The Egoscue Method

Tom Butler is back on the saddle with a fresh sense of adventure as he shares his excitement about a newly discovered cycling route. This week's episode includes Tom seeking advice from the CO60 because of a slight mishap. Plus, he gives listeners an update on his preparations for this season's challenge, a ride across Washington State.

Joining the show is Zachary Vehrs from Egoscue of Seattle. Zach introduces listeners to the lesser-known Egoscue Method, a powerful approach to improving body alignment and reducing pain. Get ready to discover how this method can enhance your cycling experience and overall well-being. Don't miss this informative and inspiring episode!

Link: egoscue.com

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Consider becoming a member of the Cycling Over Sixty Strava Club! www.strava.com/clubs/CyclingOverSixty

Please send comments, questions and especially content suggestions to me at tom.butler@teleiomedia.com

Show music is "Come On Out" by Dan Lebowitz. Find him here : lebomusic.com

Chapters

• 0:23 Weekly Update
• 7:03 Balancing Posture for Pain-Free Living
• 18:19 A Function Based Mindset Shift
• 28:28 Understanding Alignment and Healing Processes
• 38:35 Simple Alignment Exercises for Posture
• 52:06 Easy Can Be Powerful
• 53:54 Wrap Up

Transcript

Tom Bulter: 0:04

This is the Cycling Over 60 Podcast, season 2, episode 52, the Goscue Method, and I'm your host, tom Butler. Welcome back to the podcast. This is where I share my journey to get and stay fit later in life. I share my personal journey here and I also record conversations with the people helping me along that journey. My hope is that you hear something as you listen that informs or inspires you.

Tom Bulter: 0:41

One of the things I've talked about here is that I'm very annoyed with the fact that the bridge is out on my local bike trail. Having that bridge out cuts me off from my favorite routes from home. But this week I did some exploring and I found an awesome new route. The route is 33.32 miles long with 1,330 feet of elevation gain. An interesting thing about the ride is that it has three main climbs. As I ride away from home, each climb gets progressively harder. Then I hit the turnaround point and do the climbs in reverse, so that means I go from harder to easier on the way back. I really like that progression. Now the hardest climb is not very long, but it is steep enough to push me to my limit. Right now I consider a heart rate of 170 beats per minute as 90% of my max heart rate. If I get above 170 on a climb, I will step off and let my heart rate recover. The first time I rode up the steepest part of my new route, I had to step off about 50 yards from the top. Up the steepest part of my new route, I had to step off about 50 yards from the top, but after that I knew the climb better and I was able to make it to the top of the climb, as I hit 170 beats per minute. All in all, I see this as a perfect route, giving me what I need to build up my cycling strength and endurance right now.

Tom Bulter: 1:59

I hadn't fallen with my bike once in the last two years until the other day, and then I managed to go down two rides in a row. In both cases I was basically stopped, so I only got scratched up a little. The second time I fell was on gravel. I wish someone could have been there to see how I almost pulled off a spectacular save before my wheel slid out from under me. I don't know about you, but I see falling with a bike as a bit of an art, and while it might sound strange, I'm kind of glad that I went down. I was hardly hurt at all and yet I have that practice in case I go down again in not such a safe situation.

Tom Bulter: 2:37

The first time I fell, I whacked my helmet on the pavement enough to leave a dent in the back of it. I've always heard that you should replace a helmet if you damage it, so even though the dent is small, I will probably get a new helmet. I recently saw a post that made it look like white helmets are cooler than black helmets in the hot sun. The helmet that I will be replacing is black, but I don't think I've ever felt like it was warm on a hot day. But what they showed in the post was enough that I think I will replace it with a white helmet. I would love to hear what helmet you would recommend. I have only started looking for a replacement, but it's hard for me to wade through all the recommendations. If you have a favorite helmet, let me know. You can find my email and show Instagram in the show notes Plus. My favorite place for interaction is the Cycling Over 60 Strava Club. Please consider joining the club and dropping a helmet recommendation there.

Tom Bulter: 3:31

I'm continuing to plan out the ride I am doing across the state of Washington in September. I changed my mind recently about lodging. We were thinking of renting a camper van, but as I looked at different models I felt like the van wasn't going to be as convenient as I originally thought, so that has led me back to looking for hotels and other rooms to book. I do think I have found some cool places to stay, but of course I need to see what my wife Kelly thinks before moving forward. One of the key aspects of the trip is going to be how to handle water. Looking over the route, I am surprised at how remote a lot of the writing will be. Currently, I am planning on carrying enough water to make it 40 miles before refilling For me. I think I need to carry 96 ounces of water to make sure on a hot day I can go 40 miles.

Tom Bulter: 4:16

You might be wondering why I'm worried about this when I have Kelly driving in support. The problem is that I'm not sure that there will be any cell coverage on the remote sections. That would make it hard to communicate where she should meet me. The situation with cell coverage is something that I'd really like to figure out, because I would feel much more secure knowing that I could call her if I needed some assistance. When I pull up the Verizon coverage map, there is a gigantic hole in the coverage that includes where I will be riding. A somewhat unique threat to my ride that I have absolutely no control over is the risk of wildfire. In fact, state Route 20, which is the road I will be on for most of the ride just reopened today after being closed for a while because of a fire. I actually know someone who had to cancel their bike trip on State Route 20 just the other day because the highway was closed. That would be extremely disappointing. I will just have to hope that we get some significant rain before the second week of September.

Tom Bulter: 5:22

I think I've mentioned this before, but if not, kelly is constantly studying what our bodies need to stay fit. A few years ago, she started talking about Egoscue. She feels like it really helped her with some chronic joint pain. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that once again I got pushed by a health professional to work on my flexibility. I decided this week to have a conversation about Egoscue, and Zachary Veers from Egoscue Seattle agreed to answer some questions. Here is our discussion. I'm excited to introduce listeners to my guest today. Thank you, zachary Veers, for joining me. Thanks, tom. Thanks for having me. Zach, you are the owner and director of Egoscue Seattle.

Zachary Vehrs: 6:00

I think a lot of people haven't heard of Egoscue, my wife Kelly, has been an advocate in our home for the Egoscue method for a while and I wanted listeners to know about it. Awesome, yeah. Well, I'm happy to share what I know here. Just a little bit of background. I've been doing this in Seattle for about eight years now. I own my own practice here.

Zachary Vehrs: 6:26

Before that I was working as an Egoscue therapist in Portland. They had a clinic down there. That's kind of where I got my start. But before that so how I got introduced to this, I studied exercise science in college. I was a personal trainer trying to figure out what I wanted to do with. When I grew up, I was always kind of into like functional fitness. You know this idea of using movements and exercises to improve you know how our bodies function and how we feel. Not just you know how we look and strength, but our functions. So one of my professors introduced me to this method.

Zachary Vehrs: 7:03

The Egoscue method, which is basically the foundation of this method, is all on posture. So the idea is that you know if you have chronic pain or limitations, that it's, for the most part, you know barring some kind of you know birth defect or if you've been hit by a truck or something that most of our chronic aches and pains are due to our bodies being out of balance, meaning our posture is compromised, our muscles are not doing what they're supposed to, the joints aren't moving the way they're supposed to, and so we develop these less than ideal patterns, you know, and those can eventually lead to injuries or just chronic pain, and we view pain as simply your body's way of talking to you. So it's, it's a way for your body to tell us hey, you know, pay attention, something's not working the way it's supposed to. It doesn't necessarily mean you're broken or that it's beyond repair. It just means it's like a warning light, you know, check engine light on your car. That's how I think of it.

Zachary Vehrs: 8:07

So, anyway, I really liked this idea and thought, as a trainer, like, oh, I could do this. This would be a great way for me to help service, to provide for my clients. But of course, this is for old people though, right, like I'm, I don't need this. I'm a invincible 20 something year-year-old, right? Well, it turns out I played a lot of racquetball in college and grad school and I started having my own back and shoulder problems and I thought, well, maybe I should give this Egoscue a shot.

Zachary Vehrs: 8:39

And so my professor you know, he gave a little assessment on me looked at my posture and I was really clear as soon as I saw my photos.

Zachary Vehrs: 8:47

How you know, my head was forward, my torso was completely stuck in a rotated position, so my spine was twisted, among other things. And so then it just made sense Like it wasn't the racquetball's fault that I hurt, I was bringing a body to the court that was, you know, out of alignment and and just kind of prone for injury, right, and that's kind of the approach we take with you, goscue, whether it's racquetball or, you know, cycling in this case, uh, or really any activity, our bodies are designed to do that stuff. It's just we have to, um, we have to make sure we're bringing a balanced body to the activity if we want to be able to, you know, do those things and enjoy them without pain. So I started doing the exercises and, as you can imagine, felt better, got me back on my feet playing racquetball without any issues after that, and that's kind of what got me started, and so I became certified and wanted to help other people achieve the same thing. So here I am, 10 plus years later.

Tom Bulter: 9:47

Well, there is a key figure, Edie Goskew. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about who he is.

Zachary Vehrs: 9:53

Yeah, so Pete, that's where the name of the method comes from he was a Marine in the Vietnam War and came back and basically he was injured and had this lingering pain, even after things healed up, that nobody could really help him with. He got kind of frustrated with that. The medical system wasn't able to offer him much other than drugs, right. And so basically just out of pure frustration and curiosity too, I think, he picked up an anatomy book and started just, you know, trying to figure things out on himself. And the first thing he saw you know, when you look at any anatomy book, you see a picture of our you know our skeletal system and muscular system and you see how things are balanced. We have the same thing on the right and left sides. You know we're meant to stand upright with their joints stacked above each other properly. And then he looked at that picture and realized, hey, that's, I don't look like that Right.

Zachary Vehrs: 10:54

So maybe that got the wheels turning, I think, and basically, just through his own experimentation, was able to help himself get out of pain. And so he was his own first patient, basically, was able to then just start helping his other people he knew, and eventually became a business in the early 80s. But, yeah, no real professional medical training per se. It was all kind of self-taught and some stuff borrowed from yoga, from other. You know his military training, physical education, and so then it's just grown from there. He started in San Diego. That's where the main clinic was for many years and then now there's over 20 franchise locations across the country. Yeah, there's several books. Most of our clients have heard of or read the books Pain Free. It's kind of the most popular one. It's still. It's sold over a million copies today, I think.

Tom Bulter: 11:47

That's the book that my wife got introduced to and now has introduced several people to it and you know we'll open it up and look at the exercises still and you know it's interesting. I believe it's pain free. That has some stories in it about Peter Goscue and it seemed like he had this ability. After developing this, experiencing it, it seemed like he had this ability of like watching people and kind of really diagnosing people by watching their movements.

Tom Bulter: 12:29

By watching their movements and then some very simple interventions that made dramatic improvements. And so it's really fascinating and I'm wondering if there are some core principles behind the Agascu method that you could focus on.

Zachary Vehrs: 12:42

Yeah, no, it's. I think a lot of people have that impression when they start, you know, whether it's reading the book or coming into a clinic and they realize, you know, it's really not rocket science, like, it's pretty simple, which is, I think, is part of why it's so effective, is because it's really designed, you know, to help anybody and it's you know. The exercises are also generally pretty simple, right? They're all things that you can do on your own at home, it's. There's no equipment needed for the most part.

Zachary Vehrs: 13:14

And so, yeah, the main principle is just that our bodies are designed to be stacked vertically. So we have our eight load bearing joints two shoulders, two hips, two knees, two ankles. So if you're looking at your body from the front or from the side, those joints should be vertically aligned with each other, and then also horizontally. So the shoulders should be level with each other, hips should be level, et cetera. So that creates this rule of like 90 degree angles where we can draw a line down the middle. You know, we've got horizontal alignment, we've got a vertical alignment. Pete should point straight ahead, me should point straight ahead. So that's kind of the core, that's our body's design, and anything that deviates from that is a sign of dysfunction, or our body's compensated for something right and it's now in a different position. So all we simply try to do is you know, recognize where those problems are and then use simple movements and exercises to remind our bodies where they should be. You know what the joints should be in relation to each other. So from the outside, you know a lot of the exercises look like well, you're just laying on the floor right with your legs up, or you know you're doing these simple movements, but they're so effective because it's simply putting our bodies back. You know where they want to be. Ultimately, most of us, as you can imagine, spend too much time like we are now sitting on our butts, right so, and then we go ride our bike and we're also in a seated position, right, so it's.

Zachary Vehrs: 14:45

I think one of the core principles is our body is designed to move right, so we want. Movement is good. We're proponents of all kinds of movement. I think it's all good, but you do need a balance and a variety, right? If all you do is sit or you specialize in a sport, you're probably not getting enough movement for all of your joints in the way that they're supposed to. So that's what we try to do with the exercises is kind of supplement that and say, okay, you're missing out on this function. This joint's not, you know, getting moved this way very much, so we need to, you know, work on that and improve that. So it's all very tailored as well. So and that's another thing about this method is it's not a cookie cutter approach. I know the book has exercises for specific things like back pain, hip pain, knee pain. When we work with clients one-on-one, we're able to get really specific to their bodies and give them exercises specific to their posture, not just treating symptoms. We can do that when we see what's going on in your actual body.

Tom Bulter: 15:46

You talked about help the body remember its natural alignment. It sounds to me like what you're saying is that the lives we live now that there's an element of programming misalignment into our bodies. Is that a fair thing to say or is that too much?

Zachary Vehrs: 16:08

No, I think that's fair. You know our bodies are designed to adapt. We call it compensating, basically, you know it helps us survive, right. So we can adapt to sitting, you know, in front of a computer all day. Now, is that healthy for us in the long run? You know, not really. But our bodies are. They're always adapting right. Every, every day, your, your body's going to be a little different. So, for better or for worse, right. So you know it's this balance of we've got to have.

Zachary Vehrs: 16:38

I like to think of it as a balance between the positive stimulus or things that are, you know, going to encourage health, going to encourage range of motion and mobility, and, you know, energy, and then things that don't or kind of take away from it, right.

Zachary Vehrs: 16:52

So if the balance is too heavy, you know negative stuff, like sitting in front of a computer, you know, or just being sedentary in general, then our posture is going to just adapt to that right. We're going to become more that right. We're going to become more stiff, we're going to become more rounded over in our postures, right. So we've got to balance it off, balance it out with something positive, um, to correct that right and our bodies, regardless of our age, you know. People ask like oh, is there, you know, my grandpa's, 95 years old, is it too late for him? I would say no, you know. Work with people, children, all the way up to people in their 90s, you know, and as long as you've got muscles still that you can, you can use, then body's going to adapt to how you use them.

Tom Bulter: 17:37

How would you differentiate the Goscue method with traditional physical therapy approaches?

Zachary Vehrs: 17:43

OSCU method with traditional physical therapy approaches. Yeah, I would say, first of all, there's a lot of similarities in the sense that we're using typically, you know, movements, exercises, stretches, you know, to correct things. Big difference, though, is our approach is. I can't speak for all physical therapists, because I know there's a lot of really good ones out there who actually share the same values and approaches us. So, which is great, I'm seeing more and more of that kind of holistic approach. But, just in general, I would say most physical therapy is still pretty symptom based, meaning they're you go in for back pain, you got a prescription from your doctor for your back, right, so you get this many sessions. They're really only going to look at your back and probably give you some core exercises, maybe some stretches for your back, but that's kind of it. They're, in our opinion, going to miss out on what could be the actual cause of their back pain, which could be anywhere.

Zachary Vehrs: 18:52

So at Egoscue, you come in with back pain. We're going to do a, you know, complete assessment and ask the question of why you know or you have a herniated disc or you've got, you know, arthritis, whatever it is. We say, okay, there's, you know, that's your symptom, that's your diagnosis. But we want to find out, you know, what's underlying preventing you from getting better, because we know our bodies can heal, we know we can live without pain.

Zachary Vehrs: 19:12

So we look at all those joints like we talked about and we could see, you know, there may be a problem all the way down in your foot, for example, that might be causing your back, because it's, you know, your ankles collapsed in. That makes one of your pelvis you know bones sit lower than the other, which now your back's kind of off off its center because something all the way down in your ankle maybe you never addressed an old sprained ankle, for example. So that's kind of how we approach things. We look, we look at the whole picture and so the exercise you're doing could be for any part of your body, and usually most parts of your body need something. So it's a kind of a whole body approach and we also don't do any hands-on like manual therapy, massaging, chiropractic adjustments or anything. It's all stuff we can teach you to do for yourself. So it's really a client centered approach.

Tom Bulter: 20:19

I would say, and I imagine you see people like Peter Goskew. They've gotten a lot of advice, they've seen a lot of people, they've tried a lot of things for some chronic condition and then, in comparison, the alignment exercises, as you mentioned earlier, can seem pretty simple. And so I'm wondering if we could talk a little bit about that concept of a chronic misalignment and what happens in people's minds that they just live with it.

Zachary Vehrs: 20:53

I think that's a great point. It's really unfortunate because there's a lot of people out there that are in that know they have this pain, whatever it is, and it sometimes has been around for years. You know, I hear this all the time. Someone comes in and tells me, you know, they're in their 50s or 60s and they said, oh, I've had back problems since college or whatever, you know, 40 years ago. So it's just crazy that people will just have to suffer through that pain for so long and they just think it's normal right, because it is normal in the sense that a lot of people deal with that doesn't mean it's ideal or healthy right, or that that's how it should be. That's our opinion. So there's a lot of factors. I mean, you know, the most of what they've been told is that, yeah, there's something broken or something wrong with them or it's genetic right, and so a lot of it is kind of they've given up control of their own health. Basically, they've kind of surrendered that, you know, to someone else. The doctor, the expert has told them this thing. So they just kind of give up like, oh well, you know to someone else, the doctor, the expert has told them this thing. So they just kind of give up, like, oh well, you know, this is how it's going to be. They're the expert, not me, right? So therefore I'm just going to have to live with this my whole life.

Zachary Vehrs: 22:15

You know, that's one of the first things we try to help people change in. There is their mindset of, you know, you don't have to live in pain, right? Most people actually feel some kind of positive results on their first session, like right away, and so that's kind of what gets people starting to think differently about starting to challenge some of these beliefs that, oh well, I just did a few exercises and my you know back pain I've had for 20 years is now better. Maybe it's not a hundred percent gone, but it's a level two pain instead of a level six, right, I still have the arthritis, I still have the herniated disc. So why do I feel better, right? Maybe there's a different reason I'm hurting, right? That's what we try to get people to understand is you can change something regardless of your condition. And so, yeah, it's a mind, it's definitely a mind shift, because they've been conditioned to think that, you know, as you get older, you're just going to deal with pain, right, that's just how it goes right. But yeah, it doesn't have to be that way.

Tom Bulter: 23:16

Is there an ideal candidate for the Goscue method?

Zachary Vehrs: 23:22

I'd say anybody who wants to live without limitations, whether it's pain, or most people come to us because of pain, but not everybody. And even once you get rid of the pain, that's just the first step, right, it's now? Oh great, the back doesn't hurt. Then it opens up all these possibilities. Then it opens up all these possibilities. Like you know, maybe you've given up skiing or you've given up running or something, because it hurt your knees, for example, and now the knees don't hurt anymore, so maybe I can try that activity again, right? So, um, that's really anybody who feels like they're limited but they don't want to be and they're willing to put in the effort to change that. You know it's because it is a lifestyle change. It's not a quick pill that you can just take. It does take effort and time not a lot, honestly but it is a lifestyle change. You know, we expect people to, you know, do their exercises regularly, hopefully every day, and so you have to be willing to do that. But I'd say, anybody who's willing to do that and is open to you know making some changes and believes that they can get better, can. You know, there's very few conditions.

Zachary Vehrs: 24:35

I've seen where we haven't been able to offer help. As long as people are, you know, doing their exercises and you know being consistent with their appointments and stuff, then I think there's a lot of possibilities. So yeah, our average client is, you know, probably in their fifties, active, you know, has some kind of lingering chronic pain that hasn't been solved by other traditional methods and is looking for kind of a holistic, natural approach. Maybe they want to avoid surgery. They've already had surgery and they still have this issue. So unfortunately, a lot of times we're people's last resort. We're trying to change that so that it becomes more mainstream that they try this first, but unfortunately a lot of people come to us after they've already been through all the, you know, physical therapists and chiropractic and prescription pain medications.

Tom Bulter: 25:26

Yeah, and I think that there is a element of a mindset here, you know, where it's not a situation where it's a traditional disease model that you're functioning out of. It's a situation of really everybody needs to be in alignment.

Tom Bulter: 25:48

You know, as life programs us in misalignment ways, then we need to have those strategies of how, as you said earlier, remember that alignment, get the body to remember where the optimal functioning is. And so you know, it's a really different mindset, which I think is the mindset that we need for the future of optimal health, is that mindset of doing the things, not waiting for symptoms, not waiting for a breakdown, but doing things that we know, that are preventative and that support optimal functioning.

Zachary Vehrs: 26:29

Yeah, no, that's, that's right. And I think a lot of people, I think well, you could argue, I guess everybody probably intuitively knows what they should be doing and knows that their posture is bad. You know, knows that their posture is bad, you know, and they just again, they've been, they've been told all these other things so that they kind of forget, or they or they don't trust their own you know, intuition, that you know this is something they need to do. It's crazy how many people actually, when you may be familiar with the static back exercise where you're you're laying on the floor just flat on your back with your knees bent, so your legs are up at kind of a 90 degree angle, with your legs up on a chair or couch maybe. So that's a common exercise we do.

Zachary Vehrs: 27:14

And, um, you'd be surprised how many times you know, first appointment, or whenever I first give that exercise to someone, that they'll tell me oh yeah, I already, I do this whenever my back hurts because it feels good like never. No one's ever told them to do that. That just like a natural instinct to get on, get on the floor and put your legs up. So I think a lot of people, intuitively, you know, know some of this stuff and recognize that it feels good to do these things. But it's just a matter of um recognizing it and then you know being consistent with it, I guess.

Tom Bulter: 27:45

But I'm thinking that there must be some times where there's some damage or something you know, a break or something that's torn, that there something needs to heal before they're going to get the most out of the exercises. How would you talk about that aspect?

Zachary Vehrs: 28:07

Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, we don't claim to, you know, take away from or replace all the great medical practitioners, you know, whether it's a surgeon or physical therapist, I think if you have an injury, you know an acute injury, that's we definitely. You know, we want you to take care of that. However, you need to and get the healing done. A lot of times Egoscue can help supplement, you know, while you are recovering from an accident or surgery or something you know I. Still, a lot of times you can do both, right. So I work with people all the time who do that. I work with people all the time who do that. They have their, you know, physical therapy exercises or they have, you know, they see a chiropractor, for example. Nicoscu just helps, I think, make their job easier, right? So if we can do some things to help get our bodies into a better position, I think it's going to help you heal quicker, you know. You know same with surgeries. So we're not necessarily anti-surgery. I mean, we don't think you should have surgery if you don't, if you don't absolutely need it, right, but ultimately that's the client's decision.

Zachary Vehrs: 29:15

So I've worked with people, you know, before surgeries or afterwards, or maybe they've are trying to prevent having to have, like a knee replacement or a hip replacement, for example, back surgery.

Zachary Vehrs: 29:32

So whether they have the surgery or not, though you know the alignment is going to be the same, or may actually it's going to change after the surgery actually. But you know. So we still want to, wherever you are along that timeline, you still want to make sure that you're having the best possible posture so that you can get the most out of those treatments and then also hopefully prevent stuff down the road Cause you hear this a lot where someone gets multiple back surgeries, right, they fix a disc or they take out that bulging disc and then the disc above it eventually starts to fail, right, and you just have this cascade of surgeries which you know we can hopefully want to avoid, right. So so, yeah, no, we tend to deal more with the chronic stuff. So if you go out and sprain your ankle or tear your ACL over the weekend like, that's not the type of stuff we typically deal with it's usually the stuff that's been for months or, like I said, even years for most people.

Tom Bulter: 30:28

Seems like if I'm living a life out of alignment and I've not thought about that, I've not done anything about that. It seems like the older I get, there's going to be kind of like a compounding impact of that, as I ignore the pain and I've not fixed anything as far as my posture is concerned and I just ignore more pain. Is that kind of fit with what you see?

Zachary Vehrs: 30:55

Yeah. So again, a lot of people will blame their problems on their age, which is not entirely accurate, right, because it's really just it's. The problem is still the imbalance or the misalignment in their posture. It's just, the more years you have in that position, the more chances you have of getting hurt and your body will start to have to. You know, if you're not listening to that original signal of hey, you know something's wrong. Well, what does your body do? It just turns up that signal, right, pain's got to get worse and worse until eventually, maybe you'll finally listen to it when you hit rock bottom, right? Yeah. So age isn't necessarily the problem.

Zachary Vehrs: 31:37

But you're right, if left unchecked, then things tend to get worse if you're not trying to fix them, right? So again, with the analogy of the car check engine light on your car, it may come on and your car may seemingly still be running fine, right, because nothing's catastrophically broken. Yet Maybe a sensor just went bad or isn't receiving a good signal. You know, something simple still works fine. So maybe you ignore it. But eventually, down the road, you know it's likely that something else will fail, or or that failure will cause more damage than than it would have if you had fixed it earlier, right? So I think it's the same with our bodies, right. We want to listen to those signals as soon as we can, but it's never really too late. So, like I said, I've worked with people of all ages and all kinds of different diagnoses and I think you can always make improvement. The sooner you start, the better you know, as with most things.

Tom Bulter: 32:34

Can you talk about what a typical Agosku session would look like?

Zachary Vehrs: 32:40

Yeah, so it's all one-on-one. So it's all one-on-one. So we typically sit down with people and chat about their health history, what their problems are, what their goals are, what they're looking to achieve, and then we go through an assessment of their posture. So we take photos so that the client can see exactly what's going on, put them in our software, which allows us to identify where each of those joints are in relation to each other, so you can see really clearly oh, one shoulder is higher than the other, or my body's twisting, or this foot doesn't point the same direction as the other foot all these things we can see in the photos. And then we also look at how you move. So we look at walking gait Typically. We might do a few other simple movements like bending over to touch your toes or balancing on one foot, that kind of stuff, just to kind of confirm where we think problems are. And so that's really the first step is the assessment and also the education aspect of you know, helping the person understand exactly what's going on, because up until this point they may have they may have been to several professionals who give them different you know diagnoses and things, but never really told them the why right. So that's our goal on day one is to help people understand why they have this pain and then show them what they can do about it. So so then, after we do the assessment based on the posture that they have and the limitations we find, then exercises are tailored specifically to those misalignments or weaknesses that we find. So then we'll take them through the exercises, you know, show them how to do it. The form is really important, so we're meticulous about, you know, having good form and if we want to get the most out of it. And then the client goes home with all their we call it a menu. It's a series of exercises that they do. Our app allows them to log in and see all the instructions. There's videos and pictures to help them, you know, do the exercises successfully at home, do the exercises successfully at home, and so they then go home and do their exercises.

Zachary Vehrs: 34:48

Typically takes, you know, 20 to 30 minutes a day. Some people do more, some people do less, but that's pretty average. It just kind of depends on what you need, of course, but so the appointments are typically an hour long, one-on-one, and we meet with people generally once a week. In the beginning sometimes twice a week, but eventually get to a point where you're. You know you've made a lot of initial improvement. Pain is now better, your posture is better. Our focus starts to shift more towards strengthening and then just kind of maintaining. Once you get to that point where your limitations are no longer an issue, we don't need to meet as often, so we kind of taper it off and meet maybe once a month or something. You know, the idea is to create independence, not dependence on us. We want to teach people the things they need to do to take care of themselves.

Tom Bulter: 35:38

Ultimately, yeah, as you're talking about it, there's something that comes to my mind and that's the bike fitting that I did In the past. I never thought that a bike fitting would be something that I need to do. I thought that's probably something that professional cyclists do. And then I ended up having a bike fitting done and now I'm like, wow, that was a really valuable investment for me to make my handlebars removed out so that there was better alignment with my shoulders. There were spacers put in my pedals so that my feet were moved out. There was an element of alignment going on as far as you know, sitting on the bike, and so it seems like cyclists can kind of relate a bit to those concepts of alignment just from that thought about being in repetitive motion on a bike and then being out of alignment and what that can do yeah, no, that's, that's exactly right.

Zachary Vehrs: 36:36

Not much of a cyclist myself. I used to, you know, I would cycle to work back when I lived in portland. Um, I that I and I would ride my bike as a child and things, but I haven't so much. Since living in Seattle, actually, my bike got stolen the first. I think it was the first month I lived here my bike was stolen. I was unfortunate, so, um, that's terrible. I mean, it was a cheap bike at least, so hopefully they needed it more than me. I mean, it makes sense.

Zachary Vehrs: 37:07

And you know, if you think about, let's say, on, you're on your bike and your handlebars are crooked or maybe one, you know, I mean, just imagine if your pedals weren't symmetrical, right like if one pedal turned out more or was a different size, or you know just anything. That was different on your right and left side. It's going to cause problems, right like uh, and just apply that was different on your right and left side. It's going to cause problems, right Like uh, and just apply that to your body.

Zachary Vehrs: 37:29

You know, if you have, let's say, one, you look down, you're standing in front of a mirror and one of your legs, your foot or maybe your knee, or maybe both turns out and the other one is pointing straight ahead. Like it's supposed to think about all the thousands of steps you take a day. Or if you're pedaling, you know thousands of pedal strokes. You add that up over the years, millions of times. You're moving in this asymmetrical pattern, like it makes sense that something's going to eventually break right or wear out or at minimum hurt right. Like I said, it's not rocket science, it's pretty common sense once you start thinking about it. It's just unfortunately not so common in today's medical system.

Tom Bulter: 38:09

Fortunately, you talked about some of the exercises and you know that there's a real focus on self-care. These, you know. What I've seen is that they're easy to do with just things that you have around the house. Is it specifically designed that way or, you know, did it just kind of end up that way?

Zachary Vehrs: 38:30

It's a good question, I mean, I think. I think it's designed that way. The simplicity of it, I think, is part of why it's so sustainable, right, Like you don't have to, anybody can do it and you can pretty much do it anywhere, right? That's the beauty of it, is you really just need your body? I mean, the equipment we have here you were to see my clinic is pretty minimal. We, we basically have the floor, the walls, some blocks that are basically at home. You, most people use a chair, maybe a small cushion off their couch. That's about it, you know. So it's really designed to be simple and we just focus a lot on those principles of right angles and you know vertical and horizontal alignment. So a lot of that we can do without any fancy equipment.

Tom Bulter: 39:21

My wife does have a fancy tower, oh yeah, the tower Nice. But it seems like that is more just for convenience. I guess the necessity, I think, is the right way to say that.

Zachary Vehrs: 39:34

Yeah, yeah, the tower for the listeners. It's a device where you basically typically how you use it is, you're laying on the floor. You can strap one or both actually both feet, into this like foot pedal, and then it's attached to this wooden tower. It's about what? 24 inches high, I think, so you can basically lay on your back and elevate one of or both of your legs into the tower, but then there's different levels to it, so notches on this tower so you can kind of lower your leg closer to the ground. And we usually use it to help.

Zachary Vehrs: 40:08

Primarily it's it's good for releasing like tightness and your hip flexors. So, as you know, it's kind of a common way to use that, so good if you've got really tight hips and good for your back to. You know you're laying on the floor on your back, so it helps to release, um change your spine and hip position basically. But the tower didn't come along until years after Pete came up with that stretch. I think originally you were just laying on the floor with one leg up on a chair and the other leg straight, either on the ground or elevated on another chair with your knee extended. So yeah, there's ways of doing it without that, but the tower definitely makes it easier.

Tom Bulter: 40:47

As you're talking about it, you know and this is not my first exposure to it, but maybe some people it is you know you're not talking about anything strange or radical or anything, but I'm wondering if, as you're out in the world, you know people ask you what you do things like that. Do you face some skepticism about the method?

Zachary Vehrs: 41:10

Oh yeah, definitely. I mean I would say I mean a lot of people are just naturally skeptical, right for anything that they're not familiar with, so that's normal, but I mean most people, I would say once they try it, I think a lot of that skepticism goes away because they see and feel how effective it is Right.

Zachary Vehrs: 41:30

So sometimes it's as simple as well. You got to just try it. Ultimately, if you want to see that, the proof is in the pudding, right. But I, you know you do run into that where you start to tell people about what you do and for most people they like you, you know, agree that it's. Oh, it makes sense, right, common sense, your body should be lined up a certain way, and all this stuff.

Zachary Vehrs: 41:51

But you do get some pushback from people who are a little more. They want to see, you know, we call them fact finders, where it's like, well, what's the? You know, has there been research on this? And how come, you know, know, insurance doesn't pay for it if it's legit, right? Like how come my doctor doesn't do this, right? So there's a lot of that where, you know, they're used to the western medical system being, you know, kind of the authority, right, and so if it doesn't fall under under that, then it must not be true, right?

Zachary Vehrs: 42:23

So you know, everybody's got to be willing to, I think, be curious about it and try it out if they want to really be a good judge of it. Because that's ultimately, what matters is, if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. But so, um, something, I was thinking if you wanted me to kind of take you through just a sample exercise, something that we can do here. I know your listeners can't see, but this is something that we can just describe and that I think anybody could try as just something to kind of feel the kind of thing that we do. I love it. Yeah, maybe I'll. I'll have you do this with me here. Okay, describe what we're doing. So we're just going to stand up. I don't know if you keep all made here because you've got their mic there. Oh, it was perfect, okay.

Tom Bulter: 43:15

You're not going to be able to see me, but that's okay.

Zachary Vehrs: 43:19

So you're going to stand up, preferably do this barefoot, and if you have shoes on right now, that's fine. But the first thing you're going to do? If you look down at your feet, most of us, our feet don't point exactly straight like they're supposed to, so we're actually going to kind of overcorrect and go pigeon toed. So I want you to touch your big toes together in the middle and your heels are now spread out, so your feet are kind of maybe pointing in like a 45 degrees at each other.

Tom Bulter: 43:43

Okay, Got it.

Zachary Vehrs: 43:44

Well then I want you to tighten up your quads. So lock your knees. So no bend in the knees. So tighten up your quads, keep your knees locked, okay. So just doing that, and a lot of your listeners might feel a little uncomfortable, like it's maybe some tightness in their hips, especially if they're cycling a lot. This is going to challenge some of their joints, but it shouldn't be painful, but it's okay if it feels a little stiff. So now take your hands and just interlace your fingers and kind of cup the back of your head. So just put your hands behind your head, fingers interlaced all the way together, and then pull your elbows back. So try to pull your elbows back and look straight ahead, and we're just going to hold this, so there's no movement. We're just going to keep focusing on tightening up our quads, keeping our elbows pulled back. Okay, and Tom, maybe you can describe what you're feeling so far as you're doing this.

Tom Bulter: 44:38

Well, I am feeling tightness in between my shoulders. I'm feeling quite a bit of tightness in my mid-back, but I'm not feeling it too much in my hips. Really not much in my hips at all, but mostly kind of my upper back in between my shoulder blades and then kind of mid-back.

Zachary Vehrs: 44:59

Perfect. Yeah, well, that's. Yeah, everybody's going to feel it maybe a little bit differently, but that's yeah. Well, that's. Yeah, everybody's going to feel it maybe a little bit differently, but that's this exercise is. It kind of addresses two of the main areas that most people have issues, especially cyclists. Right, where we're stuck in flexion, where we're bent forward, you know, our shoulders are rounded, our upper back is typically rounded forward and we're also in a seated position, so our hips are kind of in a closed or flexed position. So that position we just did is the opposite. Right, your hips are now extended, your legs are straight and then the hands behind their head gets your upper back to straighten out. So it kind of takes you out of that rounded forward kyphosis, you know, and gives you a little more extension in your upper back, pulls your shoulders back. It helps actually get your head back in alignment, in alignment with your shoulders. You know you're feeling it probably where your, where your weak spot is, which is that mid to upper back, right.

Tom Bulter: 45:53

So yeah, and again, I think you know what you're saying. Just another example of something that just makes total sense, because talked about this with other people on the show and you know I'm forward, I'm typing, you know my chest is kind of in and I get on the bike and I'm, my chest is still in and I'm, I'm bent over more and it's, you know, it's that closed motion. So so that's the kind of thing that I think is important for me and I, you, you know, I think a lot of cyclists.

Zachary Vehrs: 46:25

Yeah, no, I would encourage your listeners to do that exercise and hold it for a minute. I mean you could hold it for longer if you want, but a minute should be plenty. You can do that before you get on the bike. After you get off the bike, maybe, you know, take a little breaks throughout your day If you're working on a computer, you know. That's just something that's real simple, doesn't require any equipment. You just just standing there and that'll give you an instant positive impact on your posture. So see how you feel before and then how you feel immediately, immediately afterwards, and I can guarantee you most people are going to feel, feel a little bit better just from doing that I was touching my toes and flexing my quads.

Tom Bulter: 47:05

If I was feeling a lot of tightness, do you back off? Do you have your toes not touching, do you?

Zachary Vehrs: 47:13

Yeah, you want to listen to your body, right. So if it just can't, if you're just really that tight that you can't get your toes to point inward and touch in the middle, then just do the best you can, right. So even if you just have to start with the feet pointing straight, cause some people you know they're walking around, you know, like ducks, right, but their feet turned out 45 degrees. So turning them in is like a huge difference, a huge change to ask. So so we might have to just start by turning them in a little bit so that they're actually parallel, like they be, and then maybe work towards pointing them in the same with the hands behind the head.

Zachary Vehrs: 47:47

I mean, if you've got like a active rotator, cuff, kick, tear or something and that position is painful, then we don't want to aggravate it, right? So this is just an example of something you know. But obviously each individual work we want to tailor to their to. Yeah, general rule of thumb don't push it if it causes more pain. You know, a little bit of discomfort or fatigue or muscle tension or even cramping is not bad, but if it actually hurts more when you're done than it did before, probably not the best thing for you right now.

Tom Bulter: 48:21

You mentioned insurance and I'm thinking that it's not typical that you would have insurance pay for Egoscue treatment. Is that fair to say?

Zachary Vehrs: 48:32

Yeah, that's correct. So if you have a health savings account or a flex spending account, usually that can be used to pay for it, but otherwise we just we don't work with insurance, or I should say insurance doesn't work with us. So so yeah, it's out of pocket. Just to give you an idea, we offer a couple different programs. You know, since this is something that, as you can imagine, isn't typically just a one and done deal, you know it's a process. So we offer packages of either eight or 16 sessions.

Zachary Vehrs: 49:02

We offer packages of either eight or 16 sessions. So it's basically, you know, we're meeting with people weekly, so our eight session program is typically like two months. So that's usually enough time to really make a significant change on people's problems that they're coming in with, and so the price of the eight visit package is $16.45. And then there's also a 16 session package. You know, if we decide you need more than that, it's $27.45. So if you do the math, it's a bit cheaper per session with the larger package, but that's for new clients. And then if you need more beyond that, you know, as an existing client, the prices do go down a bit as you get into more of that. We call thrive where you're, you know, continuing to maintain the progress, but maybe meeting less often. The prices go down a bit after that.

Tom Bulter: 49:53

It sounds like you're part of a network of Egoscue practitioners across the US. Is that right?

Zachary Vehrs: 50:01

Yeah, us, is that right? Yeah, so it's a franchise, which means everything is pretty standardized. As far as you could go to any Egoscue clinic across the country, you're going to get the same treatment, same software, the same price, the same results. I mean therapists are going to be different, obviously, and everybody has their own kind of style and personalities, but the method is the same and procedures are the same, so you can expect the same quality any location you go to. So, and that's nice. So some people travel, or maybe they, you know, spend summers and winters in different homes, and so they may go to different clinics for their treatment. And if you do have a program with us, it's transferable between those locations. Or if you move, for example, and you still have sessions left to use, they transfer to other Egoscue franchise locations.

Tom Bulter: 50:54

People can go to egoscuecom. Is that a place?

Zachary Vehrs: 50:58

to start. Yeah, that's the place, it's egoscue-O-S-C-U-E dot com.

Tom Bulter: 51:05

And I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Anything else that you can think that people should be aware of or you'd like people to know about, consider when they're thinking about the Goscue method.

Zachary Vehrs: 51:18

If this is resonating with you, you know, and you feel like you've got this lingering issue that maybe you've been dealing with for a long time or even a short time, maybe it's a new injury or something that's preventing you from doing the thing you love to do. I would just encourage you to give it a try. You know, just believe in your body's ability to get better and that if you put in the effort and with a little extra guidance from us, we can work together, you know, as a team, to help you figure out what you need to do to get better, and seen a lot, of, a lot of success for people that have been told otherwise.

Tom Bulter: 51:52

So never give up hope I love that part of the story where someone you know would come in and if they're dealing with something for a long time, and you know, I would think there'd be a lot of people you know, and I kind of put myself in this category too. I have to be really transparent. It's like it just seems too easy, right, it just seems like it's. You know, it's such a basic thing get in alignment and so to have someone try something that is relatively easy, something they can do at home, something they can learn and then keep up with and you know, every day that they're doing.

Tom Bulter: 52:29

it kind of builds the builds or bodies, remembrance of you know how to stay in alignment and it's just, it's gotta be wonderful times.

Zachary Vehrs: 52:39

Yeah, no, it really is. I'm really glad I get to do this and I find it a privilege to be able to help people like that and that's what brings me a lot of satisfaction and joy. And what I do is just seeing people, you know, have that moment of like oh, I can do this thing now. I can play with my grandkids again, or I can go back on the bike that I haven't been able to for years and, you know, basically living their lives the way that they want to again. It's really fulfilling. So it's my privilege. I don't take credit very often for that, you know, because ultimately, they're doing all the hard work each day. I'm just giving them some exercises to do.

Tom Bulter: 53:19

Zach, thank you so much for taking the time to come on and share with us. You so much for taking the time to come on and share with us. And again, I'd encourage anybody to just go to agoscucom and there's a place there that you can click on to try Agoscu and to go through that process and connect with someone like Zach. So thanks, Zach, for coming on.

Zachary Vehrs: 53:41

All right, thank you, it was great.

Tom Bulter: 53:43

Talk to you later. I'm going to set up an appointment with Zach and have him do an assessment of my alignment. Right now I'm about as committed to working on flexibility as I ever have been, and I think that using the Agoscue method will provide another layer of benefit to becoming more limber. I will definitely keep you posted on how Agoscue helps with my progress. We have been having some incredible weather here in the Pacific Northwest lately. I hope you are finding the conditions awesome or at least tolerable, or you are. Please keep the pictures coming on the Cycling Over 60 Strava Club. I really enjoy seeing pictures of bikes and scenery and especially your smiling faces. And remember, age is just a gear change.