Episode #100

Dr. Ryan DeBell

Improving Joint Health and Optimizing Your Range of Motion

You can build muscle and get tremendous training effects without hurting your joints. Click To Tweet

You may be working out and thinking that you’re doing a good thing for your physical health but if you’re not considering things like your range of motion and joint health, you could be doing a huge disservice to your body.

As my guest and former classmate Dr. Ryan DeBell points out in this podcast episode, many people don’t realize just how variable their anatomy is.

And without considering this, you could be doing popular exercises like squats and overhead lifts incorrectly for your specific body.

Over time, this can lead to injuries and deterioration of joint health despite the fact that you thought you were doing the right thing.

So how can you improve this situation?

Thanks exactly what you’ll learn about in this episode.

Ryan discusses how to improve your joint health with the goal of preserving it and strengthening it for longevity along with figuring out how to optimize your range of motion without putting yourself at risk for injuries.

Paying attention to your energy levels when you’re training hard is important. You should feel good and energetic from your workouts, not drained. Click To Tweet

Not only is Ryan a good friend of mine, but he’s also received his Master’s Degree in Sports & Exercise Science along with a Doctorate in chiropractic.

And he’s been studying how the body moves for several years now.

What he discovered is that, while most of us have good intentions, we’re actually not using exercise programs designed specifically for our body.

Along with injuries, this can lead to unwanted aches and pains and imbalances.

Ryan also shares how there are two specific body parts that are often not worked out enough and why not everyone should squat the same.

Ryan’s viewpoints are unique in that he doesn’t follow the norm and believes that exercise is not a one size fits all thing, similar to how I view nutrition.

Instead, he helps people understand their own personal movement better so each person can become a master of their own body.

And that’s exactly what he dives into with this episode.

Here’s a sneak peek of everything Ryan and I chat about today:

  • How Dr. Ryan DeBell helped people beyond his clinical practice
  • Why he uses an approach of taking the obvious next step
  • What he offered in his in-person workshops and why
  • How one of his first blog articles on hip anatomy and squatting received over a million page views fairly quickly
  • Should everyone squat?
  • Why the concept of variability of anatomy is important to consider when exercising 
  • How Dr. DeBell knew something was up as a kid playing basketball
  • Retroversion, including what that is and why it’s way more common than people think
  • What research on hip surgeries discovered
  • McKibbin instability index
  • How each person has a different expression of movement and what it takes to find yours
  • What to do if you try to pursue an exercise move and nothing changes after a year
  • Why your range of motion is not limitless no matter how much you stretch or workout
  • Active mobility
  • Active versus passive range of motion limitations
  • Passive stabilizers of a joint
  • Stressing a joint’s end range
  • Hylauranic acid
  • Static stretching techniques and what research shows about these
  • Dr. DeBell also shares his thoughts on why people should not squat the same as someone else (especially those they see on Instagram)
  • Shoulder flexion and why it poses as a problem for some
  • Why you can’t teach a standardized system of exercise due to so much individual variability
  • Dr. DeBell also shares his top two rules when it comes to joint health
  • The one signal to look out for that tells you your body can’t do this move or shouldn’t do it to the full range of motion
  • How your exercises should leave you feeling and what to do if they’re not
  • Two of the most under trained parts of the body and why that’s a huge issue
  • Movement omnivores

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