Hi everybody, Doug Adams here from the Run DNA Podcast and really excited to have Michael Silva on, a physical therapist on. So Michael, thank you for joining us today here. You know, it's great to be in Delaware virtually. My first time in Delaware. Yes. That's the extent of what most people have here. Not a lot of actual present people in Delaware. So, but I'm going to do a quick intro just for the group. And then we're going to hop into some rapid fire questions just to get to learn Michael a little bit more here. So you've been a PT for about twenty five years, right? Yeah, exactly. Yep. And then you ran your own practice for about twenty. Right. Where was that located? Where were you there? I was in Massachusetts in Rhode Island. Yeah. I had two in Rhode Island, one in Mass. And I was about to open my third in Rhode Island when I decided to sell and exit. Nice. Congratulations. Yeah. And you had a lot of success really working with an endurance population became a great local source and even a regional national, uh, international source for, for working with runners here. I think this is one of the things that you and I really connected on, um, working with that elite population, uh, with that, which is just, I don't know about you. I just thought it was such a fun part of my career here working at that level. You know what, Doug, it, um, finding my niche in the running world saved my profession. Like I was really jaded and I was like not having fun working with unmotivated people who didn't wanna get better and like, like I can't keep doing this and I happen to follow in and I was I think we mentioned earlier I was not originally an endurance athlete or a distance runner I was a football player right and football basketball and track and the sprinter but I kind of fell into this and started doing endurance sports with my wife and then fell into the running world and fortunately had some success at the beginning and then it just steamrolled and it built you know my we used to call my business the practice the runner built yeah and I tell you what you can't get more motivated clients than runners man It is such a fun population to work with. I just have to say, like our slogan for our Clinic Omega project here is can't stop, won't stop. And that's very true of these athletes here, right? It's part of their being. And if you can make a change for them, they are so grateful. And that is such a rewarding position to be in. Right. Yeah. If you know, I don't know if you had this experience with PTs that don't work with runners or have no desire to like, I don't want to work with runners. They're stubborn. Like they never listen. I'm like, no, you just don't know how to talk to them. And you don't like show them the value of the advice you're giving. But I'm like, if you talk to them the way they need to be talked to and get the point across, they're going to be your best clients ever. And I'm like, you know what? Don't worry about it. Just send all your runners to me. I'll take them. Yeah, I'll take them all. I'll send you all my workers comp. I'll take all your runners. It'll be good. People even say that runners are cheap and they never want to pay for things. And I'm like, well, why are they running around in a three hundred dollar pair of shoes that they're going to run fifty miles in? Right. And runners are changing every month. Exactly. They're just value driven. They are, I want value. I know what I do. I know who I am. And anybody that can help me, great. If you can't help me, I'm going to move on from you pretty quick. So they're value-driven. Love runners for that. Absolutely. They don't want to waste their time. No. They've got to hit the long run on the weekend. They don't want to waste their time. For a therapist that's not going to get them better, they don't want to waste time or money on something that's not going to make them a better runner, whether they're going to run longer, run faster, or avoid pain. That's all they want. Any runner have any different goals in those three pretty much? Run faster, run longer, do it without pain. Yeah. And that actually, I love that that's on your Run Strong website. So once you kind of transition out of the practice area, it looks like you had some great, you were doing some business coaching, some speaking, doing a lot with their consulting. You've told me some great stories about how you helped a lot of practices, which is just awesome. Our profession needs that. So thank you for doing that. And then you're still doing the run strong. Maybe tell us a little bit about that as well. Yeah, so Run Strong started as a strengthening class I did for runners. Probably started twenty years ago, maybe not twenty, seventeen years ago. As you notice, there's some common imbalances we see in runners, right? What I was noticing is every runner I was discharging, no matter what their injury was, had a pretty similar discharge plan and maintenance plan. We've got to open up the hips, strengthen the glutes, get a little more dorsiflexion, a little more thoracic rotation, whatever it was. I had all these things. I'm like, I wonder if I just taught everyone this before they got hurt. Maybe this would be helpful. It started off as just a class, and I did it at a local running store, and it it was really popular I would do two classes back to back I'd have twenty runners in the class two classes at forty runners after treating sixteen patients that day then going to the running store and doing these classes at night so it started there and then a lot of the public speaking I was doing and consulting with like college teams and high school teams I just kind of coined I trademarked the term run strong it's it's mine and kind of housed everything I did with runners under that trademark And then it turned into like this virtual platform. And, you know, so the run strong class, it turned into a virtual like asynchronous, do it whenever you want type of program. I've got a coach's course in there. So I'm trying to help coaches not destroy our high school athletes and teach them how to be better coaches. Right. And I do some like virtual running analysis through there as well. That's awesome. You know what's funny? I didn't realize this until now, but I'm pretty sure when we were looking for company names and website URLs, I'm pretty sure I looked at Run Strong and I was like, man, somebody's got it. It's a good name. I'm surprised they got it. Yeah, I know. Around that time, do you remember Livestrong with Lance Armstrong? Yeah. I get that Livestrong band forever. For three years, I think I wore that thing straight. Yeah. But when I did that, people were like, oh, you better be careful. Lance is going to come after you. I'm like, not Liv Strong. And now, I mean, everything, Boston Strong, this strong. Anytime a tragedy happens, unfortunately, in our country, it's something strong, right? Yeah. Yeah, but thank you. I like the name, and I'm not giving it up. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Don't even come bidding here. He's sticking with it here. Everyone has a price, Doug. Just going to say that. Yeah, everyone does have a price. Yeah, right there. So, yeah. Well, Michael and I were chatting. We recently met in person for the first time. We had been talking back and forth virtually for a while. We met at a private practice section conference recently and had some great conversations there. Then we said, let's get a podcast together. Let's find some things to do together. just really like-minded and we started talking about tons of different things. I think it's refreshing to see that there is a very similar philosophy with a lot of what we do here. But we came across a topic that is going to be pretty fun to talk about and I'm excited to hear your thoughts on this. We're going to talk about what we can learn from the low-tech or more holistic type runner. And we were kind of saying that there were a lot of things that we see. And just like you were saying, the discharging, you're noticing common things that everyone needs to work on or things that we wish you did. And so I want to go into that. So we're going to jump into that in a second. But first, I want to do those rapid fire questions just so that the audience knows you a little bit more before we go into this. So warm up, ready? Yeah. Easy one. Why did you become a PT? Uh, like most orthopedic sports medicine PTs, I was hurt a lot as a high school athlete, spent a lot of time in PT. There you go. Yeah. The pretty common story. All right. Another rapid fire one. What's your favorite thing to treat? Wow. Yeah. I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm going to say, so as strain, um, Hmm. Nice. I haven't gotten that answer before. I figured I'd throw that one at you. Yeah. I'm going to say anything below the belly button, but you know, that's just not really specific. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of things below the belly button, but there you go. Okay. All right. I like that one. So, all right. Another rapid fire. Describe one thing you would have every runner do if you knew they would actually do it. I would say a side plank, starfish side plank. Starfish side plank. Nice. Okay. All right. I like that. There's a lot of benefit with that exercise. There is. Yeah. I always like a lot of, my friend JJ Thomas really convinced me a lot of this too, like incorporating shoulder into core stability is so important. for some of those things, for that upper and lower body connection. And that's a great exercise for it. So there you go. All right. I like that one. Now, a little bit tougher ones as we get towards the last two here. What's something that you're most excited about in the field of PT currently? What gets you really excited about the profession right now? All right, the thing that gets me really excited actually got me really scared at first, but learning more, I'm excited about incorporating AI and technology into our field. I feel like twenty twenty four is the year of AI. Oh, that is like we're going to look back on it and be like, that was the year that it just exploded. And at that private practice session meeting, I noticed just how different the room was that some of these companies that were like small before and then all of a sudden they had AI and they are like the big ones throwing the Cirque du Soleil parties at the end of the night. It was like, okay, all right, this is EMR with AI and trying to avoid burnout and PTs. That is, I think, why people are so excited about it. And I think if you use it properly, you can achieve that, right? You can be more efficient, avoid burnout. I always thought it was going to take away from our human connection, which I do not want to ever do in our profession because I think it's extremely important. But I think we can use that to do these mundane tasks and we can get more human connection. I mean you're gonna get me going off on a tangent so I know that's not the topic of the day maybe a little tangent on that because I a hundred percent agree that a lot of times I'll get some people saying like I don't want to use technology I want to be connected with a person and my response is that the technology lets us spend the time there with it I was talking to a fairly well-known clinician this morning that does a lot of gait analysis They were just on a big show and they blew up after the show. They just had a ton of people coming in for gate analysis. We started showing some of the things that we do and how we use the RunDNA app and how we use the technology and they're like, When we get done a gait analysis, I don't have anything else to do for them. I've got everything done. And that allows me to connect with that person way more in front of me because I can make sure they're doing their exercises correctly, answer the questions, educate them more. It's like, let's use technology for that. Amen. Absolutely. All right. Now, last one's probably the toughest one here. What's one thing you wish you could create or invent as a PT that would make a huge impact on the field? You can make anything and it would work and it wouldn't cost you money is aside. What would you make? I would make a rapid fire bone stimulator to get rid of all bony stress injuries. Mm hmm. Thirty minutes or less. Thirty minutes or less. All right. It's like the microwave of bone stimulators. Yeah. The easy button with it. Do you have experience with TECR therapy then for that? Or are you familiar with transfer of energy through capacity and resistance? So this technology exists a little bit there for you here, actually. When we were talking about favorite things to treat, when you said psoas strains there, recently I used to say shin splints were mine. because it's they're so easy to fix like it's just you get to be such a hero for that person and it's just like really easy and there's like five or six things that could be contributing you get the right one and it's like boom they instantly feel better um but I have actually recently found a little secret formula for treating like for lack of a better term the sports hernias Oh, nice. The Bermuda Triangle of injuries, right? It's a little bit of like pubic symphysis pain. It's a little bit adductor. It's that. But I was on a webinar the other day kind of talking about this. But we use Winback for this tech art. I swear I've had people come in, and it is just that like – It's that microwave version of it, of just getting the, yeah. So what's it called? It's called Tekker. So the company is Winback and it's a transfer of energy through capacitive and resistive. And it is something that for bone structure, stress injuries for soft tissues. It has been a game changer just because of the depth that you can really get with some of that. And it actually feels nice when you're doing it too. So that's like, and I just use it as part of my treatment. It's not replace it. I like, it's something I do while I do my manual. So yeah. So there you go. Went back, shout out unintended, but, but yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah there you go so uh but it's something to like that's a common thing we see that question like something that's going to get rid of pathology quickly or pain quickly so that we can focus on the other things and say let's restore movement let's restore tissue capacity range of motion mobility like that's what we really want to do and if you get that stuff out of the way it makes it so much easier to do the fun part of our job Right. But isn't the absence of pain, the indicator of true, fully functioning a hundred percent, like there's nothing else to do, right? wow yeah that's I want a t-shirt that says that just like so that people can egg me when I'm walking around with it yeah no it's absolutely not right absence of pain is not health but that is what we uh often see unfortunately a lot of times that people get impairment resolution and they think oh okay uh you have a hundred and twenty five degrees of knee flexion and uh you have no pain you must be healthy But watching you walk up and down the steps, I feel like I need to grab a gait belt. That's okay. You don't have pain. But you're healthy. But you're healthy. You're healthy. You know how many times I've used that line? The absence of pain does not indicate you're fully healed and ready to run. Yes. It's just the noxious stimuli is not enough to trigger your pain pathways. We have so much more work to do. Because, hey, thanks for getting rid of my pain, Mike. I got a marathon tomorrow. We're going for it. Yes. Let's have a chat about that. Yeah, I feel like there's a whole other podcast topic for us there. We could just go into that whole. Well, this is our problem, Doug. We have too many things we want to talk about and too many things we like talking about. So we're focused. All right, let's stay focused. All right, let's get back to the topic at the end here. So like we said, you work with some very elite runners, and I know that there's a lot that goes into getting successful outcomes with that group. So what are some things that you've noticed that either those elite runners do better than the recreational or some things you consistently prescribe even to those elite runners that are that low tech, no tech, holistic approach to help people get better results with their running? right I don't think you can get any more low tech or basic than this I find like these pro elite runners I worked with probably because they can they have the ability to do this but they rest and recover better than all the rest of us yes you know and it's hard when I tell you know like a mother of three who's working a full-time job and training for a marathon to say you know you need to sleep you know nine eight and a half hours a day you need to take this day off you need to rest here it's hard right you need to decrease your stress load so just get rid of your kids and quit your job but so yeah pro athletes fortunately have the ability to do that but I think they rest and take recovery more serious which they should but then the recreational runner and I wish I could get the recreational runner to just put a little more energy and passion into their recovery which I think I've done it over the years that's been a lot of my conversations that is a huge part of that I like is saying I forget where I heard this but uh I don't think it was an original quote from even the person that I heard it from so I don't feel bad not uh giving them credit with it but the exercise is the contraction but the recovery is the expansion Right. That's where. Yeah. Right. So when we work, right, we're contracting. But when we grow and we want to expand, like that's where recovery comes in. And that's a big part of it there. And that's why I'm such a minimum effective dosage person there with it, where it's like if you're doing more than you can recover from, you are only breaking your body down. Right. Beyond what it really needs to. Yeah, where you're just going to have a chronic state of, and I've said this on here before, and you and I have even said this too, it's not over-training, it's under-recovering. That's why people get injured. It's not that they can't handle some of the training, because they went and did the training. They did it. They were able to go and run. They weren't able to recover enough to do another one there. But it wasn't that they couldn't do the training. They did it. By definition, it's not overtraining. By definition, it's under-recovering. and then you're breaking it down there right so um how do you get them to do that what are like what are some of the suggestions what are some of the tricks what do you you know recovery obviously sleep is a huge thing there but how do you like do how do you convince somebody to do that That's a loaded question because everyone's life is so different. There's a select few of the recreational people who do a decent job with it, but for me, it's having that conversation. I wish I had that quote, running is the contraction, and uh rest is the expansion like I would just say like you benefit from your hard work when you rest like that's when you're gonna that's when you're gonna maximize the outcome of the effort you put in so if you're not resting you're never gonna maximize that outcome so getting them to realize the importance of rest and you know rest is not a sign of weakness and training harder doesn't mean you're training smarter most of the time people just want to train harder train harder train harder than their Yeah, they handled the training, like you said. I'm going to steal this quote from you. It's not that you over-trained, you under-rested. So how can we incorporate the rest in there? You know, it's just so hard when people are so busy, right? You know, it's hard. Like, I... I loved all the runners I worked with. I think it was easier to work with the elite ones because they had the time and resources to do whatever you told them. Yeah. Right. And, and they didn't get to that, to that point in their career by chance. Right. So they've got a work ethic. They have a talent built in there. They've got the DNA that's in their favor. Um, and then they had resources, right. They can take the time to rest. So, um, yeah, getting the mother of four who works full time and her partner works full time to take a full day off and try to really rest and you know make sure she does her warm up properly and make sure she does her cool down properly just expressing just trying to express the value and how important that is and you know a lot of these people don't want to hear the research you know research says that this and this and this is just trying to make it applicable to them in their life And it goes back to that connection with the human. Like, I'm not going to spit out an AI bot to tell them to do that, but just looking in their eyes and, you know, I mean, how many times have your runners cried in your office when you have to exchange certain information, right? Oh, yeah. So, and we know how important running is to them. And when they're seeing that they might not be able to get to this marathon that they train so hard for, or, you know, they, they used running for mental health or they lost weight, you know, they're in a healthiest they've ever been because of running and now running could possibly be taken away because of an injury. So just connecting. So I'm kind of giving you a long-winded answer, but connecting and who they are, what their life is like, what their circumstances are like and trying to provide, let them know the value and how important it is and how, let me help you strategize how you can fit in a little more rest into your schedule. And the number one thing absolutely is just getting them to sleep more. Yes. Very few people sleep enough. I'm going to take a long-winded way to come back to something called motivational interviewing and see your thoughts on this too. But what we're talking about is really, I find much easier for the tech-based runner because I can show them, hey, what's your resting heart rate? When you take a rest day, what is your recovery score? When you take a rest day, what's your body battery at? What does this look like? And for me, it's so easy because when I notice like my progression, Thursday's my rest day. So if you look at charts and I look at mine, it's like, okay, resting heart rate on Friday, Saturday, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two. By the time I get to Wednesday, it's like fifty-three, fifty-four. And I'm like, I'm ten percent higher by the end of the week. And then I take my recovery day and it's like, okay, reset. So for the tech-driven runner, I think it's a lot easier here. For the non-tech runner, I think it can be challenging to relate that. So there's two things that I find. The first is the one I mentioned, motivation and interviewing. The other thing is testing. the one of my favorite lines to when working with our learner is if things keep going the way that they're going what do you think is going to happen and just be quiet and just kind of mic drop a little bit be like what you know what do you think like if you just keep doing the same thing what's going to happen they're like oh yeah, I'm probably not gonna be able to run in six months from now. I'm gonna have to quit running. So, okay. So that's kind of the way to get them into that. And then I'd be curious what you do from this on the coaching side, because in our endurance coaching certification course that we have, we teach a little bit of a systematic way. And again, I'm very tech oriented, but we have some low tech ways to get people to realize the benefits of recovery, and appropriate training intensities and those types of things. And I use a two-mile time trial frequently. I get them to do frequent, I either do a two mile time trial or a two mile endurance test. And you need a heart rate strap for that one. But for the low tech version of it, just doing a two mile time trial, just so that they can see that if they are incorporating things, how it actually helps them. So do you have anything like that, that like convinces them or shows them that like, hey, this is working for you by taking this? So, you know, I didn't, I didn't have like a specific test that I use, but I love the two mile test and appreciate that you shared that. So no, I didn't do anything specific like that. You know, I worked with, you know, if it was the, if I was a high school athlete, they had a coach, right? Yes. And I'm going to be nice, but there's a lot of not so great high school coaches, right? Volunteers that we are very appreciative that they are. Thank you for giving us your time. yes we appreciate the time here's some education about how to make running beneficial which is why I I made my running my running coaches certification course for that exact person right yeah but I never got into that coaching the coaching side of it and I had other coaches in in the in the area in new england that I would refer runners to that needed specific coaching and I would just get feedback and if they did have metrics and wearables and uh strata whatever they whatever they were using they would bring me some information that we'd help go through it but I didn't do a specific test like that which I like yeah can I go back to one thing that you said before yeah yeah go for it about the motivational interviewing and you said you know if things don't change where are you going to be in six months yes I did a similar trick when someone come in and then be I'm just totally making this up but like I can't believe I got hurt I've been running seven days a week for like three years straight I've done seven marathons a year like why am I getting hurt now So let's say that with a different tone. Yeah. I've been running seven days a week. Yeah. Three frigging years. I've done seven marathons a year. no wonder I got hurt. Like, you know, the last three words, but because they think like, Oh, I'm in the best shape of my life. And I would tell people when you're in PR shape, you're, you're on the tightrope between injury and, and PR. Right. So it's just getting them to realize like, you can't keep just, adding adding adding adding and not not resting enough and recovering enough because it's it's just something's going to break down you're going to get sick you're going to get hurt something bad's going to happen without And, you know, it's interesting you say it that way too, right? Because most of the runners that we work with are not professional runners, right? Like most of the people listening to this are working with recreational runners, maybe collegiate or high-level high school, but they have some other life experience, right? And when you were just saying that, it made me think about I just read this email that I get and they talk about simplifying in your business. And this is probably something that you do with your business coaching and your consulting aspects, right? When you work with a business and you're trying to grow a business, what do most people do? They add, add, add. add instead of like focusing and doing better and be, and it's like, it's synonymous there. So if you got a, you know, weekend warrior coming in and you say, Hey, listen, if you're trying to grow a business, are you going to just keep adding more elements? Are you going to try and do better and focus on the things that you're doing even better? So like cover better, eat better, sleep better, like all of those things. Right. Cause you can, You can grow or add by subtracting. I use an example of like, if I'm going to see a nutritionist and I said like, you know, I eat Sour Patch Kids every meal, three meals a day, every day of the week. Are they just going to say, oh, why don't you just throw a little broccoli in there with your Sour Patch Kids? That'll help out, right? Yeah. Maybe get rid of some of the sour patch kids. Right. So going from like, you can either add a positive or take away a negative type of thing. I think that's where you're getting at, which will help simplify. And I said, when people talking about, so I use this as an example of a bucket. Right. So in my example, an empty bucket is a good thing. Right. So if you visualize a bucket and water is getting poured into the top, right. And water is the training that these runners are doing. And they just, you know, I did two sessions today. I did a track workout. I did a long run. I'm doing hills and pouring it in, pouring it in, pouring it in, dumping it in. Sooner or later, the bucket's going to overflow. And I use this as a visual. When that bucket overflows, that's when you're going to break down. You're going to get sick. You're going to get hurt. So how can you continue to train? Without letting that water overflow. So now you're drilling holes. I'm like, all right, you sleep eight hours a day, drill a hole in the bucket. I made a really cheesy visual on the computer. It's not very savvy, but water's going down. You know, you do a proper tissue preparation before you work out. Tissue's going down. You do your mobility training. You do your strength training. You hydrate. You have good nutrition. You take a rest day, like all these positive things. things that we're doing and drilling all these holes and water's pouring out. Now you can, you're recovering more. You're doing all these good things. Now you can add it. It's like, we don't need to add more workouts for you to get better and not get hurt. We need to take away some stuff and add more self care. I love that because I've heard the bucket analogy many times, but I've never heard it with the holes and that those are the things that are going to help you just like pour more water in. Right. I love that. So I did a running camp I used to do every year here in New England. And one of the high school coaches, he was there. He heard the analogy with me and he went back and he actually bought a bucket, bought a drill and, In front of his whole team, and he sent me pictures of his team drilling holes in the buckets. I had tears in my eyes. I'm like, I love this guy because he got it, and he was actually – how many coaches do this? They go to a conference, they learn, and they actually put it to use to the point where the guy was drilling holes in the bucket to prove a point to his team. And he has a pretty good team. He's arguably one of the top successful coaches in this area. So I was so happy about that. I got through to someone. Yeah, there you go. That's what makes it worth it. So, you know, the strategy that most runners do is the opposite of that. They think that they can just build a bigger bucket. They're like, okay, hey, I'm gonna just train more so that my body is ready to handle more of this, right? And so they say, and I would say sometimes even on the therapy side of things, we're also only thinking about building the bigger bucket. Like, okay, let's just make your muscles stronger, right? So we can increase that. Let's switch your shoes out kind of thing. Like, we're going to make your bucket bigger. But things like even gait analysis, right? I've never thought about it this way, but gait analysis can drill a couple holes in there because we're making- Giant hole in there. Giant holes there, right? So that's going to make each step less impactful. So the water is just going to pour out and you're never going to exceed it there. I love that. I've never heard the analogy, the bucket. I've heard the bucket analogy maybe a hundred times, but I've never heard it. That way. Maybe I'm going to use, speaking of AI, I'm going to use Dolly to create the actual video content of the buckets and the water coming out. Because I did it on Keynote on my MacBook. It was so bad. And then when I would do my presentations of my talks, I'm like, don't judge my graphics. I'm not a graphic dude, and I'm not going to spend money on graphics, but you'll get the point. Yeah. But yeah, I like it. I've used it forever. And I think for some people, they're like, oh, that makes sense. Yeah. So hopefully I get through to a few people. Yeah, that's a great one. I know we're going to share that and get that out there. And you're going to start getting, I'm going to send you like a bucket in the mail here and a drill that right. On that note, I did a, I used to present at a massage therapy school every year. Cause like, so they brought me in to talk about how massage therapists and PTs can work close together. And I'll also with my work with runners and I use that. And every year they would give me a thank you gift and they would put it in a bucket. and they would put mike's bucket and they would just paint holes all around it and they would just fill it with like I don't know gift cards and things like a presence as a thank you because I never charged them it was just a fun thing I did for them so I have all these buckets with all these painted holes in it in my basement I'm thinking about this analogy even further right and now I'm thinking about like the types of recovery that you do and the types of things that you can do not only the size of the whole but like certain buckets almost like there's layers of it right You can drill a hole at the base of the bucket with like gait analysis down there and like sleep. But like maybe nutrition's in the middle type thing of like, hey, yeah, eating healthy, it's helpful. You know, what you put in is what you get out of your body kind of thing. There's other things like higher up where it's unimportant. gimmicky things right of like oh yeah you know I took this or I did that or like what are like where does the recovery we could design a whole thing with us this is our course here we're talking about this is our course get ready everybody yeah so we could call it the bucket course but there's certain things that are like hey drill it down here and then there's opposite things that people have like maybe somebody has something where that somebody's put some sand in their bucket right they they have an injury like they have a huge ankle joint or something lock in the holes that's always it's going to block the holes or it's going to reduce the capacity of the bucket and there's certain things that you're going to have to do more holes in the bucket if you've got some sand in the bottom Right. So I don't know if I told you, like, I'm writing a book on foundational health for runners. And a lot of it is about theory. I might have to bring you on as a co author with me. And we're gonna start throwing rocks and sand in the buckets. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I love it. Because we use that we like for our businesses, we use the traction method, which is like a And they talk about that classic experiment where you put the sand in and if you put the sand and then the pebbles and then the rocks and then the water, it's all going to spill over. But if you put the rocks in first and, you know, yeah. But we can take that bucket analogy to a different level here. That's really I love this. I'm really loving where this is going just because it's so relatable for a runner. Yeah. Right. And maybe you and I leave us some comments if you think it's as much as I think about this a lot. Right. This is something we're always thinking about. So maybe it's just refreshing to us. No one else is as excited as we are is what you're trying to get at. Right. Yeah. I think they will be. But maybe leave us some comments so that we know if you're if you're in line with the bucket analogy with us there. So, well, you know, just so I think when we've had lunch together, PPS and met for the first time in person, we're talking like, yeah like so much in the beginning of my career and thanks to people like you with the technology and the research and our mutual friend jay dashari like all the stuff that you guys are putting out made me a better therapist for my runners right and you know I'm looking at foot strikes and how far in center far in this uh in front of the center of mass are you what does your arm swing look like like all these biomechanical things that we look at And I would do this advice. I would analyze them. I'd give this advice. And, you know, back in the day, like if you, I think runners world said like heel striking was the third leading cause of death in the country back in years. Yeah. But, but the point I was making was, and I was giving all this great advice and I was giving the, in my opinion, the best like self-care programs, you know, tissue, tissue preparation, strengthening geared right for this person. That's like we're, we're working on their deficiencies and there's no way they're not going to get better. Yeah. I never asked how much sleep they were getting a night. Yeah. I never asked if they actually looked at their pee when they went to the bathroom. Is it look like orange juice or does it look more like water? right? Like I never, I never get into it. And then even with a female runner, like I got more confident to have conversations about menstrual cycles because things are going to change during the cycle. Right. So I think, and as I got older and I became more of this like holistic hippie, not so technical resource for my runners, I talk more about those things. I still do the geeky stuff like you do not quite the level you do, by the way, you're, I respect all that you've done with your technology and what you've built to run DNA and your system. But I just started having these other conversations. Like, why am I going to show this person a strengthening program, and they're sleeping four hours a night. They hate their job. They're on the verge of divorce. They just lost a significant, like they have death. All these things. Like, no, we have to talk about this. I spent so much time, and we had tissue boxes in all of our treatment rooms. And they weren't for, I used to tell people, they're not for runny noses, they're for tears. Like, let's really talk about this. Let's get real with it. Yeah. Cause like shit gets real when you're in a private room and you're really asking people some deep questions and they're wise. Why are you running seven days a week? Why do you need to do this? And what's really going on? And I think arguably, I think I helped as many people just from these conversations that I did with my SOAS releases and telescopes, you know? Right. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, that's that's kind of the overarching theme of when we first talked about this. And now that we've had a fun conversation about it, I think that theme of when you're working with somebody and whether they're low tech or high tech, even with it there, but especially with that less data driven, more, you know, for lack of a better word, touchy feely kind of runner that's into that. I think the connection and developing the connection and giving them somebody to talk to that's an educated resource on a lot of these things. And maybe you try one or two things that might resonate with them and can make the biggest impact for their life. where you say exactly like you just put it so well here why am I going to give somebody a strengthening program if they're getting four hours of sleep a night and they're about to lose their job that's not going to be successful no we have to think about like what would be the barriers to making this a good outcome for everybody involved and those are the things that we're not talking about enough so we need to have those conversations right and I think we need to have them yes but also I think coaches need to be more comfortable I mean they're the first set of eyes on these runners like I'm thinking high school and college yeah right so educating the coaches on how to have these conversations and hopefully they're comfortable having these conversations because I think they could they could save a lot of people from harming themselves and getting sick and getting injured yeah if they were more comfortable with it that's my opinion I love it. I love it. So we could probably keep going on a lot of different things. So, but I think we're, you know, if you're open to it, I'd love to have you back for some more conversations. Are you kidding? I just got warmed up, man. Yeah, there we go. Love it. Look out for our bucket t-shirts coming out and our bucket course and things. But where can people find you? Where can people get more information? What's the best way to kind of, you know, see some of the content that you're putting out or get in touch with you? So best way with the running part of my world is go to myrunstrong.com. So M-Y-R-U-N-S-T-R-O-N-G.com. That's where I house all my courses. And on Instagram, my handle's at myrunstrong. I'm not too involved on Facebook with that, but it's more just Instagram. And then I'm doing a lot of stuff on LinkedIn, more on the business coaching side, but that's michaeljsilva.com is my website for my business coaching site. um and email info at michaeljsilva.com if anyone has any questions or wants to uh talk about buckets and um and how to drill holes in buckets here right and what level we should put certain um we can take this pretty deep here yeah yeah for sure I love it love it yeah it's so fun and again I'm going to tell you something like I kind of gloss over before but thank you like for all the effort you put into what you're doing helping runners and the technology you created like I've seen it online and I've been on your email list forever and we've exchanged communication but actually like watching you demonstrated at pps and seeing it I was like damn like why did I not reach out to this guy sooner especially when I had my practices like it's a different level of of uh of gate analysis than I've ever done and I think um I'm thankful for people like you and keep up the good work. Yeah. Well, thank you. Appreciate the kind words and looking forward to many future opportunities to work together here with us. And thank you again for being on and thank you all for listening here. You know, make sure you subscribe, like, do all those kinds of things. Leave us some comments about future content you want to see. Yeah. Thumbs up, thumbs up, all that kind of stuff. So, but thanks again, Michael, and looking forward to hearing more from you. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again.