How To Integrate Neurology To Optimize Movement & Performance w/ Shawn Sherman (SSOF Ep 65)

James de Lacey2:31

PT doc?

Shawn Sherman2:31

I'm pretty sure he's an osteopath. I could be wrong about that, but he's South African. And I believe that maybe what it is, it's the neurolymphatic stuff. I believe that that's all based on Chapman's reflexes, and I believe the original guy who came up with this whole neurolymphatic piece, I believe, was an osteopath. So maybe Doug is a physical therapist, so I stand corrected. I'm not sure exactly what Doug does, but he's... so he had this Be Activated piece.

And then I know the RPR guys, they wanted to bring that concept to the sports world here in the states. Okay, so that's a modality, and it's looking at this connection and this relationship between specific muscles and specific anterior and posterior neurolymphatic areas of the body. And you can get a really cool effect by getting some neural or some lymphatic drainage.

And with Square One, it's a little bit different in that I don't think of Square One as a modality. I think of it as a framework that's based in some very basic neurological principles. So it's a very principle-driven system where it gives you, as a clinician or a movement professional, a lot of leeway. There's decisions you can make, like I can do this, I can do that.

And so you can almost run little mini experiments on whoever you're working on, and you're just monitoring the global systemic impact that it's having on the nervous system. So if you find an activity that's causing a stress response, there's ways we can reset and restore organization to vision, to the vestibular system, or proprioception.

So how they're different... how Square One... what's really cool about, I think, Square One is that it's a nice complement to anything I've run across. So you could sync it up with RPR, you could sync it up with NKT, you could sync it up with active stretching like the guys up in Canada, FRC.

Yeah, FRC. You can... it meshes well with a chiropractic adjustment or massage. If you're doing martial arts, the fighting arts, like I suppose you guys are into, so you can really mix it with anything because it's really a way to gauge how the nervous system is responding and then really quickly restore organization to getting upright and that base pattern of locomotion.

James de Lacey4:40

Nice. You mentioned at the beginning about neurological baggage, I guess. Would the layman or the common term for that... people talk about some people hold stress in certain places in the body. Would that be a similar thing?

Shawn Sherman4:40

I think so. I guess the whole distress in certain parts of the body, I would say that would be one of a myriad of different downstream effects of neurological disorganization. That'd probably be a length-tension relationship in a muscle. So maybe a muscle's chronically firing 24/7 because it's trying to create a safety. So I think that would be one downstream negative impact of neurological disorganization, or neurological baggage, as I said earlier.

And it could be tightness, it could be weakness, it could be pain, it could be changes your technique and how you perform a pattern. Because if your brain perceives certain actions as unavailable or inaccessible right now, the brain really quickly will rewire around that and you'll just compensate and how you create movement. So compensation has all those other downstream symptoms, I guess you could say.

James de Lacey5:36

So this might be a very general question, but where do you start with something like this? If someone's listening to this and, okay, neurological this and that, okay, there's a vestibular system, I got to maybe do my vision, I got to do things that I touch... where do you start with all this?

Shawn Sherman6:05

All right. Probably depends on how much time, effort, money they want to put into something. If you want to invest almost no time and no know-how and no money, read the book Breath by Nestor. Nasal breathing, super cool stuff. I read that book about two years ago. Square One's been around for about 15 years. Actually, our impetus moment was in '08.

But I read that book, Breath, and that inspired me to look further into just breath work. And at the time, Square One was purely a proprioceptive reset. And I read the book Breath, and I started tinkering around with breathing, and that's what actually helped me to figure out a reset for the vision and for the vestibular piece.

And long story short, all the crazy stuff I've been messing with, there's something truly magical that happens when you add nasal breathing to an athlete's programming, even in the middle of a workout, in the middle of a match, in the middle of a game, part of their training process. I'd say that's a low-hanging fruit piece, is really focused on making sure you're doing more nasal breathing than you currently are. So I think that'd be an easy way to just play around with some stuff.

We have some online products. Signal Six is like a hundred bucks, I think. It's very underpriced for the value that it's been providing to a lot of these coaches. If you go to our Instagram account and scroll through some stuff, about once or twice a year I share some different standing versions of Six-Six. So it's just this isometric routine from the neck down to the hips. So if you go over Instagram stuff and just look through it, you'll find some nice goodies in there. So there are some pretty beefy freebies in there if you dig into it a little bit.

James de Lacey7:46

Nice. And then... you've mentioned as well, so you mentioned you have the vestibular system, you've got your vision, the proprioception. So if you were going to... and you talked about resets, you're resetting the system. So you're moving, I guess, within whatever it is you're doing, training, lifting, whatever. But how do you know which one of those is the problem, where you should start?

Shawn Sherman8:14

That is awesome. And I was literally talking to Victor this morning at 6 a.m. my time, and we're literally talking about that. It's really cool. He was giving me some tips on... well, maybe if you touch the facial region, that correlates to proprioception. You put the finger in the ear, correlates the vestibular, and just touch the eyes to figure out a priority.

But I said, all right Dan, I'm not saying you're wrong, but here's a story I've been telling and I'm not saying I'm right and he's wrong. Maybe the answer is in between, maybe he's right and I'm wrong, I'm not sure. But I always talk about how the nervous system or the person's body is a building and these different sensory systems—vision, vestibular and proprioception—those are three different doors into the same building. So what I've found is it doesn't matter if I reset vision or vestibular or proprioception.

So how I choose it as a Square One guy is when I do the proprioception piece, it's a little bit more—there's a couple more questions I have to get answered when I interview the person's nervous system, and it's not long, so that might take eight seconds versus if I just go through the vestibular, visual, it's like two seconds. So it's just a little bit of a time saving.

So I like to, if I have a brand new patient—or I'm not a patient, I'm not a licensed medical person—if I have a client or an athlete, a lot of times I start with the proprioceptive piece because it gives me a little more fine details and I kind of get to know their body.

And then if it looks pretty classical and they come in, have back pain, and I find a lot of hip and knee and low back issues, I'll then just start going into the vestibular and the visual resets because they're just quicker, cleaner, and I maybe don't need as much detail after 20 minutes into a session or so.

James de Lacey9:49

Okay, so how are you then assessing that initial pain or whatever it is there? And then what do those resets look like? Do you have any examples of maybe you could run through for each one?

Shawn Sherman9:49

Yeah, sure. Yeah, so the initial way to assess a person, we're using neural response muscle testing. Are you familiar with that style of muscle?

James de Lacey10:15

All right.

Shawn Sherman10:15

So if you go—in here in the States, and also in Australia as well, in orthopedic circles—there's what's called break testing, which is a manual test a lot of times physical therapists or physios would use that, orthopedic surgeons. And they're looking for structural damage, so instead of ordering an MRI, they might do some orthopedic tests and find out if there's tissue degradation based on some manual testing.

So there's this testing: they'll start light and they'll gradually increase the force to find out what the force output is. So it's more of a strength test. Neural response testing is very low intensity, but you get the full intensity very quickly—like tenth of a second, quarter of a second. So maybe we're only imposing three to eight pounds, one to four kilograms of force, and we're really finding out can the brain send a signal to that limb quick enough to mount a response.

Okay, so we're using this neural response test. So what I do is I'll find a failed position and then I'll do something like turn your head to the left and find out if the nervous system likes that position versus head turning to the right. So we're looking at the two phases of gait—of right step when the right foot is the ground, versus left step when left foot is the ground. So left head turn, it correlates with right step; right head turn correlates with left step. And we could use other body parts.

So what I'm trying to quickly find out is there a discrepancy, is there a preference, right versus left? And once I see that, that gives me all kinds of information like, okay cool, they're avoiding left and they're landing extra hard on right. And if I want to fill in some of those deficiencies with left step, what I would do with the vestibular system is just simple head positioning.

So it's literally a left lean with a nasal breath and a right head rotation with a nasal breath. That would be a vestibular reset for that manufactured, that little artificial scenario which I just said about avoiding left step and overfavoring right step.

With visual, it'd be really simple. It'd be an eye position. It'd be eyes left and a nasal breath. And if it's a proprioceptive piece, I would actually have to go further than just head rotation right-left. I have to find out what joint is the issue currently—where's the brain perceiving ground reaction forces as a threat or as unsafe. And then I would do is if we ascertain it was your left hip, we would then have to shove you into kind of mimic ground reaction forces in flexion, internal rotation, and adduction.

And what's going to happen is that person is going to fail one of those three and they'll be fine with the other two. So once we find out, oh, it's hip adduction, we'll just have them perform an isometric contraction into hip adduction. So the fix is really simple—it's too easy, but the magic of it is is that it really matches with that person's real-time perceived—the subconscious perception of threat. So if we give the person—it's not about the intensity, it's about the accuracy of giving that person's nervous system exactly what it needs at that moment.

James de Lacey12:49

Gotcha. Okay, so the example you gave of turning the head and then nasal breathing, it's almost like because they're correlated with the left step, you're trying to challenge that further.

Shawn Sherman13:20

So when I say—I would say almost the opposite. Instead of further, we'd actually say, hey, it's okay, we like it. Almost like a soothing response. It's okay. Put in position which is probably perceived as a threat. And that's where the nasal—that parasympathetic state helps get—it's almost like showing the brain, hey, this is actually okay. Because it doesn't look like much if I don't have pain, most people think, oh, that's no big deal.

Well, it's not about whether you have pain. It's about when you put yourself in a position and if that causes a failure of these neural response tests, that lets us know really quickly like, oh yeah, the brain right now has a problem with that position. So then we just have to layer in that nasal breath and it's—it's okay. We're actually talking to the brain, to the body that way. But it's almost—that's what I imagine in my head. I'm kind of stroking, petting the dog kind of thing, like it's okay, you're a good boy. So just kind of saying it's okay to be in that position.

So we're kind of finding that threat response and putting them in that where it is a challenging position, and then saying no, it's cool, man. They're talking to their subconscious. It's good, it's fine, it's safe.

James de Lacey14:24

Gotcha. And so the goal of doing this then would be to get the short-term changes and then basically ingrain it within training and then just repeatedly doing that versus trying to make long-term change from something like that?

Shawn Sherman14:24

Well, I think we have a long-term change with it too because when you—because now we're probably getting a little bit of neuroplasticity, which is like neurons that fire together, wire together. So absolutely following up Square One with any kind of exercise is amazing—so squatting or walking, swinging a golf club, whatever is great.

But yeah, I think what we're doing is the goal would be to get the nervous system to not have a preference between landing on your right foot or left foot, bottom of a squat or top of a squat. So if we have where the nervous system has no preference, then it's almost like, okay, I can do any kind of training style you want to do in this moment.

And it actually—it's almost like preparing the soil to get more goodies out of whatever training, whether it's a rehab deal or it's a performance deal or it's a fitness program. So it's almost like getting a nervous system ready and prepared to handle whatever you're going to throw at it.

James de Lacey15:20

Gotcha. So yeah, how could someone listening to this assess themselves? Is there an easy way to do something, even something small?

Shawn Sherman15:20

Yes, yeah. Okay. Yeah, we're going to have—I've been talking about this for about a year. About two years ago I had this idea, kind of this epiphany where Square One's weird. If you haven't seen it, it's like it's not just, hey, let's just do a bunch of repetitions and we're going to do the skill work. We're not anti those things. Sometimes people confuse that. So we're not anti motor learning. We're looking at kind of like restoring motor control, and you do that differently. And so it looks weird.

We have—this arm's fail, and they think you're pushing harder. And that's why we'll start off with a couple, like maybe a couple restrictions in range of motion, bring some order to the chaos, and you see almost instant changes in range of motion to help validate, look, I know this is weird, but some cool things are happening.

But I'm trying to think. I lost my train of thought there a little bit. What was your—the question was about assessing someone themselves? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so sorry. So then, yeah, so I made it—yeah, I had three hours of sleep last night. I'm sorry, like I'm losing a little bit.

But yeah, so this whole idea of assessing yourself—this idea I had was I would have people in their back for the last 13 years. They laid on a massage table and I'd run Square One on them, and we're imitating ground reaction forces to—

Have this real-world experience even though they're on their back. But what's weird about that is when the chaos sets in, when we challenge the nervous system, even the worst athlete I've ever worked on, nobody's ever fallen off my table. So that's a little bit weird because they just have to trust that when I'm pushing I'm not going hard. So I'm like, all right, I'm going to get these people upright more and put them in balance-compromised positions.

So what I've been working on is if you put somebody in a balance-compromised position, let's just say it's like a split stance, like a split squat stance, one foot in front of the other, and they're standing nice tall posture and there's a little sway, no big deal. But we're looking for this Moro reflex where this hyper-correction, like where the righting me, like this righting deal where your body kind of spazzes a little bit. It doesn't hurt, but it's almost like you're trying to maintain balance, you almost get tripped and fall kind of deal.

So you can then do stuff like, oh, let's turn my head and do different things. And you might find a certain head position that kind of throws you off balance. That's pretty darn solid evidence of neurological disorganization.

So if I was in a room with that person and we saw that Moro reflex, there's like a 99.9% chance if I did a neuroses test they'd probably fail it. It's like, so far to date, it's been 100%. I say 99.9% because I'm going to see an outlier tomorrow or next month, I'm going to see some weird thing, so I'll keep the door open.

So that would be a really strong indication of, hey, there's a position, there's a posture, there's a shape that my nervous system is a little bit like, it doesn't have a plan for that position. So that could be something that they could do on their own.

And I'm actually going to put out a this informational product, this program, like a digital product, will have, it has over 5,000 different postures actually. So it's like, it's like six different base, yeah, so it's right and left side of the body, six different postures, six different head positions, over 70 visual inputs, and that's the wild card. And you just run yourself through them and you're just trying to scan and try to find out which shapes you personally have an issue with.

Because you get a good athlete and it looks like that's an easy position for you or I, and they fail it. And then they do some kind of really even more difficult thing and they're fine with it, and you and I might fail. So it's very individualized, even good athlete, bad athlete. It's really crazy, some positions that it's easy to make assumptions that are wrong, that someone's a great athlete and that they have no problem with balance. Like, that's just not true.

So if you can put people through these different balance-compromised positions, if you search far enough and you had just the right amount of, if you go eyes closed and stand on one foot and do dynamic head movements, like, good luck. I mean, I'm sure there's some people on the planet who can do it, but it's really tough for 99% of us.

James de Lacey19:26

Before getting back to the podcast, I want to let you know there's a link down in the description for the Sweet Science of Fighting Underground Community. You can get all the help you need for your combat sports training. You get every single Sweet Science of Fighting training program, online course, and you get access to a range of coaches within the private Discord community. So go check that out. And back to the podcast.

So if you find that, that's pretty good evidence that you have some neurological disorganization. Okay, so I like the simplicity of that test. Basically you're in a split stance, feet would you have feet like tightrope position?

Shawn Sherman19:49

Okay, tight position, move your head left and right, and if you have, it'd be even tougher.

James de Lacey19:49

Yeah, God, sorry to cut you off.

Shawn Sherman19:49

Yep, you're nailing, sorry to cut you off.

James de Lacey19:49

No, you're good. So basically, move your head left to right in that position, and if you have that falling reflex, then okay, you might have some kind of neurological disorder. But then what does someone do to reset that?

Shawn Sherman20:16

Great. Couple different things you could do that are real quick and easy. There's this piece of your ear right here in the front, this piece of cartilage called the, I'll try to get it in view here, called the tragus. And that ties into the vagus nerve. And I got this piece, I like to give credit to all my sources because I like these people that are out there in the industry, they borrow stuff and they never tell people they borrowed it. Oh, this guy's so smart. No, he just read a lot of books and he's not sharing where his sources are.

But there's a video on YouTube called How Trauma Gets Trapped Inside the Body and What to Do About It. It's such a lengthy title, but it's a cool little video. So that's where I got the tragus piece. I started screwing around with it. Wow, this is pretty phenomenal.

And what I found is if you just squeeze it one time or poke it like a button, there is no neurological reset effect. But as long as you do a double squeeze or you squeeze and just kind of rub it under your fingertips, it doesn't have to be painful, it just has a neurological reset.

So what you can do is go right back to that balance-compromised position. Did it get better? If not, you do it again. Now what I'm finding is about two out of three, three out of four times, you do it one time, that balance position gets better. So you just move on to another challenge.

But every once in a while you'll get stuck. Like, oh my gosh, like you do it, it feels like nothing's happening. You might need to clear it out eight, ten, twelve times. You might have to do that reset repetitively because that's just a funky position. It's kind of complicated. So maybe that relates to the four ankle sprains and the broken leg and the, you got punched in the side, who knows. I mean, there could be like a lot of trauma associated with that one position, possibly.

So yeah, find, you could, I mean, I have more specific and quicker ways to go about it, but that's a pretty, that's why I'm putting this product together. Because it's like, okay, here's something that doesn't require a whole lot of skill and they're still going to get like 90 to 95% of the goodies. Square One, we have the Signal Six piece, and it's good, it's really good. I wouldn't have put it out if I didn't think it was good.

But honestly, compared to Square One, it's just not that good. It's just not refined enough. There's no assessment with it. So in good faith, you'd run yourself through these isometrics and people get good results with it. But I like this balance-compromise thing because it's like, oh, you can actually self-assess a little bit. You can run on teams of guys. And it's going to be, I think it's going to be a really cool product.

And it'll have, I anticipate in my mind, we'll have like a little workbook on it. So I'm almost imagining like maybe we rank up from, okay, this is the easiest one, and here's the, here's 5,000, 5,200, these are the 200 toughest. And I'm thinking we kind of group them together and say, hey, work through this workbook. And because once you clear these, for most people, they tend to stay cleared unless there's like some kind of trauma, car accident, you play football, you're in fighting sports and you had some trauma that way.

But for most Joe Schmo that are going to the gym three days a week and running 5Ks a couple times a year, once we clear these frames, they tend to stay pretty darn clear for most people.

James de Lacey23:16

Okay, interesting. I guess from the outside looking, for someone who may be skeptical of the system, the question in my mind would be, okay, how much of this comes down to just repeating the task and getting better at doing it? For example, if I do that split squat thing and I do whatever, I do the split squat thing again, like I've done it once, so maybe I'm going to get better each time I do it. So I guess like potentiation, right?

Shawn Sherman23:39

Yeah, potentiate. Yeah, exactly. So we get that a lot. It's funny, last time I had that live with somebody, we were doing, I think it was chin-ups. So they did a chin-up and it triggered them, and we cleared it. And by the fourth, fifth, sixth time it wasn't triggering him. He's like, "That's potentiation." Like, look, man, and it was actually, I was over in Australia, I'm like, I wouldn't have had 36 hours of travel time to come over and show you potentiation. Like, I wouldn't have done that. That's crazy. I just wouldn't.

And like, potentiation also wears off as soon, you after a certain number of minutes. So we have that piece. But then we said, like, okay, let's do it with your push-ups then. So we did, we had him do a push-up. I checked him and it failed. All right, so let's just wait. Like, we'll try to mimic it.

I'll do two push-ups, and it still failed. Then they did three and five, and if it did like ten, twelve times, like, well, when's the potentiation going to kick in on this pattern? Right? Because it's like, it's so, it's a common, that's what I would have thought if I was in your shoes. That would be maybe.

James de Lacey24:39

I wouldn't think that, but I would be like that'd be one thing if I'm trying to debunk it a little bit. But yeah, so potentiation wears off.

Shawn Sherman24:39

We have people that we work on that have been to a bunch of different practitioners, whether it's PTs or chiros, they can't solve it. They see us, care one person, and whether it's the first session, second session, third session, usually within the first one to three sessions they have this crazy result. And then a week later the effect is still there, and a month later, and a year later the pain didn't come back.

We have uncountable at this point number of success stories like that. So potentiation, you take a nap, you wake up, it's done. You gotta do your warm up, your active dynamic warm up the next workout and the next workout and the next workout too to keep that effect going.

James de Lacey25:02

So I guess that'd be my first answer to that, to perfectly say that that's probably what's going on here. Nice. And talk me through as well with the proprioception reset. So I'm part of Dan Victor's membership and he just did a video recently and he has a spiky ball on his hands doing that before doing bench stuff. Just run through some of that as well. What are you trying to achieve doing something like that?

Shawn Sherman25:25

Well, I think that's much more of a tactile piece, which is very closely relevant to proprioception. And I'm not sure even the delineation between the two, as I see it. I tell people all the time, I didn't, when I developed this, I didn't come in through the neurological door. I came through more like I'm a pattern person and I'm a puzzle person. I see how things fit together.

And so we're using neurology on the back end to describe what's going on because the effect is so quick. I think the neuro spike ball, that'd be more of a tactile input. So what we're doing within Square One, it's more, alright, what specific joint action.

So I always talk about, I got away from muscles as I was doing this because you can't isolate one. There's no muscle that you can isolate its function. So therefore it makes it really, it's a trash testing variable in any kind of experiment. Because if you're talking about the lat, well which job? Internal rotator, external rotator? Is the hand on a bar? Is it open chain? Is it, what position? Sitting? From there's a lot of problems with that in the field for guys like us that are more performance people.

And so I'm looking at joint actions because they're a lot more isolatable. Like that's that one joint, flex, and that, you know I'm showing the index there, or cervical rotation or elbow flexion. So you can isolate those more.

So what we're looking at doing is we're just really finding out if there's a preference for landing on the right side and this aversion to left. Like okay, what's going on with this left step piece? So then if we find out that it's right hip abduction, and how I would find it is, again I would take their leg and if they're on their back I'd literally shove them out to the out to the side, or they're standing up. Okay, have you abduct your leg?

And then immediately we go into a test, that neural response test, and if it passes we move on. So we load tolerance test joint by joint. And once we find it, then we literally are just having them actively attain the position. I think what that's doing is by driving that motor output to those structures to create the position, it's like once there's like a threshold, maybe a second, second and a half into it where it kind of flips the switch.

And then now it's like, oh cool, it almost opens up that neural pathway. And then those structures can then send sensory input back to the brain, say hey, actually I'm safe here, this is not a problem, I don't need to avoid this position. And it kind of completes the loop. And then we check our work, and if it's good, then we shove them down the steps. We don't actually do that, but then we challenge the nervous system.

Hey, do a lunge, or if you're a fighter, maybe throw a certain punch or do a certain kick, or whatever, depends on who you're working with. You kind of tailor to that person where you just try, hey, let's do the stuff that you're doing every day. I'm going to find out what in your workout might be causing a little bit of, where you're causing you to have to compensate. So we want to kind of find out where there's a disconnect, and we just kind of run through this process again. Okay, where did it break this time? And then looking at joint actions.

James de Lacey28:16

Gotcha. And then with vision, what would be some examples of resetting the vision? Is SADS or SACRE part of that, or obviously there's more to it, but yeah?

Shawn Sherman28:35

Yeah, yeah. I would say that all SADS and a lot of the things we see when people are talking neuro, we're very open to all of it. To me, I don't think of those things so much as the resets. I see those as the challenge.

So we can do stuff, you do convergence, divergence. So most people see this, I just do this 100,000 times. And I'm like, no, we're gonna do it once. And when it triggers you, we're gonna get your nervous system okay with it. And then the second time or the 10th time, all of a sudden it's good, and it's good next week and the week after. So we don't do a lot of this as training, we do a lot of this as the challenge or the SADS.

So it's really cool. I think it's cool because it fits lock and step. So we are making, I always say if we do a, we elicit the saccade, we do real quick from one position to another. So isometric is the quickest muscular contraction in the human body. When we do that, I'm not assuming because they didn't get dizzy or vomit that their nervous system actually liked that.

So people are like, let's just do it, we'll do it a bunch of times and we'll get training. And that's fine, that's called a replacement strategy where you're kind of work hardening, you're doing it over and over and trying to get more skilled at it. We're saying, hey, why don't we check it one time, and if it breaks the system, quote unquote breaks the system, then we'll just reset through the vision or proprioception or do the tragus. There's many options you have.

And then now they're good temporarily. Then let's go right back to that drill, and if it breaks them we reset it. And the third, the fifth, at some point probably within three minutes, five minutes, it's going to be reset and that's not a problem. So then we move on to bigger and higher challenges.

James de Lacey30:08

Okay. So by breaking them, that split squat would be the example that we used in the beginning where if they maybe fell, then you would, then you would do different pictures?

Shawn Sherman30:08

Yeah, it could be an eye movement, it could be a pitcher throwing a curveball or a fastball, it could be whatever you want it to. So I would say it's the stuff you're already doing are the inputs. So we look at those inputs and see if it challenges. And the ones that don't challenge an individual, oh cool, no, that's awesome, we don't need to worry about that.

I'm looking for the most basic crap that you're doing every day that is subconsciously causing you to compensate and you didn't even know it. That's kind of what we're doing in this first session.

James de Lacey30:34

Okay, so then the SADS or these drills...

Shawn Sherman30:56

I don't look at things as good or bad. What dictates good or bad is in that moment and it's in that person's nervous system. So SADS, oh, this is bad, let's avoid it. We're saying, no, no, no, if we find it's bad, we gotta train it. We're saying, no, no, no, we find if it causes that neurological chaos or that disorder to come along, disorganization, whatever term we want to use, then we do our reset, get them better, and we go right back to that challenge.

And we're looking to where they can tolerate that challenge so we can move on to more higher order, higher challenges.

James de Lacey31:18

Gotcha. And then I guess a lot of this or some of this can be used to reduce pain as well, or even I guess improve mobility? Well, when we talk about flexibility, mobility, a lot of it is neurological, right? Because not so much... Yeah, it's kind of your brain stopping you getting into those positions. So let's maybe start, let's start there, let's start with flexibility, mobility. How can you use something like this to unlock essentially your hips, shoulders, whatever?

Shawn Sherman31:18

Sure. A lot of times if you're on social media, you'll see people talking about the brain. They'll talk about the brain grants you strength, the brain grants you mobility. 100%, I absolutely agree with that. Because when I learned this other system called MAT years ago, the guy, Greg Roskopf, was the guy who's my mentor who got me into muscle testing and that system.

And he would talk about taking a person and if there's this disorganization or lack of activation, they were talking about it's almost like they're walking on ice even though there's no ice present. And if you get enough stuff activated, it's almost like melting the ice. I think that's...

Just a great analogy, and again I said I always like to give credit to wherever I learn and pick up things. So I think if someone has lack of mobility, I don't say, "Oh look, it's an ankle mobility, therefore we have to do X, Y, and Z." I'm looking at it, I'm like, "Okay, here's a lack of mobility," and I'm like, "I got my fingers crossed, I really hope that that lack of mobility is coming from a compensatory source or a neurological disorganization source."

So then I'm going to do is just systemically create, hey, let's do a lunge, create stress, organize it. Okay, we got things good, and then go back and check. Oh, it got better or it didn't. And if it didn't, you keep going. And if it did get better, you might say, "Oh, now you have new flexibility in that ankle. Maybe we need to create triggers around that. Can you handle load in that new position?"

So I don't have like, "Here's the outcome, therefore you do this protocol." It's more like, "Hey, let's find out how you're disorganized." So it's much more of a systemic approach as opposed to a desired outcome approach.

I tell people all the time, it feels like—I'm not someone who gambles very, a handful times in my life—but it's like you're buying all those like those tickets that you scratch off. And with Square One, it's like every one of those are a winner. Sometimes it's just another free ticket—ah, no big deal, it's a little bit better—but sometimes it's like, "Oh my gosh, it's a $10,000 winner," like you just, this guy had knee pain for 12 years and you clear out four or five things and her knee pain goes away.

So it's like, it's more like let's organize, challenge, organize, challenge. And when the dust clears, there's a pretty good likelihood you're gonna have more mobility, less pain. So I'm always—I always say I'm rooting for it—but the more I care about that symptom, the crappier I am on my job. And the less I just distance myself from that outcome, and I just check in periodically during the session. Like maybe if I'm working with him for an hour, maybe five times during that hour, I'm like, "Hey, how's your pain doing?"

So we periodically check in as a litmus test, but I'm really just trying to challenge, organize, challenge, organize, challenge, break, organize, challenge, break, organize is what I'm really trying to do.

James de Lacey34:35

So for example, the ankle mobility thing, you might do the check, your ankle mobility. Okay, then you might do that air one, that vagus one where you're pressing the air, then you'll go back to do the ankle to see if it changed.

Shawn Sherman34:35

Yeah, and a lot of times I'm like, whatever they're doing—because they're probably already coming in with all their correctives or they're doing tissue work—so, "Hey, let's start with what you're already doing. Let's make sure that your interventions are actually in agreement with the nervous system," because maybe it's a great exercise but your nervous system is like, "That's a threat." So we just have to reduce that threat.

So it's not—we're not anti—that's why I say we're not anti other system. That's so crazy, because I always tell people, I'm not trying to be politically correct, because if you know me, I'm actually not politically correct. I just tell you how I see the truth is.

So when I'm saying all these other systems, I look, "No, this is good stuff, but can we get better outcomes with that?" Because maybe it's under the category in your mind that's a therapeutic intervention, but if you don't interview the person's nervous system, they might be having an adverse response to it. It doesn't always look like their head falls off or you break out in hives. It could be just a subdued response. And with Square One, we're picking that up.

So we get it where they can organize it and then go back to your deal. So we're literally—you brought up RPR at the beginning session, at the beginning of our conversation—and so many of our students are RPR people. So it's awesome. You have this bag, you have a bag of goodies. I'm going to enhance that. We're going to raise your game on that whole thing.

So don't stop doing what you're doing. You just bring Square One side by side with it, and you find out, "Oh, well that neurolymphatic activation or drainage effort, maybe if you're doing 12 of them, what if four of them their nervous system isn't cool with it and the other eight it is?" Okay, so let's focus on those four. And then, it's like it just, it's a very cohesive fit. See it as such.

James de Lacey36:28

Regarding the reducing pain thing, so for example, yeah, like chronic knee pain and stuff like that, I guess the question is regarding structural damage, real structural damage, versus maybe just something that is a pain signal from, I don't know, years of whatever, I guess, comp—yeah, delineating the difference there. Like obviously, yeah, at some point you can only do so much, but if it's structural then there's not much else you can really do, right?

Shawn Sherman36:28

Yeah, that's a loaded question. So I always, the first thing I'm thinking of when you say that is, "Okay," what I say all the time to all my clients: "I don't have MRI or x-ray eyeballs, so I have to assume the worst." So let's assume that it is structurally damaged in case it is, because I don't want to be the guy that's contributing further to your issues. So I always want to be very conservative in that regard.

But the thing too is, you think about it, I think the common—I think this is mythology with pain that's still pervasive in the mainstream—and it's changing a little bit in the movement industry over the last 5-10 years, but just because there's structural damage doesn't mean there's pain. And just because there's pain, it doesn't mean there's structural damage.

There's people that have MRIs and x-rays done and they have all this arthritic change along their vertebrae and they have no pain. And there's other people, they do these images and they can't find any structural damage and they do have pain. So is it that they're crazy and a wimp? I don't think so. I think it's really the nervous system control over the tissue.

So I would say if you have structural damage, we know there's an accompanying functional neurological piece. And if there's not structural damage, you still have a functional issue. So to me, the brain should come first. The brain rules all, controls all. I think it's a logical place to start, unless it's like the guy just wrecked his motorcycle right now—yeah, we need to make sure his heart's going, let's save his life. And then, okay, he's alive, and then we can think about, okay, now structure, function, we can figure out how do we negotiate those waters.

But for me, fortunately, my reputation is I'm the guy that works chronic pain. Like a lot, we got a lot of people with hip, knee, back, neck, shoulder pain. So they're like, "Yeah, when nothing else works." So I'm kind of getting people that have already been looked at by multiple structural people. So the likelihood that most of the people that I'm working with have structural damage, they would have already picked it up. They've already been to a couple PTs, maybe an orthopedic person.

So I'm kind of fortunate in the setting that I'm in as private practice. And it might look different if you're at a sporting event, you know, you're a strength coach and you have the medic people. So just, hopefully there's a good relationship and hopefully the medical people have an appreciation on some level for the nervous system, because it should be really hand meets—you know, whatever—coming together. I can't think of a good analogy because I'm three hours of sleep again, but the hand fitting in the glove, it should be a pretty good fit: structure and the function people together.

So just because there's pain, don't assume structural damage. And just because there's not pain, don't assume that there's not structural damage. So we always want to proceed cautiously, especially those of us who are not licensed to make diagnosis and to treat tissue and that sort of thing.

James de Lacey39:18

I guess maybe for—maybe people can relate to this, you can tell me if this is actually, I guess, part of a neurological phenomenon or not—but for example, when you have, say, pain in your elbow for six months, and then you get an injury or pain in your knee six months later, but then the elbow pain's gone and it's only the knee pain now. That would be that phenomenon, correct?

Shawn Sherman39:43

Yes. No, yeah, that's clearly, that seems to me to be a neurological piece. Your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. And again, I always tell people too, it's like you have to be careful with your words when we're talking to our athletes. Like, "Oh, it's in your head." Well, not saying you're imagining it, but it's literally it's a brain piece.

So it's not—so I'm on your team, so I'm not challenging that you're a sissy or whatever—but literally, your brain and, it's all about perception. And that's the word I've really hounded on the last couple, two, three years, because your perception, it's really the collective input coming from your sensory input, from vision, vestibular, all that. That's what is the raw materials.

Of your perception. So your subconscious perception is massive. The example I use of that all the time, it's a little bit of a beating of a dead horse if you're around me enough, it's like when you sprained your ankle I always like to ask people, "Hey, where'd you go for your limping lessons? Who taught you that?" So it's like that's kind of another example of I didn't think about it, it just hurt so I kind of altered my heel limping.

And then what happens is after the tissue heals, it's X number of weeks later and a person maybe you don't see them limping, but then you play sports and they won't, they're doing these big loopy circles, they're not cutting hard anymore because they still are acting as if the ankle's injured kind of thing. So robbing of performance and setting them up for their next injury.

James de Lacey40:52

Yeah, I remember when I had my meniscus done, I was like 16 and getting back to sport, and just that fear. It took, it reminds me of a rehab process obviously where with people with ACLs, at least in rugby they'll include like a ball and they'll pass the ball back and forth so they're not thinking about the knee and whatever they're doing at the time.

Shawn Sherman41:17

I like it.

James de Lacey41:17

Yeah, it took until, so tennis was my main sport growing up, so I was playing tennis and I was a little timid on it. But it wasn't until you start running after a ball, you kind of completely forget about it and then you do something, you go, "Oh, it's actually fine," and then that kind of just unlocks it straight away, I guess. A similar concept.

Shawn Sherman41:39

Yeah, I think a lot of times people talk about pain being like psycho-emotional, that's definitely part of it, right? So that's what I'm talking analogies all the time with people because again I didn't come in the neurology door, so I'm trying to tell a story that I kind of conceptually see in my mind.

So I look at it that what I'm doing with my clients and my customers is I'm giving their brain access to certain positions and shapes and patterns, and once we give them that access then we use it. So like I had a guy in a workshop, it was kind of our test dummy or one of our test dummies, and he had a, I think it was a car accident, and there's certain moves he was afraid to do, and one of them was like a hip hinge.

So after we cleared out some basic patterns I start going up their hip hinge. I said, "Dude, I'm not trying to challenge you, I'm not trying to go you too hard, but let's just go go halfway into a pain-producing position. So if 20 degrees you have pain, just go 10 degrees." So we would just kind of go into it and the nervous system would trigger, and as we were clearing these layers he's going further, further, further.

And by the time we got down pretty far he's like, "Dude," like he's looking scared. I'm like, "But do you feel it?" He's like, "No, I don't feel any pain." Like, "Yeah, at the beginning you're feeling pain here, now you're here." So we kind of gave his brain access to it and then we want them to go and use it and kind of, as best he can, forget about it. And as we set them up for success, you have more of those successful events, this fear can go away.

But it's funny you said about getting hurt when you're younger. I hurt my back right around the same age you would have been, like I was probably 15, 16, playing basketball. And now I would say, for the most part, if 340 to 360 days a year I don't really have back pain, but you have an episode here and there every, maybe it's twice a year, once every two or three years.

But it's crazy, like sometimes if something falls under ground I'll find myself put my hands on my knees like, "Oh my," I'm acting like it's 15 years ago. I don't even have pain but I catch myself falling back into these old habits. So I don't know that we can, we probably can wipe it totally out, there's things that I'm, maybe I'm just too, but I think it's that old memories, that's still in there deep in there, that maybe it's not totally gone.

So it's a lot better, but if you were to say, "Hey, jump on that box," like can you give me five minutes to warm up? Because that would be a little scary for me versus 20 years ago. Maybe even with the pain, but it's like I've been hurt enough times over the last 20 years here and there, like I just don't really want to have a big injury again. So yeah, fear's the son of a gun, man.

James de Lacey43:50

Yeah, I know a lot of martial artists or combat athletes, they do suffer from knee pain. I mean you hear it all the time on the mats, especially jiu-jitsu guys too. But when you mentioned about having your hands on your knees to bend over, sometimes like I spend a lot of my time competing in weightlifting as well, so sometimes my knees can feel a little funny and I'll sometimes do that and bend down gingerly and there'll be some pain every now and then.

But it's almost like I've ingrained that pattern, like there is going to be pain. What do you do in that situation to start clearing that out?

Shawn Sherman44:34

If I'm running Square One on you, we will literally go after those. Like one of the questions I ask people when they come in is like, "Okay, what are you doing that's weird in the gym? What are the exercises you're avoiding because it just scares you?" So let's start with the stuff that, because we all, these, if you're a movement person, you have certain things that you're good at, certain things you suck at. So I'm always looking at what do you suck at and what are you afraid of.

Maybe I phrase it differently, but literally, like how you just described it, like let's use that as a, let's test that scenario. Have you do it, check the arm, then probably even in novelty the first time it's probably going to trigger. But then it keeps triggering, like okay, get yourself in that position where it's scary and then all of a sudden it doesn't trigger you, but it's still scary. Like okay, now get in that position, let's add head movements, let's add convergence, let's stack in different challenges and make it such a robust piece, like dude, you own this position.

So I'll put you lopsided, like I have one foot on an Airex pad, the other side on solid ground, then we'll switch them. I do all the time with like deadlifts, so like solid ground, just get into a set up in a position, don't pick it up. Okay, now stand up, let's check it, let's clear it. Okay, now pick up a lightweight, we'll do that. Then we do offset, like off, either lopsided and load, put more weight on one side. We can do convergence, divergence. We just stack things.

We create these crazy challenging environments and get it where your brain doesn't flinch, like I got this. So instead of practicing it, I'm more like I'd rather have a thousand versions of that deadlift that your brain knows how to handle, instead of like, it's not the practice, it's, it's almost like wiping the slate clean for that hyper-specific environment.

And the brain is so, what I've been learning and I still feel like I'm learning, is how, how finicky, that's not the right word, that's negative, how sensitive the nervous system is to how, if I clear you sitting on the ground and you hold like arm overhead and it triggers you with whatever, 20-pound dumbbells, whatever, and we do it three times, five times, and then it clears through Square One, and then I have you stand up and do the same thing, it's a whole new environment.

And then once we clear that, then we do a split stance, do an overhead press, new environment. Close one eye, new environment. So always kind of different iterations of the same thing.

James de Lacey46:28

So in those examples, you would you do some of those things like the eye stuff and whatever else in the position that you're maybe afraid of or in pain? Okay.

Shawn Sherman46:52

Yeah, yeah. And then I'll monitor if it triggers them. If it doesn't trigger, like cool, don't worry about it, let's find, I'm always trying to like, I'm always trying to break, I'm like, break softly, break and about break soft. A neuro response, it could be pain, maybe with or without pain. If it's painful I'm paying extra attention to it because I know that matters to them and that's, that'll curb your behavior, that'll change your behavior.

So if there are pain-producing positions that sometimes they don't trigger, I'll say like maybe it's like, I don't know, like doing a bench press at a certain angle, like a third of the way, "Oh yeah, weird shoulder thing." Like okay, we'll just do it with the bar, something that's very light for them, so that we can do it without totally freaking them out. And we clear it, and then we start off with just okay, let's get up to a reasonable load. Let's get up to, maybe 60% of what they might do in a workout.

Then I'll say, "Okay, let's go a little lighter, let's go to just the bar only and have your head to the left," and then we'll check it. "Have your head to the right." So trying to find out what are the provoking to the nervous system, not necessarily pain, but what can't their system handle? So if we have, where I can do whatever...

I say a thousand whatever. If we can do 30 different versions of that bench press, I probably prepared him for just a regular boring neutral neck position. Right? So I'm just trying to stack things in that look like what they might do. Then we say, hey, drive through your heels. Okay, drive through one heel as you're doing. Drive through the other heel. I mean, literally it's just stuff that might happen, like when if one side's stronger than the other and they have to push at one heel.

So we're literally making it very real world and just really exaggerating or hyper embellishing aspects of what they're already doing and just say, hey, not injuring and or not producing pain doesn't mean that the nervous system gives you the all clear. So we're just, we're like anal retentive little detectives that are just taking nothing for granted and just create these environments and find out what breaks the system.

James de Lacey48:14

So then what are you looking for? For example, if you're bench pressing, say, with your head to the right, what are you looking for? What are you looking for to fail, the mechanics of the bench press or...?

Shawn Sherman48:39

Nope. So not even. I'm only watching enough they don't drop the bar in their face. I don't want to kill them. But I honestly, I try to, I try to close my eyes. I try not to use my coach's eye too much because then I can start making up these logical stories that are just not accurate. And I would say logical is a poor substitute for accurate. We care about accurate.

So what I'm looking for isn't so much with my coach's eyes, it's more like do it, okay, rack the bar, and then I do that neuro response test. And that neuro response test lets us know whether they were like hunky dory, like yeah, thumbs up, or nah, a fail type deal. So it's really the nervous system response to the activity is what I'm looking for.

James de Lacey49:24

Okay. And that split squat was an example of a neuro response test, the one where you're split squatting, holding the split squat and turning your head?

Shawn Sherman49:24

Oh, that would be the challenge. Yeah, don't worry. So say they do like a split stance and they're not, you know, piece of cake, there's no morel reflex, there's no righting mechanism. So maybe it's like, okay, close your eyes and make your head go down slow, up and down, dynamic. Oh, they had that morel reflex, I'll check the arm. Okay, it fails.

And then I can either do the tragus, we could do a visual reset, we could do a vestibular reset, we can do proprioception. So then I go into square one. Oh, it's your right shoulder. We do this. There's a lot of details into it. But we find out that, oh, it's shrugging your shoulder, as an example. Okay, yeah. So they'll do the whole shrug. All right, they're like, oh, I check their patterns, right versus left balance, up versus down balance.

Okay, go back to the challenge. Split stance, eyes closed, head up and down. Oh, no more reflex. I'll check their arm, oh, it's solid. Let's add another piece. Okay, more. Split stance, eyes closed, transverse plane, let's go ahead right to left with your eyes closed. Oh, that looks good. Oh, to go right to left in a frontal plane triggered you. It's have that morel reflex, check the arm, check the leg, whatever, the brain response, the nervous system response to the activity. If it breaks them, then we reset them.

James de Lacey50:09

And when you're saying you're checking the arm, you're pushing down on the arm to see how quickly it can resist?

Shawn Sherman50:33

Yeah. Okay, yeah. So like if you were to buy like a kinesio muscle testing manual, it'd be called like an upper trap test. I don't like calling that because like there's like a billion muscles involved. Like that's a position of emphasis, but it's also your delt, it's also your obliques. There's, you know, the scapular retract, there's just, you know, there's lots of things going on. Your bicep, lot of muscles. But that would be named the upper trap test as a common one I use.

So, but I don't care what the name of it is. I almost want to call that test one and call it test two. So I'm trying to, I'm trying to break people's brain from thinking in terms of muscles. If they're not orthopedic surgeons, it's like we got to think about in terms of joint actions and patterns and movements and shapes more so than specific muscles.

James de Lacey50:56

Yeah, not fair enough. I've got one more question for you that rolls around PNF stretching. PNF stretching would then be a version of, I guess, integrating the nervous system with it, because I mean you're literally flexing the muscle at the end range.

Shawn Sherman51:15

I think anything could represent a way to integrate things. It's a matter of having a systematic way to assess if it integrated or didn't. So if you're talking about PNF, like, so let's use a hamstring as an example. So you'd have them go actively into hip flexion and then give them resistance on the short side that engages, flex more and let go further.

James de Lacey51:15

I mean, PNF is like kind of loaded. There's more, or just like pushing against you with the hamstring and then getting more range.

Shawn Sherman51:46

You're right. You're right, yep, yep, yep, yep. So that's one, yep, possibly. So what I would do, if you like doing that, I would do one of them, then I would check the neuro response test. Like it, didn't like it. So I'd reset them and I go right back to that PNF thing. So you can partner them together.

So again, I look at square one as a way to, it's a way to interview the nervous system throughout whatever session you want to do. In a one-on-one setting, it's really, I mean you can do two-in-one, three-in-one, but one-in-one it's brilliant at the one-on-one level.

James de Lacey52:29

All right, perfect. Now this has been super insightful, Shawn, and a great dive into square one. But you want to maybe let everyone know where they can find you and follow you and check everything?

Shawn Sherman52:29

Absolutely. Yeah, well thanks for having me on. It was great. I loved your line of questioning, very inquisitive, some slightly different questions I got in the past. So very, oh perfect. You're thinking, you're a thinking person. You're asking very, very good questions, honestly.

Yeah, but to find me, I rarely point people to our website. I usually send people to Instagram. That's where we're most active, and that's just square1system. And it's singular and it's a numerical one, so it's not O, and it's just square, the number one, system is our handle there.

James de Lacey52:53

Perfect, I'll link, perfect. Yeah, I'll put that in description for everyone to see as well and go to when they watch this. So if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify or whatever it is later on, check that out. But thanks for coming on, Shawn. I appreciate it.

Shawn Sherman53:20

Oh man, thank you for giving me your platform with your audience, man. I really appreciate you. Thank you.