Episode 20: Finding Your Movement Signature

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• Joe Gambino
• Joe LaVacca

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Summary
In this episode, Joe Gambino and Joe LaVacca discuss the importance of mobility and strength work in relation to golf and other sports. They emphasize the need for movement variability and building a strong foundation to improve performance. They also address the common tendency to compare oneself to professional athletes and highlight the importance of individuality and focusing on one's own unique movement signature. The hosts stress the significance of basics and consistency in training, as well as the role of pain and how it can affect movement. They share personal anecdotes and examples to illustrate their points.

Takeaways
Movement variability is important for skilled movement in sports.
 
Comparing oneself to professional athletes may not be helpful as they are outliers and have unique movement signatures.
 
Focusing on basics and building a strong foundation is crucial for improving performance.
 
Consistency in training and addressing pain are key factors in achieving optimal movement and performance.

Transcript

Joe Gambino (00:00.929)
Welcome back into the Beyond Pain podcast. I am one of your hosts, Joe Gambino, and I'm here with the handsome as always lovely Joe Lavaca. of course, of course, of course looking even better after after being here and visiting so.

Joe LaVacca (00:11.649)
Thank you for saying that.

Joe LaVacca (00:18.571)
we'll talk about that. I'm sure it was a little lead in, but I did. I came back refreshed and ready to rock,

Joe Gambino (00:24.399)
I love it. You can find this on all the social channels. Particularly Instagram is where we're both most active at Joe Gambino DPT for me and at strength and motion underscore PT for Dr. Lavaca over there. This podcast is on YouTube, cups of Joe underscore PT. We also have our own Instagram channel for beyond pain podcast. And if you are interested in having

conversation with us, just send a DM, more than happy to chat and you can find those links in the show notes. And if you do want to work with us, there is an application form. You are more than welcome to fill it out and one of us or maybe even both of us, if you're lucky, we'll reach out. Yep. You never know. You never know here at the cups of Joe scenario here, but Joe, how are you doing? It's been a while.

Joe LaVacca (01:08.226)
Maybe both.

Joe LaVacca (01:21.1)
I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Yeah, it's been like four or five days since we've been apart and it feels a lot longer. Of course, for those listening, I visited Joe in North Carolina this past weekend, got to hang out with his beautiful family. They took me around multiple towns, multiple cities. I too much to eat, which probably stopped me from having too much to drink, which was good, but it was good. We still got to partake in a lot of fun things and

Joe Gambino (01:25.069)
Yeah.

Joe Gambino (01:41.175)
Me too.

Joe LaVacca (01:48.992)
It was just good to see you, man. Feels like, you know, that was a really long time coming. So.

Joe Gambino (01:53.109)
Yes, that was a very long time coming. It's probably been at least a year now.

Joe LaVacca (01:58.384)
yeah, because we met in the city, I think right outside my office for a little bit when you guys were visiting. And for those wondering, because we did have someone ask Joe Gambino this, I did not get a chance to make Joe an espresso martini, which I was very disappointed about. But Joe did make me his famous iced latte and it was absolutely wonderful. I've been craving them ever since I've come back. So thank you for that.

Joe Gambino (02:12.885)
I was gonna call you out on...

Joe Gambino (02:25.827)
Well, now that you've brought it up in the podcast, I want an honest to true review because you just told me it was good. There's nothing, no merit behind that. So I want to, you know, like zero to 10. How are you rating it among the coffees? But I want honesty, because, you know, if I'm going to improve on the recipe, I can't be having fluff.

Joe LaVacca (02:47.02)
Yeah, no, think honestly the latte, I don't drink a lot of lattes. So for me, I don't see how that latte could have gotten better. It wasn't sweet. I like it, you know, with no vanilla and hazelnut and all this other stuff. I'm just not a big flavor guy. So for me, that was as good as it gets. So, and to the point where, Joel, I'll even share this with you, I've considered ordering an iced latte.

Joe Gambino (03:06.285)
All

Joe LaVacca (03:16.086)
Now that when I go pick up my coffee, I've been making it at home and bringing it into the city a lot. I have not yet made cold brew. I'll keep you posted on that. But yeah, I've considered actually buying some iced latte as the weather was heating up again in New York this week.

Joe Gambino (03:31.669)
Wow, look at this. We're changing you. You're a change man all of a sudden. I was gonna say, you're have to try some lattes now so you can actually make an educated review of my iced lattes. But you do drink iced coffee, so how would you rate the iced coffee here?

Joe LaVacca (03:34.412)
Yeah, change behaviors, that's what we're all about. That's what...

Joe LaVacca (03:41.627)
That's fair.

That's fair, that's fair. Yes. you know, again, the iced coffee, maybe it was Grayson that maybe originally said this. And then I feel like now everywhere I go, there is some heavy whipping cream around. You guys had some heavy whipping cream in your fridge. I just made coffee here yesterday and today at Courtney's office. They had heavy whipping cream for some reason. I'm just like, I feel like I remember Grayson saying he just has some black coffee, little dash of some heavy cream.

And that's it. And I also think I'm switching over to just like a drop. know, we can't go too heavy with it. But just like a little drop of some heavy cream. And I've been enjoying that also. So my trip to North Carolina has maybe shaped future caffeine intake for me quite heavily.

Joe Gambino (04:35.611)
my. Well, I don't know if that's a good thing or a thing, Joe.

Joe LaVacca (04:40.574)
I it's good. I like to read the studies that say caffeine is very good for you and then dismiss the ones that say it might keep you up at night and cause anxiety or other health issues. I don't have time for those articles.

Joe Gambino (04:53.335)
Well, I mean, I am an N of one, but I can disprove all those theories.

Joe LaVacca (04:57.735)
Yes, yes, I can too actually so we have a now we have a case series. I think we would call ourselves

Joe Gambino (05:03.671)
Yes. Let's, let's shift here. question of the day. I actually don't remember who this one comes from, but the question is, how does mobility and strength work carry over to golf? so I'll let you kick this one off and maybe since golf isn't quite your forte, we can talk about how it carries over to activities in general. You know, you can pick a sport, Joe, and then I will, I will backfill and be more specific.

Joe LaVacca (05:33.024)
Yeah, I was hoping that you were going to take the lead on that one. I don't know anything about golf, but, I, I always tell people it's just about giving yourself options. If you are thinking about, just say a squat, cause that's what people tease me of knowing the most about just because I like to squat and the insane size of my legs, as I've been told, it's kind of becoming a little bit of a self -conscious thing, but.

Joe Gambino (05:35.883)
No, no, I'm gonna throw it away,

Joe Gambino (05:58.244)
Well, by the way, I don't know, you posted, I think it was a story, like an old one. I don't even know where you got from is really shitty quality, but it was of your legs. And I was like, I forgot how skinny and frail you used to be. And those quads, are impressive these days.

Joe LaVacca (06:14.848)
thank you. Yeah, you got to see them up close and personal. I think you even got to touch them at one point. But no, I usually just explain it very generally as look, you know, I'm not an Olympic weightlifting coach. I'm not a golf coach. I'm not a swim coach. Right. So the things that I think strength and mobility can help you with is having more options to express yourself for the skill you want to get better at. And that's sort of the big picture in a nutshell.

Joe Gambino (06:15.875)
Thank

Joe LaVacca (06:43.65)
sort of thing that I'll lay on patient. So why do I need to work on my hip? Why do I need to do this? Why do I need to do that? Why can't I just play golf? Why can't I just play swim? Why can't I just do this? And the thing I tell people is that because when you now go and use that skill, you're just using the sort of capacities that you have to exemplify your performance or just kind of push your performance.

So if you work on mobility or strength with us or your coach or whoever it is, you're actually building capacities that may help you improve your performance. So for me, it's just about options. It's about building that base to express yourself. And I think the more ways that we can express ourselves, potentially there's a reduced injury risk, but I think injury is a lot more complicated than just having a little bit more hip mobility or back mobility. But how would you particularly pertain it to golf? Because that was the listener's question.

Joe Gambino (07:40.727)
That was, yeah. So I mean, I think you'd hit the nail on the head with movement variability. We do know that the more movement options that you have, the more skilled you're going to be at those tasks. So a shitty golfer such as myself will have very limited ways of being able to hit a golf ball, right? And kind of get through a swing and someone who's very skilled, the low handicap golfer is going to have many ways to do that. So if the lie changes or something specific happens where you can't have

rely on a perfect swing, right? You have more options to have the same exact outcome at the end. And that's the same for skilled movement across the board. So yeah, movement variability is important. And I think it's just really where are you on that spectrum? Because the counter argument for mobility work is that there are great golfers in the world and they're weak or they're not mobile or whatever it is, but they can still hit the ball really far and still play well.

That's always been the counter argument that I've heard. Like, why do I need mobility? Why do I need strength? and again, it all is individual. mean, some of those, like if you're comparing yourself to a professional golfer, and like people will always go to John Daly. don't know if you know who he is, Joe, but he is like, you know, I mean, he's, he's a character, right? mean, he's, know, out on the course drinking 12 sodas and 20 beers and smoking cigarettes. And he is the outlier of.

Joe LaVacca (08:54.114)
Yes.

Yeah.

Joe Gambino (09:07.275)
Everything, right? all the golfers today, they, tend to, at least at the higher level, have a whole team around them as far as strength work, mobility, body work, all of that stuff, mental side of things. So it's very, very different, but do you have pain? are you just looking for performance? Do you care about your score? All those things. I think you have to take into consideration on how mobility work and strength work can impact you. If you don't really care, you're just playing for fun.

Then you do fitness for fitness and it doesn't really matter if you're looking for a performance perspective. the more mobility that you have, the more movement options you have, the better skill you're going to have. Also, even if we're looking at it from a distance perspective, if you can turn further and you can have a longer swing, that's going to increase club head speed, which will then carry over nicely to the sport. and if you have pain, mean, you just have to figure out, mean, once you, we, I mean, you and I both know Joe and I don't know if we've talked about on the podcast, but pain will alter movement.

even if it looks relatively good to the human eye. I mean, if you're trying to work around pain, you're not gonna be taking in good information and the outputs from your body are going to be different and not as, not what you'd want it to be all the time. So bringing down pain is going to have a carryover because you're just gonna feel generally better. You're probably not gonna wanna like slow down on your swing. You're not gonna be trying to make tweaks on the course if something's bothering you.

If it's pain afterwards, maybe you don't really care. You're just going to swing your swing and then deal with it afterwards. And then it's really what are the things that are causing pain and how can you give that stuff back so your body can then tolerate golf better? So it really just depends on the camp. I don't think in anything in life doing more fitness or more mobility is going to have a negative impact on your life unless it's a time commitment that you don't want to put in. So that's my time.

Joe LaVacca (10:55.66)
Right. Right. Well, I think the one thing I will say that you highlighted was the outlier thing. And I think it's really normal for clients to want to live on the edges. And whenever a client sort of says, well, well, what about John Daly? And then what about Michael Jordan? And what about LeBron James's feet? I'm like,

Joe Gambino (11:18.103)
Yeah.

Joe LaVacca (11:19.608)
good for them. There's 8 billion people on the world. There's going to be a lot of variations. There's going be a lot of luck. There's going to be a lot of hard work. There's going be a lot of different things that factor into your success. So sure, you can keep living on the edges and keep coming back with the same results. That would be the definition of insanity. Or we can forget that you are like anyone else on the planet and you are an individual and just work on the things that you need and then see where that leads us. So thank you for bringing up the outlier.

conversation.

Joe Gambino (11:50.151)
Maybe we'll we'll ship this in a follow up question here is. People tend to compare themselves or aspire based on professional sports and stuff like that, right? Like, this golfer swings like this, so I want to replicate my swing for this. this player who is a. Baseball, basketball, you name it right there, freak of athlete, and I want to be able to do their workouts right? Because look at what this person has accomplished.

Joe LaVacca (12:19.384)
Mm -hmm.

Joe Gambino (12:19.895)
What are your thoughts on that and have you seen that kind of pop up as themes when people come to see you and how are you navigating things like that?

Joe LaVacca (12:26.732)
Well, I kind of give the example of think about your signature, right? I mean, we all learn cursive in school, right? we, well, I mean, well, then how are people signing their name? This is that well, then this is a really big topic for me to understand. Is it, is it like, it's like PDF. You just, you just, it's a digital sign, it's digital signature now. that's true. I mean, Avery's going to be in, in fifth grade. don't.

Joe Gambino (12:35.777)
I don't know. Is it a thing anymore though? I don't know, Joe. I don't think people are wearing cursive anymore.

Capital letters. Smiley face or an X.

Joe LaVacca (12:56.32)
Am I recalling her learning script? I gotta go back and look at my dad files for that one. for most of the people we're working with, we all learned cursive and we had penmanship and we had all these different things. And as you look at everyone's signature, everything is unique about it. So we came from this base and maybe, okay, now we can start bringing this back to golf and basketball or how you throw a baseball and things like that. There's fundamentals. You're at Little League.

You're learning how to swoop your J and everything else. And then eventually as you keep practicing and practicing and practicing, you make it your own. So when we see athletes, because that's when we see them, they're already professional. They already have cameras on them. We've been following them, right? And now we're looking at their career in sort of this lens. That's their finished product of years and years and years of practice and repetition and fine tuning.

Don't mimic them because that was their unique end product. Go find yours, right? And if you want to have more options, and this comes back to that first question, hey, I think you might feel better in your swing if you had more rotation to the right, if you had more shoulder external rotation, if your foot was able to pronate. And guess what? If it can't, well then that would be what we would consider a constraint, right? Something that like.

stops you from creating that shape or motion and then how can we alter the environment for you? Maybe that's a different clubhead, maybe that's an orthotic, maybe that is then trying to mimic some different types of swings. But take your time, practice and build your unique movement signature. That's what I would say.

Joe Gambino (14:41.759)
I agree with that. think it, I mean, obviously anyone who's on Fresh Lively, those people are in general, genetically, you know, way more gifted than I would be from a movement perspective, a strength perspective, a power perspective, right? They're outliers in their own right, so to speak. But I don't think there's anything that I've ever done in life where going back and always focusing on basics hasn't been

Joe LaVacca (14:52.184)
Correct.

Joe Gambino (15:11.331)
helpful, right? So I think there's always like, you you need to spend some time working on the basics. You need to build that foundation and then you could expand upon it when you have it, but you still need to come back to basics. Like if I'm working fitness for somebody year round, there's always a block that is just general preparation for somebody, right? It's just how do we get you back to basics, make sure movement's good. And then depending on your sport or your goals, or as we're trying to get a little bit more specific.

Well, then we move in that direction. We always come back to basics. So I would just say, when in doubt, hit some of the basics. If you're just doing the normal, you know, flow of strength work, some mobility work, you're consistent, you're some basics from nutrition, right? Nothing that needs to be overly complicated, just protein, like don't eat processed foods, drink water, sleep enough. You do those things, which not a lot of people do well. Those are basics.

Joe LaVacca (15:57.292)
Yeah.

Joe Gambino (16:04.791)
you will see significantly more results than people who are trying all these crazy things.

Joe LaVacca (16:09.048)
Yeah, no, totally, totally. And, again, the, the, the, the sport athlete conversation really drives me crazy because. know, yeah. LeBron James playing for 20 years is kind of unheard of, you know, the average MBA career, I think is about five years. That's, that's on average. So that means that there are some people floating into the league and that last half a season, one season, two seasons, cause the average is five, right?

Joe Gambino (16:26.083)
His career is crazy.

Joe LaVacca (16:34.168)
I think in the NFL, it's been proven to show that it's been three years is your average career in the NFL. I think the highest is golf. think the highest is 10 years on average. I was looking at some data before just while we were kind of rambling on. But all professional athletes, and this was something that I just learned this morning, they retire on average at the age of 33. now you're looking at like, well, okay, I want to be like him. It's like, hey, Bob, you're 47.

you're done, dude. Like that's it. It's over for you. You're not going to go backwards and start learning how to dunk a basketball and, you know, have a golf swing like John Daly. Maybe 27 years ago would have been the time to practice. Now let's just go and have fun. You know, you're a dentist. You you, play golf every other weekend for, know, and your par is, you know, what's a handicap. Is that what the thing is called? See, I don't even know this. How would I know about golf? Your handicaps are 32, right?

Just why don't we just go back to having fun, man? Why don't we get you out of pain, give you a couple techniques, right? But I think that's a whole other thing that I get into with patients. But not so much anymore. think everyone's kind of, I think really, maybe since I switched populations to that persistent pain thing, not too many people are coming in and arguing with me that they have to look like LeBron James when they shoot or John Daly when they swing or anything like that. So luckily, yeah. sure, sure, sure.

Joe Gambino (17:55.111)
But it's more of the workouts. Like you see some things on Instagram about what they're doing. Tom Brady was a big one with his diet and stuff like that. like, yeah, that whole thing got really popular for a while just because mean, longevity, right? For Tom Brady was a thing. He's obviously one of the best to be quarterback, right? In football. So, you know, I think people gravitate towards where other people have had success, but that doesn't necessarily mean success for you, especially

Joe LaVacca (18:00.725)
the TB12.

Joe Gambino (18:23.297)
I mean, how can anyone who has a full -time job and kids and stuff like that, right? Like think about trying to do anything that Tom Brady did when that was his life. You know, it was his full -time job for how many years, right? That where he was able to put any, you know, all these are like, think, think it was Derek Henry. think he spends like, it was an outrageous number. I have a million might be overshooting it, but it was like that kind of money on his body. That's how much he spends a year to take care of his body, to play football.

Joe LaVacca (18:51.874)
Do you see what that guy looks like?

Joe Gambino (18:53.525)
Yeah, exactly. like, you know, I mean, his job is to get crushed by other human beings that are probably even bigger than him and tackled and hit. yeah, you have to do what you have to do to be. I mean, he's had actually a pretty long career. All right. So, you know.

Joe LaVacca (18:59.742)
Yeah.

Joe LaVacca (19:09.528)
He might rush for 3000 yards this year now that he's on actually like a really good team with a really good offensive line and he looks great. But I think, for people listening, if you're kind of struggling with this idea of pain and sport, you know, Joe just brought up sort of another really important thing. It's environment, right? It's like, where, where were you coming up in learning to, you know, your golf? Was it just with your dad on the weekends? Did you have a coach?

What were the sort of constraints to your equipment? Could you afford a country club? Could you afford the nicest golf balls, the newest attire? All of those things are going to potentially affect your performance. I always say this, there's a reason 31 teams passed seven times on Tom Brady. He wasn't good. He wasn't good enough to make it in the NFL, or at least that's what the going theory was.

And you can even make the same argument about Brock Purdy right now for you guys have heard of him, the 49ers quarterback. You know, last, close to the last pick in the draft, 31 teams had seven different opportunities to draft him and they were all like, no thanks. And then he gets put into a good system like Tom Brady with an amazing coach, amazing players, arguably the most talented team in the league. And he's able to excel because he just does what is asked of him. He does the basics.

So that's what I always tell my clients and athletes in pain. Hey look, get back to doing the basics. How can we regress your workout if you're having some pains with swings or rotation? Okay, well that's a power output. Maybe we need to just do something isometrically in rotation. Hey, you're having difficulty reaching your arm overhead to shoot or dunk. Okay, well maybe it's a range of motion thing. How can we maybe get you on more pulling rather than pressing?

For those listening, there's definite ways to modify your program. There's definite ways to lateralize exercises to get you back to the things that you want to do.

Joe LaVacca (21:19.948)
I don't know if you're... dude, you're muted.

Joe Gambino (21:23.267)
That's because my vacuum was going off. We'll finish this episode with a little bit of a story and then we'll see back for some new stuff in the next episode. But I have a client and just kind of going back to basics. He had neck pain for, I don't know, this is probably three to five years he's been going on for. He's seen chiropractors and all these things and nothing has really changed it. He's like, I'd go and I'd feel a little bit better. But then when I come back, it's...

Joe LaVacca (21:25.733)
Ha

Joe Gambino (21:52.993)
A day later, all my pain is back and he's the in -person, he's the first in -person I've worked with in quite some time. He's here in the community that I live in. And we've worked now together for three weeks and he has practically no pain. And it's because all we've done is work on basics. It's like, hey, you have some pain when you look to the left. Well, how can we restore that? Just gentle, easy movements to bring down pain. That was all we focused on in the beginning.

Now we're able to expand onto other body parts and he's doing pretty well, but it's just like, when you look at things from a movement perspective, just, Hey, if you can't reach overhead, well, how can you start to put together some of those pieces to build it up? Right? How can you maybe start in ranges that work for you and then build up to those deeper ranges that are painful? If you can't squat, how can you, depending on where your pain is, right? Like how do your ankles move? Your knees move, your hips move. Do you have the capacity to get in those positions without pain?

If you can't, you probably shouldn't be loading it, right? Because it's just going to cause more pain. So it's, it's kind of sounds like common sense, but I think when we always go back to the basics and really all we did with this person is how do we make sure your neck can rotate without pain? How can we make sure it flexes and extends? How can we start to build, bring down pain? Now it's more, how can we start to bring up some, some load to those tissues? And now we're expanding out into the shoulders, which has had surgery on, on the right side, which has also been giving them problems. That's also tied in.

So I give him some goals. Hey, these are the things that we're gonna work on his job is to just make sure those things are moving in the right direction They have every single session so far In the beginning I was actually nervous because I didn't think he was gonna be he wasn't consistent for like the first two weeks and also He's like sorry Joe. I started doing things again, and I'm actually feeling really good right now. I was like Yeah, I was to go knock on his door like But like it was like literally like

Joe LaVacca (23:38.326)
Yeah, and you live close by, so that's an issue, you know?

Joe Gambino (23:45.559)
I think we had two weeks before our next session and he didn't do anything for like the first week and a half. And then he just did everything literally. He just got consistent and he started being better. And that was a hurdle that he had somewhere else. So we're going back to basics. Be consistent with something. If you're kind of on and off and you're not sleeping and you're not recovered and you're not doing the things you know, you should be, you know, that's probably the first place to start is can you get consistent and can you do things? So I'll leave it there.

Fun episode, think. Joe, I love you. Listeners, I love you. And if you made it this far to the episode, extra love for you.

Joe LaVacca (24:16.161)
Damn, yeah, yeah.

I love you.