Natalie Wieneroider teaches core strength to older adults on GetSetUp to help with balance and strength. Natalie believes that healthy living and movement are an ingrained part of her DNA. As an adult she spent many years traveling, first throughout Europe, supporting herself as a tour guide and then a similar role around Australia, eventually landing in India for a 6-month discovery tour which led her to intensive Yoga teacher training.
Back home and over the next twenty years, she pursued studies and practice in Shiatsu therapy, Kundalini yoga, and Pilates and began teaching these modalities. For Natalie, these practices were not enough as she has a constant need to know ‘why?’. So, she took additional courses including studies with Biomechanists Katy Bowman (Nutritious Movement) and Jules Mitchell (Jules Mitchell Yoga), multiple foot workshops, and many others. Her desire to work out how to integrate movement into our lives to achieve personal transformation led her to further questions and research.
Natalie’s major goal is to help you achieve health and wellbeing through integrating alignment and natural movement into your daily life. She looks forward to meeting you and helping you achieve your health and wellness goals.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Natalie Wieneroider about how moving safely isn’t safe.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How everyone moves differently, so they need an individual approach.
– How our bodies are more resilient than people give them credit for.
– Why people need to move in a way that feels correct for them.
– Why sitting on the floor is a better alternative to sitting on a couch or chair.
– How it’s important to move throughout the day, whether you are sitting or standing.
Connect with Natalie:
Links Mentioned:
getsetup.org
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
If you’re going to go do an exercise program, especially if you’re getting older, I mean, I’m going to be 60 soon, you want to make sure you’re doing things that are safe, or do you? We’re going to find out more about that on today’s episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body, starting typically, feet first, because those things are your foundation, but then we’ve done some gut first things, and some brain first things. But anyway, you get the idea. We’re going to break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright lies you’ve been told about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body to run, to walk, to play, to do yoga, CrossFit, hang out with your kids, whatever it is you like to do, and to do that enjoyably effectively, efficiently.
And did I mention enjoyably? Trick question, I know I did because, look, if you’re not having a good time, do something different until you are, because you’re not going to keep it up if you’re not enjoying it. So I’m Steven Sashen, your host of the podcast and the CEO of xeroshoes.com, makers of incredibly comfortable, lightweight footwear. And we call it The MOVEMENT Movement because we are creating a movement that involves you, no obligation, really easy, I’ll say more about that in a second, about natural movement. We’re helping people rediscover that letting your body do what’s natural is the better, obvious, healthy choice, the way we currently think about natural food. And that movement part that involves you is really easy. Go to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com. There’s no cost for joining, you don’t need to do anything, there’s no secret handshake.
Point is, you’ll find the previous episodes, all the ways you can engage with us on Facebook, and Instagram, and YouTube, all the places that you get podcasts. You can find out if you want to pick a new one to hear our podcast, but the gist is share, and like, and review, and comment, et cetera. That’s how you become part of spreading the word, moving The MOVEMENT Movement, in short, if you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. So let’s get started, Natalie. Welcome, pleasure having you here. And for people who don’t know or aren’t watching, there’s a Christmas tree behind her, probably not by accident, it is the season as they say, do me a favor, tell our human beings who you are and what it is you do.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Okay. My name’s Natalie and I teach movement to, mainly, older people these days, a broad range of people, but I’m into teaching movement in all sorts of different ways. It started with yoga teacher training, and then it morphed into a Pilate teacher training, and then it went on from there. It’s sort of a roller-coaster because I’m one of those why people. I need to know why. So that’s a never ending story, isn’t it? So I’ve done… I can’t tell you how many certifications. The reason I’m here, I think, is because of feet, right? I’m a big foot fan, I’m really interested in feet.
And actually Steven, I bought your huaraches when they were first the self-making kits, way back in the day when you first started out. So I’ve been actually following you for a long, long time because of my foot interest. And yeah, look, I just say to people, I could have actually paid for a PhD in what I have actually paid for in workshops and courses, because I need to know why. And yeah, that’s just where I am right now. And I’m excited about learning and I’m constantly learning, but… Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
There are a number of few people whom I’ve asked this question, to lawyers, to doctors, to many, many other people, which is how much of what you learned in school, or in your case, in various classes are you still doing versus how much have you evolved and are doing things different than that? I’m not going to tell you what their answer is until I hear your answer.
Natalie Wieneroider:
I love that question. My first big training was a yoga teacher training. And after that I was like, “Oh, yoga is the perfect movement for everybody,” right? Everybody should be doing yoga because it helps us, we don’t need anything else because we’re moving, and we’re using our body weight, and that’s all we need. Then I did my main Pilate teacher training. Then it was like, “Oh, Pilates is the best thing for everything. You don’t need anything else except Pilates,” and then it went on. So every big training that I did, it was the same thing. And then it sort of dawned on me and going, “Hang on a minute.” It was actually in my graduate school, I was doing a graduate program and somebody said to me, “You’re telling us how to move.” And I’m like, “That’s not right. Not everybody moves the same way.”
And I’m like, “Well, that’s interesting because that came from people of a non-movement background, from a broad range of learning.” And the light bulbs went off and I’m like, “Oh, my God. What am I doing?” So then, that led down the path of, “You know what? Maybe we need to vary things and treat the person as the individual, and work on it that way.” I can’t remember what podcast it was, but somebody said in a podcast I was listening to years ago, “If you’re not horrified at what you were teaching five years ago, you’re not learning.” And I love that as well. I thought, “Well, that fits my own philosophy.” Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
I would take that down to six months.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Okay.
Steven Sashen:
If you haven’t found a new way of saying it in six months, something is awry. It’s funny, actually, I think of the number of things that I say over, and over, and over to explain natural movement to people. And every time it starts to come out of my mouth, I look for something to tweak, something that might make it a little better, a little easier, little whatever. And that’s been super fun. So would you say, on a percentage, so what percentage of what you’re doing now, from zero to a hundred, is based on the things that you were taught versus what you figured out?
Natalie Wieneroider:
Oh, good grief. Probably… No. Probably still around the 60%, 60 to 75% taught-
Steven Sashen:
That’s pretty good.
Natalie Wieneroider:
… and then figured out it’s got to… It’s a bit of everything because lately, or the last few years, I’ve been learning really great things from people who are saying, “Go and figure it out.” So that’s why I’m learning.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. I’m not sure if that counts. If they say go figure it out and you figure it out, that’s you.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So, when I ask this to doctors and attorneys, they often… I haven’t heard anyone who said anything more than 20% of what they learned in school is what they’re still doing, which I find very interesting.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. Well, with that, I was doing a training, it’s called fascial fitness. That was actually done in Germany. And one of the things that we had to do was learn to stand up next to a wall, put your hand on the wall and then move, in all the ways you can move without moving your hand.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, fun.
Natalie Wieneroider:
And it was really interesting because the teacher said to us, “Just move. Don’t follow me, do what you wanted do.” And we were all kind of following her and doing exactly what she was doing. It was like get out of that box.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Natalie Wieneroider:
And when I teach that movement myself, I find people just follow exactly what I’m doing. And it’s the same, it just continues. So how do we get out of that paradigm of watching the teacher or listening to the teacher, and not just doing that, but doing what we’re okay with? We find that hard to be really creative.
Steven Sashen:
Well, it’s so-
Natalie Wieneroider:
So yeah, that’s what-
Steven Sashen:
… funny you say that. You just gave me a flashback because anytime I was involved in any sort of workshopy kind of thing, where there was a suggestion like that, I would immediately try to do the opposite of what I thought, either everyone was going to do or what they imagined. So I just had a flashback to the number of times they’d say like, “Find a way to move,” and I would literally, leave the room.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Okay.
Steven Sashen:
And that was kind of my thing. I mean, I would just do whatever I could think of that was going to be as extreme as I could in a different direction, because that was going to be the most interesting to me. I hadn’t thought about that in a long time. So backing up, so we started this by saying that especially for older people, you want to be safe, or should you? And I have a sneaking suspicion, because you’re the one who gave me the hint to say that, that you have a different idea about that, about safety.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. That’s a really hard one because it’s so ingrained in your training like, “Keep people safe.” What do you do? I was watching a class the other day and the teacher was getting people to do a side bend, but bend this way, bend that way. He said something like, “No, make sure you don’t bend to the side. Don’t let yourself turn because then you could hurt yourself.” And I was like, “What are you saying?” Why is that? I think we’re conditioned to think that we’ve got to look after ourselves because maybe the body is a fragile thing.
And doing something one way, you can injure yourself, so you need to stay safe by listening to instructions, whereas the complete opposite is the case, right? We’re strong. A body of spine will naturally move in all the different ways. It’s strong. It’s not going to break because you bend forward. There’s still a big belief in the yoga and Pilates world, it’s like, “How do I bend forward,” right? I’ve had lots of people come to me, they’ve hurt their backs. The doctor has said to them, “Don’t do any forward bends now. You can’t do yoga.” I’m like, “How can you live your life without doing a forward bend?”
If you need to just sit down, you’re bending forward. So how is that not safe now? Yeah, I’m finding that really hard to sort of expand on that idea, but we need variability. The most important thing in our body is variability. Because if you stay really linear, if you keep doing the same movements over and over again, and don’t find varied ways to do them, well, that then could be a problem. You get stuck in that, not just your body, but your mind as well.
Steven Sashen:
You’re reminding me of things like the difference between using Nautilus equipment versus free weights. And it’s not that they don’t work, it’s not that Nautilus doesn’t work, depending on what your goals are, but the whole idea with Nautilus is to just isolate things as much as possible so that if you’re working your biceps, you’re only working your biceps. If you’re working your pecs, you’re only working your pecs, which is again, depending on your goals, totally, totally fine. But to your point, on the one hand, when it comes to being a functional human being, it’s not that you’re not developing muscles that you need for functional movement, but you’re not applying necessarily those things functionally. Now, I’m not suggesting that you have to just lift heavier bags of groceries to be able to lift groceries. You can get strong doing Nautilus and lift your groceries just fine.
Nor am I suggesting something that I find really funny… And I’m curious what your thoughts are. I love it when people say, “Well, you want to do things that are unstable because you have to work on the stabilizer muscles.” And I go, I say, “Can you show me a stabilizer muscle?” It’s like, “They’re just muscles.” It’s like, “Your stability is a neurological thing. There’s not magic stabilizer muscles.” I mean, your shoulder has a whole bunch of muscles that stabilize the shoulder, but they’re not stabilizer muscles, they’re just muscles. That one totally cracks me up. So talk to me more about then what you’re doing… What’s happening, where people are coming to you and what do you then do with them to… I mean, you’re not putting them in “dangerous situations,” but to not stay safe and non-practical, if you will.
Natalie Wieneroider:
All right. So basically, I’m not telling them, “You must do it this way. You must lift up your arm here and it’s got to be right next to your ear, and you’ve got to have a five degree angle in your elbow,” or, “Do it this…” And I know teachers that still teach that way, particularly, in the Pilate field. Actually I did an audition interview yesterday and the girl that was the body on the reformer for me was like, “Well, so how do I breathe?” And I’m like, “Well, you breathe in after you breathe out, and you breathe out after you breathe in,” and I could see the eye rolls. And I was like, “Oh, my God, where are we right now?” Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So just to be clear, you’re actually suggesting breathing in after out and out after in, that’s radical, Natalie.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Most people do it the other way around. And I think you’re going to find that if you try that, especially, if you breathe in through one of the holes in your face and then out through a hole in your face, that’ll change your life.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah, absolutely. What are we doing? That’s a huge thing, actually, for me lately, is the breathing thing. You get people that say, especially, you’ll find that in yoga, like, “Breathe in, breathe out, do this, do that.” Well, we’re all different people so we all need to breathe differently, right? We move differently, we need to breathe differently. So let’s not put people in that box and say, “You need to move this way.” How about we let them explore and see what it feels like. Maybe we’ll say, “How about you try it, putting your foot in this position, and then one foot that way, and one foot in that position? What does that feel like to you? Okay. Let’s change it. Turn one foot some slightly different way, what does that feel like? Does it feel better? Does it feel worse? Can you experiment in those parameters?”
Steven Sashen:
Well, human beings, we, by and large, we like to get instructions. We like for someone to tell us what to do, we like to have a clear path. Basically, we’re wired to imagine the preferred endpoint and then look to the past or to someone else about how to get us there reliably. And of course, the problem is most of the time that doesn’t work, so that’s a whole other story. So I’m curious, two things… Well, let me start with this one. The first is on the one hand, yes, everyone is a unique little snowflake. On the other hand, we all have human bodies, which are fundamentally the same. How do you balance those two things?
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. That’s a hard question. How do you try and encourage people to do things in a way that feels right for them? It’s like, “Okay, try it this way.” What I like to do is demonstrate and go, “Okay, well, say like I’m lifting my arm here.” Again, I’ll go with the arm because I can see my arm here on the screen. So I can lift my arm up here. How about you try here? Maybe try lifting it higher. Can you lift it higher? What does it work? So give them options and maybe give them a bit of encouragement and say, “Does that feel right? You’re doing really well.”
Steven Sashen:
So, for people who are listening, let me describe what you did. So one is, if you’re going to talk about lifting your arm from the side of your body to overhead, so you’re pointing towards the ceiling. And there’s just different angles that you can do that. And of course, where my head goes is why are we going in a straight line? Why not go in S shape or some weird thing? Or why not go put it backwards-
Natalie Wieneroider:
Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
… and come forward. So there are an almost infinite number of different ways you could do that. And in my head, what’s really fun, I hadn’t thought… So I’m thinking about lifting my arm and I’m lifting it at first was just basically moving my hand towards the front of my body and up. When I did the one going behind my body, it was such an odd way of getting my arm to go up that I actually got a little bit of a buzz from it. I mean, just like, “Ooh, that was exciting,” just because it was something so neurologically different. And then let your hand do snakey shapes to get there. So fundamentally, the same thing is we can get our arm into a position where our hand is pointing towards the ceiling, but there’s an infinite number of ways of getting there, which is an interesting way of putting it. So-
Natalie Wieneroider:
Or maybe you can’t. Or maybe you can’t lift your arm up and touch the ceiling, that’s the thing. You might not be able to do it. So maybe you’re reaching out towards your TV, or maybe you’re reaching into the kitchen, or maybe you’re reaching… I’m thinking where I am. Or your balcony across your body, what’s that like? Is that novel to you? What can you do? And then what we’re doing is we’re letting our brain know that it’s safe, there’s that word again, right? That it’s safe to move and then maybe it can go, “Well, actually, well, that feels okay. Maybe I can move a little bit more from there.” So it’s just a constant exploration. And what we want to do is explore and get curious about our own bodies. And the more we move and the more that we explore, the more we are able to get a sense of what’s going on and then maybe, get a little bit more confidence, and able to move more or differently from there.
Steven Sashen:
So, I like that distinction about safety, which is it’s not that you’re trying to put people in unsafe positions or doing unsafe movements, but that what we find is that human beings get locked in… Well, there’s two aspects. One is we tend to get locked in to patterns that are familiar, often, because we are worried about extending in either direction past what’s familiar. And the other is people who are teaching, who maybe, well, for various reasons, are doing something similar where they want to keep people in a specific plane of motion, because frankly, they’re trying to be safe. They don’t want somebody to do something where they might possibly have an experience that the teacher doesn’t want like, “Hey, that hurt,” or, “Hey, I didn’t like it.” And so they’re limiting, they’re constraining the clients for their, in a way, their own psychological safety or their own financial safety is what it sounds like.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. Well, you just touched on something interesting where people want to do what the teacher wants. Like, “Am I doing it right for you?” Or where’s that personal agency? Where’s that sense of personal responsibility? When I’m teaching Pilates, we do like sometimes, it’s, “Okay, we’re going to do 10 repetitions of this,” so we’re going to do 10 of that. And I’ll have a room full of people there. And I’m thinking about what I’m going to do next or looking around the room, what are people doing? What cues can I give them? And I’ll say, “Well, how many have you done?” And I could have 20 people in the room and everyone’s like, “I don’t know.” Who’s going to start counting? Do you want me to count for you?
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Or they want me to tell them what to do. And I’m trying to say, “Well, actually we’re going to keep going until somebody tells me that you get to 10.” Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Now, I will confess that, personally, there’s things that I… I like having a workout where it is constrained to a certain extent, because then I do know what I’m doing, but then I like messing around with it. So I’ll tell you the thing I’m doing lately. I’m doing a workout where the idea is you’ll take an exercise you could do, say, 20 reps with, let’s say, bench press, and then you do three reps or as many reps as you can do in five seconds, and you want to go for speed, and then you rest for 30 seconds, and then you repeat this 30 times. And so I like it because it’s very contained, which I need at this point because my schedule’s just so busy that psychologically, that’s very helpful to know I’m going to do this 18-minute thing.
And then maybe I throw in something before or after, depending on what time of the evening it is, but then I mess around with the exercises. So every week, it’s like, “Okay, I know I’m going to do something with my legs. Something that’s a pushing exercise, something, that’s a pulling exercise. What do I want to do that’s unusual? What do I want to do that’s fun?” Maybe I’ll do rope climbing. Maybe I’ll do pushups on rings or between chairs, or it’s like… So that’s the fun experimental part, but having the container, if you will, is just helpful for my current lifestyle. So it’s an interesting balance there.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I think we all need that in some respect. You’ve got something that it’s going to give you a goal, it’s going to make you feel good, and I’ve just done that particular movement, but then you have a little bit of a play out of there. And I do the same thing. Pilates is coming back to me again because I… I don’t know how familiar you are with Pilates, Pilates exercises-
Steven Sashen:
Wait, well, let me answer that. So I spent 20 plus years in Boulder, Colorado where my joke is you can’t throw a tantrum without hitting a therapist, usually a Pilates therapist.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Oh, wow. We say that yoga here, is how every person who do yoga here joke over here.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, my God. How?
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. Well, so there’s the classical order as per going back like, not thousands of years, but decades in this case, that if you do the same exercises in a certain way, that’s the way you do it. That’s the way they’re set up to get the best out of your body to do them. So pretty much, I teach a variation of that. I teach some sort of order of the same kind of exercises, but I like to change them around. So we’re still doing something basic. So people come and they’ve got an idea of that’s what they’re going to do in class, but let’s add some rotations this week.
Last week I had a theme, it was twisting. So this week’s going to put twisting into everything that we do. This week, my theme is slip and slide. We’re going to slide on the floor, on blankets or whatever else. So there’s the same kind of thing, but with variation and to make it fun. I think you say that you want to have fun with what you’re doing. Well, that’s one of my main values, I think, to have fun or why are we doing it? There’s no point.
Steven Sashen:
You gave me a funny flashback. A friend of mine’s a very big deal, Zen teacher. And he was doing a meditation program in Santa Fe. And they wanted to do walking meditation, but there was this very tiny room so they couldn’t do it the way it was normally done. And he figured out a way that they could do this practice in this weird setup. And he comes back to that group like five years later, in a completely different situation, where they had plenty of room to do whatever they were wanting and they were still walking in this weird pattern.
And he said, “Why are you doing that?” They go, “Well, that’s the way the Buddha originally taught people.” He goes, “No, no, no. I made that up five years ago because we were in a tiny little room.” And they went, “Oh, no, no. You can look in the scriptures and you can find…” And he literally couldn’t convince his own students that he had made something up for a unique situation, which I thought was utterly, utterly brilliant. I want to back up a giant, giant step to, basically, what I often do at the beginning of these conversations and I didn’t do it then, especially, this is especially relevant for you, I think. Can you think of a movement thing that people who are listening to this now or watching this, more listening, could do to get an embodied sense of the kind of thing that happens when they’re hanging out with you?
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. That’s easy. Sit on the floor.
Steven Sashen:
For people who are driving, that would be challenging unless they’re driving a Flintstone mobile and make, you’re not moving, because otherwise, you’ll be using your butt as a break, which I don’t recommend. Not from personal experience. I’m just hypothecating. But other than… So say more about that answer though.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Okay. Well, if you’re driving, let’s just think about how you can move your pelvis. We’re talking right about the center of the body. So many people don’t have that ability to move their pelvis because they spend their lives sitting in chairs, right? So a chair puts your body into a chair shaped position, which generally, is your pelvis is tilted backwards or your tail is tucked under. So you’re not sitting on what we call the sitting bones, right? The bones underneath.
You’re sitting on the fleshy part of your bottom and your tail’s tucked under and there’s… We could go into lectures about that, but we’re not going to right now. So a lot of people can’t get out of that tucked back sitting position. So if you’re driving in your car, do the best you can to try and get out of that tucked position because that’s pretty much where you’re going to be right now, and sit on up nice and tall, or try and get yourself on top of those bones. And then whoa, maybe you could even tilt forward, roll forward off them, which is going to be pretty much impossible for a lot of people.
But coming back to sitting on the floor, that’s all part and parcel of that. How do you sit? Most people spend their lives sitting in chairs or they’re watching Netflix on their comfortable sofa. And you can get in onto your sofa and you can sit in that position for hours. What’s the latest thing that you’ve binged on Netflix, right? Especially, during COVID. I’m in Melbourne. We’re the most locked down city in the entire world.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Natalie Wieneroider:
At 280 days or something, or other, of being locked down. So people are spending a lot of time on TV and they’re spending a lot of time sitting down. You can be there and you cannot move for literally hours at a time, but if you’re sitting on the floor, you’re not going to be comfortable for the most part. Especially if you’re from a Western society. So you’re going to constantly have to move positions. I’m sitting on the floor right now. So I’m like, “Okay, that’s uncomfortable. I’m going to move my legs in this position. I’m going to move somewhere else. I’m going to change.” And there’s your variability of movement. There’s your natural movement right there, just by taking it down to the floor.
Steven Sashen:
No, this is brilliant. Harvard’s Daniel Lieberman, who was one of the guys who basically kicked off the barefoot running movement with the study that he did, showing that habitual barefoot runners, when they put on shoes, suddenly have form that puts force right into their joints, and if they’re barefoot, they don’t have that, and other things as well. But he has a book that came out a little while ago called Exercised. And one of the first myths that he breaks down is sitting as the new smoking. And what he says is, well, kind of is what you just said, is if you’re just immobile in a posturally bad position, that’s one thing, but if you look at indigenous tribes, they spend more time sitting than we do, it’s just that they don’t just sit in a single position. They sit in many positions, they move around, they’ll get up a little bit. They go grab a kid and then come back down. But fundamentally, they’re spending a lot of time sitting and lying, just never static.
Natalie Wieneroider:
True. Well, the same goes, people are like, “Oh, sitting is the new smoking, so let’s get a standing desk, and let’s stand up all day, and we’ll be still. We’re not going to move,” or… It’s the same thing, isn’t it? You’re not moving there, you’re not getting the variation.
Unless, you have a Topo man. I think I’ve heard you say on another podcast that you’re friends with a Topo guy.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Is that right? Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
I’m friends with a lot of guys. Well, look, for people who are watching, I’m going to show this. The chair that I’m sitting on right now, it looks like this. So it’s basically a ball with a padded tray on top of it, and it’s totally unstable. And so you’re constantly… First of all, it puts you in a position where you have to sit on your sit bones. I mean, if you don’t, you cannot, but by and large, that’s the place where it’s most comfortable. And then, you’re moving continually, which is really fun. And it’s called a QOR360, Q-O-R 360. I’ve done a review. Anyway, it’s super fun and very weird. People look at you strangely. Speaking of weird things, something you said that I never thought of before, I don’t know why we refer to our butt as our bottom, because our feet are our bottom.
Natalie Wieneroider:
That’s a good question. I’ve never thought of it either.
Steven Sashen:
Nor I. I’m going to look that one up and see if I can figure out where that started. That makes no sense.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Well, it does when you’re sitting on it, doesn’t it?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. But even when you’re sitting on it, if you’re sitting in a chair, your feet are still probably lower. So unless, you’re sitting on the ground, when… Then you’ve got a whole lot of things that are your bottom. So something’s very wrong. I think we need… This’ll be our new mission in life is to change that terminology. All right, so-
Natalie Wieneroider:
What are you going to call it?
Steven Sashen:
Well, butt’s always a good one, but I don’t even know why we do that. That’s a weird one too. You can say your glutes, you can sit on your glutes. And then the questions are sitting on your glute maximus? Are you sitting on your medias? Are you’re sitting on the minimus? So this could go in very bad directions.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. Yeah. But see, I think, actually, you’ve actually said it. You’ve taught talking about muscles, about how muscles move. Well, we’re kind of forgetting about the fascia or the connected tissue, aren’t we? It’s not just muscles and I think people have been trained to, and we all have been trained to, to look at the muscles, and how do the muscles work, and how do they move the body. But what about the connective tissue that has been seen for many years as some sort of filler or some sort of packing? But it’s a huge sensory organ and it connects the whole body. It’s like interwoven in between the muscles and the tendons, it’s all part of it. So we’re moving from there too. We can’t sort of move without our connected tissue.
Steven Sashen:
So, since most people have no… I mean, what you just introduced, the concept of the fascial system and it is like this sheath of material that surrounds and penetrates muscles, ligaments, and tendons. Some people, that may be news to them. Can you think of any way of giving them, other than just the concept of that, some experience of what that means to engage with your fascial system?
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. Yeah. Think about it. Because it’s all encompassing and it’s everywhere in our body, when we move one part of our body, the rest of the body will be affected by that movement. Think about like the T-shirt that you’re wearing. If you pull on the T-shirt, the neck of your T-shirt, the bottom of your T-shirt will lift up as well, at the same time, right? So that’s how your body works too. It’s not just I’m working my bicep here. There’s this idea of reciprocal inhibition that was making the rounds for a long time. If you’re using your bicep, your tricep is switching off. Well, I’m sure you know and most people, hopefully, know these days that they’re both working at the same time.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, my God. Sorry, you just gave me-
Natalie Wieneroider:
When one is-
Steven Sashen:
You just gave me this incredible flashback. So first of all, let me highlight that and sorry for interrupting. So you’re doing a bicep curl and yes, the muscle, the tricep muscle is not active, but you are stretching the fascia on the back of your arm. I mean-
Natalie Wieneroider:
But it is active. The tricep is active. It’s not inactive-
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here’s the thing that occurred to me. So, I did that crazy, that five second on, 30 second off workout. I was doing a variation of that before where… I’ll describe it. You do three reps, rest for 10 seconds, do three reps. And when you can’t do three, you do two. When you can’t do two, you do one. One’s a little hard, you just go start at three again with 20 seconds of rest, and you just work your way down. And this takes like 40 minutes. And I was doing bench press, which most people think of as a tricep and chest exercise. And I was stunned to see that when I was done, my biceps were totally pumped up.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
But again, this is something that most people, when they think about working a muscle, “Well, if I’m working my bicep, I’m not working my tricep,” and vice versa. So just to highlight this, basically, in large part, because of the fascial system, that isn’t the way it works.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Well, it’s not just the fascial system, the muscle just works that way. All of your muscles are working all of the time. How’s that for a novel concept?
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Natalie Wieneroider:
They’re all working all the time.
Steven Sashen:
Well, let’s dive into that then. Here, I’m pushing my hand against my head so I can contract my bicep. So if I feel my tricep, it’s mostly relaxed. So talk to me about what it’s doing when… I mean, the reciprocal inhibition thing. Talk to me about that when I’m feeling right now, tension in my bicep, relaxation in my tricep. And by the way, if anyone’s watching this, this looks really stupid.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. But it’s working, it’s not not working. Okay. So do that again, do that exercise. Right. Put your hand on your triceps, right?
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Reach your arm out in front of you.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Natalie Wieneroider:
And hold onto your tricep, right?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Feel your tricep. Now, bend your elbow and put your hand on your head. You felt the tricep moving, didn’t you? It’s not doing nothing, it’s moving.
Natalie Wieneroider:
No, even more.
Steven Sashen:
It’s actually engaging.
Yeah. It’s moving, and it’s changing. So like when I have my arm fully extended, so my arm is parallel to the ground, palm is up. If I flex a little bit, then I feel tension to my tricep. And then as I relax and just start bending my elbow, so I’m going to end up with my hand in my forehead, it changes, but also, it goes, like in about the middle of the range when my arms are about 90 degrees, it’s pretty relaxed. And then once I get past there, there’s tension, but in a different part of the tricep.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. So you’ve got your concentric contraction, right? When it’s getting shorter and your eccentric contraction when it’s getting… Well, hang on. I’ve got that.
Steven Sashen:
No, the eccentric contraction. Yeah, yeah.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So they’re always all working all the time and you think about, “Okay, well I’m relaxing the rest of my body because I’m sitting down.” Well, how is your body upright, if your muscles are not working?
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Things are turning on and off into degrees, but not the way people think of.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. So here’s a wacky question for you. Why do people come and see you? And what do you say if someone come… Well, first of all, what inspires them to come? And if they ask you some crazy question, like why should I give you any money and hang out with you, what do you tell them? What are you offering promising, suggesting, to deal with the reason that they say they’re coming? That make sense?
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. Okay. Yes, it absolutely makes sense. And my reason that I say to them, “Well, we need to keep moving and we want to keep ourselves functional, and moving so we can stay active and stay out of the retirement village,” or whatever it is that we want to do. We want to build strength. Yeah, we want to be able to be active and healthy throughout our entire lives. We want a fulfilling life that we can do all the things that we need to do and not rely on other people.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Natalie Wieneroider:
So, my movements are all based around that. It’s like getting people moving and getting them doing things that are going to help them, in what they’re doing in their daily lives.
Steven Sashen:
And so, since this week is about sliding, talk to me about what that time with you, that class, excuse me, I got the hiccups, will look like.
Natalie Wieneroider:
It wasn’t going to be. It was supposed to be push and pull week. My partner sends out the emails and I’m like, “It’s going to be push and pull week. Let’s be more functional.” And I looked at the email he sent out last night and it’s called slip sliding week. I’m like, “No.”
Steven Sashen:
Well, okay.
Natalie Wieneroider:
And I just found that out. How’s that going to work? Yeah. So we’re going-
Steven Sashen:
But you can pretend that the email went out correctly and it’s push and pull week. I’m trying to give people a sense of what it’s like to actually work with you.
Natalie Wieneroider:
All right. So I’m just putting basic movements together where I can… I’ll stick with the sliding principle. So if you have carpet, you’ll need something plastic, or paper plates, or something like that. If you have a wooden floor, or tiles, or whatever on the floor, you just need a towel or a blanket. So what we are going to do is use the floor as a resistance tool. So for me, a good example, if you were standing up and one foot was on your floor and one foot was on your sliding, whatever it is that you have, just slide that foot out in all directions. You might slide it out to the side, so your feet go wider apart from each other.
And then what do you have to do to bring your feedback together again? There’s resistance right there. That could be super hard. Can we do it with bent knees? Can we do it with straight legs? Then maybe you slide your foot out in front, then maybe behind, maybe across your body. So variations of the theme. So with your feet, or on your hands and knees, or slide your hands out. Yeah, that kind of thing. So instead of doing a pushup, maybe we’ll slide out towards a pushup and then slide back in again. It can be a lot of fun and it can also be very hard.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Yeah. I’m having, again, flashbacks. So you’re giving me more flashbacks than I normally have of just dancing and doing a similar thing of doing the splits and pulling your feet back in to stand back up. And there was always just that thing of having to match your shoes to the surface so that you get the right amount of tension, the right amount of slide. So if we were in fact doing push, pull, what would be different then?
Natalie Wieneroider:
Well, maybe the tools that we’re using. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a hard one because now I’m not thinking about that one either.
Steven Sashen:
Pressure’s on.
Natalie Wieneroider:
This came out like an hour before class, what am I going to do today? I was going to be using a stick. I haven’t got one handy. I’ve got a pen here, so maybe I can just hold my pen out, my stick out in front of me and push my hand into it and do a movement. Maybe I’m going to do a roll up, like I’m lying down on the floor and I’m going to push my hands together to roll myself up. And then let’s try it by pulling that stick apart. What does that feel like if I… Yeah, you have a pen too.
Steven Sashen:
Pulled the pen off my pants.
Natalie Wieneroider:
If you pull it apart and roll up and down, rather than push, or even as simple as what you’re doing now, lifting around the side of the head.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Pushing your hands together, pulling it apart. Yeah, that type of thing built into lots of different types of exercises.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, this is super interesting. That was kind of a moving isometric kind of thing that-
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
What’s interesting for me when I did it… And again, pushing my hand, I’m holding a pen, pushing my hands in was interesting and pulling them apart, I just took the cap off the pen, which apparently I’m super strong, which enabled me to do that. But that was really interesting because I just felt my shoulders and back working in ways that I otherwise… You wouldn’t feel it because you’ve never done that thing of putting your hands together while moving them overhead or sideways, again, just finding other directions, that’s-
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. All that.
Steven Sashen:
You know my favorite part about that, is not only was it just… It was instantly interesting. It was instantly compelling, because it was so unusual that there was a kind of just fun, meditative, not like Zen out meditation, but it turns your attention inward automatically, in a way that’s kind of playful, very interesting, kind of compelling, so I’m loving that. I’m just going to be doing that for the rest of the day, I think.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Well, let’s hone it in a little bit more. And when you grip onto something, what happens if you just grip more with your little finger and your second finger? You can push and pull that way with more pressure on the little finger side of your hand. And then what about if you just press squeeze more with your thumb and your index finger side? So just the different pressure in your hands, that’s going to give you a different experience as well.
Steven Sashen:
That’s super cool. This is literally reminding me of my first barefoot run, where I was just so entrenched by playing with different experiences of where do I land on my foot? Am I moving my legs faster or slower while I run the same speed, or faster, or slower? It’s that same kind of thing that just is so… It’s so interesting because you’ve never paid attention to that before. Never done that simple, weird little thing. And it’s like, “Oh, fascinating.” Oh, I love it.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. Yeah. We sometimes forget about the smaller movements instead of the bigger movements. We’d get all involved about the bigger or the more complex movements. How can I make this more challenging? What am I going to do? I used to have a gym I used to work in, we had a personal trainer and we’d all used to laugh at him because you’d see his clients balancing on a bosu, with TheraBand attached to one foot and one hand, and maybe holding onto a pole or something in this arm, doing something else. It was making it more, and more, and more complex-
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Natalie Wieneroider:
… thinking that people know that, whereas sometimes we need to break it back down again, bring it right back and then work on those little things. I mean, there’s a place for all of them.
Steven Sashen:
This is actually going out back to the people who might be listening to this while driving. Just with your hands on the steering wheel, grip with your first finger or your thumb, and change lanes safely, or grip with your pinky and your ring finger, and just see what… I mean, just doing that alone, would I imagine, be very interesting and, hopefully, not so interesting that you miss an exit or crash into somebody.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. That wouldn’t be a good thing.
Steven Sashen:
Not so much.
Natalie Wieneroider:
At all. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So, is there anything you can think of that we left out that you want to share with human beings?
Natalie Wieneroider:
Hang on, I’ve got some little notes here, let’s have a look. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, notes. Holy crap.
Natalie Wieneroider:
I think… No, I know. I know. I just want to… I’ve been doing these. The reason I’m here is I’ve been… Was sort of asked to do it by a company that I’m doing lots of classes for, it’s called GetSetUp which is a community of older adults learning, it’s a learning platform online. And I was doing a walking tour of Melbourne, the city that I live in. So I was getting my phone out and I was walking around Melbourne, videoing everything and trying to talk about things, thinking, “I can make this really fun, and interesting, and exciting,” because I love my city and I know so much about it, but get out there and I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to say. I come home and I look at my notes, and I go, “Oh, I didn’t say this, and this, and this, and this,” and that was so crap.
Steven Sashen:
Funny.
Natalie Wieneroider:
I’m not surprised. I only had a few people left at the end of that hour, but anyway…
Steven Sashen:
That’s hysterical. All right. Well, I will let you check the notes that I did not ask you to make. And I’m stunned that you feel that you need notes.
Natalie Wieneroider:
No, I only wrote a couple, so I didn’t do-
Steven Sashen:
Well, then let me ask you a question. So especially, working with older people, what do you see as the… I mean, what do you see as the primary challenge that they’re dealing with? And talk about the changes that you see them experiencing over time. I mean, just older populations are very interesting aside from the fact that we’re all getting older. People who are getting older now… Well, let’s say it this way, so I’m about to turn 60. And so I, at 60 now, am a completely different human being than my father was at 60. And so I imagine similar thing. The people who are 80 now, when we become 80, I imagine and hope that we may be very different, but what are you seeing and what’s the experience that they seem to be having when they’re doing this work with you?
Natalie Wieneroider:
That’s interesting. You say that about a completely different person. I’m 55, my mom’s in her 80s. When she was 65, she got on a plane and flew to Beijing, just spent the next two years in the sports university over there, learning Tai Chi.
Steven Sashen:
Wow.
Natalie Wieneroider:
And then there’s been teaching like 20 or so Tai Chi classes every week, for the last 20 years or so now, except just recently, she’s given that up. So I have that example to live by. And when I was teaching in person classes, prior to the whole COVID thing, I was only doing it here, in this country, in Australia. And basically, I was making people get down onto the floor. We’re doing this class, and we’re going to be on the floor, on the mat. And if you couldn’t do that, well, basically, you wouldn’t come to class with me, but the people in the gym where I was working would do that.
Then I’ve transferred to doing most of my stuff up online, and then working for GetSetUp, and working with now an international audience. And I found that a lot of people can’t get down onto the floor, that they’re scared about getting down to the floor because they think if they get there, they can’t get back up again. Especially, if they’re living at home alone and that’s a real concern. So my aim is now… And I’ve had to learn to teach on a chair, which for me… Because like I said, I was always making people get onto the floor. So how do I adapt these exercises to do the same thing, but do it on a chair? But my intention is to get those people out of the chair and back down onto the floor.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Natalie Wieneroider:
And get more confident about doing it. And I think that’s the biggest thing is that lack of confidence about their body being strong, and capable, and being able to adapt, and get stronger again, even though they’re getting older.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Natalie Wieneroider:
I think we’re, maybe, conditioned to believe that it is a downhill process once we get older. And inevitably, things are going to fall apart and we have this wear and tear sort of syndrome on our bodies. And how many times do I hear people say, “Oh, I’ve got these issues in my knee. It’s like bone on bone.” And that’s what they’re told. They’re told by their doctors or they’re told by their therapist that this is not curable, you’re old and it’s not going to get any better, and we have to operate. But I believe that it’s a lot to do with what you’re thinking.
What your outlook is, who are you hanging around with? Are you buying into that whole I’m getting older, I’m going to get worse, it’s all downhill from here? Or can you buy into that concept of like, “No, there’s a lot I can do and I might not be able to move like I was when I was in my 20s or my 30s, but I can still move, and I can still be effective, and I can still be active, and I can still be doing the things that I want to do throughout my entire life?” I’m working in that concept. I don’t want to be a dribbling mess somewhere that somebody has to look after. Yeah, I’m just really confident that people can get out there and do things to improve their lives when it comes to movement.
Steven Sashen:
If you want to get inspired, go find a master’s track meet, especially a national, international meet, where you see all these people in their 80s, plus. And yes, they’re not running like they’re in their 30s, they’re out running. And in fact, 13 years ago or so, in Finland, for the World Masters Track and Field Championships, there was a guy who was 101, and he did the field event. So, he came out on his walker and then they handed him the shot put, maybe it was for, at that age, it’s like five pounds. And he heaves it like 10 feet and the crowd goes insane, because everyone’s thinking, “I just want to be that guy,” and you can. Then they hand him the javelin, and the crowd goes nuts.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So yeah, it’s like the thing of just doing as much as you can, because it’s not going to be the same. I remember Jack LaLanne when he was 90 or so, they were interviewing him and he was… He helped invent the universal gym. And so they have him on a universal gym and he’s bench pressing, and he’s putting a lot of effort. And I looked very carefully, you could see, he was only lifting 20 pounds, but he was working it. He was doing the most that he could and just still staying active, which was… So that’s the inspirational part that you just alluded to.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s keeping up the intensity and even if the intensity is at a lower weight, you still have that intensity and that’s what we’re looking for.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brilliant.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yeah. And people like that are inspiring. It’s amazing. I think they’ve had people in their 100s, running like a hundred meters or whatever.
Steven Sashen:
There’s a woman who’s 105 who just set the record because there’s never been someone, a female, 105, who ran the hundred. At almost 60, I can tell you, it’s sort of annoying. I’ve gone from being invisible. Like in my 50s, no one paid any attention. And now that I’m almost 60, people in their 30s come up and they tell me I’m an inspiration and then I punch them. Talk to me when I’m 70, I’m okay being this at 70, not at 60.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Yes. Yeah. Well, I figure I might take up running when I’m 80, or something, or other. I’m not a runner. I don’t like to run at all, but I’m thinking, “Yeah. Well then, maybe I can set some records,” or something. That’ll be fine.
Steven Sashen:
Well, that’s pretty much what all the Masters athletes think is I just need to outlive my competition. So that’s my goal.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Perfect.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. I reached out to a friend of mine who’s 63 or 64, and I asked him if he was going to be at the World’s… It’s in Finland again. And he said, “Yeah.” And he asked me if I’m going. I said, “I just want to see if you’re willing to pull me around a four by 100 meter relay,” because he’s like one of the fastest guys in the world and I’m like the 15th fastest guy in the country. But in a relay, I just need to hold my own and he’ll be able to do the heavy lifting.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Great. That’s excellent. That’s a way to be. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Natalie Wieneroider:
Goals. Goals. Life goals. Yeah. There’s plenty of them out there.
Steven Sashen:
I’m never going t
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