Joey's PHT Success Story

: On today's episode, Joey's PHT success story. Welcome to the podcast helping you overcome your proximal hamstring tendinopathy. This podcast is designed to help you understand this condition, learn the most effective evidence-based treatments and bust the widespread misconceptions. My name is Brody Sharp. I'm an online physiotherapist, recreational athlete, creator of the Run Smarter series and a chronic proximal hamstring tendinopathy battler. Whether you are an athlete or not, this podcast will educate and empower you in taking the right steps to overcome this horrible condition. So let's give you the right knowledge along with practical takeaways in today's lesson. I was excited to get Joey on despite him driving for the first minute or so of our conversation. So you might hear a bit of road traffic noises, but excited to have him on because first of all, fun guy, very passionate and loving life and just a different PhD background. I guess he can explain that in a second, but not much of a runner. Um, well, not purely in the running sense, um, but not purely a gym go away either. And yeah, has a really, um, extensive and comprehensive story that sort of got him turning the corner and finally overcoming PhD. And so, um, that's why I was excited to have him on probably goes to show in this episode that. You can be an athlete, you can be a recreational athlete or competitive, or you could just be a sedentary person. These principles tend to carry over into any population. And like I say, Joey was really fun to have on. I'm excited to bring you his story. So let's dive in. Joey, thank you very much for joining me today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yes, I know you're driving at the moment and you're going to pull over soon. So for those who might, people might hear some car noises and maybe some road rage in the background. Yeah. It's not rush hour yet. There shouldn't be any of that, but it's coming. All right. Good mates. Well, one really interesting reason why I want to have you on is because you're, I guess, athletic background. is quite different to the runners or cyclists, triathletes, and that sort of stuff that I usually have on. So would you mind introducing yourself and sort of where that athletic background comes from? Well, I grew up, I've lived in San Diego my entire life and due to weather, probably like Australia, people are active year round. So I grew up playing the traditional typical sports of American football, wrestling, and dabbled in boxing, things like that, and a lot of surfing and so on. So I kind of athletic my whole life or active my whole life. Then got married, had kids and just became more of a gym rat. I was never... I was never an endurance athlete though. I never did any legitimate endurance activities. And then at 41 years old, my coworker, who is a serious and accomplished endurance athlete, had invited me to do something called a Marine Corps mud run. It was a 10K run where you do a bunch of obstacles. And I, like I said, I had zero cardio. I didn't know that stuff at that point in my life. I was 41 and had just been going to the gym and lifting weights, but I just thought how hard can it be? So I went out there and I just about died and I realized for the first time in my life, oh my God, I have no cardio. And so I decided to take up running, but because I also wasn't in the endurance community on any level, I didn't even, I knew nothing about all of that. I just thought. to be a better runner, just put on some shoes and start running. So I started doing that and I just ran as far as I could, as fast as I could. Every chance I got and I got faster and I got, I was able to run further and I was able to run faster, but I also was just piling up into one injury after another and that the injuries are what caused me to start trying to figure out, Oh, why is this happening? You know, ITB was my first major issue and that's why I started learning. Oh wow. There's a, there's an art to this. Uh, duh. and I started learning, there is a process. But because of the sports jobs I was in before where you just do everything hard, hard as you can all the time, even though I read a lot of this stuff, chief running these things, trying to fix my ITB, I didn't really listen. I just still pushed and pushed and pushed. And then in about, I'd say about five, six years into it, I would be, I guess, an OK runner in the world of runners. I had, you know, running a 10K at about a 7 and 1 1⁄2 minute pace and 7 minute pace. Ran a half marathon, but always hurting. And about that time, I was at the beach, and I slipped playing with my daughters, playing a paddle ball game. And it's the first time I felt a, like a pain, like an injury to my. right hamstring tendon up by where my butt is. And from that point forward, every time I ran, it would hurt. And because I didn't want to lose my running conditioning, I never took a break. So I became Dr. Google. I started looking, trying to figure out what's going on. My daughter, my oldest daughter, was at UCLA. And I had to drive two to three hours to see her regularly and to do. I couldn't sit that long. I'd have to literally lean the entire way on one butt cheek. Sorry. But that's what I did to get there. And never understood what was truly going on. I knew what started it, but I couldn't understand why it wouldn't go away. But because I'm hardheaded, I wouldn't take any time off. And I continued this years. So it stayed. The pain would stay, or the inflammation would stay anywhere from a. Uh, four or five in the pain scale up to a nine or a 10, sometimes we're just painful. And, um, I just continued for years. And then about two years ago, I'd say, um, I was trail running downhill and I stumbled. And in the effort, you know, that kind of downhill out of control lunging, trying to, you know, if my arms are flailing. I felt the exact same thing happen to the left one. And I recognized it. It's an exact spot really high up behind my butt. And now here I am. Both sides are messed up. And in that same effort, I re-injured my right. But now I added my left, which was new. That never really had the issue. And then again, back to Dr. Google. And that's how I stumbled on you. Well, first of all, let me back up. I finally went and saw a doctor for the first time. up until then I hadn't actually went and seen a doctor. So I went, they sent me to a, I forget the guy's specialty, and they gave me an MRI of both hamstrings. And then I got to talk to the surgeon afterwards who said, you've got this proximal hamstring tendinopathy. He goes, you've got some thickening, you've got some scar tissue. The right one has some thickening and some scar tissue and things. The left one was just inflamed, he had tendonitis and tendonitis. I can't remember. I think I showed you, I can't, but I had two things going on in both of them. And he said, I can get in there and I can, I can operate on both of them and fix them and you'll need to take a full year off in the recovery. I was like, well, I'm not going to do that. There's just, that's not an option for me. And he goes, well, the other option would be we can try something that may or may not work. It's called PRP injection. where I do what's called dry needling. I'll just go into your hamstring tendon, I'll poke a bunch of holes in it, and then I'll inject some of your plasma into it. And that worked for some people, not for others. It's worth a try. And I said, all right. And so that's what I did. I'm both hamstrings. And a word of caution, if anybody out there hears this and wants to do it, I opted to not use any anesthesia. And they have one that's true anesthesia, and they have another one that's Like you just sedated a choke neither and I would never make that mistake again. It's unbearably painful. Um, but nonetheless, I did it. And during that process is when I really started digging for information and I found you. Um, I found your other podcasts. You have two, the one that was just specifically about hamstring tennanopathy. And I went holy and I'm listening to it. And you were describing for the first time I've heard someone echo back to me. Exactly what i'm going through like a few things you said that just stuck out at me like oh my god, that's it Um the shoe off test these certain things I was spending years doing like, you know I couldn't just kick off my shoes by putting one foot behind the other heel and do that There's a lot of things I just couldn't do anymore Everything you spoke about Was almost like you're talking directly to me or read my mind so I started in Doing some of those things and then realize after the PRP injections, I need someone like you who understands this injury to help me rehab, because I didn't want to go through the basically geriatric ward of my health care center, which is not for aged. I'm an aged athlete is what they call me. And I knew I'd be treated like a convalescent person, and I didn't want that. So I contacted you. And we started building a program and it worked. Yeah. And I think at the stage when it was like a week or so after having those PRP injections and you said that the pain had significantly reduced because of those injections, but we were just now sort of rebuilding up to trying to come up with a structure to, I guess, rebuild you back up to your fitness goals. But you then mentioned, okay, I do high rocks. you know, courses, um, can you just explain what that is? So high rocks is, um, because like I said, I was a gym rat, you know, doing, making, trying to make my muscles big, the transition to running. And then I found, I found this sport called high rocks. It's H Y R O X. It started out in Europe and it's what they call hybrid athlete test. They wanted to, the CEO decided he wanted to create a sport where you couldn't be Like a little crossfit muscley guy or a really thin endurance athlete He wanted to find something that required an equal amount of both. So it's an 8k run Broken up into eight 1000 meter sprints in between each of those thousand meter sprints is going to be a heavy Zone so I like in one case is a 360 pound sled push that goes 50 meters you run a thousand meters Then you do a rower for you row for 1000 meters, then run 1000 meters. Wall balls with a 20 pound wall ball to 10 feet. You do a hundred of those, which if you haven't done that, just give it a shot. It'll kill you. You throw the ball at the 10 feet and then run 1000 meters. So you have 10 of these. Oh, one of them is a kettlebell carry. You pick up a 32 kilogram kettlebells, one in each hand and you run for 200 meters. And then again, and you go for 1000 meters sprint. So there are physical strength tests combined with running in the idea that you create the hybrid athlete. So I had qual- prior to right after getting in, I qualified for the world champion in 2021, but I got hurt. Like I said, trial running and that took me out. So I wasn't able to do it. So now my goal is to get back to that. which I've already qualified. I competed in December. I took first place in my age group. And so now my goal is to compete as a pro, which simply means for high rocks, heavier weights. Everything's the same. Now I have to push 440 pounds sled and I weigh 160. So that's gonna be a challenge. The heavier kettlebells and things like that. But for the most part, it's the same race, just heavier weights, same... run distances. Yeah. Why I say that is because, you know, sometimes we were, well, obviously we will work when working with athletes. What are their goals? Okay. Is it a marathon? Is it a, um, an iron man? And you would, I hadn't really heard of high rocks and you were just listing off the list of, um, stages. And I was just like, this is so much work for your hamstring. You got the sled pushes, you got the wall balls, and then you've got the sprints in between those stages. And so. just looking at the amount of load that we need to get you back to seemed like we really needed to work very carefully with introducing a lot of these things. I didn't want to put words in your mouth when it comes to the outcome of the PRP, but I thought, could you share that? What was your reaction like, you know, days, weeks, months after the PRP injection? I opted to drive there myself because I told my wife, don't worry, it's no big deal. It took me, I don't know, 15 minutes to get to my car. So short term, it was excruciatingly painful. The worst pain I had experienced and that level of pain lasted until like the next day, I'd say. Then it started to subside and became tolerable. I should have probably kept notes. I don't have a perfect timeline. But the pain just, it evenly decreased over, I'd say a week or two. I don't know if you kept notes. I can't remember, but about that, I'd say it was ready to start doing some stuff, start doing some light conditioning. I think with past clients, it was actually good that you had that outcome. I've seen, I think I might do a podcast episode on PRPs. But the, like your specialist said, like, we're not sure if it's going to work or not, and you opted for it, which I think is pretty good advice because I've seen a lot of people have PRP and it make no difference. I've seen some people have PRP and actually increases their symptoms. And so there's, um, it seems like a bit of hit and miss, but a bit different to your initial injury. Um, your initial onset is what we call like a, a bit more traumatic or acute onset of symptoms. It was more of a one movement lunge slide where you sort of felt something in your high hamstring, where some other people's onset might be very slow and gradual where they. just run a little bit more or run a little bit faster and it just slowly develops over time. So those two different onsets, which is why I like every condition is different and should be treated differently. But yeah, nonetheless, we had your PRP, you know, a couple of weeks later, we start working together, we start coming up with like a formula and a plan. Was there anything in particular that you found? I guess different, was there anything about the structure that you, that we laid out that you're a bit surprised about? Can you recall back then? I wouldn't say surprised because I'd listened so much of your, about your book and I listened so much of your podcasts. So I kind of, I guess it'd be like describing how to make a cake, right? You could tell someone all the ingredients. I knew the ingredients because I had heard everything you'd said. So I knew I needed eggs and flour and salt and I'm going to need all the things I needed, but I still didn't understand how to apply it. What combinations, how much of this versus how much of that? I needed that and as it applies to me as the type of athlete, I have a 58-year-old where one leg is 10 years of this tendinopathy. The other leg is one year. trying to get back and so all those things I knew I needed tailored directly to me and I, although I knew the ingredients, I didn't know how to apply them, how much of each, what the doses would be here, the measurement would be for each thing. So you're able to put that together for me in a very, very precise way and I was very happy. I'd say it sort of challenged. my abilities to structure in things as well, because mainly working with runners, I'm very, like, I've got a lot of experience with saying, okay, this is this first week, we won't do any running, let's just work out some strength exercises and see what strength exercise you can tolerate. Once we find that out, let's layer in some running, usually some like really easy walk runs, then just progress based on symptoms, a little bit more running, a little bit less walking, a little bit heavier lifting, sprinkle those layers in. But for you, not only were we coming off the PRP, so we have to be very careful about how we apply load to make sure the tendons are tolerating that after that procedure. But I think we started off the first week, you know, we had you doing some like a high rehab day, a low rehab day, whereas the low rehab day would be like, more like bodyweight style things. short range of movement, but then the higher rehab days being more like your deadlifts, trying to go heavy, but reduced range of movement, seeing how that was tolerated. And then once we found that layer, we then piled on top of that a walk run program, which started off with a lot of walking, not a lot of running, all really easy running as well, which, you know, you over the course of working together, it sounds like you were a bit frustrating about wanting to, you know, kick it up a notch, um, but slowly piecing everything together and making sure that symptoms were falling when within acceptable limits. Um, can you remember like in the first couple of weeks, first couple of months, how you felt, um, your tendon was responding? Yeah, I do. I, I remember that there were certain exercises that You can tell, I guess maybe my gym rat years, I learned a lot and then, you know, early sports, I learned a lot about how to assess my own body. I can just tell when things are working, how they're working. And so I was able to, when some of the exercises I can immediately tell, oh, this is going to be good. I can tell what I'm like. And some of them surprised me. The, like for instance, I had never done hip thrust ever in my life. And in the beginning, like you said, we were going really light. and I was just doing the isometric version. And I can feel, remember I think I told you it would get kind of hot, not painful, just I was like wow. But when I would stand up afterwards, I immediately knew there was a benefit, I can tell. So early on I do recall certain exercises I can tell were, I immediately knew they were working, they were doing something good for me. And then other ones I brought up with you I was worried about. And what was great about working with you was you immediately would switch things up and kind of tailor them to things that. And I've told a few friends about you and that I'm not used to someone taking the feedback and redesigning that the very next day or the very next week right there on the spot. to give me the same volume of exercises, but in a different way. And I think that was really the best part of the process. Cause like he said, it was that whole saying, trust the process. Cause there's a lot of times where I knew I felt better, but I wasn't better. And I wanted to go and test it. And a few times I accidentally did, but that wasn't deliberate. Oh, a few times I just misunderstood and you were very clear. Cause when I went back and looked at the Google sheet, it was written out there quite clear what not to do, what to do and how to do it. Oh, I just, my, you know, my attention span isn't the greatest or my attention to detail. But when I did adhere to the program, I saw continuous progress. But like you said, I was so eager to get back at it. Yeah. There's a few things to unpack there because it's- It's almost quite dangerous when you start getting improvements. I've done a podcast episode on this, like when, um, when getting better can be dangerous and it's essentially like highlighting if you have two good weeks, three good weeks, four good weeks of like almost getting symptom free, you know, people's mindset is like, yes, I'm back. Let's get into it. Let's grind. Let's work. Let's go. We've got these races to prepare for. We've got world champs to look forward to. And then, you know, people just hit the accelerator and it sort of, you know, gets them into trouble, gets them into a setback. And then their mindset just plummets because they're like, I was feeling so good. Now I feel like I'm back at square one. There's a lot of things to a lot of the rollercoaster of emotions to go through there. But another thing that you said was the ability to at least moderate a plan so that you're still really active. Like in the early days, trying to be as active as you can be. Um, because a lot of fears for a lot of athletes is if I go to see a physio or a PT or a doctor, they're just going to tell me not to do the activity that I love. And that's a lot of the fear they say, you know what, they're going to tell me, I just can't run and I'm just going to ignore them. And so what's the point of even going and getting it checked out. But, um, one thing that I try and do as a therapist is say, okay, how much can we get away with? How much running? how much exercise, how much gym workouts can we get away with and try and do as much as possible without flaring things up because one that would raise the strength and capacity, but two, like your mindset, if you're, if you're an athlete and you're doing a workout every day, even though it might not be as intense or as long as you want, we're at least doing something every day, you're still feeling like you're productive, still feeling like you're exercising and you're sort of getting that endorphin hit and that. rehab experience, that rehab journey is a little bit more tolerable. But then you said that, you know, there were some hiccups, there were some flare ups and you might not have adhered to the plan in some stages. Can you remember what components within that might you might have led your way and generate that flare up? Oh, I know for sure what it is. Is something about running? what for me is fast. I know in the world of runners, this is not fast, but in my world of hybrid athletes that are a little more boxy and a little more muscular and heavy is fast for us. So when I picked up the pace, if I, if I on some of the, um, uh, these intervals, you call them strides, um, I was, if I, I misunderstood, um, or I didn't read what you'd written about. the level of effort I should put into that. So I saw that as an opportunity to, like you just said, because you feel good. You're like, well, there's only one way to know how far along I am in it. I'm just going to go, I'm going to haul ass. Sorry. And so I did. And I was like, it felt good to be running at almost a max pace. For sure, even if it was a short duration, it was that thing where we gradually build, and then for maybe five or 10 seconds right in the very middle, I thought I had the green light to, for five or 10 seconds, just open up with everything I got and then slowly taper down. And after, I can't remember, I did a few of those repeats and then like maybe the third or fourth one, I'm like, uh-oh, it's hurting. And then... one or two more of those after that. I'm like, oh shit, I'm in trouble. This is hurting. Both of them are both tenants were hurting and then we spoke and you made a, he said, no, you did them wrong. So yeah, I know what I did. I know what caused the most. It was trying to sprint, trying to stride out before my hamstrings were ready. Cause all the other exercises. didn't see, oh well one, the lying hamstring curls. Whenever I, if you know, the one where you lay on your stomach and you curl, for whatever reason, that particular movement seems to flare it up a tiny bit. Not a lot, but no, not the running too fast, running slow at a moderate pace didn't bother it at all. It's just. And this is probably something that PHT sufferers can. can learn from this. When you run, when you increase your speed, the demand on your tendon isn't linear. Like if you progress your speed in a linear fashion, the demand that the requirements for the hamstring isn't linear, it's actually exponential. So, you know, even if you are running at 75% of your max sprint, and then you go to 100% of your max sprint, you're like doubling demand of that hamstring. And so that's why it's why you've had such a reaction to those sprints. And usually within a formula or like a benchmark kind of rules I sort of lay out for people. At that stage, we were doing all slow running and then we started to piece in, okay, what does speed work look like? And so we implemented strides once a week, which would be four to six repeats you know, running for 30 seconds, like you said, slowly accelerating for 15 seconds. So you start slow, accelerate for 15 seconds. Once you get to your top speed, we, you know, run at that top speed for eight to 10 seconds, and then we back off. But for in those early stages, that top speed, we sort of had a cap on at about like 75% of your max sprint, which, like you say, you sort of fell away from those rules or misinterpreted those and thought it to go at 100%. And so that sort of miscommunication led to that flare up, which took a couple of couple of days, couple of weeks to sort of settle down. Which sort of brings me to my next point, like when you did have that flare up, what do you think you did well that brought it back under control? And how long do you think that sort of process took? Um, since common sense for me is I just avoided the things that hurt. And I, you know, we did, we continued the ones that seem to like, we're at that point we were doing, we're, we had incorporated my sled push and some lunges and some, we're doing both Romanian deadlifts and their standard deadlifts. And I, each one of those exercises at that point. before I flared it back up, I could tell that those things were really helping. I could tell it. Not only could I feel it immediately after, for about a half hour, I basically be pain free, which is weird. It slowly creeped back in. But just, so I knew those exercises were helping me. And so I just got back to really focusing on those and try not to do the, well. not trying, I didn't do any more sprints. I, all of the running that we did from that point forward, I just, as you said, just monitor it and don't let it go above a certain level, pain threshold, and I stuck to that. And that, I think that's what made the most, the biggest differences. Which is a good takeaway for most people if they do have a particular flare up is, okay, we need to understand what's currently causing that irritation. So we said it was the speed work, sprinting at that 100% max during those strides. So remove those, take them out for a couple of weeks to let things settle down. But like you said, you were quite in tune with your body and knowing what exercises actually felt really good, which turns out to be like the slow heavy load stuff under certain weights and certain ranges of movement and that sort of thing. And so we stuck to those and just waited for things to gradually settle and get back to baseline. And then we slowly introduced those that sprints again. Are you back to strides? Are you back to sprints? How are you feeling with those? Yeah, I'm doing everything. I'm continuing everything as we left off. I'm doing the, I'm sticking to all the strength movements, all the, the compress, or what do you call them? Loading, the loading movements. And then, but I am. I'm going to stick with the program you had, right? I'm not going to return to the way I used to run. I found out that doing these, like having interval day and a slow run day and then having some strides doing that, I'm able to get the same running volume in a week without any pain and I just did it. Uh, I've raced twice since then and I haven't lost any of my, uh, VO two max, I guess you could say my, my. my output, my ability to either sustain a long run or a fast run, didn't suffer at all by switching up the way my running training is going. So I'm just going to keep doing that. I'll do some strides, once or twice a week. I'm doing these interval runs. I'm probably going to run that way forever now because it just feels good. And I'm not losing anything. And then I'll do maybe one long, really slow zone two comfortable run. Um, and it's, I'm just going to stick to that. And so when you say the intervals, the interval running sessions, they walk, run, uh, repeats. Right. With the strides, um, what's your current level? Like, so what does a stride session look like at the moment? You know what I've been doing? I've been doing it by, uh, well too, sometimes I've been doing it on a treadmill. Um, so I've been doing it by time on, on the treadmill. But when I'm outside, I've just been doing it by a fixed distance. You know, I just open up. I would just gradually start running and just open up. I'm going by feel, I guess. I don't have a set distance or time. I'm just, I want to feel the foot turnover. I want to feel the muscles engage. I want to feel the tendon work. But I don't want to risk. hurting it so I'm not doing a ton because a sport I do doesn't need it. I just know that I need it for, um, health, I guess for my, for my, my running fitness. So I'm not having to have a structured strides, I guess right now. All right. I haven't been, um, if that makes any sense. One thing that, um, I haven't really. highlighted yet is like throughout your process, once we knew that you could tolerate some walk running, then we laid in like different stages of the high rocks protocol. Like we had the ski-oak, we had the sled push, we had the wall balls, we had sandbag lunges, we had the rower, the farmer's carry, all that sort of stuff were those stages in those events. And so I think it was like every week or so we sort of just added in one station at a time and just seeing how that could be tolerated and sort of progressed through. And now you sort of, like you say, you're now doing events and going pretty well. I think one of my questions would be like, what do you think your weak link is or your weakest link is right now? That's sort of you feel like you need to work on to get to your best performance? It's still my running, only because again, the guys I'm competing against, they are lifelong endurance athletes who added strength to their... So when you look at this sport, like I said, it's eight zones and eight 1000 meter runs. 1000 meter runs take up about 50% of the total race time So most like the world champion in my age group will finish this race in about an hour and 15 minutes So about half that time is spent running So if you could run if you could do thousand meter sprints if I could shave a minute off of each of my thousand meter not a thousand meter runs I could win the world championship because my strength Events those portions. I'm already on par with the world with the world champion So I don't really need much there I need to be able to and they call it compromise running so it's a transition a lot of endurance athletes Don't realize until they do it how difficult it is to go from doing putting you know a 40 pound sandbag and lunge for a hundred meters and then immediately get up start running and then sprint for a thousand meters and then immediately push a you know 300, 400 pound sled for 50 meters and then again shift to sprint to running again and be at top running speed within you know five seconds. You know what I mean? You don't have time to build up. That shifting of anaerobic muscles, it is in itself. something that has to be learned. So I need to be able to get up to speed and have my top speed be the same as the top runners. And these guys right now, they have a—well, the best in the world have—most of the guys I beat, but when I'm talking about just the top guys in the world, we're talking—they have—they beat me by 30 seconds to a minute on each of those 8K laps. That adds up. I've got your program in front of me. The, when we very first started working together was about August last year. So we're looking at, you know, five months, six months. And the progress you've made, it's been great. Back to competing, you've got like your world champs in the, on the horizon. And so things are going really well. Is there anything in particular? Um, if someone is suffering from PhD and they're really struggling to get in control of their symptoms or return back to their activities, is there anything based on your experience in your rehab or any tips and advice you might have for them if they're, you know, finding that they're struggling? Yeah, it's something I don't have patience. But you know, I learned having work, you really do have to have a plan. I really I don't think you could do what I did for all those years and just kind of go by feel and massage here and take some ibuprofen this day and heat there, you know, all these different gym, you know, they call it gym bro or bro science. It wasn't working for me. It didn't work for me. I did for years and years and years. And finally, you got to have a structured plan. And I definitely think those loading exercises, if I had to put my finger on one thing, I really think those loading exercises were the biggest difference maker of all of it all. Everything I'm sure was an important ingredient. But having a plan and being pretty religious about the hip thrust, the lunges, the, well, we go to it later, but the hip thrust, the two different types of deadlifts and not skipping them and being, I really think that those two things made the biggest difference for me at least, I think. Yeah. I think patience is a good one. And like you say, diligent and consistent with the things that work well. You have a, being an athlete, you have a nice in tune sense of, you know, what feels good or what's good for the body. But like anyone, we can have our impatient moments and our frustrations. And I think, like we said, um, in this podcast earlier, when you start feeling good, that's a real test of character to, to still be patient when things feel good. Um, because, you know, we're all about long-term success. We're all about. you know, wanting to get six to 12 months from now and have a noticeable improvement back to your peak performance rather than just having these boom bust cycles that a lot of people are familiar with and then, you know, looking or being six to 12 months down the track and being at the same spot just because you've, you've been impatient. You've had those boom bust cycles throughout that rehab process. So yeah, trust the process, be patient, be diligent, I think is some really nice lessons. Um, anything else to add before we wrap up? No, other than thank you. Uh, you extended my, uh, competitive career. Cause I was already thinking I might have to move into something like cycling or I'm very competitive. So I'd have to do something, but I wanted to continue doing the thing I love. And I, I really think I owe it to you, um, that I'm out there doing it again at a high level. So thank you. Nice. Do you mind if I share your Instagram account? Um, I actually didn't check with you beforehand, but you're okay with me to share that? Sure. Yeah. So it's San Diego, Joey. If people want to follow your journey and see how the world champs go and your races, and there's some, some good high rocks footage on there as well. Yeah, looking forward to personally following your journey and seeing where it takes you in the next couple of events, the world champs and all that sort of stuff. And was really excited to have you on and a good different rehab journey to what is usually on this podcast. So thanks for coming on, mate. Thanks Brody, appreciate it. Knowledge is power.