The Healthy Movement Podcast

Knee pain out of nowhere is the signal almost everyone misreads. You did not fall. You did not twist it. You got out of the car or stepped down a stair and your knee twinged, and now you are searching for stretches and exercises and trying creams and braces and inserts that work for a little while before the pain comes back.In this episode I break down what I find when I test somebody whose knee started hurting for no reason. The restriction is not in the knee. It is above it in the hip and below it in the ankle and foot, and it was already there long before the knee ever hurt. Your knee is a hinge with a rotational component, and when the joints on either side of it lose their capacity to move, your nervous system locks that knee down. You feel it on stairs, in squats and every time you lower yourself onto something.I also cover the research. A review of 18 studies following 4,818 people with no knee pain found that the ones who went on to develop it had not started out with weaker hips. So if weakness is not the root cause, strengthening a restricted joint is not going to give you back what your body took away.You will learn the difference between real strength loss and a communication loss that feels identical, why an improved range of motion measurement is not proof your joint capacity came back, and the two questions to ask any professional working on your knee.Then get tested. Full body Healthy Movement Testing in person at Beckett Ridge gives you your Healthy Movement Score, your Movement Age and your Blueprint. Virtual testing covers one area and gives you a Mobility Health Score.Book here: https://www.wellnessliving.com/rs/appointment-start.html?id_class_tab=3&id_mode=1&k_business=770209&k_class_tab=78026&k_service=321431

Sitting is not shortening your hip muscles. I read the research and it does not support what we have all been taught.I spent over 20 years as a PTA teaching people that sitting shortened their hip flexors and that aging was why they felt tight. This episode is where I show you what changed my mind.We look at what two studies on hamstring length and hip muscle length actually concluded. We look at what sitting really does inside the first hour and why the fix is not a stretch. Then we get into what is quietly taking your muscle and your joint movement while you are busy blaming your chair. Your hip flexor group is five muscles and some of them begin to atrophy long before you feel anything.This is part of my series for people over 50 who want to keep their hips mobile and healthy. If you feel tight and stiff and heavy in your body this one is for you.www.thestretchmobilitycoach.com/beckett to connectUntil next week. Move and feel amazing when you do.

Your hip flexor stretch stops holding after 40 and the reason has nothing to do with how much you stretch. In this episode I go through the actual stretching research and show you the number nobody hands you. How much stretching it really takes before your range of motion moves enough to count as a real change. Then I show you what happened when researchers stood those same people up and asked them to run.I spent over twenty five years in physical therapy as a PTA before I opened my own studio and started testing the joint instead of the muscle. This is episode one in a new series on the hip.WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS EPISODEWhy the hip flexor stretch feels right and still does not hold The two kinds of stretching and which one is available on every corner What a range of motion score actually measures and why it cannot tell you where your loss is coming from The dose response research on how much stretching it takes to see a detectable change Why passive hip extension improved in a study and running did not change at all What no stretching study has ever measured What changes in your body after 40 and why the same program does not work The study from 1991 that says mobility loss is not aging What I actually do with a client over 40Want to connect with me. Email me at info@thestretchmobilitycoach.com

Can you open up space in a tight joint without surgery or injections after 40. Yes. But not with stretching.There are two types of motion in every joint. One you can partly control and it is the one everybody measures. The other lives inside the joint capsule and you have no voluntary control over it at all. You cannot stretch it. You cannot strengthen it. You cannot foam roll it. And it is the one that decides how far the first one can go.Kim Nartker spent over twenty five years in physical therapy as a PTA and ran her own practice before building The Stretch Mobility Coach. In this episode she breaks down what accessory motion actually is and why a range of motion score cannot tell you where your loss is coming from. She explains what a stretch session reaches and what it never touches. She walks through what physical therapists and chiropractors and osteopathic doctors each do to a joint and what the research says about when any of them do it.Then she gets to the rusted hinge. A door in your house that will not open the way it used to. You can pull on it as hard as you like. The rust is the problem and pulling harder has never once removed rust.She also looks at what a knee replacement actually gives back. The straightening improves. The bend usually does not. And the hip and the ankle and the back that nobody tested are still sitting there restricted.The most useful thing in this episode is a question. Before you agree to any treatment ask what movement can I expect from this. Then ask how long do I keep it after the treatment stops. Write both down. Most people never ask either one.Book your Unlock Healthy Joint Mobility session and get your Mobility Health Score.https://www.wellnessliving.com/rs/appointment-start.html?id_class_tab=3&id_mode=1&k_business=770209&k_class_tab=78026&k_service=319744In person in West Chester Ohio. Virtual available worldwide.info@thestretchmobilitycoach.comMovement health education. Not medical advice.

Your knee feels fine walking. Fine on stairs. Then you go down to the floor and there is a pressure. Most people call this pressure aging. and avoid that deep knee bend. It is not aging. Your knee has a lock and unlock mechanism you have no control over, and going to the floor is the only movement in your day that will tell you it has stopped working. In this episode I break down what that pressure actually is, what the research supports, where the evidence runs out, and three real women standing at three different points on the same road.Please share this episode with friends or family that want answers about knee pain or pressure with deep bending positions.

Healthy Movement 101: What You Can Control, What's Stealing Your Movement, and the Gap Between ThemThis is the foundational episode — the one to start with, and the one to share when someone asks what healthy movement actually is.We cover a lot of ground. First, what you can control: why holding any position too long lets the tissues around your joints slowly deform and quiet the muscles that stabilize them, why keeping your strength is one of the highest-leverage things you can do, what stretching and mobility work actually change, and how sleep, stress, and nutrition support the system. Then, what steals your movement: a layer of motion deep inside the joint that is not under your voluntary control, how it can begin to fail before you feel anything, and the cycle that follows — what the research calls arthrogenic muscle inhibition, and what I call the Silent Shutdown Cycle. And finally, the gap between the two: the things you can do act on the layer you can reach, while the decline begins in the layer you cannot.Along the way we stay honest about what the research establishes and what I am proposing from what I see in my studio. If you have ever done everything right and still felt yourself getting tighter, stiffer, or less capable with the years, this episode explains why.