Fitness and Wellness Class: Percussive Therapy—More than Recovery, Powered by Therabody®

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Paul Cauldwell:
Hello, everyone, my name is Paul Cauldwell, Vice President of development for Therabody. And I just want to welcome you to today's course around everything percussive therapy. So first off, I'd like to say thank you to NASM and AFFA to hold this wonderful conference and for allowing therapy to be a part of it. And we're extremely excited to speak with you today. And really discuss everything about percussive therapy, and we realize because of therapy is a relatively new term in our industry. So really, my job today is walk you through some background on where percussively came from the origin story, as well as talking about the science and research around percussive therapy, and really how percussive therapy fits into your practice working with your clients, your athletes, as well as yourself. So let's get right into it. Because we have a lot to cover. And I'm really excited to speak with you today. So it's not just enough for us to really design the best products, but I said Thera body has started a whole entire new initiative called Theravada University. And so what you're going to see today is a snippet of our education. And we really pride ourselves on being the educational provider on everything because of therapy as well as really just recovery in general. So we've launched our entire Theravada University and then really empowering individuals in the in the fitness and athletic space to really have the understanding and the underlying evidence to show what percussive therapy is doing to the body and how best to provide it into your into your experiences.

Paul Cauldwell:
And so let's think about recovery first, right? So we see this pendulum shift in our industry. And over the past 1015 years, the industry itself has really been focused around intensity, intensity is ruled in terms of you know, you think about what's even back in 2007, the inception of the CrossFit boom, and that intensity matter, you know, our clients would discuss with each other about what they did for a workout and how hard it was. But what we've seen over the past few years now is that pendulum starting to shift back more towards the center. And I think a lot of that has to do with the advancements around recovery. But also, quite frankly, people starting to see that they have to balance the scales of work and recovery, it can't just be only about the intensity in the in a training session or the intensity in the weight room, there has to be a level of balance associated. And I want you to think of this analogy of Imagine if we all went outside right now, and we rubbed our hand on the asphalt, right for the next two minutes, think about what your hands going to look like it's going to look bloody just battered and really like hamburger meat. But let's say we went outside and rubbed it on the asphalt for 20 seconds or even 10 seconds and then did that every couple of days. And over time, your body will adapt to that stimulus with the right amount of rest in between. And that's where you start to develop calluses. And so we have to look at the way we train our clients and even ourselves as providing the right amount of intensity with the right amount of recovery and rest to ultimately be successful and have long term adaptation. And so when we think about the recovery space, especially right now, there has been so many different scientific advancements around recovery resect recovery is cool to talk about again, which is great for us. But also if you think about things like wearable technology, you know I'm wearing a Garmin watch and ordering this you know whoop, go on down and down the list bio strap is so many different types of wearable tech now that even our consumers have the ability to look at their data and manage and understand better understand their recovery, which only helps them in terms of how to balance the work in rest. So from wearable tech to advancements on sleep hygiene to cryo therapy, red light therapy all the way down cold plunged infrared sauna, compression, CBD and with percussive therapy. And you can see now that percussive therapy lives in this space where all of these fantastic modalities are about supporting, enhancing the efforts around recovery and around the body's ability to recover from training and stress. But just as important the body the ability to regulate the nervous system, to putting individuals in more parasympathetic states. So that's kind of where we feel their body and really percussive therapy lives with these greatest advancements. And, and the goal today is really to talk about some of the science behind what percussive therapy is, and what it's doing both directly globally to the muscle as well as centrally to the nervous system and how you can really tell the use of percussive therapy, to really match up with the outcomes, your your desire, whether you use this, whether you use a Thera gun as part of your warmup strategy, or whether you use it to manage aches and pains, or let's say you to use it to help prepare for sleep, there's so many different ways we can look at that. But we want to make sure it's individualized. And we understand what the what we need to do in terms of force and pressure to be able to elicit a certain outcome.

Paul Cauldwell:
So before I get really into the science of what percussive therapy is, I want to talk about the history behind it. And it's really important to pay homage to both vibration, as well as pressure. And if you think about the industry, and really the research around vibration and localized pressure, like putting the pressure directly into a muscle that's been around for generations, and there's so much evidence to show how beneficial providing local vibration and local pressure independently are, what they can do to a muscle in terms of alleviating pain and managing discomfort and supporting soft tissue health. But there's never really been a modality or tool or space to be able to provide both of those stimuluses together. And that's where percussive therapy comes into play. So really the background and the origin story of theragun and percussive therapy, it really started with one man's need to emit eliminate his own pain. So Jason roselyn, who is the founder of Thera body is a chiropractor by trade. He went out and really back in 2007, was really finishing up his last exams to become a licensed chiropractor. And during that time, unfortunate for him, he was in a really bad motorcycle accident in Los Angeles that left him with significant cervical signs, scapula damage, really that type of life altering pain, where it affected his ability to have, you know, play with his kids take a shower on really decreased his range of motion and tremendous atrophy in his shoulder. And he was really left with two options at that point, he could either have some type of surgery that really didn't know the outcome in terms of his quality of life for the future, and or deal with pain medication, you know, for a period of time. And so he comes from a family of different types of practitioners, massage therapists, chiropractors, so we they all have that kind of same mind. And, you know, it was his path to really support his own pain, where he kind of started to think about percussive therapy of taking these devices that are out there at the time that that provided localized vibration. And will could there be a way to provide some type of pressure with vibration. And so he started just messing around with different types of prototypes to really support his own pain. And sure enough, it started to help him. And what he really started to stumble on was the advancements of percussive therapy. And it wasn't till about a year or two later, where he started to feel better, his range of motion started, improve, improve with his shoulder, he started to be able to take a shower with his hand, he started to be able to. And so what he started to do is go about his chiropractic practice, he opened up a practice in Los Angeles, and developed a network of individuals. And he started to see very similar symptoms that he was dealing with. And so as he started to work with different individuals, he started to use these different prototypes on them and started to see them help them. So it was until about a year or two later, where the light bulb went off to say, maybe what I developed for myself to manage my own pain and deal with my own discomfort, could help other people that are walking into my clinic that maybe don't have the right insurance, or maybe don't have the financial means to pay out of pocket, but maybe there's a tool that they can use to help support their soft tissue care, and maybe deal with some of their aches and pains themselves. And as you can see off the timeline here, you know, it's been it's these are all real images of Jason's story of developing various prototypes of their guns to where we are today with our generation four. But you can see even in 2008 and 2009, it was no different than a power tool with a ball on the end. Right? And really just that's where the inception came from, to where we are today. And it's been just the amazing ride to see his innovation kind of started a new space of percussive therapy where it's just taken off in this. And so many people are able to put their quality of life in their own hands to understand what their new normal should feel like in terms of everyday movement, flexibility, range of motion, if I have a low back, how can I deal with it myself. And so I'll talk you through a really what percussive therapy is, but I wanted to share with you the origin story of their gun and Thera body now, because I get it. I get asked to speak at various conferences throughout the year. And I constantly get the question, especially when, when you're in the exhibit hall of, you know, Paul, what's the difference between one company compared to the next? And how do I choose? And I think it all goes back for me, especially working in the performance space for a significant amount of time, it comes back to the company's origin story of why they develop the product and what was the need for them? Was it out of just developing a cool product to sell to the fitness space? Or was there solving a need? And where did that origin story come from. And so I want to take an opportunity to share you share with you Jason's story, because I think it's a really impactful. So as we start to think about now, what percussive therapy is, I want to have a chance to define it for you. So percussive therapy can be defined as rapid and repetitive application of pressure perpendicular to the body. And so I think it's really important to understand that percussive therapy is providing both, or allowing the tissues to experience both pressure and vibration. And that's really key as we get into the nuts and bolts. And really, what it's combining is combining amplitude, frequency and torque, all simultaneously to the muscle. So the first one we talked about is amplitude. And that's the size of impact. So amplitude is really referring to how far their head travels in one revolution. So a theory gun specifically travels 16 millimeters, which is over a half an inch. And that's really important to understand, because every time you hold that theory gun on your skin, even if you just let it flow, it's going to pull off the skin every time. And that's really important in terms of this concept of combination. And when that when that head moves off the skin every time your body is never allowed, you're never allowed to accommodate to that sensation. And when you look at the other products, like massage got on the market, they're able to to significantly smaller, so it actually stays in contact with the skin. So your body will get used to that. And that's called vibration therapy. And that's great, there are benefits to vibration therapy. But in terms of combining that with that level of pressure, you need that amplitude, and that amplitude is extremely important. And that's why we chose a 16 millimeters. So it allows the head to move off the skin every time. So your body never gets used to that feeling. So you don't get it just doesn't become natural. There's a constant neuromuscular adaptation happening.

Paul Cauldwell:
The next one we talked about is torque. And torque is really speaking to the horsepower of the motor. So the theragun has the ability to provide up to 60 pounds of force. And I think that's really important when we look at having the ability to put force into the tissue, because there are going to be times depending on how you use the device that you're gonna have to create force. And so having the right amount of torque is extremely important because especially when you're thinking about using it as part of a warm up strategy, or part of the integrating the actual workout torque is extremely important. And that's why our products are, you know, with the motor design, it's a significant motor because we wanted to make sure it had a certain amount of torque to go along with it. The next one is frequency. And frequency is really referring to the speed of the device. So if you look at the research out there, our body in terms of hertz, we're talking about hertz. Now, in terms of having the right neuromuscular adaptation, the research shows that it's 29 to 40 hertz. So if you look at any theragun product in terms of the speed ranges, and all lives in that hertz range, so we have a couple of we have variable speeds now in our product. But what happens is when you turn a theragun on, it always defaults to the fastest speeds, which is 2400 RPM, that's hitting your skin 40 times a second. And that's really important because that's what's going to help elicit changes both in the tissue in the muscle in the fascia as well as the nervous system. So that's why our devices have certain speed. It's all based off research, and it's based off of what hertz range had the right responses to the body. And since some of our new products we've launched, we've been able to add in variable speeds, but you will as we go into the practical application speed or practice the 2400 RPM speed is extremely important in terms of affecting the neuromuscular system.

Paul Cauldwell:
So, this is where I really get excited to talk to you about the science of percussive therapy because like I said, Before is relatively new term, and we want to make sure that we provide you all with the right science and research of what percussive therapy is doing to the body. And the way we break down our sciences we talk about first is, is we've invested a lot of time and energy to look at research. In fact, we have a dedicated full time sports scientists who actually spent last 10 years at Gatorade, and his primary role primary role is to lead the charge on everything science and research for percussive therapy. And so as it stands right now, we have 21 different studies going on with at seven different universities. And we're looking at a variety of benchmarks with things like trigger point release, improve performance, mobility, range of motion, blood flow, facial fluid changes. And so we want to make sure we provide the the the environment in our industry with the right research, because percussive therapy is relatively new. And we know that innovation moves much faster than science. But we want to make sure that we're providing you all with the right research out there. So you know how to apply this application in the right format. And so the way we kind of break down our science is when we break it down into three pieces, we have physiological and neurological responses, right? When I apply this device directly to my muscle, there are both physiological and neurological responses happening. And from those responses, we have certain types of benefits. And from those benefits, how does it apply to our client experience. So let's take a look at the responses. First, I'm going to talk specifically, we break them down into global if I like a global responses if I apply this directly to my bicep, what's happening locally at the bicep, and then global and global is more referring to the nervous system of either up regulating or down regulating your nervous system. So the first one is thixotropy. And I realized that's a tongue twister of a term. And thixotropy is often studied in plastics and in fluids. And really thixotropy is the idea of making an environment less viscous. So we know through within your fascist system, you have hyaluronic acid, and these fluids in your fascia ultimately get kind of bound down, especially when you're sleeping, I want you to think about when you're the first time you wake up, or let's say you're on a long flight, you're feeling stiff and kind of tight, right. And so the idea is when you create share he force pressure, you're able to decrease the viscosity of the fluids in the fascia, which allow the muscle to glide and slide more in the fashion tissue which you get increased range of motion and better movement quality. And so what we've been able to study is that providing percussive therapy directly to the tissue, you're able to decrease the viscosity of the fluids of the fascia, which make the muscle easier to work with. And so think about the best analogy I love here is think about the old Heinz 57 ketchup bottles. And imagine when you were, you know, you'd be sitting at a diner and you try to get that ketchup out, you'd have to tap it on the side, I think you're actually supposed to hit the 57 logo. And as you start to tap it, what happens to the ketchup, it starts to come out. And so that is the idea of thixotropy of what being able to create a less viscous, viscous environment into the tissue, where the fluids of the fascia are, are more goopy, are in there easier and more moldable. So the muscles actually move more efficiently. The next one, when we talk about the science at the local level is fascicle fluid changes. So based off our research, when you apply percussive therapy directly into the muscle, I want you to think about as if it's your ringing out, ringing out a sponge, so you're able to disrupt the fluids of the fashion in that area. And they actually have done this in studies with cadavers, where they've actually squeezed the muscle in the fascia, and then I actually squeezed the fluids out. And what happens is, the muscle becomes more pliable and softer to work with. And based off are all based off the research, you have this 10 minute window after applying percussive therapy, like I said, the muscle softer, more pliable. And so I want you to think about how that applies to corrective exercises, warming up where the tissue is more easier to work with. So then you can overlay proper movement patterns to especially as part of the warm up or on recovery days. And that's where we get a lot of testimonials back from lmts physical therapists who work with their hands a lot where they might go in with a with a Thera gun first to help destruct distribute the fluids of the fascia and then go in with their hands next, and the tissue is more pliable and softer to work with. So they see so much better outcomes and it saves our hands. So when we look at that in terms of What's really unique about fascicle fluid distribution. In order to disrupt the fluids, the fascia, you do need to have the right amplitude with the right torque. And there's studies out there to show from USC and back in 2019, that compared a theragun, next to a hypervolt of the both the left and right quad. And what we found was is that the theragun, because of the bigger amplitude, and the bigger torque, was able to increase blood flow at a higher rate, but also was able to destruct distribute the fluids to the fascia, and the hypervolt was not. And so that's just something to think about when you're looking to make an investment into percussive therapy, you have to make sure that it has the right amount of amplitude, because it will have an effect on the fascicle fluid, which again, goes back to decreasing the viscosity of the fluids of the fascia, as well as making the muscle more pliable and softer to work with, which only will help our client experience when we're doing we're doing things like corrective exercises, warming up or on a dedicated recovery day.

Paul Cauldwell:
The third piece to local responses is blood flow. And I think it goes without saying that when you apply percussive therapy to the muscle, your increasing blood flow to the area. So not only are you increasing blood flow to the area, but you're also blood just doesn't pool like that. So the old blood has to be removed. So now you're getting this flush of blood of new blood in old blood out recirculating back to the back to the lungs. And so what we've been able to look at from a research perspective is that when a two minute theragun treatment can able to ink it has the ability to increase blood flow by 500% to the area for up to 10 minutes. So that's really obviously extremely important in terms of blood flow and circulation. The other caveat, well, the other piece of that, which is an additional benefit, not only does it increase blood flow, but it also increases muscle oxygen saturation by 10%. So if you think about why that's important, you're getting increase muscle oxygen saturation to the area. So let's say you're going through a Tabata or a high intensity session or an amrap or an EMA, where, you know, you might not rest every time, but you're starting to hit a wall, your clients hitting a wall. And so by using a quick 15 second 30 seconds theragun sweep, you're able to improve or increase the rate of recovery inside the extra actual workout itself. And that's really the exciting part as we start to look at how to integrate theragun into the client experience is that you can actually bring it into the actual workout as part of the rest period that will help enable and speed up the recovery process.

Paul Cauldwell:
So the next piece of this is more about global responses talking about globally what's happening in the nervous system. And so you have these various mccanna receptors of the body. And these mackenna receptors are stimulated by different types of pressure in different types of vibration, and when they're stimulated, have a direct effect on our nervous system. So if you look at the ruffini endings in the top left, when the ruffini endings are stimulated, they decrease sympathetic activity. So I want you to think about for a second, what times of the day would you want to decrease sympathetic activity. Right. So for me it comes whether it's after a workout on a recovery day or right before you go to sleep, you're calming the nervous system in putting in a state of relaxation. Okay, now on the flip side of that coin, if you look down the bottom left, we have the pacinian corpuscles. And when the Presidium proposals are stimulated, they increase sympathetic activity and increase proprioception. So now think about the times of the day when you would want to do something like that. And for me that that's right before a workout where you're going to help improve increase proprioception, kinesthetic awareness, balance, as well as exciting the nervous system. And so these various mccanna receptors, whether it's the muscle spindles, the Golgi tendon organs with increasing and decreased muscle tone, they respond to different types of stimulation. But it's important to understand they don't all respond the same in terms of force and pressure. So what I mean by that again, going back to the yellow with the ruffini endings. In order to stimulate the ruffini endings, I need very light force, which means I'm going to let the device just float over the skin literally just float I am going to move the device at a slow rate of speed. So it's moving very methodically moving in slow light force, which is going to stimulate the ruffini endings, which is going to decrease sympathetic activity. So that's how I would use it before I go to bed light force moving slowly on the other side of that equation before before a workout. I want to activate the pacinian corpuscles So that's why I would provide moderate force moving the device fast. So now I'm putting some pressure into the muscle in moving fast and digging a little bit. And again, that those two ends of the spectrum have an effect on my nervous system versus sympathetic versus parasympathetic. And I can use that to regulate my nervous system, individualize the way I use percussive therapy in my in my client in my life, daily activity. So it can't be a one size fits fits all model for someone who's just buying and wants to feel better. But us as fitness professionals, we can get a little bit deeper of how we use these tools based off how it affects not just the blood flow and fluid distribution, but also how it affects our nervous system. And I really think that's extremely important piece because especially right now, as individuals also on this conference, and our clients and our family members, we're all dealing with stress, especially right now. And if we have ways to help manage stress and manage our nervous system, whether it's using this tool on between meetings, after a long day of work or before sleep, any way that we can provide a huge stress, which means a positive stress to someone's life is extremely important, especially right now.

Paul Cauldwell:
So if you look now those are some of the effects of the responses right? thixotropy fast with fluid change, blood flow and exciting the mccanna receptors. Now, if we say all that, what are the benefits to those type of responses, and you can see here, they're all listed. Whether we want to decrease pain and soreness or whether we want to decrease Dom's does direct research to show that vibration can help decrease Dom's from a previous workout. Increase or Decrease muscle tone and tension in the muscle. excite the nervous system. So you can use the device let's say if you're going to use it as a precursor to a deadlift, a clean a snatch a squat, you can excite the nervous system with post activation potentiation properties. It's improving the overall health and quality of our soft tissue. It's improving blood flow and muscle oxygen saturation. And I finally I think the final bullet on this list is arguably the most important, it feels good. There's a positive experience with it. And that is really one of the most important elements with this. And I think compliance. I think we can all agree as fitness professionals compliance when soft tissue care is extremely important. You know that 23 one rule if your clients are foam rolling and using soft tissue devices with you, but what are they doing for those other days. And I think what I've seen, you know, in my experiences in our education team is that there's a higher compliance and utilization around using a theragun or percussive therapy tool. When someone is not with their client, because it ultimately feels good. They can use it on their coach, they can use it sitting they can, they can control the force. And so they start to feel this new normal now in terms of range of motion and posture and how they move and how they play with their kids. That getting getting down on a foam roll sometimes is for most people, especially for someone who's maybe dealing with an injury, or that's you know, really sore from a workout is they gently associate that with pain, it can be very uncomfortable, where now with this, they can control how much force they're putting into the body. So I think compliance and utilization is often something we want to you know, we want to discuss because again, it's a you stress meeting, it feels good. It's a positive stress, which I think will have better outcomes long term. So, want to talk a little bit about how you use your theragun. So we kind of made some interesting device modifications. So when you look at actually look at a theragun. holding it up here you can see this individual's finger is right at that feedback point. We call this the feedback point right here. And oftentimes, that's off often or we overlook, the idea is, is if you're holding this device and treating somebody you put your finger right there, and allows you to get feedback and allows you to feel what's taking place in the body. And that's extremely important when you're working with someone, especially if you're a practitioner, where you can feel maybe a nod or an adhesion, right, we don't want the the product the device to be a barrier to what you supposed to feel as a practitioner and what the clients feeling. So the way we design our product is weighed so you can feel actually what's taking place in the body. So a little bit of deeper dive. So when can you use a Thera gun, or percussive therapy tool? Well, you can use it as part of a warm up to help increase mobility increased blood flow. You can use it as part of the actual workout experience to help reactivate the tissue to excite the nervous system and helps promote recovery between exercises. And you can also use it as part of your recovery which will help decrease Post exercise soreness, increased blood flow really calm the nervous system and put somebody in a state of relaxation. So I don't want you to only think that you have to use this vise as part of recovery, you can essentially use it as part of the overall training experience.

Paul Cauldwell:
So the way we kind of break this down is if you're going to use it as part of the workout itself, you're going to spend no more than 15 seconds on a muscle. If you're going to use it as part of the warm up, you're going to use for 30 seconds on the muscle. And then if you're gonna use it as part of your recovery session, it can be up to 60 to two minutes in length. Okay, so time is really important of how long we use it depending on where it lives in our programming. And then forces important to like I said, a lot of our products also now have a force meter. So it allows you to see objectively how much force you're putting into the tissue. And like I said before, on, on sleep preparation or recovery days, you're using very light force. But as part of a warm up or as part of the actual workout, you're using more and more force, and you can use that force me to give you an objective measure. And then speed speed is really referring to inches per second, which means how fast or how slow, I use the device on the tissue itself. So again, if as part of the cool down or recovery, it will be one inch per second. So mu using it very slowly, very methodically, I might hold it on a certain spot. But on the flip side of that, if I'm using it as part of the workout, or part of the warm up, I'm moving it at five inches per second, really moving quickly exciting the nervous system and firing up those pacinian corpuscles. We also have different ways that we can use a device, we can use it in different directions, whether we're parallel with the muscle perpendicular to the muscle, holding it on the area. And we also have various head attachments. And each head attachment is specifically designed for different parts of the body. I will say that you can use any one of these attachments, any you some people have personal favorites. But each one is designed, whether it's the super soft or the dampner, it's very soft type of head where you can use it on someone who's injured, or maybe somebody who's new to theragun, the large ball and standard ball are more dense little bit, that's actually the standard balls my personal favorite. It's someone who may be using theragun, or because of therapy tool every day that the density of the balls a little stronger. And then the wedge is designed for some light facile sharing. So if anybody's had any scraping or cutting techniques, the idea of flushing the fluid out of the fashio or getting new blood in really good in the pec minor and into the bicep as well as down the IT band. The thumb is designed for very acute spots where you know, you might have a trigger point, let's say in your upper trap the qL of your lower back. And then the cone is designed for the the soles of your feet, the palm of your hand. So if anybody's dealing with carpal tunnel, maybe some plantar fasciitis of the foot and then muscles around the elbow for like tennis elbow and things like that. So like I said before, they're designed for specific parts of the body, but you can also use it anywhere you'd like. And then of course, we have different grips. And if you do own a theragun. Even if you don't own a theragun, I would highly recommend downloading our Thera body app. There are over 1550 different protocols in there that show you how to hold the device, which attachment to use, how much force you should apply, and how long you should hold, use the device on each muscle. So whether it's biking, running, swimming, high intensity workouts, or even different ailments like plantar fasciitis, low back pain, tech, neck, etc. And then finally, a couple of little nuggets here, guys, as we get it before we go into the practical application, some best practices, you know, you always want to make sure you turn the device on before you use it. Always start by floating over the body. And again, the reason for this is you want to make sure your clients have a great positive experience with this, you know, I always recommend letting someone feel it in the palm of their hand first, and then going more to the middle of the back versus going right to a tender spot like the upper trap or the low back or even the glue, move with intent. And it makes sure that your clients are breathing just like any type of soft tissue. You know, always make sure your clients are breathing specifically do through the diaphragm on recovery days. Because if you don't relax, the muscle will relax. And I think it's really important to tie in breathing strategies when you're using percussive therapy tools to allow the muscle to relax and be in a state of calm.

Paul Cauldwell:
Some common faults to think about right so applying the the wrong amount of force the wrong amount of speed. spending too much time in an area especially if you're using it before workout. Using the word the wrong grip which can put a little strain on your hand. Starting the treatment directly in the most tender spot like a spot like I spoke about earlier. You want you clients to have a positive experience with these tools, and then not having the right attachment. Right. So like I said before anybody can buy a percussive therapy therapy tool right now. But if we want to really make it individualize and make a world class, especially in our training, we want to make sure that we're using the right force with the right speeds to have the right outcome. And that's really important. All right, let's talk about for the last 10 minutes, I really want to talk about practical application, because I think that's extremely important here. So the first thing, let's talk about how to integrate percussive therapy into a warm up. So when we look at a warm up, you know, when you really strip it away, the benefits of warming up are really twofold. you ultimately want to improve your client performance in the workout or in a competition or a game. And you also want to decrease the rate of injury potential. And that's really the the main two reasons why we warm up. And so when you think about that, if we want to increase core temperature, excite the nervous system, can we tie their gun or percussive therapy into a warm up program? Well, absolutely can. And here's an example day of a warm up, you know, tying in some breathing, tying in some theragun to activate the nervous system and getting increased blood flow, and then some hip and many band activation, as well as some dynamic flexibility. And again, I realized this is a perfect day, right, and we might not all have the time for this extension of warm up. But maybe it's a maybe it's a percussive therapy protocol built inside, and maybe you're just hitting the muscles that are gonna get trained inside of that training session. But again, I want you to always remember the idea is, is if you're integrating into the warm up, you're exciting the nervous system, you're increasing blood flow, and you're helping the tissue be more softer, or more pliable to work with which I think we can all agree that is extremely beneficial qualities to an entire warm up strategy. Now, when we talk about integrating into the actual workout, this is really, really gets fun. So if you think about why we want to engrave their gun into the actual workout, well, it will help with increasing blood flow and assisting with blood flow during sets during the recovery between sets. It will help keep the nervous system potential ated and will also help maintain tissue and joint mobility throughout as we start to get fatigued. And so when you think about what's popular right now, obviously, I know we probably talked about this on some of the other seminars that you've sat in today. But you know, high intensity, right am raps EDT circuits, ladders countdowns, they're popular our clients like them, they're fun, they're engaging, they build a sense of community. But can we tie Farragut into these type workouts where we can strategically provide more rest to our members so they don't get hurt, and actually see better outcomes over the long haul. And I know as a coach myself, always, especially getting members to strategically slow down has always been a challenge. And Steph, you're dealing with some intrinsically motivated type A personalities. So here's a couple of examples. And by no means is this the only way to do this, I just want to provide you with a few examples of how you can tie it in. So number one would could be lower body pull upper body push session where you're doing a 15 minute amrap, doing 15 revolutions of a jump rope followed by 10 reps of an RDL followed by 10 reps of a push up. And then every set, you're doing 15 seconds on your hipping glue. And maybe it's not every set, maybe it's every third set, right? Think of it like a pit crew, right? A NASCAR doesn't stop every every lap. But it's very strategic of how it stops to change the tires and get new gas Because ultimately, they're in it for the long haul. And so I want you to think about integrating theragun into the actual workout just like a pit crew would. It might not be every round, but it could be every third round or every fourth round are moments of fatigue, where you start to see your members or clients move in quality stuff

Paul Cauldwell:
is another version of a lower body push upper body pull session, and this is a ladder. So you're adding one rep for every round, and you're doing 10 calories on the aerodyne bike, followed by 10 reps or a kettlebell goblet squat, a pull up or a pull down and you're adding one rep for every round until you get to 10. And so maybe again, like I said before, you're hitting 15 seconds of your lats, right, because there's a lot of pulling with the pull ups and pull downs. But again, like I said before, it doesn't have to be every round, it can be every couple of rounds. So this is just another example. And then to bottas, right, so you can tie in there going into the devadas. So 820 on 10 off or eight rounds, and then a two minute rest between each exercise listed here. And between each two minutes, you're integrating the theragun as a precursor into that x neck next exercise. So if I'm going to do it to Bob over to Rex row is obviously gonna be a lot of pulling. So I'm gonna hit my lats and my back. If I'm going to add it as a precursor to my deadlift. It's going to be my hip, glute and hamstring. And I can use that during my two minute rest. And so when you think about Now finally, from a recovery standpoint, how do we tie theragun into recovery This is probably the one that makes the most sense to all of us. But it's just as important as the warmup and as the as the training session. So why do we provide recovery, right? It helps balance the scales of work and rest. Stress is cumulative, right? That can leave fatigue or injury if you don't balance the scales and provide recovery sessions or recovery days. And so we want to think about that recovery cycle of work and rest equals adaptation that ultimately drives success. So how do we tie theragun into recovery sessions? Right, so here's an another example of a perfect day of what a recovery session might look like when tying theragun in or percussive therapy in. So number one diaphragmatic breathing, I'm not sure if anybody on the on the call here provides diver diaphragmatic breathing to your clients. But this breathing strategy, the goal here is to increase or decrease sympathetic activity while increasing parasympathetic activity, right relaxing the nervous system, getting the nervous system in a state of calm, and then a theragun treatment here. But now the theragun treatment is completely opposite to how it was built into the warm up, the warm up was moderate pressure. And moving the device fast for only 30 seconds a muscle, now we're going 60 seconds per muscle, with light force moving the device slowly complete opposite, you can follow the same body parts. But in terms of the intent of why you would use it, it's two ends of the spectrum. Now we're calming the nervous system working on the health and quality of our soft tissue. And you can see we've complemented that with some static stretching, and maybe a hot and cold contrast, I realize everybody on the call does not have access to hot and cold tubs. But maybe it's a cold shower. Or maybe it's something that you have available, maybe it's a light walk outside, or a light bike ride non impact or light roller, something like that. So again, this is just another example of how you would tie it into a recovery session. And you can take bits and parts of this to make it really impactful. In fact, I've messed around and with some of the folks I've worked with in the past of hitting a theragun first, so let's say I'm focusing on the calves, hit both cats with a theragun, then follow that up with a calf stretch, and then go up the chain and then do both hamstrings, follow that up with a hamstring stretch, and a quad hip flexor all the way up. So you're alternating between theragun stretch theragun stretch. And again, going back to the research, looking at that you have that 10 minute window of opportunity where you the muscles going to be more pliable. And you're going to get a better range of motion and ultimately affect long term change with your clients in terms of their flexibility, their posture and their movement quality.

Paul Cauldwell:
So with that being said, I'd like to kind of I know we have about three minutes, three minutes left. But I do want to provide a little bit of a recap of and a little bit of an end point of just calling it a few things as you start to think about what what percussive therapy is in some resources for you. So we've really ventured into some interesting territory is now that we do have a Thera body app, like I mentioned. And I just want if you take a moment, if you have a percussive therapy tool, any one doesn't matter, us or our competitors, I highly encourage you to download the app because like I said, there are 50 different protocols in there that make it really easy to follow along. And you can push these protocols to your clients. So if they have the app to you can recommend based off their activity levels and working with Apple Health, Google Fit, Fitbit and really making sure now that because of the Bluetooth technology in our devices, they're starting to speak to these wearable technology. So now ultimately, as I start to use my Apple Watch and recognizes my app, my Thera body app recognizes my activity level, it will prescribe me the right percussive therapy protocol based off my activities. So it was really important for us to as we look to get into this space is that we're able to provide the end user, the clients, the right protocols for their lifestyle and their different things they're dealing with from an injury standpoint. And we also have Theravada University. So this is if you haven't had a chance to check us out there about a university. This is everything education, we actually created three courses that are all cu accredited. One's called the performance specialist course, which is geared towards the strength coaching community, the personal trainer community, the group fitness community, and it goes into detail on the science and application. We also have a LMT course, as well as a practitioner course. And these courses are all digital, pre recorded on inspire 360 we can do in virtual and we also do them live when when we can do them live. So we're not just again, I want everybody on the call as we start to think about percussive therapy, we're more than just their guns. We want to provide the right education or along with The products on what percussive therapy is doing to the body and how you as an end user, a trainer, ultimately provide this modality back to your clientele. So number one, you're setting them up for success. You provide them a great experience so they can continue to come back and then ultimately be able to continue to do things like this on their own when they're not with you which me as as a trainer, myself, and as a strength coach. The goal with anybody you're working with is to always get them to come back and have a positive experience when they're not with you. So I'd like to just wrap things up, we have about 30 seconds left and say thank you for everybody on the call today. Really appreciate everybody's undivided attention. And I know you've it's anytime you're going to a conference. It's always drinking through a firehose, so hope you have a couple of Monday morning takeaways for percussive therapy, and my contact information is on our exhibit hall. So feel free to stop by our virtual exhibit hall. I'll be in there all my all my contact information is there and I want to say thank you and have a great day.