Hiking Pain Free & Unlocking Your Physical Potential: Chase Mountains Interview
Tayson Whittaker: All right, Chase. I'm super excited to have you on the podcast today.
How are you doing?
Chase Mountains: Yeah. Thanks for inviting me. I'm doing really well.
Tayson Whittaker: I followed you for quite some time actually, maybe from a distance. And a lot of what you say resonates heavily with me is as far as, you know, functional aspects, working through injuries. Where did that come about for you? How did you get into, you know, figuring those elements out and then, and then start teaching those?
Chase Mountains: I think it came from just going out on hiking trips myself and, you know, having niggles in my body and not really understanding things, you know, not understanding why my back aches when I carried a certain weight or why my calves were tight or any, any other little that I had, I just had a lot of curiosity and I think that's a good place to start from.
And yeah, it ended up turning into a full time job and a, and a career.
Tayson Whittaker: I, I think that's one thing that I've seen a lot is one thing that I like worrying about, for people, even close friends and family members is when pain starts to settle in.
I feel like there's kind of two ways you can go about it. There's one way which is like avoidance, right? Where it's like, ok, I've got knee pain, I'm going to stop doing whatever gave me knee pain like indefinitely. And my fear with that is that it turns into like a domino effect of other ailments. Like you start counteracting like, OK, if I don't want to put weight on this knee, then I start putting more weight on the other knee and, and it just starts domino, you know, and the other option would be to figure out what the root cause of things are. to me it seems like that's like what you're all about is figuring out those root causes. And so, I mean, how do people go about doing something like that?
Chase Mountains: Well, I think it's, it's a combination of becoming interested and then taking inputs from, from other people that know a lot more than you. And it doesn't have to be me. Like, I, realistically, I don't know that much but my, my small niche of hiking, I know a decent amount from that. But I think it's, yeah, being interested and then experimenting with things like I'm constantly telling people give, give whatever you're experimenting with like four weeks because that's a good amount of time for the body to start to settle in. Like it'll take you a week or two to start understanding how certain movements affect your body. Maybe it'll even take you like two weeks to get the movement right. You know, cos a lot of this stuff is fairly, there's a lot of nuance to it and it's fairly complex. So I think they're the two things like having the interest and then a little bit of input. Maybe that input is just from a youtube video. Maybe it's from ideally, you know, seeing a professional face to face who can do some objective table tests and get a little bit closer to what might be that, that underlying issue that's triggering all these, all these things that you're experiencing. But the first thing I like, I wanna be really clear and just like, say that if you are experiencing pain and discomfort and you're not 100% comfortable in your body all the time, that's kind of just part of being a human, right? Like I'm not perfect and there's, I guarantee you every single person that's making videos about pain on youtube has something that they're working on. You know, no-one's got this perfect ideal physique. We're all working towards somewhere. So don't feel like being in pain or being in discomfort like you're not broken, you're not, don't let pain become part of your identity because then it can lead you down this path of chronic pain and and it becomes part of your psyche and that's a very dangerous place to be and it's very hard to come out of.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah, I, I actually like that you brought that up because I feel like in the last while it's been a shocker to a lot of people. at least for me, like it was, it was very apparent recently with just when you're looking at a high level of people. you know, the Instagram, the youtubers and stuff and what they, what they look like and what they say can be very different from, from realities, right? I don't know how much you followed this there is that there's this crazy guy in the US called the Liver King who was getting all sorts of famous, right. You're laughing here, I'm sure you've heard of that. Right. And then it finally comes out, he's like, no, I don't touch, you know, steroids and peDS and, and all this stuff. And of course he was, but it was really interesting because that kind of like tipped a domino for me where I started to look at maybe other people that I'm like, I'm pretty sure they're natural or I'm pretty sure they're this or, and just kind of made me realize, like, man, there's no way, like, there's no way that, like, some of these people are natural or that they're actually pain free or that they're like this perfect physique or whatever. and it's really changed, I guess, not, not like at a, at a massive significant level, but it definitely changed some of my beliefs of what I see. So I actually really appreciate that comment right there that everyone's gonna have some level of pain and discomfort and, and whether that's weakness in the body or, or whatever it is, joints that are, they're giving you more grief. I think that can be expected. And if people come in with that expectation, they're less likely to get burnt out or, or quit something. Right.
Chase Mountains: Hm. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, pain is just a signal. It's part of a conversation that you have with the body that you're living in, so it's your responsibility to be able to listen to those signals. And from the other side of the perspective, if you're not in pain and you don't, you're not really feeling any kind of discomfort, that actually might be a bad sign because you're not really in tune and you're not feeling what, what's happening and it may be because of the footwear that you're wearing, or maybe, maybe you're just a little bit too much up in, up in your own head all the time. So it's not like what I'm trying to say is that pain is not necessarily a bad thing. Don't look at it like it's the end of the world, it's just a signal for us to start understanding at a deeper level. What, what might be happening with our, with our physiology.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah. So, speaking of pain and how it relates to hiking, what are the most common injuries or, or issues that you see coming up for people?
Chase Mountains: Well, knees are the most common one I think. And that's just, that's just the nature of knees because they're stuck between the ankle and the hip. And a lot of the time the knees aren't the problem. Like the knees are just, they're always the culprit that, that, that where the pain arises, but often the problem is, is not actually in the knee then the knee is a fairly simple joint. It's like it's just a hinge joint, you know, it can't rotate or it can, but it doesn't do it a lot. But the hip, on the other hand, is a very complex joint and the foot is even more complex. So knees are often where the problems arise, but it doesn't necessarily mean the knee, the knee is the problem and it's often the ankle or the hip. And if you could go, if you want to go another level deeper, and then it's probably to do with the ability for you to stabilize your own body using your diaphragm. So it could be a breathing issue. And, and, and the more that I start to understand about these things, the more that I'm inclined to think, well, yeah, this the way that the ribs are interacting with the diaphragm is having an effect on the pelvis and that's having an effect on the knee and the, the longer I stay in this game. And the, and the more I learn, the more I sort, I, I tend to look towards the center of the body. And if we can stabilize and center our breathing and we can fully create support within our abdominal cavity. When we breathe like each breath, we do 22,000 breaths a day. So if we can make a 1% improvement on that, then it's likely gonna have an impact on the rest of our body because the diaphragm is the largest stabilizing muscle in the body. So if it's not, if we're not getting good amplitude, we have our zone of our position. It's the space within the rib cage. If that's very wide, we actually want a closer zone where the ribs are sort of closer together and closer in towards the spine. And that creates intra abdominal pressure which stabilizes our midsection. And so we can do all of the work to, you know, the feet are a big issue as well because they're so complex, but we can do all the work with the hips and the shoulders and everything and run up against these, these problems continuously. And if we're not looking at breeding as the fundamental pattern that it is stability wise, then like that's where I would recommend people to look into. Because if they've, you know, continually hit up these walls where they're just like, oh, I'm not getting anywhere with this stuff. Like I'm doing all this mobility and all these drills and nothing's changing, then I would be looking at the breeding. And so like the last year and a half of my life has just been diving deeper and deeper and deeper on this. And it's been really interesting, but I guess the hard thing is to get people to understand. Well, let's make this potentially work.
Tayson Whittaker: Let's make this a little more like personal then because I think that that's, that's really, it's really fascinating because, I mean, at first I was thinking all right, let's talk about ankles, let's talk about hips. but let's, let's come back to those and, and talk about breathing here for a second because, I've had a few issues come through BioLife. Right. I've had p fasciitis. I've had knee pain, but the one that's been, the most common has been back pain. And for years that, like, really plagued me and then I learned how to stretch and stretch like my, so as muscle, that was like a big trigger point and issue for me. And so I, I learned that and, and then I was able to kind of like stave it off. Like if I did all my stretches, then I would, I'd keep it at bay. And then, a couple of years back, I started to get into trail running quite a lot and that seemed to actually help my back. I feel like, like I had some initial pain for like the first month and then it almost seemed like the motion of movement and getting that movement in more on a daily basis. I think helped me a bit but, and so then, like, I, and I dropped some weight, I dropped, you know, 20 lbs or so from running and, and was in a good spot and then just this last March my back I just woke up one morning and my back was just, like, out in it and I couldn't train, I couldn't do anything for a week and I was really frustrated by it because I'm like, usually I know these, these triggers that start to, to lead into some of this stuff and the biggest thing I could really think about was I was dealing with a, with a higher stress load leading up to that,, which I've also linked to my back pain at times, but I'm, but I've never had a link to it, right. like I've never been able to go back. Well, I'm, when I'm stressed, this is why my back can be more susceptible and stuff like that. I'm, I'm wondering if maybe there's a connection with what you're talking about and it affecting my core, which then affects my back, like you've mentioned.
Chase Mountains: I'm sure there is.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah.
Chase Mountains: I, I, I can't, I don't know if I can give you a clear answer on it, but let's, let's talk about, I guess the, the nervous system, which I like to think of as the governing body that is really in control of everything that happens in your body and, and including that in the mind. So you went through this period of time where you were a little bit sort of jacked up on your nervous system under a lot of stress and that's not only in the mind like the, the body holds that tension. And so you, you may have been storing certain amounts of tension in other parts of the body. And then maybe you had a, a kind of a crappy night's sleep where you weren't in a great position. And if you lifted yourself out of bed and then boom, the lower back starts firing up.
Tayson Whittaker: Mhm
Chase Mountains: So when it comes to the nervous system, this is inherently tied to breathing because as far as I know, the only way to influence our nervous system, our automatic autonomic nervous system, is to do controlled breathing, to manipulate that. So there's the stability aspect that I talked about before, which is a bit more of a mechanical thing. So that's really about utilizing the diaphragm to stabilize the body. But then there's breeding as a method of influencing the nervous system or the autonomic nervous system. And so this is basically your, your fight or flight response or fight flight or freeze versus your rest and digest. So we can utilize breathing as a way to purposefully put us up into fight or flight so that we have more.
so I guess we're more mobile in our autonomic nervous system. So we can force our way up, which means we can up regulate when we choose and then we can also choose to down regulate. So it's more flexible in, in the, in a state that the nervous system is in as a, like when we're going about our daily lives when there's no threat, but then that threat could not necessarily be like a tiger. That threat can be just stress from work, you know. So then if we're spiking up and we're being upregulated into a sympathetic state where we're, you know, fight flight or freeze, that's certainly gonna impact our physical body.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah. Yeah, it makes me, and this might have been in that. I know this is a book that you've read by James Nester. But I, I feel like I've, I've seen a stat somewhere that, that breathing is one of the only ways to like almost immediately reduce stress levels in the body, like doing a controlled breathing pattern or, or like a, you know, some people, I hate to say the word meditation because I think people get the wrong like knowledge of that, but a lot of meditation can just be breath work, right? But it, if I remember remembering, right? It's one of the quickest and only ways to really just reduce stress almost immediately in the body is by focusing on breath for and doing maybe a box pattern breathing technique or something, right?
Chase Mountains: You can drink a whole bunch of beers and smoke some weed maybe. But then you pay for that later it comes right to bite you.
Tayson Whittaker: That's true.
Chase Mountains: So, yeah, there's, there's ways, I mean, I mean, this is the modern human, we cope with stuff like this.
Tayson Whittaker: So, ok, so, so link for me, let's because I'd like to bring it back to like the knees, you know, ankles and hips for a bit. But, what's the easiest way to understand a connection between breath and how it might be affecting your lower body like that?
Chase Mountains: Ok. So if you imagine like a, like a party balloon, just get a party balloon and blow it all up. And then just imagine that balloon is sitting just under your rib cage and it's sitting between your pels and your rib cage, right? And that balloon, if you could imagine that balloon is being, being responsible for keeping you stable. So, rather than the muscles having to work really hard all the time to constantly readjust your posture and your balance, if we can get that balloon to take over that job of keeping us mostly stable, then the rest of the muscles don't actually have to do that much work. They can focus on what they normally do, which is power us forward or to the side rather than having to keep us upright all the time. So this is all integrated with posture and the body will find stability. Like very few people are walking around falling over all the time unless we get to, you know, age 80 and above. So the body in, in, in the case that you are not stabilizing through the diaphragm there is going to be muscular compensations. Usually, you know, the muscles that you've mentioned already, like the so is a, is a big, stabilizer. That's why a lot of people tend to have really tight hip flexors and solas and they're constantly stretching. And like you said before, you had found a workaround because you were, you determined, a series of stretches that, you know, would, you know, pull you back into a more comfortable alignment. But do we really wanna, I personally don't wanna have to do a whole bunch of stretches every day just to, just to pull myself back into my natural alignment. And I've struggled with this for a really long time and for a while back, I just decided I was like, I'm gonna stop stretching. Like I haven't put stretching videos out on youtube for a while, move videos. Yes, but not actual stretching because I'm starting to think that, ok, stretching has a place when you know exactly what needs to be stretched and you use that to temporarily overcome some sort of discomfort or misalignment. But if it's something that you have to do every single day in order to just be comfortable for me, personally, I don't, I don't wanna have to do that. I'd rather just wake up and be like, yeah, I'm sweet, you know,
Tayson Whittaker: I resonate with that 100% as like, man, if I don't do these stretches, this is the consequence, but it just felt like a hamster wheel. Like, you're just running in a circle all the time and not getting any, like, true progress. Right.
Chase Mountains: Hm. Yeah. And it, it, it is something that has been repeated a lot and I'm also probably guilty of it if you go back to my channel three or four years ago. Yeah. Do these stretches? This is important, blah, blah, blah. But, yeah, the more I learn, the more I change my mind. I'm like, oh, I don't actually want to be spending, you know, 25 or 30 minutes a day or even more like day and night trying to realign myself. Why can't I just be good? And so yeah, like the journey that I'm on now is like discovering and it's weird because I learned this stuff like 10 years ago. But until you, until you like to suffer from this and it gets to the point where you're just like, I'm just so tired of this. It's only when you get to that point that you start looking down the path of things that are a little bit on the fringe. Like, OK, maybe I, maybe I should be, you know, having another crack at meditation. Maybe stillness is the answer. Maybe I, what would happen if I just sat for five minutes or stood for five minutes and felt how my, how my balance is being constantly shifting, shifting and changing in order to maintain this upright posture. So, you know, I would love to be able to provide a solution and just be, like, do this. And I think, I always think I'm close to that, you know, I keep discovering more things like this is gonna be, this is the magic thing that everyone that doesn't know, you know, but I've been through that like, 10 times.
Tayson Whittaker: So, yeah, I don't know why there's certain lessons in life that I feel like we have to learn more than once. I'm guilty of that just recently. But, what, what are your thoughts on? Like, I wanna, I don't wanna like weighted stretching or, or just like what, like a lot of what you teach with actual movement I think is how you kind of categorize that, that's kind of when, when I was like, started to be, feel like, hey, all this stretching isn't getting me true lasting progress. I was trying to replace it with more. I would classify it as weighted stretching, but really, it's just range of motion, right? Whether that's body weight or whether it's very lightweight. Do you see that as like a, another aspect of this as well as, as the breeding and, and the, the technique there?
Chase Mountains: For sure. Yeah, I think that's probably like a first step really. because it's a lot easier to do that. And it's not so complex if you,
it, it's easier to do that than to breathe. Right.
Chase Mountains: Yeah, exactly. You know, because yes, laying down on the floor and just focusing on your breathing is tough. And, and I'm trying to make it easier with, like, making videos with queues for, for the clients that I'm working with to give them, you know, real tangible stuff that they can, you know, listen to and get constant feedback. But, yeah, to, to your point about what I, the term I use is loaded mobility. But yeah, weighted, weighted stretching or just really heavy or not even really heavy, but strength training in full ranges of motion. I spent a good two years working with that modality through the ATG system. I don't know if you know the knees advertiser guy. I trained on the system and was in his realm of coaching for a couple of years and I was like, at the time, I was like, yes, this is it. We need more strength and we need more range of motion because if we have more range of motion and more strength, we're bulletproof. However, my experience going through that was that I was trying so hard all the time to create more strength and create more muscle activation, you know, thinking, oh there's muscles that aren't being activated. So I need to work and work harder and harder to activate these certain muscles. The result of that was that I ended up experiencing a lot more tension in my body. I had more resting tension in, in the muscle. And so whilst I think many, many people will benefit from that. And I still put people on that style of training program all the time because I think it's useful for a lot of people, but for certain individuals who are wound a little bit more tightly. Like naturally, I'm more of a natural sort of anxious person. I spend probably more time in this fight or flight part of my nervous system. So, you know, it just so happens that probably that wasn't the best thing for me to do for two years. And but it's all part of the process, man, like, and, and I'm not saying that that's not going to work for other people. It certainly does and there's plenty of evidence of it. And I think it, it is really for my mind, it is the best way to train and if I could train that way all the time and get continual results without getting an excessive amount of attention, I would try it that way. But it just when rotten,
Tayson Whittaker: When you say, when you say tension, do you just mean like you're having a lot of soreness on a daily basis or you're just feeling very tight? Like, like instead of getting more loose with these big range emotion exercises, were you feeling more tight? I guess it, maybe it just explains that a little bit.
Chase Mountains: Ok. So you can, you can have an individual who is strong and mobile and who can reach the end ranges of certain positions. Like I can pretty much get into front splits. But if I work up to it for 10 minutes, 15 minutes. However, the result of that is generally more muscle tone, so not tone in a way that all this guy is toned and he looks ripped but tone in, in terms of like, actually you feel the muscle and where the muscles should be relaxed and where we should just be laying on the couch and just being completely at rest. Instead, there's this holding tension and, and tone in the muscle and whether that's, you know, it's almost certainly got to do with the nervous system and fashion and all the rest of it. But basically the muscle spindles and are all, you know, he
Tayson Whittaker: like a defense mechanism
Chase Mountains: 100 it's 100% a defense mechanism because it's tied into the autonomic nervous system and is part of flight. So essentially with me, what I'm sort of starting to discover is that I'm holding more of this tension. It's not serving me. So what can I do now to, to relax and, and release that because I know I'm strong enough, you know, I can, I can go and do all these, all these things and I'm, I'm fine, you know, but I can get through it, but I'm getting through with a lot more discomfort than I would like to have. So, my focus now, for me personally is on trying to down regulate the nervous system, trying to bring more stability with diaphragmatic breathing and that intra abdominal pressure, that balloon that we spoke about earlier, so that I don't have to do half an hour of stretching in the morning to remain pain free and balanced.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah. You know, one of my, one of the most interesting takeaways for me from that breathe book was how it related to high altitude sickness. I started to experiment with either devices that would open up my nose more for night time or even the taping your mouth shut aspect of it. And any time that I do that at high elevation, I track my heart rate, my resting heart rate pretty closely because I've been able to tie my resting heart rate to my susceptibility of getting altitude sickness. the next day. You know, there's, there's elements of hydration in that, but there's, there's other elements of just your body, you know, reducing stress per se or feeling, you know, at elevation. And so, I have found personally that when I do those types of things at elevations, I'm able to get into a more resting state and have a reduced heart rate when I'm sleeping and then that ends up reducing my risk of altitude sickness. It seems like the next day. So there really is like a lot of, it's like, it's like this, you know, spider web effect of it just, it just all kind of comes out from, from that center. but let's, let's change.
Chase Mountains: Oh, go ahead. I was just gonna say there's many ways to skin a cat as well. Like there's many different, many different modalities that we can, that we can implement to see what, what changes they bring about in the body. Yeah.
Tayson Whittaker: And I think that's the, the hard part with all of this is life is too short to learn from your mistakes alone, right? So you've like, you've really got to spend a little bit of time in that education field and, and go to guys like you and, and take those shortcuts, right? Because if you know, you've been on a whatever 10 plus year journey or your whole life journey of, of figuring a lot of these things out and for a lot of people, they could shave years and years off of those times to get to a better place for themselves without having to learn every step of the way firsthand. Right. So I think it's always, it's always wise right to, to look to the experts and to figure out how to cut some of those corners per se because it's life's just too short to to make every mistake there is out there.
Chase Mountains: Yeah, absolutely. I'm reminded of that every day when I'm getting, getting a little bit older and, like, oh, I wish I had this figured out by it. Right.
Tayson Whittaker: Right. I think in some ways though, like, I think that, at my age it's hard to say this, like, outright, but I feel like I'm in the best shape of my life, which is pretty cool to be, I don't know what I am 32 or 33. I should know that and, you know, but to feel like I, I'm in the best shape of my life because I mean, I, I played sports and stuff when I was younger and,, dabbled collegiately for a second and, you know, and just, it was to be able to feel like I'm actually in better shape now than then is, is, I think a pretty cool thing. But I think that the amount of knowledge that I've accumulated over the last decade, you know, really, really plays into that and, and, and my abilities. Right. But so, yeah, I wanna come back though to this. Oh, go ahead, go ahead.
Chase Mountains: I was gonna say as you, as you get older, I think, these more nuanced things become more important like when you are 18 or 19. If there's young guys or girls listening to this, there's every likelihood you don't have to worry about this, you just go out and play, your sports, have lots of variety, you know, experiment with different things, get as much variety as you can and get that general preparedness up and, you know, do what you can to increase your athleticism because that's when you put money in the bank for the rest of your life. And I'm part of what I'm doing is trying to get that message across because from my perspective, you know, the people that I've hung out with and hiked with, they're not always, you know, the most athletic people and they haven't had a, you know, a huge background in sports and that kind of thing. And hiking is their only one of the only physical outlets. So I'm really trying to meld these two worlds of like strength and conditioning and, and, and hiking together so that people can have a more well rounded sort of athletic physique and, and life and mind. So it's, it's been interesting to see different people come from different perspectives and different ages of life and go through my training programs and, and to see how, how there was and their hiking has been affected by it.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah, I think it's seen when I was about 24 almost, or at 24 25 I, I gained a bunch of weight. I kind of went through this cycle where I was starting, you know, ultra vitals and, and just recently got married and, and I just kind of click on to the gym, quit doing all these things and I gained a bunch of weight and I kept that weight on for a couple of years and, and then kind of had that, that moment where I was like, holy cow. Like, if this is everything I care about in life, but my physical body isn't capable of doing those to the level that I'd like. like it, it was just this, this real light bulb moment for me where it was like, no, like focusing on health empowers you to do more of everything that you love. If you're listening to this podcast, more than likely the things that you care about are, getting into the outdoors and being in a healthy state is so much more empowering to, to getting out consistently to going farther, to experiencing more. that I would, I would absolutely urge you to, to go and check out, you know, some of Chase's courses and, and figure some of these things out and well, that's even like dropping weight or, or things like that, you know, join our 100 Mile challenge. check some of these courses out because they, because in the end, like, like, I think my biggest thought now too is like in the longevity side of things where it's like, man, I want to do these things, but life is short and I want to do these things for a long time. Like, I don't want this window to be short so that I'm able to go and do all these things that I really, really care about. So, and I feel like that's what, what people will get out of your courses and I wanted to, to maybe bring this conversation back to. I think it's called Mountain Tough Ankles. It is one of the modules or courses that you teach.
Chase Mountains: Yeah, mountain proof ankles.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah. Mountain proof mountain.
Chase Mountains: It's a, it's a free program that I put out maybe three years ago. That is, that's more or less me, like just throwing paint on the wall to see what sticks, to be perfectly honest. But tons of people have come back to me and said like this literally changed how I walk. And, you know, for a lot of hikers, a foot problem or an ankle problem is not just a foot problem. It's an identity problem because it prevents you from doing the thing that, that you love and, and that, that it's such an important part of people's lives if, if you're a hiker and that's what you do.
A foot problem is a, is not just a foot problem.
Tayson Whittaker: Well, and, and like you mentioned already when like we've put a pull out here on our end too and, and knee pain is the most common issue people have, right? But you kind of, you brought up a really good point, I hadn't actually looked or thought of it that way where the knee does have way less mobility, way less going on inside of it compared to the hip or the ankle or foot area. Right. So maybe let's, let's like, walk us through a little bit about how the ankle per se because I personally, like I had knee pain, but I, I would never classify myself as having ankle pain or I did start to develop, you know, plantar fasciitis and I dealt with that for a while. but again, it was always like knee pain is, it has been something that's kind of come and gone at times. And I've never really linked that to my feet and ankles. So I think it'd be really interesting to hear how you link those and, and, and how other people can, why, why they should care about their feet more.
Chase Mountains: So the ankle requires a good amount of mobility so that the knee can push over the toe. And one of the big things that's been discovered in strength training in the last three or four years is that there was a myth going around that we should never squat with the knee passing over the toe. And that came from one study in, I don't know, I think it was the eighties or nineties and it was just taken as gospel and there was, it was never really revisited.
So strength coaches like myself and millions of people all around the world were going into the gym or going into their workouts thinking, oh, I could never push the knee over the top, but it's essential to be able to, to have that like knees over toes happens when you go downhill, it happens when you go down stairs. So we need to be strong and protected in that. And one of the people who is, or the person who has been best in that field at literally dispelling that myth and that myth alone has been Ben Patrick and he, he was the guy that I spoke about earlier, who's developing this ATG system. So we need a little, we need enough ankle mobility for the knee to pass over the toe in order to be, you know, comfortable going downhill. So that's the first, that's the first thing.
Tayson Whittaker: But then, so what do, what do they do? Well, like, is there a good test to, like, like instantly, just see if you can, if, if you have an issue,
Chase Mountains: basically, you put your toe up against the skirting board with a wall and then keep your big toe on the, on the skating board and then drive the knee forward. Don't let it go immediately, don't let it pass inwards, but keep it directly over the, the 2nd and 3rd toe and drive the knee and if you can hit the wall, good shuffle back another inch, if you can get your toe an inch away from the wall and hit your knee to the wall. You've got a decent amount of mobility there and if you don't, you simply just do that and you work towards that.
Tayson Whittaker: So that's interesting. That seems like such an easy test. But at the same time, are there a lot of people that can't do that?
Chase Mountains: Yeah. Yeah, there's loads of people who can do so,, many people, well, some people will, will get an immediate benefit for that. they do that for like, you know, every day for four weeks and like, ok, I'm starting to hold on to a little bit more, mobility and perhaps they maintain that mobility by just, you know, squatting more often getting down deep into the ankles and the hips and doing a few more drills exploring with, you know, crawling and, and just generally being down low on the floor and not in chairs so much. But for the, for a lot of people that will be plenty for another subset of people, people like myself who tend to hold a little bit more tension, maybe there's a foot issue that's restricting that, that drive of the knee over the toe, then the nervous system is gonna see that as a threat and it's not gonna let you go into that position without a lot of force and, and effort all the time. And if you stop doing the drill and everything goes back to the original state. Then it's like, ok, this, this particular drill didn't work, but it's likely that other similar drills may not also work. So if we tick that box and say, ok, that didn't work. Next, in the assessment sequence, I would go to look at the foot. So, it's really complex because there are 26 bones, 33 joints, 200 something 1000 nerve endings in the bottom of the foot. And then we have the way that the lower leg interacts with the ankle as well. So my current methodology with this is mobilize. So we're mobilizing. Firstly, the toes because the big toe needs to be mobile, every single step off, whether you're running or walking, hiking, we have a toe off where the big toe needs to lex and push off. So we need big toe mobility and this is where people start. I start losing people because they're like, oh what, I've got to mobilize my little toes to be able to get rid of my knee pain or whatever because it isn't like on the surface level. If you don't know much about your body and biomechanics, it's like, how is this even relevant? But we, we are, it's all one system and it's also intricately connected, you know. So yeah, I have people, you know, doing things like inserting their fingers into the, into the toe joint. I call it the, the toe glove
Tayson Whittaker: And that is so, so painful for me.
Chase Mountains: Yeah.
Tayson Whittaker: No, like I bought so I, I, you know, I've, the last couple of years have dabbled with this, even putting, like, in gingy socks, like toe socks onto my feet. I could feel that. Like, it was a little bit uncomfortable the first time I did that and then, you know, I got, like, toe spreaders and that was just outright painful. Like that actually felt painful for me. Whereas my wife, she could sit there and like, move each individual toe and pick things up off the ground. And I'm like, you're, I just, I just, I just say she has monkey toes, not in a bad way, but she could do things at their feet that I just like, I've never dreamt of. Right.
Chase Mountains: frustrating, isn't it? My, my, my girlfriend's exactly the same.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah.
Chase Mountains: So I discovered all these drills about toe dissociation where you're trying to lift the big toe. But then we dissociate the little toes. So they go in the opposite direction and you can start doing that manually by manually forcing it with your hands. But then the next level, this is a, this is a conversation of hardware versus software. So the hardware is you physically moving the toes and seeing if they physically have the joint mobility to be able to move into full range and full range, believe it or not. It's pretty, it's pretty extreme. Like when you see people who are expressing the full range of their sizes, it's like, wow, it's like 90 degrees, you know. So that's the hardware part just moving it. But then there's the software which is doing that movement with just your mind, body connection with just your brain. So you sit there, you're not manipulating it with your hands, but then you're disassociating your toes. So you're standing weight, evenly placed into the feet and then lifting the two big toes and then pressing the two big toes down and lifting them, the little I can't even do it with my fingers. I'm like, and when the, the interesting thing is when you do this, you see, you see all sorts of strange things start to happen, you like weird things happen with your hands or you're like moving your neck in a, in a weird way. But it's really interesting work because it is, you know, really deep and nuanced proprioception where we improve that mind- body relationship.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah.
Chase Mountains: So yeah, as I was saying, yeah, mob mobility first. and then stability. So I get people doing a lot of single leg, standing exercises in lots of different ways with eyes closed or eyes open or support or no support or disassociating the head and neck and seeing how that impacts the stability. And so every step that we take when we're running or walking is essentially a single leg balance. So, if we get better at single leg balancing and if we can, you know, get better at hopping and using that natural elasticity that the, that the foot and the lower leg has, it's likely going to impact our hiking and walking and running in a positive way because that's what's in contact with the ground all the time.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah, I guess, I guess if I'm understanding correctly with increasing both your foot, your foot's ability to move balance, which is strengthened as well. it's gonna take less load from transferring up to your knee when it's trying to counteract per se. a lack of flexor mobility. so then it, it keeps your knee more free to do what it's supposed to do instead of overcompensating for muscular weaknesses or like you mentioned, the lack of ability of just having movement like that's that, that just is going to put a big cap in my mind on your ability for your knee to work properly and, get a full range of motion. If your foot can't have a full range of motion that's instantly going to come into a knee range of motion, I would imagine. and that kind of thing, oh, go ahead.
Chase Mountains: often these things just move upstream. So we think downstream is the feet and the foot, the foot is not doing its job to be stable. This is why I have a bit of a, a, a gripe against, you know, modern footwear because modern footwear is, you know, very big support, supported cushiony. So, and that's providing an extra level of stability which makes the feet kind of dumb and insensitive. So if that, if the foot isn't doing the job, then it likely goes upstream. Often it goes into the tibialis, an interior which is the muscle at the front of the lower leg. And no one, very few people and very few standard gym programs are doing specific exercises. Like the only lower leg exercise that you see in a lot of standard strength programs is just calf raises. But a lot of what happens when we're hiking and walking happens below the knee. So I, for that reason, I do a lot of work on the lower leg and a lot of the time it's the PVR the interior.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah, that was, that was, that happened to me last year. I did a big effort in the Grand Canyon and did 38 miles in a day. But, we descended like 10,000 plus feet that day. Right. So a massive amount of, downhill. We were running a part of it with a loaded pack on. and by the end of the day, my knees were in a lot of pain and then I dealt with that pain through the rest of the summer, ran an ultra marathon. It flared back up and, and kicked my butt on that ultra marathon and then it really took me until months later when I started to do things like tip raises that I started to feel like I was making like real progress with it, so, yeah, I, I, I totally resonate with what you're saying there on, on, the Alice and, and trying to strengthen that because it's, to me that, that, that I wouldn't say ruined but drastically impacted my entire last year of my life for sure.
Chase Mountains: And that, I like to think of that muscle is really the muscle that is primarily responsible for deceleration. So you could think about going downhill as deceleration or let's say you're sprinting flat out 100% and then you have to slow down that's deceleration. So a lot of that force is going into the tibia and if that tissue isn't up to scratch to take that amount of load, then that's when you get something like shin splints.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah. Do you, do you see, or, I don't know, is it more common to have a foot issue that goes into the knee and into the hips or do people also build hip issues that come downwards into the knee?
Chase Mountains: It can go either way and to be perfectly honest, half of the time I have no idea. you know,
Tayson Whittaker: You figure that out, I guess.
Chase Mountains: Yeah, we did, you know, like I said, it's throwing paint on the wall and seeing what sticks. You can go to a really, really good physiotherapist and there's tons of them who will do objective table tests. you really need someone there with you feeling your feeling your body, feeling the tone and the muscle when you do these tests. And they can say with a good level of confidence that, you know, the problem is coming from here and then you objectively test that by implementing this a set of exercises and then reassess it.
Tayson Whittaker: Is that something that, that you coach on as well, is trying to diagnose or not so much or no?
Chase Mountains: No, I'm I, I don't diagnose anything. I do. I try and stay away from labeling pain. I mean, if I discover something from my body that I know helped me and I documented that process and, and I'm confident that similar people who have a similar physiology to me will benefit from that. Then I'll make a video about that and I'll put it on youtube for free. But I really have a lot of hesitation in putting something out there saying do this and it will fix your knee pain, ankle pain, whatever. There's been certain cases where I've made videos on something like one example was Ilio Band syndrome. And that just so happened that I was hiking with a guy who was experiencing that and I was like, it was really just intuition and I was like, do these five things and I said it with a lot of confidence and I was hiking with him every day. So he was under pressure, you know, for me to do these things and he did them and he would, he, by the end of the hike he'd thrown away those knee supports. And, he's really, really, really strong now, still a really good friend of mine. I'm going to Italy with him next week.
Tayson Whittaker: That's awesome.
Chase Mountains: So these situations where I've lived that experience or I've had direct experience with that with a client or a friend or whatever family member, I'll put something on youtube for free. But I, I don't wanna be in a position where someone comes to me with pain because it's going to be very hard for me to diagnose that even in real life because I'm not an expert in this. I'm an expert in hiking and, you know, movement and I don't necessarily want to be that guy that people come to with, with pain because I think there's better people more educated, people with systems who can quickly get them to the problem. What I like to do is preparation and rehabilitation as opposed to rehabilitation. And so what I'm trying to do is get people before they're injured to be like, ok, you're in a good spot. Let's get you strong, let's get you mobile. Let's get you in tune with your breathing and hope for the rest.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah.
Chase Mountains: And then we're in a situation where we can push things and when we push it and we do something like 100 mile race or we do like a, a big day of hiking and we, we feel maybe we pushed our limits a little bit, then we have a framework to be like, hm. Ok. That's interesting. Rather than I'm absolutely screwed and I can't move.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah. So I wanna bring it back to your issue with modern footwear for a second. I've recently been thinking a little bit more about this. I recently read the, the Born To Run Book, Decade Behind The Times, you know, but, it's, it's a really interesting concept of, by going back to more natural foot positioning, how it affects everything else. and I'm, I'm, I would say I'm in the very beginning stages where I'm, I'm considering, you know, what smaller adaptations I could try to, to implement that. So, you know, first it's like, oh, you need a zero padding shoe and, and a, you know, it's gotta have a big wide foot box and all these kinds of things or toe box. so my compromise was to, I've, I've been like anti ultra shoes for a long time and I re bought a pair of ultra shoes and started, just started just with that. I'm like, there's still padding in there. but it's a zero drop and, and there's, you know, space for my toes to display out. But yeah, from your perspective, what do you see are the issues with, with some of the footwear that's out there? And, and what do you recommend people, you know, consider doing about it?
Chase Mountains: I recommend if you have kids get them in minimal barefoot shoes because
Tayson Whittaker: are, are those, are there brands out there that do that for sure.
Chase Mountains: Yeah, zero shoes. I just had a big conversation with Steven the CEO from, from X just a couple of hours ago.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah, I've met him before.
Chase Mountains: He's a cool guy. I like him.
Tayson Whittaker: high energy
Chase Mountains: talks a lot. but he knows a lot too. He knows heaps man and he's been, he's been around since the beginning and then. Yeah, Vivo as well. They make, they make shoes for kids and like it's, it's growing exponentially. There will be more companies. But what I was speaking to Stephen about, I was like, you guys are doing a good job of the education part because I feel like these shoes could almost come with a manual for the body and a manual to how to use the shoe. You know, there should be like a, an ebook that comes with these shoes because a lot of time people just like put these shoes on and start running and, you know, some people will be fine but a good amount of people will, will learn that lesson
Tayson Whittaker: and then swear them off.
Chase Mountains: Mhm. So the first thing is that modern footwear, the way that it's shaped, the stability aspect of putting a large amount of material between the foot and the ground. These things all impact our sensory development, when my Children, when we're developing motor skills, when we're developing the brain and if we're deafening that it has an impact on, on kids, that's at the neurological level. But if we talk about the biomechanical level that tends to result in the things that we've been talking about with knee pain and, and foot issues and hip issues and lower back pain and all this sort of stuff. So, the best thing for our future is to get kids wearing wide flat shoes so they can not go through the process that you and I have gone through where we jammed our feet and restrictive shoes and messed up our toes and lost that sensitivity. Now, it's not to say that as adults, we can't regain that the, the body is incredibly intelligent and for the most, like we see it every day that people regain that sensitivity and they regain that stability and, and the, and the ability that we once had, but it's certainly a lot harder as you, as you age to be able to regain that. So, yeah, the sooner the better for most people having said that there is, there's a shoe for every purpose. There's a shoe for every individual person at a point in time. And so it may be that you need to go to a, you know, an old school podiatrist and have a wedge put in your shoe to boost a certain part of your foot to regain some natural biomechanics. It's, there's really, I have a problem with saying it as a blanket statement. Everyone should be in barefoot style shoes because there's, you know, there's a lot of nuance, but for kids
Tayson Whittaker: makes a lot of sense. Yeah. What, what man, this is such a big topic, right? Like it's, it's a very interesting topic. Obviously, the more barefoot style the shoe, I think at a high level and, and just correct me if I'm wrong here, but the more barefoot style of the shoe, the more the body can move and strengthen itself naturally. It can, it can feel things like you've mentioned with, with the reduction in foam. It can be beneficial. But I think one of my biggest concerns with going full barefoot, which is like no padding. Really? Right. Just a, like a piece of rubber underneath your foot. is like these bigger efforts that, that I enjoy doing and like I was just recently on a hike in Zion National Park and one of the, one of the guys there had a pair of zero hiking boots and he's like, yeah, like, I've really enjoyed minimalist style footwear over my life. But it kind of sounded like, like his, his takeaway from all of it was, you know, I like these boots but I, I don't think I'd want to do more than, like, 15 miles in them, or something for a day or like, and, and he was also mentioning, like, he has to be a lot more careful with foot placement, you know, he's paying attention to where he's putting his feet down, you know, more and more. And to me, I was like, man, I really like the idea of all this. But that, that sounds like a lot of like some drawbacks for me, in leaning into going full barefoot style shoes. So I'm curious about you, because you've been, you've been in this realm for quite a while, like when you go out hiking, like how many miles a day are you doing? And, and how much weight are you carrying? And, how does that equate to your footwear?
Chase Mountains: Well, I'm still pretty much an ultra light hiker unless I'm going on a big mountaineering trip or a big ski trip. I'm not carrying more than 8, 9 kg maybe. I think it's probably around, let's say my base weight is probably like six at the moment. So I add food and water. Yeah, 7, 8 non.
Tayson Whittaker: So you're roughly bouncing for, for those in the US, between maybe 10 and 20 lbs I think.
Chase Mountains: Yeah. Yeah, if I, if I remember correctly, yeah, somewhere like 17 lbs 18 I think I did my base weight calculation last year and then, you know, distance. So on the weekend I hiked, I think it was about 20 somewhere between 28-30 kilometers and that was over two days and that was a pretty chill, pretty chill effort. So, you know, I'm, I'm not out doing massive miles and if I was, I probably wouldn't be wearing barefoot shoes because there's a certain amount of,, risk that I'm willing to, to take in, in that realm. Like, I guess the good thing is that, the guy that you just spoke about seemed to me like he had a pretty good knowledge of his body. Like him, he was aware of his limits and he was in tune with his musculoskeletal system. And so that in my mind is the big benefit of barefoot shoes. There's no rule book saying when you buy your first barefoot style shoes that you sign up for them for life and you wear nothing other than barefoot shoes. It's not how it has to be. There's a shoe for every occasion. And so on the weekend, you know, I wore a pretty standard supportive shoe wide enough. Like, I personally like ultras a lot for big, big mile days. Like last time I did a big tree hike, it was a while ago that I was wearing Ultras because I was doing like 40 kilometers a day or more sometimes. So I'm not willing to put myself in that position just to say, hey, I'm a barefoot hiker and look how strong and cool I am. Like, if I bust my shit up, then my, my, I have a big problem, you know, if I can't work, I can't earn money if I can't, it, you know, if I can move without paying. So it, it's, yeah, it, it comes down to the individual and the, and the circumstances of, of the trip and a lot of the time, maybe a barefoot shoe isn't going to be appropriate for, for that, for that trip. So you just gotta make those decisions. I will learn from you in the next.
Tayson Whittaker: That's, that's actually really good to hear. some reason in my mind, I don't know where, I don't even know where this came from. But I kind of thought that if you went through the process of training your body to do barefoot shoes that you were like committed for life, if that makes sense. is, is that, is that just a myth like, is that not, does that, is that not reality? I guess?
Chase Mountains: I mean, the, the truth is somewhere in the middle, right? So let's say for me putting on rigid mountaineering boots, alpine climbing in a certain mood. I, I really suffer and my plan for the FAA starts to really get jacked up and, and angry because it's trying to do the work and it can't feel and it's, it's confused, you know. But then the most recent pair of shoes I bought my alpine climbing shoes are great and I feel fine and I did like a 12 hour day with a decent pack weight on,, not too long ago and I felt great. So, and that really comes down to all those little nuances of stack height, drop height, how much flex it has. And I guess my truth is that being barefoot and spending more time in barefoot shoes gives me more adaptability and it doesn't put me into this situation where I can't switch back and forth. And maybe if you did a hard change and you went all barefoot like all or nothing, then, yeah, maybe it'll be difficult for you to, to come back into regular shoes. Perhaps that's a dangerous place to be.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah. I actually part of my, my thought with all of this was I've been spending a lot of time running in years previous in a pair of shoes that had like an, an eight millimeter drop. And I wondered, I, I started to really, and I'm a, and I'm kind of a hill striker and so I've been trying to work on both of those to land a little bit more on my four ft and then, use shoes that are either zero drop or lower amount of, of drop. And I think, I think that it's been helping honestly. So, but I think I, I, I really like that because I, again, to me it's like the, I feel like sometimes to this cult, like following of bare barefoot shoes, sometimes you have to have like a really strong compelling message and like, it's all or nothing to like, get that cool like following. But I think what you're saying is you can end up in the middle. There's going to be benefits. I think if you can, I don't know, like I'm thinking if I could daily wear more of a barefoot style shoe that even when I go into an ultra, when I'm hitting trails or running or, or doing bigger efforts, that I'm still gonna be better off than if I was only using, you know, this highly cushioned, very supportive shoe all the time and then going and doing the same efforts because my foot's just never getting stronger if that makes sense and, and strengthening. And so I like that. I think that, that, that's a, I think that's a really solid takeaway for, for listeners to, to maybe move towards this barefoot style of shoe but, but it doesn't have to be the full, you don't have to, you know,
Chase Mountains: the barefoot Kool aid.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah.
Chase Mountains: I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to make it really obvious in the videos that I make about barefoot shoes, but I'm not drinking the Kool Aid. And I made this video about like it was a real quick bait title. It's called like Lies The Barefoot Industry Tells you or whatever. And then, oh
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah, you got it. You got me. I got, I watched it
Chase Mountains: even from zero. He emails me and he's like, look, I was gonna do a reaction video to like call you out on all the like all the stuff that he said that I thought was wrong or could it could actually have a little bit more information around it, but maybe you just want to have a conversation and I was like, yeah, sure, we just jumped on a call and we talked about it and yeah, that video is gonna be out soon. So it'll be interesting for people to watch, but it's a long, long, long conversation with a lot of nuance. But I really enjoyed it and I think what I got away from talking to him is that he came from quite an athletic background with a lot of different disciplines and he himself is very adaptable. So he discovered his own bare journey and he obviously had a great experience and he went down the process of creating a business and they're now the number one minimal shoe in us, in terms of sales. But I made that video and other videos similar to that because I just want to bring the reality back. Like, let's, let's look at things a little bit more objectively because not everyone has the same experience as high level athletes and people who are very adaptable. There's many other people that have different situations and we can't necessarily say that being for shoes is absolutely the best thing for everyone.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think what we can say is that increasing people's mobility is just gonna make them have better and better experiences on the trails. And I think that that's something that you do an exceptional job at, with your youtube channel and with your courses that you offer. So why don't you just take a second and, and explain a little bit about your courses and what, what people can do? I know that personally. Like I said, I've, I've kind of followed some of your stuff from, you know, I'll catch a few videos here and there and, but I haven't, I hadn't yet purchased a course or anything. This morning, I actually went on and downloaded like or got your app and looked at your seven day free course and it's in, it's done incredibly well. I was really happy with that. I'm excited to continue to dig into the app and what it offers. But, it looked really good. It functioned really well and it was just, I, I thought you'd done a really good job. So, maybe explain a little bit about those and, and maybe where people should look at starting.
Chase Mountains: Well, I'm glad you went through that seven day challenge because it's a good introduction to the app and how it works. I'm not entirely happy with that because, from a beginner's perspective, you go in there and it's like a dump of information on you. And I didn't, I didn't really think about that. As I was, I was making that seven day challenge because it's just five moves. And the idea originally was to give people these five very basic moves that cover a lot of what you need and it takes five minutes. But then you go through the individual videos and you're like, well, there's tons of nuance to each of these moves and there's progressions and regressions and different variations of the exercise to find something that aligns. Well, with your current situation. Couple of years ago during COVID, I released a program called Elements, which was the first program that I really made. That wasn't about the mountain. I used to make programs for the mountain. So I'll have a Kilimanjaro program or every space cam program.
Tayson Whittaker: Hm.
Chase Mountains: What I struggled with was that people could potentially go into this program and injure themselves mid preparation for a trip of a lifetime because of what I was giving them without any kind of nuance or any way to customize it for them. So I've since moved away from that and started to make programs that are sort of fit for a certain body or a certain sort of situation. It was really about slowing down everything and taking a very relaxed approach to training. A lot of it is starting on the floor. And when we look at, you know, early development in childhood and developing those motor skills, a lot of it happens with rolling and crawling and being on the floor and we build up from that. So elements are mainly about being on the floor and interacting with the floor and doing very basic stuff that I'm sure is not going to create more tension and pain and injury. I really wanted to have a very safe starting point for anyone like I made that program for eight year olds. I wanted my grandmother to be able to go through that safely.
Tayson Whittaker: Mhm
Chase Mountains: Then I've just recently released elements one oh two, which is a further development of that. So that's a little bit more dynamic. It really gets into the breeding. There's a whole module about how to breathe at rest, how to breathe when you're hiking. In terms of the amount of rest that you take, the chemical, the biochemical component of breathing. What happens with the CO2 and nitrogen and oxygen and then the biomechanical part of breathing and how that interacts. All this is all the stuff that we've talked about. Right. And then there's a lot of just standard, you know, squats and lunges there, the standard diet of what you need to get strong. So that if you have a trip coming up, you know, you focus on that phase, which is very much all the basics, you know, just getting strong core work, squats and lunges, all the basics. And then also in that program is a little bit more complex movement. So if people choose, they can, let's say after a trip, they can get into a little bit more nuance with the body, start to put themselves in challenging positions that will require some work shopping and some experimentation to be able to get a better sense of where we may be limited. So that's what illness wanna choose about. We have mountain proof ankles, which is a free program. That's obvious I think and then there's a mountain proof knees program that one is paid for. And that's basically, I have a little bit of a problem with that because the way that the way that it's out there is like if you have knee pain, do this and we've had thousands of success stories from that, but not everyone will have that same story because of nuance, right? So for the moment it's up there and people are still getting good results from it for the most part. Then there's cornerstone which is a high level, so more on the athlete side of things. So people looking to do higher endurance, higher mountains. And that is basically a representation of what I do when I'm in my zone. And it's the closest representation of my sort of style of training. What do I like to do when I'm in the preparation phase for something big?
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah. Now are these all like one off courses or is it like a monthly paid system or how does, how does that work?
Chase Mountains: All of those are 11 off, just purchase it and you get it for the lifetime of the program. I can't say you get it for life because I know that after 10 years of doing this, certain things are like, I don't really want this to be out there because there's better information I can, I can, I can update this, I can change it. Maybe new research comes out, this isn't relevant anymore. So it's for the lifetime of the program. It's a once off price. I do have a membership which is called momentum. And that's basically at the moment it's like a gigantic library of all my videos, especially follow along videos. So for people that like to just press play and have lots of variety and just follow along to, you know, they've got nice good tunes and it's my voiceover and generally it's filmed in like, a nice kind of environment. That's the kind of thing that a lot of beginners will like because it's just doing exactly what they tell you to do. Just press play and you're with me, I'm with you for the, you know, 2030 40 minutes in some cases of these sessions. Yeah. Other than that they're just once off programs.
Tayson Whittaker: Yeah. Awesome. And a breathwork program to come. Where is that just built into all of them?
Chase Mountains: The breathwork module is in momentum though. It's in the membership and it's been added as a bonus to S one oh two and cool elements, one oh two. I'm continuing to add to that because I'm just learning new things all the time. I just finished off a video today all about, you know, intra abdominal breathing and some of the nuance that comes with, with that and how to, how to go about establishing more of that stability from, from the Awesome.
Tayson Whittaker: Awesome. Well, I highly encourage people to go check those courses out. I think it is for everybody but especially if you're someone who's, who's finding that they're butting up against walls with, with pain with mobility, you know, those kinds of things, these are going to really speak to you. But I think everyone, whether it's like we've talked about whether you're too young and you don't have issues yet they will come. And so learning these things sooner, in my opinion, will pay off big dividends in the back end and maybe keep you more mobile and doing what you want to do with your life. You know, your outdoor hobbies are much longer throughout your life. Again, I think personally, I don't think this is a, an individual goal, but a goal that I have is just to be able to go hiking and, and, you know, ride a pedal bike and, and do everything that my kids want to do well into my, my later stages of life when, when most people have, you know, quote unquote, retired from, from so many things. So, I think that these pay big dividends, it's a worthy investment and I would encourage you to go check those out. You can find those at Chase Mountains dot I O or through Chase's youtube channel. He'll have, he'll have links there, but I really appreciate you coming on today. I know you, you've got a wealth of knowledge and, and, I asked a lot of questions that I was very interested in. So I hope this podcast turns out for everyone else listening. But, this is, you know, this is just a taste of, of all of the things that can greatly impact, you know, your health and, and I think Chase is, is an exceptional resource to find that. So again, Chase Mountains on youtube or Chase Mountains dot I O It would be his website. So I really appreciate it. Chase. Any, any final words or any, any last comments here that we may have missed that, that you feel are important.
Chase Mountains: I think the reason why this has been a great conversation and probably one of the best podcasts that I've done in a while is because we have that fundamental value of wanting to be able to do these things when we're 80 and 90. Like that is the one thing that I've repeated over and over and over again on my channel. So yeah, it's just super nice to chat to someone that's on the, on that same level, on that same path. And, and I think that's why it's been very enjoyable for me to chat to you, man. So I very much appreciate it.
Tayson Whittaker: I, I appreciate that and again, just appreciate your time. So, ok, go check out Chase and hopefully we'll, we'll have back on the podcast someday. So,
Chase Mountains: thanks, man.
