35: 8 Exercises for Avoiding Injuries with Jeff Pelizarro

[00:00:00] Jase Kraft: [00:00:00] You're listening to the science of sports recovery podcast. Each week. We explore how to recover more efficiently from training so you can work out harder and realize your full potential. 

This is the science of sports recovery podcast.

Hey everybody. I'm Jase Kraft and welcome to the podcast. You are listening to another episode of the science, a sports recovery podcast I have on the show today, Jeff Pelizzaro He is a licensed physical therapist and golf digest, top 50 fitness professional specializing in the movement and fitness for golfers.

He works with golfers of all levels, including the PGA tour winner, Adam. Long He is the [00:01:00] co-founder of 18 strong, which is an online golf fitness brand that provides golfers with the resources exercises, guidance, to train properly, live a healthier lifestyle and achieve maximum results on and off the links.

Today, we are talking about movement patterns for athletes, vanity training, and the habits that build your recovery. Excuse me, my baby is sick. I have a four year, a four month old. He's going back to he's going to daycare and he's bringing all this crap home. Today we are talking about movement patterns for athletes, vanity training, what that is, and if you should or should not be doing it.

And the habits that build your recover team, let's get in. Jeff welcome to the podcast. 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:01:55] Thanks for having me Jase, excited to be here. 

Jase Kraft: [00:01:57] Awesome. I got to ask, [00:02:00] obviously you've done a lot golf, kind of industry. Is that the sport that you first fell in love with as a kid? 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:02:09] No, in fact, I didn't really start playing golf and really loving golf until I was close to 30 years old.

My background was really more in soccer. I grew up in a soccer family here in St. We like to think of St. Louis as the hub of, of soccer back in the 1960s and seventies and my grandpa, my dad all played very high level national championships at the collegiate level. And so I played into college.

And so that was always like my number one score. I played a little bit of everything. Like most kids did baseball,  basketball. But no soccer was my first law, probably still my big law, but golf I'm completely addicted to now as well. And that's what I do day in and day out with my clients and the people that we work with online.

I have to say, I love both of them now. 

[00:03:00] Jase Kraft: [00:03:01] Yeah. Okay. Do you still play any soccer? 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:03:04] I coach I help coach my son's team. I play a little bit not regularly on a recreational basis, but once a year we definitely play January 1st week. We have a big game that we always play. I kicked around a couple of times a year and then I did my fix at my son's soccer practice.

Jase Kraft: [00:03:23] Gotcha. Yeah, I think soccer is probably one of those harder ones to find post collegiately. If you're not doing it, in some sort of league, whereas there's pickup basketball games and there's all these races, but I imagine it's hard to find. And then soccer. 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:03:37] There's a, there's quite a bit of indoor soccer that's played.

I haven't had any major injuries or surgeries and I really don't want to have any in indoor soccer or a lot of those kind of things I try to stay away. 

Jase Kraft: [00:03:51] For sure. So you said you didn't pick up golf until age 30. Like why, how did that happen? 

[00:04:00] Jeff Pelizarro: [00:04:00] A strange situation. I was working in the physical therapy clinic here in St. Louis. I've been working in the clinics for about six years after graduating more of a general. Style clinic. And I worked at a big orthopedic center. So surgery center, we had the fitness center. We had the physical therapy center and in the fitness center, there was a lady who had just moved back to town.

She was from St. Louis originally, but had. Touring around with the PGA tour working with golfers on the fitness. And she came back to St. Louis and started working with some golfers here locally. And then we connected because I was helping, she would send them over to me when they got busted up and I'd fix them up and send them the accidents are working together.

And one day she asked me if I wanted to kind of jump ship on the PT side and come join her and starting to work to build golf fitness   practice. And after many long conversations with my wife and kinda being a little burnt out in the physical therapy [00:05:00] industry, seeing 35 patients a day and in running and clinical seven, seven therapists, I decided, okay, Time to try something new, something where I could be more on the preventative side of things.

I knew that I could help the golfers because I know the way the body moves. I didn't really know much about golf itself though. I figured learn  about that. And so yeah,  made it made a jump in and dove in and started learning as much as I could about golf. And here we are 13 years later and this is what, I'm what I'm still doing.

Yeah. 

Jase Kraft: [00:05:31] So 13 years ago, if you. If somebody tells you, Hey, Jeff, you're going to start working with golfers and you're going to be, listed in the top 50 fitness professionals and the golf tides and you know, working with Adam Long, would you have told them that they were crazy? Or did you see the vision?

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:05:55] I don't know for sure. They were crazy. Take me back to [00:06:00] 2008. And just kind assumed I was going to be a physical therapist. I'd maybe move on to owning a clinic or a couple of clinics. And you'll go down that traditional path. And I had a friend that introduced me to a little bit more of the entrepreneurial side of a business and had gotten involved in a couple of things with him just as far as some supplement sales and things like that.

And so I started to realize that, there's, there's to it then just going down that same track that I've seen so many other physical therapists go down. And I think that's what opened my eyes to, just new possibilities and but no, had  you told me I'd be working with. A guy who ends up winning a PGA tour event.

In fact, one of my other clients just made it into he's playing in the U S open in a couple of weeks now. Yeah, no, I golf to me was going out and playing in a charity, scramble drinking a bunch of beer and you know, maybe on a guy's golf trip for a bachelor party or something like that.

[00:07:00] Yeah, 

Jase Kraft: [00:07:03] I get ya. So you had said something in there that I want to just highlight, cause it's gonna frame the conversation. For anybody who's not in golf, you said, you, you weren't in golf first and you could help golfers because you knew the body and so a lot of this, what we're going to talk about is, he has experience in golf, but it applies to any athlete, no matter what sport you're doing, there's basic movements that the body does.

And that's what we're going to talk about with fitness and you know, flexibility, strength, that kind of stuff. I want to start with, you had mentioned, like it's very important to keep simple fitness and nutrition as a practice. Why do you think that is? And how do you keep it simple?

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:07:58] Kind of going back to what you just [00:08:00] said about. Yeah, I work with golfers or in the physical therapy clinic. I worked with people that were injured. You deal a lot with the endurance population. You know, really any athlete there's basic needs that we all have. And, and I think that we're so quick to jump to the very specific things, whether that be for our sport or if it's diet nutrition, we try to find like what's the

what are the 1% things that will help people as, but we tend to step over like the big basics and the big rocks. And I think that time and time again, and now on our podcast, I've had a chance to interview. We've done over 300 episodes and interview a bunch of great coaches and trainers and instructors, and, the best coaches that I find are the ones that boil it down as simply as possible.

They guarantee that their clients, their athletes, whoever are going to first of all, follow the plan and get the results. And [00:09:00] so I think when we step over the very simple things and try to go to these really complex things, complexity and complexity is the enemy of execution is a quote that I can't remember, maybe Tony Robbins, but if you give so many simple steps to follow, let's say for nutrition, it's eat your vegetables get good quality protein. Don't snack pay attention to your calories. It's those are the boring things. And we don't want to hear about that, but those are also the things that kind of get the job done if you really put any time and effort into it. So I think that if we don't pay attention to the simplicity and the consistency, it's those two things.

If you can keep it simple, but you can do it for a long period of time. That's what's actually going to get you your results, whether that's looking better in the mirror, whether that's reducing your time on your runs, whether that's, improving your golf score or improving your driving distance.

It's because you've put in the consistent effort. If you're [00:10:00] trying to do all these different things, you end up not doing anything. 

Jase Kraft: [00:10:04] Yeah. I think some of this complexity comes with that. Hey, I don't want to do simple things and try and that quick fix, the, the, the energy shake that's promised to, increase your VO two and, the, the super, the new super food, that's like a recovery, machine and stuff.

And we then were like, oh, I can do that. And then not sleep as much. 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:10:31] Yeah. I mean, I used to be a supplement junkie, give me a a protein shake. That's gonna build 10 pounds of muscle or, load up on the creatine or the, the body fat blaster, 2000, whatever, it all sounds  great in, but my mom has told me from the day I was a little kid, if it sounds too good to be true, it is.

And that's usually pretty, pretty darn good advice. [00:11:00] You know, when you talk to any super high level athlete or anybody that's achieved a ton of success in whatever they do could be a business person. They do the very mundane things and they just do them repetitiously and they do the things that other people don't see them doing.

And I think that's part of it too, is, maybe with the social media and Instagram and all that stuff, we tend to see and gravitate towards the flashy stuff. And that's what people put out there because they know that they need to get clicks and views, and I totally get that. But we don't see a lot of the little simple things that people do, the little, maybe stretching routine or  warm routine.

The golfers are doing, or the endurance athletes are doing that. Isn't very sexy, but they do it. 

Jase Kraft: [00:11:47] Post at the end of the day. Hey finished my, water drinking quota for the day, or I woke up and I got eight hours [00:12:00] of sleep last night. That's good content.

Cool. So you, you started this 18 strong brand then was that right away that you started that when you started working with golfers or was that along the way and kind of tell us the story of how that came to be and what it means 18 strong.

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:12:27] If these wrong came out. Not until 2014. So 2008 is when I had transitioned over, started working with golfers.

And then in 2012, I ended up The original owner of the company I was working with, she moved out of town. And so then I was on my own doing my own thing. And then I partnered up into a sports performance gym called elevated performance and teamed up with a friend of mine who he worked with a lot of professional hockey.

[00:13:00] Professional hockey players, junior hockey players. And so it was this mix kind a cool mix in our gym where we had golfers and really most of the golfers that were there were more of regular  country club, general type golfers. But the hockey players, a lot of them in the off season were some professionals that would come in backseat Lewis.

And and then it was around that time that I wanted to start doing something that had a little bit more. Exposure really to help get the word out about fitness and golf. Because at  the time, golfers were not paying attention to working out or anything like that. Back in 2008, this was really a very novel idea, which you know, we see sports go through transition of, you saw basketball and baseball.

He looked back in the seventies and nobody was lifting weights or doing any of that stuff. Golf is kind in this transition. And so in, in 2012 or 13, I started just [00:14:00] writing some online articles and started a blog. 2014, teamed up with my cousin, Ryan, who has had a background in some website development and things like that.

So we decided, Hey, let's team up and I'll create the content. And you helped me with the backend stuff. Cause I wanted to get out the word to guys like my buddy you know, I was on a golf trip one time and it was sitting there having a beer after our round with a buddy of mine from college. And he's telling me all this stuff that he's starting to do to work out for his golf game.

And I looked him dead in the eye and I'm like, TJ. That's all the wrong stuff, man. Like you're doing it all wrong, but I appreciate the fact that you're seeing that working out can help your golf game and training and getting stronger. It's gonna help the golf game. So I knew that there was this desire for it, but the guys didn't know what they really needed to do.

And that's really where 18 strong started was just some articles. And then this new thing called podcasts that I just heard about start it up. And so I decided [00:15:00] that'd be cool. Talk to some people in the industry and just reached out to a couple people. I knew that worked with some tour players and that's where the whole thing started. 

Jase Kraft: [00:15:08] So that Conversation with TJ is he's doing one thing and you're like, dude, that's wrong? And what was he doing? And what should they have been doing? 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:15:19] Okay. This is really funny, cause this will play right into our conversation about vantage cream. So TJ was, he was doing a bunch of bicep curls and a bunch of chest presses.

And, and he's yeah, just makes me feel a lot stronger when I'm standing over the ball. It makes me feel a lot more confident over the ball. And so on, on one hand, I love that. I love that it makes him feel more confident and that's okay. Why I think that we can get into this a little bit deeper, but I think that there is some benefit to doing some vanity training and why I say vanity training.

You know, the pool muscle training didn't wear in high school. But on [00:16:00] the other hand, just doing that style training, wasn't really setting him up for his body to move a whole lot better. You know, like doing isolation exercises for your biceps, isn't going to do a whole lot your golf swing.

But all we had to do, he had the desire to get in and start doing some work. What I then encouraged him to do is, Hey, let's get a little bit more of the lower body stuff involved. Cause most guys love to skip leg day. Like we all know. But as, as Jason, the lower body is really our engine and we look at a golfer and we look at a golf swing with these athletic movements and you think of the swinging in the rotation, but most people don't realize like that all starts at your feet, that all starts with your contact with the ground. And this, if you can help a guy who's, now we're in our forties, early forties, if you can help a guide that's in his thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, that hasn't done much training for as lower as just that [00:17:00] right there could completely revolutionize his game because he's going to have so much more strength, power endurance. So that was one piece. And then I like to balance things out. We all do everything forward and hunched forward. A bunch of bench presses and bicep curls is only going to tighten you up in the front of it.

So I like to really get the work the back, the posterior side for the golfers, because we're often shown a desk or a phone or whatever. So those were the initial things for TJ. 

Jase Kraft: [00:17:31] You had mentioned, like it starts with starts with the base of, the legs or some, or with golfers, they have they don't work on their base. I would say also runners don't work on their upper body and that causes problems too. Because they're like, I don't need it. I need to be as light as possible. And I got in trouble with this. So you're looking at a guy who can do like 10 push-ups [00:18:00] after his college career without being sore for a week.

Now I've, I've filled out a little bit more training for obstacle course races, but I think. To the point I'm trying to make is you don't have to a, just do vanity training for, cause that's not gonna translate, but it's also good to have, some sort of. Training. That's not specific to what you're doing because I think athletes are notorious for just training.

What's going to make them faster. And then that causes problems down the road, whether it's after they, after they, are not. Athletes anymore. For the sake of the word or in the injury, we're out where they have to make a movement that they wouldn't normally make, whether in a race or in a basketball game or on a golf course, and then they get hurt.

So what are you doing [00:19:00] now to do like the prehab stuff? So you are reducing into injuries because that's to me that's a big part of the recovery is making sure that you don't have to have, extended recovery. So what are you doing on the front end with some of. 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:19:20] Yeah, you're right. Your recovery shouldn't be rehab, right?

Yeah. Your recovery should just be recovery. And yeah, that's the whole thing is the preventative side of it. And that's one of the big reasons why I was so excited to get out of the clinic and move over to this side, because I knew that, I, I think that a lot of golfers. And this goes for everybody.

You know, I know that you don't have any golfers, private listening to this, but athletes in general. And a lot of athletes as we get past our athletic careers, a lot of them do tend to go play golf because it's like a one thing you can do for the rest of your life.

Jase Kraft: [00:19:57] I'd love to do it. If I could hit a ball straight. 

[00:20:00] Jeff Pelizarro: [00:20:00] There's always time and there's always time, but that's, what's so unique about working with golfers is I can be working with a 13 year old kid.

I can be working with a 45 year old guy like myself, or I can be working with an 85 year old person male or female. And so they've all got different needs. And especially for the population that we tend to hone in on, which is more guys of my population, maybe that 35 to 65 range.

It's almost like society just tells them to expect to have back pain to gain weight your performance on the course is gonna, it's gonna worse than, the, I could hit the ball as far. And what I would love to see is when these guys start to do just we start everybody out with just some movement routines just to get their body moving. But then we also implement some strength, training stuff, very basic stuff, squats, split squats. If they can do pull-ups, we try to get everybody [00:21:00] to do pull-ups, but, pull downs, those kinds of things. We're basically working on the main, push, pull squat hinge, all of those things that are really fundamental movements for not just athletes, but human beings.

But many of them haven't been doing any of it. And so simply by getting the lower body stronger, just like you said, you're helping too. Prevent injury when they're playing their sport, but we all have lives outside of our sports too. Like you were just saying, you have a youngster at home and I've got three kids and it's sometimes you're chasing after a kid and that's when you're going to pop or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. You can just build some muscle strength. You can teach the body to handle resistance and really that's the name 18 strong comes from is it's not my strong, like all the barbell squat, 500 pounds. We think of strong as the [00:22:00] definition of being able to withstand great pressure or force and that's mentally that's physically.

And so the, the more we can prepare somebody's body to handle the forces it's going to endure on the golf course or off the golf course, the better off they're going to be. So just some specific things for golfers. We know that their shoulder. And their hips are kind the big areas where they end up hurting.

Yeah, pain and issues. Shoulders,  hips, and back is pretty much number one, but it's usually because of the shoulders or the hits aren't working. And so if we get their shoulders and hips working better, we work on, some of the shoulder blade muscles and things like that. How we get the hips rotating a little bit.

That takes a lot of stress off of the other areas of body. That's typically what I find is that one area of the body's not working very well. So the area that's hurting is taking up the slack or taking it apart. 

Jase Kraft: [00:22:53] So when you say not working very well do you mean like it's [00:23:00] just weak or it's not like there's some inhibition where it can't have its full range of motion or muscle yeah, contraction?

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:23:14] In some instances, so many times for the hips it's they don't have The range of motion.

And, if you think of a golfer swinging, when he swings his front leg, he has to rotate really hard on that front hip, typically for a writing and golfer. It's that left hip and many golfers don't have very good rotation on either hip really, but if that front hip isn't able to rotate very well then The back has to create there has to be some more rotation at the lower part of the back or the lumbar spine. And so the spine really isn't meant to rotate there, but it started taking up that stress and then those discs can be irritated. The the Fossette joints [00:24:00] around there can be irritated because your lower back is.

It looks like you're rotating there. Your lower back, you look at a spine is really meant to just bend forward and backwards. It's meant to flex and extend our upper back. Like where are our thoracic spine is our rib cage. That's where we should rotate on the spine. And then, we obviously rotate our hips, but if either of those aren't rotating very well, then that lower part of the back starts to turn with a two.

Cause it's almost like. If everything's stuck and it's all starting to rotate together. So typically what we'll do. And so to answer your question is it strength? Is it range of motion? It depends a lot of times it's it is strength. They don't have the strength to actively create that motion at a joint.

So that might be their shoulder blade. They can't pull their shoulder blade. Far enough to rotate. That could maybe start at their spine, not being able to [00:25:00] their upper spine, not being able to rotate very well. So that's where we have to dig in and figure out what those issues are. I find that, once we start to work on some of those movements, some of them are just moving and they just aren't used to doing until they go out and swing your club.

If we just start to teach them to exercise a few things in those motions and sorry. Motion routine. And some of the strengthening exercises that we do, we'll start to free up those areas. And that will start that  routine. 

Jase Kraft: [00:25:25] You mention motion routine. Can you dig into that? 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:25:30] So. 

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Jeff Pelizarro: [00:26:56] Several years ago, I was introduced to chiropractor by the name of [00:27:00] Dr. Andrew IO spina. Have you heard of him at all? The FRC functional range conditioning is the name of their organization? Functional anatomy seminars is there's seminar  course. And he introduced me to a concept. Controlled articular rotations or are they just call them cars? Basically, think of that as articular your joint, your joints articulate so controlling the articular motion.

And so it's like next circles, shoulder circles, hip circles, really just getting a lot of the major joints moving through their full range of motion on a daily basis. So literally what this for us is in the morning when I turned my coffee pot on, before I had my cup of coffee, I do, I think it's eight different moves.

I do next circles. I do shoulder circles, the hips, the ankles. I get down on the floor and I do a 90, 90, hip stretch. [00:28:00] I do the that cat and camel, but basically it's just getting all of these joints moving. And what that does is it helps to, first of all, get you in positions that you want.

Doesn't tend to do throughout the regular portions of the day. For most people, especially if they sit at a desk, they don't move these joints in those positions at all, but it continues to bring blood flow and nutrients to those areas. So basically, so you're teaching the body how to handle more stress because that's when injury occurs, when the body can't handle the stress that it is put on it, you get injured. So this is just a way to test out your joints every morning, and it's funny when you first start doing it and really to this day, you'll get I get like crunches in the act. You start to do these big circles. And the key is to do them really slow, very slow and with intention and try to improve your range of motion throughout every single movement.

And we started. I tell people, just do that before the round of golf. It's a great warmup before the golf. 

[00:29:00] Jase Kraft: [00:29:00] So I want to dig into this a little bit, but more into what those eight movements are for you. But I have a few questions before we get into that one is, is this something that can be kind of a one size fits all for each athlete?

Or is it more of a Hey, you're a basketball player. So these are your eight movements, a golfer. These are your eight movements. 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:29:24] So the the original ones that that we went through with Dr. Spina it's funny, I went to a seminar in Chicago today. Really to learn these eight moves or whatever it is, nine moves.

And most people looking at him like that's so simple and silly that you would spend two days on that. But like, with anything, it's the details below to really understand why it's working is why we go to the courses. But no, I he, he works with, and MMA fighters, NFL football [00:30:00] players, every athlete under the sun.

We all have the same bodies for the most part. And so it's, it's really, it's getting your spine moving properly. It's getting your shoulder joint in your shoulder blade, able to move and no matter how complex the movements are of whatever sport we're doing, if the basic fundamental pieces don't move, if you have a car and the tires don't roll straight.

That car is garbage, whether it's a formula one, or whether it's a Pinto, barely rolling down the street. So everybody would benefit from doing it. I have my mom and dad doing these. I've got you know, I taught my kids to do them. Cause it's basically just getting those joints so they don't get, you don't get in a rut where you start to lose range of motion that you once had.

And a lot of it for, as we get older is starting to try to reclaim the mobility that we won't have. But if we can start some of these kiddos younger, they [00:31:00] can keep that in and then they can gain more control over it. 

Jase Kraft: [00:31:03] Okay. So that gives us some context. I wanted to dig into a little bit of go slowly through the eight moves or, you know, what they are in their attention.

You mentioned first was next circles. Yeah. So explain audio the best as you can without anybody seeing you?

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:31:26] So for our golfers we kind of threw in a couple of other ones that are, have a little bit more of a golf motion to it, just to get them doing a few things, but the basic ones are simply yeah, next circles. It's exactly what you would think, but pretend you have a pencil sticking out of the top of your head.

And then all you're going to do is try to draw a circle as you can  keep your mouth closed when you do this. Cause as you reach up, you'll notice that your mouth tends to open up, but you're going to tip your chin down to your chest, and then you're simply going to roll [00:32:00] your head all the way around.

Okay. And you drawing that big circle with that pencil on top of your head. And you're going to do it really slow. Take five to 10 seconds to make one, one pass of it in as you're doing it. You're really just trying to make that motion as big as you can. One one word of caution is if you do feel pain as you're doing it, like if you're, when you're going to one side, if you feel pain on the side that you're bending towards, don't push into that pain.

If it's more of a pinching, you don't want to pinch into that. Just work your way over. Yeah, but if you have pain on the opposite side, like on the stretching side, this the stretch isn't okay. Discomfort. But if it's on the bedside, that's more of a pinch you don't want to pinch through.

But gotcha. 

Jase Kraft: [00:32:52] Okay. I'm assuming this out to, 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:32:55] with any of these, any of the pinching stretching you want to, it's [00:33:00] good to continue with the movement, but just stay away from the painful away from the painful area. Cause the movement again brings the blood flow. The movement does a lot of good things and in many times you'll find that after you do it several times, it starts to ease up that distance.

And you'll be able to get through that full range. Awesome. 

Jase Kraft: [00:33:18] Okay. So we started with neck circles. What's what's next on the eight or nine list. 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:33:25] Next one, I go into the icon scapular circles. So that would be more like your shoulder blade. So you think of, you've seen guys doing shrugs at the gym with the weights, shrugging up towards your ears.

You're going to do basically one arm at a time. And you're going to, you're not only just going to shrug up towards your ears, then you're going to hold the whole shoulder blade back behind you, and then you're gonna drop the shoulder all the way down and you're, then you're going to roll it forward.

So I think of, doing I'm almost doing like a reverse shoulder. [00:34:00] If I was standing up, you'd see, my arm is just dangling at the side and trying to keep the arm pretty straight and then I would reverse it. So all of these you're going to do basically both ways too. You'll do clockwise counterclockwise.

Gotcha. And I just, we just tell everybody to do three to five repetitions. The more time you have the slower you'll want to do them, but if some days I have to rush through them because I'm in a time crunch, but some days I'll take. Some days, it takes five minutes to do this. Some days I'll spend 30 minutes.

Gotcha. 

Jase Kraft: [00:34:30] Is there an advantage doing one shoulder at a time versus both of them control?

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:34:37] Yeah. You're going to find that one. You're probably better with one than the other, the shoulder blades, a funny one, because most people have never really done that all by itself. It's harder to do. You'll find that you're going to want to bend your knees, bend your head towards your shoulder, or you're going to see you like your elbow kicking back and things like that.

So yeah, it's just a way to [00:35:00] concentrate a little bit more on that one side versus the upset. If you, there are many days where I do them both together, again, more to save time than anything, but if you're just starting out, I would highly suggest do the right side than the left side. Just so you can separate it.

Jase Kraft: [00:35:17] Okay. Cool. All right. So neck, shoulders, the 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:35:22] scapulas the next one is more of a, I would call this to shoulder circle where it's more of a full arm, almost like a windmill where you're trying to do the whole arm going up over your head and then back behind your back again, hard to explain just via audio, but if you were standing straight.

You put your right arm straight out in front of you, and then you raise your arm all the way up over your head is high. As you can get, then you're going to rotate the arm to where your hand goes, outward. And then you drive the arm back [00:36:00] behind your back. Then you reverse it going the other way too.

Now the key on this one is really trying to keep your shoulders and chest square, where it's really. Just the motion that's shoulder. So the cheat would be doing, you rotating your whole body when you're trying to do it. I think if I think of like a pinwheel, you try to be as much like a pinwheel or a wind.

Jase Kraft: [00:36:24] Yeah. Yeah, that's a good visual for it. If anybody is getting lost at this point I will be posting the full video of this eight movements on Instagram. So you can go follow me at and JTS J. E cheese and there'll be there. Or if you just search Jace craft, you'll find me. Okay. So we have the scapular circles, which is the shoulder movement, the arm just dangling.

And then we have the arm circles, which is the full arm kind of, [00:37:00] as high as you can reach as low as you can reach and, and back and forward. What is number four? 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:37:07] So the next one, this is one that we've adapted a little bit from the doctor screen is this is more we do just a rotation.

You can either do this seated or standing, but just really try to rotate your shoulders. So my hips are staying still on my chair and I'm trying to rotate my shoulders as far as I can't really rotate my whole chest and everything. And I'm doing that by using those muscles on the backside of my, so whichever side I'm turning to, I'm using the muscles on the backside of my shoulder, trying to pull myself into that rotation as opposed to taking this out and pushing into rotation, if that makes sense.

So that, that allows me to really pull around my spine a little bit more and you'll feel those muscles in your back and working in note, that's a really crucial piece for our golfers, especially, but a lot of people do. Function [00:38:00] in their thoracic spine and they lose that good rotation and that can lead to a lot of shoulder problems that can even lead to elbow problems, tennis, elbow, golf elbow.

Again, if one part's not working, another area of your body has to work harder to catch up. 

Jase Kraft: [00:38:15] Totally. You're speaking my language on this one because I, my elbows have always been notoriously, not great. My shoulders have no range of motion. They do a little bit now that I've been working on them, but when I got out of college, it was like they could do the running form.

And that was it. 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:38:39] Exactly. Exactly. It's like a golfer that does not belong to a golf club. You get good at your one thing and you can't stray from them. 

Jase Kraft: [00:38:49] Yeah. Okay. So four is rotating the torso. You're pulling with your back as opposed to pushing with your opposite shoulder. [00:39:00] You're going to do that both ways and then move on to move number five, which is.

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:39:08] So the next one would be what I call hip circles. And this is it. I won't be able to do it since I'm attached to the cord, to the computer, but standing up basically, it's almost like you're going to bring one leg up in front, like one knee up in front almost to 90 degrees. And then think of it as almost like stepping backwards over a hurdle to your side.

Yeah. So you're going to step backwards and then you're going to bring that leg back up and. Into the front edge. Again, even on this video, you can see, as I'm mimicking you with my hand, I'm like bending my chest, the key here again, is everything else should be nice and tall and straight while you're only working on that one piece.

So as you bring that leg up, you're going to then bring it out to the side and go up and over the hurdle, bring it down. So it's very similar to the arm circle. 

Jase Kraft: [00:39:59] Yeah. [00:40:00] Just as a reminder, you're not going through the circle. Like it's not a complete circle over and over. You're going to essentially, almost a complete circle then starting over and coming back.

Question on this one. Do you keep your foot like down underneath your knee the whole time? Or do you bring it out to swing it out to the side? Like you would be trying to get as high over the hurdle? Or is it just on the hip? 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:40:31] That's a great question. Yeah, you actually do bring that foot up.

Like you're trying to bring the foot up over the hurdle first. Okay. 

That 

Jase Kraft: [00:40:38] makes sense. Yeah. And again, these visuals will be on Instagram, a number six after we're probably moving down the chain here. So you're going to really work on how to show this. But what comes after hip circles? 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:40:55] So the next one that we do we tend, we just skip over to [00:41:00] the ankle.

There is a knee one, but we don't have everybody do that one. Again, very important than he is more of a hinges joint, which is why I don't put as much emphasis on it. If you're trying to get our golfers to do anything, we're trying to minimize as much as we need them to do but the ankle is really you know, you lock your block, your shin, however you want.

So you can kinda hold your leg. And then basically you're just doing a big circle with your foot. Very slowly, trying to point in every single direction. Just, doing a big rotation, trying to feel all the muscles working in every direction. So you'll do three out, three to five of them one way, and then also do it back the other way.

And you'll start, you feel sometimes you might even get cramping in the bottom of your foot. You might get cramping in some of those muscles up along the side of your ankle. And again, that cramping is really just the fact that. Don't use those muscles very [00:42:00] often, or you don't use them that hard. And so your body's trying to figure out what's what to do.

So we tend, or we tell our golfers we want you to experience that cramp. That cramp is now telling your brain how to react and what it's trying to do. So don't always bail out of the cramp when you get it. If it's something like, you're dehydrated after a 50 mile run or something that's different, but if it's a simple little motion and you get a cramp on a muscle, it's usually not so much a dehydration as it is a muscle confusing.

Jase Kraft: [00:42:33] Totally. Totally. Cool. So, so we got a couple more ankle or foot ones come up here. 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:42:41] The other two that we do are more the one is the cat camel. I think a lot of people are probably familiar with that where, you're on your hands and your knees, and you're really just arching your back up as high as you can get it.

And then you're letting it sag as low as you can. Same principle, it's it. But it's getting the [00:43:00] discs in the spine to move. So we're getting all those joints to move into flection and extension pattern. And then the other one would be sitting on the ground, getting in what I call the 90, 90 position where your hips are basically, this is hard to explain, but one leg is out in front of you and you've got your knee bent to 90 degrees.

You've got your. Bent at 90 degrees. And then your other leg is also back a little bit with the knee bent at 90 degrees. And you're basically sitting there trying to sit up as tall as you can. 

Jase Kraft: [00:43:35] Gotcha. Like your top of a hurdle, like if you're going over the hurdle.

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:43:39] Very much  so yeah, very much and then you start from that position and then you try to do it without using your hands.

You try to rope, roll and rotate over to the other side where you can flip your lid. Two two, then you're starting with your left leg in front of you. You're like rolling on your butt to flip over to where your right leg is in front. [00:44:00] Sorry for everyone listening.

Jase Kraft: [00:44:02] No, I absolutely cannot do that.

You cannot do that. You said not even close. 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:44:09] Come on, man. We gotta get, we gotta get you doing these things. And to be honest, if you know much like you, when I played soccer, I did nothing but soccer and ran and figuring Hey, I'm running, my legs are getting a bunch of workout. And but had I known to do this stuff for sure, but some of the strength training stuff, it's amazing how much further along.

I think my soccer career would have gone, but for all the runners, all the endurance athletes that are listening, these little things. Could really, really help you with a lot of those nagging injuries and ailments that you guys have, because I know that as much pounding as you put your body through going through these long endurance races or the trail runs or the obstacle courses, these are the things that will help get all of those little joints moving.

[00:45:00] They aren't used to moving in and that's going to allow your body to function a lot more efficiently. Yeah. 

Jase Kraft: [00:45:05] And I think there's, there's a couple of notions to this. There's one, like you said that all we do is do our sport and train for that. And I think there's some sort of ego involved with Hey, if I run any faster, I'm healthy, I'm fit.

I can do whatever I want. Essentially. That's how I felt. I won't speak for the rest of the endurance crowd. But I was like, I'm healthy, because I can run a four, 10 mile. That's what health means. It's not. And I actually have our next guest will be talking about what, how you can be unhealthy but be fit.

So you have to listen to that. But where I was going with this is that the, I think it also comes with complexity. [00:46:00] Like you mentioned in the beginning where we say, okay, my hips are tight and then we go. Weak this, inflexible this, do these seven exercises and then, that kind of stuff.

And then just for the hips and then do something else for the ankles and that kind of stuff, and gets all lost in them. Done because it's not a habit. And kind closing out this conversation this like routine of the reason I spent so much time on this is because it's simple. Yeah, if you can just get in the habit of doing these eight things, five minutes to 30 minutes every day at a certain time of the day, set an alarm on your clock, like you'll feel the difference.

I always feel the most healthy as an athlete and as a person combined, when I am most mobile. And outside of my [00:47:00] sport and stuff. And now that I'm trained for obstacle course racing, like I have to be a lot more mobile, so it's nice. But that's my encouragement, to anybody listening is like, this is simple, it's effective and it'll just make you feel better. 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:47:17] It's amazing.

The response that we get from some of the people in our community, we call our community, the crew and you know, like they'll. Initially, come in and say Hey, I've got back pain, I've got this again. Do you have any exercises for this? And I'll say, start with the daily motion, do it for seven days.

Get back to me after that. And let's see how everything feels. And it's three days in five days. And man, I'm starting to move better. My, my neck less crunchy and it's amazing by just doing these things again and just getting the. Moving the way that it needs to certain joints moving away, it ends up taking care of a lot of different things.

So you don't have to go down that complex road, like you were talking about and like, oh, [00:48:00] this is tight and okay, here's your rehab exercise? It's no, just start here. Do these simple things. If we have to go any deeper, if we have to get any more involved, we can do that. Start basics.

And that's really what we do with a lot of our training programs, too. Like our exercises, our programming is pretty basic to start because that's going to take care of 90% of what these guys need. It's not like everybody's trying to be a PGA tour winner. They want to maybe do some way, if they want to get more mobile, they want to feel better.

They want to, maybe gain some distance. All of that can happen with very big. Training, but you have to do it right. You have to do it on a regular basis. 

Jase Kraft: [00:48:40] Yeah. Has to be simple enough and easy enough and habitual enough, but yeah. Yeah, I do it. 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:48:46] And I made it, I'd like to think that I'm naturally a lazy guy and I, I don't want to sit and do an hour's worth of mobility workout.

Yeah. Give me something that's simple, but I can do in five and 10 minutes. That really makes me feel like I could walk. I'm going to go of course, [00:49:00] right down and go hit the first tee without warming up. Yeah, I'm in give me that. Yeah, 

Jase Kraft: [00:49:07] totally. I will keep that in mind. When I hire a personal trainer, I want somebody to keep it simple.

I was the opposite in high school. I had a little project that I was training people for like my senior project or whatever, but I was on. Naturally motivated. And I did a bunch of crazy stuff and I just expected other people to do it. Nobody followed through with that because I was simple.

So now I'm like I got a life, and a kid and a business, and I'm like, I need something. 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:49:49] If there's one thing that being a physical therapist taught me is if you're sending somebody home with exercises, They better be very clear. They better be very simple for them to follow up because they give people [00:50:00] five exercise and they come back and show you what they've been trying to do.

And they don't get them. Or they just don't do it. 

Jase Kraft: [00:50:07] Yeah, exactly. Cool. Well, we're at the end of our time, Jeff, it's great having you on tell us where we can find 18 strong. I believe that's a podcast. So I'm assuming you can search it on apple, Google, Spotify, all the works as well as going to 18 strong.com.

That's one eight. Spelled out a one eight strong.com and I believe you have a free trial of your golf fitness app there. Any anywhere else you want to send people or tell a little bit more about that podcast and 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:50:42] yeah, obviously if you guys are listening to the podcast, listening to this podcast, he loves to listen to podcasts.

And so we'd love for you to come over and check out 18 strong. And yet it's just one eight strong, all one word, you can search it over on iTunes and everything. But we like to say that we're more than just a golf and fitness package. Because [00:51:00] we do bring on a lot of mental game coaches. We've had a Navy seal sniper on talking about performance under pressure.

So we try to really bridge the gap bring in cool experts, fond people that either have experiences in the world of golf or performance or athletics or something. And maybe they just love to play the game or they have some tie to the game. Yeah. Yeah, we'd love to have you come over there and then yeah, 18th strong.com.

We do have a free trial. In fact, that might be the best place for you to go to really understand what the daily motion is. You can try try the app for seven days and heck, you can even return it afterwards. You'll know the drills by the end of the seven days. If you're not interested in doing any of the other programs.

But 18 strong.com. You'll see, right on the homepage, a video of me, and you can get the daily motion drills right on your phone. And I highly recommend, in fact, I challenge you to do that, to go over there and get that try for seven days and see if it doesn't work. 

Jase Kraft: [00:51:56] Yeah, that's awesome. Go do that.

Instead of the [00:52:00] Instagram thing that might be hard to 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:52:05] over on the app, as opposed to what we just did here. 

Jase Kraft: [00:52:11] Yeah. Instagram is like the $1 the, and then the app is like the full, full course meal there. Cool. Thanks Jeff. We're beyond a lot of fun, a lot of great information. 

Jeff Pelizarro: [00:52:29] Thanks.

Jase really enjoyed being here. 

Jase Kraft: [00:52:31] All right, episodes over. If you found value in this episode, please consider giving us a review on iTunes. And if you haven't already yet subscribe, do so now. So you don't miss any important topics in the company. And if you have any questions or suggestions for the show, please send them my way.

I am most responsive on Instagram. That's at Jaecheese like the food or email me directly [00:53:00] at Jase at science of sports, recovery.com. Talk soon.