Unlocking Golf Performance: Stick Mobility, Yoga, and Breath Awareness with Lauren McMillin of YoGolf Performance and Neal Valera of StickMobility

Ever thought about how a simple tool like a stick could transform your golf game? Elevate your skills as we traverse the innovative world of Stick Mobility. Joined by Lauren McMillin , a renowned yoga and pilates teacher at YoGolfPerformance.com, and Neil Valera, the co-founder of Stick Mobility, we unveil the magic of stick mobility and how it's benefited golfers across the globe. We reveal our personal journey and witness first-hand the impact it had on our swings, balance, and overall mobility.

We journey beyond just enhancing your swings. We talk about how Stick Mobility can help us better understand our bodies and the instructions from our golf trainers. Lauren's yoga practice offers a fresh perspective, helping us gain a deeper understanding of our own bodies. From improving wrist mobility to building compensations for one-sided golf movements, we leave no stone unturned. 

Brace yourselves as we unravel how stick mobility strengthens golfers, enhancing their stability. We discuss the benefits of lighter weight exercises, single leg RDLs, Qi energy, the monkey hang, and the slap shot drill. We also peel back the layers on the critical role of breath awareness for performance. Tapping into the parasympathetic nervous system or evading injuries, stick mobility coupled with yoga and breathwork proves beneficial for all, not just golfers. Come connect with us on this enlightening journey of stick mobility.
You can find Lauren easiest on Instagram @yogolf_performance and www.ygp.uscreen.io. Also, go to www.StickMobility.com to get the sticks. Make sure to put in a 10 percent off code at checkout. The code is D2581D3587F. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome once again to another edition of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. This one was a good one, folks. I'm gonna highly recommend listening to this multiple times. I think you're gonna get a lot out of it. I know that we're approaching fall. Golf season is still quite in a full swing. However, for a lot of the country and in some parts of the world, it's gonna be winding down here pretty soon and I thought it would be prudent to put this one out with.

Speaker 1: 0:30

With Lauren McMillan, yogolfperformancecom, yoga teacher, pilates teacher, tpi certified, and my friend Neil Valera, co-owner, co-founder excuse me of stick mobility. Along with Dennis Dumfie, those two guys have created something very, very special. For those who are not familiar with stick mobility, stick mobility is quite an interesting concept. I think the use of dowels aren't necessarily for the people who stretch or work on their mobility with staff or a bow staff or a dowel, something like that, but these guys have taken it to another level Stick mobility. Basically what got me and I've been using them now for two years there are a couple long orange sticks and there's a small stick that you throw in there with the workout as well and what really got me when I first found stick mobility was strengthening muscles in their end range states. So what does that mean? Well, let's say, for example, in the golf swing, you're in the top of your backswing and you've got for. If you're right-handed, you've got your left arm pretty straight for the most part. You have some muscles that are taught in your back that are winding, comparable to a bow, and that are going to come down into the strike and deliver a powerful hit. Well, what stick mobility does, in a nutshell, in addition to a great stretch, it's active mobility. So you're strengthening as well as stretching, and I find that to be very interesting, in a hell of a lot more interesting when you're actually performing the movements.

Speaker 1: 2:17

Stick mobility has been around for a few years now and they are in a lot of locker rooms. Folks. There's a lot of guys and gals out on the major tours that use these things as part of their training protocols, and I myself have found them to be quite helpful and very convenient, because I've got a set in my living room where they're right in front of my TV, and I also have a set in my car that I use prior to a quick warm-up quick five, seven-minute warm-up if I don't have time to really get down and stretch before playing. The convenience of these things are fantastic and they're quite ingenious Stickmobilitycom. I would encourage everyone to go and check that out. I'm also going to put a link in the show notes, my own referral code for me. You can get yourself a little bit of a discount if you buy them. You buy them in a bundle. It seems to be a little bit of a better deal versus buying them individually, but you can use one or two sticks simultaneously and get a great stretch and a great workout.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Lauren has been on the podcast before. She's a regular. I'm going to call her the fitness advisor to the Flag Hunters Golf podcast. She is TPI certified, pilates certified, golf digest certified, a student of the game of golf. She has her own yoga practice there in Jackson, mississippi. As long as an online golf specific yoga platform, which is YoGolfPerformance YoGolfPerformancecom. I subscribe to her website. It's fantastic. She has great videos that really are specific to what you're looking for as long as taped yoga sessions, because not all of us are going to be in Mississippi with her. So she graciously tapes her sessions with her students and puts them on her website and they're fantastic.

Speaker 1: 4:22

And I got to tell you between stickmobility and really getting into the practice of yoga. For me, especially someone being 53 years of age has been quite a revelation and I think that I wish I would have started yoga at least because I don't think Neil and Dennis with stickmobility were around 20 years ago, but nonetheless, I think there was a great tagline I read the other day which is you're not getting old, you just need to get loose. And there's a lot of truth to that. When I started using the sticks with stickmobility, I really found myself opening up more in my hips, my back, my shoulders, my abductors pretty much a holistic body, loosening and just feeling better overall feeling just a greater sense of wellness. And when we feel good, life seems to flow just a little bit better and our golf games just flow a little bit better when we feel good physically. When we feel tight and bound up, it's going to be hard to make a proper swing and it just seems that everything, every task and normal everyday life, is just a bit more of a grind. The body is extremely smart. It's going to protect itself and unfortunately that can lead to some some improper swing action when the body is trying to protect itself.

Speaker 1: 5:58

So in closing of this long winded intro, once again go to stickmobilitycom. My little code is going to be in the show notes and that'll be available on all the platforms as well stickmobility. And then go and see Lauren McMillan over there at yogoffperformancecom. Yogoff is yoga specific for golfers, taking in her years of yoga training, tpi training, pilates training and blending it all into just one absolute glorious series of workouts and Lauren's video work and, by the way, she did that whole thing herself. So give Lauren a little bit of praise when you go to that website.

Speaker 1: 6:44

She is a one man, one woman working crew and doing a fabulous job at that, and her teachings have really helped me a lot. I've gained a little bit more depth in my backswing. My back feels better. More depth in my backswing means actually I can wind the bow a little bit more and exert a little bit more pressure on the shaft and into the golf ball. So I've gained a little bit of distance ever since I started this yoga practice about 90 days ago, and I'm going to recommend both protocols. Folks, there's a lot of great athletes out here that practice both and it's really going to help your golf game. I promise you that it's helped mine at 53. I'm going to continue to do these protocols with great regularity. Both are interesting, both focus on certain things that are required for mind body symmetry and connection, which is maybe the most important thing in the game of golf mind body cohesion. I can't think of anything that's more important. These two disciplines will undoubtedly get you there.

Speaker 1: 7:51

Thanks for listening. Folks have a great week and I also want to give a special thanks to Neil for coming on. He's a pretty busy guy juggling two toddlers and running a business running a very great company. Their customer service is off the charts good, they're completely transparent and they've got so many great training videos online. Both Neil and Dennis and shout out to them because they're only an hour away from me in San Jose as a little moderate.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Thanks, folks, for listening and once again, go to stickmobilitycom excuse me and go see Lauren over at yogulfperformancecom. Keep them straight, play smart and have a great week. Y'all. Hello and welcome to another edition of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. We got a special one today. Folks People that know me, play golf with me know that I've got a set of orange sticks in my car and every now and again I'll get the question of what are those things, and then inevitably, I teach them the bow and arrow and they immediately feel better. So we've got one of the co-founders on, neil Valera from Stick Mobility, and we also have the fitness instructor to the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast, yoggolf Performance Owner online yoga studio, lauren McMillan, coming from Jackson Mississippi. Hello and welcome everybody.

Speaker 2: 9:34

Hey, jesse, thanks for having us. Yeah, of course, neil, thanks for coming on.

Speaker 1: 9:37

Appreciate it. Neil, thanks for coming on, Thanks for taking the time to come on and enlighten the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast listeners about Stick Mobility, and I'm going to tell you before we begin. Those things have helped me out a lot, so a big shout out to you and your partner. Thank you for creating these things and turning back Father Time for me.

Speaker 3: 9:58

It's been a nice addition.

Speaker 1: 9:59

It's been a nice addition. So my routine I use them every day and I use them as a power down, sometimes at night before I go to bed, and I always wake up feeling great. And what's cool is you don't really need to mess with them for too long. Good 10, 15 minute flow is all you need to get the body feeling pretty good. Yeah, absolutely so. How did Stick Mobility begin, and who thought of it so?

Speaker 3: 10:24

I've been training since 2007. And in 2014, dennis and I we started learning from a doctor in Santa Cruz that taught stick stretching, and we were just using bamboo rods and we're doing a lot of passive stretching with it and we're like, wow, this is really great. But there's definitely a missing element to this and we learned more. We learned, you know, you basically combine certain yoga postures and then use a stick for leverage to get you a bigger stretch. But with our strength training background, we started to add an isometrics, we started to flex the stick in different directions and ultimately, we needed something stronger.

Speaker 3: 11:03

What would happen with bamboo is that it would start to work right and then it would stay worked. And then we started to use we tried PVC. It works, but it's a little brittle, and then you have that there's that chance of it shattering on you. So then I got together with one of my clients who had the resources to basically figure out what kind of materials are best, and then we came up with what you're using right now. So it's a really strong blend of plastics, and the first iteration had basically a tennis wrap on it, and so this was in 2000 and early, late 2015, early 2016. And those things they worked. But you know, after a while just like tennis grips, right, you had to change them out all the time. So I'm like why don't we start using something like a golf grip?

Speaker 3: 11:47

So, we figured out a rubber that would work, slides on and then if you have that version, you can tell there's some texture on them. So you get some feedback in your hands. You can anchor them into the ground really well, and that's kind of how it started. I came up with a name but Dennis and I created the whole program with everything that we knew I'm a big fan.

Speaker 1: 12:08

I love it. It's really helped me a lot and you'll tell us really the importance of using stick mobility and how it can benefit people to not only get mobile, more mobile, but the really one thing that caught my attention when I first discovered you guys was strengthening an area, particularly a muscle in an elongated state, and I think that was the first time I'd ever heard of that. But it also made sense to me right away and I felt that phenomenon happen within my own body. Talk about that a minute.

Speaker 3: 12:48

Yeah, so essentially, when we're using the training sticks I talked about it earlier it gives you leverage, right. So you're able to get your body or a specific joint into a position that you may not have been able to get to without it. So once you get to that position let's just say, getting your arm overhead and getting into maybe a hang, now your arms overhead, maybe you can't get your arm overhead without the help. Now, once you're in that position, you can start to drive and take into the ground. You could take your other hand, you push into it, you could flex it in a certain direction. So now we're building some strength in there and building more awareness within that joint, within that whatever shape you maybe try to get into.

Speaker 3: 13:27

So you talked about the bone arrow, right? So you're getting into this side then. So with the bone arrow, you have to use your strength to get into the position, but then the stick allows you to maybe get a little bit further because you have something to pull and push into. So but now that we're in these positions, we can create strength safely using isometrics, whereas if we tried to, maybe, let's just say, you got into a big side then and you picked up a heavy load and your body wasn't quite prepared for it. I mean, the chances of injury might be higher.

Speaker 3: 13:55

This way we can just gradually expose you to a light tension. So maybe you say, hey, noah, let's go at 10 percent effort here. And then, if you feel safe and you feel good and you have that confidence, you can start to ramp that tension up more and more and more. Go 30, 40, 50, 60 percent, learn how to breathe through it and now your body feels, it feels safe, it feels good and you're like OK, I can do this. And then you can start to apply that to different athletic motions. Thoughts Lauren.

Speaker 2: 14:22

I love it. I mean, I just see, now we're talking right before this. I teach yoga and Pilates to golfers and we're talking about how you know like oftentimes if I'm working one on one with somebody, it might be using Pilates apparatus like the reformer or the chair or a prop of some sort, where you do get that feedback in that leverage, and you're able to apply more control and stability and to be able to move in a safer and many times more effective way. What I love about the mobility sticks is that you can get that same impact and you can have that same experience without having to spend like thousands of dollars on something bulky and ginormous like Pilates equipment. I love how mobile it is, I love how portable it is, and it just seems like the ease of use in the barrier to entry is so low that I mean correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like golfers of any level, whether that be their golf skill or even where they are in terms of their fitness, can use these right away.

Speaker 3: 15:20

Yeah, absolutely so. You know we have a lot of clients that are older, you know, in their their 70s and 80s, and that, whether they play golf or want to just get back into exercise, it just gives them that confidence that, hey look, this is not that intimidating. But at the same time it gives me access to different ranges that they may not have been able to get into in a really long time.

Speaker 1: 15:43

That's well said and I can certainly echo that last statement, neil. And in my case, as we were talking earlier, before we started I didn't play any golf for virtually 10 years. I didn't do a lot of stretching or mobility work Also. So what the sticks provided me when I first got them was that real crucial feedback that I needed and how it translated into my golf swing. There's it's a two part statement here I'm going to make.

Speaker 1: 16:16

First was I didn't know I was telling Lauren this early. I didn't know that my right side which is interesting, my right side was a little bit tighter than my left number right handed golfer. And what was what was happening, manifesting in my golf swing, was I was unable to really pivot through the strike because my right side Hogan talked about having three right sides and three right hands was virtually protecting itself. So I was early extending and raising the handle and flipping my hands, but I didn't realize that a lot of it had to do with my mobility. My right side, particularly my QL, and my right hip, right abductor, my whole right side, was out of balance and when I started using the sticks and really felt that that translated into the range that I can do basically practicing or on the golf course. It increased the awareness but it didn't really take long for the pain and the soreness and the stiffness to go away through consistent training.

Speaker 1: 17:21

But that bow and arrow position has been huge for me. I can't, I can't overstate that, I really can't and I don't know. Neil, you could probably explain it best to the listeners what the bow and arrow is. Just explain that real quick, because it's a. It's a big exercise, at least for me it was.

Speaker 3: 17:38

Well, you know I think probably golfers listening here basically, if you think about impact position, right that's, it's a side bend, yeah, side bend, with some rotation. Now a bow and arrow allows you to get into a bigger side bend. So you're basically standing with your feet straight ahead. Now, if you're standing on a clock, let's just say, the stick is out to your three o'clock position and now you're going to get both hands on the stick. So your, your right hand is going to go right in the middle of the stick, the left hand is going to come over the top of your body to the top end of the stick and then from there you essentially push your body away from the stick and then push your hands into the stick. So it's going to create this bone, the stick.

Speaker 3: 18:18

But then now, if you think about what's happening with the other side as you push into the stick, that other side is lengthening but at the same time you're strengthening it because you have to push the stick down, you have to pull into it. So it's not just a passive bend, we're putting some energy into it. And then what you'll find is you're not only lengthening that, that one side, that short, shortened side that's bending into. So let's just say, your right handed you know your right side is what's what's being crunched at impact in a golf swing. So now you're strengthening that crunch side. So you're oblique, you're quewell, you're lat as you push the stick into the ground. That's the best way I could explain it without visually showing you.

Speaker 1: 19:00

Yeah, that's a great explanation too. And how I can translate that into the golf swing is you know, the body is so smart that it will unconsciously protect itself from injury, which was the manifestation with me, and that turned into a pivot stall, a flip and a lot of inconsistent ball striking. So, as I was saying before, if your body isn't mobile enough to swing, biomechanically it's going to be compromised, and I think that goes understated quite a bit in the golf, the golf instructional landscape today. You know, in comparison to the swing, golf swing analysis, for example If your body isn't strong, mobile, supple enough to support swinging the way that you would want to swing, it's just you're not going to swing correctly.

Speaker 1: 19:54

And I was telling Lauren earlier, when I started getting into playing again after raising kids after 10 years, my back was sore, my right hip was sore, my right shoulder was sore and I was thinking to myself what in the hell is this? I've never experienced this before in my life. Well, you know, when you reach 40 and over, you're not recovering as quickly and you're losing mobility and flexibility quickly, man, if you don't stay on top of it. So when I got the sticks and started doing the QL, I noticed I hit it better after about three weeks, noticeably, and that part I need to overstate. And I didn't do anything different to my golf swing. There wasn't a different thought, there wasn't a different pattern. I was trying to ingrain it's my body was ah, okay. So now those areas you can really rip through the shot.

Speaker 1: 20:48

I had a hard time hitting a cut shot. I had a really hard time, you know sustaining, you know pressuring the shaft and really rotating left and pivoting after the strike. I had a hard time doing that. So I had a hard time hitting a cut shot and in all of a sudden I had unconsciously had permission to hit a cut shot because my body was loose and strong and I was just after three weeks of working on those things and that's a couple of years ago and I played 36 holes quite a bit and I'm not sore ever. 53. That's great man. Yeah, a lot of it has to do with you guys. A lot of it has to do with what Lauren's teaching me as well. But the two go hand in hand nicely. Yoga and the sticks go hand in hand very, very well.

Speaker 2: 21:31

So that's Well something that I wanted to add on to that. And, Jesse, you and I have talked about this before. The golf swing is a movement that is so one-sided and talking about like compensations being built in the body. If all you do, if the only kind of form of exercise or sport that you play is golf, or if you're a baseball player and you're only throwing with your right arm, obviously your right arm is gonna be moving a lot differently than your left arm. So I'm always looking at ways to kind of help my golfers and my clients recreate that balance in their bodies. And I'm curious to know more about, like Neil, from your perspective. How do you all use the sticks to help kind of restore balance in the body and to kind of even out some of these muscle imbalances, to eliminate compensations, to kind of bring people back into this place of alignment where they're not getting off the course and having these tremendous aches and pains or they're not feeling limitations in their swing because of the imbalances that they're experiencing.

Speaker 3: 22:29

You know, I think the way we look at it is, instead of thinking about the imbalances you know, like the golf swing might cause, and trying to take those away, because some of those are necessary, especially the higher level you get right, your body is gonna compensate because that's hey, look, this is, if you're a kicker, same kind of thing, right, I don't wanna take some of these things away, but I don't wanna take away. I want you to have the ability to do everything you can do in your normal life, right? So if we start to lose our basic abilities is where we go all right, we need to make sure we have those. So, with the sticks, a great way to do it is you can do everything single stick and so that you'll do one side at a time and you can tell a big difference between the sides. So now, if we're doing a basic lunge with a hang on there and you can't rotate one direction, that's a problem right on one side. So that's an easy way to balance it out there.

Speaker 3: 23:23

We can do certain single leg exercises with the sticks and we can tell hey, is the left side moving as well as a right, or close enough? You know, maybe one side's always gonna be a little bit stronger because we just have so many reps on that one side from golf or baseball or throwing or whatever it is that we may not be able to bring perfect balance, and I think that's okay. But I think if we start to lose that ability somewhere else in our daily life, then that's the biggest issue there. So you could start with single sticks you know, see how things go there and then you can do double stick work too, to add on top of that.

Speaker 2: 24:00

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and tagging right off of that, will you explain for people who aren't familiar, the difference is between all the different sticks that you'll offer. Yeah, so yeah, you know the heights and sizes and go ahead.

Speaker 3: 24:14

So we have two long sticks and those are height dependent, right. So if you're five, nine and shorter, you would wanna use two six footers. If you're five, 10 and taller, then you'd wanna use the two seven footers. And so those are gonna be used the majority of the time for our system. So we'll use them for our big active stretches. We'll use it for strength training, because you can do partner strength training, that where you're trying to resist someone flexing the stick.

Speaker 3: 24:42

I don't know if I can, I can explain that without showing. Let's just say that you were holding the stick there just across your right in front of your chest, and I tried to flex it, but I didn't want you to rotate or bend. You would have to basically resist it and you'd have to figure out how to organize your body in a way that you could contract all your muscles and not let me move you, if that makes sense. So those are gonna be used the majority of the time. The short stick we'll use for certain joint mobilizations. So whether it's like we'll go through every single joint, from the feet to the hips, to the spine, to the wrist, it's just a lot easier to control than the six or seven footer, so that's typically why we'll use the shorter stick.

Speaker 1: 25:24

And I wanted to add something also, too, with my experience with the sticks folks, I but, tagging back to the awareness part, I didn't realize that I actually was not very balanced, like my weight, like I wasn't balanced and some of the flows that you guys have. By the way, stick mobility has great flows on YouTube and Instagram pretty much every day, don't you still? You still have that.

Speaker 3: 25:51

Yeah, I think on YouTube we probably have like eight or 900 videos and then we try to post something every single day on social media.

Speaker 1: 25:58

Yeah, some of the flows are fantastic and using the sticks also has helped me just with my general overall balance and that's translated into my swing motion nicely. But just in life, for example, I tripped over something the other day and I caught myself. I didn't jar anything or whatever, and I'm not a small guy, I'm 6'2", 210 pounds and I attributed that I walked to my car and I said man, I'm really glad I'm using those sticks, cause that's been a big awareness thing and helped me with my balance. Talk about that, both of you and how important that is balance, especially as we age, it's a big deal.

Speaker 2: 26:39

Well, I was just thinking, looking at the videos, and from what I've seen, I love that the movements they work on balance and weight shift and moving through all three planes of motion in a way that is very mindful, and you're doing it in a very intentional way where you're not rushing through it, you're not just like trying to get in like an incredibly fast hit workout. It's very intentional and I think that just pays off so much when it comes to exactly what we were talking about creating balance in a very kind of well-rounded way. That translates, of course, off the golf course.

Speaker 3: 27:16

Yeah, I think the sticks provide a lot of feedback for you, from your hands to your feet, and then all the different positions we get you in. Once we start to add shifting and rotation, it makes you pressure different parts of your foot. So as you're going through all these different motions now, you have a sense of the ground a lot better. So now, whether you're taking a step, you'll be able to find your footing better, or maybe when you're making your golf swing, you can understand how to pressure the ground in the right way to get the most out of it.

Speaker 1: 27:49

Yeah, that's very well said. Yeah, Lauren, anything to add on that?

Speaker 2: 27:54

Well, and what you explained earlier, describing how, when you're holding the stick, how you're pulling up with one side but you're pressing down with the other that is such an interesting way to teach people how to use the ground and to activate ground reaction forces. Because when I'm trying to teach that, yes, I can try to explain to somebody drive your feet through the floor and nine out of 10 times I'll get it. But every now and then they might not yet have the awareness to kind of make that connection between their brain and their feet. But I think that's that kind of pushing motion, digging into the ground that clicks pretty instantly and that can translate a lot faster than not using the sticks and that's huge for balance, for weight shift, for power, for all of these things that we're talking about.

Speaker 3: 28:37

Yeah, absolutely. I mean anytime you can get more feel you're just gonna be more athletic.

Speaker 1: 28:42

Yeah, that's a big point. That's such a massive component to using the sticks Is that feedback? And it's intuitive. A lot of it is intuitive. Your body's gonna start talking to you because you've got these sticks that are putting you in positions and pressuring different parts of your feet. I love that, by the way, neil, and really accessing awareness to different parts of the body, and for those of us who are continuously trying to get better playing golf, that's, the two go hand in hand seamlessly, in my opinion.

Speaker 1: 29:21

A lot of I'm gonna keep mentioning the bow and arrow and also, too, there's a couple other things that I wanna talk about as far as with wrist mobility and how to use the sticks with that, but while we're on the subject, there's you could feel the pressures in your hands and in your feet when you're in these movements, and I love the three planes of motion because your hands and your feet are lighting up, feeling what's happening, feeling where you can be stiff or maybe where you're weak, and then, when you start to put two and two together, maybe that might be the reason why your golf instructor is having a hard time getting you to where you need to be in your golf swing and I'm gonna keep repeating that over and over again. My experience I never would have thought in a million years that my right side would be inhibiting. Being a right hander, I mean, I am very right handed, I do everything right handed pretty much that it could be inhibiting me to properly rotating through the strike. And then you add the awareness component with ground force when you do these specific movements with the sticks, for example, one of the flows that I absolutely love was feeling pressuring the stick and then having the instructor say what does that feel like in your feet and how can you translate that into your swing motion or whatever that you're doing? I know I'm repeating myself, but it bears repeating. And what's really cool is I found my extra gear again. Everybody wants the extra gear and I found that again. I'm going to directly credit you, neil, for inventing these things, for finding that extra gear. I used it the other day. Oh man, it was huge. It was lost forever. You hear it on the telecast a lot if you watch golf. Oh, you know, he or she really put it in the extra gear there.

Speaker 1: 31:19

Well, there's something to that. There's a mobility aspect and there's also the aspect, as I'm translating, of using the ground. And you're not going to use the ground if you're not mobile. You're not going to use the ground if your ankles are stiff, if you don't have any awareness of your feet, if your abductors are super tight. You know that whole kinetic chain coming from the ground If you're not loose and mobile and oily, it's just, it's going to be impossible to really extract that precious energy.

Speaker 1: 31:49

You know, and I've gotten some comments of folks saying, well, you know, the ground really isn't that important, and I say, well, why don't you try to hit a golf ball suspended in midair? You'll see how important the ground is. So all of this stuff really trains the whole swing action, the awareness component, nicely and really getting that valuable feedback. I went out and played the other day and I used the sticks for warm up, proper warm up before playing and I felt, you know, maybe I wasn't quite as loose and my left lat as I want to be and that right there gives me an additional awareness of, hey, today might not be a good day to be trying to swing hard at it. Today just might be a cruiser day, might be a 70, 65% day you can play golf that way, but I didn't have that awareness prior to having these things, which I think for me is very, very important. Playing competitively and being a little bit on the older side chronologically has really helped me quite a bit. Lauren, you want to add to that?

Speaker 2: 32:54

Well, from an aging perspective, I mean, I'm of the mindset of like, use it or lose it. You know, I have some golfers that I work with that are in their 70s and climbing and they have been working on their mobility and they move so much better than golfers that are my age, that are in their 30s, and it's remarkable to see the difference that doing this kind of work makes. And it's not just a matter of stretching, which, again, like I've said this before, if that's all you're doing, then that's a really good starting point. It's better than nothing, but it's so much more complex than that. There's so much more that goes into it and, like I keep saying, it goes so far beyond what happens on the course. These are movements that will benefit how you move and how you feel on a day-to-day basis, how you move through your life, how you sleep, how you do anything. So to find something like stick mobility that can really support all of those efforts and yeah, it, just to me it's a no-brainer I'm like I think everybody needs to start using these. And actually I have a follow-up question, speaking of everybody should use these.

Speaker 2: 34:08

Neil, will you talk for a second about and this is something you touched on a little bit when using the sticks, I think mobility is probably first and foremost, but there's also that strength and stability component, like with the isometric work. So looking at the difference, kind of generally speaking, the difference between male and female golfers, I find that a lot of female golfers, like myself included, are already in a position where we're super mobile, really flexible, and maybe strength and stability is more needed. So for female golfers, how can they use the sticks to maybe increase that strength to? Maybe it's more about building the ground reaction forces? Why should they use it instead of just seeing the word mobility in the name, being like oh, I already got a lot of mobility, I'm good.

Speaker 3: 34:59

Well, depending on their level, right, if they're maybe apprehensive to strength training, it's a great way to start to get them into these different, so that the monkey-hank position that we use is essentially a lunge position, with your arms overhead and your hanging. So that requires quite a bit of strength in your upper body or lower body, depending on how much weight you want to put into your legs or your arms. So we can start there and say, hey, you know what we need to build your mobile, but we need your legs stronger. And we're going to strengthen your legs in this big split stance or lunge, because you're in this lengthened position on one side. We're just going to strengthen this front leg. So I want you to you're going to have the sticks for support, but I only want you to put, let's just say, 20% effort in your hands, right. So now that's going to put the emphasis on the legs and then, while we're there, what they can start to do is okay, I want you to start to rotate the sticks back and forth, almost like you were swinging through monkey bars. So they're going to get this nice thoracic rotation while still driving the sticks into the ground. So they are going to build some strength in the shoulders and the grip, but now they're, they're leg. You're going to have to deal with some rotational forces and have to balance, have to build that stability there. We can do that for time right. So the the sticks give them enough stability so that they can stay under tension for 30 seconds a 60 second, isometric maybe and then we can switch sides. Or now let's say hey, you know what we want to build a little bit more strength in your grip and in your upper body and your shoulders. Let's put 50% of the weight in your legs and put 50% of the weight in your arms. So now they're really, they're actually feeling like they're hanging, like they're on a pull-up bar, but now they have that added aspect of rotation. That rope grip that you're holding on the sticks is more like it's basically like you're holding on to a golf club. So that translates really well for grip strength, and we know important grip strength is for golf. So I mean that's that's one way you could do it just from one exercise. As far as programming goes and you know it's like we were talking about earlier that intention, right, is it? Where do you want to put it? Do you want to put the emphasis on the lower body, the upper body.

Speaker 3: 37:00

The other things we can do with the sticks is we can use them to help with balance.

Speaker 3: 37:03

So if we're doing some single leg drills, maybe they can't hinge from a single leg.

Speaker 3: 37:09

So now we can start to do an assisted RDL or a deadlift, if people are more familiar with that, so we can start to train a single leg deadlift motion. We can start to drive the sticks into the ground for more stability. As you drive the sticks into the ground, you're going to get that increased feedback into your midsection and your lats. So you're going to create the stronger connection from your hips all the way through your hands and in the feet and then from there, once they feel like they have enough stability and strength, we can say, hey, you know what, let's let go of the sticks, let's go ahead and grab a weight and now you can start doing some deadlifts with some load, and I've taken some women through a progression using the sticks just for that deadlift. Maybe we spend a bunch of three or four weeks doing a bunch of isometrics with the sticks and then they're immediately able to go feel stable with 10 to 15, even 20, 30 pounds in each hand.

Speaker 2: 37:58

That is really cool. I didn't think about kind of building up to being able to do strength training with bigger weights, because I think I'm sure you've seen this before, which is maybe exactly why I'll do it this way. When people want to build strength, often they just go straight to the weight rack and try to lift as heavy as they can, but that runs into problems when their form is off, when their alignment is not ideal for their body and they're not giving that kind of individual attention that their joints and their muscles need. But I love that build up first of making sure that they have the right balance, the right stability, they're hinging at the right joints, they're moving in a way that their body is designed, and then you're adding the extra weight. I think that's absolutely brilliant.

Speaker 3: 38:42

It's a nice entry point for anyone men, women, children. It's just the easy way to eat. I don't want to say trick them, but you're putting them in these same positions that they would be doing weightlifting. They just don't really correlate it like that.

Speaker 2: 39:00

Well, and a lot of times. I think that lighter weight or less weight can be harder in many ways, because you're not relying on putting all your body weight into that weight. You have to use more of your core strength. Yeah, it challenges the body and the brain in different ways and I think they're both valuable.

Speaker 1: 39:17

Yeah, well said, I could definitely echo that sentiment too. Some of the balance procedures that you guys have, neil, with the RDLs the single leg RDLs were the ones that identified my deficiency and my balance. Just by doing those pretty consistently for about four weeks, I steadily got my balance back, and I do check in with that. The single leg RDLs are really, really good, by the way. It feel amazing. You get great feedback and for me, the balance point being the core. You hear that the core. I call it Qi energy or the Qi core, if you will. That really gets the practitioner the awareness of that as well. And have that being a balance point when you're doing some of these a one-sided drill or a single leg drill that adds that component as well.

Speaker 1: 40:15

Talk about strengthening the core. Some of the exercises that you guys prescribe and have do that as a happenstance, which I think is going to lead me to. When you're doing some of these movements and some of these flows, you're really getting a lot of bang for your buck. You're not only working maybe one specific thing or two specific things, but there's a lot of things that are going on, which is, I mean, I think it's brilliant. Let's talk about that. Some of the after effects, like, for example, real quick, my shoulders have gotten a lot more limber just by not even trying, just by using the sticks. Talk about that because I think that's really worth repeating, really worth explaining.

Speaker 3: 41:03

With our basic drills, our intent was to essentially give your body enough so that you can do whatever activity you want to do, anything you want to do in life. We're putting you in different positions. We talked about the monkey hang. So that's a lunge or a split stance. So just that in itself is going to strengthen your legs, but it's going to start to expose you to somewhat of a single leg stance. But when you're in a split stance your body has to balance. Now, in that monkey hang, your torso has to rotate, your arms have to get overhead. So we think that everyone should be able to hang right, have enough grip strength to hang from a pull up bar, a tree, whatever it is. With enough leg strength, we want you to be able to get up off the ground. That's a big thing for us. So being able to go all the way down in a full lunge, tap your knee on the ground, come up, that's a great goal.

Speaker 3: 41:54

We have our slap shot drill, which starts to get into the lateral motions. So it's essentially like a lateral lunge with hipshifting. So we get that slide side to side. You're starting to open up the hips, but now you're starting to deal with some lateral motions. And then you start to add the rastic rotation with that, which is basically everything in sports, right From your combining lateral motion with your legs to rotating your upper body. So whether it's cutting, whether it's pitching, golf swing, hockey, all of it, it's all right there. So that's kind of a nice way to make sure that you have it, and if you don't have it, it's an easy way to get into it so that you can start. Hey, I haven't done this in a long time. Now I'm going to start going to skate. I'm going to go start to play hockey again. Or I want to start loading up some lateral lunges with some big weights, or maybe you're doing some skater hops or something like that, something more explosive.

Speaker 3: 42:49

And then we have our RDL hip series. Jesse, I don't know if you've gone through some of the standing hip drills, yep. So a lot of times we'll combine that with the RDL. And what you're doing there is we're starting to strengthen that internal, external rotation of the hip, which is I mean, it happens in almost every motion you do, whether you're sitting down. If you want to create power and also take away stress from your lower back, you have to have hip internal rotation, external rotation. So those are some components that we wanted to include in there, and do it in a simple way where you could literally do those three exercises, like you said five, 10, 15 minutes a day. And if you do it every day, you will start, you'll get more coordinated, but over time you'll get stronger and you're just accumulating time in these positions so that when you're exposed to them, wherever you're at, you'll feel comfortable. Like that, you fall into a lunge. You're like, oh OK, I've been here before, this isn't foreign to me, I know what's going on.

Speaker 1: 43:48

Yeah, the slap saw drill is that one was a real telling how tight my hips were and, interestingly enough, I do the slap shot every day and it's exactly what Neil said. You're basically doing a side lunge and you're leaning into it, you're pressuring the stick, and it really helped me with my hips, helped me with my low back. It's really got me in my so as as well. I could really feel that thing loosening up a little bit by doing that. And also, too, another thing that I found was I hold my breath and you can't really, you know, working on movement and mobility and whatever flow that you're going to choose, if you hold your breath, you're really doing yourself a big disservice. And that was a massive light bulb that went off in my head, because now, if I'm, if I'm doing anything from from Lauren, any yoga stuff from Lauren I mean, that's Lauren. We, you and I both know how important breathing is, but that really started as a result for me, as a result of doing the sticks, and I think a lot of people hold their breath.

Speaker 2: 45:00

Oh, my goodness, yes, yes, the number of times that that I'm working with people and I have to remind them to breathe every single time. Everybody does it, if they're not aware of it or thinking about it.

Speaker 3: 45:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's natural. You know you get into this position that you haven't been in before and I don't know. Your body is just kind of naturally scared and you kind of hold on to things. So, yeah, we always tell people, hey, look, only go to a position where you can breathe, or maybe you get into the position and you can figure out how to breathe, otherwise you've probably gone too far. Yeah, if you see someone's face change waiting, you're like, hey, man, you got to get it back off a little bit yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 45:37

Yeah, that's, that's pretty cool. Yeah, that was also a big, big piece for me. And continually I remind myself when I, when I'm warming up with sticks or I'm getting into some deep stretching, powering down at night, I just have to remind myself to breathe. Breathe into that spot. You know doing the. You know breathe into my sides If I'm doing the bow and arrow. Breathe into it If I'm doing a single leg something. Breathe into my feet, you know. Breathe into my core if you will just something. You know energy. Energy goes where you put your attention to it. And the whole breath breathwork part component of this thing is pretty big and I think that you set it spot on Neil breathing until you. If your body is starting to hold your breath and it's scared that you know that's a, that's a pretty good indicator that maybe you've gone too far.

Speaker 3: 46:33

So there's a self regulatory component with this as well and what we're talking about you know with with the golfers I train, I'll tell them to on the golf course when they start to freak out, get nervous. It's like just go to your breath. It's kind of the same same thing right there Breath is huge.

Speaker 1: 46:48

Lauren, yoga instructor extraordinaire. That's a big part of your practice, isn't it? Breathing.

Speaker 2: 46:55

Oh, 100%. Yeah, I always tell people I'm like, if all you're doing at the end of this is breathing, then we're good, just keep breathing, please. But yeah, no, you're exactly right. It translates to so much and I think I think, as a society, people generally do not know how to breathe and when they say that they're like what are you like what? Of course we know how to breathe.

Speaker 3: 47:18

And.

Speaker 2: 47:18

I'm like, yes, but not really. I think people don't really understand how to fully utilize their diaphragm, how to fully kind of utilize their respiratory system in a way that is going to support their nervous system as opposed to hindering it. We're all stuck in this kind of shoulders hiked up, breathing into our neck muscles, this fight or flight stance, and we just kind of move through life that way. And then when we go out to the golf course and try to have a nice relaxed, fun time, we, as hard as we try, we can do it. We try. We can't really because our bodies think that we're still in that really stressed out state. But when we learn to tap into the breath and to breathe more deeply and more fully and to relax all these accessory muscles, that translates so far beyond what we're feeling physically and it kind of washes through our systems mentally, emotionally, and it just has a cascading effect. So yeah, the breath is important.

Speaker 1: 48:17

Such a good explanation. I love it. You know what are your thoughts on it.

Speaker 3: 48:21

In closing, on that, it frees you up if you can control it, yeah, yeah, without a doubt.

Speaker 1: 48:29

What's interesting too in going through, you know I'm going to keep saying the bow and arrow, going into the bow and arrow I really focus on when my breath starts to get a little bit tight.

Speaker 1: 48:43

It's a really great thing for me to be aware of and it just translates into my day as well. You know, the difference between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system is massive, and we want to really tap into the parasympathetic as much as we can. And what's cool is you get really aware of how you're breathing when you're in these positions, whether you're using stick mobility or whether you're a yoga practitioner or Pilates, and there's something that you're asking your body to do. When you breathe into that it's, you are giving yourself permission to really explore those ranges of motion. I mean, it just helps with everything, helps with circulation, everything, and also, too, it's almost like you said, neal, it's a barometer as well of if you're breathing a little bit shallow, then maybe you're going too far. You know the body changes every day. Some days you're going to be loose, some days you're not going to be loose. But to be aware of that is really huge, and the breath is a big part of that, and you two are a huge part of that.

Speaker 2: 49:47

I was just going to say when we we know how to pay attention to the breath and we start to pay attention to it, it can tell us quite a bit about ourselves and what's going on, just like getting into a position and you're suddenly holding your breath. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 50:01

So, um boy, I'm loving this conversation y'all, I really am. I think this is important. You know, one of the things too that, um, that folks need to. You know I would encourage folks to think about this is a when you know this is a golf podcast. I mean this can translate to any athletic endeavor, in my opinion, uh, and in life.

Speaker 1: 50:23

But for golfers, particularly where awareness is so big and it's, it's hard to correlate instructional commands if you're not aware of what's happening within your body. You know, if you're deficient in your glutes, for example, and you're trying to get more explosive, say you're, you know you're, you're going, you're doing speed training, and if you've got, if you're not aware of what's going on down there, it's going to be very hard for your body to accept any commands that you're trying to give it. And the one thing that I found with stick mobility that was so huge for me, in addition to the breath, was those awareness, those deep, intimate awarenesses of the body parts, which and how I can correlate and translate that into my golf swing. You know, I do some drill work every day with my golf swing and I am more aware now than I ever have been at any point in my life and that is directly correlated to using the sticks, without a doubt. Um, I take lessons from John Erickson and Brad Hughes and Billy McKinney. If they, if I, if I sent them a video of my golf swing and they tell me you know, I need to work on or think about or become more aware of, I correlate it and connect it that much more faster because of the work that I've done with the sticks. You know, getting in some of these deeper positions, having awareness of the breath, working on balance, it all ties in together. It really does. And I think that If you're going to play this game at a high level, this part of your training I'm generally speaking is paramount, it's key and it's mandatory because I mean, I want to play golf, I want to still shoot under par when I'm 70, if possible, and this is undoubtedly a great pathway to do it. And I'm going to pick both your brains before we end here and how important this conversation is.

Speaker 1: 52:31

Also that we haven't touched on to injury prevention. I mentioned it before. I'm 53. If I don't work on this stuff, things are going to start breaking and it's not going to be very fun to recover from. I don't want to get any of my rotator cuffs worked on if I'm 53. Are you kidding me? Or blow out an Achilles, or blow out a knee, blood and ACL or an MCL, or have bad back muscles, or I don't want any of that. So, both of you being experts in this field, how important is what we're talking about to injury prevention? Anyone can start, because it's a big one.

Speaker 2: 53:13

I was going to say it's critical. It's absolutely vital whether you are trying to prevent injury, to just support your joints, how they move, how you support them. But I was also thinking too of, yes, it's important to help you move and feel as best as you can now and as you're getting older. But even sometimes, when we have conditions pop up that might be genetic, that all the injury prevention in the world won't prevent, if you inherit some form of arthritis or things like that, even then you can still benefit so much from doing this kind of work, from getting that mobility in your joints, from nourishing them in that way. It might not be a cure for what you're experiencing, but it's going to make your quality of life so much greater and the quality of how you move and feel, both on and off the course. So, yeah, I think it's everything Neal. What do you think?

Speaker 3: 54:08

I think you talked about it best earlier just that simple statement of use it or lose it. So all the mobility training, it's just going to help your joints. You're going to expose your joints to all these different positions. You're going to be able to contract the muscles around them, keep them healthy and then, with whatever activity you do, a lot of the stuff that we're doing is not super, super intense, although you can make it really intense. So it is going to support what you like to do, so that you can go do intense activities. But yeah, just that quality of life. That's the biggest thing for us is making sure that you can enjoy activities you like, but make sure that in your daily life you can do everything you want.

Speaker 2: 54:50

Yeah, it's all extremely fun and what people need.

Speaker 1: 54:52

Yeah, and I'm going to encourage everybody to go to stickmobilitycom and check them out. Thanks to Neal and the team at stickmobility, they gave me a unique code to go out and get a little bit of a discount and also to check out Lauren as well at yogulfperformancecom. Lauren has a great membership and has a ton of videos out there for anything that might ALU or anything that you want to work on, and hopefully this conversation will inspire folks to take a, to take a serious look at this, because if you're going to, if you, if you want to play golf well and feel good and not feel like you know what after or be limited to what you can do, check out stickmobility, check out Lauren at yogulfperformance I'm going to make sure that I have all of Neal's information in the links as it relates to stickmobility and get yourself a pair of sticks. They've been, I could tell you personally.

Speaker 1: 55:59

I am very passionate about them. I feel very strongly about them. I feel very strongly about the practice of yoga and breathwork and meditation. All of this ties in together exquisitely Best way I can put it. Folks, but Neal, on behalf of Lauren and myself, thank you for coming on, my friend, I really appreciate it. Keep doing what you're doing. Keep putting out this, this great product and great information. It's been extremely helpful to me and I'm sure many, many people have found it to be very, very helpful.

Speaker 3: 56:32

Well, thanks so much for having me on. I really appreciate it Nice to meet you too, Lauren.

Speaker 2: 56:35

Likewise Nice to meet you, Jesse Again, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 56:39

Of course.