Why Pain Happens (and How to Train Smarter) | Dr. Jordan Shallow

Summary

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Stronger with Don Saladino

Episode: Why Pain Happens (and How to Train Smarter)
Guest: Dr. Jordan Shallow | September 16, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this in-depth episode of Stronger, renowned fitness coach Don Saladino welcomes Dr. Jordan Shallow — sports performance expert, chiropractic specialist, and founder of the educational platform Prescript — to unravel the complex topic of pain. Their discussion moves far beyond the stereotypical “no pain, no gain” gym wisdom, exploring pain’s nature, perception, and the critical differences between pain and injury. Together, they shed light on smarter ways to train, how to distinguish productive discomfort from real warning signs, and why skill acquisition and proper movement must take precedence over mere brute strength.
Listeners are treated to a blend of practical advice, scientific insight, and personal stories, all delivered in a relatable, engaging manner.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. What Is Pain? Framing the Conversation

[01:17–03:00]

• Dr. Shallow begins by challenging basic assumptions:
  “If I were to say what is pain, how would you answer that question?”
• Don views pain as an “indicator” that something isn’t right — a common but incomplete view.
• Dr. Jordan expands:

  “People will call it a sensation. Pain is an emotion... Your brain is guessing about what reality is.” [01:48]

• He illustrates the power of perception with a UK case: a man experienced excruciating pain from a nail through his boot that never touched his foot — the pain was real, even in the absence of injury.

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2. Dr. Shallow’s Story and Unique Approach

[03:00–07:52]

• Don credits Dr. Shallow as a huge personal influence, emphasizing his expertise and humanity.
• Jordan’s journey:
  • From working corporate wellness at Apple and Stanford to immersing himself in powerlifting culture.
  • Highlights the integration of clinical, athletic, and strength lenses in understanding human movement and pain.
  • Started Prescript, an advanced educational platform to improve the standard of coaching globally.
• Don contextualizes:

  “You’re on the top two list. … If I’m going to pick the top two people for pain management and strength and conditioning, you’re on that list.” [04:21]

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3. Physical Pain: Indicator or Injury? (Pain 101)

[09:54–13:19]

• Don and Jordan break down the confusion between pain, injury, and nociception.
• Dr. Shallow:

  “Pain is a perception. … there is a difference between pain and injury, and there’s clearly a difference between pain and nociception. Nociception is just the raw sensory data of the experience of pain.” [13:20]

• Not all pain means damage; the brain constructs pain based on perception, context, and prior experience.

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4. Perception, Reality, and Learning Movement

[16:09–28:48]

• Dr. Shallow champions the idea that “lifting is learning and training is teaching.”

  “The sooner we can all get on board with lifting as learning and training as teaching, we’re going to make way better decisions around exercise.” [16:09]

• Skill acquisition is foundational—good exercise selection is less about targeting individual muscles and more about matching movements to what the body and brain can handle.
• Analogy: Building a website using drag-and-drop vs. true coding. Movement is the user interface; most people only scratch the surface.
• Don on the pitfalls of always chasing progressive overload:

  “Progressive overload, it’s not always going to happen, right? …how you treat that, I think, is a really important thing.” [19:45]

• Dr. Shallow outlines the three prongs of performance:
  1. Objectification (numbers, weights, reps)
  2. How it feels (subjective experience)
  3. How it looks (movement quality and coordination) [20:22–21:00]
• Notable insight: The best athletes are often the fastest to learn new skills, not necessarily the strongest in the gym.
  • Example: Bo Jackson, whose genius lies in rapid skill acquisition.

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5. Athletic Sensitivity & the Role of Subjectivity

[22:46–28:00]

• Stories of high-performing athletes (tennis and golf) detecting minute changes in their equipment show the value of subjectivity and body awareness.
• Dr. Shallow:

  “It’s the feel that allows for… the input that drives the output.” [26:36]

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6. Skill Loss, Motor Learning, and “Muscle Memory”

[28:00–31:34]

• Don’s personal example: After a three-month break from squatting, his body feels unfamiliar with the movement despite decades of training.

  “…I felt like there was a disconnect on what I was feeling and what I was perceiving.” [28:48]

• Dr. Shallow explains:
  • The brain constantly updates motor patterns, even through visualization or observation.
  • “Muscle memory” is less about muscles, more about continual updating of neural pathways.

    “When it comes to exercise, the interesting thing is the muscle memory works the same way. …even though you weren’t on the bike, you see bikes everywhere.” [31:12]

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7. Exercise Selection, Pain Avoidance, and Performance Enhancement

[34:57–36:36]

• Both agree: The right movement selection, tailored to the individual’s skill and hardware/software (body/brain) match, is foundational.
• Don:

  “…if we can get into a successful position, we’re like removing the parking brake from the moving car.” [34:57]

• Jordan:

  “Elbow pain, shoulder pain, these are all signals that there’s a qualitative issue, not a quantitative issue. … Oh, my elbow hurts because I bench too much. No, you don’t bench well.” [36:15]

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8. Practical Listener Q&A: Downhill Running Knee Pain

[36:47–40:52]

• Question from Aaron in LA about knee pain while running downhill.
• Dr. Shallow’s advice:
  • Running downhill requires adjusting your center of mass: keep shoulders relaxed and slightly forward to prevent momentum from taking you over your toes.

  • “You need to stay relaxed through the shoulders, because you need your center of mass to be lower… your upper body isn’t absorbing the force with you, now your knees have to do more.” [37:47; 39:51]

  • Train eccentric strength and external rotation in the gym (front foot elevated split squats, etc.).
  • Flexibility and mobility work before hikes are also beneficial.

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Memorable Quotes & Wisdom

• “Pain is an emotion… your brain is guessing about what reality is.”
  — Dr. Jordan Shallow [01:48]
• “There is a difference between pain and injury, and there’s clearly a difference between pain and nociception.”
  — Dr. Jordan Shallow [13:20]
• “The sooner we can all get on board with lifting as learning and training as teaching, we’re going to make way better decisions around exercise.”
  — Dr. Jordan Shallow [16:09]
• “If we can get into a successful position, we’re like removing the parking brake from the moving car.”
  — Don Saladino [34:57]
• “It’s not about doing more, it’s about doing it better.”
  — Dr. Jordan Shallow [36:15]
• “People want quick answers, but do you want right answers?”
  — Dr. Jordan Shallow [41:28]

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Tone and Style

• The conversation is candid, energetic, and relatable, with personal anecdotes and humor.
• Deep dives are presented accessibly, with analogies (websites, learning languages, parking brakes) that demystify complex topics for all listeners.
• Both host and guest are clear about their mission: empower listeners to think critically about pain, movement, and self-improvement—making strength more holistic than ever.

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Standout Segments & Timestamps

• [01:17] — What is pain, really? The nail-through-the-boot story.
• [04:44] — Dr. Shallow’s unique professional and sporting journey.
• [13:19] — Key distinction: Pain perception vs. tissue injury.
• [16:09] — Redefining training as teaching and skill acquisition.
• [19:45] — The three prongs of performance: numbers, feel, and look.
• [26:36] — World-class athletes and the power of sensitivity.
• [28:48] — Losing and regaining skill after layoff; “muscle memory” re-explained.
• [36:15] — Pain as a signal of quality, not quantity.
• [37:47] — Listener Q&A: practical tips for knee pain and running downhill.

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Final Thoughts

Don wraps the episode by affirming the beauty of continual learning and the value of asking better questions rather than chasing fast fixes:

“I think part of the excitement of this industry is that we’re always learning and we’re always getting better… I want them to learn how to cook it right.” [42:27]

Dr. Shallow closes with a challenge to elevate the industry:

“We’ve been operating off bad philosophy for a long time that has given us right answers to the wrong questions. …change your philosophy so you ask better questions.” [42:06]

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Whether you’re just starting your fitness journey, seeking answers about pain, or aiming to step up your performance, this episode will arm you with knowledge—and a fresh mindset—for training smarter.

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Transcript

[Don Saladino]

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[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Blind Nil Audio if I were to say what is pain, how would you answer that question?

[Don Saladino]

Pain is this indication for me it's like oh my God, that was not right. So it's an indicator.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

So it's an indicator? Yes, people will call it a sensation. Pain is an emotion. A guy fell off a la I think it was somewhere in the UK and a 15 centimeter nail went through his boot. Writhing in pain. They had to put him on morphine just to get him to calm down. They X ray. The boot went right between the toes. Went right between his toes.

[Don Saladino]

He just saw it come through and he's like, oh my God.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Here's the key. And there's a lot to be gleaned from this. It was real. He wasn't faking it. Your brain is guessing about what reality is.

[Don Saladino]

Welcome to Stronger. Today's guest is Dr. Jordan Shallow, a sports performance expert, master chiropractor and world class educator. Together we're diving into the topic of pain. How to manage it, how to better understand it, and how to recognize the difference between everyday pain and true injury. I'm Don Saladino. Let's get stronger with Dr. Jordan Shallow. All right, so this is really exciting for me and I'M gonna. I'm gonna tell you why. First off, I. All the guests that I'm bringing on right now are people I have a connection with. But you're like, you know, there's you, there's Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, there's Evie. And I don't want to devalue anything from anyone else. I'm in the process of writing my book right now with Charles Thorpe. We're halfway through it, and we had to do the acknowledge section, and you're in it. I mean, it's obvious. No, but that's just to say that there's a reason why I love you so much. And I'm gonna break it down. One, how we met's hilarious. And I think that's a really funny story, and we should probably get into that at some point. We don't have to mention names, right? That's number one. Well, we.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

To.

[Don Saladino]

You know, you're obviously brilliant in the industry, and I always, like, I was always fascinated from learning from incredibly smart people, especially when they had specific areas of expertise that I'm like, oh, wow, this is so beyond what I actually have. So to be able to sit here and even on social media watching you, but just sitting and having conversations at dinner. But the most important part is that my kids call you Uncle Jordan. And my wife is like, you know, my wife, it's her home. But it's like, oh, well, who's coming in? Oh, Jordan, just, just, just give him, Give him the code. He's like, you know, so that says a lot about you as a person. And everyone sees this, like, tatted up, powerlifting guy who's incredibly articulate and very knowledgeable, but you're Uncle Jordan. And I'm just. I almost get choked up talking about it. Right, right now, like, you can see you better.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Because if I start, you better come with it.

[Don Saladino]

You better come with. But, like, but. But I think that's. This show is not about, you know, you know, I don't have to wow people with science. I want to really deliver information at a very understandable level where people can be like, oh, wow, I learned something. But, wow, that person's cool, right? And I think that's been a consistent theme along the way, is that there's been a lot of highs and lows for the people coming on here. So, you know, I know today we're going to cover a very specific topic, pain. But as we're getting into this, I want to give a little backstory. You know, you were. Dude, you were living in your car. At one point. I mean, you're one of the most successful strength coaches I think around. If I'm going to go to pick the top two people for I think pain management and strength and conditioning, you're on that list. You're on the top two list. I mean, that's a special list. I mean, I know Poliquin's gone and Boyle and all these guys, but I'm putting, I'm putting Dr. Jordan Shallow on that list. So give us some backstory, man.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Yeah, maybe the intersection when me went. It's a good place to kick off. That was fun. I went to. So went to chiropractic college out of undergrad and I moved to California and immediately out of school I got a job as a chiropractor at Apple. Like, you know, where your phone. You're on MacBook there or whatever. So they have a corporate in the center and you know, it's very competitive getting, getting talent in the Bay Area. Engineers, developers, all that. So there's a lot of corporate incentive. So one of the big things that incentivizes talent to go to particular companies, Nvidia, Apple, Google, Facebook, Pinterest, whatever, is corporate wellness. Right. So I worked at the corporate wellness center as a chiropractor and then kind of went from that to. I went from Apple to Stanford and then I. Oh started comp. Competitive powerlifting as well. So I was always like into lifting weights. And then just so happened that the first real patient I had in clinical practice owned a gym and you know, he was beat up from himself being a competitive powerlifter. So I, I kind of saw an opportunity. I would go see him at his gym multiple times a week, treat him in various capacities, talk about his training. He's really, really smart lifter. And then that evolved to me having office space in his gym. I would treat him, he would coach me and then got into powerlifting. You know, had a knack for it, was already decently strong and you know, lifting weights for sports.

[Don Saladino]

As a kid, you totaled what, 1900 competitively?

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Yeah, I think my best total in a meat was 1901. I did that in 2018. Yeah.

[Don Saladino]

So for people who don't understand what that is, it's, it's your bench, your squat and your deadlift totaling 1900 pounds. So squat had to be what, seven, eight and change.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

So I think that meat would have been two so kilograms, 200 kilos, 441 pound bench press, a 755 pound deadlift, and a 737 pound squat something. I think the squat I'm unsure about.

[Don Saladino]

Sure. Yeah.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

But yeah. So all of these things, like my whole day was working out, so I got to kind of see movement through a lot of different lenses, right. From this clinical lens in a general population setting at a place like Apple, through an athletic lens and a sports performance and also rehabilitation at Stanford. And then, you know, from a, from a pure like resistance training, muscle building, strength building lens when I was at my office and you know, just started seeing where all the holes were, that really kind of set me down the path of like, okay, now when I go to explain it and we can curate our curriculum at prescript. It was those three experiences that kind of set me down that path because prescript is what ultimately took me away from all of those jobs.

[Don Saladino]

Right. And just a little back, just quickly. Prescript, I would say, is probably, I think it's the number one certification educational platform like on the, out there. Like, I don't, I, I don't think that there's a higher level of education when it comes down to certifying trainers. And you know, it's not even something I would tell like a newbie or a beginner to get into. I would say, you know, get your feet wet a little bit, learn your, learn the ropes and then you go into level one, level two, level three. So I speak very highly of it.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Appreciate that.

[Don Saladino]

So you built up this resume. You started becoming known for the, for the coach who really specialized in, in blending, I think, sport performance with corrective rehabilitation. I mean, I, I wouldn't even know if that's the right way or the way that you want to be referred to as, but you are like, I've, I've, you know, I've had problems, I've had injuries, hockey, whatever it is, and you're one of the first people on the phone, on the phone with. And I mean, the first thing for, for me is always, oh my God, when something goes wrong, you immediately know, you're like, oh my God, I just broke my foot. Oh my God, I just broke my hand. My shoulder got dislocated something and immediately, for some reason, my head. They're like, oh my God, am I going to be able to squat? Am I going to be able to press? It's just where my head always goes. My thought process is that I want to get back to training as quickly as possible. I'm always like, oh, I don't like taking time off. How can I train? I remember, I remember breaking my wrists and literally having a Safety squat bar. And I couldn't even wrap my hands around, and I had my palms on the safety squat bar as the, you know, as the handles were going out. I remember squatting to a box because my knees were, I think, dislocated from, you know, from just a bad. A bad injury. But I remember all of those times that I learned to train around pain. That was things. One, I learned more about my body than I ever would have if I, if I didn't. Because I feel like when you go through it, it's just. It's different and you learn how to rehab yourself. But pain is something I think most of us get. Most people out there get incredibly freaked out about. And then out of. I mean, there's different forms of pain, right? Like, there's chronic, there's acute. Like, there's so many different ways that I want to hear how you would break it down. Like, what is your like, start from, like, pain 101? Like, we're start. We're. We're talking to a 13 year old here. And I know it's very hard for you to do. I know you don't like to do it, but. But seriously, like, how are we. Because I think the purpose of this episode today is to allow people to distinguish between, you know, is there good pain, is there bad pain? Do you need to lay off? Do you not need to lay off? It's all contingent upon the injury. But I want to hear your perspective on things. And let's just try and start with a very. Okay, yeah, yeah, you caught this.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

What? What? Okay, let's, let's. I've been practicing. What. How would you describe. Not describe pain qualitatively as like a sharper stabbing, shooting or something like that. Like, if I were to say, like, what is pain like, how would you answer that question? And there's no wrong answer.

[Don Saladino]

No. Yeah, I know. Pain is. Pain is this indication for me, it's like, oh, my God, that's not. That's not blood getting into the muscle where, oh, this hurts.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Like, there's.

[Don Saladino]

It's complete. Pain is like, oh, my God, something jarring. Like, that was not right.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

So it's an indicator.

[Don Saladino]

Yes.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Yeah, yeah, so. And look, you can ask a thousand different people and you're gonna get a thousand different answers. And I think fundamentally pain is a framework. People will call it a sensation. Right? Pain is a sensation. Pain is an emotion. Right? And it's like, yes, yeah, it's all that. But okay, so all of those fit within a framework. And the framework that it all fits in is it fits in our perceptual framework, right? So what is our perception is what is consciously aware to us. Like what are we perceiving right now, whether it's we're seeing the lights, if we're feeling the texture of the chair, whatever our conscious awareness sort of brings into this global workspace in our brain. And pain is in itself a perception. We perceive pain in our conscious awareness. And the tricky thing about pain, this is two bookends, right? Because pain is a perception. And in order for us to understand how pain is a perception, we need to understand how we perceive, which is kind of tricky.

[Don Saladino]

It's tricky because it's different for everyone, right?

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Well, it's different for everyone. And so here's the thing. The pain that I think you and I discuss the most when it comes to injuries and things like that is what's called nociceptive pain. So there are different types of pain, like visceral pain, but when we talk about lifting, we're talking about nociceptive pain, right? Like my elbow hurts when I bench press type stuff. My shoulder hurts when I squat or whatever it is. So nociceptive pain fits within this framework, this perceptual framework, but it's the same perceptual framework that we use for everything. Do you remember the Facebook blue dress, gold dress thing? Do you remember that was going on? You guys remember that? Yeah. Okay. What did you see? I saw blue. I saw blue.

[Don Saladino]

I think so too.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Okay. Do you remember this?

[Don Saladino]

No.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Okay. So it was a viral phenomenon where with certainty, some people were perceiving, I want to say, like a white and black dress or white and gold. And the other people, the other cohort was perceiving blue and black.

[Don Saladino]

Wow.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Right. And it was going around and like, you're so certain. I think I saw blue and black or whatever it was, and someone was like, no, it's like white and gold. I'm like, what's wrong with you? It's. But the funny thing is these happen. These sort of illusory things happen all the time where. Where it actually gives us an indicator that. That our reality is liable to our perception. So, you know, there's a case, a really famous case study done, where a guy fell off a ladder, it was somewhere in the UK and a 15 centimeter nail went through his boot, writhing in pain. They had to put. Put him on morphine just to get him to calm down. They brought him into the X ray. They. They X ray. The boot went right between toes. No Went right between his toes. Didn't puncture his foot at all. They needed to sedate this guy because of the pain. He was. The pain that he was.

[Don Saladino]

Because of what he thought happened, because he won't happen. That is bananas.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Oh, yeah. Well documented. So here. What do we have so far? We have. We have pain in the presence of. No tissue damage.

[Don Saladino]

Didn't even cut him. Nothing.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Nothing.

[Don Saladino]

He just saw it come through, and he's like, oh, my God. And he.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

What? He. And here's the. Here's the key. And there's. There's. There's a lot to be gleaned from this. It was real. Oh, yeah, right. It was real, right? If anyone's ever been on morphine, like, you know, like, that's. You'll find out pretty quick, right? Like, what. What's real and what's not. He wasn't faking it, but there was no injury. And this is like the first pebble in the shoe that we need to kind of pay attention to because it's like, here we have the perception of pain and the absence of tissue damage because there is difference between pain and an injury, and there's clearly difference between pain and nociception. So nociception is just the raw sensory data of the experience of pain. Our perception, not even our perception of pain. Everything we're perceiving right now. So people are watching this. They're seeing us interact as, you know, that they heard this. Maybe, like all of this is. It's all. It's all offered up to your. You know, to your. In your conscious theater, your brain is guessing about what reality is.

[Don Saladino]

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[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Yeah. Because look, the, the sooner we can all get on board with lifting as learning and training, as teaching.

[Don Saladino]

Yep.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

We're going to make way better decisions around exercise. Right, Right. Because, you know, the word motor learning gets thrown around a lot. And you know, a lot of times people are just talking about techniques. Right. But motor learning has more to do with skill acquisition than actual movement execution. Right. Because if I, you know, let's, let's say, for example, you know, I'm not great at math, would surprise no people if you were trying to teach me fractal equations. Right. But I don't know basic arithmetic. I can't get there from here. Right. Like, I need to know, I need to know these basics. I need to have this, this, this olive branch extended to me. I need to leave this trail of breadcrumbs for me to build up to that. One of the things that the fitness community specifically struggles with when, and I think you're probably one of the best communicators at this through your programming and just through your, your rhetoric and your dialogue is that most people can't be physically empathetic. Like people in our industry can't be physically empathetic to someone who's never played sports, never worked out, and is walking to the gym for the first time in like their mid-30s or 40s or whatever. Right. Like, I'm. It's akin to like learning a language. We don't see it that way. Right. And a lot of the reason we don't see it that way is people in our industry go like, yeah, you know, you just like, squat. You just put the bar on your back and you sit down. It's like the mind is so, the conscious mind is an interface. Right. So if you guys have a website, you have a couple of them, you poke around on that. They don't let you touch that stuff?

[Don Saladino]

Well, on my website.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Don Saladino]

Poke around. I'm not making adjustments. That will kill me.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Right, exactly. So it's like. Yeah, you know, I same thing. I have a website, a few of them, and like, you know, they're robust now. Like someone. Well, not someone. My CTO goes in and he like, codes stuff and builds stuff and there's Figma boards and, you know, I know enough words to sound smart, but like, at the end of the day, I've know. But when we started the company, I don't know, Shopify or Squarespace or Wix or whatever, and I was just dragging and dropping. Oh, yeah, let's put a. I was like, Bob Ross. I'm like, we're gonna put a little tree right here. Yeah, Our little secret. It. Why not?

[Don Saladino]

And we see that a lot in the industry, right? We see a lot of people just selecting stuff because of how it looks. And it's a recipe for disaster sometimes.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

But so the point here is, when I was dragging, dropping shit in a website, I would never proclaim that I know how to build a website because you and I know that building a website is like, oh, HTML or you, you know, are you coding it in. In Python? You know, is it. Are you using like Liquid framework? Like, there's a lot that goes into building a website, but at the end of the day, why is Squarespace and Shopify and WordPress so successful? It's because they have this interface or they have an interface that anyone can do it. The conscious mind and the unconscious brain use movement as an interface where it's like, we don't necessarily need to be neuroscientists, we just know how to. Need to know how to move the body correctly to harness this compute power. You and I can build a website. We don't need to know all of the computer science, we don't need to know all the ones and zeros and the bits and shit, right? So it's like in understanding, understanding movement and if we understand that the goal of, of proper exercise selection is learning, it's not necessarily about challenging muscle, that that comes later, right? But if we can teach people how to learn motor skills, we can get them to their goal, whether it's weight loss, whether it's, you know, sports performance, rehabilitation, all that, but things just start happening.

[Don Saladino]

I feel like when you start treating exercise as a skill, I really feel like thing. Because progressive overload, it's not always going to happen, right? Like you're not always going to be able to add more Weight and get stronger and get stronger. It doesn'.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Right.

[Don Saladino]

And there are times where you've gone in and you've grabbed the 110s and you're pressing overhead and you're like, all right, you know what? It's not going up for six or seven like it did last week, it's going up for five. Like, how do, how you treat that, I think is a really important thing because most people are going to look at that as, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm failing, I'm regressing, I'm not. You approach that a bit differently. You might, your, your brain set up differently to go in and to understand how am I going to be successful with this exercise right now or with this weight that I'm using, Correct?

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Well, yeah, because performance has three prongs to it, right? There's the, the objectification of like o. Was it 110s or was it 120s or was it 100s? Was it 8 reps? Was it 10 reps? Was it 4 reps? Right. So that's it. That's undoubtedly a part of performance. Now the tricky part is that's the part that we see, but there's two other parts that are really important and I would argue that the part we see the objectification of, like how fast, how heavy, you know, how long, whatever is as a byproduct of the other two components that are beneath the surface, which is, hey, how did it feel? Right.

[Don Saladino]

Which is key.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Which is something that again, in the over objectification, data driven rather than data informed world that we live in, with wearables of different types and different training tools, measuring bar speed and all that. And then just some of the classic metrics of like how heavy, how much you bench, that's only one part of the equation. But how you feel is as important and as a prerequisite to how you perform. And it sounds kind of, you know, cliche, but it's true. But also how things look, right? How so? You know, you and I are fitness professionals in, in various capacities and in various settings. If I watch someone do something and it looks bad, it looks inefficient, it looks asynchronous, it looks disjointed, it looks uncoordinated. Well, yeah, look, it may objectively have gone up, but I want all three of these things to move, right? And if one's not moving, I want to look to the subjective. Right? So how does it feel and how does it look? These are questions that we have to ask. And we have to trust that we can objectify subjective data. That's like, that's. That is a. Such a conceptual divide for people that can you bring subjectivity into the objective realm? And it's like nothing else matters. Like. And you. You good athletes will teach you this, right? Good athletes. They, you know, they're not in the weight room. They're not super strong, right. I have a friend of mine, Corey Schlesinger, is a strength coach for the Detroit Pistons. He always says the. The best player. I hope this. I don't outing or anything, but the best players in the gym sit next to him during the games, right? Because it's not just about being strong, Right. Athleticism is about learning. If I were to describe athleticism in a single sentence, I would say it's the ability to learn motor skills quickly. Who's the best athlete of all time?

[Don Saladino]

Bo Jackson.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Bo Jackson, without a doubt. Why? Because he's. Because he's all time in two different sports, two completely different sets of motors.

[Don Saladino]

But he also. But he also combines a level of. Take the talent, take the ability in his sports. Strength, power, speed, muscularity. He puts together a package. And I don't think because other people say, well, Allen Iverson, I'm like, fine. Allen iverson can't bench £185 like Bowden. Bo would pick up £500. He was. He didn't like lifting.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

He.

[Don Saladino]

You hear him talk, he's like, I felt. Why would I want to do something that makes me tired, but I have to be ready for sport. A little bit of truth to that, right?

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

But I mean, he's a guy who learns motor skills quickly, right? So everything. You just. Even muscularity is an acquired skill, right? So that was his. That was his. Like, he. When you watch a Bo Jackson, you know, crack a bat over his head or, you know, run a four, three, four.

[Don Saladino]

It's frightening. You almost look at it and you're like, oh, oh, my God. It's like abrupt.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you watch him do that, that's. Those are measures of output. It. Right. Like you and I would. How it would take both of us to snap a Louisville Slugger.

[Don Saladino]

Oh, I ain't doing it. I played baseball. I. I can't.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

So, like, we know the pounds per square inch of force it would take to do that. And it's like, grotesque. But what you're. When you see that objective measure, what you're actually seeing is the refinement of quality. I worked with an athlete once who told Me that early in his career, who is a tennis player, early in his career he was sponsored by a Japanese racket company and there was a mishap in the way that they were manufacturing the racket that he was sort of sponsored to have. Like he sent him his rackets. He was very successful. He's still very successful, but was very successful phenom, like, you know, arguably from a raw talent perspective, one of the best tennis players to ever play the game. And I remember being in the locker room at Wimbledon and I was with him and I think it was Andy Murray came up and grabbed my client's racket and started like just admiring it. Not Andy Murray's. Like, you know, Murray, fitter, Djokovic and Nadal, the top four all time. This is in Wimbledon. So it's like he's at his and he's taking out his racket. He's admiring. It's like, oh, this is so cool. And like kind of confused. Like, I'm sure it's anywhere. You can get any racket he wants. And my client, his agent were there. He's like, no, they only make this for me. Like, get the out of here. He's like, no, I'm serious. And he explains to that when he was 17, he was playing with a racket. He was very successful and they changed the racket and didn't tell him, but he knew. So he got his rackets and he was practicing with him, smashing on the ground was like, this, this isn't my racket. And his agent picks it up and like looks at his old one, looks.

[Don Saladino]

The same thing still.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

What are you talking about? Like, you know, if you don't want.

[Don Saladino]

To play, it's so obvious.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

And so he calls, he's like, talk to him. I'm not playing until I get my racket call. Like a racket company. Like, hey, he told me, I got called. I don't know what's going on. I see the same racket and the agent's like, what? You knew about this? And like, yeah, like, I don't know, different material or manufacturer, different plant, whatever, whatever. Didn't think he'd notice. Like he noticed the sensitivity, right? He has the biggest serve on tour, right?

[Don Saladino]

Golfers, Golfers have the same. I, I've heard of golfers who, you know, they would wrap the, underneath the grip. So if you want one, wrap two wraps. So it's not only that you're ordering like, like a standard size grip or a mid sized grip or a jumbo grip. Sometimes what they do in between the different grips is they'll put a wrap of tape on it. And I've heard tour players grabbing the same grip and being like, oh, no, this is one wrap, not two. And they're like, it's. It's a layer of tape underneath. And they're like, no. I mean, golfers are so particular that the. That the shaft is in grams. I mean, if it's a gram off, two grams off, they'll pick it up and be like, oh, this feels completely different.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

And that's what's driving the engine.

[Don Saladino]

Right.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Is that what the subjectivity is driving the engine? Right. So it's. It's the feel that allows for. It's the input that drives the output. Like, let's take a squat, for example. Let's try and make this exercise.

[Don Saladino]

Sure.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Nine times out of ten, if you bring someone in who's never squatted before, their squats are going to look like deadlifts. The chest is going to fall on their. On their knees, and their ass is going to fall back. Right. So it's sort of like a horizontal. The pelvis moves back. That's kind of what a deadlift is. Pelvis moves down. It's kind of what a squat is. Right. So when you go, like, all right, I want you to squat. Squat, and their ass goes back. And most people go like, all right, well, I said squat, and that's what you did. So that was a squat. Like, no, that wasn't a squat. It was a deadlift. Right. So what you see there is. You see a disconnect. There's a barrier in the way of learning that skill. And that barrier exists in the brain. Right. The brain is perceiving the body to be in a different starting position than our eyes are perceiving it. If you're, you know, out of shape, you know, maybe a little long in the waistband, that center of ass is out in front of you. So your body is automatically calling on all ships to keep you upright. So, you know, maybe your low back gets a little bit tight. Maybe your shoulder blades, you know, start burning a little bit when you do, when you're doing the dishes and you're bending over, maybe. Maybe your. Your calves are tight when you squat. All of these things are just holding. The brain is firing these things at all cylinders because it's not in the same. Your hardware doesn't match your software.

[Don Saladino]

You know what's funny about that? When you. The squat is the reference. That's something that's always been in my programming at specific phases during the year the back might become the front or zercher or whatever it might be if I stay away from squatting. Which I, I'm saying this because I started back squatting again this week. I started high. Barring I set up a camera and a profile and I literally in between every set I would go from my warm up sets to my last set and probably all in we're looking at, you know, nine sets, eight sets, you know, a few feeler sets then you do. I've ran like a five by have really basic stuff, right. I would go back and I'd have to watch a video on every single repetition of every single set because I felt like those three months from not back squatting there was a disconnect on what I was feeling and what I was perceiving. Because the feeling changes.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Yeah, for sure.

[Don Saladino]

Now I'm sitting there with the bar, it's high. Where when I was squatting through the winter, you know, I was low. Right. So now that changes everything. Right. And now, you know, my, my body's shaking differently. I'm unsure on where my depth is. Am I hitting depth? So I almost felt like I lost that skill in a way where when I watched the video I was like, oh wow, it actually looks good, but it feels like this. And then as the sets were going on, I started developing that. I felt like I started developing that skill again in confidence. I'm not there. It's still going to take me and I know it's going to take me weeks to where I kind of get back to the point where I'm like, all right, right, we're in a good place. And it's fascinating that that's just three months and I've been squatting for 30 years.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

So you bring up something interesting and you will learn faster if you keep watching films between sets. Because there's. We're kind of switching neurological.

[Don Saladino]

It's fine.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

But think of visualization, right? Visualization is a practice that's used a lot in sports psychology. And there's a neurological correlation it to visualization. Which means there's a part of the brain when it comes to motor skills that's really at the helm of updating your. So think of it this way, like if you were to have. They can shoot a free throw. When's the last time you shot a basketball?

[Don Saladino]

Oh, it was, it was actually last week.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Okay. Prior to that, was it hell? Okay.

[Don Saladino]

Yeah, it was a while.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Not something you do often, but you have a, like a motor pattern for. It's like if someone hands you a basketball right now, now you got a dusty thing on the shelf in your brain that you're going to pull off the shelf. And it, it deploys this synchronization of different muscular coke attractors that, that exists in this pathway called your cerebrocerebellar pathway. And the, the tricky part with this, and not tricky, but like the potent part of this is this, is this part of your brain is always updating movements whether you're performing them or not. Right? So the classic adage for this is, oh, it's like riding a bike. Oh, okay, Interesting. One of the reasons that we don't really ever forget how to ride a bike is because we're always exposed to bike riding, right? Especially now you're going down 5th Ave. Watching Cubby, and there's people's bikes, there's bikes, bikes, bikes, bikes, bikes, bikes, bikes, bikes, bikes. You don't realize that that's actually updating your priority. That's updating your. So that's calling to memory. So muscle memory is a term that gets used a lot, right? And it's very misunderstood. Not because people don't understand things about muscles, it's because they don't understand things about memory, right? People think that your memory is a timestamped VHS that sits in your brain that you, you then take and put into the vcr. Listen to me. You know the Blu Ray or the streaming thing where you just hit play.

[Don Saladino]

You weren't alive during vcr.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Yes, I was. I remember watching Die Hard Card recorded off of TNT on a vhs. But so the point being is people think that's the way your memory works is it's this timestamped record of what happened that's stored in your brain. It's like not at all how it works. It's actually one of the most like deceitful, unreliable sources of information because flashbulb memories are really good examples of this. Like the, the one that gets thrown around a lot is 9 11, right? Where we. I've, I've, you know, I've heard your story a handful of times. You were living down. You could see the. Right. Yeah. And without. And I remember, I remember my version, but what I remember is not the timestamped memory of driving from the orthodontist appointment to Mrs. Hayes's sixth grade class and telling her, that's what I think I remember. But I'm not remembering that. I'm remembering the last time I remembered it, which was a memory of the last time I remembered. It was Remembering the last time I remembered it. But when it comes to exercise, the interesting thing is the muscle memory works the same way. So the reason that you can ride a bike after not riding a bike bike for 20, 30 years is because even though you weren't on the bike, you see bikes everywhere. Go to Amsterdam and walk around. You'll be a, you'll be proficient in bike riding without ever stepping on the pedals. Because everyone rides bikes, right. So you can use that prior with little sensory data to, to update the perception and learn the skill faster. Right. So visualization and when learning skills of exercises like what we need to have, have a task that can be performed, right. That isn't physically bottlenecked by range of motion or work capacity or something like, or strength or. But if you onboard someone and, and on ramp someone with exercises of increasing complexity and demand and you understand that. Yeah, we're not. Look, if I'm trying to learn how to squat, my last focus in the early stages is all like glutes or quads or adductors. It's like we're trying to do fractal equations but we don't know one plus one one. Right? So but if I give you. Hey, we're going to start with a counterbalance guard like well, what's that? So you're going to hold a weight at arm's length. Well, you can't hold a lot of weight, can you? No, no, but this changes. This matches your hardware and your software. It's like, well, it's going to push your center of mass back. It's going to force you to want to drop your spine a little more upright. You mean elevate the heel does the same thing. And then rather than going from what maybe I could hold a 45 pound plate out at shoulder like this maybe baby. And I'm. And my shoulders are failing before my legs. So then we can move to like a goblet squat with a dumbbell or a kettlebell. So now I'm here. This, the very fact of this is a load, man. Now I can lift more, right. I can hold more here than I can hold at arms like. But I've also changed the position of the center of mass, right. And it's a little bit more challenging. Not just because it's heavy, it's heavier because it's more challenging. Right. So it's like here I'm in this position where it's like okay, it's pulling me in a certain direction. I've learned how to pull and stay a little Bit upright. I'm not going to be as upright as. And it's heavier. And then we move to a front squat and then a high bar squat and then a low bar squat. But a lot of people, they just go, oh, like we'll just put a bar on their back day one and just do low bar squats. It's like you're treating this like training. You need to teach it. You need to treat it like teaching and you need to look at learning or lifting as learning, pain and performance.

[Don Saladino]

In a way, what we're talking about, it's almost the same, it's almost the same answer to it. Like, we're talking about not loading dysfunction. We're talking about exercise selection being incredibly important. Not because of what it's doing to the muscle, but the position it's putting you in that's going to allow you to be successful. What I like to refer to it as is if we can get into a successful position, we're like removing the parking brake from the moving car. Right. And I think that's the best way to put it. But not only are we going to establish more of a higher success, a level of success for ourselves when it comes down to staying out of pain, but we're also going to perform a lot better. We're also going to get a lot stronger. So what's been valuable about this is that we're, we're talking about right now how to make sure that as we're training, we're not. Because you hear it all the time. How's training?

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Oh, I love it.

[Don Saladino]

But, but, you know, elbows and my knees and my back, and it's like, all right, that's a red flag there. In my opinion. That just might mean that your exercise selection, not even exercise necessarily the programming, but the exercise selection could be off. Maybe you're choosing two movements that you're just trying to drive a really large, large, you know, nail through a really small hole that's just not working. Right. In a way, there's, there's no answer to this. Like, when we're talking about pain, I mean, what do we get out of that today is be really careful on the extra, on the movements that you select not only to keep yourself out of potentially being in pain, but to actually improve performance.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Yeah, I mean, I think if you, if we're talking general population, elbow pain, shoulder pain, these are all signals that there's a qualitative issue, not a quantitative issue. Okay, Right. It's not about doing more, it's about doing it better. Right. Oh, my elbows hurts because I bench too much. No, you don't bench well. Right. So I think quality is the main takeaway.

[Don Saladino]

So I'm looking at this not only as pain, but as performance. What I'd like to do right now is. I'd like to. Chris, we have a question coming in.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Yeah, I've got one for you guys. This is Aaron from Los Angeles.

[Botox Commercial Narrator]

Hi, Don. Hi, Dr. Shallow. My name is Aaron. I am an avid hiker. I like to hike here in the Verdugo Mountains in beautiful Burbank, California. I like to hike uphill. I like to run downhill. But my knees are not as young as they once were, and I'm wondering if there are ways to mitigate pain. Are there pre or post workout things that I should be doing? Are there postural ideas for running downhill? Because I'm not gonna stop. Thanks.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

All that.

[Don Saladino]

Yeah.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

So it's great. I think there's some things we can do in the short term, and I think there's some big picture things that are worth looking at. So when you. It really kind of comes down to the squat thing. Again, the center of mass. It's about understanding, like, what is. What do we need to do? In what phase of movement are we in when we're doing both of those tasks? So when we're walking uphill, our center of mass is. We have to push it forward. How do we do that? Our ass goes back, Our chest goes forward. Right. So when you walk uphill, if you walk down, if you ran downhill the way you walked uphill, you wouldn't be running downhill, you'd be rolling downhill.

[Don Saladino]

Yeah.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Because your center mass would be too far outside of your base of support. So I think one in an almost an immediate thing you can do when you're running downhill is you need to try and stay relaxed through the shoulders, because you need your center of mass to be lower, because you can't let that center of mass get out in front of you. A lot of people when they run, they bring the shoulder blades together and the chest comes up. That means the center of mass goes forward. Your spine goes into extension. It can be hard, depending on how fast you're going to cue your body to drop your shoulders down and almost push them forward, because as you push your shoulders forward, your center of mass comes back. The center of mass is already going forward because gravity is pitching it forward for you. So when I see people, you know, take a tumble or run downhill, oftentimes they get into this position where their shoulder blades are together. And the chest comes up and their spine is extended. It's like you're doing what the hill is already doing for you and it's working against you.

[Don Saladino]

Right.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

You're in a position that's consistent with, like, producing force. And you need to absorb force. So you need to relax the shoulders. Try and even protract your shoulder blades around ground. Get more of your mass out in front of you. Like, get your. Keep your arms out in front of you as much as you can. Not for anything other than that's going to push your center of mass back and it's going to keep your center of mass in your base of support. A lot of people when they run, the feet go behind them and their chest goes forward and the center of mass goes with it. It's like the center of mass is already being pulled forward because of the pitch of the hill. You need to. And it's maybe even be counterintuitively. Drop the shoulders, get them out in front of you. Get your center of mass back. If your shoulders are up, you're liable to. One, your upper body isn't absorbing the force with you now your knees have to do more. Right. So if I. If I don't have this shock absorber up here, it's going to be all liable to my lower extremity. Two, it's going to actually put my lower extremity in a better position.

[Don Saladino]

Right.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

By anteriorly tilt. That's not a great way for you to use my quads as a decelerator as I go down. So if I want to keep a posterior tilt, which is kind of consistent with this drop shoulder, consistent with the center of mass back. I'm now in a position to use my muscles better to absorb forces that.

[Don Saladino]

Run down rather than your. What's pretty much your joints.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Your joints.

[Don Saladino]

Yeah, yeah. So what you're saying is, shoulders forward.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Get as much of your mass out in front of you as you can.

[Don Saladino]

Okay.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Push your center of mass back when you run downhill. And then there's like, you know, there's a bigger answer to that of like, well, what can we do to reinforce these types of patterns in the gym? Like, can we get stronger at absorbing force? Can we start to load into these positions? Because, you know, internal rotation is what produces force, external rotation is what accepts force. So, you know, maybe you try improving, you know, mobility into external rotation. Stretch out your hips before you go on these hikes and see if that doesn't help. But then really learn how to load into more external rotation exercises like. Like a Front foot elevated. Split squat, where you put your foot on, like, a plate and you load some weight out in front of you. So you get used to this exposure because everyone puts weight on their back, weight in their hands, their chest comes up. So when things. When the go in gets tough, they default to these positions. The downhill is a completely different beast. You got to learn how to. How to operate with deliberately pushing your center of mass back as gravity is pulling it forward.

[Don Saladino]

I love it. Awesome. So, first off. Thank you. I feel like that episode, I mean, we could have sat on it for four hours and it gets difficult sometimes. Right. Because I think people want immediate answers, and it's not always that easy. I know in my career, I feel like the more I learn, the more it becomes. Well, it depends. But I think you gave an incredible framework on perception of pain, and I think he gave some great examples to some people who exercise as a skill. I think this all kind of revolves around. Things can go wrong if we start doing things that aren't correct.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Yeah. I mean, people want quick answers, but do you want right answers? That's the thing. It's like Neil DeGrasse Tyson has this bit, and he's an astrophysicist or a cosmologist or whatever, and he's like, look, the universe is under no obligation to make sense. Sounds to you, right? Like. And I cringe at the idea of, like, explain it to a. It's like me at 13. What? I didn't know any of this at 13. That's why it took me an extra, whatever, 17 years to get 20 something years to get here. So it's like, I think this. If this is over your head, the goal is for this to be in five, 10 years, the way we talk about these things.

[Don Saladino]

Sure.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

Right. And then for someone else to sit here and push this forward again. But because if we sit and we don't take autonomy over good ideas, I think one of the issues that we struggle from an industry perspective is we've been operating off bad philosophy for a long time. That has given us right answers to the wrong questions. I think this is about changing your philosophy so you ask better questions.

[Don Saladino]

I get that. But I also understand that, like you said, starting here with the squat, I'm trying to start here with this topic because I want people, I never want them to be discouraged. I want them to listen to you. You're brilliant. And I'm hoping that. That we all learn more, and I'm hoping we all educate ourselves more to the point where they could sit with you at a table and have a full conversation and understand what it is you're saying. I've evolved throughout the years, even speaking with you about that. Now I sit here and I get everything that you're saying and I'm always like, oh, cool, maybe five, six years ago, maybe sometimes I was like, God damn it, he's losing me right now. But that's the beauty of it. I think part of the excitement of this industry is that we're always learning and we're always getting better. And that's kind of my objective is I want to push people also to who, you know, want to understand more and not just say, you know what, just, just cook me the meal. I want them to learn how to cook it right. So I want to give a huge thank you to the Post. This place is awesome. I mean, this is the. We work for athletes and just to have this on 23rd Street. You've been in here a few times already Bill a roll and everyone's cool. It's just a good vibe and huge thank you. And we are gonna have Jordan on a few more times to discuss other topics. I think we said we were going to cover recovery and we're going to get into that stuff. So stay tuned and comment if you really enjoyed this. Thanks guys.

[Dr. Jordan Shallow]

The views, information or opinions expressed in the series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Chip and Joanna Gaines by Nail Audio nor Magnolia.