Dr Chalmers Path to Pro - Why Your Joints Hurt
A lot of common joint problems like shoulder pain, carpal tunnel, or plantar fasciitis can actually come from imbalances in how our muscles work, not just wear and tear. When certain muscles are overused or stuck in the same position too long, they start to pull differently, which can throw off how our joints move and feel.
It highlights how simple movements and daily habits can help reset that balance. From easy hand exercises to tips for shoulder and back pain, it offers practical ways to feel better and move more freely. There’s also helpful advice for spotting early signs of scoliosis in kids, which can make a big difference down the road.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:04 - Understanding Joint Pain and Muscle Tone
01:21 - How Posture and Position Reset Muscle Tone
02:27 - Shoulder Pain in Lifters
03:45 - Neurologic Reflexive Inhibition Explained
04:45 - Carpal Tunnel: Muscle Imbalance from Overuse
05:14 - How to Rebalance Hand and Wrist Muscles
06:54 - Therapies for Shoulder and Foot Pain
08:22 - Imaging for Persistent Pain
09:48 - Importance of Hamstring Flexibility
11:17 - Functional Training Tips for Lifters
12:35 - Preventing Shoulder Injuries in Lifters
13:25 - Early Scoliosis Detection in Girls
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] All right, so today's topic question, however you want to say it, comes from a question I was tagged in on Facebook. And I see this a lot. People who have shoulder issues, like, you know, shoulder pain in lifters, frozen shoulder, plantar spatioides, carpal tunnel, frozen shoulder scoliosis. A lot of these issues are actually neurologic in presentation. So what you have to understand is that your muscles have two things. They have strength. They have tone. Strength is how hard they can pull at anyone given time. Tone is how hard they're pulling all the time. We also call tone posture or postural tone. So what you have to understand is that you control, you have a lot of control over your tone. So if you completely, if you continually use a muscle or you keep it in a specific length, that will help set its tone. So as a quick example, if you've ever been sitting at your desk for. Too long. And when you stand up, you feel your low back is tight, and then you feel kind of in the iliopsoas or in the hip, then it's also too tight. The reason for that is because the muscle is supposed to be this long. But because the way you've been sitting or standing or laying or whatever, the muscle's shorter.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:21] And so what happens is that there's little receptors inside the muscle and the tendon called Golgi tendon organs, muscle spindle fibers, things like and they send information to the brain that says, hey, we are. This short we're twisted like this we're sitting like that and so the brain starts to go okay cool you're fine that way stay there and so what ends up happening is that you kind of reset the tone instead of being this long it's this long and so that's where it stays and when you stand up it goes and it pulls against that tongue and it kind of like is stiff then you take a couple steps and it loosens up the reason why the steps help to loosen it up because all the scooter. Around it also has little receptors in it, those muscles, spindle, fibro, scolgi, tendon organs and all the other stuff. And so it sends a bunch of information to the brain and the brain goes, hold on, you know, hip flexor, iliopsoas, you're this long, I need you that long. And so the hip brain goes okay, and it resets and it leans up. So after a couple of steps of actually functionally using the joint, it works itself out and you're usually okay. Chronic use of this gives you low back issues, hip issues, knee issues, things like that.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:27] So when we look at our lifters, you know, people who are doing bench press a lot. And I've gone on and on about how much I hate using bars, especially for shoulders, because the natural range of motion of the shoulder is like this. You can't do that with a bar. But anyway, so what ends up happening a lot of times with a lot different people is they'll do a lot of chest work and they'll be great chest work. They'll be doing, you know, even if they're doing dumbbells and flies with cables and stuff like that, even if you're not using bars. Then what ends of happening is that they go and they sleep on their side. They don't sleep on your side. They roll the shoulder in and they turn it like this. Now the pec is super short for six or eight hours while you're sleeping on it. And then you wake up and you're like, ah, stiff. And then people will tell me that it hurts right here. And I'll go to the other side. Right here. And they're like oh, it's just like right in here. Like certain things I do really make it hurt. Well guess where the pec ties in? Right in there. And so what ends up happening is it gets shorter, rolls the shoulder forward, and because of where the connected is, it kind of opens up the AC joint ever so slightly, just a little, little tiny bit. Then when you start to use it, your body freaks out and goes, no, don't do that. And so it ends up hurting. So what we'll typically do is we do this for everything. So this is the easiest proof that I am not a marketer.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:45] So what I've called this is neurologic reflexive inhibition. And what we're trying to do is we're starting to activate the musculature while it's under load. And so what I'll do is I'll stretch the musclature, activating all of those little receptors, and then take the shoulder through its full range of motion. And this is, by the way, super uncomfortable. Like I've made big burly Marines cry when they have frozen shoulder, but this is a great way to take it back to being healthy. So this is one of those big things. This is where we start talking about, okay, so for carpal tunnel, what ends up happening is that you type a lot, you text a lot. So you're using this muscle a lot that closes your hand. But you're not using this muscles that opens your hand at all. And so what you want to do is you want to balance those two forces. And so, what you wanna do is jump online, go to Amazon, and grab finger rubber bands. Just type that in. They look like little silicone brass knuckles. You stick your fingers in them and you exercise the opening of the hand, okay? So think about this. You've done all this grabbing, clasping, turning, typing, texting. Everything brings your fingers together. So that overuse of bringing the fingers together makes this muscle really dominant And this one really, really kind of. Doesn't get that much use. And so what ends up happening is that, and you can see this if you ever put E-STIM on this muscle group, it closes the hair. So this muscle does this. So as it does that, you're gonna get pinching in the carpal tunnel and that's where a lot of carpal tunnels and issues come from. So get those little bands and exercise the opening of the hand.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:14] Now, remember, this isn't a strength thing. It's a tone thing. Tone thing comes from use. And so what you want to do is get those little bands in, get one that you can feel, but you can get all the way open. Like you're like, this is pretty like I can feel the resistance, but I can get my hand all the open. So just do that to exhaustion. Give yourself 30, 40 seconds. Do it again to exhaustion yourself. 30,40 seconds to it again. So three, three sets to exhaustion, do that a couple of times a day. If you guys are sitting at your desk, this is a great thing to do. If you're gonna be doing it while you're driving, also a great to do, do one hand at a time if you're drive. Just, you know, I realize how silly that sounds, but people are people. So, just keep doing that, and it'll help rebalance the carpal tunnel. We see this all the time. For plantar spatioides, I use the Achilles tendon to activate all the receptors in there. But specifically for shoulder, it's one of those where, so you get your pec major, pec minor, and so I'll go up underneath them and really distract them as you go through the whole range of motion. Make sure that thumb gets that external rotation. So here, here, and then we'll do lat work, so subscap and lat. Start up in there as you're doing the same thing. That will usually loosen the shoulder up. I really recommend that you get the joints adjusted. So thoracic spine, ribs, cervical spine or neck, sorry, mid back, adjust the shoulder and just kind of work that piece out really, really well. Dry needling is also a great thing for this. If you've ever done dry needling and you've never had a needle hit a muscle just and you go pah, and it feels like someone plunged a guitar string.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:54] And you know just it just kind of shocks all of a sudden and you're like ah like that's a that you know you hit the right muscle and that happens um so dry needling i'm a big fan of dry needly for this um lots and lots and lot of stripping out physical therapy typically we'd all do for this type of issue uh if i'm seeing it in my clinic we'll do it three times a week for about three weeks um you know shoulder stuff like i said it's pretty uncomfortable but it works really really well we've had guys with frozen shoulders who couldn't lift their arm more this get all the way up and we're done. I've had a lot of people from plantar sfasciitis come in. They'll come in on crutches. They'll coming in on those little wheelie carts. And most of these guys, if it's true, like plantar fasciitis, when they stand up, they're like, holy crap, I feel a difference after the first treatment. That's usually how we know that this is definitely the thing. If after two or three treatments, they're, like, I don't feel that much, then we go for imaging. So for instance, on plantar SFASTIATIS, I'll always remember this. I had this lady come in. She's a colonel in the army. And so she comes in. I work on her ankle. And she's like, I don't think that helped much. All right. So for the third time, she was like, I don't think that help much. I was like all right, so let's get imaging just to see if there's a bone spur or something like that. Her heel bone was broken in two places, and she was still running on it. I was just like, this is unbelievable, but that's what we see.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:22] So if this stuff doesn't work after, like I said, about three treatments, we'll get imaging lots of times we see very rarely. You actually see the cocking is broken. This was a weird case. That's why I remember it. We see lots of bone spurs. We see lot of, you know, cysts or, you know, growth or tears in the plantar spasm. We see that on MRI. And those are obviously a different issue. So imaging is very beneficial, but I usually do it after we've done the therapy to see if they've had any issues. Start looking at neurologic tone. If you guys have, if you guys are lifters or athletes of any kind and you've got chronic issues, this is a big deal. This is also why one of the major exercises I give everybody who comes in for their low back, people come in, they're like, my low back's stiff and sore. And I'm like, did you do anything? They're like not really. We're going to start working on hamstring tone. So this is where we get everybody feet together, knees not locked, but like 98% locked. Then you just bend over and touch your toes. And then what ends up happening is people are like, well, I can't touch my toes. If you can't bend over and touch you toes, you're gonna have hip and low back issues, straight up. Your hamstrings are way too tight. You've got to loosen them up. Loosening them up with exercise is the easiest way. Dynamic constant movement is gonna be best because that's how we activate neurologic function. If you go into a static stretch for you to bend over and hang. Your body freaks out, releases endorphins, so it does feel good, but it's not really going to help change muscle belly tone as active motion will.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:48] So like that's the bend over to your toes exercise. We have people do that. And what's funny is that this is just not something people do. If you ask somebody, like, well, how often do you touch your toes? And people are like, never. We're like, I can't touch my toes. Well, that's terrible. So once we get people doing that, then we add weights into that same exercise. We build those weights up because this is part of that whole, you know, if you want your back to be able to do stuff, you need to train every part of your body. If you ever want it to be functional, you need to train it because if you just sit at your desk all day long, then you go pick up that case of water at Costco or Sam's. And you wonder why your backwards hurt. You just picked up 30 pounds. Because like so a liter of water is 2.2 pounds is how that we design the telemetric system was set up So if you pick up, you know, 10 liters of water, that's 22 pounds, and you're picking it up, and your bending, you're flexing at the low back and rotating at the lower back, you're asking muscles to work that you don't ever try. And so that's why we get some of these issues from back issues that are actually neurologic tone in origin. So keep exercising that full range of motion. One of the big things for the shoulder, by the way. If you're going to do a lot of press, bring that, you know, bring that elbow out and bring that yellow in. You need to do the opposite thing on your back. So for instance, big open flies, you know, one of the things we have our people do is high right, low left, then the other side to kind of get that shoulder back open. And so as you're opening up the back, it's going to be really, really helpful.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:17] One of the thing I also do on this topic is I'll have people do, you lats, not with a bar, but with cables so you can come all the way down in proper motion and you don't have to worry about a bar going in front of or behind your head. Cables allows you to come straight down and get that full activation, open that chest up and get the back working. The other one is when you do traps, take your dumbbells and roll them all the way back around and look up. So you're coming up here. So your elbows are behind your body frame, coming up, you get that little squeeze. Because again, we want to open that chest up as we're activating our musculature to allow the muscles to elongate and get their full range of motion, get as open as possible. So those are some of the things that you guys do if you're lifting. It's just kind of a maintenance thing. Because what I see over time is you're, if you understand how your body's supposed to move and you're like, okay, I'm going to just really, really lean into the functional movements of my body. You're not only going to be able to build the musculature, but you're also going to be able restore health to the joint ligament and tendon. So instead of exercising, tearing your body down, we're going to have to use exercise to build a body up. We've got a lot of older lifters. It's always funny because you see the guys who are really big in the bench press for years, because when they get about 40 to 50, they start getting those little dots on their shoulders from the orthoscopic surgery, from where they turn their shoulders up.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:35] But, you know, if that's what you love to do, bench press is what you love to, do cool. Just make sure you offset all that stuff with posterior work, you know, upper trap work, and everything else you're doing is getting your shoulders back as you're coming up. So if you guys have any questions on that, ask them out. If you guys are in the area and you have plantar spasciitis, carpal tunnel, frozen shoulders, scoliosis issues, come in and we're going to work on it. If you have daughters. Men and women, if you've got daughters who are between the ages of 11 and 15, I would start getting x-rays of their spine. We call them P to A weight-bearing thoracic, so they're standing up. You wanna take x-ray from the pelvis all the way up to the skull, so the entire spine, and what we're looking for is slight deviations in the spine, so the scoliosis stuff, right? So it starts curving like this, well guess what? The tone on the inside is higher than the tone on outside. So what you do is you develop exercises to activate the tone of the outside. And straightens that scoliosis. This will work in people who are like 30 and 40, but man, if you can catch these girls when they're in their teenage years while they're actively developing this neurologic tone issue, you can offset it and save them years and years of years of pain and misery. So if you guys have daughters and you guys aren't doing that, I can help set that up if you're in town. If not, talk to your, find a Cairo who knows how to do neurologic tongue work and get into it. Like I said, if guys have any other questions, to the stop. Hope this helps out. Thanks for your time. Have a great day.
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Dr. Matt Chalmers
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