Why Dynamic Stretch?

< Full Episode

Transcript: Why Dynamic Stretch?

Season 7, Episode 4  | September 12, 2023

Jamie Martin:
Welcome to Life Time Talks, the podcast that’s aimed at helping you achieve your health, fitness, and life goals. I’m Jamie Martin, editor and chief of Experience Life, Life Time’s whole life health and fitness magazine.

David Freeman:
And I’m David Freeman, director of Alpha, one of Life Time’s signature group training programs. We’re all in different places along our health and fitness journey but no matter what we’re working toward we have some essential things we can do to keep moving in the direction of a healthy, purpose driven life.

Jamie Martin:
In each episode, we break down various elements of healthy living, including fitness and nutrition, mindset and community, and health issues. We’ll also share real inspiring stories of transformation.

David Freeman:
And we’ll be talking to experts from Life Time and beyond and we’ll share their insights and knowledge, so you have the tools and information you need to take charge of your next steps. Here we go.

Jamie Martin:
Hey everyone, welcome back to Life Time Talks. I’m Jamie Martin.

David Freeman:
And I’m David Freeman.

Jamie Martin:
And in this mini episode we are talking about Dynamic Stretch, a new offering at Life Time and with us we have a familiar voice that you’ve heard here on the podcast before. Danny King is with us. Danny is a master trainer and the manager of performance and recovery here at Life Time. Hi Danny.

Danny King:
Hello. Thanks so much for having me back.

David Freeman:
I’m down with the King always. So, we got the Dynamic Stretch that we’re talking about. So, let’s get right into it. Danny, tell us what Dynamic Stretch is and why Life Time decided to launch this service.

Danny King:
Yeah. So, as Jamie mentioned it’s our newest service offering and Dynamic Stretch is a one on one hands on assisted stretch session with one of our stretch specialists, and when we talk about why, I think the most interesting thing or we talk about launching is there’s actually plenty of our dynamic personal trainers or performers out in the field who would say we’ve already been doing this, and if I go back all the way to our time our Egan location in 2011 we had a team member that the majority of his business was this style of session, right. So, it’s been there forever. What we have realized though is the amount of people out there who aren’t moving enough that are stressed out that need to focus on things like range of motion, recovery, wellness, is just continuing to increase and what we figured out is a huge amount of our members didn’t know this was something we could do.

There’s members saying, you know, personal training that’s not for me. I don’t want to do that. I’m not interested in exercising…oh we have other things, but they just weren’t understanding it. When we started to use the phrase stretch or assisted stretch members were saying that I want to do, let me do that, right. So, what we realized is we’re just not getting to the consumer in the right way, and we’ve got to make sure they know what we can do. So, we’re super excited to launch and start to talk about this and get this out to our members.

Jamie Martin:
One thing we want to make sure we acknowledge is that Dynamic Stretch, and I’m saying that as like our proper name for this program, is different than what’s known kind of across the fitness industry as Dynamic Stretching. So, I’m hoping you can clarify the difference, so that people know what we’re talking about.

Danny King:
I appreciate you bringing that up. Yeah, I really do because the phrase Dynamic Stretching is a style of stretching that’s range of motion based. A dynamic warmup or moving through space, and that’s a little confusing at times. You know, you’ll always see one, our product being called Dynamic Stretch, and this will continue to make more sense, right. We rebrand it and launch our personal training as dynamic personal training last year and you will continue to see us enhance that dynamic umbrella. I’m previewing or teasing something in the future that likely you’ll be talking to one of my colleagues about as we’re launching dynamic nutrition later this year.

You’ll see dynamic 30. So, we’re going to continue to see that umbrella of dynamic services. That really is everything that falls under this category of dynamic personal training at Life Time but was we mentioned this is a hands-on table based assisted stretch session. So, you can expect to be predominantly on the table. Your coach is going to be bringing you through range of motion. This isn’t going to happen out on the fitness floor.

David Freeman:
So, Danny like for our listeners, what I always like to dive into obviously we can speak a lot to the why. I want to go a little bit to what the difference is in comparison to anything outside of Life Time that might offer this type of service. Like what kind of level of education these individuals who are doing this, what they go through and what separates us from the rest. So, if you can, like what makes Dynamic Stretch different at Life Time?

Danny King:
Yeah. I think the easy answer right away just put is our coaches. Our performers are people. We’ve spent thousands and thousands of hours in collective manpower around getting the best people. So, when you get the best people, everything that comes from that becomes better, right, and the availability. Now a huge thing that separates is not necessarily just the techniques that we’re doing, and there’s some small differences there that we can talk about and really geek out about how we’re doing a PNF, or contractor relax based stretch or teaching a multitude of different things, but we also cross train our people in so many areas around nutrition, stress management, exercise, right.

They have such knowledge that even within that session, the small, little bits of coaching that you’re going to get, the tips around nutrition or health or what to do outside of the facility or outside of the session, that’s actually going to be a really big part of that distinguisher. You can probably get a stretch session potentially outside of here but is the person doing that going to be able to help really bring that into your full plan or program or facilitate that. That’s I think a huge differentiator for us.

Jamie Martin:
Well, you’re talking about the people right now who are doing this, the coaches, and you did allude earlier you used the phrase stretch specialist. So, what makes somebody a stretch specialist? Are there certain certifications or how do we determine that?

Danny King:
Yeah. There are some external certifications here and we often look for people that have something like that, but we built our education internally. So, we built a fairly robust certification. That was myself and a group of people here. We went and looked at what people had done. We’ve looked at all these other offerings and really just kind of dove back into the research to say what do you need to know to get a safe and effective session here.

So, it’s around five hours of internal content and then quite a bit of….let’s call that the how and the why, and then when we look at how do you go execute there’s a robust offering around the different techniques, the stretches that they go through, that they’re going to go do hands on with one of the master coaches in their region or with their personal training leader to practice and be ready for them. Then once they have those skills and abilities, they test out, right. So, we make sure that they complete their certification with that last test out and then they’re ready to do this with our members.

Jamie Martin:
I’m just going to kind of build on that too because, you know, we’ve got the people who know how to do this but then we also want to talk about like the benefits of working with somebody for this because as you alluded to this is kind of an offering that a lot of people don’t realize we have but all of us need greater mobility to be able to function as well as we can for as long as we can in our life. So, let’s talk a little bit about the benefits of stretching and why assisted stretching in particular, and if there’s specific techniques that…I know it’s going to be individualized. You know, I’m training for a race right now, I’m going to need something different than somebody else, but how is that determined and what are some of the benefits in general?

Danny King:
Yeah. And I love that you started with just benefits of stretching because over the last few years we see pendulum swings in the fitness industry a ton and this is one that likely has gotten deemphasized over time to other things whether that’s tissue work, things like ____00:07:42, etcetera, etcetera. The fact is there’s robust research on stretching and its benefit, right. So, when we look at increasing range of motion, which is how much we can move, what our body’s ability there is, there’s great benefit to just simply looking at creating blood flow in muscles. To reducing soreness. Even things like relieving joint pain through things like arthritis. Bringing those muscles through range of motion is incredibly beneficial.

Now when we get really specific to an assisted stretch session, there’s a couple extra enhanced benefits. The easiest or the best way to think about it is we’re all inherently wired to avoid pain or discomfort. So, when we try to stretch ourselves, we frequently will move off of areas that are really, you know, discomfort, that are painful. We don’t like it, and often we don’t know we’re doing it, right. If we were to easily look in the mirror we’d say wow my hips are really crooked right now but I can’t see that. Well, when you’ve got a stretch specialist bringing you through it, I can block your knee to make sure that it doesn’t bend when we’re doing a hamstring stretch.

I can level your hips off and put you in a position that I’m just moving to get that glute optimally right into rotation. So, there’s all these really unique things we can do to ensure that you get the most effective stretch. The other part of it is you can just relax in a way that you can’t anywhere else, right. If I’m trying to stretch my own hamstring, I’m reaching my arms out with a strap or I’m doing something and while I might be relaxing my hip, my neck, my arms, they’re doing a ton of work. You’re laying on a table and someone tells you to relax, you can just let go and they’re doing everything, and you just can’t replace that.

David Freeman:
So, I love it that you spoke on the benefits, and I think it shows and presents so much value. Increased range of motion, increased blood flow, preventative measures to injury, right. So, that’s always awesome when we’re hearing it and like you said we’re wired in a certain way as far as athletes when we’re going in there we associate results to a feeling. So, with that how do you now shift that mindset for our listeners and our coaches as well to understand okay that workout is always going to be the workout but how do you now optimize this workout is doing this. So, what’s the recommended time then Danny? Do I need to do this, you know, 25 minutes a day five days out of the week? What do you think the entry level should be for those who are resistant to I don’t have that much time, so I only have time for my workout. What would you say to that?

Danny King:
Yeah. I think that’s great, right, because there’s so many good things out there. How do we get them all in? How do we do all of this? The more you can do it the better, right. Honestly the more you need to work on it, the more we need to prioritize it, right. So, the tighter someone is, the stiffer they are, the more they need something like this in their life, the better they are. For most people that are active in moving and already doing a lot of stuff, I recommend a 25- or 30-minute session, right, in that timeframe because that allows us the time. When I think about what we’ve got I can get a great workout in, 45 minutes to an hour when I think about some strength, some cardio, right. We think about something like an alpha class, you can get all those great things in but likely the thing that’s maybe being neglected there is a little bit of cool down or range of motion, and just because we’ve got to go, right.

Well, I can add this onto that then, right, and put an extra half hour on and I’m still in and out in 90 minutes or less than two hours as we do. So, I’m a big fan of that for most people unless they need some really specific extra recovery, like Jamie mentioned you’re training for a race and a recovery day adding this as a full hour, right, great benefit. In terms of frequency, a lot of it comes are you going to do your homework, right. Are you stretching on your own? Are you doing some of the things the coach recommends? What are you doing at least once a week but we do see a huge benefit to something like this if we jump to twice a week with some really targeted effort. That’s where I think the sweet spot, right. Someone who’s really struggling a little bit, give a coach two half hours a week on top of what you’re doing and I promise you in four to six weeks you’re going to notice a significant difference to some of these things.

Jamie Martin:
So, like anything a service like this comes with a fee. So, how about from a cost perspective. I mean, you know, we have our pricing for personal training, for dynamic personal training. Is this comparable? I mean this is a 25-to-30-minute session, 25 to 30 minute or an hour. How about from an affordability perspective for people.

Danny King:
Yeah. So, this really mostly mirrors our dynamic personal training price. You know, talk to a coach. It does tend to be again because we emphasize these 30 minute sessions…I apologize for jumping between 25 to 30 minutes. ____00:12:19 is 25. That just gives our coaches a little bit of time to wipe down the table in between but I’m used to thinking of it in my head as 30. Because of that that obviously makes the affordability work a little bit more for a lot of people and this is something I would encourage you talk to a coach. Don’t let that be the distinguisher right away.

Go try it and in terms of frequency and how often these things we can work within a lot of people’s budget and just at least that occasional time that we get something like this can make a big difference, right, even if it becomes a treat similar to something like a massage that only happens once every couple of weeks. I actually would discourage someone from doing that from a personal training standpoint. I think there are better options at that point, but this is a little bit different than that, and even if we start to back down that frequency and use it less often there’s still some great benefits.

David Freeman:
So Danny, I’ll throw another one at you. Okay. You kind of gave the scenario post workout. Is this beneficial pre workout as well?

Danny King:
It is. So, the interesting thing, and this goes again kind of back to our performers and why it’s better and what we can do here is they’re going to do some initial intake with you. Understanding what you want to get out of it. So, is this someone just looking for relaxation in their life? Is this someone who’s got some very specific goals with it? Let’s take, I keep using Alpha because you’re here, let’s take someone who’s going to take an Alpha class and the things we’ve identified is their squat depth isn’t great and their overhead position isn’t great and some of these things, right. There’s only so much time that the class can do there. Well, adding something like this beforehand, the coach knows specific techniques there, right.

We’re going to use a lot more what we consider active stretching. So, they’re going to focus on activating the muscles we need to activate and turn on while we’re increasing that range of motion at the beginning of a workout, right. So, I think for those scenarios it makes a ton of sense to do it at the beginning. If I think about adding it post workout, and again for someone who wants to reduce soreness, increase their range of motion, make sure that they’re recovering optimally from the workouts, well we’re going to use techniques that makes the most sense adding it there.

If someone’s coming in for an off day, maybe they’re just a parent at home who’s super stressed out and just doesn’t get a lot of time for TLC etcetera and we’re putting that session together, I’m likely to tell them hey lay on your back, relax as much as you can, I’m taking you through everything in this one, right. Not a lot of activity to it. So, before workout great timing if that’s what makes sense for your goal. After workout, great timing if that makes sense for your goals. Off days, great timing if that’s what makes sense for your goals, and our stretch specialists will help lead you to the best style and technique that make sense for you and what you’re looking to do.

Jamie Martin:
So Danny, what I’m hearing is like really this is for everyone. You know really I think about at Life Time we have a ton of people playing pickleball. We’ve got our racket sports. Like all these different people doing all sorts of different activities but when you really think about it, you know, stretching really is for all of us. So, is there anyone who should be careful with this, who needs to just take a little bit of caution potentially?

Danny King:
You know, I think this is an interesting ____00:15:22 out first because that’s a great question. It really is for everybody. The coach, the personal trainer in me is going to say make sure you’re getting the hard stuff in, right, and hey if you need the recovery, if you need it great but if you’re coming in with big body composition goals let’s make sure we’re doing the deal first, right. You’re taking your class. You’re training with your trainer. You’re working hard and then let’s add this on top of that, right.

I’m not going to stand here and say you know what 30 minute stretch a couple times a week is going to get you to those body composition goals or something like that. Now the only other thing is just make sure you’re communicating with your coaches. There are small contraindications. If you’ve had a hip replacement, it’s not that you shouldn’t stretch but there are some positions we shouldn’t put that hip in. So, when we’re starting to look at really specific injuries we can work through them, we can work around it, we can do those things, you just got to be sure you’re being very open with your coach.

Jamie Martin:
Well Danny, this is a mini episode, so anything else you want to add before we have to sign off?

Danny King:
The only think I’m going to add, find your local facility, find a stretch specialist, you just got to try it. I can talk about this all the time. Go experience a session to really understand what we’re talking about.

Jamie Martin:
All right. Well, if anybody wants to hear more from Danny whether it’s about this…we have some articles coming out on at experiencelife.Life Time.life, but Danny has also been on previous episodes. We’ve talked about heart rate training, recovery, fitness competitions and more and you can also follow Danny on Instagram at dtraining. So, make sure to follow him there. Thanks Danny.

David Freeman:
Thanks Danny.

Danny King:
Absolutely.

David Freeman:
Thanks for joining us for this episode. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on our conversation today and how you approach this aspect of healthy living in your own life. What works for you, where do you run into challenges, where do you need help?

Jamie Martin:
And if you have topics for future episodes, you can share those with us too. Email us at lttalks@lifetime.life or reach out to us on Instagram at @lifetime.life, @jamiemartinel and @freezy30, and use the hashtag #lifetimetalks. You can also learn more about the podcast at experincelife.lifetime.life/podcasts.

David Freeman:
And if you’re enjoying Life Time Talks, please subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you’re hearing, we invite you to rate and review the podcast and share it on your social channels too.

Jamie Martin:
Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next time on Life Time Talks. Life Time Talks is a production of Life Time healthy Way of Life. It is produced by Molly Kopischke and Sara Ellingsworth with audio engineering by Peter Perkins, video production and editing by Kevin Dickson, sound and video consulting by Coy Larson and support from George Norman and the rest of the team at Life Time Motion.

David Freeman:
A big thank you to everyone who helps create each episode and provides feedback.