Just Fly Performance Podcast
Dr. Edythe Heus on The Dynamics of Fascial and Balance Training
Our guest for today’s show is Dr. Edythe Heus. Dr. Heus is a nationally known chiropractor utilizing kinesiology with 22 years of experience. She is the founder of the RevinMo, a unique corrective exercise program and co-author of ProBodX. Dr. Heus is a thoughtful investigator whose diagnosis and treatment is based on specialized knowledge of the body's interconnectedness. Dr. Heus has enjoyed great success, and works with many professional and Olympic athletes.
When training individuals, it’s easiest to focus only on “outputs”, such as the load on the bar, or how fast an individual ran through sprint gates. In taking a full-view at training, it’s also important to understand more subtle inputs, and how the body organizes movement from a fascial perspective.
I’ve routinely noticed in the world of track and field, and swimming, a cycle where athletes experience an injury, have to do “rehab” (subtle) work (and also get a deload from the typical intense work they are doing) and come back to their sport to set personal bests within a few weeks or months. As such, it’s worthwhile to study the full spectrum of “rehab to outputs” in human and athletic performance, and how we can organize each of these methods through a training session, or one’s career.
On the show today, Dr. Heus will speak on balance and proprioceptive training methods, such as pipes and slant boards, advanced foot training concepts, and information on the fascia and how it responds to various training methods. This is an important concept for anyone, and particularly those individuals who wish to learn more about the “softer” side of performance that can make a large impact on one’s function and resistance to injury.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs.
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Timestamps and Main Points
6:00 – How Edythe got into a more “alternative” position on exercise and training in her career
19:30 – Deeper thoughts on balance training, and how it benefits the nervous system
38:30 – From a balance perspective, what athletes should be able to do from a fundamental movement perspective
56:00 – Assessing the feet and the abdominals in the course of balance-oriented training
1:02.00 – Using slant boards to train the feet
1:06:00 – Edythe’s thoughts on toe strength
1:21:15 – How Edythe can feel the fascial system working in a particular exercise, and what exactly is “fascial training”
“A quality of a person’s life is directly related to the health of their feet”
“I see what I do, whether it is treatment or training, because I don’t separate those, as a collaborative team effort (between myself and the client)”
“(I want to know) why are we not getting the response from the nervous system or the fascia that is possible?”
“Balance, for me, isn’t just standing on unstable surfaces”
“Balance is a form of novelty, and the brain thrives on novelty… I also challenge them textually”
“Instability just simply, makes the cerebellum work”
“Balance comes in so that your inner and outer environment can better communicate with each other”
“One of the components I think is critical in training is a perception of risk”
“Do some of my stuff before the lift, do it after, and then your lift is going to be better, and you are going to build on what you gained from that lifting, so heavy weight stuff definitely has to be on a stable surface”
“I don’t think that without an unstable surface, that you are going to get all parts of your being integrated”
“We want to automate as much as possible so there is not much thinking involved, so when you do have a skill you actually want to learn, you’ve got more bandwidth for that skill,