Movement as a Path to Self-Connection

Introduction and Coach Tyleru2019s background 0:00

Everybody, Dr. Rob Silverman here. I'm with Coach Tyler. This guy's been smiling since we've been off camera. He's got so much to offer in the world of fitness and health and positivity. Coach, how are you doing today? I am doing good. Thanks for having me on the show, Doctor Rob. Appreciate it. No more looking in the mirror, measuring my biceps, no more trying to see how my six array pack is doing. It's all about how we shape. How'd you come to this? You know, I wish I could say I came to in a really enlightened way, but I'm really great at just failing my way forward.

And so, you know I grew up in I always joke that they thought diet soda was a health food, right? Nobody gave me a good example of what to eat or how to move or anything like that. So like most people out there, I looked at myself in the mirror and said I hate you and I'm going to join the gym to change this. I want to actually like myself. So I started doing the traditional stuff, you know, going to the gym and bodybuilding and things like that. And as luck would have it, I got hit by a car and I cracked my femur.

I was in a wheelchair for three months, had to relearn how to walk. When I came back to gym, everything hurt.I couldn't do the same things I did before. So my motivations very quickly changed. If anybody's listening and you have injuries or aches and pains,you quickly start to think to yourself, You know what? I don't really care about this whole looks thing anymore. I don't want people to feel better in my body. So, you know, I was pretty young at the time, but I had a lot of issues with that injury and it really pushed me to learn how the human body was supposed to work, how to heal it, How to make it feel, better how, to move in a way that makes it.

Feel better. And so I spent the next 10 or so years doing that and teaching it to people. You know I, had the biggest group training program in, my hometown. We were teaching a, lot, of people how. To move better and feel. Better, But I'll be honest with you, Dr. Rob, underneath all that, I still had a really big drive fueled from my ego. It was like, it went from I want to change the way I look to now I wanna see how far I can take my performance, right? So as luck would have it, 10 years later, I was doing an adult gymnastics class, which I had no business being in an adults gymnastics at my height and weight, and I came down and snapped my other knee.

And it was sideways toward my ACL. LCL, MCL, quad, and meniscus all in one shot. And I've had four surgeries on that knee now. So I spent almost a year of my life in bed recovering from that injury. What that injured taught me was it's about longevity. Because even though I turned it around and said, focus on performance and flexibility and strength and learning how to do things with my body, I took it too far. I didn't listen to my buddy because on that day when I was doing those gymnastics moves, my buddies was telling me this is too much.

Like literally, it was screaming to me and my coach said, punch harder. And I thought to myself, oh, show him. You know, so I just completely ignored my bad. Came down, blew my knee up in a way that completely challenged me for more than a decade now. So yeah, just been a journey of just learning respect my body and take care of my and show up from a place of wanting to move and have as much movement freedom for as long as possible and then teach that to others so they can do the same thing. You're on fire, man.

I mean, you're teaching a lot of people. You got a lotta followers. And you are making a really big mark in the fitness industry. But it's fascinating because we look at the superheroes in movies, the actors now, and they're getting pretty buff. They're pretty muscular. It's all about how they look. To speak to what you do, it is not just about they how look, It's about how they move. How they perform. It is the imagery that they project. I grew up in an era that bodybuilders, it was a very narcissistic thing.

The reason I went to the gym was I was skinny kid with a crooked neck. And I wanted to straighten my neck, grow my hair long and get muscular. So I grew my air, I got some muscles, didn't really affect my dad, but because that was a congenital problem. But it was loathing, you know, self hate. I hardly agree. Narcissism by that, right? Right. We look in the mirror and we think that's what we are and who we And I think it's much more than that and I really like the idea that you talk about movement freedom versus statics You know, you're not anti aesthetics, but you want to be able to move freely, You take a yoga class into a weight class.

So why don't you advocate for the transition from that traditional appearance that fitness driven appearance to more of a movement freedman?

From aesthetics to movement freedom 4:36

Yeah, I love that. Thanks for that question. are not really sure what it is I'm trying to get them to do, which is move better and feel better. You know, this is a big problem with the fitness industry because I think when most people think of fitness in the first place, they think either of doing cardiovascular exercises to lose weight or pumping their muscles to build their muscle. That's it. It's all intensity focused. You know the energy cycles and energy systems and what I'm talking about is quality of movement Okay, can you go for a walk or a hike pain-free?

Can you pick stuff up off the ground? can You put your clothes on and balance on one foot while you slip your pant leg on right? you do the things that you want to be able to do for as long as possible that bring us freedom of Movement and unfortunately a lot of people lose that and And they lose that because they've never been taught how their body was supposed to move. When's the last time you were about to stand up from a chair and somebody said, hold up, put a little more weight on your heels, load your hips a bit more, make sure your knees go in the same direction as your toes.

And then they do it and they're like, wow, all of a sudden, standing up for my chair doesn't hurt as badly anymore. Maybe it feels significantly better. So that's what I'm on a mission for is teaching people how to approach their movement practice or their fitness routine in terms of movement practices. How do we practice movement? How did we then apply that to our daily lives? Because that's what gives us the longevity and freedom, right? And as far as the aesthetics go, forget about it. Just take care of your body and let those things fall into place as they are.

If all you do is focusing on taking care your of body, and just showing up from a different place consistently, which is the most important part, that what's going to make a long-term change in how you feel. And it will change the way your looks too. But try not to focus on that. It's so that stuff is, like you said, it's, so vain. It so built around this one standard, which, by the way, that standard changes every decade, as we know. So it even think about this. One standard in the first place.

But probably the best way to even answer this question is if I could fast forward everyone listening, maybe 10 or 20 years, and they didn't prioritize taking care of their bodies. they would regret it. They would tell themselves today, get started now. Stretch your body. Develop some strength. Learn how to move better. Eat foods that agree with you. Get a good night's sleep. Do joyful things with your life. Have a community of people that you love and respect, right? Like all those things are important when it comes to having health and happiness.

And so I just want people to realize like, if we don't start now, eventually we're gonna look back and wish we did. Oh, I wish I could go back and do some things differently. Flexibility. You know, you made a really salient point in the idea of putting your pants on one leg at a time. I work out of my basement, but I went to the gym and I saw a guy. He's in my age bracket. And he's late fifties and he worked his legs hard because he wants to get those thighs cooking and couldn't put his pants. And I was looking at him and I'm like, you can't put your pants on.

You can open your parents to go to the laboratory. Is that exercise? I mean, do you hate yourself that much? Yes. He's training hard. It's probably over training. But what really fascinated me about what you're doing is this new movement called we shape. Can you detail that for everybody listening? Yeah, sure. I mean, WeShape is the name that we gave to, you know, the company and the movement that were really trying to push forward. But, if I were to be honest about my personal mission, Rob, before WeShape, I was really successful online.

Like I said, decades ago, had the biggest gym in the town or group training program in our hometown. After that, went online, made a bunch of Cookbooks and workouts and sold supplements and all these different things and our company was on the ink 500 list the fastest growing companies in the US three row and after all that I had two daughters and I had this moment of like do I want my girls to know me as the guy who became successful from selling people on buy this supplement so you can lose weight or do this ab program because you hate your belly and you know I wish I could take credit for my wife was the one who really brought it to us after we noticed our daughter starting to have like some early signs of eating disorder behavior and i realized man this whole health and wellness community can be just as toxic as not doing anything.

We can push really hard for things and create a lot of dysfunctions in our children and future generations. And again, that message that I think I really learned to stand against was you should hate yourself. They say this to you, they say, you should hate yourself if you don't look like this, and you buy my program so that you can look this and then you'll feel happy and everybody outside will validate you and feel great, right? It's a horrible message. It has messed so many of us up inside of our minds.

We think that fitness is a punishment for what we ate yesterday or how we look, not us learning how to care for ourselves because we deserve to. I think it's a huge problem. And so WeShape's goal is how do we bring to light what the fitness industry is doing? And again, I want to be honest with you. Why I know this is because I was vastly successful telling people, grab a section of your belly and jiggle it and then you could do this program and it'll change it, right? Like I did that, but when you know better, you do better.

I don't want my kids to grow up in a world where the pain message in the your worth and value lies in how you look. And if you don't look a certain way, you should hate yourself. It's not working, and the worst part, Rob, is I got to a place where I saw literally thousands of people lose hundreds of pounds. You know what you think? You think that somebody would get to their quote unquote goal weight and they'd say, yay, I love myself. But what happens? If we're getting there the entire way by criticizing, self-judgment, negativity, fear-based motivation, Now you look in the mirror at your goal weight and you say, oh, my arms are gross.

Oh, I got to do something about this. I've got something to say about that. Because all we did was we just rehearsed that negativity over and over again. And you will never be content with your body. You won't be happy with life unless you practice finding joy and gratitude for your life right now, no matter what position you're in. So yeah, we're just trying to reshape the way people think about fitness and then teach people to care for themselves in a much more meaningful way. Hear, hear. Now, everybody's going to ask, because they ask me all the time, so I'm just going turn it right on you.

Go ahead. What's the day in the life of Coach Tyler? What do you eat? Tell me your exercise program. OK, and one disclaimer. Right. Coach, Tyler and I had the conversation. Everything's personalized and individualized. So what he does may not be for me, may be different for my wife. But we want to know what you do every day.

Why WeShape was created 11:24

Yeah. Thank you, I appreciate that. I'm an entrepreneur, so I get to make my own schedule, which is a huge, huge privilege. I acknowledge that. That means that a lot of my days are me asking myself the question, what do I need today? How do i show up and take care of myself, do the work I am supposed to do, show for my kids, for partner, and make sure that I have a little bit of balance across the board. If you met me 10 years ago, I wasn't a very balanced person in that way. It was more like all in on everything that I did.

But like I said, life has a way of teaching you the things you need to be taught. And so I've had to learn balance. When I get up each morning, and I try to kind of connect with what I need. If I'm feeling really exhausted, if I don't do a workout first thing in the morning. Maybe I'll come back after dropping the kids off to school and do asana before my workday. Typically I dive into WeShape. I work really hard to spread this message because It's really important to me that the fitness industry changes.

So I'm not just doing this to build a business. I feel like it's my purpose to be totally frank. And then some days I'll do a wee-shape workout if I am feeling good. The thing I love about our wee shape workouts is we spent the last four years building a system that's individualized. So it doesn't matter if you're a complete beginner. It doesn' matter If you have injuries in certain parts of your body. We collect all that information up front from our clients and then we customize their workout routine for them every single day.

And so I want this philosophy to be something that I practice, right? So I'll give you an example. If I go to use WeShape today, I'm a little bit under the weather. I didn't sleep that great because my daughter's sick and she was coughing all night long. So if I went to a personal trainer that didn' t take that into account, That'd be kind of lame, right? Like if I just came in and they just tried to murder me on a day where I felt crappy. So at WeShape, we do things differently. We say, hey, how much time do you have?

And they say 10 minutes, 20 minutes 30 minutes 45 minutes 60 minutes. Like we give you options because some days are busy, but I want to make sure that you don't have any excuses. Everybody's got 10 Minutes, Right? The second thing I'm going to ask you is how'd you sleep last night? And based on your answer, we're going to change the workout routine for you because of how you slept. And then we say, how does your body feel right now? And we continue to the routine based upon how we felt. Why I like to use WeShape personally is if I slept crappy and my body feels crappy, I'm going end up stretching a bunch.

It's going treat me like you'd want to treat somebody if they were your client. If I feel great and I sleep great, it's gonna give me a butt-kicking workout. I'm gonna go do that butt kicking workout. It's gonna be just what I need that day. So I try to honor that in my daily life by, you know, waking up, asking myself what i need, doing something to care for myself every day, whether that's a breath work session or a stretching session, or movement session. You asked me about what I eat. I used to be a diet guy.

You know, I wrote cookbooks and diet programs and all this different stuff. Tried every diet under the sun, vegan, vegetarian, keto, paleo, Mediterranean, zone, counting calories, like you name it. And you know what? I've really landed on? If I eat this, does my body feel good afterwards, right? Does it digest easily? does it give me energy? And I do that nine times out of 10, is eat the things that I feel like my buddy will digest well, will give the energy, it'll give you the building blocks I need, that are tasty too, and then the other one out 10 times, I ate the damn cookie and I say, mmm, this is a delicious cookie, so it's just about, again, once you change your perspective from like punishing yourself and pushing yourself, and this has to be so hard and intense to like, I'm going to take care of myself.

And every action I take throughout the day is going be a reflection of my ability to show up and listen to my body and show and care for my buddy. Then you don't need a diet anymore. You know, you need to do all these different things. Just show at each day and you just try to care yourself. So, answer the question specifically, but you know I love eating, eggs for breakfast and, chicken, fish, steak, and some rice and veggies for dinner. I have my protein shakes I like. And I love kombucha and all these different things.

But again, it all comes from this place of does this agree with me? Does this nurture me, does it make me feel good? And if you can do more of that, I think you're going to make a lot better choices. So you go by feel. The shackles are off. I love it. If I'm hungry, I'll eat. And if I feel like I need more protein, then I eat more. Want a cookie? I have a cookies. There's freedom in that. Why so many people are frustrated with the fitness industry, the diet culture, everything, is because we're not being taught to connect with ourselves.

We're being taught to place every single person out there on a pedestal as a guru who's supposed to tell us what to do. And what does that do? It cuts us off from the neck to our body. We never get a chance to connect with our bodies and say, Hey, when I do this squat, how does it feel? Like when's the last time somebody had you do a workout routine and they didn't say push it. They said, How does. Does it feel okay on your feet, your knees, you hips, lower back? Do you feel like, okay, now let's try a little tweak here and a tweak there.

How's that feel? Oh, it feels stronger. It feels more stable, right? Nobody will ever intrinsically learn how to show up and care for themselves. No one will every intrinsical learn to move their bodies better throughout their day unless they reconnect their head with their body, and start asking, how does this feel, what do I need? No doubt, I love it. So, where are you from? Um, Santa Cruz, California. That's where you're going to be laid back. You're a West coast guy. I'm a New York guy through and through all about speed and push and everything.

So we're gonna do my favorite section of the day. It's called rapid fire. Rapid fire, let's do it. Let's go. Give me the most overrated fitness trend right now. All these quizzes that lead you to like Tai Chi walking and all these different things out there that you probably see in. Um I think that they're, a lot of bullshit and I don't think they are really showing up to serve people. One habit that delivers the highest return for your health. Breathing deeply into your belly and then exhaling slowly and relaxing the rest of your body.

A physiological sigh. Biggest mindset shift people need before starting a program. Look at yourself in the mirror and say that you're worth taking care of. Love it. Be good to yourself. I love it! If someone only has 10 minutes a day, what should they do? What their body actually needs. So some days it's a hard workout. Some days is a couple stretches. Flexibility, feel, I love it again. What does success in the fitness look like beyond looking in a mirror? Wanting to take care of your body. Alright, so I'm gonna go.

Are you ready? We're gonna do some exercises. On a scale from 1 to 10, rate these exercises, 10 being fantastic, 1 being, are you kidding me? Alright, let's do it. 1 to 10. Air squats. I'm going to put those at a 9. Chin and pull ups. Oh, a 10 Push ups I am going put that at 9 Planks I will put this at an 8 I have been on fire Bulgarian split squats Oh, I'm going to put that at a 10. That's a fantastic one. I thought I'd get you on that jumping rope. Depends on the person. If you have great mechanics and you healthy joints, it's it a ten.

Daily routine, food, and intuitive training 18:36

if you don't, its a zero. Don't do it. Box jumps. Same kind of answer, but even less people are going be able to do right. So I would say for 99.9% of the population, not worth it Treadmill, bike, rower. I am not a big fan of cardio for cardio's sake unless you love that. i'd rather do functional movement to get the heart rate up and do it a little more intensely. So I hear my friend from Geneva screaming with me now, Rob, what's his number one functional exercise? Yeah. How is yours? What do you got?

You know, this can maybe dive us into a different part of this conversation, which I think could be interesting. You know, the way that I've learned how to approach fitness and movement is that everything exists on a spectrum. So when I say number one functional exercise, obviously it has to be contextual to the person that we're talking to. With WeShape, what we do is we have movements that you can practice if you cannot even sit up out of bed. Then we've got movements that you can practice while sitting in a chair if you cannot stand up.

Then, we have movements you could practice standing. And we had movements, you practice more in planking positions and doing more sophistication. So, everything in WeShape exists on a spectrum. Our goal is to meet you where you're at. If you are in hospital bed and you recovering from something, You still need to move, you still to practice movement, You need still stretch, to still move your body. But the things that you should be doing are different than the thing that somebody who's 40 years old, a little bit deconditioned and trying to get back in the game, but they don't have any injuries, right?

So it has to be contextualized a bit. So what do I want people to do? I wanna them to maintain strength and flexibility through their joints ranges of motion. And so we wanna do things like sit to stands. We wanna things burpees, we want to things lateral movement. Burpees. Oh my god, I'm having nightmares now going to CrossFit. 100 burpees in 10 minutes. You're killing me, my friend. See, but that's ridiculous. Most people can't even begin to do a burpee. They don't got the mobility, they don' got technique, the strength, flexibility, nothing.

So how do we start someone out at that? Let's pretend all you do is put your hands up against a wall. step back into a plank position, step forward and stand up tall. Like that's a beginner version of the burpee. And then we could put your hands on the top of a chair. Then we can put it on a low chair surface. As your mobility increases, we bring it down to a block or all the way down the floor. But we're still walking the feet back and walking feet forward. So we are learning proper technique and we gradually building strength, flexibility, balance and coordination.

Which is really what we focus on at WeShape is improving those four attributes. Because those things are what make your body feel better. Over time, as you continue making the movement a little bit more sophisticated, eventually you're up to doing burpees and stuff like that, right? So, I think the most important movements for people to do are the ones that their body is the least adept at. And so that's why you need to make sure that you have a program that is looking for where you are weak, where your tight, and focusing on making you stronger and more flexible in those areas.

Now for you, my understanding WeShape is really robust on the idea of home exercise, because COVID made home exercises vogue. I gave up my gym membership, I was in New York, we don't want to go down that rabbit hole. And I did everything at home. We had equipment and we've added equipment since then. But you like a lot of at-home equipment. Explain to me why you liked the at hole equipment? A lot my friends like to get out of the house, get in the gym. Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think that's totally fine either.

To me, the best program is the one that you enjoy doing and that she'll actually do and it feels good to your body. By no means am I suggesting that what we've built is one and only option. It's amazing, but I don't think it's for everybody. The reason why we focus on movements that you can do at home, and by the way, this is no equipment. It's like a chair and a little bit of space on the floor and the towel usually is what we require for people, is I think the majority of people have a laundry list of reasons why they think they can't do a fitness routine.

And it starts with time. Great, we got 10 minute routines, right? And then it goes to, well, I don't feel like it's for me. Okay, great. We have customized routines. They're scalable infinitely. Well, don' have any equipment. I not want to join the gym. You don''t need that, so I think at the end of the day, my goal is to make WeShape as inclusive as possible. And, you know, I mentioned earlier that all the lower level movements in the WeShape program are things you could do in bed if you can't even set up.

The reason why that exists, Dr. Rob, is I was sitting in a hospital bed recovering from a knee surgery, the fourth one on the right knee, when I creating the programming behind WeShape. And I remember thinking to myself, ''I want to be able to use this program right now.'' to just stay active while I'm laying in this bed. I don't want any excuses. It's really easy for us to find reasons why we shouldn't do things. As much as I want people to love and take care of their bodies and find a joyful experience in that, it's not what it always is every day.

I don't want to do this, but I know how good I'm going to feel afterwards. And so I want do it anyways, right? And how do we remove all the objections that your mind tells you that prevents you from showing up to take care of yourself? How do you make it as simple as possible? The easiest way to that is require them to have nothing but access to the program. And home access is right there. Yeah, always there, yeah. So I've got one that I wrote down. What is coach C period, O period A period C, period H period?

And how did your do your movement sessions support people on days that they don't feel that best? I figured that would be a follow up for you because even you not always ready to go. Totally, totally great question. Coach is kind of the engine behind what we do at WeShape. Like I said, this isn't just a you know, follow-on video program or something where you choose workouts to follow along to. We really customize every single workout for every person who comes into WeShape. And how we do that is when you sign up, we take you through an onboarding survey.

we ask you, I think, around 50 different questions. What's funny is I mentioned in the lightning rounds that I don't like these long quizzes that sell these Tai Chi walking programs and things like that. Part of the reason why is because None of the questions that you're answering are being used to contextualize your program or very few of them. In ours, almost every single question is building your problem in the background, right? And the way I think about this, Dr. Rob, is like I was a personal trainer.

I worked with people one-on-one for years and I specialize in people who had really challenging cases when it came to injuries that they couldn't make feel better. My process was simple. You come to me. We talk about your goals. we figure out who you are. Then I do some movement analysis on you. Where are you tight? Where you weak? What, where do we start? Right? And then based on that, I can develop a plan for you, here's the levels of the different movements that I think we should be doing. And, then I could say on your programming profile, how much to be prioritized certain things over others.

If you have loose hip flexors and tight hamstrings, i'm not going to have you stretch your hip, flexor is the same amount as your hamstring. I'm going to have you stretch your hamstrings twice as much as your hip flexors, right? Because they're tighter. So we want to be able to utilize that to come up with a program for each individual. Coach is the algorithm behind this.

Rapid-fire fitness opinions 26:00

Custom Optimized Algorithm Creating Health is what the acronym stands for. In a nutshell, it's our proprietary formula. that we created to basically look at each individual and say, not only based on your client intake survey, but based your usage of the program, based how you slept last night, how your body feels today, what's the best program for you today. And so we're constantly trying to improve that and give people a better experience. But in a nutshell, what coach is doing is it's looking for where your weakest, it is looking where you're tightest and it prioritizing movements that help you gain mobility, flexibility and strength in those areas.

And then once the changes, like let's pretend your hamstrings are tight and all of a sudden you've scaled up that movement to a place where we know your hams are flexible now, well it will find the next tight area and prioritize that instead. It's really my best attempt at How would I give somebody the same experience of working with me as a trainer? But for a fraction of the cost, because obviously I can't duplicate myself for everybody. So I very much, as you can probably tell by now, I have a little bit of a vendetta against the traditional fitness industry.

And part of that was me watching personal trainers charge people $100 an hour to sit there and text their friends while they put them on a treadmill or some weight machines and counted some reps for them. a lot of attention to detail on their movement. This person needs a much different program than the one that they're getting. And so, yeah, I just want people to have the opportunity to that experience even if they can't afford it. So I dreamt about it back then and we finally built it, so. You still lift weights.

I mean, you'll still pick a barbell up, a dumbbell, kettlebell, up. Yeah, so I've been in the fitness industry for long enough that I have a collection of fun things that i like to play with, right? So, I'm a huge fan of body weight and movement progressions. I think it's a foundation that everyone needs to have. In fact, i think most people probably err a little too hard on weightlifting and not enough on learning how to move your body better intrinsically. But I also, personally, on a personal level, I don't have this in the Wii Shape program because it's not required in my opinion, especially for the people we serve.

I enjoy doing some barbell lifts.I enjoy lifting some heavy stuff. i like doing kettlebell swings.i like sprinting in a street. l like playing with gymnastic rings.l like swinging a sledgehammer. You know, i do some weird stuff like that too. But it is not require. If we look at where the wii shape program, for example, could take you, is if you can do dive bomber push-ups, if can V-Ups, single leg deadlifts with perfect form, you know single-leg squats, like table tops, things like that. If you could do all that stuff, then you're going to have all the movement freedom you ever need.

And then if want to join the gym and lift some weights and do some other stuff like I do, go for it. You know what I mean? But it's not required. You talked about longevity at the beginning, and you know, it's really clear to me that you emphasize movement, free movement appropriate movement. The number one test for longevity, believe it or not, is movement or finding a movement dysfunction. And one of the biggest ones that it said in which you're never going to be able to perform any exercise correctly is toe extension.

So it is great to see that. You're doing that, but you've really emphasized the concept of community, mission, togetherness? Yeah. How are you able to attain that if people work at home? Oh, that's a great question. Yeah, thanks for asking that. You know, this is something that we had as an aspiration early on because obviously people were doing their workout programs and stuff. So, you know within WeShape, we created a little social media community so people could say, I just finished my routine and support each other.

That was a good first step. We started hosting live calls every week with myself and some of the other coaches on the WeShape staff. So, you know, when you come inside, You can jump into live zoom calls where we'll answer questions or talk about different subjects or even some Of them are just support groups for people trying to support you through the changes that you're making when it comes to releasing this shame and the guilt and The toxic messaging that we've all been kind of succumbed to over a very long period of time from diet and fitness culture.

And then we have challenges, and this is probably the most powerful thing that we've done inside WeShape is we host these things we call feel-good challenges.

Functional movement, home workouts, and Coach 30:00

Now, I'm going to be honest with you, most people join their first feel good challenge and they're like, oh, this going be great, i'm gonna use it as an opportunity to lose some weight and like get consistent, right? And, then, we start them off in the challenge with like okay, let's stop focusing on exercise. And let's start focusing on movement. I know it's a nuance to the language, but exercise brings up all this negativity. It brings this, like, I had to do this in gym class to burn calories, right?

I got to exercise because of what I ate yesterday. So if we focus on practicing movement, now it has changed. Now it is about care. Its about intention. its about reconnection with the body, not the opposite. And then the next week we're like let us talk about your why. Why are you here? And we go a little deeper with their why, because almost everybody starts with, I want to lose weight, or my doctor said I got to loose weight or something like that. And when we start trying to connect them to something more deep, like I wanna care for myself so I can be with my partner and do as much as I could with movement freedom as possible.

Go on hikes, go on trips, do on things like. Maybe it's my children or grandchildren. I'm gonna be able to keep up with them. Then ultimately, over time, people eventually just look at themselves in the mirror and say, wait, want do this for me. That's when they say I do want this because I deserve it. And then as a third pillar in that challenge, we focus on community. And so when people join our challenges, the biggest thing that I try to teach them is that we're trying to not just shift the way you move, but we are trying shift your mindset.

That means ultimately, what are we trying do? We are going to change, right? When we have a community of people around us who can hold space for us, who could support us and encourage us. We feel safe. When we feel safe, our nervous system, or body, we change. We have the freedom to change when we don't feel. Safe. we won't change period. Right. And so that's why community is so important is because if I can't bring people together to, for one person to say, I'm really struggling with my body image today.

Right. That gives that person the safety to say it's okay for me to struggle today. Today does not mean my life. It just means right now, tomorrow I'm going to wake up and maybe back on track. Right? So it is about creating safety and connection and making sure that people feel like we see the real them, not the superficial masks that we all put on to feel like we're successful or attractive or whatever it may be. So yeah, ultimately through the challenges, through live calls, to our integrated community, we are able to build a really strong community.

And then lately we've been dabbling with some live events as well. We did our first retreat last year. Very happy to say it went great and we'll do another one this year because just bringing people together and moving and working on the mindset stuff together is just so powerful. Yeah, that's why we do it and how we show it. That's fabulous. So what does feeling lighter mean and why did you choose it as a name for your podcast? I appreciate that. This was my wife who was originally, we started WeShaped Together.

She ended up deciding she wanted to stay home with the kids or kids had some extra needs that she needed to attend to. That was about a year and a half ago, but she named the podcast and I always loved it because what we're trying to do at WeShape with the mindset side of things is give people the permission to like themselves as they are. Right? If you can start to shift—it doesn't happen overnight, by the way—if you could start shift from walking past the mirror and being like, oh god, look at how gross I am, or like this is disgusting, I can't believe how shameful I should be about the ways I look, and instead you say, you know what?

I'm really grateful that my lungs breathed all night last night for me while I was sleeping. And I am really greatful that I got another day on this planet Earth and maybe that evolves into, wow, you're smart and you are funny and your a hard worker and take care of yourself. Or wow I've learned this new skill, I'am such a good learner and getting so much more movement freedom. If you can change that over time to so many more positive things, well you gonna feel soo much lighter, right? And i think it's a little bit of a play too because what does everybody want when they join the fitness industry?

They wanna get lighter. They want to lose weight. But as I said before, I've watched so many people lose weight, reach their goals, and like we're talking hundreds of pounds lost goals. And a lot of them, almost all of, them were still miserable. They didn't feel lighter. they were lighter, but they carried that same heaviness and judgment and criticism with them because it's all they've ever done to get to where they where. So what happens when we remove that? What happens if we removed you using criticism as fuel to create motivation?

Well, we've got to find it a different way. We've gotta find inspiration. You've gonna find that inside intrinsically. And that happens by learning how to love and care for ourselves. So, you know, that's what the podcast is all about. It's just about teaching people more ways to Love and Care for themselves, overcoming these mental blocks and giving them as many tools as we possibly can to bring more awareness to their day that we ultimately can all love our bodies and our lives right now. And it just takes some work, just like moving better takes a lot of good repetitions.

Thinking better, takes lot a good repetition too. Indeed. So you have a theme that I think actually crosses into bodybuilding. I need to call you out on this. All right, let's hear it. Or contraction control. That's a big thing in body building. Tell me about it! The idea of contraction control, the idea that you're controlling the muscle in reference to your mind and you have that mind-body, famously made by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah, yeah. Oh, even before that, you'd have the vaudeville strongman like Eugene Sando.

There's some old timer guys who were, in my opinion, those were the real specimens, right? They had strength, flexibility, everything. But yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. You know, a huge part of the foundation of good movement is first feeling your body. It's like, what am I feeling right here? The difference between I think what we do and what you'd see in traditional bodybuilding would be they tend to focus on isolation and muscular contraction to maximize growth. And we tend focus to on the collaboration.

of the muscles. So, you know, I'll give you a great example. One of my favorite movements in the world, and this is a good movement test for people, we call it a one-legged drinking bird, but if you can imagine if I just stand on one foot and I'm upright and i'm able to hinge forward at the hips into a horizontal position and then back up on that one without falling down, absolutely one of most functional moves we can do as a human being. And yet most people do it really poorly or can barely do at all because they don't have the balance and coordination, right?

Community, mindset, and feeling lighter 36:36

If somebody's gonna do that move and I tell them, you know, we're gonna focus on one muscle, it's never gonna work. So what do we do? First focus is on the feet, all right? Is your arch active? Are your toes active, okay? Now let's focus your core and whether you're properly centered over that foot. If you are crooked over the foot, your gonna fall every time or you gonna be strengthening the wrong things. Now, let make sure the hips working properly. That's the main motor here, right. feel multiple things at once is a bit of a journey.

Because I know that one thing we get consistently is people will say, I just get so frustrated when I get a new movement on here, because I feel like I can't do it. And I'm like, great. That's exactly how it's supposed to feel. When you can do something that's more challenging than you currently do, it is supposed feel frustrating. As we continue practicing it, we go from conscious incompetence. I don't, like... I, know I am sucking at this, right? To unconscious competence. I don't have to think about it anymore and I can still do it, right?

And so I think it's a really important thing for people to realize that, you know, hey, it is about integrating the body and focusing on multiple muscles. And then it also, every time we get to that point where we feel like we've got a movement down, let's make it a little harder and then we'll get frustrated all over again. But that progress of learning how to move better, that's what allows us to have that movement freedom for as long as possible. Would you say your message resonates more with people trying to get in shape?

And when I say in-shape, a little leaner, move a bit better, or people who are trying stronger? Or people that are getting bigger, like powerlifters and the like? Definitely not the aesthetic-based fitness crowd. I would say that the majority of the people who come to us, and this is more factual than anecdotal, because we have the data, come with an ache, pain, or injury. So most of people that come are going to be over 50. They're going be more on the beginner side of things or tried a lot of programs and felt like nothing feels like a good fit for them.

And they have some sort of movement restriction. It's usually like an aches, a pain or an injury in some area of their body. And what I'm really proud to say is we can help people typically feel better within the first week just by simple principles of how the body is supposed to move. A great one is there's probably a lot of people listening with knee pain. I know knee in all too well with five knee surgeries between my two knees. The number one thing that changed my life for knee-pain was when I do all movements, Make sure my knee is pointing the same direction as my toes.

That's it. If I look down, is my thigh bone, if I just drew a line out from my thighs bone is that in the middle of my foot? If it is, my knees in a pretty safe position. I can strengthen, I could do all kinds of stuff. And that doesn't matter if i'm walking sideways, playing tennis, doing a squat, going up and down stairs, right? if you watch your knee wobble in too far or out too, and you're wondering why you have knee pain? There it is, right? Learn how to move properly and you'll feel better.

So let's wrap with a request. Okay. Buddy of mine always says, give me one thing that I can do on Monday to make myself better, coach Tyler, help my friend out. I'm going to give people a really practical thing, okay? Love it. This is something that if you followed me around all day, I'd probably do it 10 or more times throughout the day. It only takes 10 seconds at a time. And I think it's one of the absolute keys for me maintaining really good posture, thoracic mobility, shoulder health, etc. and it just makes you feel good too.

All right. So if you're listening to this, you know, just try to follow along. But what you basically do is you take your hands. and you're going to clasp them behind your back. If you can't do that, you could grab a little washcloth and grab onto the wash cloth so there's space between your hands. And then what you are going do is straighten your arms, drop your shoulders down away from your ears, and lift your chest towards the sky. Just count to ten real quick while you do this, then slowly come back to the start position and relax.

If you do that three times a day for a couple weeks, your body is going to start feeling so much better and it's going take you 30 seconds a Day. Okay, so I love integrating movement into my day. I have a new thing I've been telling people if it is in the way, I'll do it every day so now I put stuff in my home environment to remind me to move.

Contraction control and a simple daily stretch 40:36

So when I walk through this door, this is my chest stretch door. When I come over here, I've got a foam roller. I can do some work there. And I got this thing over there where I could do a little back stretch. Then I try to remind myself to do these little shoulder stretches and stuff throughout the day. Sometimes the best way to get started is not even working out in the first place. It's just doing little movement snacks is what we call them throughout day so you can start feeling better. So I would just pick one thing.

Just start showing up for yourself. Start taking care of yourself, notice how it feels. This should feel good. Once something feels good, we want to more of it. and it'll help you keep that snowball rolling forward. One little movement snack, I'll lead him down a laundry list of laundry hacks. I love it. That's right. You got it! It's been fun, man. We're helping people today. It was a good day. Coach Tyler, appreciate your time. Yeah, you as well, Dr. Robin. Thanks for listening. Anytime you want to talk health, give me a buzz.