you were just like, you’re Achilles, you.
you had a new baby, were 37, were, or no, you were 36, you were playing at the highest level of sport and you didn’t sleep for six weeks. And you, and you’re up, oh, sorry. And you had a calf strain the end of the previous season and never rehabbed it. So like, again, perfect recipe. So you tore your Achilles. That calf strain that you had the previous year, like that was a big sign.
You said this before Jake, I think on one of our podcasts that we did, like a younger person hurts their calf, an older person hurts their Achilles. So he hurt his calf and then his Achilles. And I just was detrained. was out of shape. So I do think genetics probably is part of it, but also just, just recipe for disaster.
Jake (53:29)
This I went through I went through a Jill Cook course recently Joe cook McHugh’s I love listening to Jill but there’s probably like ten things she said where I’m like, how can you say that? One of them was on the Hagelins deformity She’s like, I don’t think it’s a problem and if you if you like shave it or cut it out what I was just gonna come right back but I’m like I don’t know how you can say that cuz I’ve heard a lot of cases of people that like That’s a serious problem for their Achilles. Do you see a lot of them?
David Grey (53:58)
No, not that many, but so I don’t know. I’m not confident enough to say it is or it isn’t. like with this guy that I’m rehabbing, he spoke to a surgeon. Like he should have, I think, again, anecdotally, I think when they were doing his achilles, they should have just shaved it off as well. They should have cleaned it up because it wouldn’t have mattered. Like they were going in there anyway, so just do it. And they didn’t. And then he spoke to a surgeon about it recently.
And he said like, yeah, I can do it now, but I still don’t know if it’s gonna help pain wise. So I don’t know. I think it’s a bit of a guess. I don’t think we know, to be honest. But I don’t know, there’s definitely, I have seen people, the people that I’ve seen have it, have an Achilles problem as well. You know, I haven’t seen too many where, no, maybe I’m not looking for it then. I don’t know, but seems to be an issue, but that doesn’t mean that.
shaving it off is going to help. So I don’t know. I don’t know. But I’ve seen with some of these foot shapes that like they’re very rigid feet and a little bit more supinated. And I think that can be a bit of a problem. Actually more so not with the deformity, but more so with the insertion of Achilles, super rigid foot shapes with like a really tucked under heel bone. And I think that I personally think that that is causing more compression on that insertion of Achilles because when they drive their knee forward,
they just have a little bit of less space, I think. they have to, you can actually see a bend through some of these Achilles. It doesn’t go like someone who can kind of open their mid foot. You can see this nicer kind of long line. I have a video on our membership site about this. You can see more of a long line as they go into dorsiflexion. It’s like a flat stretch that they get on the Achilles versus some of these insertional people with the more rigid foot shape. see like a bend through a certain part of the Achilles. And I think that’s probably not great.
But again, I don’t have anything to back that up. That’s just very anecdotal. I’m sure a researcher would like say you have nothing to back that up and I would 100 % agree with them.
Jake (56:04)
That’s what I just talked to Joel and he was saying the same with.
I guess he looks at a lot of high jumpers and it’s like the rigid supinated foot is all of that’s going through the Achilles like they’re just beating up their Achilles versus like the over pronator quote unquote is like they’re getting deformation at their ankle and it’s like unloading the Achilles a bit instead of everything going which is crazy because you look at the foot people the foot world that it’s all about let’s get more supinated and rigid foot and it’s like how many if that actually stuck with a person you probably just be yanking on everyone’s Achilles like there’d be no give there
David Grey (56:37)
Yep.
Jake (56:38)
That’s what I think at least. You said you had a
David Grey (56:39)
Yeah. I agree.
Jake (56:41)
a question I always get and I’m kind of frustrated because I don’t know, I usually just try to make people feel at ease with their tendon, but they get a report of a partial tear, a partial rupture. And then when I go through read research, it seems pretty agreed upon. Now, if it’s like a major rupture, like 50 % or something, it’s like, you can probably see that on imaging, but a lot of them are just like, how do you distinguish the rupture from just like normal?
degeneration of the tendon and there’s not really a clear picture on that. So I just tell people just to rehab. Do you have people like partial ruptures? Do you do anything different or is it just more like if they come to you right after a partial rupture, a suspected partial rupture, you’re taking it much easier. But I feel like you do that with a very sensitive tendon anyways. Like is there any difference like partial rupture versus just regular tendinopathy?
David Grey (57:31)
No, for me it would be like, well yeah, I’m just more cautious with it. If we agree, and this is a conversation for them and a surgeon and a couple of different opinions, I guess, but if they agree that they’re not going to get surgery and most, I would say rarely is surgery the right option there, then we agree that rehab is the right approach and with rehab, like,
The good thing with rehab is you’re going to push people as hard as you can push people and no harder. And that’s that’s that doesn’t matter if it’s an ACL rehab, if it’s a hamstring rehab, if it’s an Achilles rupture and Achilles tendinopathy. I’m just going to push it as hard as I think I can. And that’s going to constantly change. So if it’s a rupture, if you can do if it’s a partial rupture and you can do single leg calf raises and go nice and heavy, I’m going to go nice and heavy.
You know, I’m gonna, I’m just gonna push you as hard as I can. ACL rehab, I’m not gonna pay too much attention to the timeline that people put on it. I’m just gonna try and push you as hard as I can and try and improve function all of the way. And I think you’re gonna end up in a good place. So yeah, that’s the beauty of rehab. just meet you where you’re at, make you a bit better. Meet you where you’re at, make you a bit better. And you can’t really, actually, like I said with this guy that had the calf, the scan.
like you can have three people reading that and they all say completely different things so i can’t really place 100 trust in what any of those people say so i can only see what i see and try and go from there you know
Jake (59:16)
I don’t know if this was on your… You had Peter Maliaris on. Was this a long time ago though? This was many years maybe. Okay, I think he was on Greg Lehman’s show and I had never heard this because I just had never heard it until he said it. But I think he was talking about Achilles ruptures. I think that was the only tendon. And he was saying how it’s a weird thing because there’s no pain in the rehab process.
David Grey (59:20)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, a couple years ago, yeah.
Jake (59:39)
And I’m like is this for all tendons because you for a tendon opathy it can be like alright. Let’s load it What’s the pain response like you can even do pain? Well pain during kind of sucks because it can warm up It could be a few hours later you get pain it could be the next day could be the following day And that’s the pain that’s the guide you use for rehab of okay if your tendon tolerated this well pain is stable if it didn’t it blew up with more pain because we should probably regress or take take some days off try again with the ruptures is that
Is there no pain? Is there like less of a sensitive pain response? What’s going on?
David Grey (1:00:11)
Yeah, not really with an Achilles, you’re not gonna get probably any pain to be honest. Yeah, so.
you just judge function. Like you’re looking at range of motion and that doesn’t mean range of more is better. It’s limited range of motion. We want to limit your range of motion and function. Can you do a calf raise? That’s gonna be your big first milestone. Can you do a calf raise? And with our Achilles guy that we’re rehabbing at the moment, long before he could do a calf raise, I got him to try and do a calf raise every single day.
Even if you’re not doing calf raises on that day or double leg calf raises or assisted calf raises or like lying on the floor against the wall calf raises, every day stand up and try and do a calf raise, at least one. Just so that the intention was so clear on his mind that like the sooner I can do a calf raise the better. yeah, you’re not gonna have pain, just judge function and range of motion. And that’s where your force testing can be good. saw.
There was a girl, a high jumper in the UK that had an Achilles tendon, or sorry, yeah, tendon rupture just before the Olympics, actually. I think she was due to go to the Olympics and she ruptured her Achilles and they were using, they were using some different testing even while she was in the booth, I think, or when they take the boot off to do a little bit of rehab and they used not a force plate, they were using like a, I think it was remake or was the model that they were using where they can.
a dynamometer, handheld dynamometer, and they were using that to calculate how much force she could put through so that they knew when she could walk because they were saying, okay, when you walk, you’re gonna have to handle X amount of force at your soleus and your gastroc and your Achilles. So we’re not allowing you to walk. Like you can walk when you can do X amount of plant reflection force.
you can walk with one crutch when you can do whatever you can walk with no crutches. like there’s very, very, you can make very clear functional milestones and it doesn’t matter that there’s no pain. And it’s a good thing that there’s no pain because pain is a bitch and it’s going to get in the way. So it’s a good thing it’s not there.
Jake (1:02:29)
Do you think the no pain leads to people doing too much too soon?
Like if you have no pain, you might be like, I’m gonna go hop back into sport unless you have clear timelines of.
David Grey (1:02:36)
Eh.
Yeah, nah, it doesn’t. If they do that, they’re an idiot. yeah, they have a bad coach or a bad rehabber, you know? So yeah, with other issues, with other injuries it can, but like something like a rupture, it definitely shouldn’t. You’re definitely not hopping back into sport unless you wanna hop back out again nice and quickly. So yeah, I don’t think so. But one thing I have changed my mind on a bit is the pain during…
tendinopathy. So for a few years I was kind of very much on the board of like pushing up to a three or four out of 10 pain during a session is fine. Even maybe I was like on the mindset of that’s that’s good. That means we’re working hard. That’s good. As long as it doesn’t spike too much the following day. And I still appreciate that. It’s still fine. But I don’t know. I’m much clearer in my mindset now that I’d much rather it not be sore. I’d much rather find positions where we can just
get the load as high as possible without the pain. And I know that sounds incredibly obvious, but I probably wasn’t active enough with trying to do that in the past. I was probably like, because everyone said it’s fine if there’s pain there, I just was like, it’s fine if there’s pain there, rather than being like, it’s fine, but also it’s much better if there’s not.
Jake (1:04:01)
Yeah, I like, you’re speaking at Boyle’s soon, right? Mike Boyle’s? Yeah, I like, well, Enda King did it for me first, where he’s like, he wants a big hit in the muscle and not in the joints and the tendon, and I was like, that’s so good. And then Mike Boyle, same thing, he’s like, he wants sore muscles, not sore joints and tendons. And yeah, and it’s like, it’s so simple, but.
David Grey (1:04:06)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (1:04:22)
yeah the all that research is like you can be like a four or five and i’ve just never really liked that and i also wonder i wonder what’s happening if you’re if you’re just re because like that you get nerve end growth into the tendon i wonder if you just keep keeping that going the nerve end growth into the tendon and those are just not gonna come out and maybe that’s gonna make the pain more chronic but it might be like i think you said on the last show the more gogans or less gogans it’s like if someone’s a baby they probably need more gogans and you probably should push into some things
And if someone is an idiot and pushing too hard, like, let’s back off and try to get the muscles and lay off of the tendon. So I was on the plantar flexion thing. So for a long time you were doing like full range calf raises and you just felt like, cause I hardly do calf raises. I’ve just always had like pretty decent sized calves. So I’ve never really had to do that. And also not a history of Achilles problems, but whenever I do them, it’s like, yeah, that top position just feels so weird. It’s almost like.
David Grey (1:04:56)
Yeah, big time.
you
Jake (1:05:19)
Is it like a resuppination of your foot? And I just feel like, I feel like my tendon is like, just, just, I don’t know. Cause you get a good strain on the Achilles, but you get to the top, feels like it’s just crunching up. And I just feel not a good, yeah, like not a good contraction on my, so like, I think you had said this recently that you’ll, you’ll try to get that as like a range of motion thing. But when you’re going for loading, you’re just going to not care about getting plantar flexion, right?
David Grey (1:05:30)
Yeah.
Yeah, I’ll separate it out. So you will if it’s if it’s a rupture again of Achilles, you want to get that top range back because it’s almost impossible for them to get that top range back. They’re just going to be really, really weak there, probably forever or weaker there than they could have been. And I think that’s down to structural changes. I spoke to Colin Griffin very briefly about that and I’m
He’s actually going to come on my podcast, I think soon. But I don’t know. He’s smarter than me. So he knows about the structural changes that when the Achilles tears and blah, blah, something with the gas truck changes and blah, But what it results in for me is they’re weaker in the top range. And so you do want to make sure that you strengthen that. But you have to separate that out from the foot, the middle range and where you’re going to go for your most load. Because if you’re always trying to
Choose a weight that loads the top range. It means you’re under loading the bottom range or the middle range So we separate it out. We go right there’s your calf raises and you’re gonna go through whatever range it is if it’s a tendinopathy or a rupture whatever range where you’re allowed to go through go as heavy as you can through this range and then we will do some top range calf raises separately to that if we feel like we need to top it up so in that instance
you’re setting up and you have a plate under your heel and the plate is actually, so you’re starting in plantar flexion, in a decent bit of plantar flexion and you’re just going to go to the top. It’s like a calf raise of like an inch at the top and we’ll just go for super high reps there. So we get a massive burn in that top range or you can load that top range, but we separate it out. It’s two different exercises and that works really well.
And then maybe once a week we’ll go for either max capacity calf raise where they just do a bodyweight calf raise and they’re trying to go through their full range. And that’s something that we can test obviously. we want to get like an active male should be aiming for getting about 30 reps there of their just up and down bodyweight calf raise on a single leg. And.
So we can do that maybe once a week or we can have slightly higher reps of like two or three sets of 12 to 15 reps where we do body weight again up and down and try and get the full range. But that’s a bit more capacity and range, whereas strength and intensity. I’ll just repeat again one last time that the biggest, biggest by far mistake that people make is not loading heavy enough because they’re trying to go up to the top range.
Jake (1:08:40)
You talked about Alex Netera and I got to get him on at some point, but he has those jerk isometrics, right? Where you’re starting from like a relaxed and then you’re jerking into something. And I’ve always, I’ve just wondered what is the effect on the tendon? I, cause I just feel like it’s such a sudden yank on the tendon, almost like a plyometric. That’s what I would think. And I’m like, if you’re doing an isometric, you kind of want a therapeutic effect. And I’m like,
David Grey (1:09:03)
Mm-hmm.
Jake (1:09:08)
Does that, is that negating the therapeutic effect because you just yanked on the tendon? I guess you would know with like pain symptoms or something. I don’t know. Have you, have you played around with the jerk type ones and what do you think?
David Grey (1:09:21)
Not really. think that if I’m at that stage of like rehab, let’s say I am doing ballistic movements and jumping movements, I suppose, at that stage. the girl that I was saying, the sprinter that had with me today from Switzerland, she was setting up in his, in that overcoming isometric position that I described. And she was trying to find a way to actually jerk to initiate the rep.
So I’m trying to get her to fully lock in, there’s zero movement anywhere. And then she just has to drive as hard as she can, 100 % as quickly as possible. And she was trying to like, every time I said go, she was trying to like have this oscillation at the knee. It was like she was using the patellar tendon and the quad tendon, this oscillation to drive, to transfer energy to the ankle. And I see that as a like quote unquote compensation there that she’s trying to do. She can’t, she’s not happy to just
be in a position and then smash through the foot. She’s transferring energy down the chain. yeah, see that as a, you’re saying therapeutic effect if you’re more isometric. Yes, I think that’s the case, but also I see that as an opportunity for someone to find other ways to load and push rather than the one area. And that’s where our isometrics are so good.
overcoming, yielding, whatever they are, long or short, high intensity or not, you can be much more clear with what’s working and what’s not working. It’s not just about how much force you can generate, it’s in the right area. And I think that’s where the true isometrics can really be most valuable is you have almost no choice but to use the tissue that we’re trying to use. Almost no choice.
Jake (1:11:11)
I just talked to Joel and he gave his ways of prehab for his own Achilles and his number one is running on the creek, all these rocks that are like different surfaces and everything. When you’re doing Achilles rehab, are you varying surfaces of the floor, like angles of the floor, or are you like flat ground a lot of times?
David Grey (1:11:33)
yeah, well we do a lot of foot stuff with it anyway. so not necessarily varying angles of the floor, but we’re varying shin angles. I spend a lot of time getting people to shift. So if you think about, if you, if you think about the shin, the shin is going to be a big driver of everything, really the position of the shin and the movement of the shin. So we’re going to have plantar flexion and dorsiflexion. have where we can get the shin to IR and ER. And then the one that people don’t really talk about is
Let’s say you can get, so if your foot is planted on the floor, can get the foot and ankle to evert and invert passively and actively. this, much I can go into this on the podcast is kind of tricky because it almost needs a visual. But let’s say, let’s say I plant my right foot down in front of me and then I do a lateral lunge. My right foot stays put. I lunge over to the left. So my body, my center of mass is moving to the left.
as my right foot stays planted. So now my right knee has gone inside my right ankle. Yeah? Are you with me? So if I allow, as I do that, I’m pulling my center of mass away from my right foot immediately. And if I allow my right foot to roll off the outside, then that’s a passive eversion of my right foot.
And that’s what will happen as I do a lateral lunge, unless I actively invert down into the floor to press the outside of my foot down into the floor. So this is a way of getting your, I almost think about it as the top of your shin inside the bottom of your shin. And then I can do like a curtsy lunge where I lunge back behind myself and out laterally the other way where my right foot still stays put. And now if I,
keep pushing further and further to the right, my whole foot is going to actively invert unless I actively press it back down into the floor and evert back down into the floor. we don’t really spend too much time varying surfaces. We spend a lot of time manipulating the center of mass so that you have to use different muscles. So like I guess what Joel is doing there when he runs on different surfaces and he’s hitting different rocks, what he’s getting is
a of eversion and inversion and then his muscles have to have more everter activity, more inverter activity, more plantar flexor activity, the bones are spreading so that the transverse arch is spreading, there’s a lot of variety there. But it’s difficult to get that at a certain stage of the rehab process because maybe you can’t run yet, maybe you can’t do that yet. So I think a lot of people bring in lot of tools to
manipulate that so your foot is even like some people have like a sand pit in the gym or stones in the gym so you can walk and step on stuff. I think that’s a good idea but we’ve kind of found ways to not really need that and that’s just making sure we’re manipulating our center of mass around and that’s forcing us to actively evert very hard and invert very hard and we use that a lot with like shin rehab as well, tip post all that stuff works really well and we do that.
All of that stuff, we do that with every Achilles person and every, yeah, like I just cannot see a benefit in making sure that all of those muscles are working really well and you can move in lots of different ways. And I think that is another huge point that I think people miss is, I don’t know, with lots of parts of the body, with like the back, lower back, the people will encourage movement in all sorts of ways with.
the hip, they’ll encourage it in all sorts of ways. And then they come to like the ankle and they just do like calf raises and knee to wall. And then they come to the knee and they just do a leg extension. And that’s not to say that you can’t get great results doing that, but I just don’t see a negative in just getting it moving in lots of ways. And I think that inhibition that comes along with pain doesn’t just cause the quads to stop working as well as they could have.
I think that it’s just a sore knee. So you’re probably missing a bit of hamstring as well. You’re probably missing a bit of, I don’t know, like all around the knee. And that’s the same with the, with the ankle. I think the Achilles, you’re probably not working any of those muscles as well as they could. So why not train them?
Jake (1:16:14)
Yeah, I was, I don’t know why, this study yesterday, was on feet straight, toes in, toes out. And it’s like looking at the sliding of the collagen within the tendon. And I guess first they found that people with tendinopathy, their tendon doesn’t slide. It’s just like, it’s a thicker tendon and it just kind of all moves as one unit. But then it was, if you turn your feet out, you actually get more sliding. So I was like, I wonder the practical applications of that, but they’re probably.
I mean, that’s just like, I think that’s pronation. you’re probably, you’re getting just, I guess more movement maybe at the ankle. I don’t really know why it would actually happen now that I say that. with people with tendinopathy, Achilles tendinopathy, that calcaneus being stuck, is that like a thing you see with everyone with Achilles tendon or?
David Grey (1:16:51)
Mm-hmm.
No, no, I would say more so with that insertional Achilles I see that a lot where it’s it’s it’s kind of it’s kind of just a bit it just tends to be a lot more rigid down there now with a With a regular mid portion tendinopathy, I think it can show up with any with any shape some people have more mobile feet more Yeah, you’ll see it without everything to be honest. So
It’s not necessarily that you’re working on mobility there, but you might be just working on variety and loading for the foot so that it can access different shapes without worrying about if you’re getting more mobile.
Jake (1:17:42)
Have you, I’ve found research on the heel wedges for insertional. The people put heel wedges and maybe this is the group we talked about at first, the 60 year old people that just want to go walk without pain. There’s no performance concern. And heel wedges helps with insertional. I guess it helps with mid portion. I don’t know what study this was, but I was listening to a podcast that, I mean, it just makes sense. You’re going to be straining the tendon less because you’re not, that heel’s not dropping. What are your thoughts there? Have you, have you given that out to anybody?
day to day just wearing heel wedges or not?
David Grey (1:18:11)
Yeah, we…
Yeah, or a shoe which has a little bit more of a higher heel. Yes, we do. Yep. I think it can help. think it can help with, yeah, certain people who just want to walk better, but mostly we work with athletes and they’re in season and they just are looking for a little bit extra relief. And I think that that is actually super helpful. Just making sure, like, don’t be stretching it during the day. It’s like, you might get short term relief, but stop doing that.
make sure you’re getting your nutrition right, make sure you’re getting your sleep right, and then here’s a shoe or a little wedge and let’s try that out for one or two training sessions and see how it feels and whether it’s placebo or not. I personally don’t think it is, but like who am I to say, but I think it tends to have some kind of beneficial effect.
Jake (1:19:07)
Um, last, last one I got for you. If you got time, you got time, right? Like I told you, I think I told you 90 minutes. We’re at about hour 15, a little bit over. upper body tendons. I, I pretty much spend all my time on patellar and then a bit of Achilles so I can try to understand patellar better. And then I’ll do a little bit with upper body. just, I just don’t care. And I feel like they’re just simple and they’re uninteresting.
David Grey (1:19:12)
Yep.
Jake (1:19:35)
but you’ve worked with people with like wrists, finger, wrist, elbow, shoulder, you’ve worked with all these tendons. What is this like?
David Grey (1:19:44)
Yeah, but not that much, a little bit. And I had a really bad medial epicondylitis myself years ago when I did a lot of gymnastics at one point, a lot of like ring work and handstand work, all that stuff. I couldn’t even brush my teeth in the morning. was like my forearms were just blown up. It is, I don’t know, the typical.
The typical procedure in that world back in the day was tons of dowel type of stuff. So you hold the stick and you’re going into pronation and supination and ulnar deviation and you’re just moving your wrist around. You’re doing it with a bent elbow. doing like those, you know, those you hang off the edge of the bench and you’re doing those like finger curls with the dumbbell, all that stuff. like, it seems like they are on the same track as
what the Achilles and the Patella tendon are doing there. And you’ll see a lot of climbers that have nasty enough tendinopathy there and they seem to value like strength training quite a bit for those areas. But then you’ll see some research which particularly talks about the elbow and it seems to say that it doesn’t seem to respond as well to heavy training there.
So I don’t really know. My bias would be just to try and treat it in the same way, which is find an entry point with the load and go from there. But I think that potentially mechanics are maybe more of a factor there with the tendinopathy, particularly around the elbow. I would be definitely more like if you come into me with a patellar tendon, I’ll look at how you move. But I’m I’m definitely finding a hard quad exercise that you can do.
like straight away. Maybe I’ll do a few other things, but I’m definitely finding an entry point there. If you come in with the elbow, probably finding an entry point there where we can load straight away, but I’m most likely going to spend a lot more time looking at how your shoulder and your wrist and stuff moves as well. But again, that’s just my bias. I probably don’t have a strong reason for that, except for like, I don’t know, there’s a lot more degrees of freedom in around your
wrist, your hand, your shoulder, and I think you should have access to more movement there. And you’ll see some people just like you try and you try and pick up a pen off the table. And if you can’t pronate and you can’t turn your wrist down, you are going to turn from your shoulder. You’re still going to find a way to pick up the pen. So there’s so much kind of more ways of getting stuff done in the upper limb. So I try and open up those those movement options again as bit more of a priority than lower limb.
Jake (1:22:36)
How did you get back to brushing teeth? Good. Did you just stop gymnastics or what?
David Grey (1:22:39)
Yeah.
Yeah, I hit a 60 second handstand and that was my goal for a while. Free standing 60 seconds and I instantly got bored with it. I was like, OK, I don’t mind if I never ever do another handstand. It was weird. I do have sometimes a short attention span, but like that was the most I realized that.
I was doing that purely because I set some arbitrary goal and I had to do it. Not for I realized, I think almost the second I came back down from that handstand that I did not give a shit. I just did it and that was it. So, yeah, that was me done forever.
Jake (1:23:27)
I had the medial epicondyle pain too from powerlifting and that was my last powerlifting. It was like the squat and the bench press. Because at the bench you got to hold it at the bottom and then the squat I was doing like a really close grip and I had to go wider and wider and almost like rest my palms on the bar because I couldn’t squeeze down. hurt so bad. Even deadlifts hurt. And then I was dating this girl at time. She would always massage my elbow I remember. I don’t even think that helped at all but…
I would get pain sleeping. I would get pain in bed sleeping. I’d wake up every few hours with elbow pain. And for me, it just went away because I stopped powerlifting. It just was not a good… I don’t know, I got monkey arms. must have been something with whatever was going on. It’s like, I don’t like heavy bench press like that. I don’t like heavy squats. Like, I could bench once a week and I could squat once a week because the pain was so bad. And then I just stopped powerlifting.
David Grey (1:24:15)
Mm-hmm.
Did you
tell your girlfriend that it was gone or did you get her to keep massaging your elbows?
Jake (1:24:24)
I don’t know, she probably did it because I just complained about it all the time. Yeah, I just complained about it.
David Grey (1:24:29)
But even after the pain
was gone, you still told her.
Jake (1:24:32)
No, no, no, no, it wasn’t even enjoyable. Like the elbow is not
a enjoyable place to feel good and massage anyways. It doesn’t feel good. Like, no, and you probably hit the funny bone every once in a while. It’s like, not a good thing. But the,
David Grey (1:24:41)
It’s not pleasurable at the elbow.
But
here’s a question for you. Like with the power lifting, do you think that you would have had less strain on your elbow if you had more mobility, let’s say at your shoulders and your wrist?
Jake (1:24:59)
I think so, because my movement, I was so limited on what I was doing. Like I was just, I think Mike Isretel had a, he had a book, nutrition book, like Renaissance Spiritization, one of his first books, and he had a powerlifting template. And it was just like the big three exercises and very small variations of them. So like that was all I was doing. And yeah, that just blew it up. I remember one day I went, my friend came up from, some guys wanted to play basketball.
And I hadn’t played basketball in like two years, because I just want to get big and fat and strong. And I went out to play basketball and just even shooting the ball and passing the ball just blew up my elbows. My elbows hurt so and jogging. Like these are not things where you’re really loading your elbows and like my elbows hurt so bad after 15 minutes of basketball. And I was supposed to go lift after that. And I was like, why did I just play? But that’s how bad it was. I think I was just so I was like, I’ve always been a block of wood. But like I was even more blocky back then that
There’s no, there was no movement options anywhere. The only movement options were squat bench deadlift. Yeah. Have you seen rotator cuff? Do you deal with rotator cuff tendons? Not really. Okay. Cause I.
David Grey (1:26:01)
Mm-hmm.
Nah, not really, More
and more we’re going like, lower limb, that’s it.
Jake (1:26:16)
Yeah,
yeah. Yeah, those those are ones I don’t I kind of I think it’s the infraspinatus one of them is a big like so like you have the distinction of energy storage tendons, the the Achilles and the patellar and their energy storage because they’re bigger, they have individual college and fascicles with the IFM gel and they just they they they strain so much like maybe 20 % strain of the Achilles and the patellar and then every other tendon is most of the other tendons are positional and they strain like 4 % or five maybe
David Grey (1:26:44)
Mm-hmm.
No, what about the, what about the argument you had? This is related to the argument you had on Instagram the other day, but the 4%. I saw something. Yeah.
Jake (1:27:15)
That’s what it is. So like the
4 % is based on all the positional tendons. And if you look up any stress and strain graph, not all of them, but most of them are saying if you get to an 8 % rupture, 8 % strain, you’re going to rupture the tendon. So it’s like, well, then what about this piece of research where the Achilles goes 16 % and it’s running. They didn’t rupture, they’re fine. And then patellar tendon, same thing. There’s other studies too. One of the first ones, I think they put a transducer or something inside the Achilles.
like surgically put it inside to see the strain that had to be so painful. They don’t do that anymore, but they saw, think they saw like 15, 20 % strain when running. So yeah, I think that, but I think this is the thing that the positional ones are just a linear extension of the tendon and the energy storage is like a helical twisting of the tendon. And as you get older, the tendons going to strain less because the IFM kind of dries up. I wanted to ask on that actually, my last one is I did
My hazel, I did a show with hazel screen on the inter-facicular matrix gel and I got to do another one because she just, my idea of tendon structure, which had been built over like four and a half years, a lot of the things she just was, took away and I was like, I’m kind of happy it was because it’s fun to, it’s just playing both sides of like, a tendon’s built this way, no, a tendon’s built this way and I just go back and forth because everyone disagrees with one another. But I would say, she’s saying in horses it dries up.
pretty linearly with with age, and then you would get these energy storage tendons, they’re not going to strain as much. So they’re not going to be as extendable. And then I was just looking at older athletes, and I’m like, they just all seem to move stiff. And yesterday, I was getting, I was getting an upper body pump at Planet Fitness. And I was like, this stiffness in people as they get older, if the bones are the same, and if the muscles are the same, is the stiffness coming because the tendons don’t extend? Is that like
You know, is that the reason why we get stiffer with age? Any thoughts there?
David Grey (1:29:18)
Good question.
I would find it very difficult to pin it down to that.
Jake (1:29:28)
Yeah,
exactly. Exactly. But I want to. But I want to.
David Grey (1:29:30)
I would be… yeah.
in your life, you’re like, you see someone crashing a car beside you, you’re like, I wonder… something to do with his tendon.
Jake (1:29:45)
Like
I saw a, I was hunting and a turkey came by and it was limping bad. And I’m like, that’s gotta be the Achilles.
David Grey (1:29:56)
You were like looking at the turkey showing him a calf raise
Jake (1:30:00)
But I know like I
was playing ball at LA fitness a couple of weeks ago and this guy went down, bigger guy went, like the story you said with your Achilles rupture, same thing with this guy. Odd of shape, took so much time off. He actually ruptured his other one many years prior so that the chances of rupturing the contralateral are way up. he went down, I didn’t even see him go down, but I heard the gunshot and I look over at my buddy and he was on the ground. I’m like, dude, I think that was his Achilles. No one else expected it. And there was a guy at the gym, this guy from.
Thick accent African guy and he was like telling me I man you got a stretch and you got to do all XYZ and I’m just I’m just thinking like I’m just thinking like bro He’s really friendly. He’s older, but I’m like you got to get out of here man Like this guy just ruptured his Achilles. He’s and he’s like you probably good in about a week Just give it some rest and it’s like you don’t understand man He’s done for a year and he’s probably never coming back to play basketball out here
David Grey (1:30:33)
Nope.
He’s done! He’s done done!
Jake (1:30:51)
But yeah, I do
David Grey (1:30:51)
Yeah, it’s nasty.
Jake (1:30:53)
try. I am aware of my bias, though. try to everything I’m seeing is like, well, what’s going on with the tendon here? But is this something you see with older athletes, the stiffness, the movement quality? Do people get stiffer with age?
David Grey (1:31:06)
Yes, of course. Yeah, but I think it’s a million things because they tend to move with less variety as well. So what you’re kind of describing is a lack of rhythm, a lack of range of motion and a lack of variability. So they don’t move in as many ways. They don’t have as many options.
they don’t move through as large a range a lot of the time and they don’t move as smoothly. And partly that is probably to do with a history of injury for a lot of these people. It’s fine if you’re moving around an old knee injury, but now you’re moving around an old knee injury and a hip that feels like crap and a back and blah, blah, blah. So there’s that. There’s a lack of variety in their movement. They just don’t do.
a lot of different things. They just do that one thing. So they’re missing that. And people tend to confuse the two words variety and variability. And it’s a little bit of a bugbear of mine because it’s a really important distinction. Variety is doing more things. Variety is saying, I go for a walk, I play tennis, I…
jog, I play basketball or in the gym. I don’t just squat bench and deadlift. do lateral work. do rotation. I do med ball. So you’re, you’re, have more exercise variety. Variability is being able to express variability at your joint, for example. So I can, because a lot of people have more variety or have some variety in their training.
but they have certain joints that cannot express variability. it doesn’t matter if you do a lateral lunge, a split squat, back extension, core circuit, 10 other things. It doesn’t matter if you can’t flex your spine. Certain parts of your spine, your back and your back muscles have probably done the exact same thing for all of those exercises. Excuse me. So what you’re demonstrating there is…
a lack of variability within the variety of exercises that you’re doing. And that’s what these older people show you. Even if you give them 20 things, they will find a way to put their body in the same type of position for all these things. this is where I think that kind of like the evidence-based quote unquote thing, arguments, like the really pedantic ones kind of fall down as well, where they say like, oh, well, does more range of motion matter? Does more strength matter? Because
It’s not, that might not mean that you improve this tendinopathy. Well, okay, fair enough. But like, if I went into a shop and I was missing a hand and I went to buy a hand off the shelf, would I want the hand that could move or the hand that couldn’t move? I’d want the hand that could move. I’d pick that one. Would I want the spine that could move or not? I’d pick the spine that could move. That’s the one I would buy. So I’m going to give that back to my clients where I can. Give them back the spine that can move, the hip that can move.
The tissue that can load in all of these ways, give them back all of that. And that’s, I think, an important distinction, but they’re lacking variability, even if they move with variety. And that can sometimes be a mental thing as well. People get more rigid as they get older, they get kind of stuck in their ways. And that can be expressed in the body as well. yeah, variety and variability. And maybe it’s a tendon problem.
Jake (1:34:41)
Yeah,
that reminds me of the bill bill Hartman was on Joel’s podcast a couple times recently they were they really good, but I forget his exact phrasing but it was it was it just reminded me that People think they’re getting these these joint ranges of motion, but they’re just like orienting themselves differently I don’t know if that that rings a bell. But yeah, it was so good
David Grey (1:35:06)
Not for me, I
find it difficult to listen to Bill. Not a sleight on Bill or anything like that. He’s very smart, but I, yeah, sometimes it just, I don’t know, I end up with a bit of a headache. I’m not smart enough.
Jake (1:35:19)
I agree, but I find, oh,
I’ll find one thing in 60 minutes where I’m like, that is low IQ enough that I enjoy that. That’s something that, know. All right, David, tell everyone what you got coming up.
David Grey (1:35:35)
Ehm… Nah, that’s a cheek.
Jake (1:35:36)
Well actually
tell us about the hip program too, you just released a hip program.
David Grey (1:35:41)
Thank you. You’re doing your job as a podcaster, prompting me to sell something. Yeah, we released the hip program. It’s kind of generic. It’s well, it is generic. It’s it’s a mix of so we get a lot of people with hips come to us and they have different problems. They have growing problems, kind of just general super tight hips, hip flexors, all this stuff. So we kind of tried to really do a same version of.
Jake (1:35:44)
You
David Grey (1:36:07)
what I’ve done with the foot and Achilles and what you’ve done with the patellar tendon and just kind of make a four-phase approach for the hip area, but not with a specific problem in mind, more like, okay, we’ll work on your mobility a bit, we’ll work on your strength and control a little bit, and then we’ll slowly make things a bit more dynamic as we go. So that’s what we’ve done, because I think, I don’t know, there’s something weird in the hip world where it’s like you go to a physio that…
they’re just purely gonna do like FRC stuff with you, just a thousand hip circles every day, or they’re purely gonna do glute exercises like a glute activation, or they’re just gonna tell you none of that matters and just like deadlift. So try to just like combine those things together and progressing that way and just work on nice movement, strength, control, activation, mobility. And yeah, we’ve had a really good uptake on it so far. It’s released about a week ago and
think it’s going to be really good for people. yeah, that’s it. That’s it. That’s it.
Jake (1:37:10)
And next,
what you got coming up? You come into the States to Mike Boyle.
David Grey (1:37:17)
Yeah. So Mike asked us to come to speak at his, is it a spring seminar? That’s what you talk, talk that, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. So we’re going to go there and because I’m only allowed to do one trip to the States a year. Cause Kira is coming with me and Matty, little baby is coming as well. like, it’s, it’s going to be one trip. It’s going to be one and done. So, we’re going to go to New York before that. We have a workshop there, in reload physical therapy. were there a couple of years ago.
Jake (1:37:22)
That’s what I did last year, man. It was great, yeah.
David Grey (1:37:46)
and a weekend workshop and that’s sold out already. So no point in me plugging it, but if you got a ticket, you got a ticket. So we’re gonna go to Mike’s and then I’m trying to convince Kira to let me to go to, let us go to Texas as well. We wanna go to Austin and check it out for a week. Tim Reilly has been trying to convince me to move to Austin for two years now. So I’m gonna maybe go and check it out and see what we think.
Jake (1:38:13)
Well, if you go, I might be there too. I’m not sure yet, but I was gonna leave it. I’m in Minneapolis. was deer hunting for three months at my parents. Got three deer. It’s more for like a, it’s a family thing. Like I get to spend time with my dad and my niece, nephew, sister, brother-in-law. And I live in a shack for like, yeah, I just live in a shack for three months deep in the woods.
David Grey (1:38:17)

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