Good morning. Happy Monday. I have neural coffee in hand and it is perfect. All right, man, coming off a great weekend digging into today's Q&A. This is with Alec. This is a little bit different from what we typically talk about, but it's a very important question and an important discussion to have. And it has to do with creating an environment where you can be productive. And so this is about dealing with attention-related issues, self-regulation-related issues. So if you're working in open spaces, if you're working in commercial gyms, there's lots of distractions. When we're trying to recapture movement capabilities, in many cases it requires internalizing a lot of cues. And how do we handle these large distractions? How do we create a situation? In my case, what I do is I create a room. And so I always talk about the purple room. And I wrote a blog many, many years ago about why the room is purple. And it has to do with a clinic that I was in in Florida in the mid 90s. And this therapist had created an entire clinic that was specifically designed to improve self-regulation. And it was very, very impressive. And one of the qualities of that facility was that everything was this light sheet of purple, there was lavender scent in the air, there was music playing in the background. So he created this incredible environment. I don't go to that extreme, but I do control as many things as I can to get a home field advantage. And so this is the question that we answered for Alec is like, well, how do you do this in a commercial situation? Is there anything that we can do to help our clients improve their self-regulation to make all of the things that we're doing even more effective. So thank you, Alec. This is a big question, a very important question for a lot of people. If you'd like to participate in a 15 minute consultation, please go to Ask Bill Hartman at gmail.com. Ask Bill Hartman at gmail.com. Please put 15 minute consultation in the subject line so I don't delete it and include your question in the email if you would. We'll arrange that at our mutual convenience. Everybody have an outstanding Monday and I will see you tomorrow.

I recall one time where you made a comment about the fact that some people, like let's say someone that is very compressed, that is very hard into the ground, that is kind of close to end game, they have a hard time to like actually just, we need to unweight them just because they cannot get good feedback from their feet. And I kind of kept thinking about that. And I kept thinking also like just, by contrast of trying to train trying to have someone like be very keenly aware of nuance in a reset in a commercial gym where beside that there's like three dudes grunting and dropping bars and and there's like some Bon Jovi playing for no reason and as long as it's living on a prayer we're okay. It was not, they play, they don't play that song for some reason. But anyway, my point being like, I'm trying to think how can I, how can I get like some, some time expansion, if that makes sense? Like in the sense, I'll, like I kept thinking about you, you, if my memory is correct, the reason why the purple room was purple is because it was appeasing. And the same manner that like, I'm pretty sure you're very deliberate with the tone of your voice when you explain something with someone. And yeah, exactly. Cause, but so I'm trying to think like, how can I, how can I bring that into my coaching? Cause my environment doesn't allow my clients to be very, uh, very aware of their body, like feeling a first method on the wall in the middle of like this kind of crowded place where people are dropping weights and whatnot. So this is where I'm trying to like, how can I make more space in the moment where they are doing their reset? so that they are able to gain a more granular experience of what they are actually doing. Because often the time I put them in the right position, I'm like, can you feel this? And it's like super gross movement pattern where it's like, yeah, no, I'm not recapturing it.

I understand your dilemma. I just don't know if there's necessarily a great solution because you have a lot of sound that you're trying to block out, which then your vocalization becomes more important. And so this might be like the exception to the rule of saying less, where your voice becomes the guidance. And so to overcome Bon Jovi, you know, you're gonna have to hold somebody's attention. So that might be a little bit more of a continuous instruction—not giving more details, but giving the same details more times.

Yeah, guided meditation type of thing. Kind of.

Yeah, you don't want to be necessarily that meditative, right?

Yeah, I just mean in the sense of continuously being directive into the same process.

And then it's a matter of literally finding a location within the facility where there are fewer visual distractions. So you can find a corner space that, if you've got two walls, you've eliminated 50% of the space around them. And then you become the other wall. So then they're facing away from everything, and you are capturing the space for them.

Yeah.

That makes sense. So you can find a corner. If you just got a wall on in two big spaces on either side, you're on one space and then they still have that big open space. So if you can create an isolated area, that might be helpful. That might be helpful.

Yeah, okay.

If you just got a wall on in two big spaces on either side, you're on one space and then they still have that big open space. So if you can create an isolated area, that might be helpful. That might be helpful.

I was thinking that, but that's helpful along the same lines—it's pretty much what I can do within the facility. I was trying to think of where else we could unpack the overwhelm of pressure and help them be more aware of the force produced in the activity by having them be partially unweighted. I was wondering if there would be value in having them not necessarily meditate at home, but just do some relaxed, prolonged breathing—perhaps not even in a specific position, like just on their back with their feet up on a chair or in a half-lying position—simply to breathe in and out and try to feel their body expand and contract, without even attempting to reset. The goal would be to create a practice for attending to physical sensation while keeping their values in mind.

Of course there is. It's like, anytime you can internalize, you improve self-regulation. That's what meditation is for. Meditation is just for self-regulation purposes, right? So when I coach people to do lazy rolling activities, like the really slow lazy rolling activities, I always ask them, I say, do you meditate? And surprisingly, a lot of people do or they try anyway. And then so I tell them, I say, your lazy rolling is now your meditation because that is a very internalized activity because there's always the self-coaching of slow down, stay heavy, less muscle activity, right? So you learn, they learn how to self-regulate. So it is meditative, right? Where like if you're doing transcendental meditation and you have a mantra, so what the mantra is for is to create white noise, to block out all other thoughts and activities. If I put you in lazy rolling and I say, I tend to this, always think this, always remind yourself of this, I have now internalized. So now you're teaching self-regulation and you're promoting a shape change that might be favorable. So I would lean in that direction. I would give them something to do that achieves the desired outcome versus just an idea.

Please put 15 minute consultation in the subject line so I don't delete it. Please include your question in the email. We will arrange that at our mutual convenience. Everybody have an outstanding Tuesday and I will see you.

I had a question regarding your statement that when you have a narrow with more IR on the left, you know that's coming from the spine. Then you said the narrows would start the compensatory strategies up top going down. So it would be like C3, C5, C6 going down towards the pelvis creating that IR. And I'm just trying to see, is that because they are already ER'd and they have space to IR into, or is that just because they're not weight-bearing as much through the upper parts of the spine?

So they're moving into a late representation. From proximal to distal, right? Their proximal is that if we talk about the lumbar spine, the proximal is that the T11-12.

Yeah.

From proximal to distal, right? Their proximal is that if we talk about the lumbar spine, the proximal is that the T11-12. And then for like, so when in TAS example, where it was at 25 degrees of hip IR was on that individual that you were just talking about. Okay. So the amount of orientation that they have is not at the extreme, whereas I had somebody that was like 45-50 degrees of hip IR. That's somebody that's going to have every one of those segments turned to the right.

Yeah.

In the TAS example, where it was at 25 degrees of hip IR on that individual that you were just talking about, the amount of orientation that they have is not at the extreme. Whereas I had somebody that was 45-50 degrees of hip IR; that's somebody that's going to have every one of those segments turned to the right. As it ticks down from L1, L2, L3, you're getting more and more and more IR under the surface. It's the late representation coming down from the top.

Yeah.

You see it? As it ticks down from like L1, L2, L3, you're getting more and more IR under the surface. It's the late representation coming down from the top.

That's all the discussion when the pelvis is in one piece and then you just get all the stuff moving above it. And going wide, I say, because they are already in IR, they start in IR. So why would that just be reversed? When they go in oblique angle orientation, their right side would go towards IR, but the left side would be like ER, ER, ER, ER.

No. No, they're just gonna, so they're gonna, did you say left side to ER? Yeah, left side into ER.

No.

No, they're just going to, so they're going to, did you say left side to ER? No, because so, so, so they still have, they still have to turn into the internal force.

Yeah, left side into ER.

No, because they still have to turn into the internal force. They still have to push against the stuff that's going on internally. So what you're going to end up seeing gradually is the anterior orientation is going to be greater on the left side than it is on the right side. So there's a differential between the two. The further they go, the more you're going to get the anterior orientation going up the right side as well. So again, this is why when you're on the oblique, the left side goes up, and the center of gravity shifts back towards the right. So it's turning on the oblique this way. And as they move forward, there's more and more anterior orientation on the right side. So that's why I start to lose the IR because I'm IR-ing in the spine. I'm not IR-ing in the hip.

Right. They still have to turn right.

Yeah, they still have to push against the stuff that's going on internally. Right. So what you're going to end up seeing gradually is, the anterior orientation is going to be greater on the left side than it is on the right side. So there's a differential between the two. The further they go, the more you're going to get the anterior orientation going up the right side as well. So again, this is why when you're on the oblique, the left side goes up, and the center of gravity shifts back towards the right. So it's turning on the oblique this way. And as they move forward, there's more and more anterior orientation on the right side. So that's why I start to lose the IR because I'm IR-ing in the spine. I'm not IR-ing in the hip.