James: Would you say most people are a little low on the self-awareness scale? I’ll give an example. I saw a news article today. A lady, it was in some other country, went to the doctor to see them about a back pain she’d experienced from a few days ago. And then she delivered a baby in the bathroom while she was waiting, between the blood tests. She was literally carrying a baby, let’s say for nine months, because apparently the birth was a very happy, healthy baby; and didn’t even realize, and only three days prior, felt a back pain.
Now I’d say that’s very, very low on the self-awareness scale. Between that and someone who might be in your situation is like, obviously highly educated, practicing this for a living. You’ve read all the research, you’ve done lots of different tests and experiments, you’ve seen your clients over a period of time, it gives you a fantastic data set, a lot like I do with businesses. Where do most people sit when you start dealing? Like for example, someone listening to this, where are they most likely to be?
Carl: That depends if they’ve got a background in sport, because that always helps the body. But I do find a lot of people don’t have a good understanding or awareness of their movements. But also, they don’t know that, if I can just backtrack a bit, one of the biggest problems, James, about 30 years ago or even a little bit longer, we were having a lot of back problems picking up stuff incorrectly, and they can use technique that was taught.
I’ve had the privilege of traveling the world, and wherever you go, and you ask people to pick something up, they’re always going to go, ‘Oh, yes.’ That you use your knees, keep your back straight. And that technique was a plaster approach to stopping people from hurting their backs temporarily, but what’s happened is it’s filtered through the whole movement industry, and it’s caused the whole world to move dysfunctionally. So if you look, if you go to the gym now and you’re to do squats, 10 out of 10 times, a personal trainer or physio will say, “Don’t let your knees go past your toes and don’t overcorrect your back.” So we try to undo these bad habits.
When I was in Australia and New Zealand, people are much more aware than they are in South Africa, and these people know what a hamstring or quads are. Where here, they still have no idea. It’s sort of huge. But when it comes to moving, I think people aren’t aware that they’re moving incorrectly. Like, a great example is climbing stairs. There’s a correct way to climb stairs. And when people say, ‘What do you mean the correct way to climb stairs? You just climb stairs,’ and I’m going, ‘No.’
If you look at how you climb stairs, how much strain you put on your knees; if you look at how you squat, how much pressure you put through your back and your knees, it’s because no one or not many people are teaching you how to move. And just last thing, I just said there was like, there are a lot of people teaching people how to exercise, but not how to move and function correctly.
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