December 1, 2021 • 50 mins
On this episode of the Fitness Disrupted podcast Tom welcomes the creator of the MELT Method, Sue Hitzmann to the show to discuss connective tissue, movement and replenishing your love of self! All of us have the desire to feel good and movement plays a huge role in our quality of life! Listen as Tom and Sue discuss how moving in the correct way can influence a whole host of healthy adaptations.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of My Heart Radio.
I am Tom Holland and this is Fitness Disrupted. So
this next guest and this show is an interesting one.
(00:23):
Why don't we say that? On many levels? I know
it's something. This methodology, they can absolutely help you, help
you look better, feel better, with longer. It's simple. It's
tough to explain right away, and especially when it comes
from someone like my next guest, Sue Hitsman, who it
(00:45):
makes no sense that I have not yet met her
because I have known of her for three decades. We
started in the same place, New York City, back in
the nineties. We both were running around, you know, to
the different clubs, one in particular we'll talk about. And
we are so aligned in so many ways, which is
(01:07):
probably why I am excited to speak with her. And
I agree with just about everything, just about with her
whole methodology. It's simple, but it's different. It isn't. It isn't.
This is why it's it's everything. I believe in consistency, simplicity,
connecting to your body, that we need to avoid injury
(01:32):
and pain, and that the human condition is such that
we compensate. Talk about that, but we need to move correctly,
we need to move naturally. And you know, when we
talk about these studies as I do, like you know,
does stretching help, uh? Performance, Does stretching help? Period? Of course?
(01:55):
Our bodies need to move the way they were meant to.
And Sue Hitsman's Melt method that she has, you know, refined, compiled,
researched over the years, is just that. And she's someone
like me who is so passionate about fitness and passionate
about learning, and she studied to death and then came
(02:19):
upon this just resonated with her. But it goes back
to the simple stuff is the most important. In other words,
it's the flashy stuff and the lose weight quick schemes
and all that stuff that distracts you from what really matters,
(02:41):
being pain free, moving efficiently, being able to do what
you want to do, whether that's your activities of daily living,
whether that's your recreational sports or competitive sports like really
high level, and the Melt method addresses all three of
(03:02):
those groups. So let me give you a quick bio
on Sue. But she's gonna tell you all you need
to know, all right. So she is the creator of
the Melt method and is a nationally recognized educator, manuel therapist,
exercise physiologists, and founding member of the Fascia Rebody Society.
(03:22):
Hitsman has appeared on The Doctor Show, Nightline, The Rachel Ratio,
and Live with Kelly. She lives in New York City.
What Sue Actually she just moved. Um. What Sue is
someone who has stood the test of time in this
really difficult fitness industry. And again, it's incredible that this
is the first time I believe we will speak. I
(03:45):
had a lot of concussions in sports growing up, but
I'm sure we've never come across each other, which is
incredible because again, same amount of time, really long time
in the industry, so many similarities, uh in where we were.
But she stood the test of time because it works.
(04:08):
You know, Yes, you could be really successful in this crazy,
multi gazillion dollar industry selling garbage. That's most of it
is most of it, and it comes and goes and
it keeps coming back. Same diets, a little different with
exercise routines that's more fatty, you know, that's a d
Those fads, the crazier they are, they tend to go
(04:32):
around for a while people get hurt, people don't see results.
But as I will talk with Sue about the simplicity
of the Melt method, and when I say simplicities, and
why it's a complex yet not issue. Simplicity is the
tools you use in the Melt method. It's not fit
(04:53):
tech century. But it's this accumulated knowledge that Sue has
in this very specific area that makes it so effective.
And then add into that Sue obviously being an incredible
businesswoman who has created one of the greatest businesses careers
(05:18):
around a specific fitness and exercise modality. Everything you need, inexpensive,
the privacy of your own home that's gonna make you
look better, feel better, to live longer. Okay, I'm gonna
let her explain all about it, though very excited to
speak finally after over thirty years of reading about her,
seeing her on TV. And now we're gonna we're gonna talk,
(05:40):
all right, quick break when we come back, Sue hitsman,
and we are back. As I said in the intro,
it makes no sense that this is the first time.
I think, I think, and she thinks as well. We
spoke quickly, but yeah, so have we not met? I
(06:02):
don't I don't think so, I said, I must have
been hiding under a rock or something. I don't know.
How is it even possible, I don't know. So Sue,
as I said, is someone I have seen in the media,
have followed in this crazy industry. And so what I
was talking about is like, you know, this is a
brutal industry. It's really hard to make a living much
(06:23):
less you know, a career out of it, and you
have like thrived. We will talk much more about that.
But we but we literally, I think, are the same
age roughly, and we started in the same area and
we're running. But we never I figured we were like
one block away, I said in the intro at any
given time. I think. So, I mean, I just I
have this feeling like I mean, if we didn't actually meet,
(06:44):
we just know the same people. Because this industry, far
as vast and massive as it is, there is a
contingency of people who have always I think, been pushers
of the industry of of excellence, in the industry of
education and the industry. So I think that, uh, you know,
we're in good company for sure. We're passionate, right, we
(07:05):
don't have a choice. And let me just I'm gonna
jump all over the place in my mannic way. But uh,
as I just said, you know, that's why I love
this format. I can do that. We both. As I
was researching you, I knew a lot about you obviously,
but I didn't know your theater background. We have that
in common as well. So I started music and acting
and stand up comedy. I spent a lot of time
(07:27):
doing comedy in the city with gaff Agin and people
who were just starting out, and you had that theater
background as well. To start I did well. Actually, my
background is more in directing and production. I I actually
thought I was going to become a casting director, and
then I did a lot of production. I never wanted
to be on the stage. I always just had, like,
(07:48):
you know, the idea. And then I went to n
y U Film School and matriculated out of the film
department and into the science department. And here I am.
And the hilarity is that all of the videos that
I've done for mel I produced, edit, shoot, like all
by myself, right, So all of these videos that have
ever gotten me anywhere, the background of Palman theater and
(08:09):
production have have clearly come into play, which I think
is part of why I am where I am still
because I've been doing it all myself, probably years, you
and me both. I love that because people don't realize
that how hard, right, They just see the videos. So
when they're like, oh, you just spent money, you hired people,
and first of all, it's like, no, I want to
save money, especially when we're starting out. Right, my first video,
(08:30):
Sue you know, did the music, myself, did the credits, myself,
did everything like you without that you know, background, but
just the love of it, right, And that's so. And
I'm sure to this day you still control as much
as you can. And you can see that in your
you know, the whole melt Method empire you've built because
we love and we want to do all that. Yes,
and mean, that's it is when you when you have
(08:51):
something that you want to get out there, and financially
it's tough, I mean, and in this day and age,
you really do have to get very cre you have
and with iPhones and everything, I mean, you know, I
mean I'm in my sixties. When we first started there,
we're in on I phones there, you know, you couldn't
shoot your own things, and now you know, you really
(09:11):
don't need an editing production company and spending hundreds of
thousands of dollars to which I have earlier on uh,
and and now it's like, gosh, you I really need
to do that. Now I can just set up three
iPhones and do it myself. And so that's what I've
been doing with Melk for all these years, is just
trying to get that information out as quickly as possible
and as diversely as possible. And you do, you have
(09:33):
to learn how to save money in the places that
you can, and and film and editing is certainly one
of the ones that I think I can master with this. Yeah, absolutely,
uh And it makes you know, it's no surprise to
me that you're more the behind behind the camera person
based on just again you know everything you've done. Um,
but let's go even further back, because further back you
(09:55):
crunch fitness is one of the gems where I really
you know, and I know that you have that in
your background as well. Let's just start crunch. So tell
people about like your crunch years and and well, yeah,
I mean I've been in fitness since I'm sixteen. It
was my first legitimate job when you know, there were
two kinds of classes you could teach for jazzer's eyes
and I impact aerobics, right, and so you jumping on
(10:16):
cement all the time. And I got into when I
moved to New York City at twenty and I was
going through my master's. I needed to make money, and
at that time, the best job you could have was
a group exercise in these small boutique studios. And Crunch
was one of the newer ones that had come online.
And I got in with Crunch and just started teaching
(10:39):
and loved loved teaching so much, and I auditioned for
the ESPN shows that Crunch had, the Crunch video and
the TV show, and then I auditioned to do the
Crunch boot Camp video and I landed that when I
couldn't believe it. And Linda Shelton was one of the
producers with Andrea and Bando, and I had the opportunity
(11:02):
to produce and direct, in a sense, my own video
and to construct it and choreograph it with Linda, and
we made this. It was actually one of the first
boot camp videos on the market anywhere, and it's sold
like a million copies around the world, and it was
such an opportunity for me just to see what production
(11:24):
was about, right, And the oddity was that, you know,
a decade later when I shot the my first video,
the same people who were the production people ended up
being the guys doing my video. If that's not like
one of those pirenees or serendipity of life. And they
were like, why are you that girl that's like a
(11:44):
one hit wonder of Crunch? And I was like, oh
my god, did you yes? And They're like, we still
talked about you today. You nailed every single one of
your sessions. You you nailed every single piece of that video.
We were done in two hours and so many Oh,
it's it's a really beautiful opportunity to be able to
do a Crunch video and and just against people production
(12:08):
about well, and that's I think, I know why you
know your program is so successful is and we'll talk
much more about the education and stuff, but it's that
diverse background that you know, the twenty thirty year overnight success. Right.
And uh, by the way, did did Andrea make you
cry the way she made me cry when I did
my first video with her? Yes? She did, she did.
(12:30):
Yes for those of you who don't know, And I
love her, haven't spoken with her in decades, but she
isn't what well was I think? Right, it's been many,
many years, but if you got a video done, if
you were like a playboy playmate, you went to Andrea
like she just ruled the world of fitness video And
I remember going out to her house in the Hollywood
(12:50):
Hills and just yeah, she made me cry. And I
remember Melissa McNeice. I'm sure yes, Melissa helped me with that.
Get that job was the ABSTE workout video and she said, Tom,
she's going to make you cry. I said, listen, I
can work with anyone. She goes, no, trust me, she's
my best friend and she will tear you down. Uh.
But you know it's all those experiences right that um made.
(13:13):
It made us who we are. And that was the
crazy days of Doug Leavin and entertainment and you know
when it was just starting out and it wasn't really
I mean, I will never forget so that Doug Levin
saying Crunch is not about fitness, it's about entertainment. And
I was like, I have kind of have a problem
with that, right, And I get it. And they were
always putting that Fireman's work out on or Truly's you know,
(13:35):
abstise and gossip class and all the crazy people which
just made it fun. But what I love about you
is you know you you go to get the education right.
You say, I gotta go back. I want to study this,
and you studied it to death. I mean, give us
a little bit of your crazy just experience with studying. Yeah. Well,
(13:56):
I mean I started out, like I said it, film
partner being pulled me over and saying, why are you
taking anatomy classes with a film class and biology and
cat you what are you doing? I said, you know,
I just have a fascination of the human body and
I want to learn more about it. And he said,
I think you're I think we need to flip your major.
I think the film should be your having and science
(14:18):
should here major. You're getting all as here and not
a lot of women are in the science department. I
think you should be over here. And I just kind
of got drawn into it. But my masters is an
exerciy science and physiology. I then got into doing dissections
and understanding the body in a deeper way, and um,
during my master as I started learning about neural rescue therapy,
(14:41):
which was Leon Chike down and dub the lanis work
of um, you know, really neurologically reintegrating movement patterns for
people who have gotten injured. Now they're limping, they're not
recovering properly, and learning about that intrinsic strength that is
beyond the fitness realm of you know, I'm gonna do
a bicep girl or a light press to make my
(15:03):
muscles younger. This was more of that stability of joints.
And so by the time I got into my late twenties,
I thought, you know, I had kind of reached the pinnacle.
I was working with high performance athletes. Um you know,
I got I got my land at the French boot
camp videos and things like that, and so I had
really bought into this idea that if you ate right
(15:23):
to be exercised and all the things I knew about
the human body, this was what was going to lead
to an active, healthy, pain free life. And then I
woke up one day on the bottom of my foot
hurt me and I thought I stepped down a piece
of glass and I thought, I'm not sure what that is,
which started as quick patron into this body. Why eight
all sorts of problems, and I've got doctors saying maybe
(15:47):
it's lucas. My compartness is m that's by well, Miles
was like they weren't for what was going on, and
it geared me out of the business industry trying to
understand more about the body because the first diagnosis plant
our fast sits, and that meant our fashion. It was
in plain fashion. Couldn play fashion across me all of
this pain that I had, And that's the case, there's
(16:08):
no exercise with that? What least that? And I hear
that of fitness and got into the healing arts of
premial sacle therapy and this real manipulation and just trying
to understand more about what fasial was and how how
it related to pain and mobility and stability and the
you know, in the late nineties, that's where rugle became
a thing. So fashion was the first word. I typed
(16:30):
into the Internet and found all of this research on
connective tissue. And it was really where my shift happened
was in the light nineties, going from working with type
performance athletes and then kind of understanding that there was
more to the psychology even of pain and you know,
fear when you're an athlete, all of a sudden, like
(16:52):
the whole career is is kind of weighing the balance
of your healing that nature. And then of course with
nine eleven happened in New York, a post your mental
stress disorder in that pain became a thing for me
to really make thingqurey on. Truly, it doesn't matter if
you have a car accident or you know, you have
the death of someone, pain can ultimately manifest itself for
(17:14):
you to take action to change. And um you know
that's been kind of my curiosity of the body. Here.
I became a founding the to the Fashion Research Society
and there are two thousands. That's how I started to
develop um as at home self care protocol to treat
of tissue. Kind of my background of science. Yeah, so
(17:35):
much there and I love it. I didn't realize, Sue,
your connection to the psychological, which I just loved when
I was reading your books and finally getting a you know,
doing a deeper dive into the melt method and everything,
because That's what I'm all about too. And I would
argue anyone who's like us, who spends enough time and
studies enough says Yeah, it's about the body, but there's
a huge psychological component to this behavior change. And as
(17:57):
you're saying, you know, so much of what happens in
the mind manifest in the body, so it doesn't surprise me.
But I what I was about you when I was
kind of thinking about you is you're kind of like
that doctors who like I have doctor friends who are like,
g I doctors, and you're like, why did you go
into with all that? You could have you know, chosen,
but it just it rang out to you. And I think,
as you said already, I think that dissection course was
(18:18):
a big turning point for you or you're like, oh
my god, like there's something And that's what I love,
is like you're such a specialist in this unique place. Um,
and let's talk about you know, you were talking about
the performance side, but again I think if you're in
this industry for any amount of time, you go, yeah,
the athletes, but I need to help real people quote unquote,
And so you talk about free areas, right, pain, performance
(18:38):
and lifestyle, so kind of talk about that. As far
as the Melt method and what we're talking about here, Yeah,
I mean Melt in general, it's a self care technique
to help people restore the fluid components of connected tissue
and whether you have teens, because you are like us,
you're athletic, right, um, you know anybody who's trained or
(19:01):
athletic of any sort. You kind of were used to
the no pain, no gain theory and I had really
bought into that as well, Like you just push through
your pain until you can't, and then you start seeking
out help, which oftentimes just leads you to either taking
pain medications for surgical procedures because most often is the
joint problem. So with melt with performance, we're looking at
(19:25):
trying to help the athlete for you know, whether you're
an athlete in training or you're just an athlete in
your mind one where or other. Uh, you know that
the goal here is to learn to prepare your body
for athletic performance and restore your body so that you
can go back and continue to make the gains that
you want. And that's really I think a process here
(19:49):
that a lot of athletes kind of are lacking is
that we just when we're younger, you know, what did
we do to warm up? I don't know, five minutes
of jogging around the soccer field, for you play s right,
that was your warm up right, But as you get older,
you have to realize that you're warming up is actually
very inherently critical to joint performance and joint mobility. So
(20:11):
that's really where melt comes into place to prepare and
then too our athletes uh to minimize joint imbalances, joint compression,
and muscle strain. For people who have pain, it's actually
you know whether your pain is emotional or it's physical
or structural of any kind. A hundred percent of the
time your brains was producing your spence of pain. But
(20:33):
what we do is we try to educate people that
most often where you have specific pain points area is
very far away from those areas of your body are
where the trollmakers are. So to learn to identify where
this cumulative stress and connect tissues living in your body
and how your nervous system is adapting to keep you
as balanced as it can. That's part of the education
(20:55):
that we bring to people who have pain is to
vier their mind away from the pain problems so that
they can get back into active living and for lifestyle
people who aren't keeper athletic or haven't had an injury
or an accident or an illness. You're just sitting at
a desk all day long, and you're noticing that not
only is your backside looking a little lumpy, but your
(21:17):
back is killing you. The active father if you you know,
you suddenly are exhausted all day long. You've got adjusted
problems and a lot of it. It's just I would say, like,
you know, sitting as a desk sentence, right, You're just
sitting yourself to death. So how can we again corporate
a little bit of self care from day to day
to mitigate some of those repetitive postures movements of just
(21:38):
general everyday living and the source of all of the
problems really culminates in educating people on what fashion is
as a global system of stability, and how daily living
causes an issue and that connected tissue that brings us
down and postoms to the paying people talk about the
h and I think, Sue, and I'm sure you'd agree,
(21:59):
because this is what you're you're talking about in your
whole method, that we far too often we jump so
far ahead, right, So in other words, I always say,
like I'm not as proud of the the events I've
done or whatever. It's that I'm not in pain, because
that's that's the first report that the body works well,
that the body does what I wanted to do when
I wanted to do it. And people always like, let's
talk about iron Man ultra Okay, but none of that
(22:22):
matters and the performance and the lifestyle and the pain.
If our bodies aren't moving correctly, we're in trouble, right,
And as you alluded to, there's two ends to that spectrum.
There's doing too little, which is most people, and there's
doing too much or the same repetitive movement, which is
some people. And everyone will benefit from this melt method,
(22:42):
the the neurological I mean we need like five hours,
I always say when I have people on like you
so um, but just getting the body to work correctly, right,
And and you know the confusion people have about flexibility.
If your body doesn't move correctly, you're gonna have problems. Well,
and I guess the question it's like what is correct movement? Right,
just like when we talk about corrective exercise, like we
(23:05):
you know, the thing about movement is we don't think
about move we don't think about stability, we don't think
about move We just get up and get the thing
that we want to get and when we want to
get it, you know, and so we don't think about
how we're doing things and how joints ideally move in
their ideal range. And so what a lot of people
(23:25):
get is what I call segmentally hyper flexible, right, so
around particular areas of their body, they're super recusing where
you don't want to be like a range of joints.
But then you have muscle abilities that are really a
lot short consent strain and tendance near joints, and so
you're just increasing your chances of pain. So you know, again,
only living alters fashion, which is is a matrix of
(23:50):
collagen or around the body. And look, even if anybody
listening doesn't have pain, if you've ever sat for long
periods of time, get up and feel like you age twenty,
is because you're trying to don't work as well when
you get up as a didn you sat down. You're
feeling the effects of the fluid flow, the food profusion
adaptations that occur in this connectifition matrix. And what it
(24:12):
reeks havoc on is our joints. And if you think
of the fluids and fashion like a river daily living
is kind of laying certainly down to that river's flowing
where that sediment really loves to accumulate. This around your
joint where fashion is most abundant, and it loses its
bit to elastic properties, ability to move and adapt this
move and what they want to, you know, move efficiently.
(24:34):
So I wouldn't talk about correct and I would think
about efficient right that oftentimes we're not moving efficiently. We're
just pushing ourselves to run that extra mile. Our bodies
are hurting and we're just going anyway. Or you take
the opposite round. Gosh, I stand up in my back hurts,
need What do I do? I sit back down and again,
(24:56):
which is why you have back in in the first place.
So it's the vicious cycle that again comes down to
the psychology that people don't really talk about. Is the
desire to be better, the desire to be loved, be wanted,
to be healthy. Right, we want we want these things
in our life. If you ask anybody, do you want
(25:17):
to leave an active, healthy, painprey life for as long
as possible? If anybody says, now, I'm good with the crampy,
not so great short life, I don't think anybody's gonna
say that, now, you know, why wouldn't we all want
to live as long as we can as helpful as
we can, So that that is about efficiency, not about correct.
It's it's really an efficient state of being, and a
(25:39):
lot of us are functioning inefficiently because we're unstable. Can't
be efficiently efficiently stable. And I'm gonna say it again,
fashion is the stability system of the body. So if
you want to learn how to maintain efficiency and stability,
you gotta learn a little bit about the automomic processes
of the nervous system and have the nervous system of
death to daily living and how fashion you can actually
(26:01):
side yourself to death. You know, lots of people eat
right and exercise still chronic pain. So sort of the
journeys on the secret of our industry that most people
can really change harder and paint. And I love that
you have to take issue with the word correct, because
that's really important, right that we use words that people
understand in the way that they need to understand them.
(26:24):
When I say it, it's it's it's natural, as you're
alluding to, we need to work in our natural range
of motion. But what I also love that you alluded
to that I don't I know, people don't really realize, Sue,
because it's human nature. The problem is what you alluded
to about compensatory issues, right, So in other words, you say, well,
people don't have pain most people, Right, they'll get a
pain in their leg or let's say shoulder, right, And
(26:46):
what they do they start putting on their shirt differently.
They change everything about what they do without really realizing it.
And then what happens, The shoulder feels better and it
goes to wear right. So just talk about that and
and this is a real problem. You know, we adapted
to avoid this pain and that was protective, but in
the common, everyday world that can be a huge problem. Huge. Well,
(27:07):
and what you're this is really big where you're saying time,
because that's that's what happens is our nervous system is
designed to adapt to keep us functioning as efficiently as possible.
And I kind of always kind of make an analogy
of like, if you live in a suburban, you've gotta
get downtown. And let's say you're and you've got to
get down at the fluor five brilli in the morning
in Los Angeles. You you don't take the highway because
(27:30):
you know there's gonna be congestion on the highway. So
how do you get downtown. You learn to take side
streets to get you where you want to go, and
although it's not the most efficient round, it's gonna get
you where you want to go in relatively the same
amount of time. The problem is on the weekend, somebody
invites you downtown and by habit you take the side
streets instead of going on the highway. And that's kind
(27:52):
of how the nervous system works. If there are these
directoral pathways movement that are ideal in a normal range
of joy, it's an ideal range of joints. These are
neural patterns that we adapted when we were a baby
from zero to two. And then we just like how
you say we practice and pete movements to get better
(28:12):
at sport. We are habitually doing the same movements and patterns,
and so your brain anticipates how you want to move
when you go remove, but it's not saying that it's
doing it in an ideal, more efficient way anymore. And
if your nervous system adapts enough times to a compensatory pattern,
as far as your brain is concerned, that's the dominant pathway,
(28:34):
that's the ideal way to move. But time over tension.
Just like how you say, hey, my shoulder birds day,
I'm never gonna start putting my shirt down differently, I'm
gonna avoid moving my arm this way. Well you know,
I mean, you're it's a slippery spoke because now the
function of you was adapting in other areas of your body.
So maybe six months down the road, your shoulder might
(28:56):
feel better, but you're opposite me and hips start hurting you,
and you're not realizing that it's because of the compensation
that your body has adopted while you were healing one
problem and now you're making other problems where else. So again,
what I think what melt is an interruption and those
compensatory patterns to get you to identify where can you
(29:17):
live stress as living in your body, how your body
is adapting in compensatory ways, and then treating the body
so that it down regulates and it repairs self. Right.
Body is designed to prepare, increase some stress, roost the
body's natural repair processes, and get your background those highways
so that now your nervous system is regaining those proper
(29:40):
sensory motor pathways that move you and your joints in
an efficient way. And that is again, you're not going
to get that by exercise and by just lifting weights.
You're most often what people do when they have compensation
and they weight train is they become a stronger, more
dysfunctional body. They actually get better at managing their dysfunctions
(30:01):
without and and and again, once you get into your fifties,
that's does not work. And that's why so many people
who engaged in bitness when they were younger finally their
joints start breaking down. I love that analogy. That's gonna
help so many people. The traffic and and you know,
if that doesn't paint the perfect visual for people, I
(30:22):
don't know what will. And you know, it's the muscles
firing correctly in the right sequence that you're alluding to
as well. Um, and people don't realize that. And I
would say so that you know, I am in my
fifties too. I think we're probably really close in age,
and you know, my friends are dropping like flies, and
guys and women much younger than I. Right, And one
of the problems is what you just said in that
(30:44):
you know we can, we compensate our bodies moved differently,
and then we go to do things like play basketball,
play doubles, tennis, and we ask our bodies to take
that route that we've been avoiding because we have to
do it quickly, right, and that's when the achilles goes,
the hamstring goes, and now we've got place. Yeah, Like
if your body has been sitting for long periods and
you get really good at siday, but then you know,
(31:07):
you decide, Hey, at the end of the day, I'm gonna,
you know, go for a run. Your body's like, whoa, whoa, what?
What's this running thing that you wanted to do? Because like,
you can't just do that every once in a while
because I'm only really good at sitting. And as as
you sit for long periods of time, certain muscles getting pivoted,
some muscles get much short and luck long. But centrally
(31:28):
motor wise, again, you're not gonna not move right you
You just your body is gonna again get around these
roadblocks to get you to where you want to go,
to move you how it thinks you want to move
relative to what you're you know, what you're asking your
body to do. But yeah, you gonna go play pickleball.
It's not a smaller court. I'm not gonna have to
(31:49):
run as much. But still you can tork your knee
because again, the resilience of the connective tissue is stiff,
it's dehydrated, it doesn't it doesn't have its elastic property
to stabilize those joints, and it's just these quick movements
that we then ask our body to do. It really is,
you know, a road to disaster for a lot of people,
(32:12):
which I think it's very frustrating, and any athlete knows
one of the worst things that athletes can do is
get injured, because then there's this repair time, and that's
frustrating in the presence, you can't move and you're gonna
take weight, and there's all this internal drama going on
if that person loves me anymore and my ground and
and then it becomes a thing of like, well, what
(32:34):
if this goes on forever, We'll forget it. I'm just
gonna run anyway, right, And so I think oftentimes the
messages our bodies are giving us, our bodies are just
gagging for our help, streaming our hate, help me, and
instead we're ignoring we're disregarding who we're popping a pill
to quiet it down. I always say to people, you know,
(32:56):
if you think of pain in your body like kid
crying out for your health, you wouldn't run up to
a kid who was crying out for your health and
punch space, right or ignore them for lock them in
the room. Right. You would get at their level and
you would calm them down. You would take information, and
you would figure out what the problem was, and then
you would take action to solution. But when our bodies
are streaming up our health, we ignore, we try to
(33:18):
tone it down with medications, or we just pushed through it,
which is a winning ticket to dysfunction. Right. I mean, like,
if that's what you want to do, more of the
body's signals and not really listen to what your body
is asking. Is just a little bit of time and
a little bit of focus and really giving yourself permission
to go back into your body and sense what you
(33:39):
feel and care for yourself is an invitation that a
lot of people have never really considered that, Especially in fitness,
most people are very outside of their bodies. They're looking
at themselves in a mirror. They're worried about what other
people perceive of them. And they're not doing things because
they love themselves. They're doing things in fitness because they
want to change for the don't like about And I
(34:02):
always encourage people to exercise because you love yourself, because
you want to improve the assets that you have and
the quality of who you are. That's why she'd movement,
doing exercises or whatever it is you love to do,
um and and pain again as that motivator for me
to get back into your body. To love yourself. It's
(34:26):
about being happy, as you're saying, and that's so important.
And I love that we're almost like a half hour
in and this is the first we've really brought up exercise.
We've we've talked about movement, movement, movement, because that's what
it's about. Right. Yes, we can call it what you want,
but you know negative connotation. And I say, just as
you did, Sue, no one hates exercise. You haven't figured
(34:47):
out what you enjoy doing yet, right, and or you're
doing it for the wrong reasons as you just outlined.
It's fun. And if I told you you couldn't do
what you love, I know, Sue that you would be
really angry with me. If I said no, you know,
the walk you go on, or the wim you do,
or the you know whatever class, you would be angry.
And everyone has the capacity to get to that point,
(35:07):
every single person, right. What I also love, though, I
gotta backtrack a little bit so much here you talked
about like you know, injury and back to like you know,
I've lectured on does strength training improve running performance? The
first slide I show is the band yes, right, It's
just yes, of course, But the primary reason is that
it allows you to keep training right to prevent injury.
(35:28):
So we can go into the pliometric thing and running
efficiency and things like that. But as you said, if
we are injured, if we don't feel good, if we
don't you know, want to move more, that nothing else
matters at that point, right, So we we have to
start there. And what I love about the Melt method
is it's not this incredible crazy fitness tech. I have
everything known demand, Sue, as I'm sure you do as
(35:50):
well when it comes to fitness tech. We're given all
this stuff frequently, but at the end of the day,
it's you know, it's a ball, and it's it's it's
it's simple it's a simple stuff. So talk about as
we kind of wrap this up, how do people We'll
just talk about the melt method, how people would get started,
and what it entails. Yeah, so you know we I
(36:10):
actually have been doing this a long time now, right
that this is the twenty year in the making. It
started at his homework for my clients to get out
of my office and get back into access living. And
I developed these soft balls and soft rulers to teach
people how to use compression or tensions into their bodies
because that's the fashion, is the tension compression management system
(36:31):
to apply self touch just like manual therapy onto their
bodies so that they can eliminate some of that teams
to stress. So I have a stranging platform called Meltdown Demand.
I put out a new video every week, just I said,
in the categories of pain, performance or lifestyle. So you know,
there's a prep map for golf, there's a restorative map
(36:52):
for runners, there's maps for low back pain. There's maps
for you said at your desk all day long, right, so, uh,
just a self care treatment for basically everything. And there's
all sorts of different techniques that you can do with
melt it's quite a robust platform. You know. I have
five levels of instructor training. We've got two best instructors worldwide.
(37:14):
We also teach online and the life classes around the world. Um.
You know, I have a website and MELT Methods so
people can go and find out about the method itself
and beyond the product. It really is a method sharing
with people how to become more aware of the accumulative
stress in the fascial system, which is the stability system
(37:36):
of the body. Your nervous in your stability and your
fascial system will stabilize you. So MELT is this very gentle,
subtle body approach. Um. I think it's interesting in athletics,
like people go after their bodies and their recovery just
as hard as they do their exercise routines. They're smashing
their fashion, they're rolling and ironing themselves and the flipping pain,
(37:57):
And I don't get it, Like, why does your recovery
for access need to be as hard and pushing as
your training. Doesn't make any sense. But just chill out
for a second and in quiet your nervous system death.
Don't pause pain to get out of pain. Learn how
to be more just gentle and mindful with your body
because fashion is a system that is in a constant
(38:19):
state of change in adaptation. So if you know how
to addapt and really make major changes in your body,
and very short period of times, people are looking for
self care tools and easy ways to really transform their body.
I think maltime demand has got to be about the
easiest reseversion down with the app um it's just treating
platforms and and again the product is inexpensive. They work.
(38:42):
The whole methodology works. It is profound. If you try it,
what you'll find is from the point when you assess
and you do a treatment and you reassess, you are
going to sense change in your body. And that's the
first step getting out of pain, getting your body to
adapt in a positive way. And I love that you said,
because I'm totally with you. I don't treat pain with
pain personally, right, I don't. If it's something really hurts,
(39:05):
I get it. And there are people that love the
deep tissue and to each their own. And if it
works for you, we could argue about it, but but fine,
But that's what that's what I love about your system.
It's simplicity done consistently right, it's excessive moderation. It's not.
You don't have to run a marathon. You don't have
to do an iron Man, you don't have to do
a burbe. You got to get in touch with your body.
And so many people our age too, and and younger
(39:27):
with issues everything about our current lifestyle. I just interviewed
Michael Easter. I don't if you met him, you know,
the comfort crisis just amazing people. We talk about how
everything in our everyday life is just not good for
our bodies and our minds. And when you start with
something like MELT, that's doable. I would argue you have
the greatest resources of any program I've ever seen when
it comes to the videos and the books, and you
(39:49):
just really do so. Congrats, Um. I know, decades in
the making what you can do it at home, COVID
has taught us what that you can do great things
at home. You don't have to spend a lot of money.
It doesn't have to be an it shouldn't be an hour,
especially at the start. Right it's and and that's what
I will kind of wrap it up with that too.
I would say take justin only out of your vocabulary.
It's not I only did ten minutes of you know,
(40:11):
the MELT method today. It's that you did it and
that you're going to do it again, and it's not
a matter of if, but how much it will work
for you. That's right. I mean, if you just even
start out with ten minutes a day, aren't any just
submit to tenants a day to doing something for yourself
that is restored, whether that's sitting in meditation, or doing
(40:32):
the melts for treatment or rebellance sequence, or just going
for a lot. Just start with saying, for ten minutes
every day, I'm going to get up to do something
that is going to replenish the love of myself, within myself,
whatever that is. That's how you start. You don't need
to start with an hour workout or anything like that.
To start with ten minutes a day and build yourself
(40:52):
up and you'll find that, especially with MELT, you're gonna
love how it feels, and so you're gonna want to
do those thirty fourty minute sessions that we also have
on the platform. But you know, we have five to
ten minute treatments, we've got one hour treatments. It just
depends upon what you're working with and what you're looking
to revolve and you know and how much time you have,
(41:13):
but I'm always just looking for saving people time on
the in effort to feel good. And if you can
do something that's simple, easy and effective, that's what you
should do. And that's about and it's a gateway drug.
As you said, you know you're gonna gonna do five. Yeah.
Uh so, thank you so much, so great to after
(41:34):
thirty years. Probably you're absolutely let me say, we're at
the holidays. Uh, this is a gift you'd not only
give yourself but give people you love. The books and
and the products and the programs. This is the kind
of thing I know that people it will transform your
(41:55):
life if you go. That sounds so crazy and it's
rare that I say that, but I know that when
people who haven't moved suddenly start moving and move better,
like you know, life changing, it's life changing. And I
find I've said at three times now, but we're gonna
end with this. We didn't talk about weight loss, we
didn't talk really about hard exercise. It's about movement, about
being happy about being paid free, and then you can
(42:16):
do all that other stuff that's gonna happen after because
you're even go I feel better. I want to get
off the couch. I want to go play pickle ball
or whatever. UM start here and guess what, When you
do the Melt method and people see you get the results,
that's the greatest gift. I mean, I know, Sue that
you probably am like me, and that we have the
greatest jobs in the world. We help people live better lives.
It sounds so cliche, but it's true. That's what we did.
(42:39):
That's I mean, and I'm I'm very grateful, privileged, and
truly honored that so many people have, you know, allowed
me into their lives to work with them to transform
their lives, and it's transformed being. I feel like I've
learned so much from every single client, so to work
on you know, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide poltics.
(42:59):
It really is an incredible gift. And I just know
that if people are suffering, you can help yourself feel better,
and that really self care is the best health care
that you have. And so giving that gifts to other
people also gives you an accountability partner. You know, if
you really struggle with pain, having somebody that you know
you can work with, I think is a really important
(43:21):
you know that you don't feel like you by yourself
in your novel them that you know there's a community
out there, and you know again I'm on Facebook, I'm
on Instagram and lay Lansince come down so YouTube there's
free videos there as well, So there's you know, no
excuse um. If you love yourself and you feel like
you want to live an abundant life, then today's your
data to get to us. Couldn't end it any better, Sue,
(43:44):
It's been Thank you so much, have a happy holiday season,
and I hope to speak with you again soon. Thanks
thanks to and we will be right back after this
quick break and we are back. I'm waiting to get
I'm surprised I have not received yet a message from
(44:06):
any of you saying stop saying you wish you had
more time with these guests. But I do. I do
because when I get to speak with people who I
know can make me better and by definition, make you better.
When we speak here on this podcast, I want to
(44:30):
get as much out of them while I have them,
And the best ones are really busy, the best ones
are hard to get and as I said in the intro,
this is the perfect example of complex yet simple. Sue
(44:51):
has done the work, decades of research into this crazy
area that I just love how it's just she loves it,
this very specific world of fasha. But if we're understanding
improving how our bodies and our minds work, you need
(45:14):
to know you need to understand the joints in the
fasha and all that's pun intended connected. But as we discussed,
it comes back to the simple. If you're hurt, if
your body is not moving, uh, correctly. And I love
that she corrected me. That was like, you know, the
words we choose are important to us in this industry,
(45:37):
and correctly is confusing to some people. And and I
meant and I you know, said naturally. And that's what
I mean, because what's natural for one person isn't the
same for another. And that's why I've talked about, you know,
(45:57):
running coaches. We all have different biomechanics. We all have
different ways of doing things based on our body specific
personal attributes and leg length, you know differences, and and
femur length and so many different things. The way our
joints are situated, there are subtle differences. But it's gotta
(46:21):
be natural, and it's got to be pain free. And
so when you connect with your body by doing things
like the Melt method, and this is the best of
the best that I know of, and there's this is
what I do. In other words, we didn't get into
like what we could compare this too. And I did
(46:44):
that for a reason. And that's why you gotta go
to the Melt method dot com start poking around. But
this is something that you should add to your home gym.
The roller, the balls takes up no space, portable, Everyone
(47:05):
can use it and it works. And I'll leave you
with that because those are always the criteria that I
am looking for for myself and for you and for
my family. Simple, doable, effective, not gonna hurt me, gonna
make me better, like a push up or a squat
or a launge. Everyone can do it anywhere, anytime. You
(47:27):
can modify it for your goals, for your fitness level.
And the same thing holds true about the Melt Method.
No complicated app not tracking something that you probably don't
understand or the value of which can be debated. It's
(47:49):
about getting your body to move better and connecting to
your body. You know, we talked quickly about those type
of injuries where you're asking your body to move quickly
in those sports, or or when you know you trip,
when your body doesn't fire, your muscles don't fire in
the right sequence in the right way. You get hurt,
you pull something, you fall, you don't fall as you
(48:12):
can fall efficiently. People, I do it all the time.
I did it during the Ultra Marathon recently. But check
it out added to your repertoire. We need strength, we
need cardio, we need body composition, the components of exercise.
(48:33):
I'm going to lump this under flexibility just because that's
where it fits neatly. But it's more than that. But
let's put it there. Do your strength to your cardio.
You need to be flexible and connected, and that's where
the Melt method comes in. So there you go. All
right again, Thank you to Sue Hitsman. I'm sure I
(48:53):
will now be seeing and talking with her much more
frequently and for a good reason. All right again, If
you want to reach out to hit Instagram, Tom h Fit, Twitter,
Fitness Disrupted dot com, you can go there. Questions comments
my most recent book, The Micro Workout Plan. Hey there's
a great shameless plug Melt method book. Maybe a foam
(49:17):
roller micro Workout Plan. That's the gift that keeps on giving,
gifts that keep on giving. All right, but yes, my
most recent book is The micro Workout Plan. And thank
you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed. Sue. She can,
with her valuable decades of expertise, really really make a
difference in your life. And that's my goal is to
(49:37):
bring you those people. All right, I am Tom Holland
this is Fitness Disrupted. Believe in Yourself. Fitness Disrupted is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of My Heart Radio.
I am Tom Holland and this is Fitness Disrupted. So
this next guest and this show is an interesting one.
(00:23):
Why don't we say that? On many levels? I know
it's something. This methodology, they can absolutely help you, help
you look better, feel better, with longer. It's simple. It's
tough to explain right away, and especially when it comes
from someone like my next guest, Sue Hitsman, who it
(00:45):
makes no sense that I have not yet met her
because I have known of her for three decades. We
started in the same place, New York City, back in
the nineties. We both were running around, you know, to
the different clubs, one in particular we'll talk about. And
we are so aligned in so many ways, which is
(01:07):
probably why I am excited to speak with her. And
I agree with just about everything, just about with her
whole methodology. It's simple, but it's different. It isn't. It isn't.
This is why it's it's everything. I believe in consistency, simplicity,
connecting to your body, that we need to avoid injury
(01:32):
and pain, and that the human condition is such that
we compensate. Talk about that, but we need to move correctly,
we need to move naturally. And you know, when we
talk about these studies as I do, like you know,
does stretching help, uh? Performance, Does stretching help? Period? Of course?
(01:55):
Our bodies need to move the way they were meant to.
And Sue Hitsman's Melt method that she has, you know, refined, compiled,
researched over the years, is just that. And she's someone
like me who is so passionate about fitness and passionate
about learning, and she studied to death and then came
(02:19):
upon this just resonated with her. But it goes back
to the simple stuff is the most important. In other words,
it's the flashy stuff and the lose weight quick schemes
and all that stuff that distracts you from what really matters,
(02:41):
being pain free, moving efficiently, being able to do what
you want to do, whether that's your activities of daily living,
whether that's your recreational sports or competitive sports like really
high level, and the Melt method addresses all three of
(03:02):
those groups. So let me give you a quick bio
on Sue. But she's gonna tell you all you need
to know, all right. So she is the creator of
the Melt method and is a nationally recognized educator, manuel therapist,
exercise physiologists, and founding member of the Fascia Rebody Society.
(03:22):
Hitsman has appeared on The Doctor Show, Nightline, The Rachel Ratio,
and Live with Kelly. She lives in New York City.
What Sue Actually she just moved. Um. What Sue is
someone who has stood the test of time in this
really difficult fitness industry. And again, it's incredible that this
is the first time I believe we will speak. I
(03:45):
had a lot of concussions in sports growing up, but
I'm sure we've never come across each other, which is
incredible because again, same amount of time, really long time
in the industry, so many similarities, uh in where we were.
But she stood the test of time because it works.
(04:08):
You know, Yes, you could be really successful in this crazy,
multi gazillion dollar industry selling garbage. That's most of it
is most of it, and it comes and goes and
it keeps coming back. Same diets, a little different with
exercise routines that's more fatty, you know, that's a d
Those fads, the crazier they are, they tend to go
(04:32):
around for a while people get hurt, people don't see results.
But as I will talk with Sue about the simplicity
of the Melt method, and when I say simplicities, and
why it's a complex yet not issue. Simplicity is the
tools you use in the Melt method. It's not fit
(04:53):
tech century. But it's this accumulated knowledge that Sue has
in this very specific area that makes it so effective.
And then add into that Sue obviously being an incredible
businesswoman who has created one of the greatest businesses careers
(05:18):
around a specific fitness and exercise modality. Everything you need, inexpensive,
the privacy of your own home that's gonna make you
look better, feel better, to live longer. Okay, I'm gonna
let her explain all about it, though very excited to
speak finally after over thirty years of reading about her,
seeing her on TV. And now we're gonna we're gonna talk,
(05:40):
all right, quick break when we come back, Sue hitsman,
and we are back. As I said in the intro,
it makes no sense that this is the first time.
I think, I think, and she thinks as well. We
spoke quickly, but yeah, so have we not met? I
(06:02):
don't I don't think so, I said, I must have
been hiding under a rock or something. I don't know.
How is it even possible, I don't know. So Sue,
as I said, is someone I have seen in the media,
have followed in this crazy industry. And so what I
was talking about is like, you know, this is a
brutal industry. It's really hard to make a living much
(06:23):
less you know, a career out of it, and you
have like thrived. We will talk much more about that.
But we but we literally, I think, are the same
age roughly, and we started in the same area and
we're running. But we never I figured we were like
one block away, I said in the intro at any
given time. I think. So, I mean, I just I
have this feeling like I mean, if we didn't actually meet,
(06:44):
we just know the same people. Because this industry, far
as vast and massive as it is, there is a
contingency of people who have always I think, been pushers
of the industry of of excellence, in the industry of
education and the industry. So I think that, uh, you know,
we're in good company for sure. We're passionate, right, we
(07:05):
don't have a choice. And let me just I'm gonna
jump all over the place in my mannic way. But uh,
as I just said, you know, that's why I love
this format. I can do that. We both. As I
was researching you, I knew a lot about you obviously,
but I didn't know your theater background. We have that
in common as well. So I started music and acting
and stand up comedy. I spent a lot of time
(07:27):
doing comedy in the city with gaff Agin and people
who were just starting out, and you had that theater
background as well. To start I did well. Actually, my
background is more in directing and production. I I actually
thought I was going to become a casting director, and
then I did a lot of production. I never wanted
to be on the stage. I always just had, like,
(07:48):
you know, the idea. And then I went to n
y U Film School and matriculated out of the film
department and into the science department. And here I am.
And the hilarity is that all of the videos that
I've done for mel I produced, edit, shoot, like all
by myself, right, So all of these videos that have
ever gotten me anywhere, the background of Palman theater and
(08:09):
production have have clearly come into play, which I think
is part of why I am where I am still
because I've been doing it all myself, probably years, you
and me both. I love that because people don't realize
that how hard, right, They just see the videos. So
when they're like, oh, you just spent money, you hired people,
and first of all, it's like, no, I want to
save money, especially when we're starting out. Right, my first video,
(08:30):
Sue you know, did the music, myself, did the credits, myself,
did everything like you without that you know, background, but
just the love of it, right, And that's so. And
I'm sure to this day you still control as much
as you can. And you can see that in your
you know, the whole melt Method empire you've built because
we love and we want to do all that. Yes,
and mean, that's it is when you when you have
(08:51):
something that you want to get out there, and financially
it's tough, I mean, and in this day and age,
you really do have to get very cre you have
and with iPhones and everything, I mean, you know, I
mean I'm in my sixties. When we first started there,
we're in on I phones there, you know, you couldn't
shoot your own things, and now you know, you really
(09:11):
don't need an editing production company and spending hundreds of
thousands of dollars to which I have earlier on uh,
and and now it's like, gosh, you I really need
to do that. Now I can just set up three
iPhones and do it myself. And so that's what I've
been doing with Melk for all these years, is just
trying to get that information out as quickly as possible
and as diversely as possible. And you do, you have
(09:33):
to learn how to save money in the places that
you can, and and film and editing is certainly one
of the ones that I think I can master with this. Yeah, absolutely,
uh And it makes you know, it's no surprise to
me that you're more the behind behind the camera person
based on just again you know everything you've done. Um,
but let's go even further back, because further back you
(09:55):
crunch fitness is one of the gems where I really
you know, and I know that you have that in
your background as well. Let's just start crunch. So tell
people about like your crunch years and and well, yeah,
I mean I've been in fitness since I'm sixteen. It
was my first legitimate job when you know, there were
two kinds of classes you could teach for jazzer's eyes
and I impact aerobics, right, and so you jumping on
(10:16):
cement all the time. And I got into when I
moved to New York City at twenty and I was
going through my master's. I needed to make money, and
at that time, the best job you could have was
a group exercise in these small boutique studios. And Crunch
was one of the newer ones that had come online.
And I got in with Crunch and just started teaching
(10:39):
and loved loved teaching so much, and I auditioned for
the ESPN shows that Crunch had, the Crunch video and
the TV show, and then I auditioned to do the
Crunch boot Camp video and I landed that when I
couldn't believe it. And Linda Shelton was one of the
producers with Andrea and Bando, and I had the opportunity
(11:02):
to produce and direct, in a sense, my own video
and to construct it and choreograph it with Linda, and
we made this. It was actually one of the first
boot camp videos on the market anywhere, and it's sold
like a million copies around the world, and it was
such an opportunity for me just to see what production
(11:24):
was about, right, And the oddity was that, you know,
a decade later when I shot the my first video,
the same people who were the production people ended up
being the guys doing my video. If that's not like
one of those pirenees or serendipity of life. And they
were like, why are you that girl that's like a
(11:44):
one hit wonder of Crunch? And I was like, oh
my god, did you yes? And They're like, we still
talked about you today. You nailed every single one of
your sessions. You you nailed every single piece of that video.
We were done in two hours and so many Oh,
it's it's a really beautiful opportunity to be able to
do a Crunch video and and just against people production
(12:08):
about well, and that's I think, I know why you
know your program is so successful is and we'll talk
much more about the education and stuff, but it's that
diverse background that you know, the twenty thirty year overnight success. Right.
And uh, by the way, did did Andrea make you
cry the way she made me cry when I did
my first video with her? Yes? She did, she did.
(12:30):
Yes for those of you who don't know, And I
love her, haven't spoken with her in decades, but she
isn't what well was I think? Right, it's been many,
many years, but if you got a video done, if
you were like a playboy playmate, you went to Andrea
like she just ruled the world of fitness video And
I remember going out to her house in the Hollywood
(12:50):
Hills and just yeah, she made me cry. And I
remember Melissa McNeice. I'm sure yes, Melissa helped me with that.
Get that job was the ABSTE workout video and she said, Tom,
she's going to make you cry. I said, listen, I
can work with anyone. She goes, no, trust me, she's
my best friend and she will tear you down. Uh.
But you know it's all those experiences right that um made.
(13:13):
It made us who we are. And that was the
crazy days of Doug Leavin and entertainment and you know
when it was just starting out and it wasn't really
I mean, I will never forget so that Doug Levin
saying Crunch is not about fitness, it's about entertainment. And
I was like, I have kind of have a problem
with that, right, And I get it. And they were
always putting that Fireman's work out on or Truly's you know,
(13:35):
abstise and gossip class and all the crazy people which
just made it fun. But what I love about you
is you know you you go to get the education right.
You say, I gotta go back. I want to study this,
and you studied it to death. I mean, give us
a little bit of your crazy just experience with studying. Yeah. Well,
(13:56):
I mean I started out, like I said it, film
partner being pulled me over and saying, why are you
taking anatomy classes with a film class and biology and
cat you what are you doing? I said, you know,
I just have a fascination of the human body and
I want to learn more about it. And he said,
I think you're I think we need to flip your major.
I think the film should be your having and science
(14:18):
should here major. You're getting all as here and not
a lot of women are in the science department. I
think you should be over here. And I just kind
of got drawn into it. But my masters is an
exerciy science and physiology. I then got into doing dissections
and understanding the body in a deeper way, and um,
during my master as I started learning about neural rescue therapy,
(14:41):
which was Leon Chike down and dub the lanis work
of um, you know, really neurologically reintegrating movement patterns for
people who have gotten injured. Now they're limping, they're not
recovering properly, and learning about that intrinsic strength that is
beyond the fitness realm of you know, I'm gonna do
a bicep girl or a light press to make my
(15:03):
muscles younger. This was more of that stability of joints.
And so by the time I got into my late twenties,
I thought, you know, I had kind of reached the pinnacle.
I was working with high performance athletes. Um you know,
I got I got my land at the French boot
camp videos and things like that, and so I had
really bought into this idea that if you ate right
(15:23):
to be exercised and all the things I knew about
the human body, this was what was going to lead
to an active, healthy, pain free life. And then I
woke up one day on the bottom of my foot
hurt me and I thought I stepped down a piece
of glass and I thought, I'm not sure what that is,
which started as quick patron into this body. Why eight
all sorts of problems, and I've got doctors saying maybe
(15:47):
it's lucas. My compartness is m that's by well, Miles
was like they weren't for what was going on, and
it geared me out of the business industry trying to
understand more about the body because the first diagnosis plant
our fast sits, and that meant our fashion. It was
in plain fashion. Couldn play fashion across me all of
this pain that I had, And that's the case, there's
(16:08):
no exercise with that? What least that? And I hear
that of fitness and got into the healing arts of
premial sacle therapy and this real manipulation and just trying
to understand more about what fasial was and how how
it related to pain and mobility and stability and the
you know, in the late nineties, that's where rugle became
a thing. So fashion was the first word. I typed
(16:30):
into the Internet and found all of this research on
connective tissue. And it was really where my shift happened
was in the light nineties, going from working with type
performance athletes and then kind of understanding that there was
more to the psychology even of pain and you know,
fear when you're an athlete, all of a sudden, like
(16:52):
the whole career is is kind of weighing the balance
of your healing that nature. And then of course with
nine eleven happened in New York, a post your mental
stress disorder in that pain became a thing for me
to really make thingqurey on. Truly, it doesn't matter if
you have a car accident or you know, you have
the death of someone, pain can ultimately manifest itself for
(17:14):
you to take action to change. And um you know
that's been kind of my curiosity of the body. Here.
I became a founding the to the Fashion Research Society
and there are two thousands. That's how I started to
develop um as at home self care protocol to treat
of tissue. Kind of my background of science. Yeah, so
(17:35):
much there and I love it. I didn't realize, Sue,
your connection to the psychological, which I just loved when
I was reading your books and finally getting a you know,
doing a deeper dive into the melt method and everything,
because That's what I'm all about too. And I would
argue anyone who's like us, who spends enough time and
studies enough says Yeah, it's about the body, but there's
a huge psychological component to this behavior change. And as
(17:57):
you're saying, you know, so much of what happens in
the mind manifest in the body, so it doesn't surprise me.
But I what I was about you when I was
kind of thinking about you is you're kind of like
that doctors who like I have doctor friends who are like,
g I doctors, and you're like, why did you go
into with all that? You could have you know, chosen,
but it just it rang out to you. And I think,
as you said already, I think that dissection course was
(18:18):
a big turning point for you or you're like, oh
my god, like there's something And that's what I love,
is like you're such a specialist in this unique place. Um,
and let's talk about you know, you were talking about
the performance side, but again I think if you're in
this industry for any amount of time, you go, yeah,
the athletes, but I need to help real people quote unquote,
And so you talk about free areas, right, pain, performance
(18:38):
and lifestyle, so kind of talk about that. As far
as the Melt method and what we're talking about here, Yeah,
I mean Melt in general, it's a self care technique
to help people restore the fluid components of connected tissue
and whether you have teens, because you are like us,
you're athletic, right, um, you know anybody who's trained or
(19:01):
athletic of any sort. You kind of were used to
the no pain, no gain theory and I had really
bought into that as well, Like you just push through
your pain until you can't, and then you start seeking
out help, which oftentimes just leads you to either taking
pain medications for surgical procedures because most often is the
joint problem. So with melt with performance, we're looking at
(19:25):
trying to help the athlete for you know, whether you're
an athlete in training or you're just an athlete in
your mind one where or other. Uh, you know that
the goal here is to learn to prepare your body
for athletic performance and restore your body so that you
can go back and continue to make the gains that
you want. And that's really I think a process here
(19:49):
that a lot of athletes kind of are lacking is
that we just when we're younger, you know, what did
we do to warm up? I don't know, five minutes
of jogging around the soccer field, for you play s right,
that was your warm up right, But as you get older,
you have to realize that you're warming up is actually
very inherently critical to joint performance and joint mobility. So
(20:11):
that's really where melt comes into place to prepare and
then too our athletes uh to minimize joint imbalances, joint compression,
and muscle strain. For people who have pain, it's actually
you know whether your pain is emotional or it's physical
or structural of any kind. A hundred percent of the
time your brains was producing your spence of pain. But
(20:33):
what we do is we try to educate people that
most often where you have specific pain points area is
very far away from those areas of your body are
where the trollmakers are. So to learn to identify where
this cumulative stress and connect tissues living in your body
and how your nervous system is adapting to keep you
as balanced as it can. That's part of the education
(20:55):
that we bring to people who have pain is to
vier their mind away from the pain problems so that
they can get back into active living and for lifestyle
people who aren't keeper athletic or haven't had an injury
or an accident or an illness. You're just sitting at
a desk all day long, and you're noticing that not
only is your backside looking a little lumpy, but your
(21:17):
back is killing you. The active father if you you know,
you suddenly are exhausted all day long. You've got adjusted
problems and a lot of it. It's just I would say, like,
you know, sitting as a desk sentence, right, You're just
sitting yourself to death. So how can we again corporate
a little bit of self care from day to day
to mitigate some of those repetitive postures movements of just
(21:38):
general everyday living and the source of all of the
problems really culminates in educating people on what fashion is
as a global system of stability, and how daily living
causes an issue and that connected tissue that brings us
down and postoms to the paying people talk about the
h and I think, Sue, and I'm sure you'd agree,
(21:59):
because this is what you're you're talking about in your
whole method, that we far too often we jump so
far ahead, right, So in other words, I always say,
like I'm not as proud of the the events I've
done or whatever. It's that I'm not in pain, because
that's that's the first report that the body works well,
that the body does what I wanted to do when
I wanted to do it. And people always like, let's
talk about iron Man ultra Okay, but none of that
(22:22):
matters and the performance and the lifestyle and the pain.
If our bodies aren't moving correctly, we're in trouble, right,
And as you alluded to, there's two ends to that spectrum.
There's doing too little, which is most people, and there's
doing too much or the same repetitive movement, which is
some people. And everyone will benefit from this melt method,
(22:42):
the the neurological I mean we need like five hours,
I always say when I have people on like you
so um, but just getting the body to work correctly, right,
And and you know the confusion people have about flexibility.
If your body doesn't move correctly, you're gonna have problems. Well,
and I guess the question it's like what is correct movement? Right,
just like when we talk about corrective exercise, like we
(23:05):
you know, the thing about movement is we don't think
about move we don't think about stability, we don't think
about move We just get up and get the thing
that we want to get and when we want to
get it, you know, and so we don't think about
how we're doing things and how joints ideally move in
their ideal range. And so what a lot of people
(23:25):
get is what I call segmentally hyper flexible, right, so
around particular areas of their body, they're super recusing where
you don't want to be like a range of joints.
But then you have muscle abilities that are really a
lot short consent strain and tendance near joints, and so
you're just increasing your chances of pain. So you know, again,
only living alters fashion, which is is a matrix of
(23:50):
collagen or around the body. And look, even if anybody
listening doesn't have pain, if you've ever sat for long
periods of time, get up and feel like you age twenty,
is because you're trying to don't work as well when
you get up as a didn you sat down. You're
feeling the effects of the fluid flow, the food profusion
adaptations that occur in this connectifition matrix. And what it
(24:12):
reeks havoc on is our joints. And if you think
of the fluids and fashion like a river daily living
is kind of laying certainly down to that river's flowing
where that sediment really loves to accumulate. This around your
joint where fashion is most abundant, and it loses its
bit to elastic properties, ability to move and adapt this
move and what they want to, you know, move efficiently.
(24:34):
So I wouldn't talk about correct and I would think
about efficient right that oftentimes we're not moving efficiently. We're
just pushing ourselves to run that extra mile. Our bodies
are hurting and we're just going anyway. Or you take
the opposite round. Gosh, I stand up in my back hurts,
need What do I do? I sit back down and again,
(24:56):
which is why you have back in in the first place.
So it's the vicious cycle that again comes down to
the psychology that people don't really talk about. Is the
desire to be better, the desire to be loved, be wanted,
to be healthy. Right, we want we want these things
in our life. If you ask anybody, do you want
(25:17):
to leave an active, healthy, painprey life for as long
as possible? If anybody says, now, I'm good with the crampy,
not so great short life, I don't think anybody's gonna
say that, now, you know, why wouldn't we all want
to live as long as we can as helpful as
we can, So that that is about efficiency, not about correct.
It's it's really an efficient state of being, and a
(25:39):
lot of us are functioning inefficiently because we're unstable. Can't
be efficiently efficiently stable. And I'm gonna say it again,
fashion is the stability system of the body. So if
you want to learn how to maintain efficiency and stability,
you gotta learn a little bit about the automomic processes
of the nervous system and have the nervous system of
death to daily living and how fashion you can actually
(26:01):
side yourself to death. You know, lots of people eat
right and exercise still chronic pain. So sort of the
journeys on the secret of our industry that most people
can really change harder and paint. And I love that
you have to take issue with the word correct, because
that's really important, right that we use words that people
understand in the way that they need to understand them.
(26:24):
When I say it, it's it's it's natural, as you're
alluding to, we need to work in our natural range
of motion. But what I also love that you alluded
to that I don't I know, people don't really realize, Sue,
because it's human nature. The problem is what you alluded
to about compensatory issues, right, So in other words, you say, well,
people don't have pain most people, Right, they'll get a
pain in their leg or let's say shoulder, right, And
(26:46):
what they do they start putting on their shirt differently.
They change everything about what they do without really realizing it.
And then what happens, The shoulder feels better and it
goes to wear right. So just talk about that and
and this is a real problem. You know, we adapted
to avoid this pain and that was protective, but in
the common, everyday world that can be a huge problem. Huge. Well,
(27:07):
and what you're this is really big where you're saying time,
because that's that's what happens is our nervous system is
designed to adapt to keep us functioning as efficiently as possible.
And I kind of always kind of make an analogy
of like, if you live in a suburban, you've gotta
get downtown. And let's say you're and you've got to
get down at the fluor five brilli in the morning
in Los Angeles. You you don't take the highway because
(27:30):
you know there's gonna be congestion on the highway. So
how do you get downtown. You learn to take side
streets to get you where you want to go, and
although it's not the most efficient round, it's gonna get
you where you want to go in relatively the same
amount of time. The problem is on the weekend, somebody
invites you downtown and by habit you take the side
streets instead of going on the highway. And that's kind
(27:52):
of how the nervous system works. If there are these
directoral pathways movement that are ideal in a normal range
of joy, it's an ideal range of joints. These are
neural patterns that we adapted when we were a baby
from zero to two. And then we just like how
you say we practice and pete movements to get better
(28:12):
at sport. We are habitually doing the same movements and patterns,
and so your brain anticipates how you want to move
when you go remove, but it's not saying that it's
doing it in an ideal, more efficient way anymore. And
if your nervous system adapts enough times to a compensatory pattern,
as far as your brain is concerned, that's the dominant pathway,
(28:34):
that's the ideal way to move. But time over tension.
Just like how you say, hey, my shoulder birds day,
I'm never gonna start putting my shirt down differently, I'm
gonna avoid moving my arm this way. Well you know,
I mean, you're it's a slippery spoke because now the
function of you was adapting in other areas of your body.
So maybe six months down the road, your shoulder might
(28:56):
feel better, but you're opposite me and hips start hurting you,
and you're not realizing that it's because of the compensation
that your body has adopted while you were healing one
problem and now you're making other problems where else. So again,
what I think what melt is an interruption and those
compensatory patterns to get you to identify where can you
(29:17):
live stress as living in your body, how your body
is adapting in compensatory ways, and then treating the body
so that it down regulates and it repairs self. Right.
Body is designed to prepare, increase some stress, roost the
body's natural repair processes, and get your background those highways
so that now your nervous system is regaining those proper
(29:40):
sensory motor pathways that move you and your joints in
an efficient way. And that is again, you're not going
to get that by exercise and by just lifting weights.
You're most often what people do when they have compensation
and they weight train is they become a stronger, more
dysfunctional body. They actually get better at managing their dysfunctions
(30:01):
without and and and again, once you get into your fifties,
that's does not work. And that's why so many people
who engaged in bitness when they were younger finally their
joints start breaking down. I love that analogy. That's gonna
help so many people. The traffic and and you know,
if that doesn't paint the perfect visual for people, I
(30:22):
don't know what will. And you know, it's the muscles
firing correctly in the right sequence that you're alluding to
as well. Um, and people don't realize that. And I
would say so that you know, I am in my
fifties too. I think we're probably really close in age,
and you know, my friends are dropping like flies, and
guys and women much younger than I. Right, And one
of the problems is what you just said in that
(30:44):
you know we can, we compensate our bodies moved differently,
and then we go to do things like play basketball,
play doubles, tennis, and we ask our bodies to take
that route that we've been avoiding because we have to
do it quickly, right, and that's when the achilles goes,
the hamstring goes, and now we've got place. Yeah, Like
if your body has been sitting for long periods and
you get really good at siday, but then you know,
(31:07):
you decide, Hey, at the end of the day, I'm gonna,
you know, go for a run. Your body's like, whoa, whoa, what?
What's this running thing that you wanted to do? Because like,
you can't just do that every once in a while
because I'm only really good at sitting. And as as
you sit for long periods of time, certain muscles getting pivoted,
some muscles get much short and luck long. But centrally
(31:28):
motor wise, again, you're not gonna not move right you
You just your body is gonna again get around these
roadblocks to get you to where you want to go,
to move you how it thinks you want to move
relative to what you're you know, what you're asking your
body to do. But yeah, you gonna go play pickleball.
It's not a smaller court. I'm not gonna have to
(31:49):
run as much. But still you can tork your knee
because again, the resilience of the connective tissue is stiff,
it's dehydrated, it doesn't it doesn't have its elastic property
to stabilize those joints, and it's just these quick movements
that we then ask our body to do. It really is,
you know, a road to disaster for a lot of people,
(32:12):
which I think it's very frustrating, and any athlete knows
one of the worst things that athletes can do is
get injured, because then there's this repair time, and that's
frustrating in the presence, you can't move and you're gonna
take weight, and there's all this internal drama going on
if that person loves me anymore and my ground and
and then it becomes a thing of like, well, what
(32:34):
if this goes on forever, We'll forget it. I'm just
gonna run anyway, right, And so I think oftentimes the
messages our bodies are giving us, our bodies are just
gagging for our help, streaming our hate, help me, and
instead we're ignoring we're disregarding who we're popping a pill
to quiet it down. I always say to people, you know,
(32:56):
if you think of pain in your body like kid
crying out for your health, you wouldn't run up to
a kid who was crying out for your health and
punch space, right or ignore them for lock them in
the room. Right. You would get at their level and
you would calm them down. You would take information, and
you would figure out what the problem was, and then
you would take action to solution. But when our bodies
are streaming up our health, we ignore, we try to
(33:18):
tone it down with medications, or we just pushed through it,
which is a winning ticket to dysfunction. Right. I mean, like,
if that's what you want to do, more of the
body's signals and not really listen to what your body
is asking. Is just a little bit of time and
a little bit of focus and really giving yourself permission
to go back into your body and sense what you
(33:39):
feel and care for yourself is an invitation that a
lot of people have never really considered that, Especially in fitness,
most people are very outside of their bodies. They're looking
at themselves in a mirror. They're worried about what other
people perceive of them. And they're not doing things because
they love themselves. They're doing things in fitness because they
want to change for the don't like about And I
(34:02):
always encourage people to exercise because you love yourself, because
you want to improve the assets that you have and
the quality of who you are. That's why she'd movement,
doing exercises or whatever it is you love to do,
um and and pain again as that motivator for me
to get back into your body. To love yourself. It's
(34:26):
about being happy, as you're saying, and that's so important.
And I love that we're almost like a half hour
in and this is the first we've really brought up exercise.
We've we've talked about movement, movement, movement, because that's what
it's about. Right. Yes, we can call it what you want,
but you know negative connotation. And I say, just as
you did, Sue, no one hates exercise. You haven't figured
(34:47):
out what you enjoy doing yet, right, and or you're
doing it for the wrong reasons as you just outlined.
It's fun. And if I told you you couldn't do
what you love, I know, Sue that you would be
really angry with me. If I said no, you know,
the walk you go on, or the wim you do,
or the you know whatever class, you would be angry.
And everyone has the capacity to get to that point,
(35:07):
every single person, right. What I also love, though, I
gotta backtrack a little bit so much here you talked
about like you know, injury and back to like you know,
I've lectured on does strength training improve running performance? The
first slide I show is the band yes, right, It's
just yes, of course, But the primary reason is that
it allows you to keep training right to prevent injury.
(35:28):
So we can go into the pliometric thing and running
efficiency and things like that. But as you said, if
we are injured, if we don't feel good, if we
don't you know, want to move more, that nothing else
matters at that point, right, So we we have to
start there. And what I love about the Melt method
is it's not this incredible crazy fitness tech. I have
everything known demand, Sue, as I'm sure you do as
(35:50):
well when it comes to fitness tech. We're given all
this stuff frequently, but at the end of the day,
it's you know, it's a ball, and it's it's it's
it's simple it's a simple stuff. So talk about as
we kind of wrap this up, how do people We'll
just talk about the melt method, how people would get started,
and what it entails. Yeah, so you know we I
(36:10):
actually have been doing this a long time now, right
that this is the twenty year in the making. It
started at his homework for my clients to get out
of my office and get back into access living. And
I developed these soft balls and soft rulers to teach
people how to use compression or tensions into their bodies
because that's the fashion, is the tension compression management system
(36:31):
to apply self touch just like manual therapy onto their
bodies so that they can eliminate some of that teams
to stress. So I have a stranging platform called Meltdown Demand.
I put out a new video every week, just I said,
in the categories of pain, performance or lifestyle. So you know,
there's a prep map for golf, there's a restorative map
(36:52):
for runners, there's maps for low back pain. There's maps
for you said at your desk all day long, right, so, uh,
just a self care treatment for basically everything. And there's
all sorts of different techniques that you can do with
melt it's quite a robust platform. You know. I have
five levels of instructor training. We've got two best instructors worldwide.
(37:14):
We also teach online and the life classes around the world. Um.
You know, I have a website and MELT Methods so
people can go and find out about the method itself
and beyond the product. It really is a method sharing
with people how to become more aware of the accumulative
stress in the fascial system, which is the stability system
(37:36):
of the body. Your nervous in your stability and your
fascial system will stabilize you. So MELT is this very gentle,
subtle body approach. Um. I think it's interesting in athletics,
like people go after their bodies and their recovery just
as hard as they do their exercise routines. They're smashing
their fashion, they're rolling and ironing themselves and the flipping pain,
(37:57):
And I don't get it, Like, why does your recovery
for access need to be as hard and pushing as
your training. Doesn't make any sense. But just chill out
for a second and in quiet your nervous system death.
Don't pause pain to get out of pain. Learn how
to be more just gentle and mindful with your body
because fashion is a system that is in a constant
(38:19):
state of change in adaptation. So if you know how
to addapt and really make major changes in your body,
and very short period of times, people are looking for
self care tools and easy ways to really transform their body.
I think maltime demand has got to be about the
easiest reseversion down with the app um it's just treating
platforms and and again the product is inexpensive. They work.
(38:42):
The whole methodology works. It is profound. If you try it,
what you'll find is from the point when you assess
and you do a treatment and you reassess, you are
going to sense change in your body. And that's the
first step getting out of pain, getting your body to
adapt in a positive way. And I love that you said,
because I'm totally with you. I don't treat pain with
pain personally, right, I don't. If it's something really hurts,
(39:05):
I get it. And there are people that love the
deep tissue and to each their own. And if it
works for you, we could argue about it, but but fine,
But that's what that's what I love about your system.
It's simplicity done consistently right, it's excessive moderation. It's not.
You don't have to run a marathon. You don't have
to do an iron Man, you don't have to do
a burbe. You got to get in touch with your body.
And so many people our age too, and and younger
(39:27):
with issues everything about our current lifestyle. I just interviewed
Michael Easter. I don't if you met him, you know,
the comfort crisis just amazing people. We talk about how
everything in our everyday life is just not good for
our bodies and our minds. And when you start with
something like MELT, that's doable. I would argue you have
the greatest resources of any program I've ever seen when
it comes to the videos and the books, and you
(39:49):
just really do so. Congrats, Um. I know, decades in
the making what you can do it at home, COVID
has taught us what that you can do great things
at home. You don't have to spend a lot of money.
It doesn't have to be an it shouldn't be an hour,
especially at the start. Right it's and and that's what
I will kind of wrap it up with that too.
I would say take justin only out of your vocabulary.
It's not I only did ten minutes of you know,
(40:11):
the MELT method today. It's that you did it and
that you're going to do it again, and it's not
a matter of if, but how much it will work
for you. That's right. I mean, if you just even
start out with ten minutes a day, aren't any just
submit to tenants a day to doing something for yourself
that is restored, whether that's sitting in meditation, or doing
(40:32):
the melts for treatment or rebellance sequence, or just going
for a lot. Just start with saying, for ten minutes
every day, I'm going to get up to do something
that is going to replenish the love of myself, within myself,
whatever that is. That's how you start. You don't need
to start with an hour workout or anything like that.
To start with ten minutes a day and build yourself
(40:52):
up and you'll find that, especially with MELT, you're gonna
love how it feels, and so you're gonna want to
do those thirty fourty minute sessions that we also have
on the platform. But you know, we have five to
ten minute treatments, we've got one hour treatments. It just
depends upon what you're working with and what you're looking
to revolve and you know and how much time you have,
(41:13):
but I'm always just looking for saving people time on
the in effort to feel good. And if you can
do something that's simple, easy and effective, that's what you
should do. And that's about and it's a gateway drug.
As you said, you know you're gonna gonna do five. Yeah.
Uh so, thank you so much, so great to after
(41:34):
thirty years. Probably you're absolutely let me say, we're at
the holidays. Uh, this is a gift you'd not only
give yourself but give people you love. The books and
and the products and the programs. This is the kind
of thing I know that people it will transform your
(41:55):
life if you go. That sounds so crazy and it's
rare that I say that, but I know that when
people who haven't moved suddenly start moving and move better,
like you know, life changing, it's life changing. And I
find I've said at three times now, but we're gonna
end with this. We didn't talk about weight loss, we
didn't talk really about hard exercise. It's about movement, about
being happy about being paid free, and then you can
(42:16):
do all that other stuff that's gonna happen after because
you're even go I feel better. I want to get
off the couch. I want to go play pickle ball
or whatever. UM start here and guess what, When you
do the Melt method and people see you get the results,
that's the greatest gift. I mean, I know, Sue that
you probably am like me, and that we have the
greatest jobs in the world. We help people live better lives.
It sounds so cliche, but it's true. That's what we did.
(42:39):
That's I mean, and I'm I'm very grateful, privileged, and
truly honored that so many people have, you know, allowed
me into their lives to work with them to transform
their lives, and it's transformed being. I feel like I've
learned so much from every single client, so to work
on you know, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide poltics.
(42:59):
It really is an incredible gift. And I just know
that if people are suffering, you can help yourself feel better,
and that really self care is the best health care
that you have. And so giving that gifts to other
people also gives you an accountability partner. You know, if
you really struggle with pain, having somebody that you know
you can work with, I think is a really important
(43:21):
you know that you don't feel like you by yourself
in your novel them that you know there's a community
out there, and you know again I'm on Facebook, I'm
on Instagram and lay Lansince come down so YouTube there's
free videos there as well, So there's you know, no
excuse um. If you love yourself and you feel like
you want to live an abundant life, then today's your
data to get to us. Couldn't end it any better, Sue,
(43:44):
It's been Thank you so much, have a happy holiday season,
and I hope to speak with you again soon. Thanks
thanks to and we will be right back after this
quick break and we are back. I'm waiting to get
I'm surprised I have not received yet a message from
(44:06):
any of you saying stop saying you wish you had
more time with these guests. But I do. I do
because when I get to speak with people who I
know can make me better and by definition, make you better.
When we speak here on this podcast, I want to
(44:30):
get as much out of them while I have them,
And the best ones are really busy, the best ones
are hard to get and as I said in the intro,
this is the perfect example of complex yet simple. Sue
(44:51):
has done the work, decades of research into this crazy
area that I just love how it's just she loves it,
this very specific world of fasha. But if we're understanding
improving how our bodies and our minds work, you need
(45:14):
to know you need to understand the joints in the
fasha and all that's pun intended connected. But as we discussed,
it comes back to the simple. If you're hurt, if
your body is not moving, uh, correctly. And I love
that she corrected me. That was like, you know, the
words we choose are important to us in this industry,
(45:37):
and correctly is confusing to some people. And and I
meant and I you know, said naturally. And that's what
I mean, because what's natural for one person isn't the
same for another. And that's why I've talked about, you know,
(45:57):
running coaches. We all have different biomechanics. We all have
different ways of doing things based on our body specific
personal attributes and leg length, you know differences, and and
femur length and so many different things. The way our
joints are situated, there are subtle differences. But it's gotta
(46:21):
be natural, and it's got to be pain free. And
so when you connect with your body by doing things
like the Melt method, and this is the best of
the best that I know of, and there's this is
what I do. In other words, we didn't get into
like what we could compare this too. And I did
(46:44):
that for a reason. And that's why you gotta go
to the Melt method dot com start poking around. But
this is something that you should add to your home gym.
The roller, the balls takes up no space, portable, Everyone
(47:05):
can use it and it works. And I'll leave you
with that because those are always the criteria that I
am looking for for myself and for you and for
my family. Simple, doable, effective, not gonna hurt me, gonna
make me better, like a push up or a squat
or a launge. Everyone can do it anywhere, anytime. You
(47:27):
can modify it for your goals, for your fitness level.
And the same thing holds true about the Melt Method.
No complicated app not tracking something that you probably don't
understand or the value of which can be debated. It's
(47:49):
about getting your body to move better and connecting to
your body. You know, we talked quickly about those type
of injuries where you're asking your body to move quickly
in those sports, or or when you know you trip,
when your body doesn't fire, your muscles don't fire in
the right sequence in the right way. You get hurt,
you pull something, you fall, you don't fall as you
(48:12):
can fall efficiently. People, I do it all the time.
I did it during the Ultra Marathon recently. But check
it out added to your repertoire. We need strength, we
need cardio, we need body composition, the components of exercise.
(48:33):
I'm going to lump this under flexibility just because that's
where it fits neatly. But it's more than that. But
let's put it there. Do your strength to your cardio.
You need to be flexible and connected, and that's where
the Melt method comes in. So there you go. All
right again, Thank you to Sue Hitsman. I'm sure I
(48:53):
will now be seeing and talking with her much more
frequently and for a good reason. All right again, If
you want to reach out to hit Instagram, Tom h Fit, Twitter,
Fitness Disrupted dot com, you can go there. Questions comments
my most recent book, The Micro Workout Plan. Hey there's
a great shameless plug Melt method book. Maybe a foam
(49:17):
roller micro Workout Plan. That's the gift that keeps on giving,
gifts that keep on giving. All right, but yes, my
most recent book is The micro Workout Plan. And thank
you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed. Sue. She can,
with her valuable decades of expertise, really really make a
difference in your life. And that's my goal is to
(49:37):
bring you those people. All right, I am Tom Holland
this is Fitness Disrupted. Believe in Yourself. Fitness Disrupted is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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