The Daria Hamrah Podcast
Do you want to change or simply improve your life? Take your business or your personal relationships to the next level? Have you ever thought why change is so difficult? Ever wondered how people become successful and we just call them "lucky". The Daria Hamrah Podcast gives you Dr. Hamrah's personal insights and pathways to his successes and what he calls "true happiness". Featuring interviews with some of the most successful entrepreneurs, authors and experts in their field, he shares their insights into what he calls the "Secret of Life".
The Daria Hamrah Podcast
Muscle as Medicine: How Smart Training Extends Your Healthspan - with Dr. John Rusin
What if your workout routine actually built your body up instead of breaking it down? Dr. John Rusin, one of the world's leading experts in strength and performance, has revolutionized fitness with a philosophy that merges rehabilitation with peak performance.
After nearly three years of development, Dr. Rusin has distilled his renowned certification program into his new book "Pain-Free Performance," a comprehensive guide to training that respects your body while maximizing results. His approach stems from a surprising realization: the same principles that keep elite athletes healthy apply equally to everyday people seeking longevity and quality of life.
During our conversation, Dr. Rusin challenges conventional wisdom about exercise, revealing why most people waste time in the gym with movements that produce minimal results. He explains how strength training becomes truly effective only when it respects principles of adaptation—training close enough to failure, achieving sufficient volume, and moving with purpose. The good news? His clients typically train just 2-3 days weekly for 45 minutes, proving that quality trumps quantity when guided by proper methodology.
For those dealing with chronic pain or movement limitations, Dr. Rusin offers immediate solutions, including his 10-minute daily "six-phase dynamic sequence" that can transform how your body moves and feels. We explore common scenarios like post-pregnancy fitness challenges and nagging shoulder injuries, with practical advice for each situation.
Perhaps most powerful is Dr. Rusin's perspective on exercise as a cornerstone habit that enhances every aspect of life. "It makes me a better father, makes me a better husband, makes me a better business owner, gives me more energy, and it allows me to be at my best mentally, physically, and emotionally every single day," he shares.
Whether you're a weekend warrior, dealing with chronic pain, or simply seeking to extend your healthspan, this episode offers a refreshing, science-backed approach to movement that will change how you think about fitness forever.
Website: https://drjohnrusin.com
IG: @drjohnrusin
YouTube link: here
Tweet me @realdrhamrah
IG @drhamrah
All right, everyone, welcome to the show. Today, I'm joined by someone who has truly changed the way I personally think about training and longevity Dr John Rusin. Dr Rusin is one of the leading experts in the world of strength and performance and the author of his new book, pain-free Performance. What sets him apart is his unique philosophy fitness should build you up, not break you down. He's a creator of pain-free performance training systems, which has been used by professional athletes, weekend warriors and everyday people like myself to get stronger, move better and stay injury-free.
Speaker 1:What I love about John's work is that it really bridges the gap between rehabilitation and performance. Instead of separating physical therapy from strength training, he's created a model that keeps people moving, thriving and performing at their best, not just for sport, but for life, and in the context of health and longevity, that message couldn't be more important, because if you want to live longer and healthier, we cannot afford to waste time with training that leaves us hurt, overtrained or burned out. So today we're going to dive into how his principles can help us not only build strength, but also extend our health span. We'll cover everything from muscle as medicine to recovery as longevity tool, to what a true anti-aging workout might look like. So, john, it's an honor to have you here.
Speaker 1:We finally got this online, and so now you have recently written a book called Pain-Free Performance. Now, before we dive into what's in that in your book, what made you actually write a book? You're so busy with health and fitness and all of that. First of all, what made you write the book, what motivated you and how did you find the time?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm a career educator, so 19 years into my career, we've run thousands of certification courses, live and in person all across the world. I've worked with tens of thousands of clients inside of my programs, I've been able to speak and lecture at some of the best universities and I have a lot of free information out there and I love to share it. And we kept on getting the same question time and time again in the pain-free performance specialist certification live events and it was John. This really resonates with me. This was the best weekend of my life. Where can I get all these resources in one spot? And we've been hearing that for almost a decade at this point and I didn't plan on ever writing a book. It wasn't aspirational for me to go in and create not only a book, but we're talking about a textbook, which is a whole new, different animal.
Speaker 2:And in 2022, on Thanksgiving Day, I got a call from a big publishing house out here in Las Vegas, nevada. They're responsible for the all-time best-selling health and fitness books and also nutrition books to ever see the light of day here in America, and I had somebody who was a co-author for many of the books that I learned from going through my undergraduate and graduate studies and even as I continued my education outside of school, and he was on the other end of the line saying, hey, john, we want to make pain-free performance come to life in a mainstream textbook. And naively, I said, hey, let's do it. And then he uh my co-author's name is Glenn Cordoza and Glenn said, hey, let's do it. And then he uh, my coauthor's name is Glenn Cordoza and Glenn said, hey, and I believe so much in your system I've been utilizing your workouts and your training programs and I've been through your education course that I want to co-write this book with you. And I was like man, this is the best news I've ever had.
Speaker 2:Thanksgiving of 2022. I thought I was in for a year and almost three years later, we're coming to a head with the release of Pain-Free Performance. All Places Books Are Sold on October 21st, two years and 11 months since we started this project.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can imagine. I mean it's something like what you told me. It's about 600 pages. I mean that's a thick book.
Speaker 2:It's 574 pages and the reason that I know it's 574, it was that was the absolute cutoff for being able to bind a hardcover book properly without it falling apart. It was more mechanical issue versus a content issue Interesting.
Speaker 1:So do you feel you had to compromise a lot to pack all that valuable knowledge in a book, or were you able to kind of make it more concise?
Speaker 2:I think both Making concessions was a matter of trying to take a system which is tried and true and proven and one of the fastest growing and biggest certification courses in America today, and attempting to make it better make it shorter, make it more concise and make sure that there were no holes inside of the system, because when you teach for 16 hours over a two-day course, there's a lot of different nuances. You have a live audience, you can answer questions, you can go in and give live demos, you can break things down with a little bit more detail according to the interaction that you get in the gym, but when you read a resource like a book, that is an evergreen resource very well that you need to address everything right away, so you don't have any questions.
Speaker 1:Now you have a lot of content on your social media. By the way, if you guys want to check your social media out on Instagram at Dr John Rusin, you have a lot of high quality videos that really depict nicely the mechanics and the purpose of different and various training exercises. But what I love about your page is what actually attracted me. You give, like simple tips, whether it is shedding perspective or light into the why or into the science, as well as motivational ones by simply giving out facts that really by simply giving out facts, that really makes us think and look at exercise in a whole different way.
Speaker 1:So which came first? Did you develop this concept of your book based on what you had been already doing on your social media platform, or was it the other way around? You tried to kind of get little bits and pieces of the knowledge into social media from? Or was it the other way around? You tried to kind of get little bits and pieces of the knowledge into social media from the book, like, was it the chicken or the egg, or how did you do that?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the more interesting origin story is in 2013,. I was over in China working for the Chinese Olympic Committee as a sports performance coach, and I was a coach by trade, so nobody knew my name. I did not Facebook or Instagram or YouTube or any of this stuff, but I found myself in a 13 hour ahead time zone difference so nobody spoke English over at Beijing. Nobody was available for me to speak to back where I was from in America and I was left with all this time and I got this idea that I was like hey, I read so many articles, I'm reading the science and the literature, why not try to write some articles? And I submitted a couple articles to at the time is called testosterone nation t nationcom, and that was like the be all end all. If you were a strength and performance coach, you were publishing your materials over there because it got millions of views back when people used to read long form articles.
Speaker 2:So I got my start writing long form articles and when I talk about is four to 7,000 words multimedia video describing everything that I was doing, and I was simply writing on topics that I was doing on a day to day basis with my performance athletes.
Speaker 2:You know that transitioned over the years to be able to find my niche more in general fitness populations with more of a health and longevity focus. But I saw that those principles remained the same between my sports performance background, now my health and longevity focus, and then, in 2018, started teaching the certification course. Teaching the certification course but the book is the exact curriculum and structure that we teach in our two-day pain-free performance specialist certification course. But with this course, we teach the system of pain-free performance. We teach how to bucket, how to optimize movement and also how to be able to prescribe and program based on goal sets, but also staying healthy and staying functional in the process. So I think that being a specialist as a generalist is more of where I can speak to and I hope that that comes through in social media a little bit more today in 2025, than it has in the past, because I'm used to long form content. The idea of long form content today hurts people's brains, so everything is very quick hitting.
Speaker 2:It's quick hitting lines, it's catchy things, and then I'm a big advocate of practicing what I preach. So many of the different movements or the different workouts that you'll see this isn't staged, like I'm not in a studio, like trying to mass produce this content. That's me I have an hour a day to train between my client work and my family life, and I just take out the tripod and I'm able to show what I'm doing and people can come and join me in doing exactly what I'm doing or forms of it, with coaching and training. So I think that it's almost like a bird's eye view on what's actually happening, not stage, just real life practicing what I preach, because I do believe so much in the model that I couldn't afford to do it, not do it myself.
Speaker 1:Now. At which point? That's very interesting. At which point did you make the connection between exercise and actually longevity or healthspan? I know the concept is not new. The science has been out there, but I feel like today everybody is talking about it. Social media has caused this virality when it comes to exercise and longevity.
Speaker 2:At which point you know in your science I mean, you're obviously a PhD, so you have studied and you have published on this- you have studied and you have published on this, but was this always the case in fitness and in the fitness world was being able to take the best athletes in the world and just ensure that they were healthy, ensure that they were fit and they were excited to go out and be their best at their sport. And I think that that is the opposite of what most people think about sports performance. They think, oh, we're making people jump higher and run faster and be better athletes. You're really not. You're managing somebody who's already great at what they do. And that principle remained true no matter who I worked with. Futuristically, I think, this idea of health and longevity mixing with high-end performance.
Speaker 2:It really came full steam ahead when I was in Southern California working with clients in NFL off-season and I had a quarterback. He was an ex-NFL MVP, he's won Super Bowls, super awesome guy and I worked with him with a little bit of physical therapy, some sports performance and a little bit of personal training, just because he liked to train. And simultaneously I was also working with his wife, who was a mother of three at the time three young kids at home and wanted to be fit and healthy. And I was also working with his wife's mom, his mother-in-law, who was in her 70s at that time. She wanted to live a great life and she wanted to be active and able to do everything that was available for her to do in San Diego, which was surf. She wanted to be able to walk the beach and run around with her grandchildren and she wanted to be fit enough to walk and make sure that she could do the travel schedule of an NFL season, which was 18 weeks long during the regular season.
Speaker 2:So that's a lot of stress on the body. But I looked at everything that we did between the NFL player, his wife and his mother-in-law, and the principles remain the same of hey, they need to be healthy, they need to feel good, they need to have a baseline level of general physical preparedness and then, after we do all that, we're able to actually niche down and get after their particular goal sets, whether that be aesthetics, whether that be a little bit more in terms of a performance realm, more in terms of a performance realm, or simply working on some of their internal health and being able to influence some of their blood markers via the physical training that we were doing in the gym. So the principles were the same. But if you said that you were training an NFL MVP, the same as his wife and his mother-in-law, people would think you're crazy.
Speaker 1:And so can you kind of explain what is more important at different stages in your life when it comes to health and fitness, whether it is muscle mass, agility, flexibility, stages of our lives, considering our age, also considering limitations that our age bring with themselves?
Speaker 2:Well, the concept of lifelong performance really means that from the time that you start to be physically autonomous as a child all the way up into late into your lifespan, we should be able to have core physical characteristics that are maintained in a human movement system that is also maintained throughout that time. That's where we start to get into physical movement health span, and it's very similar from a child all the way up into somebody into their 30s and 40s and all the way into somebody who is working on their seventh or eighth decade on this earth. And these principles still remain the same. But I think that the change of focus is largely dependent on previous level of function and focus, and what I mean by that is if we had neglected things like strength or muscular hypertrophy for the last three or four decades, by the time you're 50 or 60, that becomes a vital concern of your longevity.
Speaker 2:But with the same person or a different example in the same situation in terms of age, if you have somebody that had always been an athlete, they maintain their gym going abilities between their 20s, 30s and 40s.
Speaker 2:They're already starting off really well. Maybe they have great muscle mass, maybe they have great strength levels, and we need to actually hybridize and look at some of their cardiovascular abilities, boosting their base of VO2 or their peak of VO2, or even looking at their mobility and their movement quality or power expressions. So everyone's a little bit different, but I think that there is this big push into the health and wellness industry today which is exercise as medicine, and I'm so ready for that because I've been preaching that my entire career. But I think that there's a big difference between somebody saying I believe in exercise or strength training is the key to longevity and actually taking action with a prescription that is individualized to the specific person, because you and I could be exactly the same age, but I guarantee you that our history is totally different. Our health history, our medical history, our movement history, our injury history is going to likely dictate where we move forward from.
Speaker 1:So I love that, because I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 1:The frustration that many people, my patients in particular, are left with is I feel like it's 2025, we have so much science, there's people like you, but yet people are lost as to where to start, where to go, how to find help and if they go to a local gym using their membership, oftentimes the trainers that are there they don't have the knowledge, don't know how to combine physical therapy with fitness, because most of the patients that I see they're in the middle ages or older.
Speaker 1:They have some nagging injury we're going to talk about what the most common ones are and they're, frankly, scared to exercise because they feel like they're going to aggravate an injury, because it's already hard enough for them to reach for a glass, a cup of water or in the shower like wash their back because of some nagging shoulder injury. And when they're told that they need to go to the gym it's part of their health and longevity they're like look, I don't have the physical ability, I have arthritis or I have knee pain, I have shoulder pain, so therefore I can't go to the gym. Why is it that at 20, 25, there is this confusion and there's this lack of guidance when it comes to this. Probably, I would argue, it's the most important aspect of our health.
Speaker 2:There's a large silo in dogmatic approach when it comes to training, when it comes to nutrition, even sleep and recovery, and it is one method is the best for everything, all the time, for everyone, and that's just simply not true, because many times we'll find fitness professionals in the field today that are lagging professionalism, they're lagging education and they're lagging common sense. We tend to see heavy turnover in personal trainers in our industry today. Almost 90% of personal trainers who start a year personal training will actually leave the profession at the end of the year. So turnover means that you are going to have a vast majority of those fitness professionals that you should be being able to be guided by when you are in a return to training situation. That's somebody that is working with aches, pains, previous injuries or health conditions that are simply mismatched in terms of their interests or their hobbies and what they bring to the table in terms of their training style and the reality of what people actually need in the real world. So I'm a big believer of being able to be well-rounded, being able to be hybridized in terms of your physical capabilities and have that show up in your training program.
Speaker 2:We all know that strength training is great, but not everyone has to become a power lifter in order to train strength. We all know that building muscle is super advantageous for longevity. Muscle is money as we get older, but we don't all need to be a professional bodybuilder. I think that we get so much attention by the spectrum. A freak show will sell, it will get the eyeballs and they'll go, wow, I want to be there someday. Or, man, if I could just get a fraction of the percent closer to what that girl looks like, I'd be doing really well. Therefore, I should do what she does, even if she doesn't do it herself. Very rarely will we have somebody with a really just a mature approach to what training well looks like being able to move well, being able to optimize your movement patterns, be able to layer in things like power, strength, muscle mass, mobility, cardio and conditioning and forms of athleticism and know very well that the gym is a means to living a better life. Being good at exercise has a very limited capability in the real world.
Speaker 1:So what do you feel? How can that be changed? Because I feel, especially now, in the world of social media, like you said, everybody wants to compare themselves with people that have put in the work for many years, but then judging just the end result and trying to find a hack or a shortcut to get there. And by doing so they realize, you know, as they're struggling, they realize, well, I guess it's not for me, because no matter what I do, I can't see any improvement. How do you retrain someone's thought process and mind when approaching fitness in the wrong way?
Speaker 2:It's like that with anything in life. You can compare yourself to a billionaire if you just made your first million dollars and you could feel like an absolute loser. The same could be said looking at fake, ai-based generated physiques online, looking at enhanced booty chicks with different inserts inside of their body that was not necessarily earned in the gym, or looking at certain bros that would make Ronnie Coleman's steroid cycle look calm. So we need to stop comparing ourselves to what I believe is a fake and plastic social media scene. You know we've spent a lot of time on social media and then you go out there in the real world, you go to Target or you go to Walmart or you go to your local grocery store. You're likely the fittest person in that store with hundreds of people and you're like, okay, this is now the real world.
Speaker 2:But I work with my clients all the times in terms of mindset, and especially when it comes to a health and longevity focused.
Speaker 2:Mindset of your health and your fitness has nothing to do with anyone else. It's about you being your most optimal self you looking, feeling and functioning your best, and it's never a comparison game, because no matter what your endeavor is in life, you will never be the best at it, and that's totally fine, because you and your abilities elsewhere are going to be able to really shine bright and it's less of what you look like. And it's less of what you look like and it's less of what you perform like in a snapshot of a five second Instagram reel, and it's more of the level of how you live. Are you physically thriving or are you struggling? I think that answering that question and actually creating some forward moving momentum with the physical practice it gets people's buy in to be able to have this so-called transformation happen not over a six or eight week period, but over a multiple decade period where we start to habituate what we make our life better via doing, which is our training, which is our nutrition and also our other 23 hours of the day lifestyle.
Speaker 1:Now you have an app called unbreakable Is that correct, correct? And? And in that app you give structured guidance when it comes to fitness, fitness nutrition and all of the stuff that make you healthy. Essentially, I want you to tell us how the users can use that as a tool to work towards a goal and how you guys guide them through the app. Because, truthfully, I think we live in a world where people don't have the time to go to a gym for hours and train. I mean, world is fast-paced. If you tell someone that they can do something from home, they're more likely to do it, but then they just need the motivation and drive. That's the other, that's a caveat. Other, that's a caveat. And also, from statistics, from your app, what is the majority of the population that uses the app? Is it like the common gym bro? Is it the middle-aged woman that is trying to get in shape? Are there just athletes and younger folks? Can you kind of explain that and then tell us what the spread there is?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the Unbreakable app. You know it sounds like another app. Oh cool, it's an app with a training program on it, but I worked over a year to create something proprietary for being able to reflect the quality of my programming, my education, and then a holistic health plan. Reflect the quality of my programming, my education, and then a holistic health plan. In my opinion, just going in and exercising without addressing nutrition, lifestyle recovery, it's never going to move the needle in the amount that you want it to. So when we put Unbreakable together, training is our first pillar.
Speaker 2:But training has optionality inside of the app, because we all know that we train different days a week. Maybe one week is different than another. Maybe I'm traveling in Las Vegas right now and I don't have access to my home gym and I'm in a hotel gym. So we have 10 distinct programs that are all ongoing that are brand new for you, every single training block that you can actually pick and choose and create your perfect structure. That could be anywhere from two days per week, full body training, all the way up into six days a week, where you lift heavy on four days and you do high-end VO2 max work and cardio and conditioning on another two days and there's everything in between.
Speaker 2:I think one of the powerful things is about Unbreakable is that you can start layering in what we know to be good, true and effective in terms of your health and longevity.
Speaker 2:So we pick a primary training program which is like, hey, if you do nothing else other than this primary training program, you're going to kill it.
Speaker 2:And then when people get the momentum going and they have a little bit more time, hey, I have 20 more minutes three days a week. They can pull in things like a mobility-emphasized program that they can do in front of their Netflix in chill mode. They can pull in different cardio that they can get their 150 minutes of Zone 2 cardio in, and they can also go at chronic injury and pain points with specific protocols to actually build them back up from a prehabilitative and a rehabilitative perspective. So we'd like to have that first pillar of training really come to life. It's not just following a training program. You can absolutely do that inside of Unbreakable if you'd like but with the assistance of myself and my entire staff, we're able to create optimal solutions for people to be able to work on their prehab work on their mobility, work on their strength and also their conditioning, and we can make this unique to almost every single user now, how do you, how do you guys?
Speaker 1:I know you talk a lot about on your site and on your content that in order to give someone advice as to how they should be training specifically to their body, you have to be able to observe them in motion, observe their mechanics and their posture. All of those things are important because it's not a cookie cutter approach. Not everybody should do the same exercise, the same reps and same motion. How do you do that with your app? Let's say I'm a customer and I'm downloading the app and am I just watching some exercise videos and I just try to do it to my best ability without any feedback? How did you guys crack that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a great question. I'm so glad you asked this, because why we spend five days every month in studio in Las Vegas to work inside of the Unbreakable app is that we not only have demo videos of 3,000 different exercise variants, we have tutorials of all 3,000 different exercise variants. So when you pull in a exercise or a workout from us, no matter what type of plan that you're on, first things first, you'll have a written description of exactly what we want you to do. You'll have me or my staff personally executing the movement on a psych wall, white screen, perfect camera angles to be able to see the mechanics of the movement itself, and then we have a little icon that you can click and go I need a little bit more education on this and you click into the icon and you have a one minute tutorial on exactly how to execute, the things to avoid and the ways to manipulate it in order to make it work for your body, not against your body. And if all else fails, we have optionality in terms of the workout itself. So if you're like man, a trap bar deadlift just doesn't feel awesome today. Boom, you click in another button. You have a B and a C option. Boom, you click in another button, you have a B and a C option. It flips it right out for you and you're able to get into something comfortable to keep on moving through the workout with success and with empowerment, instead of something that leaves you frustrated. And I think that the amount of resources that go into doing 3000 tutorial videos nobody's ever done it before and that's a shining star of Unbreakable because at their roots my staff and myself we are career educators. So even though we're coaching our clients and our members in the Unbreakable app through a training scenario, we also want to educate them.
Speaker 2:Back to the second part of your question who's actually utilizing this app?
Speaker 2:We have a wide array of different avatars that will come in and utilize our app, but a vast majority of people are going to be 40 plus years old and we have an actually 70% women to 30% men split, and I think that our most powerful members are the ones that are looking at resources like yours and saying, hey, I know I need to be strength training, but I don't want to get hurt, I need professional guidance and I need a trusted source that has done a lot of this with people like me, and I think that the 40 plus women who know that they need to take their group training classes or maybe their cardio focused fitness work over the last one or two decades, take it up a notch in terms of being able to strength train.
Speaker 2:That is where we're having the most success right now. It doesn't necessarily mean that we don't have a bunch of gym bros that are super strong and getting huge and lean we do. It doesn't necessarily mean that we don't have young and also extended age people we absolutely do. But the vast majority of our people are training anywhere from three to four days per week and it is a lot of our ladies absolutely coming in there and crushing it.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So pretty much it's for everyone. It depends on what your goal is. Now let's do some scenarios where you know I would say these are the most typical scenarios that I've been confronted with when trying to promote exercise and fitness to my patients, because for me is one of the most important prescriptions that I write for my patients towards their health and longevity, as well as preparing them for their surgeries, as I don't want to take someone into the operating room that is metabolically unhealthy, that is not fit, that is overweight and has significant lack of muscle mass lack of muscle mass. So one of the approaches that I've really utilized is to prepare my patients for surgery, as if I would prepare them for a sports event, whether it could be like marathon or it could be like some sort of a football game, whatever that is, whatever exercise that is.
Speaker 1:So we have a patient. She just had a baby and six months postpartum she says you know what? I'm having trouble losing the baby weight. Where do I start? I have barely any time because I'm busy with the baby and the other children and maybe I'm working. There's no way I have time to exercise. And now that person is spiraling down and doesn't even know how to get out. What would you, john, suggest that patient or that person to start?
Speaker 2:John suggest that patient or that person to start Time is always going to be the self-perceived limiting factor that a vast majority of people will make an excuse from. I use the word excuse pretty leanly.
Speaker 1:It is an excuse because you don't know, you don't have a solution. So in the real sense, when we look at it as an excuse, but from a person's perspective, is helplessness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so part of being a great personal trainer and fitness professional is being able to navigate the psychology and the emotions that go into being able to habituate a new health practice, and that professional ability to be able to navigate this spectrum is what makes or breaks a coach being able to help the fringe, which is essentially a vast majority of people coming in, just like this example that we're talking about. But I do believe that there are entry point levels of activity that can be a catalyst for future activity. Do I believe that being able to walk 20 to 30 minutes a day versus no minutes per day is better? Absolutely. I think that's a catalyst to change. I think that's a behavior stack. I think that's something that can lead to stepping through the doors of actually periodized, progressive training.
Speaker 2:I also think that one of the limiting factors is that people have a misconception of the actual time that it takes to move the needle in terms of their goal sets. They look at, again, instagram. They look at YouTube, they look at these influencers that spend three, four hours in the gym a day, and that's just not practical for anyone that I work with. It's not practical for myself. I do this for a living.
Speaker 1:And I can tell you right now it's not necessary.
Speaker 2:My clients will never train more than 75 minutes per session and they will never train more than six sessions per week. The vast majority will train two to three days per week, around 45 minutes, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, in two and a half hours per week I can actually start working towards losing fat, gaining muscle, getting out of pain and extending my health span. Now we're talking because people's conception of what they thought was necessary was probably around 10 or 12 hours. So when we actually break it down, hey, what does your schedule look like? That's the first thing that I ask many of my clients is what can we 110% commit to in terms of a frequency per week and also a duration per time per week? And we start there and we maximize every single second that they invest in working with me, and that very, very quickly turns into hey, I have a couple more minutes, hey, I have another day. And this creates the momentum that we're talking about in terms of a long-term health practice and exercise being a cornerstone of a lifestyle.
Speaker 2:But I would say that for her, we need to be able to define what not having time actually is being able to feed the time that she does have into investing it into the highest yield areas of being able to move the needle for her and then also for her specifically making sure that she doesn't do too much too quick, because those are the two mistakes I see people make hey, if I can't do everything, I'm going to do nothing. Or you know what? I'm so sick of feeling like shit. I'm going to go in seven days per week, two hours per day, and I'm going to do the ice cube diet until something works, and neither are good and then get hurt. That's the spectrum, and then get hurt. So we want to always balance this pendulum and many times we find ourselves right in the middle is where people will have success.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's beautifully said and I think most people are either on one side or the other side. They either do nothing or they overdo it. And I love this idea of stackable and incremental additions and improvements in your exercise. You know, just 10 minutes is better than zero minutes. Heck, one minute is better than zero minutes. And to just look at your own individual progress rather than looking at an outcome and then get yourself frustrated, or you know, it's kind of like you're standing in front of a mountain and wondering how you can climb it, just start walking. Like you're standing in front of a mountain and wondering how you can climb it, just start walking Right. Second scenario a middle-aged man has nagging shoulder pain. Could be part of an old flare-up of a rotator cuff or partial labrum tear. Went to the surgeon, said it's not significant enough for surgery.
Speaker 1:Just do RISE, meaning rest ice and you know, and here, by the way, maybe take some diclofenac or some ibuprofen and, you know, take it easy, whatever that means. But that person feels like he wants to do more and he wants to be able to do the exercises he used to do. And as his fitness is suffering as a result of lack of mobility and exercising because of the pain, he doesn't know what to do or where to start.
Speaker 2:Well, fun fact is that amongst the active pop, by the way, today, yeah by the way, that was me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's why I laughed.
Speaker 2:I was like yeah, yeah, yeah, somebody. Um, fun fact active population. In america today, the number one chronic pain point is the shoulder. It's actually surpassed chronic, generalized lower back pain. I can attest to that.
Speaker 2:This is very serious and I have to imagine that you have some postural stresses that are happening just due to your profession and the amount of time that you spend over patients. So we have these lifestyle factors that we need to go in and not treat like they don't matter. I think that that's a very popular thing to do today. Everyone's all the same. If you want to look like this, if you want to function like this, this is the plan.
Speaker 2:But what if you're a surgeon? What if you're spending 25 or 30 hours a week hunched over, being able to operate on another human being and give them back life? You know, like I have many of my clients that are physicians and surgeons that are standing on a daily basis in positions that would be like, oh my God, like I can't believe you can stand there for 10 minutes, let alone eight to 10 hours in the surgical suite. So I think that identifying factors in the other 23 hours of the day is the starting point. That's the low-hanging fruit that we can make some.
Speaker 2:Even if we don't make any restoration during that time that you're in these positions, we can at least call them out as real and then we can start to train to reverse these chronic daily postures and be able to have that as a core construct of the way that we center the programming. Now everyone's positions are different, but I think that as the decades pass, more and more we have chronic stress disorders that are bringing us more forward, more rounded, and we have more of a forward head position, more internally rotated at the shoulders and simply deactivated when it comes to our anterior core and our posterior gluten-hamstring complex. So getting people out of those positions or reversing those positions, that is one of the things that I like to do almost right away. Think about digging a ditch of deep, dark positions that we don't.
Speaker 1:I feel like I have to correct my posture here, but it's not about that.
Speaker 2:You know that's another misconception. It's like, hey, oh, I need. You know, teachers have been doing that for a hundred years in school and my son still slouches in his desk Like it's always going to happen. It's what we actively train, mindfully in the gym to reverse these positions, to actually get stronger, to build muscle armor, to build stability and be able to actually enhance the way that the body is moving. So I tend to have somebody like you audit their body maintenance, their daily body maintenance. What are you doing right now in order to get yourself out of shoulder pain? And that question is usually like nothing, or I'm trying to stretch a little bit. I'm trying to stretch that a little bit, and then every time I see that we have a huge opportunity there.
Speaker 2:I'm a big believer in running a protocol called the six phase dynamic sequence.
Speaker 2:A six phase dynamic sequence is essentially a protocol that has soft tissue work, stretching, corrective exercise, activation drills, movement pattern, pattern prepping and then also central nervous system stimulation to lock in our new motor skills, and it only takes about 10 minutes.
Speaker 2:That is an absolute game changer for somebody who's working with chronic shoulder pain or chronic pain in any region or location, because the more that we start to fine-tune our machine, the more that we actually get exposure to new things and we're able to actually get into new positions that are hopefully a little bit more pain free, even without touching what your actual training program looks like.
Speaker 2:So for my clients, being able to do 10 minutes of active daily body maintenance per day is a non-negotiable. That only takes a foam roller, your body weight, a band and maybe a light dumbbell and you can do it from your living room, you could do it from your bedroom, you could do it in the warmup area of the gym, or I have doctors, I have lawyers, I have people doing it from their office, and I think that's super cool because when you feel good after the six-phase dynamic warm-up protocol, you're more likely to stick with it and that's how, again, you can start stacking these habits to be able to have a compounding effect of maintaining your body with your own autonomy, and so how do you assess that?
Speaker 1:Let's say, I signed up, which, by the way, I'm super intrigued.
Speaker 1:I'm actually going to sign up right now because, honestly, I have looked around a lot and just tried it on my own because I wasn't able to find real help.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I did because I was frustrated I'm like, well, I can't just not do anything. I got to do something and I just used principles to try to strengthen my weak muscles, which were my back muscles and then my shoulder muscles, and just slowly exercise and train them to the point that it wouldn't aggravate the pain and basically I did baby steps until the muscles actually gained some bulk and got stronger and then, slowly, my shoulder pain went away. But one of the things that and it took me two years to do that, by the way, wow, I just because I didn't know any better, I didn't know about your app, I didn't know about you, and so it was very tough and I had to actually stop playing tennis from activities that promote repetitive movements, like tennis or, you know, the typical sports that we used to play when we were younger, because then we're more prone to injuries. Is that true or is that like a myth. Could that be mitigated through the exercises that you advocate, or is this kind of? Is there a truth?
Speaker 2:I don't believe that there's any truth to that and, honestly, I take personal offense to a recommendation like that, because when you look at getting into your older years, what are the people that you know that are in their 50s, 60s and 70s doing that are physically thriving? They're the ones over at Lifetime playing pickleball and tennis. They're the ones swimming. They're the ones biking, they're the ones golfing. They're the ones in the gym doing training.
Speaker 2:And to say that we should refrain from leisure activity that is physical is a little bit ridiculous or repetitive that promote repetitive motions on joints, or yeah all those things that I just mentioned are repetitive uh, motions on joints, swinging a golf club, swinging the pickleball or a tennis racket, swimming is a big one, and those are all very promotional of long-term health. But the caveat will be do you have the hardware aka the body and do you have the hardware aka the body and do you have the software aka the motor skill and the ability to perform these movements without compensating, without actually putting your body in an advantageous position to stay healthy? And that's where training comes in. A lot of my clients they're looking to train so they can go in and they can dominate the rest of their life. They want to go in and they want to go in on Sunday and they can dominate the rest of their life. They want to go in and they want to go in on Sunday and play three to four hours of pickleball. You can't just jump in and do that if you've never done it and if you're out of shape and if you have no exposure on the tissues. That's why you train every week.
Speaker 2:My mom, she trains twice per week with handpicked personal trainers over the last 10 years that I've set her up with in New York and Florida and she does that, so she can go out and golf three days a week.
Speaker 2:She can ride bikes the other two days a week and when she walks Italy she can fit 25,000 steps in without pain, injuries or repercussions. So this is the thing that we talk about with a health fitness, a health forward fitness solution versus hey, let's get bigger or hey, let's just lose fat. No, let's unlock your ability to do whatever the heck you want to do and not wake up the next morning hurt, injured and regretting it. So I think that a lot of what we have at our disposal needs to be a more individual context, with individual context, but, that being said, if you haven't taken care of yourself, individual context but, that being said, if you haven't taken care of yourself. There's a rebuilding phase that you need to do in order to get fit enough and in order to expose your body and your movement patterns enough to be able to withstand the stress of some of these repetitive sports and repetitive movements. It is earned in the gym to be able to go out and perform outside of the gym.
Speaker 1:Love that. So to you, what are the two biggest wastes of time when it comes to fitness? What would you see people are doing, and that's why they're not getting any results.
Speaker 2:Well, with the popularization, I will say, of strength training, especially amongst women's population, I think that the idea that I just have a weight in my hand is automatically deemed strength training. A lot of people are wasting their time. They're kind of women's population. I think that the idea that I just have a weight in my hand is automatically deemed strength training. A lot of people are wasting their time. They're kind of doing busy work with their weights and they're never actually stimulating for a physical adaptation to get them stronger, to build muscle, to be able to protect tendons or to be able to optimize the neural link between the brain and body connection which allows us to learn new motor skills. They're essentially going through the motion with weights. This is commonly done where, to give the example, if somebody is doing a single-arm dumbbell row and they are going in and they have a 20-pound dumbbell and they do it for 10 reps, because three sets of 10 is always the best, so says the science from 70 years ago, which is not true and she's 30 reps away from failure, but she does three sets of 10 with a 20 pound dumbbell. That's essentially just like movement. It's not strength training, it's not hypertrophy training, it's not mobility training. It's not power training, it's really just nothing. It's just general movement and I think a lot of people that are wanting to do good, they're just falling away from the principles of adaptation.
Speaker 2:And the principles of adaptation means that if you want to get strong, you need to train close to failure. In terms of your rep ranges, you want to get to the point where you can almost not do another quality rep. When the goal is to build muscle, we need to get some certain fatigue factor and there's a minimal effective dose of overall volume or workload that we need to get into the system in order for you to adapt. If we want to gain more mobility, we need to get into end ranges and we need to spend the time and the energy in those end ranges in order to open up the brain, to give us access to them. And if we're working on power, we need to be moving fast enough to have the brain-body connection be able to be adaptable, to accelerate and decelerate from a protective and a performance perspective. Just doing everything all the same slow and underloaded that's probably the number one mistake that I see.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So, and again, that's something that I would say 80%, if not more, of my patients I talk to, that's exactly what they're doing. When I asked them if they exercise, like yeah, and then I asked them so what exactly are you doing? Are you doing strength training? Are you doing aerobics? What are you doing? It's like, oh, I'm doing everything, I run, I do weightlifting.
Speaker 1:And then when you dive a little deeper, that's what it comes down to and you're like you're not doing anything and I think it's hard to reprogram people's mindsets and perception as to what exercise actually means compared to what they think it means, and there is a huge disconnect partly because of, like you said, way outdated routines and recommendations from the past that haven't been really updated in people's minds.
Speaker 2:Well, I think we simplify this very well in pain-free performance, on top of being able to define the six physical characteristics, which are power, strength, hypertrophy, cardio and conditioning, mobility and athleticism. We simplify this for our clients. We go hey, you're going to get these six feels in every training session that you'll do with me, whether it's inside of my one-on-one programming, whether it's working with me inside of unbreakable app. We want you to move fast. Move fast as a one specific exercise. We want you to move fast. Move fast as one specific exercise. We want you to train heavy and strain a heavy weight like, wow, I'm empowered that I just picked up that weight and I did it awesome.
Speaker 2:We want you to feel a pump for hypertrophy, like blood flow into the tissues.
Speaker 2:We want you to feel the heart rate elevate in terms of cardio and conditioning. We want you to feel a stretch when it comes to mobility and we want to have you feel like an athlete, relive your athletic background or create a new athletic future by actually moving your body through space, connecting your upper body, your lower body and core and focusing on rotation and lateralization. So if we can get all six of those fields and then we can stack a really nice prehabilitative warm-up and a nice focused cool-down in terms of central stimulation being reduced and parasympathetic recovery being enhanced. That's what a perfect training day looks like, and I think people can get behind that. They're like, okay, move fast, then move heavy, and then get a pump, get my heart rate up and then relax and recover. That makes sense and I think a lot of those bucketing items people can have success with. But when they're left with the question of what should I do? Or trying to Frankenstein different Instagram posts together into one workout, you're never going to have great success.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally agree. Well, is there any exercise or any test that can predict your lifespan or longevity, as people say? Is there a test that one can do to see where they're at? And I think a lot of the stuff that we do and recommend has to be goal-oriented, and so you know your baseline and you know what to work towards. That would be a great motivator.
Speaker 2:I do believe that there are specific metrics that can be met. There's not one single test I think a lot of people like to perseverate on, like oh, grip strength off of a dynamometer is the largest predictor of health and longevity. It's like, is there anything less functional than just sitting your arm down to the side with a dynamometer and squeezing your hand? Like what does that translate to? There's no movement. It's an isometric.
Speaker 2:I know I mean they use it as a proxy and I don't know where that came from, to be honest, but if we want to deep dive in and we're actually looking at this we need specific protocols and method metrics to be able to do power, strength, body composition with hypertrophy, and we need to look at VO2 max. We need to look at base cardiovascular abilities, we need to look at mobility in terms of stretch tests and we also need to have somebody do some sort of agility testing in terms of their athleticism. And you put those six things together, we don't do a ton of this. I'm being quite honest with you. My clients will go through and they'll do body composition testing. We'll see clear metrics of their strength increasing. We'll see their mirror test get better, aka their muscle mass is going up, their body fat's going down, they'll be able to move better, enhancing their athleticism and their power.
Speaker 2:But I'm not a huge believer in strict standardized testing, because there's one of two scenarios that are going to happen when somebody goes through something like that that I do a handful of times a year. Hey, uh, man, I really suck disempowering. I feel like I want to quit. Second thing is, especially with body composition testing, you'll see that a ton People will quit right there and then after their DEXA. And then the second thing is is that they will start really focusing in on one thing. That means nothing. We've all seen it where people are only focused on the scale weight and they lose muscle mass and they lose their ability to be a real functioning human being. But the scale went down like yay.
Speaker 2:So, they really focus in on the less opportune things. So even when people actually do test in many of these different areas, usually it's not good enough. Somebody like me will test and I'll be like should have lost 3% body fat. I only lost 2% of the last day, it's never good enough so you get those people as well.
Speaker 2:I'm a big believer that, as long as everything's moving in the right direction, that is the biggest thing to longevity. Because testing every four weeks or every four months or every year or, you know, twice a year, are you going to do that for the next 30 years? I don't think so.
Speaker 2:I think, that sometimes you need to get people past the hump and then we need to habituate the practice. Once we do that, then there's markers in times where somebody has a unique goal. Hey, I have this unique goal I want to go in and do high rocks. Okay, we're going to get some data on you. Hey, I want to go in and I want to be as lean as possible because it's my wedding. Okay, we're going to get some data on you. Hey, I'm starting to coach my son's youth basketball and I don't want to get hurt out there on the court. Hey, we're going to get some athletic performance metrics on you. But very rarely across the board does somebody need a conglomerate of all these tests all at once. I think it's just too much, too quick and it's a disempowering style of getting started.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love the way you look at it, because you hear these conflicting things. Some people say do this. Some people say to that, you know, in case of DEXA scan that you just mentioned, you know some say, like it's, it could be a great motivator when someone doesn't understand the difference between BMI and body composition. And it could be a great motivator when someone doesn't understand the difference between BMI and body composition. And it could be a great motivator to show them look, you have lack of muscle mass and too much adiposity, even though from externally you don't look too bad. But then it depends on the person. The caveat is that someone getting too fixated or, like you said which I was actually surprised to hear that they stop altogether. Do you have a story where that happened? Can you tell us why that is? Because that's something I had never considered. I had never thought of it.
Speaker 2:Self-defeating prophecy happens very, very often. So people go in. They're thinking that they're putting in all this effort, which is going from zero to being able to be multiple days a week in the gym, watching what you eat, tracking it on an app, maybe trying to get in bed. They feel like their whole lifestyle is disrupted. And then they go in and they do their in-body score or their DEXA scan and they're envisioning something that's not in reality in their life. They think that, hey, I'm going to lose 10% body fat this month because I'm doing all the things and boom, it hits.
Speaker 2:It's a little bit of progress and it's not what they expected and it has nothing to do with the test. That has everything to do with the psychology of the person, because they have uprooted their entire lifestyle and they expect more. And I see this time and time again that it's like, hey, if this is what it takes, I thought I was doing it and I'm not Giving. An example that's actually pretty close to me is that my mom, super fit, 75-year-old, trains twice a week heavy strength and conditioning, is active seven days per week, looks probably 15 20 years younger than she actually is. Optimal health eats, well limits. Alcohol isn't on any medications like killing it killing it like I wouldn't expect.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't expect anything less. Uh being uh your you know having a you know that would be. That speaks to a lot of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So she is killing it. She couldn't be doing any better and she couldn't be doing any more even in terms of supplementation. I have her working with one of our concierge positions. Everything's on point, and she goes into her primary care provider and I can't even remember why she ended up at a DEXA. But she ended up at a DEXA and now, all of a sudden, her hips have early onset osteoporosis and I'm sitting there and I'm like, okay, this doesn't matter, because what's the fix? What is the fix? Well, they said I need to be weight training. You are. They said I need to be eating a more high-protein diet, you are. So you're doing everything. And my mom is really struggling mentally with hey, I have this thing now and I didn't know I had it before.
Speaker 1:I'm already doing really well, she's labeling herself now she's labeling herself as osteoporotic and fragile, and that's really disempowering.
Speaker 2:It's disempowering and it can mess with people's flow. So I do believe that obviously there are medical conditions and there's physical conditions that we need to gain diagnostics on in terms of monitor the best possible course of action with multi methods and modes. But there's also, if there's not a problem, let's not go out and create one, and I think a lot of people that are coming in for these more robust assessments they're trying to create barriers, roadblocks, problems, when they aren't necessarily struggling with it. Again, just to reiterate, the only time that I go in and start looking at some of these deeper diving assessments is at a needs basis, it's not an automatic onset.
Speaker 1:Interesting. That's very true. I see it even in my profession a lot, where people like to label themselves and then beat themselves up, where I have to tell them hey, don't worry, relax, you're making it way worse than it is. This is the only reason why I mentioned it, because I'm obligated to, but it has no relevance. You're fine and uh, it's. It's a double-edged sword because at the same time, you're trying to um, show the patient, uh, where they started off at, and um, how much progress they've made, so you can use these tools as metrics, but at the same time, you run into this issue. So it is a double-edged sword.
Speaker 2:On the flip side of this conversation, though, I do have people check in every single week, and these are the things that I'm most interested in. What does the mirror test look like? Are you looking in the mirror and saying, yep, I can see progress? That matters a lot Mentally, physically, emotionally. Perception yeah. What does your performance look like at your job and with your family? Are you performing well or are you falling off? How's your sleep been? Are you sleeping well or are you struggling with your sleep?
Speaker 2:How would you rate your nutrition this week? Zero to 10 subjective scale? What is your motivation to continue to train and eat well? Are you on path? Are you feeling good about the process or are you falling stagnant a little bit? And finally, do you feel like everything across the span of what you're doing in your life is getting better via the work that we're doing together? That's what matters for me, that's what matters for my clients, and those are the types of things that are going to keep people active and healthy for a lifetime, because they feel good, because they look good, because they function and because they're happy. And those things you can never put a test on, it's like, but you want to be monitoring those on a weekly basis so you can get out in front of people's problems before they become a barrier to continuing to move forward I love the, the way you put it and the way you ask these questions, because isn't that, at the end of the day, why we're doing all of this?
Speaker 1:I mean, of course, if we're not training training, at least I can speak for myself I'm not training for the olympics, but the very questions that you ask. That's why we should be doing this, and I think a lot of people lose perspective during the process and then beat themselves up as if they're not going to be selected for the next Olympics, and it's very demoralizing.
Speaker 2:To personalize this a little bit. The reason that I train is because I, at this point, love training. I've trained for the last almost 30 years and it's part of my life, and it's been part of my life as a strong cornerstone for as long as I can remember. But take away my profession, take away my coaching, take away my education, I would still train every single day because it makes me a better father, makes me a better husband, makes me a better business owner, gives me more energy and it allows me to be at my best mentally, physically and emotionally every single day.
Speaker 2:And once you unlock the ability to feel your best, there's no going back. That's why creating this momentum forward to be able to have this feeling for your clients, that's what locks them in for life. These are the types of behaviors that can span a lifespan and create healthspan. It's being able to see holistically what this is doing for you. It's not one or two metrics, it's your entire life, because at the end of the day, we just want to be living our best and our most highly functioning and happy life, and for me, I know that I just wouldn't be the person that I want to be without this as a cornerstone.
Speaker 1:I think what you just mentioned is the effects on brain exercise and effects on brain. It's way underrated and they've even done studies where they compared it to antidepressants and they outdid antidepressants by 80%, and I think it's a part that's probably not mentioned enough or underestimated. The value on mental health, which then has an effect, like you mentioned in your work, in your personal life and your personal just mental health as well as physical. It's one of the most underrated aspects of exercising and I totally agree with you. I've exercised my entire life since I was I don't know since, I remember, since I was in middle school, and I never skipped more than one or two weeks, and the only reason why I skipped one or two weeks is because I was in bed with the flu. But when I went somewhere where I didn't have access to gym and I didn't have access to my own gym or couldn't go to someone else's gym I even used gallons of milk and pushups and squats I had to do something.
Speaker 1:And now, thinking back, it was more for the mental aspect of it. The endorphins and the dopamine hit that. I was just used to them up to the point that they turn into or become a habit, where then you don't have to force yourself, is probably the most important thing of getting someone into the gym and changing their lifestyle that doesn't know or thinks that it's impossible. This is only for athletes or for gym buffs, it's for everybody.
Speaker 2:It's for everybody. It's for everybody.
Speaker 1:And I love how you're trying to bring it scientifically to the everyday person, whether it's a mom that just had a baby through someone like me, middle-aged who has been struggling because of some nagging injuries, and older people like your mom in their 70s, to maintain them fit. And I think if there's one thing that can make us healthier, that if there's one thing that can make us not only physically healthier but also mentally healthier, it's exercise, and it's one of the most underrated prescriptions that, as doctors, we prescribe to our patients, and I'm so grateful for people like you that are out there that don't just talk about it but bring it to us in the practical sense that we're used to using this device here and can literally start tomorrow. I could tell you one thing I'm going to put that to test and I'll just touch back with you in a month and I would love to share you my feedback. But I'm personally super excited to see how it can move the needle for me personally and excited that there is at least a solution out there that can move the needle, and I really have to applaud to you taking putting in this effort.
Speaker 1:I know how much it takes to do what you're doing. I have been a content creator for a long time. I'm currently writing a book and I know how much work it is. My book is going to be half the size of your book. But look, we need passionate people like you and I don't have any doubt in my mind that people will be successfully using your tools simply because of the passion you have for what you're doing and the science you put in there. So, really, kudos, and I want to really thank you from the bottom of my heart to find time in your busy schedule to just chat with me on this podcast, because this is one of the most integral parts of what I'm trying to promote in my podcast and to my patients.
Speaker 2:It's my pleasure and I really look forward to having you inside of Unbreakable. We will document your progress and I'm happy to have you as part of the community.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me Definitely a customer, john, and thanks for coming on my show. Thanks so much, Daria. Thanks for having me again.
Speaker 2:Appreciate it, john, and thanks for coming on my show. Thanks so much, daria. Have a great one, and thanks for having me again.
Speaker 1:Appreciate it, John. Have a good one. All right guys. Episode's over. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Dr John Rusin. If you want to look him up and learn more about what he does, go on Instagram at Dr D-R-J-O-H-N-R-U-S-I, Instagram at drjohnrusin. And don't forget to leave me a review on your podcast platform of choice. And until next time, bye-bye, Bye.