[00:00:00] Jarlo: Hey, everyone. Welcome to GMB Fitness Autonomy Show. My name is Jarlo Ilano, one of the co-founders of GMB fitness. I'm here with my partner in crime, Mr. Andy Fossett, and we're talking about minor injuries, what they are, how to work through them. What does that mean for you? And all of that stuff.

How to Define ‘Minor’

[00:00:20] Andy: So I think one of the most important things to set as context here, is what is a minor injury. Because a lot of people are going to have different ideas around this so what are we going to set our terms here is what's minor? What's an injury versus an inconvenience or soreness or something?

[00:00:38] Jarlo: Right, right. And this is is hard because it totally depends on your background. That whole sports thing of are you injured or you just hurt? 

[00:00:48] Andy: I've sprained an ankle. It was like, "Oh, just shake it out.”

[00:00:51] Jarlo: Right. All of this sort of toxic masculinity, bullshit pain thing, which is true. It's absolutely true. It's so bad. But that's an extreme thing, right? It's an extreme thing and it's also not right, but it's also not that wrong. Because it all depends on your reaction to it. Pain is super complex, but if we frame it around some very kind of objective things, that seem subjective, but they are objective.

So most of the time when people think of minor versus major, you would think, oh, how severe is the pain? How massive is the pain? That it's obvious and it's true, but it's also something maybe it hurts so badly right away. And we've all experienced that. You stub your toe or you bang your funny bone, you bang the ulnar nerve nerve and it's killer. feel like you're going to die in that minute. But then, a few minutes later...

[00:01:48] Andy: The minute ends.

[00:01:49] Jarlo: Yeah, it ends. So that's the distinction. And I think that's something, again, it's not trite or saying, "Oh, just walk it off." It's just, we all have experienced it. Or even something that's really major. I think I told you about this example. I remember I was grappling, it was BJJ, and I did it to myself.

I was trying to pass a half guard, I was clamped on I twisted my own knee and I thought I broke my own knee off. It was that bad. And it was a quick twist to the knee. And obviously a ligament got janged up and it was literally the worst pain I've had. It was, but then for whatever reason, five minutes later, I was like, "Oh, I didn't kill myself."

So it's the severity, but there's also, how long does it last? And you can tell that, you break a bone, it's fricking sore as hell and it's sore as hell a few hours later. 

[00:02:44] Andy: It's sore a few days later. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:02:48] Jarlo: So it's a combination of the severity plus duration. You have to put it on that. So you judge how painful it is the next day or two or a few hours after, and this is where it's a little bit subjective because again, pain is all relative. Since it's a relative within yourself, you have this kind of inter-rater reliability.

You can judge it for yourself. We're all adults and we've gone through pains and we've gone through injuries, gone through hurts. And so you have to judge it for yourself. And that's a big part of what we say all the time. What is this introspection? Look back on your training.

It's not just look back on your training for the days. Look back on your training and how does that compare to the week before the month, the years gone by. This is where it's really important in real life, not just training, but because pain is so complex. It's not just you're hurt, your tissue is scarred and all that stuff. It's much more than that. Another thing too, is that if it's been longer than a few weeks and it's nagging, where it's like, it hurts, it bugs me, you're still able to do stuff throughout your day. 

That's another thing. How impactful is it on your day? 

[00:04:03] Andy: I was going to say it that's actually a thing that needs to be thought of is this pain something that is going to prevent you from doing things you need to do.

[00:04:12] Jarlo: Right. Exactly. 

[00:04:13] Andy: Does it hurt so much that you can't put weight on your leg, for example? 

[00:04:16] Jarlo: Right. Exactly. 

[00:04:17] Andy: Right or is it ignorable? But then also how long can you ignore it before weeks go by and you really shouldn't be ignoring pain that long.

[00:04:28] Jarlo: We can go into the nitty gritty of it and there's so many technical terms like there's irritability, right? There's these things. Yes, it's painful, but will it flare up if you just do one thing and then it's just you're dead for a week.

[00:04:43] Andy: And you can just avoid moving that way forever until 

[00:04:47] Jarlo: Right.

[00:04:48] Andy: You can't. 

[00:04:48] Jarlo: That's the sensitivity part of it but then there's the other one where, there's lots of people with chronic pain syndrome or fibromyalgia and all these other types of things where they don't ever have a moment without pain. it's true. They don't. And we're not saying they ignore the pain or do that, but they figure out a way, not to live with it, but to do what they need to do what they can.

And then this is one thing that was really interesting in that it was a person that's an expert in this and she has it herself. And I forget her name. I'm going to have to put it in the notes and whatever, where she goes, " What's worth it to you to have that flare up?"

And it's sorta that values thing we were talking before. That's all kind of chronic big, but the minor stuff. It's the pornography. 

[00:05:36] Andy: Yeah, let's define it. 

[00:05:37] Jarlo: It's the pornography. Let's define it. It when you see it, but that's what it is. How does it impact your day? What is it stopping you from doing? What is the severity over time that will take you from minor to major? 

[00:05:51] Andy: Right and one more thing that I would add and this comes into it later, but is there a risk of furthering the damage? 

[00:05:58] Jarlo: Yeah, that's a good one. And this is what we mean in the beginning with like how stupid it is to say, "Oh, just walk it off." Or, "are you really that hurt?" Sometimes you don't know. And it takes time and it takes a little bit of knowledge. 

[00:06:12] Andy: You have to calibrate. 

[00:06:13] Jarlo: Yeah that's hopefully what we can provide.

[00:06:15] Andy: So there's our classic definition that doesn't really define things, but I think that it guardrails that anyone listening to this probably can look back on their own experiences and say, yeah, bumped into that one or I've I felt things where it hurt but I was okay because I knew that I could still do the things I needed to do or whatever. 

As we go into more examples and things later, it'll refine this. That's a good enough working definition is something where the severity isn't "subjectively" too much. And the duration also is not too much. And so if we're looking then at how to train with, the idea is that you're training for some purpose to make yourself better at something to get stronger, get better at a sport or something, or just be healthier.

Why It’s Important to Keep Moving

[00:07:03] Andy: So how important is it for you to continue training while you are still in pain? This is where a lot of the crux come down to is just like you were saying, is how important is it? Is it worth it? 

[00:07:18] Jarlo: Exactly. Is it worth it? There's a couple of different ways you can look at it too. If you're just straight up, ask me how important is it to train while you're injured or hurt or in pain? I would say it's 100% important. You just have to do it, but then the nuance is how much, what does that mean for you?

Because it's not zero. Don't do anything at all. Or just do what you've done before. That is the wrong way to do it. Each thing is equally wrong, right? Each thing is equally wrong. You can look at it even just like straight up physiologically. You have to train while you're doing it because that's important for healing. 

It's the classic lab rat example,where they injured the rats, I think it was ligaments, and then they stop them from doing anything, probably casted them or whatever. And they had other ones that were put through, I'm always imagining rats hooked up to some weird machine where their just like moving their leg.

[00:08:20] Andy: Rats on the leg press.

[00:08:22] Jarlo: It is true though. They have all these things, but anyway, it's the ones that did nothing. Yes, they healed, but then the way our body works is it needs forces and it needs all the physics of force and movement to heal correctly. If you don't, core scarring, there's all types of things. And that's for a straight up cut ligament or cut muscle or whatever, but it's fully true that range of motion exercise. keeping your circulation going even mentally. 

If you are active and doing stuff you like, to stop cold turkey, that's bad for you. bad for you. You just know it, and then there's all this other stuff, moderate aerobic activity, decreasing pain response, being too careful can put you on the road to chronic issues because then you start to perseverate on it. All this stuff. 

So the simple thing to say yes, it's super important. You need to find a way to keep moving. 

[00:09:25] Andy: Yes we should also probably define that a little bit is just say that what we're talking about here is to train while injured is you need to be active and you need to be stimulating your whole body in general, but also especially any injured areas need stimulation for a lot of reasons to be able to heal. 

But what we're not talking about is you have broken your arm and continue doing bicep curls. So that's where you have to say, okay, now maybe you are entering a world's biggest bicep competition and you've been training for this for 12 years. And it's super, super important to you to win this. Is it really important enough to possibly permanently damage your broken arm? This is of course a really extreme example, right? 

Both of these things sound really important, but this is not the situation most of us find ourselves in. And I think that this is where we have to be really honest with ourselves. If we are just training for better fitness, for better health and we are injured, how important is it for us to continue with the same training for the duration of the healing, to heal a minor injury, because by definition, minor is probably not going to take weeks and weeks to heal, right? 

[00:10:43] Jarlo: Exactly. And this is stuff people have talked about this before. If you hurt your arm, that means you can get on the bicycle. If you hurt your knee, you can still do upper body stuff. actually a simplification too, because now what you've done is just ignored the thing and " Oh, I'm going to keep going."

The smart way to do it is to adjust things around what just happened. So the body as a whole type of thing, this is what I'm talking about with the holistic thing. Let's just say, for example, you hurt your knee, it's minor. You're on a program where you want to do lots of pistols, do a lot of shrimp squats, do lots of jumping. 

And it's hard. You were doing good. And you're about to peak or whatever. You were doing great. 

[00:11:26] Andy: Well, you're making progress and you feel good. And then you're like, "Ugh, crap!" 

[00:11:31] Jarlo: Right. So, one thing is people would go, "Now you can go on the upper body and just beat the hell, beat yourself up that way." So you're trying to transfer energy to something totally different. That's the wrong way to do it. That's not holistic kind of training.

So I think that's a good example. Another thing is, and I think you had mentioned this before, like okay, you hurt your ankle that "Well, that means I can still do handstand stuff." What happens if you mess up and you--

[00:12:00] Andy: Fall and put the leg down. 

[00:12:01] Jarlo: You fall and put them leg down that you normally would because that's what you do. Don't try to substitute the same level of intensity for something else and ignore what you've hurt. That's the wrong way to Again, that's just just as bad as saying, fuck it. I'm not going to do shit for weeks. And it's about knowing yourself. I had the same kind of thing. Like I told you this too, right? I was layering lots of these kind of lifting cycles, I have eight weeks. I got six weeks and I was doing it right.

The pandemic. I was like, yeah. And then this last one, I was feeling beat up. Something happened in my hip. I was like, "Okay. I only got six more weeks." And then I stopped myself. I'm like six weeks. 

[00:12:43] Andy: Six weeks for what? 

[00:12:43] Jarlo: I ain't got nothing. Yeah, I'm not going to be in the Olympics. I'm not going to be in whatever. And so that kind of just the light bulb went off. Like, I can stop this right now. I stop this right now. And it's been a couple months and I changed it around and now I'm fine. But I wouldn't have been fine. 

[00:13:01] Andy: Well, and I think that this is a thing that is true for most of us, but you, know, you're a physical therapist. You've been coaching people for years and you still had have this of epiphany to realize it was okay to not push yourself into this state. You were going to keep going anyway of stood back and looked at it. 

[00:13:20] Jarlo: Because it's like what you said earlier. I was doing good. I had done it before. I wasn't like just starting. This was about nine months of progressive stuff. All right, 10 months of doing different things. And I was like, "Oh, I got to finish this. I'm finishing everything that I started." 

It's a normal human response. You don't want to stop whatever you're doing. But yeah, you have to take a look at yourself and what's the greater goals. And for us, again, longevity, health, moving around. 

That's another thing too, right? These minor injuries, they all add up too. You could have the definition that we said of a minor injury, but if you have a minor injury in your shoulder, you have a minor injury in your knee. Yeah. That shit adds up and it becomes not so minor because then it starts impacting everything you do. 

[00:14:08] Andy: We've all known people that it started with like a niggle in the shoulder. And somehow their opposite ankle started hurting weeks later and then they had back pain and then they're putting on weight because it hurts to move and all these things start adding up.

Their cardio fitness goes down and now they're getting winded walking up a flight of stairs. And a year ago they looked fit, they were strong, they were making progress. And now you can't tell it's the same person sometimes. We all have seen this and it's hard, but part of it that it's not addressing, and I'm not trying to judge people that have been in this situation either because there's a million things that it could be, but a lot of times it comes from not addressing the thing and trying to ignore it and do something else instead.

And so I think the thing is we're talking about this question, how do I train around minor injuries is because the default is to ignore that until it's healed and do something else. And I think that everyone listening probably has a suspicion that maybe that's not the best thing, but you need to know what to do instead of that, because we don't have better defaults. 

[00:15:17] Jarlo: Either you go, ah, I'm done. I'll wait three, four weeks. Right. Or you don't do anything at all and you just spend the same amount of energy doing something else and then just kind of ignore it. Right. And that's the whole reason why like different rehab stuff works.

So this is probably something that'll get me kicked out of PT conferences or whatever, but a lot of this we can do ourselves. And the reason why therapy works is because this person who is knowledgeable—PT’s are great—is stopping you from doing stupid shit. 

I think that's number one. And then the second one is making you do the things you need to do. So those are the things. 

Know Thyself

[00:16:05] Jarlo: And so this is why I'm always like, know thyself. Which one of those two, are you going to fit in? And again, we're all have lived years and years with ourselves. I think we know who we are. I think we do. 

[00:16:20] Andy: Yes. 

[00:16:21] Jarlo: If your default is like, "Oh crap, I'm not gonna do nothin until it's fully, fully healed. Right. If you know you're that person then probably you need to be nudged to adjust your training, but keep going, keep moving, right. Keep doing the things, at the good energy level. 

And then if you're the person that just pushes you through and like, "Man, that is minor, I can do everything I want to do. I'm going to keep going on." Well, then you got someone needs to tell you, or you need to tell yourself, well, pump those brakes. Look at your longevity. This is going add up and, you're in that example of like six months later, that little niggling thing turns into something major. 

[00:17:03] Andy: Right. 

[00:17:04] Jarlo: Yeah. So that's why this is such a complex, complex topic. 

[00:17:08] Andy: It is. And that's why you have to rely on knowing yourself. That's why we always start Assess Address and Apply is, that's the GMB method. It starts with assessing and you have to know yourself, which means you have to spend time introspecting some or you have to pay attention.

Like after your sessions, we try to get people to think back and reflect so that they can have these data points kind of accumulating over time. So when something they do have something to look back on, but knowing yourself, this is the path of autonomy right here. As you can't make the right choice for you if you don't know yourself somewhat. 

[00:17:42] Jarlo: Even knowing yourself doing all these things, it doesn't mean that you can't seek someone else to help you, but it does mean that when you go and you look for other people and their opinions, or this kind of thing, you'll already be a step ahead because then you can judge. Is this, what this person, what they're saying, is that right for me? We're not saying, "Oh, you got to figure everything out for yourself." Part of figuring stuff out for yourself means going out, seeking out information and being able to sort through it. And that's what it is. 

[00:18:15] Andy: And also when you do so, let's say we've got these two extreme archetypes, right. I'm gonna just go hard on something else or I'm going to do nothing. Right. Well, let's say that you recognize that you're one type or the other, and you're going to try to get some advice on what to do. Well, you can also recognize where that advice is coming from. If it's coming from one of those two extremes. You go on Instagram and you'll see people like, "Oh, well, ever hurt a joint ever in your life, you must do these 90 minutes of a pre-habilitative exercise everyday 

[00:18:48] Jarlo: Right. Exactly. 

[00:18:48] Andy: And those exercises are probably good. They may be helpful, but it might be overkill for what you're personally dealing with. Or you might be people that are like, "Ooh, you got stop,” which could also be the wrong thing. 

[00:19:01] Jarlo: All right. Everything. And I've seen those and I've been those PT's in the same clinic. It all depends on the stage of life, who you are, the stuff you're going through, you've gone through. I've been both those people. But that's what it is. All right. I think that's the overarching thing. 

Maybe we can give a little bit more specific types in that kind of categorization. Right. So, how do you stay productive while you're healing or, you know, that's another thing too, like I hate saying healing and heal, right? Because you don't necessarily, that doesn't-- it assumes that there's an end point. 

[00:19:42] Andy: It implies brokenness that can be fixed and then it's done. 

[00:19:46] Jarlo: Yeah. And that can be a really dangerous thing to fall into. I was in that too for a long time. I've had back low back stuff since I was a teenager. And this is what I meant about the impacting, impactful stuff is a lot of times I just felt it when I did this, but then I got into the, "Well, I shouldn't feel anything at all. I should be pain fricking free." And then you get hyper focused on it.

[00:20:13] Andy: Yeah.

[00:20:14] Jarlo: Versus if it was really impacting what I did, and it did sometimes, then you work through it and you find a way, but you kind of go through it.

The Smart Way to Continue Training

[00:20:23] Jarlo: So say that you, I won't say feel fearful, but you're anxious. You don't want things to get worse. Nobody does. And you're like, well, does that mean I just gotta put it in a splint and not do anything? Well, we already intimated that it's "no." You can work on, there's all these examples. Like you can get on the bike, you can take a walk, those are nice things.

Those are nice things. The better way to think about it is well is the energy thing that I kind of implied. What can you spend the energy on that you were going to use in your training before, that was happening because that needs to be sublimated, right? It needs to be used in a way to keep you psychologically healthy, as well as physiologically healthy.

So what are some other areas that you can spend that on and that's something, again, you have to be a little bit more introspective. And again, it doesn't mean if you hurt your lower body, you're going to do all upper body. It's the same kind intensity level. No, that's not what it means.

You probably be focusing on different attributes. In the GMB method, we say strength, flexibility, motor control. That already says that you can probably work on your flexibility and your control. I'm just assuming, because strength is hard to keep working on hard with the intensity you need to improve strength if you're feeling pain, if you're feeling injured in a certain body area. 

But you can most certainly go, "Wow, this is a time where I can work more on my flexibility that I know I need to work on." So I think that's a really nice kind of example. You're gonna want to spend your energy on something and you know what other weaknesses or stuff you need to shore up. So this is a good reframe to do that. 

[00:22:17] Andy: Right. Cause we, we all have this thing where we all know other things we wish, we say, "I wish I had more time to spend stretching." Right. But then you get hurt. And what do you not do? Stretching.

We all have this, right? But you look at it, you can look at it as an opportunity, but then you have to actually put that same level of energy into it. If you can do that, then you can definitely make it a productive period. 

[00:22:45] Jarlo: Right. Absolutely. The other thing is when we had made strength, flexibility, motor control, all this stuff, motor control to me means is like skill training. It's like developing your attributes for whatever it is that you want to do, whether it's this bodyweight trick, like a handstand or even just balancing, balancing in a particular context, that's motor control to me.

[00:23:08] Andy: Yeah, a lot of it directing the strength and flexibility. Right. 

[00:23:13] Jarlo: Yeah. Directing those other attributes to a particular thing. Cause motor control is very specific to me in my head. It's a very specific thing. There's some people that say, oh, there's a motor moron. They just are made of bad stuff. They just are uncoordinated. And let's see. And I was like, that doesn't even make sense on the face of it. That's wrong, right? No one's like that. You can train to do anything. 

[00:23:38] Andy: Means your nerves like don't work. 

[00:23:40] Jarlo: Yeah, that's not true. 

[00:23:42] Andy: If you can learn to speak, drive a car and hold a job, then your neurological system is exactly as good as everyone else's.

[00:23:50] Jarlo: Exactly. And it's more than just growth mindset versus fixed. It's physiological truth.

[00:23:58] Andy: Yes.

[00:23:58] Jarlo: It just is. People say stretching doesn't work. Physics doesn't work then? What, where, what alternate dimension are you in? Where a force applied-- 

[00:24:08] Andy: It's like saying fire doesn't cook.

[00:24:09] Jarlo: Right? Exactly. Where a force applied to a physiologically adaptive unit doesn't make changes. Right. So anyway, we're going way off that kind of stuff. But that's what we mean where you can train other things. It's not the simple, just put your cast on the stool so that you can get on the bike and do the other leg, which is fine. 

[00:24:35] Andy: It's fine to do a couple of times to see what you can do. But I mean, the other thing too, is that, again we're presenting these things with alternatives, but it's not a true A or B. It's not an either/ or. These are all graduated continua. 

At the very beginning, if you hurt your knee, you may drop squatting to zero. But then after a few days, you're going to start trying to do like partial low range of motion, squatting movements and testing, and seeing again, you're reassessing as you continue to address so it's a continuum. The thing that you are taking time off of, you're going to want to reintroduce gradually.

And at the same time you decrease gradually the other things that you've been working on. So it's a continuum that works backwards from an abrupt change, but it's not an either/or. 

Learning to Read Your Internal Barometer

[00:25:27] Jarlo: Right. In the beginning of GMB, we used a lot of things like the rating exertion and your quality, your technique. And here's some numbers. If you're at this number, if you were four or higher and you keep going. And those were okay, but then we changed to the more nominative types of things, which is man, that was a great revelation. Getting rid of trying to be objective. And actually a lot of that came from me because I'm like, shit, this is therapy, right. This is science. 

[00:25:59] Andy: Well, I love that stuff. too. If I can put a number on something, then it simplifies things dramatically. 

[00:26:05] Jarlo: Right. But then it simplifies things dramatically. 

[00:26:08] Andy: The negative is also that it simplifies things dramatically. Yes. 

[00:26:13] Jarlo: So in terms of this, what we would say is, what we use for our quality of technique, right? And that's why we say things like solid snappy versus feeling broken, feeling glitchy right? Or is there exertion is like "Yah, I got this." Or is it just this feeling of being worn down? 

Those types of things, even though they are kind of subjective and like all kind of wishy-washy, they're not. They are exact descriptors of what's happening. And again, it's an intro-rater thing. You can know yourself and be reliable over time. Intro versus inter. It's very unreliable to look at someone and give a rating and then look at another person and give a rating.

Right. And then looking at another and then assume they're all correct. That's wrong. And that's born out of all the statistics and everything. 

[00:27:09] Andy: And we've said this. Ryan and I also did an episode talking about just this, just how you need to embrace that subjectivity, because the idea of objective measurements on some of this stuff is very, very difficult to actually use.

[00:27:26] Jarlo: Right. Absolutely. But within yourself, it totally is. It works because you are a universe unto yourself kind of thing. Right.

That's another thing too that was born out again, a lot of my coming from therapy and physical therapy. I remember this one, time I was in the class and we use goniometer, we use these set of interment to degrees, right.

And all of this stuff in bubbles. And it's good. And you absolutely need it for the research and all this stuff. But I remember one of my teachers, he was like, you know what's also good? 25%, 50%, 75%. And he was like, that shit's reliable. You wouldn't think it is, but they've done studies on it.

And an expert's eye, meaning your own, is reliable across the board. Because it's you. But if we take four experts and we do the same thing and what is there 25%, it's going to be different. So that's why the whole "know yourself" thing came up even more. You can over time, improve how you judge yourself and be really consistent.

And that's another thing people don't realize too, because other people are saying, well, that's not objective. There's no way. You need numbers, you need this, you need that. And you really don't, within yourself. 

If you're gonna do a research paper. Yes. People are conflating all of these types of advice, right? The information that are from a totally different context.

[00:28:50] Andy: Yeah. You can't say do your own research and then where research means look for YouTube videos of other people who are not you, who are describing their subjective experience of things that are not your situation. 

[00:29:04] Jarlo: Right man. Don't even get me started on that. "I do my research." No you don't, not doing anything. You're barely reading. 

[00:29:12] Andy: But minor injuries though, is that subjective. Like we said in the beginning, what is minor is also a subjective thing, but again, we can develop over time through looking at how, does this impact us? What is the duration? What is too much or too long? And what does it prevent us from doing? What trade-offs is this causing us to have to make that we wouldn't otherwise have to make? And we can look at these things and determine, yeah. 

[00:29:41] Jarlo: I have one thing more to add in terms of whether it's objectives, or what Jarlo and Andy are just saying things. We have lots of examples from our clients themselves, not just my patients that I've seen, but our clients that are doing our programs over the last 11 years saying these things to us. 

I got better at knowing myself through this, let's say Elements. And I was working through this ankle thing that I had. Or, sometimes people just have these kind of things that happen during the course of doing it. I'm being vague, but we can absolutely search this out. 

You go on our Alpha Posse community. They would say all of these types of things. One of the last Q and A's I did where we all got together on zoom. There was a couple of examples right away. People saying that, just exactly what we're talking about. They got out of this dichotomy of don't do anything at all, or ignore it. And they told us their stories of how they went through it. We are actually describing that right now. 

[00:30:46] Andy: In all of our programs, one of the really central things is to become more aware and to notice these things and it is hard to describe if you don't have the experience, but anyone who's done the programs probably knows exactly what we're talking about. Your internal barometer on these things gets more and more accurate and more reliable.

[00:31:02] Jarlo: I love seeing that. 

[00:31:04] Andy: Yeah. Okay. So minor injuries minor. What that means is up to, how to train around it. Well, you don't have to go the either/or approach. There's things you can be working on. You can put that energy into things that will be helpful, that will help you heal without damaging you more.

And then gradually you want to move back towards where you were going originally. But it is all subjective and it is all based on your own personal values compass as you go through these. 

[00:31:34] Jarlo: The whole thing of minor implies that there is a major and with a major kind of injuries, really significant, of course you should be going to see someone you trust but a lot of this is veering towards you're probably gonna have to go even slower than you think, right. You're probably going to have to temper yourself even more. Again, doesn't mean don't do anything at all, but that's what the scale of minor to major to go to severe is. 

[00:32:05] Andy: Yeah. And again, it's a continuum as well. 

[00:32:07] Jarlo: It's not all semantics. This is all real life stuff. And I think the more we all think about the more we realize that that's what it is. This nuance is on the on the sliding scale of what it is, right. To even say, even think something is sliding scale of what it is. To even say, even think something is minor, implies that it probably is. You don't have to guess at it. 

[00:32:29] Andy: Yeah. If you're listening to this and you're thinking, "Wow, I listen to these guys talk for like 40 minutes and they still haven't told me what to actually do." There's a good reason for that is we've written really, really detailed guides on how to approach minor injuries for pretty much any area of your body. And we'll link to these in the podcast notes, but you can also go gmb.io/body, and they're all listed out there. But we have from Jarlo's clinical experience written out basically the full extent of what we can responsibly tell you to do without risking your health or going over the line of trying to give medical advice to people we haven't seen or anything like that.

But they will help you assess just how minor something is and what to do about it and give you some very practical advice on things to do. So that's why we tried to cover that in the talk, because we have thorough guides and videos on all these things that are on the website as well.

[00:33:26] Jarlo: Now you can see why we've baked in the quality of your performance and your quality of your exertion and all those types of things, because those help you navigate. They will help you, straight up help you navigate, whether you have these minor injuries or something happens or you're just starting to get into it.

That's a common question. Can I do this if my back is this? Can I do this if I haven't done anything at all? And the answer is yes. If you are willing to start to get to know yourself better. 

[00:33:56] Andy: Right. Because if you say, can I do this if I have a bad back? I gotta be honest, bad back is a kind of broad and non-specific designation. 

[00:34:08] Jarlo: Right? Exactly. 

[00:34:09] Andy: So you have to either have a very specific diagnosis from somebody who said, do this, don't do that and is very clear on it. Or you have to do the work of feeling your way through that. 

[00:34:20] Jarlo: Right. That's what it all comes to too. Again, I don't like this personal responsibility or you got to do it for yourself, but it's working on yourself. 

[00:34:29] Andy: Yeah. 

[00:34:30] Jarlo: Right? I like that better. You're working on yourself. You're finding your own value. You're finding what you need to, what will take you year after year after year. That's what physical autonomy means to me.

[00:34:41] Andy: Yeah. Let's end it there. Not a very exciting conclusion, but it's the truth. And I think everyone listening, probably this is what you need to hear too. That's what it is. It's a year after year journey for lack of a better word that we're all on and minor injuries are if nothing else their an opportunity to explore a lot more about what that means for you. 

Thank you for listening. 

[00:35:03] Jarlo: Thank you guys.