A Runners Guide to Functional Movement

Carrie Tollefson: Welcome everybody. We are here at the RunDot Podcast. Today we are talking about movement. Not our usual one foot in front of the other running movement, but all of the underlying movement that supports our running, AKA functional movement. Our guest today is Dr. BJ Leeper. BJ graduated from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine with a doctorate in physical therapy and rehabilitation science. He is a board certified orthopedic specialist and a certified strength and conditioning specialist. He specializes in a lot of things obviously, but mainly in comprehensive movement, testing and injury prevention among athletes and has worked with numerous amateur and professional triathletes, do athletes, track and field athletes, marathoners and ultra marathoners. BJ, that was, you know, a lot, but we are so excited to chat with you and hear your expertise on the pod.

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, happy to be on and it's great talking with you and there's lots of cool stuff on this topic we could talk for days on but excited to dig in.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, I'm excited too. Well, I'm Keri Telfson as some of you know, but if you're new to the podcast, hi, I'm an Olympian broadcaster and your guide to the world of run dot. We treat each show like any good workout. We're gonna start with a warmup question. We'll settle into the main set. And then we're gonna wind things down by having BJ answer an audience question in the cool down. So lots of good stuff today. So let's get after it. All right, BJ, our warmup. This is a good one. So from a laugh out loud comedy like Happy Gilmore to an inspiring drama like Hoosiers, there are plenty of sports related films we can fire up on the TV. For today's warm up question, what sports movie is your favorite?

B.J. Leeper: Ooh, man, this is a, I would say this might be actually the easiest question I've ever had to answer on a podcast because we talk about this all the time in our house, like greatest sports movie ever. And for me, it's no debate. It is hands down the sandlot. And we quote it in our household all the time. And it's kind of a staple, like, you know, at Christmas you watch certain movies, for us it's. 4th of July, it's like a staple. watched the Sandlot. Just gets you in the summer mood and baseball season is prevalent in our house right now. So it's like baseball, Sandlot, can't beat it.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. We have to watch that. mean, we have watched it, but it's been a while. And I feel like now our kids are at that age where they'd appreciate it a little bit more and probably be able to sit in one room and watch it. I always bring back, mine is like a heartbreaking movie. It's Pre, so Steve Prefontaine, those of you who know Pre, obviously was killed in a tragic car accident, but I love the way that he fought for my sport, fought for running and fought for all of us. a pro athlete I think or I was a pro athlete I'm slow now don't tell anyone but but I just think back to all the things that he fought for and represented in our sport so if you haven't watched pre that's a great one there's a couple different versions of it but all of it's sort of the same thing he was just a rock star

B.J. Leeper: We actually used to watch, my wife and I, when we would run 5K races right before, the night before we would actually watch Without Limits, another movie about Pri, and it would just like get you so in the mood to just run through a brick wall and just leave it all out there. was, that's another good one.

Carrie Tollefson: Yep. Yep. I know. Yeah, he was like kind of notorious for that finishing kick and then he'd also take it out and but he just was You know if you look at him and at least the way they portray how he ran he was kind of all over the place He used all kinds of energy. He probably didn't need to but he totally ran with his heart, which was really cool So audience we want to hear from you, too We'll ask this question on all of our run dot social media accounts We're curious to know what your favorite sports movie is. So let us know on our socials Okay, let's move into the main set BJ. You've been on the show before but we've not talked about your trade, your craft. So we're entering your world today talking about movement. Give us your background and what your education journey was like getting into the physical therapy and all the work that you've done with athletes.

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, I kind of had an interesting journey through school where in undergrad, you know, I went to a small college and played basketball in Iowa and I was a biology and chemistry major and really didn't know exactly what I wanted to do after college. I went then to the University of Iowa and was kind of immersing myself in the research world. I was kind of a nerd. I thought I would go kind of the PhD track or get into medicine and do something along those lines. And so I started out in a lab there at the University of Iowa and I was in anatomy and cell biology research and then I kind of became disenchanted with the research world. I thought, you know, once I get my PhD, they'll just pay me all this money to do research and that's all I have to do. And then I slowly started to realize like to fund your research, you have to write grants and there's all this, these politics and hoops you sometimes have to jump through. And I quickly kind of became disenchanted with the research world and a friend of mine, he asked me, like, have you ever considered sports physical therapy? And oddly enough, even though I was in and out of the athletic training room all through my college career, I knew what athletic trainers did, but I had no exposure to sports physical therapy. So there's a family friend that they recommended I shadow, just talked to. I went and I shadowed him and like within the first hour of watching what he did, working with athletes. and kind of exploring the science of everything, I was hooked. Like I was immediately like, this is exactly what I want to do. How come it took this long for me to figure this out? So luckily the University of Iowa had one of the top programs in physical therapy in the country at the time. And so it was like a no brainer for me. I could stay in state, stay at the university and that was my path. So quickly got into the world of physical therapy and again, knew the whole while as I was going through school that I wanted to work with athletes and that was my my track so yeah.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. But you said your track kind of came from that basketball world. So I want to know how crazy are we runners from a physical therapy, you know, mind. Are we kind of nutty?

B.J. Leeper: Yeah. That's right. Well, absolutely. And it's funny because when I married my wife, she was a runner. So I knew how crazy runners were. Right. And then she slowly got me hooked as my basketball career ended and I was involved in other things. like, you know, I want to stay active. I'm an athlete. How hard can running be? So I quickly got into it with her and realized like, okay, this is not an easy sport. thought it was, you know, I've thought like, I've run for conditioning. How hard can this be? But what's funny is there is a stigma, obviously even in the clinic with physical therapists with runners. I, know, personally, I love working with runners, but I know there's unique challenges with runners. And it's funny, you ask some clinicians like who's the last patient you want to see walk through your doors at five o'clock on a Friday night. And I've heard several say ultra runners and, for the simple reason that, you know, they won't do what we tell them to do, right? They're, they're slaves to their training. Even if we tell them we have to pull them off their training and those are hard conversations when you're talking with runners that live for that. that can sometimes be the challenge. So, but I love the running community. Obviously it's, it's become a lot of my, my passion now and professionally. So yeah. but runners do have a stigma that, they're, passionate and they can be tough to work with sometimes regarding movement, which is why we're. here today talking about it.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, yeah, it's okay. And I also think that we can be coachable. So it's good that you guys, you know, are persistent with what you believe to what trends are you seeing in the industry right now, especially with runners when it comes to fitness and health.

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, for sure. Well, what's interesting is, you know, when you look at the literature, look at the research, runners are often injured, right? We know this as runners, we know this. And I've seen literature state, you know, as many as 50 % or more of runners have had injuries which caused them to miss at least one day of training. And I happen to think the number is much higher than 50%. I think about everybody who's been a runner and has dealt with that. But then when you look at those injuries, 75 % of them are due to overuse injuries and then 75 % of those are due or found in the lower limb. So I think some of that is intuitive, but what I find fascinating is like with all our technology as we continue to advance in training and we continue to advance in shoe technology, if anything, we're seeing the trend continue to rise with injury prevalence and not diminish, which tells us there's more of an issue with foundational things in my opinion, than just the technology that you're training with or how hard you're training the engine. A lot of it comes back to the fundamentals, which again is what we're talking about here with fundamental movement.

Carrie Tollefson: Mm-hmm. Let's talk about movement health and what you think us runners need to be aware of because you know We've been running forever and I know that times change and medicine changes and you know what you guys are all studying and PT and the biology world or The medical world are you know studying and figuring out for us? So talk a little bit about movement health and what we need to be aware of

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, so movement health is such a broad thing, right? Because a lot of times when we talk about movement, everybody jumps to, well, we're talking about the parts of movement. We're talking about joints and muscles and how they work together. And that is a big component of movement health. But movement health has many domains which, you know, encompass breathing, nutrition, sleep. even behavioral health, like how stressed you are at work or stress with relationships, like it all factors down to how the body responds to different things and how the body moves. So when we talk about movement health, we have to kind of think more holistically, but specifically with runners as we approach kind of the topic of movement health, you know, I always say there's kind of two camps that people can fit into as a runner. You can be in that camp where running is my life and then you can fit into the camp of I'm a runner with a life. And the way I delineate those two is a person who's kind of in the running is my life. They make no sacrifices to their running. If they move, it's only running and always running, right? There's nothing else that they supplement with. And runners with a life, in my opinion, it's like You're well-balanced athlete. You're not, you're a runner and that's your primary focus, but you're supplementing it with different things. You're moving in other ways. You're exploring different movements. Another way to look at it that I've heard that I think is a great analogy for runners and it sounds funny, but runners often hoard movements. So if you think of like a hoarder in their house with this room where they've got this carved out path where they can move, but in the corners they've got piled up stuff everywhere, right? But they've carved out their path where they normally go and that's the only path they use. And I think that runners often we fall into this category where we haven't dug into the corners of our room for so long. And that's where I find the movement health is best for runners when we're well balanced, we're well balanced athlete and we've got the corners of our room exposed and we explore those frequently, even if that main path of running is your focus. So it's interesting to kind of talk about that and just number one, understand that that is a big, big component of movement health, but there's other domains of it.

Carrie Tollefson: I think that's really interesting because you know we're talking to you, you're a PT but there I love your approach of there's so much to movement health it's not just going out and running. mean there is like stresses in life, there's other things going on like what are we doing besides just running and I don't know why but you know I just think of ultra marathoners a lot of times like they just continually run like they'll go for you know two days in a row on the weekend and they're running almost the entire day. So how do you kind of approach that as a PT and somebody that really studies this? Like how do you approach someone that is maybe just running the proper amount versus someone that's really going overboard? And not to say all ultra marathoners are going overboard. I'm not dissing ultra marathoners. I love that. I'm not gonna do that. I like to go short and fast. But you know, how do you kind of manage all of that?

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, I think the best way to look at it is there's a specific strategy or paradigm and we call it the performance pyramid. And the way to look at it from my perspective is, you know, obviously the best training for running is running. You know what I mean? Like it's, that is the skill of the sport. And so, especially when you go long, you know, you have to, you have to run longer distance, longer volumes to a certain extent. But the way to think about the body being balanced and kind of going back to what is true movement health for a runner, I often think of this performance pyramid. And in my best analogy, I always think of a snowman, like a perfectly built snowman where you've got the three tiers and obviously the foundational base is the biggest and it supports the mid tier, which has some wiggle room to move if it had to, but it can sit solidly on the base. And then the top is the perfectly balanced head that sits in the middle. So everybody knows what that looks like, but where that analogy holds true for movement health is that base foundation is fundamental mobility or what we always talk about with parts, like parts are moving well, joints are moving well, flexibility sometimes falls into that camp of what people consider fundamental mobility. And then the next mid-tier on top of that is fundamental stability or what I call motor control, which is the right muscle at the right time. Some people call it strength, but I think it's specific, more neurologically that motor control ability to build capacity that goes on top of mobility. So mobility first, stability second. And then on top of that is your skill. So the active running, the form, your cadence, your pacing, all the stuff that most people get caught up in where you think of that balanced snowman or that balanced pyramid, if that becomes inverted where all you're doing is the focus on the skill, all you're doing is running, you're training hard, you're studying form, cadence, all those things, but you haven't paid any attention to your foundational base, you've got an inverted snowman and it's not a matter of if you're gonna get injured, it's just when, right?

Carrie Tollefson: Hmm. Well, let's break down those layers then just a little bit because when you talk about mobile mobility Some people think they know what that is But can you break that down for us those those you know that each tier of the snowman a little bit

B.J. Leeper: Yeah. Yeah. So it's a great question because mobility is not a lot of people think, well, mobility is just, yeah, I'm stiff. I'm tight. I need to stretch. That's flexibility. But mobility is not just that. I think mobility can be different for different people or the, the root of how you work on mobility can be different for different people. And the way I think about it sometimes is like, like a garden hose analogy where if there's, let's say there's a trickle. of water coming out of that hose and that's your limitation in mobility. A lot of times people think, well, I just need to turn on more water and get that hose running more fluidly. But for other people, the water source is fine. It's not an issue of that being the problem, but it's actually there's a kink in the hose and you need to work on that hardware to unkink the hose and let the water from the source go ahead and flow out. But for those that don't necessarily have a kink in the hose, they need to work on the source. So mobility is kind of encapsulated with not just stretching. So I think a lot of times of the hypermobile person, a lot of times you think of female athletes that have a lot of mobility, that are going to yoga each and every day. But when you test them, They're like, my gosh, my hamstrings are so tight, I can't touch my toes. And they show a restriction, but when you get them on the table and you're testing all their mobility and flexibility of the muscles, it's not a muscle problem. But when they go to move in that way, their brain senses maybe it's a stability issue and their body puts on the parking brake to protect themselves from that. They'll feel that as tightness, but the last thing they need to do is start stretching their hamstrings. because the fundamental mobility, if anything, they're hypermobile. So all that to say, mobility can take different shapes depending on what you're coming to the table with.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, that's interesting. mean, I even just when I'm listening to you talk, I'm wondering how your mobility looks as a former basketball player now more into the endurance side of things. Like, do you really see a difference between the different types of athletes or is there kind of one common? I don't want to say issue. I don't like to look at things as bad, but, you know, is there kind of one common thing that athletes have that you see?

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. mean, there's different ways of presenting. Like for example, going back to our snowman analogy, right? There's often the overpowered athlete that comes in, which, know, the stereotypical, I'll just use these for examples, but the stereotypical 50 year old male who's at the gym and he's been doing the same six lifts in the weight room that he's done since high school. And he has capacity. He has that middle snowball developed of stability and power and capacity, but he cannot move foundationally mobility wise to save his life. And I'd probably fall more into that camp when I first started running where I was stiff through my ankles, my hips, my T spine. Like I had restricted mobility, but I was, I was strong, right? But when I would go and run, I would, it was like trying to drive a car with the parking brake on. Like I could move, but I wasn't moving efficiently. So I had to really train my engine hard to move faster. Whereas if I would have just spent some quality time on unlocking those areas and turning the parking brake off, I could move way more efficiently with the same engine. didn't need to build the engine more. So that type of athlete that comes in, I've told a lot of guys, I'm like, take the time you're spending in the weight room. and go to a yoga class, like unlock your body. You don't have to train and build your engine anymore. On the other end of the spectrum, we see the underpowered athlete where that big snowball at the bottom is huge. It's great. They've got mobility to boot. They can move through each joint as perfect as you'd want, but their capacity and stability, the middle snowball in their head are the same size, right? those pieces of the puzzle are the same, but we tend to gravitate towards what we like, right? So those are the athletes I'll see in the clinic where they're having issues because they don't have the ability to connect the dots and pass the baton from all the mobility that they have to put it together to stabilize it. But they still love to go to their yoga class each and every day and continue to work on their flexibility that is already really good, right? And so I would tell that athlete, hey, go to the gym and do those six lifts that other guy has been doing and switch places, right? But we tend to not want to do the things we suck at, right? We want to stay with the things we're good at. And that's sometimes the issue. And even with running, like we love running, we get it, we know how to do it. And so when we have time to move, we just go out the door and we run. We don't spend any time addressing either maybe our stability deficits or our mobility deficits. So. So yeah, there's different presentations just depending on what people are coming with.

Carrie Tollefson: I feel like you're speaking right to me. Like, I like to just head out the door. I've been really bad about getting to the gym and doing all those little things. You know, we've talked about now stability. Let's talk. I want you to just dig into that a little bit. So we've heard mobility. We know what that is. Talk about the stability again and how we can get get from dysfunctional to more functional as athletes in the middle of that snowman.

B.J. Leeper: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so when I think of stability, you know, lot of people use stability and strengths anonymously. Like they think, yeah, that's strength training. I know I need to strength train. But to me, it's more than just strength training. It's what I call motor control as well, which is passing the baton or it's the right muscle at the right time. So you can be strong. And again, I love my analogies, but the analogy I use for this is like, a relay event, think of a four by 100 meter relay, and you've got the fastest runners in the world running each leg. You've got a team of Usain Boltz, right? So the issue there is not the individual speed component, or in this case, we're talking about strength. It's not the individual muscle that's strong or not strong. It's how do you pass that baton from one segment to the other? So we work in patterns, not just parts. So no matter how fast or strong that individual runner is, if they drop the baton and the handoff, you don't finish the race. So I could have a team with just me on it, passing the baton to another me. I could beat Usain Bolt if he drops the baton. So I think of stability training as making sure you're addressing patterns and passing the baton in the right way. So not just isolated, oh, need to, I know I as a runner, I need to strengthen my glutes. So I jump on YouTube and I look at, you know, glute 101 and it's this guy lying on his side doing a clamshell. Like that's great to activate a certain muscle and maybe turn something on. But if you don't express that muscle and pass that baton in the movement, in the pattern, that's what I call mobility. It's, it's being able to express the pattern. and build strength and build capacity in that way. So hopefully that makes sense. Yeah.

Carrie Tollefson: I love that. Yeah, it does make sense. I mean, there are some people that might be listening to us like, who's got time for all this stuff? You know, like that's where I'm at in my life right now. I have time for a 20, 30 minute run, but I don't have time necessarily for another 20 to 30 minutes of mobility or, you know, stability work, all of that. So what do you tell an athlete? Especially like, what is your like cheat? Like, can we get your cheat version? What is the few things that we have to do?

B.J. Leeper: All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I wish I could have a cheat. I'd be a millionaire right now, you know, making a lot of money just if I had the cheat that would catch them all. yeah, unfortunately, so individualized, right? But I tell people, and for anybody who's heard me on other podcasts, like I say this a lot, but you have to go to sniper school. And what I mean by that is like, you don't go to sniper school to learn how to shoot.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, there's no shortcuts in life, people. There's no shortcuts. No.

B.J. Leeper: you go to sniper school to learn how to aim. And I think that's the key because we all are managers of the scarcest resource in the world, which is time. Like you said, you don't have time. So how do we manage that resource in the best way? And for me, it's always been, keep it simple. Like you have to know where your lowest hanging fruit, your biggest deficit might be and target that. Like target that one thing that you know will give you benefit. Even though you could do 10 things, I would rather have somebody do the one thing that's gonna give them the most bang for their buck and just start there. And to do that, have to, obviously you have to aim. You have to know where that deficit truly lies. And there's a lot of ways to get there, but everybody asks, well, how do you find that out? How do you know? I think the first step is to explore. right, to explore other patterns. Like we're talking about the room of the hoarder where you've got these corners of the room that are built up with junk. Like you have to have opportunities to explore. And for some people that's like going to a yoga class and doing different movements in different ways. For others, it's like you're going out to play soccer with your kid and you're like moving laterally instead of just that sagittal plane straight ahead running. And you're starting to explore like, that feels so awkward or that doesn't feel great. you know, again, like we talked earlier about the technology in our footwear. Like when's the last time you walked outside barefoot and just explored your body with the ground interfacing with your barefoot and just starting to do different things like that. So there's a systematic way to approach it. And that's probably a whole other podcast we'll jump into, but there's a systematic way to explore.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. Okay, we could do that. We have another one.

B.J. Leeper: functional movement. But you know, and if you want help, there's always, you know, trained movement professionals you could go seek that can guide you through more of that. But I always encourage people just explore your movement and then figure out. And when I stand on my right leg, I'm way worse than my left. And then start there, like start to explore and build certain habits and then dig in deeper and then focus on that one thing.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah, maybe when something is hard for you to do, then that's like a sign that we should, I was just doing every other step up my stairs and I was thinking, you know, I'm getting a little older and I'm like, I wonder if I look as agile as I did when I was younger. This was just this morning coming up the stairs and I was like, I hope somebody tells me one day like, you're starting to look a little, you know, weaker, not as peppy on these steps because I loved it. double step them all the time. I think that brings the basketball player out in me. So I think that's smart. Find something that's maybe not quite as easy for you and work on that. Because we go back to those six movements in the gym because they're sort of easy. They're a routine.

B.J. Leeper: Right. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Right. And practically speaking, because everybody wants to know, yeah, that's great talking in generalities, but like, what should I do? I will tell you that what we see from a fundamental movement perspective in runners a lot, again, it's not one size fits everybody, but it happens a lot where when we test functional movement with athletes that are primarily runners, we often see, oddly enough, we often see single leg balance deficits. which is funny because I always say running is a single leg sport. Otherwise you're walking if both feet are on the ground at the same time. But like if you were to just test this on your own at home where you stand on one foot and you bring your opposite thigh to parallel to the floor. So your femur is up parallel. So your hip is flexed, but you're balancing on that single leg. Eyes open, a running athlete or any athlete for that matter should easily be able to hold balance without faltering for at least 20 seconds. For eyes closed, at least 10 seconds. And you'd be amazed how many people struggle with that. But not just that, looking at symmetry between sides. Some people will find I can nail it on one side, 10 seconds eyes closed, 20 seconds eyes open. But then on my other side, I'm all over the place. That is a very common asymmetry that we see a lot. And it's something that you know, you need to get to the root of and figure out why is that occurring? There's a lot of reasons. It's not always just, well, my balance is bad. There could be a mobility thing restricting you and restricting the input from your brain to your foot. But the other two patterns we see a lot are actually going through a squat pattern. So just even being able to squat, keeping your heels on the ground, rock bottom, butt to heels, and not falling over. That's usually a big indicator of, okay, you know, there's a lot of patterns that affect the squat, but that's something that lot of runners struggle with. And often it gets tied up into hip mobility, ankle mobility issues. And then the other one we look at a lot is just a toe touch. Like, can you touch your toes without bending your knees and just that hip shift, that posterior chain, flexibility, everybody's like, I'm tight in my hamstrings. I can't do it. That's not always the reason. But those are three fundamental patterns that are easily testable on our own that help us start to even explore how are we moving. But those are functional movements that, you know, even as a runner, you should be able to do that. Those are just parts of being a fundamentally moving human, not just an athlete.

Carrie Tollefson: Okay. Those are great tips. I love that. We didn't talk about, we didn't really dig into the top of the snowman. Can you just do that before I ask my final questions?

B.J. Leeper: Yeah. Yeah. So that's probably the one that comes the easiest, right? If you're a runner, you know, you need to train to run and that's the no brainer, but that's, that's the top of the snowman. That's the skill of the sport. So the performance pyramid to be able to perform at that sport, you need the skill at the top. So that is, you know, from a running perspective, that's, that's focusing on forms, focus on cadence. It's focusing on stride. It's your pacing. It's all of those strategies that make up the skill and training. So that's for most of us the easiest thing to do. But again, if we sacrifice the middle and the base of the snowman because we're always just focused on the skill, you've got this huge head on a small body and there's so much instability that happens. Again, it's not a matter of when or if the snowman is gonna tip over and break. It's just when will that happen?

Carrie Tollefson: and Yeah, and I think that that's important for us to remember too. Like if we are a little off balance, you know, how do we how do we help that besides like just giving up and saying, I'm just going to run for the rest of my life. Like I think of even drills going out and doing kick butts and karaoke's and like things like that. If you don't have kids that are playing sports like you and I, BJ, we have young kids still so we can go out and play and wrestle and do all those fun things that, you know, it is hard. to get off the ground as we get older but we still do that. So we naturally have agility in our lives because we're out in the basketball court or playing catch or whatever. But if you feel like you've been in this rut and you have poor functional movement like how do you and you kind of been touching on it but what would you say as we kind of close today?

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, I mean, I think you're right on. Like we all know, even as runners that are focused on our training, like we know like, there's probably some drills I need to do and incorporate that. Like that's even a place to start where sacrifice some of your volume of running or distance and running for that 10 minute warmup to actually activate the right muscles and start with some of those drills. but again, going back to being a sniper, I would even rather have somebody just take the shotgun approach even with the drills away, focus on that thing that you need the most. Whether it's I know my right ankle is more stiff than my left, focus on things that clear that right ankle and spend those five to 10 minutes doing that before you go out for that run. But a lot of us, it's hard because a lot of us, we run to warm up. We don't warm up to run. And I think especially as we get older in the sport of running, you\... you can't sacrifice that time. You have to have that time prior to the run and make sure that your body is functioning to a certain level better. It doesn't have to be perfect. We're talking about like, C's get degrees. Like your movement doesn't have to be perfect. We just have to be, you know, I call it this floor of dysfunction where if you slip into that slippery slope of dysfunction, that's where the wheels come off. But If you can just get to the threshold of functional movement, where that's in my mind, that's a C, it doesn't have to be an A. Everybody gets caught up in, oh, it needs to be perfect. No, it might just need to be a little bit better than where you're at today. And then that's what you use to springboard you into your efforts when you're actually training.

Carrie Tollefson: So when you go out for a run, do you kind of have a checklist? Like, do you sort of work down and just kind of feel what's going on and then spend a little bit of time on a sore, you know, glute or a sore ankle or what do you do before your runs? And now I'm putting you on the spot, you're probably like, well, I need to get back to more functional movement.

B.J. Leeper: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's assuming I still run, right? Which that's gotten fewer and further between. But no, so my issues have been in the toe touch pattern. reaching down and touch your toes, like I've had issues along my posterior chain and tension through my glutes and hamstrings and ankles coming from my basketball background. I can't tell you how many times I've injured my ankles, sprains and whatnot. So I know my ankle mobility is poor and I know my hip hinge and my toe touch pattern is poor. So I've got some corrective things and for me, it's not just a flexibility thing. It's actually a motor control thing where I have to sink my breath, engage through my core and do some things to improve my toe touch pattern where I know if I don't have that before I go out for my run, things aren't gonna feel as good, right? Things aren't gonna go as well. But if I can clear that prior to my run, And then when I come back from my run, see if I've maintained that, then I know if I stayed within my threshold. So what's interesting, and this is again kind of a sidebar, but if you clear a pattern prior to going out for your activity for your run, but then you come back and that pattern is no longer cleared, that means when you're exercising with your activity and you're running, you're likely going above the threshold of your ability and your body's going back to what it knows and how to compensate for a lot of people. So sometimes the barometer of how am I doing with my tolerating, you know, the threshold that I'm training at, your pattern, your movement will actually be one of your best metrics to show you, not just your heart rate and recovery and all these metrics that we all track too, but how you move both before and after sometimes are good indicators of was that run too hard for you? Or was it spot on right in your wheelhouse, you're maintaining your pattern and you're maintaining that good movement health throughout? That's a key indicator.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. And I think we know, right? mean, let's be honest, if you're listening here and you know you're running differently or you're dragging your leg or you're not getting a lot of power or your your hamstrings are super tight like you. We talk a lot about this early on when we have new runners like listen to your body, communicate with your coach like, you know, write it in your training logs like those are things that we have to remember and I have to be reminded of that too because yeah, you drag your leg around a week, well guess what? Most likely something else is going to go wrong or that's going to really kind of, something bad is going to happen. So like I think that we all have to remind ourselves and maybe it isn't that we can see ourselves running. Maybe we do need to go in and have someone watch us here and there. How often do you recommend athletes go in and have their gait looked at?

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, I mean, I'm a big advocate obviously for the profession of physical therapy, but one thing I always think about is it's odd to me. It's been, this is my soapbox I get on because in the musculoskeletal world, get out of here. In the musculoskeletal world, like, and we're talking about physical therapy and fitness movement, we\... We don't have a standard operating procedure of how we proceed. It's always reactionary. And that's kind of largely how medicine tends to be. Like you go in when you've got a sore throat, you go in when you have a problem. But even in medicine, a lot of us go in for preventative healthcare, wellness checkups, even when there's no issues. Same thing for dentistry. Like we don't just go in like, my tooth is really hurting. I'm probably got a cavity. Now I should go into the dentist. Like most people go in a couple of times a year, even when things are feeling A-okay. We, if any area needs that more, we need that in the musculoskeletal healthcare world because we could save so many surgeries. We could save so many issues that come up orthopedics, orthopedically speaking, if we were just more proactive. So I'm a big advocate of when things are feeling great, going at least, and at least twice a year to just have somebody inspect your movement. explore and look at how things are even before there's an issue. But if you're already feeling issues, I mean, you should go in and have it evaluated or at least start exploring and taking the time to explore on your own. Some of these things, if you catch them early, you can shotgun approach, even if you don't completely know what you're doing, but you're like, I just know I need to explore this area of the house and I'm gonna try this and see if it changes. That's the first step.

Carrie Tollefson: I'm\... For sure. Mm. I love that and I'm so glad that I asked because there's this is whole other podcasts too and maybe with other experts but like even when it comes to us women and men but you know we are in this world of talking about paramenopause and menopause and and all of this stuff you know we go in when and we get our numbers tested before we have ever like had any other like standardized testing done to see where we were at so it's always it's just a guessing game so I love that you mentioned like the dentist for instance That's a brilliant way to give us an analogy where we do go in and get our cleanings done at least twice a year, right? And they check things out. Maybe we should do that a little bit more with PTs.

B.J. Leeper: Absolutely. Yeah. And that's the thing. It's just taking the time, but it's hard, right? When it's out of sight, it's out of mind. But movement should be set in my mind as a premium. we can't afford not to take that time.

Carrie Tollefson: Yeah. Cost money, all of that stuff. we have the cool down question coming and this one's from Candice and she asked depending on family schedule Sometimes I run first thing in the morning and sometimes they save it for the evening on my evening runs I find my body usually feels good and it flows well through my workout But in the mornings it's a bit more challenging to get things to click and I generally feel a bit stiffer What do our coaches recommend for priming the body before the morning run? We talked a bit about this but what would you say BJ? How do you prime the body?

B.J. Leeper: Yeah, I mean, it comes back to what we said earlier. Like you don't, you don't want to always just run to warm up. You want to warm up to run. And so it makes sense why, you know, that athlete saying that they just feel a little bit better flow when they do their run later in the day, because they've been up and moving already. So it all comes back to where our body's deficits are. And if they are in that mobility camp, likely you need to prime the pump through. doing a little movement that clears those joints that are problem areas for you. And what we find with runners again is a lot of times it's ankles, it's hips and it's thoracic spine or your mid back. Those are the areas that tend to get gummed up. And it's not for everybody, it's not just a pure flexibility stretching issue. Sometimes it can be, you got to activate, you got to sink your breath and then it helps to open up your thoracic spine or open up some of those areas. So. one good shotgun approach. Again, it's not a catch-all for everybody, but if you think about some of those flows, like even in yoga, like a sun salutation where you try to hinge through your hips, press your heels to the floor, sink your breath, explore in through extension your thoracic spine, like that's a great one that catches and touches a lot. So I would say one of the best approaches is just go through some flows, hip openers, mid back openers, things that you know touch those areas that you tend to be restricted in. Sink your breath, spend three to five minutes there and then see how it goes. I mean, that's a great place to start.

Carrie Tollefson: Just three to five minutes at first and see. So that means I need to get up 15 minutes earlier than I am right now, which is 15 minutes before I'm out the door. Okay, okay. I gotta practice what I preach here. So thank you so much, Dr. BJ Leeper. This has been so much fun listening to you and we definitely have to have you back on the pod. There's so many ways I could have gone off. I totally went off our script anyway, but I could just pick your brain on everything. So we appreciate your time.

B.J. Leeper: All right. Yeah, absolutely. Great talk.