5 Things That TERRIFY Your Physical Therapist & Combat Sports Coach (Stop Doing These)

basically nursing majors, but like 80%, 70%, some exercise science trying to get into physical therapy. Oh, okay, cool. But yeah, welcome back to the podcast. Today we’re gonna talk about the five things that scare us, that scare me as a physical therapist that you all do, and that scare Ramy here as a combat sports coach when you guys walk into his dojo. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) What made you wanna dress up as that? You know, Phoenix Sports Empire is an empire, and I always have to remind students, staff, that this is a dictatorship, and I am fully in charge. So I wanted something that had some authority involved in it. And like Cesar, I believe that one day my students will betray me and perhaps take my life. So it’s kind of like foreshadowing. So I’m gonna walk into your gym one day, you’re gonna be dead on the floor. A pile of blood. Like no. But it’ll be a glorious story. There’ll be books and movies made about me. So I’m with it, man. You wanna go out in a blaze. You’ll be never forgotten. That’s right. How about you, Dr. Gerry? What made you wanna be a Pharaoh? Being the Egyptian person that I am, I was thinking that it looked kinda cool. Doesn’t like the chain when I saw it on Amazon. So also this, whatever this is we were talking about, this owl, I don’t think it’s gonna see that. That’s right, the OVO owl. My laptop’s in the way. There’s like a owl, yeah. That’s cool, you’re really representing Drake today, man. That’s nice of you. So there’s that, and I thought it looked nice. And I just didn’t anticipate how hot it’s gonna be while we’re sitting here. That’s something I should have considered, but here we are, yeah. I’m getting a little cozy now. I think it’s not as tight as it was earlier. I kinda moved around, maneuvered a bit, I’m good. But let’s start talking about what scares us within our profession. So being that it is Halloween tomorrow, no, Saturday? Yeah, it’s close. What’s the date, Thursday? Yeah, two days. Not even know, okay, yeah. But you’re doing nothing for it, right? You’re not going out and– I’m teaching, I’m at the gym, I have a workshop at the gym, so– Like this? Not like this, I don’t think I do too well. Because I’m actually treating clients tomorrow like this. Are you really? Oh yeah. That’s actually cool, man, they’re gonna like that. No, yeah, yeah. I think that’s gonna be fun. For sure, I mean, we bought it, right? Yeah, might as well get some use out of it, yeah. I think I could maneuver around, teach somebody to a plank, a squat. I think you could. I think you could. Some good form. Yeah. Or some barbell exercises. I think you could pull it off. Yeah, man. I think you should wear that for teaching. I’m gonna try to see if I could, the grappling might be tough, but I think I could do boxing at least. The grappling might be some issues, but we’ll see what we can do. Kickboxing? Kickboxing might be tough as well, but I’m a professional, you gotta figure it out, you gotta get it done. All right, let’s start talking about what scares us. Yes. So very serious podcast here right now. But what was your number one thing that when someone, I guess, comes to you, I guess maybe students you have right now, what is one thing that terrifies you when they do it? You’re like, why are they even doing this? Or you kind of like coach them up about it? Yes, the first one that came to mind was when I see people’s ego or insecurities making them escalate sparring, because as a coach, that’s when your anxiety just goes up, because you’re like, oh, something bad’s gonna happen. You see somebody have an emotional response, maybe to getting hit, or if it’s judicious, who getting submitted or taken down or what have you, and then they respond with emotion, and that’s usually when injuries happen during sparring. So when people can’t keep their cool and can’t keep composure during sparring, every coach knows this, that’s listening or watching this, is gonna relate, they’re gonna be like, yep, that’s when you feel that tightness in your chest, like, oh man, what’s gonna happen? You have to immediately go to deescalate, and that’s our nightmare, right? You can spar, we’ve talked about sparring here a bunch, injuries happen when ego and insecurity gets in the way. So that to me came to mind right away. I try to shut that down immediately when I start to see the warning signs of it happen. So is that your number one thing overall? That’s number one, because that’s where the most serious injuries can occur, right? So it’s the fear of injury, essentially, not the fear of people getting upset with each other, that we can handle, we can talk, but it’s the injury that could occur, from somebody having an emotional response. Has that happened recently? Not at, we keep such a tight leash on folks when it comes to sparring, and as soon as we see those warning signs, we’ll stop the round immediately. Like, oh hey, pause the round, talk to that person, remind them, hey, this is not– Like they’re going too hard? Yeah, hey, you’re going too hard, you need to bring it down, or else– It’s one person, usually, correct? It’s usually one person, yeah, usually one person. It’s usually the same type of person, to be honest with you. What is it, meaning what? It’s usually, it’s adult men, 99.9% of the time. Like I’ve said with this before on the podcast, the biggest babies in the world are grown adult men. They are the most insecure, biggest egos, most emotional response, I very rarely have to tell women to tone it down during sparring. It’ll happen, but it’s usually a grown adult who has never had a healthy outlet for their emotions before, and now they’re using training, perhaps it’s like an outlet for their stress, which could be a positive thing, but not at the expense of your training partner. Yeah, not being a horrible training partner, possibly injuring them, or themselves. Yeah, or themselves, they’re dangerous to themselves at that point, exactly right. It’s funny, yeah, because especially with fighting as guys, you want to be the tough guy, and when you’re not the tough guy, it’s a huge ego killer. Yeah, it is, exactly right. So I’m assuming when that happens, when they’re getting, someone’s getting the best of them, and then they start going hard for no reason, and it’s like, “Well, what are you doing, dude?” And this is all for teaching and learning, not to get mad and try to hurt the other person. Exactly right. So my number one, so mine’s kind of in no particular order, I just kind of threw them out here, but my number one is actually my number five that I listed out here, but this is the one that kind of popped up in my head recently, because it happens a lot. I see. It’s kind of a double-edged sword, because AI, as you know, can help us a lot. I don’t know about you, but referrals for me, chat GPT has been my friend lately. Really? Yes, so SEO and all that stuff, AI models pick up on that, so Gemini recommend me as a physical therapist around Naperville. Chat GPT, if someone asks, “Hey, who’s the best physical therapist to see?” I seriously know. Around Naperville, who treats athletes or active individuals, I pop up right away. Oh, cool. Which is great, because it’s helping me out. So I got a few referrals last week from them, because I asked them, I think I got four or five new ones last week. Oh, that’s a lot. Yeah, and I asked all of them, they were all from chat GPT. You’re kidding me. That’s really interesting. We could talk off camera about that. I’ve had one student say that, actually. They came in, they said, they asked, “I forget which AI software they use.” I’m saying chat GPT. But they were like, “What’s a good jam in there?” And they recommended PSE, but that only happened once. Interesting, you’ve had so many. That’s really interesting. So it helps, obviously. But also I get the new person who walks in for physical therapy, and they start telling me, “Well, chat GPT told me to do this.” Or, “This is my diagnosis.” And then it’s stuck in their mind that this is what they have and how they have to treat it, as opposed to getting an actual assessment from a physical therapist live in person with live feedback. Right, right. Whereas an AI model can’t pick up on those subtle movement things. Most of the time, it’s just kind of chat GPT, as most social media in general, like TikTok, I have a little story about that, but it’s just kind of like throwing a bunch of shit at the wall. Yeah. And that doesn’t really help the person. Maybe a couple of exercises help, but other stuff is not for them right now and it ends up hurting them more. I see. And trying to stretch their back pain because chat GPT told them to do this. And again, it’s just throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall, and I’m like, well, it didn’t actually assess you. Yeah. It’s just something that you told it and it’s spitting back a bunch of things that things can help you. It hasn’t even seen the person. It doesn’t know anything about it except the info they’re giving, right? Right, so maybe in five years when there’s a robot physical therapist who just kills us all, but right now, that does not exist. Right, right. And it’s still pretty off. And I’ve asked AI a few things, like clinical questions to test it, and it’s gotten them wrong. Wow. And I ask, are you sure about this? I’m pretty sure that’s wrong. And it’s like, actually, Gerry, you are correct. I should not try to stump the physical therapist. And I’m like, okay. Yeah, you shouldn’t. No, but it is kind of weird how it talks back to you. Yeah, mm-hmm. Like it’s like a real person. I’m like, okay, pretty strange. It is a little strange. So anyways, that’s one of the main things that I see when people come in, especially new people, they’re like, well, AI said to do this. That’s great. Or to try this. That’s great. Which I guess is the same thing as the whole Dr. Google thing. I was gonna say, is it worse than WebMD? That’s the thing I hear from doctors. Like, oh, I went on. It’s the same thing. It’s similar, it’s the same thing. It’s trying to self-diagnose, and then they use all these, my ears are getting very hot, by the way, so I’m trying to move this. But it tells people these words that they don’t know. Let’s say, I don’t know, and I have to, again, in person tell them what everything means. Some of these words, they don’t even know what it means. Or they see, oh, well, I have a disc bulge or something, or I have a partial tear, and they get freaked out when that’s not what they have sometimes. Or they do have it, but it’s not even that bad, and they don’t need any crazy intervention. I see, okay. So that’s the first thing that came to my mind when, again, people out there watching who have back pain, and they start talking to chat GPT because, I mean, that’s a thing now, people just talk to it. Yeah. One of my guys told me he argues with it, which is kind of funny. It’s kind of weird, man. Yeah, but he’s great. Okay, I believe you. But it’s hilarious. But yeah, I mean, sometimes even myself, I find myself at a back and forth with it. I’m like, wait, again, like I said, clinical things, I’m like, that’s not right, you’re wrong. But again, self-diagnosing yourself with AI, looking up stretches, treatment things, physical therapy treatments that aren’t tailored to you, to the person that walks in to the physical therapy clinic because it can’t assess you. It’s not in front of you giving you live feedback on your movement patterns, your pain sensitivity levels, what you’re feeling, your subjective history, all that stuff. So that to me was the first thing that popped up in my head is as we’re scared of as physical therapists. Sure, yeah. What’s your number two? Number two is not disclosing any sort of skin infections like ringworm, staph. People wanna train and if you get something like ringworm, you’re not physically suffering, you just have ringworm. So they might think like, oh, or they don’t know, they’re not aware, but anytime you have unique or new blemishes or marks on your skin that you’re not aware of, you should tell your coach. Because I’ve seen them all, so I’ll be able to say, hey, you have ringworm, you can’t train until it’s healed. Especially, that’s, I mean, staph, that’s way worse. That could get really dangerous. And once in a while, once in a great while, I mean, it’s usually not from a bad place. People aren’t trying to secretly sneak in and train knowing they have a skin infection. But sometimes they might, I’ll have to ask them like, hey, I noticed that on your arm, and they’ll say like, oh yeah, I don’t know what happened, I got that, blah, blah, blah. Let’s say they’re on the wrestling team, I got it, you know, it’s like, man, you have an infection. You’re gonna get, if I get this, I can’t come to work. Where’s those dang wrestlers? Man, because wrestling doesn’t have the hygiene that a commercial jiu-jitsu gym will have, for example. Because the wrestling, it’s not as big of a business, right? Wrestling is a public sports and high school jiu-jitsu. You’re selling memberships for 200 bucks a month. You have to, you have adults training, lawyers and engineers, high schools, a bunch of kids. I’ve talked to kids that say, oh yeah, I never saw anybody clean the mats after wrestling. So they’re training on dirty mats. You know, some of these kids are coming right after finishing school. They’re already sweaty and gross, and now they’re changing into their singlet or practice. You know, they’re not taking care of their hygiene. And then they might bring it to the gym. So to me, that’s a nightmare, is somebody bringing a skin infection to practice. Because it could get all of us infected. And if I get it, which I’ve had a few times, I’ve had like staff, I don’t go to the gym. I take off everything. I cancel all my appointments. I have to stay home. Like, I can’t get anybody else sick, right? So that really terrifies me. I’ve never seen it done purposely, but just seeing that skin infection and them at PSE, that’s terrifying. So hasn’t happened in a few years, thankfully, but that actually might be number one. That might be worse than that. Yeah, that’s like, that’s the worst thing. Well, what’s his name that got it and almost died from it? Kevin Randleman. Remember he had like huge gaping holes in his body. Yeah, he literally almost died. Did Ben Askren have that too? I believe so. I mean, a lot of fighters have had it. The most famous example that I think Ben Askren did have it. I had eight years ago on my face and my face swelled up like to this size. I’ll show you, I looked like a monster. And it was so bad. I still imagine, imagine, you know, now I’m extremely good looking as you’ve pointed out many times to me, right? Usually daily sometimes. Thank you for that. Especially like this. Yeah, thank you, thank you. But I was, man, it was just, I could barely look at myself. I had like blemishes all over my face, swollen. Like, I looked like elephant man. It was bad. When was this? This was maybe 2014. So thankfully it was a while ago. And I was getting delirious a lot. And I looked it up, the closer it is to your brain, the more dangerous it is, right? So mine was in my face. So I was getting like delirious. I was getting, it was really, really horrible. Yeah, so I never want to experience that again. It’s, there is pain. There’s definitely pain and it’s only, and you can’t touch it. Cause you touch it, you’ll spread it to wherever. So you can’t touch it. You can’t do anything. It’s really, really, it’s horrible, man. I don’t wish it on anyone. And it was like all this? Yeah, it was like all over my face. This was swollen. Under my chin was swollen. It was really like three times the size. Like I looked crazy. You were on some crazy antibiotics. Absolutely, yeah. I went to the doctor immediately, antibiotics, and had to like lock myself. I had a roommate at the time, just stayed literally in my room. And luckily I had my own bathroom and shower. And that was it. I didn’t leave. It was like being quarantined, you know, for– Pre-COVID. Yeah, exactly, pre-COVID. How long did it take you to get over that? I think it took a couple of weeks overall. And once you get it, from my understanding, it’s easier for it to come back. So a lot of people will get it, for example, let’s say after they shave or go to the barber, and then they’ll train, you’re more likely to get it. Or you don’t have to get it from jujitsu or wrestling. Speaking of your barber, if your barber isn’t cleaning his stuff, you know, you could get it from sleeping over at a friend’s house who has dirty pill. There’s so many ways to get it. But training and the contact involved in training is an easier way to get it than most. So yeah, that’s definitely my number two fear, if not number one. Good thing PSC is the cleanest gym ever. We clean the mats like four or five times a day, man. So we’re not risking that. 20 times a day. 20 times, yeah, exactly right, yep. All day, you got your workers tireless, you’re working pretty. That’s right, that’s right, man. I got to pay them work. Pay them $2 a day. If they’re lucky, yeah. Yeah, free labor. (laughing) Second thing for me is, since I work with mostly athletes and active people, is the ego, I mean, you just said it for your number one, is the ego PR, like trying to hit a PR at the gym. And they’re like, when again, most people know that they shouldn’t be going for it, it’s not even programmed in for them, what whatever coach they have or trainer they have. I like the energy when you said coach, I like that, I know exactly what you mean, that spoke a lot. Random guy on social media. Thanks. Then they, again, but even then, sometimes it’s not even programmed in for them, and they still kind of like, they can’t contain themselves. And they go for the PR, whether it’s, I don’t care what it is, deadlift, a snatch, clean, whatever. And then they hurt themselves. When instead of just scaling back, living to fight another day, not hurting themselves, and then setting them back a bunch of weeks or months, because they were like, let me just do this, let me try it, I’m feeling okay today. When in reality, they’re probably overstressed, they’re working hard, they got recovery sucks, their programming is not optimal, they’re just going heavy all the time, they go for PR when they’re not supposed to, and they hurt themselves. So that to me is always kind of scary, because I mean, I always tell people, like it’s a skill to know when to scale back their training, because again, the people that I work with nowadays, it’s mostly athletes, like I said, active people, and they don’t, whether they’re runners, your favorite, the high rocks people. Those are my guys. Yes. We should do one. I don’t think you’re gonna do it. No way, never. But, and they go hard all the time. And again, it could be a mix of things, but usually it’s like, let me just go harder, because I’m feeling good, and then they hurt themselves. When you need to learn how to not do that, I’m just like, it’s a skill to just be like, today I’m feeling good, despite me feeling good, go for a zillion pound PR or running PR or whatever it is. So that scares me a lot. When people come in and they’re like, well, I went for a PR, even though I wasn’t supposed to, and then now they’re possibly needing something, crazy intervention or months of physical therapy. But so, which can be avoided. It’s such an easy thing that you could avoid when you’re just like checking your ego at the door. You know what I mean? But people can’t do that. And the funny thing is, speaking of high rocks, top two things, top two places that people get injured nowadays, especially around Naperville, pickleball and high rocks training. You’re kidding me. Wow. All the time. The two most Naperville activities of all time. (laughing) But man, it’s like, yes, all the time, every week someone’s like, I was playing pickleball, my ankle hurts now, my knee hurts now. I think I sprained my knee. Wow. Who did I have recently? I’m trying to think of a recent one. Well, I got a few high rocks people, again, just strain their back. You charge them double, right? When they come in from, okay, good. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And pickleball, and again, I’m all for people being active and training and trying to get back into something. But like, it takes a while for your body to adjust. So slowly jump back in, don’t just jump into the hardest class, and then you’re like, oh, you hurt yourself, then you hate it forever. Yep. Yes, pickleball, which have you tried pickleball? No, no, I have not. I would have thought you would have loved pickleball. Too violent for me, yeah. I would think you’d like pickleball. No, it’s a little too intense. I like some more laid back stuff. I actually tried it. Did you have fun? A couple months ago. Yes, I did have fun. It looks fun. I’ve seen my dad play it. My dad likes it, and he’s good. And he’s a good table tennis player too. Shout out to my dad. So yeah, he’s good at both, but I’ve seen him play pickleball, and he was just– You didn’t play with him? No, no, I was just there to support and watch from the sidelines. We gotta play. I would try it. I would. I would do that over Hi-Rox, because I still don’t know what Hi-Rox is, and I’m not gonna learn. I’m not gonna Google it. I refuse. Why not? So it’s just– Don’t you have some people at your gym that do it? Absolutely. And I still don’t know what they do. They just try to tell you, and you just like shun them, kick them out. I just don’t listen. I’ll listen, but I’m not listening. I’m like, “Oh, awesome, man. Good job, man.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mean CrossFit? Still don’t know what it is, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, well, did you hear about, remember I texted you about the lady that pooped herself? Yes, yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s what she gets. Did you hear about that, Brian? I don’t know if you heard about that. You could probably just Google, Hi-Rox lady poops herself, but that was everywhere on social media. Hi-Rox is just rebranded CrossFit, right? That’s all it is? I mean, it’s– Come on, let’s be real here. CrossFit involves more like lifting stuff, like Olympic level lifting type stuff, but it’s still very intense. Okay. It’s a competition, so yeah, people can do it in pairs or singles. Okay. You haven’t seen anything of it? No, literally. I mean, again, I know of it. I even have a student who I love, I think, who does like Hi-Rox, and he does like those, Miguel, he does like different events, and those running, the Tough Mudder type stuff, he’s good at that. And I have a few students who do stuff like that, but I still, even after this conversation, I still don’t fully understand what it is. I’m not smart enough for this stuff. But I’ll show you later. I mean, it’s a whole big competition. There’s one coming up in Chicago soon. Okay. So I got a few people doing that. But yeah, anyways, number two, the Ego PR. Yeah, I get that. Hurting people is my number two. Number three, what do you got? Number three, again, I don’t know if I’m going in order anymore, these are definitely the five. Number three is not listening or paying attention when a coach or instructor is teaching a technique. Two reasons, the safety reason is, if you’re not paying attention to the technique being taught and now you’re doing it inappropriately, not inappropriate, but you’re doing it incorrectly, I guess is a better word, you could injure your training partner, right? Usually, for example, if I’m teaching a submission, not only will I teach the submission, but I’ll show when to apply pressure, how to do it slowly, how to do it with control, what to look out for as far as your training partner, look for these little signals. You might be going too hard, squeezing too hard, cranking too hard, what have you. And then two, when you teach somebody a technique and they’re not paying attention, now it’s time to work the technique. We’re not paying attention at all, now you have to re-teach them the technique while everybody else is practicing it, so you don’t pay attention to anybody else, and that person’s getting the technique taught to them twice. So it takes away from everybody else’s training, and it makes the whole quality of the class suffer. Because as a coach, you wanna show the technique, make sure everybody understands it, questions, feedback, I welcome all of that. And then when it’s time to drill, I’m walking around, giving everybody individual feedback. Quick pause, this video is brought to you by Art of PT. It’s my physical therapy practice here in Naperville, Illinois. It’s all personalized, it’s all individualized, it’s all one-on-one physical therapy. So if you are an athlete or someone who does the high rocks or plays a lot of pickleball or jujitsu person or combat sports, you go to the gym all the time, you’re around Naperville and something hurts. I’m here to help, come check us out. Again, it’s all personalized, it’s not like the usual corporate physical therapy place where the PTC, three patients at once, it’s all individualized to you. So check us out, it’s artofpt.com. The link is in the description, it’ll go right to us. Tell us your story, we’ll get you back to 100%. I promise, back to the episode. If somebody’s like, hey, what is it again? Now I have to spend, let’s say that five minutes they’re supposed to be drilling, I have to re-teach them the technique one-on-one and it makes me neglect the other students. Then there’s of course the safety issue. When you’re not paying attention to how a technique is done, kick boxing, you might kick somebody’s knee. You might do something that could injure somebody simply because you weren’t paying attention. And I know sometimes I have a short attention span, I know we all deal with that, especially now when you’re doom scrolling and your relationship to dopamine and stimulation has been kind of severely compromised because of social media and access to entertainment at all times. But you have to, if you’re there, you’re paying and you wanna learn, you have to at least be able to focus for a couple minutes or find a way to focus just again for safety and for the coach’s sanity. So that’s definitely, and I’ll see it like we were talking about before we were rolling, I’ll see the person’s eyes wander and I’m just like, this person’s not paying attention at all. And sometimes you call them out and like, hey, make sure you’re paying attention. Sometimes you do it in like a friendly way, like as a reminder, other times I’ll literally go up to somebody like I said and say, hey, when you and I talk, when you talk to me, do I look around like this and look at the wall? And they’ll always say no. So okay, so just do the same for me. I’m not asking for anything that I wouldn’t expect for myself. So it’s not about a listen to me because I’m the coach, listen to me because I’m the instructor. We listen to each other when we talk because we respect each other. Especially with younger people, it becomes more that. Yeah, younger. Man, yeah. It’s tough and I get it. I totally get it. So that’s why I try to level with them rather than like, hey, pay attention. Like that’s only gonna get you so far. But if they understand why I want them to pay attention, I think I’ll have a better, I’ll do a better job of actually getting them to understand. Yeah, I mean, yeah, again, teaching freshmen at university anatomy, sometimes they talk after like a quiz or something when other people are still taking the quiz. I’m like, I’m a nice guy. So I don’t try to like, I’m like, guys, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also the time they listen, thank you. They’re great students. So that’s kind of my way of doing it. Usually it’s like when people are taking a test or a quiz and then some people are done early and they start talking about something, like nothing. They’re not talking about anything, nothing important. Right. Like guys, come on. Yeah. Show a little bit. And they stop, thankfully. But yeah, I mean, again, it is just common courtesy if someone’s taking a test or someone’s taking a quiz and you’re done, just kind of sit there and chill. Let other people kind of do their thing. Just because you finished first or early doesn’t mean they’re not trying to really think about what this question is for anatomy. But I’m glad that we both kind of have that similar vibe when it comes to, especially nowadays, like you said, sometimes they pull out their phone and they start scrolling or something, which honestly I’m fine with because they’re not talking super loud. Yeah, I’m like, at least they’re not talking. I don’t keep scrolling a little bit. They’re not looking at anything anyway. Right, right. It’s a bunch of, who knows what to, we don’t know. We’re aged out of that. Like what are they even looking at now? They’re looking at either TikTok or Instagram reels. What is it called? It’s like a rot or something? Is it brain rot? Is that a thing? It’s brain, oh yeah. Brain rot, definitely. It’s all brain rot. What even is that? Just brain rot is like a general term for like just dumb content that has no real meaning. So like stupid content, that’s brain rot. So if you’re looking up, you know, all three ways to throw, to set up your low kick, that’s not brain rot. If it’s some dumb video with no point, that’s funny, but like, and it’s just such a dumb, like low vibration way, that’s brain rot, right? So like some AI video of a guy walking in the room and his head exploding. Oh, okay, like that’s brain rot. And that’s what a lot of videos are now, especially with AI, the level of brain rot is like, never before. Yeah, I didn’t really know what that was. Yeah, just a general term. I feel like we just missed, we missed that. Yeah. It’s like we don’t, like I have no urge to look at that. Yeah, yeah, no. If I find myself scrolling, I immediately like, will snap out, like, what am I doing? Like, I like to, I like watching stuff on social media. I like watching stuff that’s related to my interests, but I never want to just scroll just to scroll. That’s like to me a path. Roman history. Yeah, exactly right. Roman history, how to stop potential assassinations, you know, things that are relative or important to my life. How did the Egyptians even, wait, like the pyramids and stuff, how did they do that, you think? This is way off topic. I think they really built the, you know, the conspiracy theories that, oh, aliens built them, but I think they were brilliant. I think they did. I think they did it themselves. I think they did it. We don’t know how, because I remember this Japanese engineering firm one time tried to recreate them at a smaller scale just to see like, how did they do it? Oh, they were really into this, okay. Yeah, and they failed. Yeah, they failed, they couldn’t do it. Imagine with today’s technology, they failed. And also the pyramids, they relate to the solar system, to the star, like their position very purposely. So I just think the people that created them were brilliant and to have slave labor and, you know, if somebody died, okay, so what? So, you know, it’s horrible working conditions plus brilliant people setting it up. And I think they did it. Yeah, I think so too. With the help of aliens, of course. With the help of aliens, yeah, of course. Yeah, the little gray guys are going around with their telekinesis. That’s right. Is that, telekinesis, is that like reading someone’s mind? I think so. Is that moving up, moving objects? Yeah, same. But yeah, yes, aliens for sure. Number three for me was one of my favorite ones. Well, you know what? Oh, my cave is coming off. Oh, no, you’re good, you’re good. Well, let me go back to the TikTok thing for a second because a story just popped up in my head about someone who came in a couple of weeks ago. Well, maybe a few weeks ago now, but she is a runner and a weightlifter, competitive weightlifter, swimmer too. Oh, wow. But she was trying to do a marathon. The Chicago marathon, I think. That’s confusing her with somebody else. Anyways, the big thing, the main thing with her was she came in because she saw, well, her foot started hurting, her heel started hurting. And again, when she came in with me, she was saying how she looked up a video on TikTok and it was, and some guy gave her some exercises that just didn’t work at all. And I can’t remember the guy’s name. I wish I wrote down his name. It was something so dumb. It was, okay. It was like Mr. Butthole or something. I don’t know what it was. It was something stupid. And he wasn’t anything. He wasn’t a trainer, physical therapist, anything. I’m like, what credentials does this guy have? She’s like, I don’t know. His name just sounded funny. No way. And she listened to him. And I was like, why are you listening to some guy who has this name as his TikTok and just is randomly saying some exercises for your foot pain? Wow. I wish I knew his name. Anyways, but that’s one of my favorite ones recently. Did she realize the error of her waist after? Okay, okay. So it’s a lesson. She’s doing great now. Good, good. Back to running soon. Yes. So number three for me was, again, one of my favorites. It’s when people stop having pain after an injury and they jump right back into their sport. They think they’re automatically healed because the pain is gone. Which cannot be further from the truth. So there’s a difference between biological healing and functional healing. Meaning the tissue can be fully healed, fine. A tendon, ligament, whatever it is, muscle tissue, whatever. But it’s not at full capacity to handle load, exercise, jumping, high impact activity, things like that. So, and that requires more physical therapy. And that’s where kind of traditional physical therapy, the corporate crappy ones kind of fail. Where they’re like, oh, you’re pain-free, discharged. Wow, okay. Instead of actually testing them, putting them through a battery of tests for their sport, for their athletic endeavor, for their, whatever it is, for running anything. They’re just like, oh, you’re pain-free, you’re fine. They just discharge you. When again, people get stuck in the cycle of, I had back pain, I was sparring, they started hurting. I stopped sparring for two months. The pain went away, it went back to sparring, it hurt again. I see. Well, the tissue’s fine. But your sensitivity meter is telling you that it’s not functionally healed yet. At full capacity to do jiu-jitsu or running or whatever sport it is. And again, people get caught in this vicious cycle of, pain, do nothing, pain goes away, jump back into sport, pain again. And it keeps going and going and going. And they just do nothing for it, pain stops, jump back in, hurts again. I see. And then they come see me. And thankfully, I’m one to tell them, hey, we need to actually slowly build you back up, we need to build your capacity again. Don’t just stop when your pain is gone. We need to actually work on it. One of my favorite sayings is, you have to work to get out of pain. And also when the pain stops, we need to keep working at it. So it’s at full capacity for your sport. And I think that’s where a lot of the traditional physical therapy model that I do not vibe with, as you know, fails people. Right. And it fails them in many ways that I’ll get into, if we have time later. But that’s my number three is, people mistaking the biological healing of a tissue with it being fully functionally healed. That makes so much sense. Yeah, that’s one of my favorite lectures to give to, well, I actually told that to my students, I think recently as well, but you’re number four. Number four, let me see. Yeah, what do you got? Let’s see, let’s see, number four. Signing up for a competition and not putting in the required amount of training. What I always tell my students when they sign up for a competition, I tell them my ultimate goal is for you to compete and be safe. That’s number one, winning is awesome. And losing, we’re gonna get a lot out of it too, we’re gonna learn a lot. Competing is great, whether you win or you lose, you’re gonna gain so much from it. My concern is somebody signing up for a competition for whatever reason, they don’t put in the amount of work that they should for the competition. Because one, now I’m more concerned about their safety because competing is at a much higher intensity than training, than sparring. You can’t replicate competition intensity in the training room. So the best way to prepare is to make sure your body is very healthy, your skills are sharp, because competing is a skill in itself, you get better at competing by competing, right? Some people are great in training and they just freeze during competition. Some people are the opposite. They’re not very good in training, but then they shine during competition. A great example of that, that I saw personally a lot was Clay Guida, who fought in the UFC for years. I remember I’d see him training and get tapped out, do poorly in striking and get out wrestled. And then he’ll go in the UFC and just win a fight. And he had skills, don’t get me wrong, but he just really loved competition, he was so good at it. He really started to shine when he competed. Some people are the opposite, they’re just killers in the training room, but either they can’t compete. One of the best fighters I ever trained with, he’s not a fighter, one of the best martial artists I have, because he doesn’t fight. He was amazing on the feet, on the ground, such a high level of skill. I’ve seen him tap out, you have sea fighters on the feet, he’s very sharp. And I always would say like, man, why don’t you compete? He’s like, I can’t, I would get so much, just the thought of it alone gives him so much anxiety. So back to my point, when people train for, or sign up for a competition, they don’t put in the correct work, I’m concerned they’re gonna get injured. When their body isn’t in competition shape, higher chance of them getting injured when people are going 100%. So that’s like a huge fear of mine. And then also, they’re representing our gym and representing our academy, so selfishly, again, it’s not where they win or lose, I want them to be prepared, to put on a good showing, put on a good performance, and to do their best. When they’re not training enough, they don’t represent themselves well, they don’t represent our academy well, and they also have a higher chance of hurting themselves. So to rectify, or to kind of correct that, we start creating training standards, like a protocol. So that way it’s not, hey, I’m picking on this person, but this person can get away with it. So for each type of combat sport, we have a requirement. Hey, for a jiu-jitsu, you have to train jiu-jitsu less intense, right? You have to train three times a week, let’s say. If you’re gonna be in kickboxing, you have to train at least four times a week. So we have a protocol now, and that helps, because that way if somebody’s not doing it, we go, hey, we have this system in place, and you’re not following it, so we’ll actually have them pull out of the competition, rather than show up unprepared. So yeah, that’s a tough thing, though, too, because it’s also a tough conversation to tell somebody, hey, you’re not gonna do well in this competition because you’re not training enough, we have to pull– Has that happened recently? It has, yeah, it has. With somebody who was very understanding, their work schedule got busier, and so yeah, we decided, hey, I don’t want you out there just unprepared. So yeah, it’s tough, and we also, because we’re semi-private and more like a tight-knit, how we operate, we have to approve people competing. In other gyms, you sign up, you tell your coach, for us, we’re really like, we are a team, so the coach decides when you compete. So I’ll have them come up to me, hey, coach, is this competition, what do you think? I’ll say, okay, yeah, if we could get this amount of work in, let’s do it. So that way, it’s really a team operation, they require coach approval to compete, and then we create a plan, we make sure they stick to that plan, and thankfully, we do very well in competition, even against better gyms, bigger gyms who have been established, been around for longer times. We win the majority of the times we compete. I saw you guys, this is something recently. Yeah, we had a Jiu-Jitsu tournament in Iowa, and both of my students who entered, both won their division. Shut up, Iowa. Yeah, yeah, so they prepared really well, and yeah, they prepared very well, though, very consistent. They worked hard, they came to open mats to get extra spawn. Where in Iowa was it? It was in Iowa City, Iowa, yeah, yep. That’s where my school is, okay. Oh, that’s where you went to school? University of Iowa, yeah. No way, okay, that’s cool, yeah, that’s where we were at. Okay, this will be– Not too many distractions there when you’re at school, huh? No. Okay, yeah. No, no, no, no. But did they do pretty well? They both won their division, man, they did great. We actually won the team trophy for the team that had the– Yeah, that’s what I saw in my head, that’s cool. Yeah, you saw the trophy, yeah, which is really cool. So I was so proud of them, man, they worked hard. When they work hard and what we practiced, they pulled it off in competition, nothing can make you happier as a coach. But the opposite is what terrifies me, somebody entering a competition when I know they haven’t put in the right amount of work. Was that just like one day thing? That was one day, yep, one day, but multiple matches. I mean, one of my students, Michael, it was Michael and Danny, shout out to them, they both won their divisions. Michael, who’s around 180 pounds, entered the heavyweight division and won the heavyweight division. Yeah, it was going up against guys 40, 50 pounds bigger than him. And submitting them, one of the people he beat has a Jiu-Jitsu Academy and is much more experienced of a competitor and they went against each other three times that day, Michael won two, the other guy won one. And Michael ended up being the champion of that division, despite being a middleweight or welterweight. And then Danny won every single match that he had then. So they did really well, I was so proud of them, man. Yeah, they did great. That’s really cool, I’m sure they were pumped. Yeah, they were so excited, man. That is super cool. My number four is kind of in line with number three is just every time you feel some pain or you get injured, it’s just like chronic resting it and doing nothing for it. Which again, kind of puts you in that cycle that I just talked about is like, well, my pain is gone, let me jump back into my sport and then it hurts again. Right. Also when you’re kind of just resting and doing nothing for your pain, it creates this kind of feeder cycle too. People get afraid of, like with back pain is like the classic one, they get afraid of bending over again or they’re afraid of doing a twisty move in jujitsu or something because they hurt themselves originally doing that. So it kind of creates this whole cycle of fear and also cycle of immobilization and while you’re not moving your body, you’re just kind of doing nothing for the pain. When again, the human body requires adaptations even when it comes to pain and injury. Like when I used to work at the hospital seeing people who had like total knee replacements, total hip replacements as a PT, they need to be moved like right away because if they just do nothing, lay in the hospital bed, it’s gonna get super stiff, super tight, it’s gonna swell up even more. So the surgeon wants the PT to move them right away. Sometimes I had like maybe like two hours afterwards or something and it sucks, they’re in pain, but they need to move because that surgery would get super tight, it’ll get worse. And again, it always sucks walking into the hospital room as a PT because they just do not wanna see us. They’re like, we don’t wanna do any type of exercise and movement, I’m like, come on, please. But I had my ways of doing it when I used to work at the hospital. But anyways, again, chronic immobilization, chronic over-resting is my number four, just doing nothing for the pain. That is not a rehab plan. So hopefully, I’ve said that many times in different podcasts, hopefully they get the idea. Well, that’s significantly slow down the recovery time. Okay, by significant amount. There’s no progress. You have to hit certain milestones to get back to, whether it is getting back to walking throughout the day, any functional activities, or like I said, your sport, which requires more hitting of certain milestones. And again, people just think doing nothing and then pain goes away, I’m fine. But that’s not the case. Okay. What’s your last one? Last one, let’s open it up. Oh. Very professional, Mr. Very professional, yeah. So, doing something stupid outside of practice to jeopardize your health or safety. Oh, okay. This, you know, people that gravitate towards combat sports can often be adrenaline junkies. And so they will be participating in activities outside. You know, let’s say you have a competition coming up, one of my students, he’s not stupid. He just loves doing cool stuff. Like he likes skateboarding, snowboarding. He had a kickboxing competition. This is Dan, you end up winning the jiu-jitsu competition. Originally signed up for a Muay Thai competition. I believe he hurt himself snowboarding, fell on his shoulder, right? Classic injury. Yeah, he didn’t do anything like, oh, it’s not like he was skydiving, you know, with no parachute. He wasn’t doing anything reckless. He’s doing something he does all the time. But there are people who tend to be more reckless, especially if you have a competition coming up, you have to be really careful with what you do outside of training. Most of my students who get injured, the overwhelming majority that do get injured, outside of practice, not in practice. Whether it’s something like slipping in the shower or, you know, skateboarding or riding their bike or, you know, so things like you said, trying to lift too heavy, doing things that are very, basically, if you have a competition coming up, the things you do outside of practice should be things that help you with your goal, right? So if you’re training for an MMA bout, you don’t also wanna be trying to hit your PR when it comes to different lifts, right? That’s for outside of camp, that you can focus on that. But you’re already putting your body through so much, and you have to, it kinda goes with what you were saying with pulling back. So if you’re intensely training for something, whether it’s competition or a specific goal you have, outside of training, you have to kind of keep things under control. You cannot, things you do outside of practice should be helping your practice. So somebody does yoga outside, I’m happy with that, great, right, if somebody starts, you know, learning new ways to recover, and that’s cool. But somebody’s like, hey, you know, I think I’m gonna try, you know, whatever, like insert silly activity here that people do. Silly activity. That’s usually like my concern. In combat sports, it’s already high risk, high risk of injury, so what you do outside of practice truly matters. Yes. So yeah, if you have a competition coming up, it’s not the time to try this new exciting– Always have these conversations with people, because again, I think, maybe we talked about this before in the podcast before, is like trying to burn the candle at both ends, like what are you, if you’re training for a marathon, let’s train for a marathon, don’t try to be a jiu-jitsu competition the same day, like you can’t do both, I mean, you can, but like, it’s not the best idea, you’re gonna burn yourself out. So like, try not be, I guess, prioritizing what you wanna do, like what competition, and then let’s train for that, not only, but like mostly for that. And then if you wanna do something else later, we’ll pick something else. But like trying to do both things on one weekend is not the best idea, especially if you’re also stressed from work, underslept, under-recovered, you’re trying to do a high rocks and a crossfit competition and a Muay Thai competition or whatever fight, it’s not the best recipe for not getting injured. Number five is my number one, so kind of went backwards here, is me being the corporate, not the corporate, physical therapy– What happened? Not that, I’m not that person. Gerry switched up on us. Is everybody going to see a corporate physical therapy clinic and them not caring about your physical therapy at all, really? And they don’t care about your injury and they’re seeing other people at the same time, they are ignoring you, they’re on their laptop like this, being silent while you’re on a heat pack or an ice pack just to get more time to trick insurance that you’re there for 60 minutes. That’s horrible. I know all the nasty tricks. Unfortunately, I used to do that. And I hated doing it. I bet. And they taught us well. Wow. They literally trained you to stand up. To unethically build, to not outright, but in certain legal ways, to build more of this or keep this patient here longer. Or what are you doing, why you’re not seeing this person three times a week, when that is all just bull crap. And so if you’re seeing a clinic like that and they don’t care about you, stop. Because they don’t care about your care. They care about money. They care about volume of patients. They care about productivity of their PTs because I remember doing that too. They’re like, “Oh, why is your productivity low this week? Why are you not seeing 80 patients a week or whatever?” I’m like, “Cause that’s crazy.” Yeah, that’s insane. And you’re all weird for just wanting that. That’s just weird. I don’t know. I mean, I know why they want it, as you know, we all know. But, and I hate to see other physical therapy clinics that open up that just do the same model too. When they’re independent, you’re saying, and they follow the court by it. And you wanna be just like that. That’s horrible. Like why are you doing that? That’s horrible. That’s horrible. You wanna be another, I’m not gonna say their names, insert name of letter A and letter P, letter D, corporate PT clinics. That’s your solution to this healthcare problem we have, you know, nowadays when people, and again, I don’t like when people, that’s their intro to PT. And they think that is real physical therapy. Right, right. Is walking in, let’s say they have back pain, walking in, heat pack for 10 minutes, they massage you for five minutes, you do some crappy stretches, and then they hand you off to an aide or a tech, and then they just ignore you for 30 minutes, and then they put you on an ice pack at the end. Horrible, man. Horrible. That’s so bad. And again, I know that, cause I did all that. I was a tech, I was an assistant in the beginning, I was an aide, I was a PT in those same models. And looking from the outside in, it still amazes me that that is even still a thing. And I see it on social media, unfortunately, like, people sitting on hot packs and ice packs, just to, again, for the PT and the company to get more time out of the patient to trick insurance, just, I don’t wanna go into all that stuff, but that stuff just grinds my gears. Yeah. And when they could be getting, again, better care as someone private, like semi-private, like you, or someone completely private, like me, where it’s all one-on-one, because out of PT, it’s all private, it’s just me, and just how we’re talking right now, that’s how it is. I don’t have phone calls and people trying to call me, oh, they’re trying to call me, but like, I don’t pick up. You’re fully focused on whoever’s in front of you. I’m fully focused, like how we are right now, fully present with the client, and we get a lot of stuff done. And to me, again, just seeing, and I’ve gotten, what, maybe three people recently from those companies that, they’ve told me the same thing. They are not getting the attention they want. They’re getting cookie cutter rehab exercises. They’re getting ignored from the PT who was just on the computer trying to rush and finish their documentation because they need to finish the documentation because they have 48 hours to finish it, if not, the manager yells at them. And yeah, it’s just annoying. I could keep going on and on about it. That’s horrible, man. And that’s why, and they all know who they are. It’s all good. What’s one name? What’s that? What’s the name of one of these companies? Come on, I’ve called out UFC, Jim, I love kickbox. You know what would be funny if I just called them all out and Brian can bleep them, that’d be funny. And they could read my lips. Yeah, let Luis know, lip reader. Yeah, so bleep this out, Brian. Athletico, ATI, PT solutions, doctors of physical therapy, ironically, they’re called that. What else? Let’s just go with those four first. Yeah, I see them all over the place. Bleep those out, that’d be, yeah, let’s do that. Whoever wants to read my lips can read them. Yep, they can figure it out. So yeah, that’s my five. Any other extra bonus ones you got? No, those are really good, by the way, the ones you mentioned. That’s really interesting to hear. Thank you. No, I think that covers it for me. Those are the five that came to mind immediately. Should we fight to the death now? Yeah, I think that’s the plan. I thought that’s what we were doing. Let’s do it after you promote your stuff. Oh, plug time? Yes, plug time. I am Julius Caesar and I’m the owner of Phoenix Sports Empire. Sometimes I go by Ramy Dawoud. If you’re interested in combat sports training and you’re in the Naperville area, visit our gym. It’s semi-private. Each class has a maximum of either 10 or 12 people, depending on the class. You get tons of personal attention. We teach boxing, kickboxing, MMA, and jiu-jitsu. We have classes seven days a week. I believe 14 adult classes, three kid classes a week. So plenty of classes. I’d love to shout out our coaches. We have more coaches now than we did last time. I’d love to hear their names. Coach Michael and Coach Danny, who won their tournament recently, they started a 6 a.m. Tuesday jiu-jitsu class together. That’s been really fun. So shout out to them. 6 a.m. Coach Enrique, who’s our biggest fan and offered comments. He’s doing amazing as always. We love you Enrique. Coach Jaime Garza, who’s been with PSC the whole time. We’ve been in business, super grateful for his expertise. The man’s in his 60s and not a single student, including myself, can keep up with him when it comes to technique or sparring. And then Coach Brooks James, who’s been with PSE for maybe eight years at this point. Wonderful coach. My students love him. He’s become like a brother to me and so thankful for them. All my students at PSC, Asha for helping run the day to day and for being the leader behind the scenes for PSC and just all the people that keep us running and keeping us going. I’m super grateful. If you wanna check us out, Phoenix Sports Empire on Instagram or our website is phoenixportsempire.com. Come check us out. Awesome. Cool, man. Yeah. And if you guys are also in Naperville, as we both are, and you’re sick of that cookie cutter physical therapy clinic that just cares about you as a number and not as you getting better from your injury or from your surgery, come check out Art of PT. It’s my practice. It’s all private. It’s all one-on-one. No cookie cutter stuff. It’s a full assessment on your pain, on your injury. We get to the root cause of your pain and injury, and we construct a whole individualized plan for your pain or injury. Everything is in the description. My website, artofpt.com. My newsletter is also there. The PT handbook. It’s all free. Lots of tips on physical therapy, sports medicine things. So sign up for that. And then what else? Website, Instagram, at apt.org, same thing on threads. And yeah, that’s all we got for you guys. Don’t go to crappy physical therapy, please. That is my worst fear. And we’ll see you guys next time. Peace. Adios.