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INTRODUCTION 0:04
Welcome to the fit and healthy Denver podcast where we discuss all things revolving around health, fitness and wellness in the amazing state of Colorado so you can get behind the scenes information from industry insiders, special events, and more. Coming up is our host, physical therapist and strength coach, Dr. Jamie Beauvais. And here we go.
JAMIE 0:30
All right, welcome, everybody. And today, I would like to welcome Jason Kelly, who is the owner of CrossFit Broadway and Cross the Broadway was one of the first CrossFit gyms in Denver, and now they just celebrated their 10th anniversary. So congratulations for that, Jason. That’s a great accomplishment.
JASON 0:48
No, thanks. Yeah, and
JAMIE 0:49
you will notice Jason’s accent a little bit. So I’m sure he gets a hard time about that every now and then. But nice. It should help to keep you interested as well. So
JASON 1:00
Welcome, Jason. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. I am from New Zealand, even though I get called Australian pretty much every day of my life.
JAMIE 1:12
Yeah, hence, the rivalry I’m sure don’t don’t like to be compared to each other. Yeah. But Jason is going to be our expert today on the subject of injury prevention. And one of the things that I noticed when I first went to CrossFit Broadway, they have a wall with people who had been there for five years and who’ve been there 10 years. And that is an amazing accomplishment. Cross it many times and get a bad rap for injuries. But with great coaching, that’s not necessarily the case. And Jason has more five year members than any gym or box I think I’ve ever seen. So Jason, how have you been so successful with keeping members that long and keeping them healthy that long?
JASON 1:56
I think we do a really good job of just having more of an individual approach to a group templated format, right. So obviously, CrossFit is a great team player. And a lot of work traditionally, it’s like, regardless who comes in that day, they must do what’s written on the board. And we kind of take a different approach where it’s a little bit more individualized, where if people will have shortened sentences, emotion, or having some pain or discomfort in certain areas that we manipulate the workout or customize a little bit more for them on any day.
JAMIE 2:33
Okay. And I know one of the big things that you are super proud of and is a Broadway corrective. And when you told me about this, I was like, Yes, this is awesome. I just love the approach. So why don’t you tell everybody what the Broadway correction is and why you developed it and who it’s perfect for?
JASON 2:51
Yeah, so we obviously have a crossover program. And then about six months, kind of during the lockdown, actually, we actually introduced the correct program, which is, it’s another offering that we have basically, it’s a totally customized program. So it’s still in the class format. But every single person that comes into that has been through the process of going through a movement screen going through strength testing, to check out any bosses they have. Yeah, hinging squatting, push, pulling, and Single Leg stuff, single arm stuff. And with that, we create their own custom program. The fifth 40 minutes of each class is the doing their own custom program, their own individual warmup, and their own strength or skill or technique, work, whatever they have programmed for that day. And it’s well, and then the last 1520 minutes is reserved for the general conditioning for the day that they actually come together as a group to do so the first full 40 minutes, their own stuff. So if you have six people in the class, all six people will be doing something completely different that is specific to them, then they will come together to do a conditioning piece together, which generally everyone loves. And that’s the reason why they do group fitness in the beginning. So and obviously that that conditioning piece can be customized as well according to what limitations they
JAMIE 4:13
have might have modifications. Yeah. And so what was the need that you saw that you were filling with the Broadway corrective as far as injury prevention goes?
JASON 4:24
Well, it originally started just just from my own kind of my own needs, to be honest. I mean, I started having my own coach about five years ago, and I was pretty big into competing and CrossFit at the time. And my bike was broken from a long rugby career. And I would wake up an immense amount of pain every single day and I was like, there was no it was not sustainable. And if I wanted to compete any longer then I was going to have to find a different way. So I ended up getting a coach that kind of shifted my mindset on how to approach training out of CrossFit, and just how to approach pain management and things to take them from weaknesses and turn them into strengths. So but one of the saddest things as a business to a gym owner is to have people leave when they run it because they feel that we can’t do anything for them. Or they go to a doctor or whatever, and they and the doctor tell them to stop what they’re doing. So I guess I developed this program to, to help people that have been in southern pines comfort on A, given any given day, have specific strength or sporting goals. And so we can take them away from a template or program and have something customized. That’s just the Vampir to template a program.
JAMIE 5:56
Cool. Yeah, that’s fantastic. So you’re, you’re personalizing their movement, you’re personalizing their strength goals, their mobility goals. And by doing so, not only are you helping them to prevent injuries, you’re helping them athletically to perform better, to where they’re more likely to succeed in your Gemini in your box. So that’s fantastic. Yeah.
JASON 6:17
So what you find and I’m sure you find is that when people come to you, or they come to me, when they’re in pain, discomfort, it not only fixes them physically, but it affects them so many other aspects of their life, right? I mean, it fixed the movie, either at home playing with the kids or hanging with your partner. There’s so many different avenues with pain, right? It’s not just the physical stuff, without one hour inside the gym, it’s fixed every single aspect of life and, and it’s a pretty strong kind of thing to deal with for people. So to get them out of that and to make them live a healthier life just gives them a more fulfilling
JAMIE 6:54
life. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And there’s, and there’s, you know, I think some people, some of my friends would kind of be like, you know, Jason’s working with people in pain and helping him get out of pain. Why do you want to do this interview with him? Because Isn’t he a competitor? And my answer is no, not even, like, we’re not even close and helping as many people as we could. Like, there’s so many people out there that are hurt and broken and not moving well, we’re not going to touch half of them. So you know, it’s more about how we can partner together and help everybody, right? Like, there’s no shortage of people who are in pain out there, or who aren’t moving well, so
JASON 7:29
and especially with you, and then when we finally got to connect, it was, you know, been in this business or the CrossFit industry anyway, for 10 years, you’re the first person that I’ve had, that will actually be to help people. Generally, if I’ve, if I’ve come across therapists in the past, it’s like, they want to take them all for themselves. And it’s like, there’s been no real partnership. And it’s been very refreshing to work with you, to provide that for people and their rate of success, and their rate of improvement has gone through the roof compared to someone who’s just working.
JAMIE 8:05
Yeah, and I think, you know, there’s an important aspect for that for the, for the athlete, or for that person who’s in pain, and it’s like, I can, I can help people get out of pain, but you don’t just want to be out of pain, you want to be able to move better. And, you know, if you’re an athlete, you want to be able to move faster, longer, and push more weight. And so there is that crossing line and rehab and then performance, right. And if we can, if we can communicate along the way, you know, you can tell me hey, this is what I’ve seen on Broadway, that I think is an issue that gives me a lot more information. And we can really, you know, improve the rehab quicker, move them into that performance. And we can kind of work together to improve that athletic standpoint. And along that way, one of the best ways to prevent future injuries is getting stronger and moving better. I mean, it is to be completely honest. So why not multiple people involved in that process? That you get a little bit a little different piece, a little bit different opinion, a little bit different viewpoint on how to improve the athlete. I mean, that’s what professional athletes do. They don’t have one trainer, right? Tiger Woods didn’t have one coach, he had seven. You know, he had seven guys looking at how he hit the ball. Now that’s the best guy in the history of golf, arguably, but you know, who had the humility golf wise to take advice from seven other people? Right. I think that’s how we need to approach health in general and injury prevention in general. So yeah, I mean, when I saw how many people had been in your box for five years, I was pretty blown away just because that’s rare and CrossFit. To love a gym that wants that much to enjoy that community that much to stay injury free, or to quickly get out of injuries and really progress their athletic abilities for that long. I’m in the sport. So good job for you. So thank you. Yeah. So we are going to talk about a couple of different questions around injury prevention, and just health in general now. So we’ve taken some of these questions from our Facebook, the fit and healthy Facebook group that were part of. So join there if you want more information on this. But let’s first talk about the importance of warm ups and cooldowns for injury prevention. So Jason, what’s your opinion on warm ups and cooldowns?
JASON 10:36
Yeah, so one offs especially, I mean, I’m a firm believer in having I guess, a longer warm up, something that’s forcing you or putting you through it, the range of motion that’s going to be replicated. And whatever you’re doing that day, I’d like to say, we do a lot of loaded mobility, I guess we would call it, we’re actually loaded in certain ranges of motion, up to people’s capacity, as well as obviously getting the heart rate up and stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, it’s obviously essential. If you want to train well into your attention to your maximum, then priming, and working through that joint range of motion is essential, right, in terms of your joint and tenant health.
JAMIE 11:23
Yeah, and I think you touched on it a little bit of what I call priming the brain. So you kind of do a similar motion to what you’re going to do in the workout. And that gets your brain ready for that movement. So it knows how to contract the muscles that knows how to relax other muscles. And you’re kind of you know, moving it through that. And that part of that is what is called a dynamic warm up. And it’s much different than you know, that static stretching that was taught forever, you know, it’s, you want to get a little bit of sweat going on, right, you want to take yourself through those motions. And one of the sports that has really pioneered this is soccer, and soccer, there’s something called the FIFA, FIFA plus 11, I believe, and it’s essentially 11 movements that you do before your game. And they’re kind of you know, they’re active, they’re kind of kicks and things like that. But when they came up with this, it was like, Oh, this is a good idea. And then they studied it. And the injury rates, the injury rate reduction went through the roof, the injury rate reduction, so less injuries. And it was I think it was kind of eye opening. And so now other sports, I believe there’s one for rugby, I don’t know the name of it, but it also really decreased rates. And that’s basically what you’re doing in that loaded mobility as you’re kind of warming and priming the brain for this is how I move weight. This is the motions I want to go through to move weight, but just without doing it in a completely exhaustive way. So I think, yeah, and those types of warm ups have really been shown to help with injury prevention. And let’s talk about cooldowns. Because cooldowns a lot of people don’t do it. So, you know, they get in there, they do their wad, they’re just exhausted. And it’s like, they lay on the ground for a little bit, catch your breath, sit in the car and go home. Right? That probably doesn’t help us nearly as much as doing a cooldown. And so cooldowns there’s lots of different opinions on what those are. I classify these as staying after the workout for about five minutes, and getting your heart rate at about 60% of heart rate maximum, and just staying there. So for most for let’s say, for your 30 to 40 year olds, that’s going to be around 115 125, something like that. And you just stay there and it’s real light. And you know, jogging, jump roping may get you there, or biking. And that does a couple things. Yes, it kind of pumps that lactic acid out a little bit. But that’s not as responsible for soreness and things like that, as most people think. But what has been shown is this really helps with the next day’s workout. And so if you are feeling better going into that workout, no, it may be mental, but it has been shown to reduce injuries. Jason, I’m curious about you, what do you guys do for cooldowns? What’s your opinion on cooldowns because not everybody agrees with this, by the way, but just what I found kind of in the research that helped.
JASON 14:05
We tend to take the group for a walk straight out like immediately. And obviously, it was a CrossFit class. Obviously these high intensity pieces and rather than just have people lie on the floor on top of that we try to keep you from moving so go take him out for a walk around the block or rivers it’s also a good way for us to kind of build camaraderie immediately after a workout. Well, the issues with training are that you always run out of time. And so I feel like the first thing that gets eliminated from a group class is the cooldown. Sometimes, for us, the war portion, selves to issues. It’s partly a code, but also a chance for us to build our community. So that’s, I guess, a way to kill two birds with one stone and give you as much time as you can.
JAMIE 15:03
Yeah, that’s a cool idea. I hadn’t thought about doing it like that’s a great idea. And you’re right, because nobody wants to sit around for a class they’re paying for and you know, kind of barely workout. It’s not not what they’re paying for.
JASON 15:13
Yeah. In terms of attention, and people’s ability to maintain attention on the cooldown as a group sit in a was very, very challenging.
JAMIE 15:23
Yeah, absolutely.
JASON 15:25
Okay, so we give, we were able to have more time we were absolutely using.
JAMIE 15:30
Yeah. Alright, so now let’s go on. So, note, so this was a question from the group, knowing when pain is a warning sign. So Jason, how would somebody know when pain is a warning sign that an injury could be about to pop up?
JASON 15:49
You know, it’s an interesting question, right? Because I feel like when people steal time, they instantly think of what they’re doing just in that moment, versus going about what’s happened in the weeks prior. Right. So it’s like, presently, we use a dealer as an example, because a lot of people are afraid of a dealer for as soon as somebody hurts their back doing a dealer visit, there’s a couple of reasons why that may occur, right? Obviously, technically, it may be an issue rather than doing it wrong. But also it could be because they say poorly, or they’ve been eating poorly, I’ve been partying too much, or they’re incredibly stressed at work, all these other factors in their life that play a role in how the body reacts to stress. Right. So you know, when you have pain or discomfort in a certain movement or a certain moment? It’s a really good way to address all the factors in your life, I think, versus just the thing that you’re doing at the moment.
JAMIE 16:59
Yeah, good question. And I’m gonna take a slightly different angle on that. And I’m gonna say, pain is always a warning sign. However, pain isn’t always damaged. So you know, it is your debt, it’s your dashboard light that comes on that says, pay attention, right? You know, but that could be a lot of different things. Like you said, it could be partying too much, it could be not getting any sleep, it could be your body, just telling you to be aware of this, something isn’t quite right. It doesn’t necessarily mean damage. And one of the things that can happen is if you’ve had past injuries, your body can be really nervous. And then if you kind of get close to a similar position of similar stress, you can feel pain when there’s no damage, because your brain is so nervous. It just wants you to be aware. So it’s kind of paying attention, right? As it is, it’s not necessarily damaged. But it is a sign that you need to start paying attention and start figuring out what’s causing it and take action to prevent it going forward. All right.
JASON 18:01
I like that kind of thing a lot.
JAMIE 18:03
Yeah. So next question, how do we use rest days? And how often should we schedule them?
JASON 18:12
You know, there’s like, especially on y’all so deep inside the CrossFit world, and the tradition of CrossFit was three on one off, right. I’m not a firm believer in having a drill like that for every single person, I think it’s more of an individual basis. I think a lot of it has to do with your training history and your kind of training age. I think this takes some, you know, some playing around with in terms of how your body is feeling and the stress that you had, is it affecting your sleep in terms of that, we tend to encourage people that are new to exercise that like a two on one off is the best way to begin. Someone that has been training at a serious level for five years, we may say you can go three on within an active recovery day one, and then a rest day, you know, so I feel like it’s more based individually. And so it’s a tough question to answer, I
JAMIE 19:18
guess. Yeah. And I think you’re absolutely right. It’s absolutely individual because you’re one percenter who’s going to the games, and as you know, an elite athlete, they’re probably working out seven times a week or possibly even more, but they can do that, right? They’ve trained themselves up that your person who’s starting CrossFit, they try that and that is not going to work well. And so what the research suggests is there is a sweet spot of three to six workouts per week. Below that and you have an injury. Have you ever seen a much increased chance of injury? Both if you’re only working out once a week, you know you may not be training yourself hard enough to adapt and that may actually be incurred. Using your injury risk, and then if you go above that, except for those people who are very good, they may be overdoing it. And so that does bring up different types of injuries, you have your acute injuries, which are those that happen right away. And it’s essentially you’re doing too much too soon. Except for trauma, you know, the rare person who dropped a plate on their head or something like that. But those acute injuries are where you do too much too soon. Then you have those chronic injuries where you’re doing too much over a long period of time. And I think we get into those things. And it’s Jason touched on but it’s, you know, monitoring your sleep is a huge indicator of how stressed you are, physically, mentally, everything else. So if you’re not sleeping, well, that’s a big sign. You know, if you’re moody during the day, and you’re just cranky with everybody, it may be a sign that you’re overtraining. And we know that there are things that now that there’s more bio bio data. I’m not sure if that’s right, but they’re the one of the biggest indicators of injury, likelihood is what’s called heart rate variability. And there’s lots of apps out there now that we’ll measure this. Your heart rate variability is basically how well your sympathetic parasympathetic nervous system is working together to fight or flight, rest and digest. And so if they’re imbalanced, there should be a large variability, the narrower that gets, it means you’re not adapting to the training and or the stresses of life, which are just as much important. And the, the less you’re adapting to those things the like, more likely you are to get injured. So for those tech geeks out there, look into some devices that measure heart rate variability, there are some free apps on your iPhone that you can get to measure that as well. Kind of got off topic there. Sorry about that. But how often to read, you know, schedule those rest days, and I think it’s, you know, learning to learn to listen to your body, essentially. All right, so next question, how can injuries be prevented?
JASON 22:08
Yeah, it’s so different for us, it’s been snapped with learning, be smart with frequency training, technically Well, or whatever you’re doing run technically well. And these so much like, I guess, intuition with the office, like you really have to learn if you’re in a training program of any sort of intensity, you really need to learn how your body responds. And the stands, when you are really tired or really sore, like what is happening to your body and adjust accordingly, right and do the appropriate things to offset that world or to prevent it from happening. The enemy, so many factors that go into it, right sleep stress diet. And that will lead like you know, I feel like especially during these times with COVID, and everything and No more stress people are at the moment, it’s like, you add this added stress daily to everything that everyone already has kids work, exercise, relationships, and then you add stress on top of us. If you don’t eliminate something out of that equation, then your body can no longer handle when your body is overloaded. Injuries will occur.
JAMIE 23:33
Yeah, yep. I think that’s great. Yeah. And I think most people don’t realize that stress, like mental stress, has kind of the same effect on the body as physical stress. So they need to be imbalanced. If you’re working out like crazy. And you’re, you’re just pushing it hard, but you’re not all that mentally stressed, then most of then you’re probably fine. But if you’re pushing it like crazy, and you’ve got you know, mortgage issues, you have divorce issues, you got kid issues, then you know, all of that stress together is going to go across the line. And that’s going to be where you’re going to start overloading things too much. And you can really start pushing it to where you might get injured. So those things are very important. The nutrition, the sleep, and I know you talked about that. And I think, you know, and I know you have a mindfulness and nutrition competition coming up. And I think keeping on track of those things on top of the other ways to stay injury free is very important. And if you look at any elite athlete, they’re doing these things, or you look at the Olympians down in the springs, and they’re doing these other things on top of training to stay injury free. So I would say with this, on top of those things on top of the life issues, I would say it’s movement, quality, movement quantity. And then Jason, you touched on this, but how to not do too much too fast, or how to not do too much for too long. And so when I think about injury prevention, we’ve talked about this before, but injury prevention is one of the hardest things in the world to get people to buy into. Because if you thought you’re gonna get injured next year, you’d already be working on it. So the fact that you’re not tells me you don’t think you’re gonna get injured next year, right. And we talked about this a lot, because the biggest predictor of future injury is current injury. So literally every person who comes into my office has the biggest predictor that they’re gonna get injured next year, but they don’t think it’s gonna happen. So you know, we’ve, we kind of have a program where we work with people monthly and keep them injury free. But it wasn’t easy at first to convince people because they didn’t believe that. But eventually, we got enough people to sign up. And we now have data of over 1000 months without injuries. And hopefully, we’ll get a university to study us pretty soon, but you know, it’s working. So right, it is, but I mean, being aware of this is, it is the thing you have to do, it’s kind of like eating well, right? If you’re overweight, it’s probably the biggest predictor that you’re gonna be overweight next year, unless you do something about it. So you know, you have to do something about it.
JASON 26:08
I’m trans, like, I’ve come to the realization of the last six months that intensity for me right now is not the right thing to do. So I’ve backed off completely from that. And, you know, instead of being like a nine out of 10, every day with intensity of load, it’s like a seven, my body feels better for it. I feel healthy. I’m not losing any fitness whatsoever. But I know that with the stresses of life at the moment. That’s right.
JAMIE 26:34
Yeah, absolutely. It’s very, you know, you have to be aware of those things. And I think most people don’t know, to be aware of those things. So I think, yeah, it’s, you know, things like this, we’re trying to get the word out. But just be aware of those things, you know, of stress levels of your diet or your sleep. Sleep is huge for prevention and recovery from workouts, things like that. And it’s probably, you know, if you had to pick the Big Three of the things that you can do today, get better sleep, better, eat better. Drink, drink, most people are dehydrated, so drink some water. Those are the three easy things you can do today to help yourself recover from workouts better and to you know, help yourself to prevent injuries. So the next one I want to talk about is cross-train. So, Jason, how do you use cross training both in cross at Broadway and in the Broadway corrective to help people stay injury free with CrossFit?
JASON 27:36
So you mean by how do we adapt the program to the individual?
JAMIE 27:43
That? Yeah, both? I think both are kind of good points.
JASON 27:52
Yeah, I mean, I just variation, right, in terms of the exercise you do just adds interest for people in terms of, if someone’s looking to lose weight. ApoE, and they don’t want to be doing the same movement or time. Right. So just adding variation helps keep the high.
JAMIE 28:12
Yeah, I think so. Well, let me kind of tell you what I gotta say about my piece, and then you can comment on it. So what I find is, the people who are getting injured, you know, if you look at 100 people in a group, most of them are kind of training in one plane. And so they let’s take a runner there, they’re very good at training in this play and doing lunges right in front, I’m doing lunges right behind them running, they’re like, I’m very strong. However, the muscles that control like rotational movements, they don’t ever do. So they get weak there. And if you look at what caused the injuries, for runners specifically, it is typically that they are weak in those other planes. So the ways that we can go about fixing that or possibly working on those other motions in different planes, that wall is not, you know, does not directly impact this plane of movement that runners do. It does help with injuries. So I know you do that, a little bit of that within the Broadway corrective, but like how do you guys because a lot of CrossFit is in this plane, right? It’s not a ton of rotational stuff out there. How do you help people with cross training, whether that be running or adding airs, supplementary accessory work, those types of things? How do you help them with that? So they can not only improve his athletes, but also prevent injuries?
JASON 29:27
Yeah, I gotcha. Now, so. You know, we talked about warm ups previously, but warm ups will both have similar movements to what’s going to be in that day’s piece. But we will also have movements in there that are different planes of motion and what is in the majority of the day. So if he has a lot of, you know, foul play and stuff or whatever, then there’s going to be different signs of the warm up, just in terms of being up to move as a human, or athlete, whatever, if it’s more sport specific, there’s so many more opportunities to train those different planes of motion. Maybe it’s something you may not use in your sport or your activity, that being better than those planes is going to make. You might like the one that is going to make the body stronger and more deep. Stress.
JAMIE 30:22
Yeah, great. Absolutely. Well, that’s most of the questions we have from the Facebook group. I think we’ve done a pretty good job covering a lot of topics on this. But I know both of those could probably talk about this all day, which our listeners probably would not stay on here. So is there anything else you want to talk about? As far as injury prevention, Broadway’s approach or the Broadway corrective or anything you want to clarify for people? No,
JASON 30:45
no, I think it’s just people really come into the realization that a group format or program is not necessarily steadily the best thing for the ride. So as an example, right, and if you are a runner, and you choose to do a group program, it’s predominantly running, then you, I guess, kind of undervalue and evaluate other areas of opportunities of training that will make you a better runner, right? So runners need a strength track, and lift weights, right? You know, if you need to lift weights, that is, I wouldn’t just encourage people to go out and search, find modalities that are going to make them better athletes, or stronger humans, right, versus just staying in this one narrow box. And I’m sure you like athletes, they come in, and they just do one specific thing. They just keep going so quickly. And by you talking about the returns of injuries, those people are always going to be returning back to health. And to get out there. So you’ve got to search for you’re gonna search for other ways, right? Because you will benefit significantly by expanding your training.
JAMIE 32:16
Yeah. Yeah. I had said beautifully Break, break this break the circle of injuries, and you’ll start getting better. Absolutely. All right. Well, everybody signing off here, Jamie with unhealthy Denver, and Jason, where can people find you on social media? And how can they contact you if they’re interested in working with you?
JASON 32:37
Yeah, just Instagram and Facebook. We just crossed broadway.com. About both costs of Broadway and Broadway corrected programs on both of those avenues.
JAMIE 32:51
Perfect. Well, everybody, we’re dropping some gems on injury, Injury Prevention here. So make sure you listen back to this, start preventing those injuries. Start getting as healthy as you can be, and we will be helping you here to get fitter and healthier in 2021 and beyond. All right. Bye, everybody.
OUTRO 33:14
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