Episode One-Hundred-Ten – Nicole Nicolay.mp4: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
Episode One-Hundred-Ten – Nicole Nicolay.mp4: this mp4 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Kevin:
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Kim Pittis:
Hello, everybody. I hope everybody can hear me. Okay. It is still so strange to start the podcast without Carol and Kevin here. So for the next few weeks, I’m flying solo all by myself. Got my big girl pants on and everything. So welcome to the podcast. Last week, we had a special guest on. Hopefully, everybody enjoyed seeing Doctor Charlie Weingroff. Whenever I have an opportunity to sit down with him, it’s you have to sit down, put on your seatbelt and take a deep breath because as he talks a mile a minute and he has so much good information. So I feel like we were robbed with that hour because there was just so much good information that came at us so fast. We talked a little bit about sprained ankles and using FSM in physical therapy sort of setting, and how we’ve utilized it with some of the athletes that we worked with. As most of my practice is working with athletes. But I work with a lot of regular people just like you and me. So today I want to carry on with the athletic trajectory, and I thought I would take a different spin on bringing the guests in that we typically do. And I would like to give you guys the opportunity to meet a patient of mine who is an athlete, a world-class Ironman athlete, actually, and I’d love to have her on just so you can get a patient’s perspective of utilizing FSM in some of the settings. So I was hoping you would be excited about that.
Kim Pittis:
So to start things off, I want to set the tone because we talk a lot about injuries and injury, recovery and rehabilitation and performance enhancement. But we miss, I think, in my opinion, talking about a really crucial role. And that’s recovery. And we talk about it as if the patients and athletes are just left to figure it out for themselves. Right? So as clinicians, we have a patient in and we spend that hour or two hours treating all the easy stuff, scar tissue, nerve pain, inflammation, that’s the easy things that we get to treat with FSM. We utilize manual therapy, other modalities, stretching, strength training. Some of you use acupuncture, other modalities like that to help complement that rehabilitation setting. But in my opinion, the recovery once that patient leaves your clinic, that’s where the magic can still continue. And so today’s episode, I really want to focus in on how we can support those patients and those athletes and the process in which they continue to travel once they leave the clinic. And in my opinion, this is the part where I think as clinicians, we tend to get a little lazy, where we’re just looking on the mode bank and we’re cutting and pasting. So today, like I said, bringing in my amazing athlete that I got to work with over the past couple years, I would like to hear her story a little bit more, and for you to hear her perspective as a patient and the importance of dialing everything in as specific as possible.
Kim Pittis:
I know personally, working with the athletes that I have, the ones that have had true success overcoming injuries and even just using it to help them from getting injured during an in-season, really rigorous training protocol. It’s been when I have been really specific with my programing and really trying to figure out what that person needs, both from a psychological perspective and a pathophysiological perspective as far as what their tissues need. So what I want to do hopefully, is share my screen with you a little bit so I can show you some slides. Those of you who are just listening on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts, these recordings are always available to you on YouTube so you can come back and see the slides, because I just want to give you a little bit of background, and I’m a very visual person, so I’m going to share my screen with you. This is a snippet of the sports Advanced class. So if you are able to come to any of the sports courses, this is what you’re going to see at the Sports Advanced course. So what I want to just show you here really quickly. Hopefully, you are able to see this slide here. What does everybody see if somebody can throw it in the chat what slide they’re seeing because I see two slides here? Fibers, managing the mechanisms, stimulation and repair. Hopefully something like that. Anybody want to throw it in the Q&A? Just really quickly to see what slide you guys are able to see or if you’re able to see a slide that would be helpful as well. Sometimes my computer is just a little bit delayed. Oh, someone in the Q&A. Simulation and repair. Wonderful. Okay, so just really quickly when we’re talking about recovery. And we can use this in an athletic situation where there is no injury or where there is an injury present. And we want to expedite healing. The chat is disabled. Okay. I’ll go back and try to look at that right away. Q&A is perfect. So when we have stimulation that occurs when the the muscle is contracting right. And that’s due to that nervous response. So during the actual exercising repeated contraction causes internal muscle fibers to be broken down. And once they’re damaged then they’re ready to be repaired. And then the repair happens. So, going back a little bit more, those of you who have listened to me speak longer than the past year or so that I’m a big proponent of METH, movement, elevation, traction, and heat, and really are moving away from RICE, which is rest, ice, compression, and elevation. Not that we don’t RICE anymore. Definitely. There’s a situation for everything. So I’m never an all or nothing sort of person, but it is really important that we realize that a certain amount of inflammation is absolutely necessary for this repair process to happen. So stimulation that could be an exercise that we’re doing on purpose.
Kim Pittis:
Or it could also be the act of an injury. So something tore a little bit too much. Not micro tearing but macro tearing. And then we have this breakdown of the muscle fiber, the repair which is after the workout or after that trauma that has happened, whether it’s a car accident, a slip and fall, new muscle fibers are produced to help replace and repair the damaged ones. More fibers are produced to make up for the damaged ones, and this is where the actual muscle growth takes place. So when we’re talking about hypertrophy, which is when we’re training to get increased volume in muscle. So whether or not it’s a bodybuilder trying to get size or somebody who’s been maybe in a cast or has had something immobilized and that muscle has atrophied, we do exercises to build that muscle back up again. Part of it is neural recruitment, right? It’s just that nervous system process of muscle-brain connection repairing. And a lot of times it’s the actual muscle fiber itself that is broken down and is repaired. And that’s when we get like increased tone, right where we increase definition or increase size. So I just wanted to break those two terms down because we talk about hypertrophy a lot, like I said in just this athletic setting. But a lot of times we’re utilizing in rehab when something has atrophied and we want to improve the connection again. So that repair process is actually really important for us to see actual repair to happen.
Kim Pittis:
All right. Let me move down here a little bit. Talking about numbers, we love to speak in numbers when it comes to FSM. 46 on the B channel has been something I’ve played around with since my very first course because we used to think 46 was muscle, and then we started thinking, no, maybe it’s the sarcomere and I beg to differ. I think it could actually be the Sarcolemma. It could be the sarcoplasm, or it could be the sarcomere, depending on what setting. I have a really hard time believing that in 1920s, when we were first seeing these numbers appear on the scene, that anybody really knew if it was a sarcoplasm, the sarcolemma, or the sarcomere itself. So let me just break down those terms really quick.
Kim Pittis:
As we first started thinking about 46, it was the sarcomere, which is the actual sliding filament mechanism of the muscle fiber. That’s contractile unit, actin and myosin coming together. Muscle fiber is shortening. The sarcoplasm is the fluid that is around these myofibrils. So as you see in the slide, it breaks it down a little bit, gives you a visual of what we’re looking at. And the sarcolemma is like that plasma membrane that’s encompassing everything. So when we want to decrease the activity of a sarcoplasm, this is where we would try it locally with athletes. For instance, you have a soccer player who just finished a game and their quadriceps and their hamstrings, so their thighs, for lack of a better term, are full of lactate and whatever else byproduct is happening.
Kim Pittis:
And we want that leg to recover. So we were thinking of running, oh, we’ll run inflammation in the muscle. So 44, 46 and things would start to get smaller. We would use a tape measure to just measure volume after every 20 minutes. And as the leg is going back down to normal size, I had to stop and think, why would decreasing activity in a sarcomere decrease volume? It didn’t make any sense. So then I started thinking, I wonder in this case, if we are decreasing or helping the inflammation and the sarcolemma or the sarcoplasm and having that localized effect there. These are the things that we talk about with the sports Advanced class. I want to give you a little bit of a teaser, but again, this also goes back to using critical thinking when you’re thinking about rehabilitation and recovery. When we bring my athlete on right away, when we talk about what happens after running, after swimming, after cycling, what sort of effects do we want to take place? And this is all part of designing a program for an athlete, especially those athletes that have those swells after that are very uncomfortable. Why I don’t like ice baths anymore is because, like we just said, we need a certain amount of repair of inflammation to happen for that repair process. Right. So those are basically those macrophages that come in. Those are your pac-men that come in and eat up all the debris.
Kim Pittis:
So, we need some inflammation to happen. So we get those clean-up crew cells to come in, gobble up all those pieces and then vacate the area. If you’re in an ice bath or you’re applying localized ice to muscles, you’re not getting good inflammation. And this is not just my opinion. There’s many studies right now if you just Google METH or not using Ice in recovery. There’s a lot of really good data coming out of Canada and Australia right now to support that. And I can post a study that I use in the sports course shortly here. So hopefully that gives you a bit of a visual of what we’re looking at. I’m going to stop sharing my screen briefly here just so we can get our my friend Nicole. I’m going to bring her on shortly. And I just wanted to give you, like I said, a little bit of these nuggets. So when we’re talking about repair, you get that visual of what the sarcomere and the sarcoplasm and the sarcolemma look like, and then we can start talking about it in real terms. So let me just highlight or promote to speaker. This is so hard for me without Kevin here. So promote to panelists. Nicole should be rejoining us shortly. Like I said, there she is Nicole. Nicole Nicolay just finished competing with Ironman World Championships in Kona last week, so we have her fresh. Nicole, welcome to our podcast. I believe you’re muted. No, you’re not. Hi.
Nicole Nicolay:
Thank you for having me.
Kim Pittis:
No. Like, I’m so excited because I was thinking about guests that I wanted to bring on. And I am the physical medicine department, Dr. McMakin talks all about functional medicine, but the gap that we consistently have is talking about the real important parts of the equation. And that’s you, the patient. So we’ve worked together for a few years. So we’ve gone through injury, we’ve gone through recovery and we’ve gone through performance enhancement. So those are my three favorite things. I was trying to think when you got your own CustomCare, because you were one of my chronic borrowers for a while until you became an addict and you’re like, okay, now I need one for myself.
Nicole Nicolay:
I need my own. I think it’s been, maybe a year and a half, two years now. I can’t ever remember not having it as a part of my training, recovery, everything regime and really relying on it. So I was very appreciative to have my own.
Kim Pittis:
And it’s funny because as clinicians, we’re also the same. I don’t ever remember practicing without this tool because it was like the dark ages. It’s how did we go to school without being able to Google something? But we did it. So like I said, I want to break down a little bit of the effects that you feel when you get a treatment, how you feel like it’s helped you. And then we’ll move into preparing for Ironman because there’s what you physically do is nothing compared to the and I’m sorry, no offense to my guys that are in the NHL and the NFL, but doing an Ironman is insane. So you are a triathlete. How long have you been doing triathlons for? Let’s back everything up there.
Nicole Nicolay:
I’ve been a triathlete for ten years.
Kim Pittis:
And your first triathlon was motivated because.
Nicole Nicolay:
I lost a family, I had a family member that was going through a rough time with battling cancer. And I myself actually had been in a car accident. And so I felt like a great way. Obviously I had a friend of mine who I’d met through cycling and she reached out and goes, you should really stop feeling sorry for yourself and you should not worry about getting your body back. You can totally do that. So why don’t you do an Ironman? Because she happened to be a bike coach at the time for team and training, you can raise some money and do a race in honor of your cousin. So I thought it would be a great idea. So I had never done a triathlon before. I was a competitive swimmer for 13 years, so I did have that background. I did have a bike, a road bike for all of about, I think maybe three months prior to that that I had just started writing. But I like dove right into it. Had the bike signed up for a 100 miler three weeks later, I was crazy. So yeah, so when I do something, I go all in and obviously never doing a triathlon. I thought doing an Ironman for a good purpose was obvious. And it just so happened that it was the very first ever Ironman that was in Lake Tahoe. So I was going to be doing my first triathlon ever at altitude.
Kim Pittis:
Wow.
Nicole Nicolay:
Let’s go.
Kim Pittis:
Let’s just. Yes. What do they say? Baptism by fire.
Nicole Nicolay:
Just jump right in.
Kim Pittis:
Literally.
Nicole Nicolay:
Yeah.
Kim Pittis:
And then you did your first one, and you’re like, because sometimes it’s a one-and-done. People just check the box and they’re like, that’s enough for me. And it clearly wasn’t because you just kept repeating the process.
Nicole Nicolay:
Yeah. When I finished that, I was like, wow, that was really crazy. Insane. All the feeling, all the pain. Excruciating. But when you are like pushing yourself and you’re seeing people around you that are in pain and they’re pushing beyond, it definitely motivates you. And I just was drawn to that. I think once you’re a competitor, once you’ve been in a competitive sport with having your girls and your husband being fierce competitors and yourself, that you can’t turn that drive off, it’s just in you. And I think mine had been dormant maybe a decade or so in that regard. And it was definitely was my awakening. And I think I turned to my husband and I said, I’m going to race Kona someday. I’m just sure I finished this in 15 hours and I mostly walked the horrid marathon at the end. But I’m going to work at getting faster and I’m going to qualify. I’m going to race Kona at the World Championship one day.
Kim Pittis:
And you did last week.
Nicole Nicolay:
And I did last week. Yay!
Nicole Nicolay:
So let’s talk about the road to Kona a little bit. And for those of you who are listening, who don’t know there’s many different distances for a triathlon. So the distance that you just competed in is or an I guess an Ironman distance is different than a normal triathlon. Correct?
Nicole Nicolay:
So, an Ironman is a full-distance triathlon. There’s typically your sprint distance, your Olympic distance that most people know of. And then there’s the half distance and then the full distance. An Ironman is a 2.4-mile swim, followed by 112-mile bike ride, followed by a 26-mile marathon. 140.6 miles and there’s time limits for each, and you have to complete it in 17 hours or less.
Kim Pittis:
Well, like I feel like my brain is on the back of the wall right now because for me, I just raced half marathons. That is where I tap out. That’s my sweet spot. I can’t imagine running a full marathon, especially after biking. What did you say? A hundred and how many miles?
Nicole Nicolay:
112.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah, 112. And then swimming. What is the hardest part of a triathlon for you during the race itself?
Nicole Nicolay:
I think it’s the it’s your mind. It’s a very long conversation with yourself, and you’re going to be in pain, and you know that you’re going to be in pain. And there’s you have to be ready for that. Running is definitely, it’s my Achilles. I’m a swimmer. I feel like you’re either a swimmer or a runner, naturally. And so that’s how it shakes out. Like the bike seems like the equalizer for most of us racing. But yeah, it’s definitely always been the run.
Kim Pittis:
Okay. So just as I was just talking about, there’s that mechanical breakdown and repair. Another thing I don’t think we talk about a lot with FSM or just in general, actually is the mental repair for a competitor for training. It’s the same whether you’re an athlete or you are a patient who is in chronic pain, somebody who is going through multiple surgeries or even just one surgery. The mental I guess component is something that we can greatly help with FSM and we utilize it in different ways. So I know with yourself and with many athletes, it’s if I can train really hard and not feel sore tomorrow, I will spend whatever that price tag is so I can just keep my volume going higher and higher. But like you said, with something like a triathlon where it’s not like a guy who just plays on Sunday, you are stuck in your brain without headphones, correct? Like you’re not allowed to listen to anything. So it’s not like you can throw on a podcast like this or some tunes and just get lost in it. Go back to utilizing FSM. Have you found that? It helps you with nerves, or with that mental struggle or relaxing at the very least, being able to sleep at night.
Nicole Nicolay:
I think twofold here. So one, when I first met you and first came to you, it was because I had just suffered a bike crash and I had a double concussion and I had hit my head twice. And you let me borrow a machine, showed me, you worked with me and we had the concussion setting. And I was like, That was my first aha! That wow, this modality, this treatment is something that’s just floored me as something I didn’t have very much exposure to. And I had been to physical therapists and different things prior to that, because I think I met you like halfway through my Ironman journey, like five years in maybe. And so that was my first exposure to Wow, this can really calm my nervous system. This can really relax me, and it can have an effect just mentally that also is very connected to my body. So that was my first moment in realizing how incredible it was. But more and probably the reason why I ended up begging you, I need a machine. Because as I had been racing for a number of years, obviously with Covid there were not very many races happening. And then when I decided to start again, training for another full, the anxiety that started building within me for just managing my own training, managing the pressure I was putting on myself, the unknowns just kind of coming out of Covid and going back into racing is challenging enough. But there were all these outside pressures, and I think having you to help me with anxiety and calming my nervous system and settling my mind and just grounding me with FSM was huge in just getting me to the start line.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah, I think so lots to unpack there. Like I said, I think as clinicians, we get really caught up in inflammation, scar tissue, all that stuff. And yeah, that’s all really important. But you can treat you can do that localized treatment all you want. You can be really great with your hands. You could be a phenomenal exercise therapist and give your athletes and your patients really good training programs. But once they leave your clinic and they get in that car and they drive, they are on their own. And it is amazing what just stress and the pressures of their everyday life, how that can affect their sleep. And you and I both know and everybody listening both knows it doesn’t matter what you do during the day, if you cannot sleep at night, you are undoing all that training, all that hard work, all that clean eating. We joke around with athletes that like the concussion protocol and I put that in bunny ears, has been like the CustomCare’s claim to fame, especially with my athletes. I’ll have people who don’t even know FSM or don’t even know me, but they know of the athlete that has the CustomCare that has the concussion protocol and it helps them unwind from a game. It helps them sleep. It helps them prepare the night before, before a big race or before a big game. And it’s one protocol that we don’t really tinker with. We don’t dial that in because it’s the gold standard. It hits everything. It works for everybody. I’ve yet to found a person that it doesn’t at least, put a little smile on their face. And some people get totally dwarfed and stoned and floaty and they pass out and they drool. That’s me. And some people are just like, I don’t know if I feel anything, but I just feel relaxed and I’m like, hey, that’s great. And everything in between. Whatever just helps your nervous system.
Nicole Nicolay:
I think. And that’s a hard thing, is a lot of athletes that I know are very Type-A, especially triathletes. You’ve got three sports, so many moving parts. There’s a lot that goes into it. I also own my own business. I’m a mom. So there’s all these things There is no balance. It’s all an ebb and flow from one thing to the next. I try to stay in the now, but as much as you can try to be present with every task and every training, episode, workout, whatever you’re still going to, your brain is still getting a workout too. And the brain needs to relax, and it’s really hard to turn it off at night, to turn it off sometimes. Not even just to turn it off, but just to bring it down and relax it. And it’s definitely helped. It helps me on a regular basis. But like you said, definitely it’s one of those go to as I’m leading up to the race and the anxiety tends to mount as you are getting closer and closer, you’re going to need that. In addition to running Doms and running super Fascia and running hip capsule, my specific things that I need for me, it’s part of that whole treatment cycle that I need to have.
Kim Pittis:
So again, more things to unpack here. So we talked about the very generalized concussion protocol and sleep. And then we’re going to go backwards now and go into specific body parts for the clinicians listening. When you have an athlete or you have a patient that has a localized area of complaint, know that localized area of complaint will change. If you’re worth your salt, you will fix that first area, but there will be another injury because this is what athletes do. For you, I know we had a hip issue, a tendinopathy with the hamstring attached. Then it morphed down. You had an ankle injury during a half marathon that we had to flip back to. So, I will have an athlete have the generalized soft tissue acute. Somebody had put in the Q&A. We talked about MLTB that stands for muscle, ligament, tendon, Bursa. I have a whole bunch of go-to’s, almost like a virtual like a first aid kit for athletes. Nicole rolls her ankle during a half marathon. And does she pull out? Heck no. She just continues to run on the sprained or is a stress fracture? I can’t remember what it was.
Nicole Nicolay:
I rolled it both directions and then I _____.
Kim Pittis:
Adrenaline.
Nicole Nicolay:
It’s amazing.
Kim Pittis:
Right? It’s amazing what the mind can do. But after you had felt it. So we always talk about the four hour rule with FSM. The faster you can get Microcurrent onto an acute injury, the better success you’re going to have for faster healing. So I think a lot of the times, even going back to the psychological component, it is so nice for an athlete to just have that peace of mind going. If something happens, I have something that can help and that can help me right away. I don’t have to worry about a clinic being closed on a Sunday. I have something that I can run at night, and then when Kim opens Monday morning, she can make it more specific to me. Like you said, you run Doms, right? So that’s our delayed onset muscle soreness. We also have a workout recovery. And you’re so great at posting pictures on Instagram and promoting FSM that way. And I know a lot of people are like, What’s that little?
Nicole Nicolay:
They’re always asking me. They’re like, what is that? How are you recovering? What do you mean? do you feel it? There’s always so many questions about it.
Kim Pittis:
And I think that’s so great about the triathlete community, which can be very different than like my professional NHL or NFLers, where they want to keep their secret sauce kind of close to the west. I find like triathletes are so open about everything. You try this electrolyte try these shoes. I was running with this on and that and it’s such a great.
Nicole Nicolay:
It’s definitely a lot of passionate people with ideas on what works and what doesn’t work. And yes, it’s a very sharing community, which is nice. I think as you get up into the higher ranks of the super elite and the professionals, I’m sure they are much more closed door about their protocols. But the other thing with triathlon is , again, it’s so many moving parts. There are so many aspects to a swim, to the bike, to the run, to the nutrition and strength are the fourth and fifth modalities of a triathlon. So there’s so much going on there and it’s a very personalized approach on what food are you going to eat and how do you recover best. You mentioned ice baths, and I thought that was really interesting because in the early years, I was battling a lot of injuries, and I always was told that ice baths were the way to go. So those first five years I was training, I’d get off writing a 70-mile bike ride, running five miles, and then I’d go get in the bathtub and my husband would have 220-pound bags of ice and dump them in there. And I would start the clock 12 minutes, whatever that I would be in there. And I used to think that has to be what’s helping but I didn’t understand why I was always faced with mostly that chronic hamstring injury that I kept having and it just didn’t seem to go away, no matter whatever I tried. And so now I don’t do any ice baths. And I can’t say that I miss them.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah. Don’t know. One person that really enjoys that process of an ice bath. Like, psychologically, it is again something to overcome. You sit there, it builds that mental callus to be uncomfortable. And so I do like cold plunges and an ice bath for that component of it. But as far as true recovery goes, the data is just so good, suggesting that we don’t really want to impede that inflammatory process. And like I said, when you understand our natural inflammatory process, how those little macrophages come down and they gobble up the debris, we want to get inflammation in. But the key is to get the inflammation out and for it to not go crazy. So using FSM has been, in my opinion, just a true game changer because it allows for that natural inflammatory process to happen, whether it’s like post-ride or post-run, post-lift, post-game, or even post-injury. It allows that natural inflammatory process to happen, but it keeps it all in checks and bounds. And then it says, okay, you guys have done enough. Let’s bring everything back into that lymphatic circulation. Going back to last week, Dr. Charlie was talking about using the skeletal muscle pump and using lymphatic drainage and kind of following the spark up. So even though we’re looking at like a sprained ankle, sometimes it can be really helpful to apply the leads higher up. So we’re getting all that inflammation. We’re pulling everything up the leg into lymphatics. So set up like that can be important, not just localized.
Kim Pittis:
Going back to the mental part of it, we talk about relaxing, talking about having a good sleep. I want to talk a little bit about confidence and injury rehabilitation because that can be the game changer in how fast we’re getting somebody back from injury. So we’re getting the injury repaired and we know that the tendon is healing and the muscle is healing. But then it’s like putting that into motion again, whether that’s getting somebody to walk without a cane or getting somebody to run a marathon after an injury. From an athlete’s perspective, how much are you thinking in those initial training days? Is it safe? Does it hurt? Am I doing more harm than good?
Nicole Nicolay:
Oh, it’s nonstop. It’s nonstop. You’re always thinking, am I doing what’s right? Am I think I probably I mean, I would let you chime in, but I think I have a pretty good body awareness. So I do listen to my body. And I’ve gotten better at listening to my body versus listening to the little voice in your head, which you know, could come from a different place. So it’s just really about understanding who’s talking to me. Is this my body really having that awareness to say, you know what, you’re fine? You did the right recovery. Let’s take it slow. Let’s warm up these muscles and then let’s get into it. So it’s managing like how you’re feeling with really having that body awareness at the same time.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah, I think it’s important to yes to listen to your body. Athletes typically are blessed with that really good intuitive sixth sense of knowing that when to push and when to back off. Some athletes do blow through the stop signs and it’s just go and then they pay for it later. I think it’s important to have a good therapist dialog where you can be like, I don’t feel it there. I can feel it over here. And you are very specific, your hamstring attachment, you can figure out where it’s the musculotendinous junction versus the muscle belly versus the attachment onto the periosteum. So when I feel like I learn FSM really easily because athletes are able to hone in on something. I want to talk about your hip capsule protocol for instance. Working with the Canadian speed skaters and hockey players, I saw a ton of hip impingement syndrome, hip capsule strains and the hip capsule protocol that I was utilizing. So torn and broken and inflammation on the hip capsule. So 13/40 on Channel A, 480 on channel B had such dramatic effects that with range of motion, pain reduction, localized swelling all went down. And when we think about a triathlete, your hips are feeling the brunt of, let’s face it, your body is feeling the brunt of absolutely everything but your shoulders that you could blow apart swimming get a bit of a reprieve when you’re on the bike. Your hips are being used for everything swimming. They’re being cranked on the bike, and then those poor little hips have to carry you through a marathon right after. It’s unfair. So I think sometimes as practitioners we look officially at the glutes because that’s typically all we can treat. But when you have an athlete that’s complaining of deep joint pain and your hip pain was almost nonspecific, it was in the front, it was in the back, it was on the side. You couldn’t get relief rolling, stretching, deep tissue massage. And so when that happens, the blinking flashing light was it’s her hip capsule. So we developed a program for your hip capsule specifically. And as a patient or as an athlete. Like, how does that help you know or help you knowing that you have something specific just for you and just for your injury versus like a TENS machine that would just be very like nonspecific.
Nicole Nicolay:
I think obviously you being the practitioner and knowing you, the combination of seeing you and having something very specific that you programed to me. So when I see you in a session and you’re working on that particular area, and I’m explaining to you when you bring your knowledge to it, and then I see you dial in the Microcurrent for that, and I start to immediately feel the relief. I immediately have confidence. Right? And then I’m able to take that machine with me, and you give me the protocol of, okay, this is what I want you to do it. So I feel like I’m doctoring myself, right? I’m giving myself the confidence because I know I have something that’s going to go specific to that injury, and it’s going to help because I’ve already gotten a taste of it from seeing it, seeing and using it initially with you. I’ve got that initial relief. So the more and more that I use it, I can feel that confidence. I can feel the body parts start to improve. But then I also have that growing confidence so that I go into my next session. Yes, I’m going to have that body awareness, but I’ll have a little more confidence than I would if I didn’t have something like that. Right? Because I’d just be guessing, like, am I going to do more damage or am I repairing this? But you’re tuned into all the parts by having that specific protocol for yourself.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah, thanks. I think that is a really important component, the way we utilize our devices, software that we use, the steps that we do to put the intellectual property into the protocols for the patient. I had a hockey player years ago who suffered some pretty significant injuries at the Olympics, and we got him through in Canada medal, and it was a happy day. And what can I do for you? I’m like, nothing like seeing you so happy and seeing that medal around your neck is all I need. How would a testimonial? I’m like, I would love that. Thank you. Because like I said, I don’t have a lot of athletes that write these testimonials because it’s their secret sauce. It’s their secret baby. But he wrote all about how well he slept. He wrote all about his immune system being strong. He wrote all about his confidence. And I was just like, this has nothing to do with the fact that we, like, recovered these fractures and these strains. But then it really hit me the confidence that he had this little tool with him that he could fly across the world with, that could help him with jet lag, that he could run the immune support with. I’m going to jump for a second. I have one patient that thinks FSM is complete placebo effect. And I said, but that’s okay too, though, because at the end of the day, if you’re consulting with me to recover better, to feel better, to move better. And that happens under my watch. Isn’t that still a good thing?
Nicole Nicolay:
Yeah.
Kim Pittis:
And I’m sure you’re superstitious. Like most athletes, there’s probably different things that you do, but. Yeah, and I’m okay with the part of it being maybe it’s superstition. But if the proof’s in the pudding, I think there’s something in between at all.
Nicole Nicolay:
I definitely worked with you for a few years before I bought my own machine. It wasn’t like I bought the machine overnight. We started with a concussion, and then I had the hamstring issue again, and then I had other injuries. And then I started seeing you for different parts of my body that were breaking down in the process. But I think with each time that I saw you and then was able to take the machine and explore with it, and while listening to my body, I could start to understand that it was actually treating the whole person, the whole athlete. And I think that obviously, science or not, any athlete is going to tell you it’s a whole mind-body connection and that it’s often more in our mind about how we feel and how we can get our bodies all ready, but if our mind is not ready to the task at hand, then it doesn’t matter how ready we are. Sometimes I’ve come into a race feeling like I’ve only been prepared 75% of the way there, but then I’m able to show up and use my mind and be able to really push past where I thought I could go.
Nicole Nicolay:
I think that’s really the special uniqueness about it. I don’t go into a lot of detail. When people ask me. I’ll post photos on Instagram here and there and people are like, oh, you have a stem machine? I’m like, no, it’s not stem. And then I have to explain what Microcurrent is and they’re like, I never heard of that or or okay, I’ve heard of that, but I’m not exactly sure how it’s used or how does that help you? There are so many questions and whether or not someone’s actually going to follow through and try to use something like that, or find a Kim by them or come and see you. I’m really, truly spoiled because you’re close and I can come and see you in your office, and you’re giving me the confidence because you’ve utilized this for so long and your knowledge base mixed with the Microcurrent is amazing. It’s definitely a game changer for me, and it helped me get to where I wanted to be.
Kim Pittis:
Yay! For all those things. Again, going back to confidence, there are so many frequencies out there and we’re able to treat so many things. I stay in my lane as best as I can. But you touched on it like it’s the whole thing, right? I don’t think any patient should ever come in and be like, there’s something wrong with my left ankle. And as a practitioner, we just look at the left ankle. I’m always going to make note. Patient complains of the left ankle, but the first thing I’m doing is, what is the foot look like? What does the knee look like? What does the hip look like? What do they do? How are they training? How are they sitting? It is everything. And I think the more you can blossom outward and look at the human as a whole and again going, asking those questions about stress, sleep, diet, and all those factors. Because again, it doesn’t matter how good of a therapist you are for that one hour that you see them, it’s everything else that they’re doing.
Speaker2:
Athletes like yourself are very frustrating for practitioners because we do spend so much time putting you together, and the minute you pop off the table, you’re just going to go and undo everything. For me, I have so much more confidence in you and your treatment because I know you have the FSM machine at home at your fingertips. So when you’re going back to that, we talk about return to play or return to sport or return to function, return to activities of daily living. That’s always the scariest part as a practitioner, when you’re giving them more leeway. Okay, you can try to run. You can try to go on your bike again, try a little swim. Because I know if I tell someone like you to just go out and run two miles, you’re going to run 4 or 5, and then you’re going to at the very minimum, and then you’re going to lie about it. But at least I know that you have this, like little safety net with you that you can run immediately after. Yeah.
Nicole Nicolay:
Oh, athletes, we are terrible when you say you should warm up, you should take it easy when you just get started like, there’s just so much energy and there’s so much drive. I think in most athletes that it’s really hard to temper that. And as I’ve gotten older, obviously it’s easier. I’m now approaching 50. As someone that’s approaching 50, I I have had to create a team or a crew that really has supported me to get me to the finish line, that I wanted to get your part of the puzzle. But like you said, it’s also important that I have my nutrition dialed in and I have a coach that’s a full-time coach that helps me with my nutrition, gives me my training plan, is checking in with me. So I’ve got that piece of the puzzle, and then I’ve got my sports massage and I’ve got to get that part dialed in. And so I have all of these things and people. And then you have your family, right? You enroll your family in this process that you’re in to be a part of it all. So, it really is just one more piece of the puzzle that I needed to fold in that I didn’t have before, and now I can’t live without it. Because now I’m home and I’m recovering right? And I’m like, I want to go out and run. I want to go out. And my coaches know you can’t run yet. You can swim or you can bike. And then I’m anxious and I don’t know, like many driven athletes, we’re like, what’s the next goal? And so now I’ve got my machine to let’s relax. Let’s soak in, make this part of the process of true recovery.
Kim Pittis:
I wanted to get a little bit more specific with Ironman Kona. How many days before did you go to Hawaii?
Nicole Nicolay:
Yeah, I would have loved to gone there two weeks before to acclimate. Most people say that you need most of the pros got their two weeks to a month prior, but I was only able to get there five days before the race, so I did. I sat in a sauna for every single night for ten days leading up to even before leaving.
Kim Pittis:
And you brought your FSM with you. You sent me a nice picture of you running it on the airplane. So what are some of the protocols leading up to the race that are your favorites that you relied on?
Nicole Nicolay:
I’d start with 40/89, so I don’t know if that’s a popular one out there that many people know, but that’s just opens the door for everything else to fall into place.
Kim Pittis:
I’m going to pause you for one second. So right now, this might have been my proudest moment. So when I have a patient or an athlete that can talk in numbers and say, 40/89, I feel like I’ve arrived my finish line. So we talk about 40/89 quite a bit. That’s reducing the activity of the midbrain or the amygdala. That is our foundation for movement in my opinion. So whenever we’re rehabilitating somebody or getting somebody ready to move, your central nervous system must feel safe before movement can occur. It has to feel safe so that all the right motor units can jump on board and know that this human is healed. We can move without reservation. In an athletic situation, I will give my athletes 40/89 just as a single pair because of its grounding, strong, I’m ready to go feeling that it gives them. So we use 40/89 with injury, but I also use it in performance enhancement. So I’ll let you continue.
Nicole Nicolay:
So 40/89 for sure. And then DOMS always running that.
Kim Pittis:
DOMS is delayed onset muscle soreness. That’s the acronym for that.
Nicole Nicolay:
Always running immune support. Just to feel like I think every athlete’s worried about making sure they’re at their best, their most healthiest and then sport perform. There’s a specific one sport perform. So I would run those also though, like while on the plane, I’m concerned about the hip capsule and so super fashion hip capsule. I would run those two and then every morning and every evening leading up to the race, I would start with 40/89 fold in, sport perform, immune support. Those things that I felt that I would need based on the type of training, because I was swimming in Kona, obviously, doing shakeout runs, etc. So just trying to really pinpoint the specific protocols that I thought were supporting me and then you’re a part of my race morning, if you can believe that. It started three races ago, and I just had one of the most incredible, I had come off an injury and you had set me up with reboot, and I had the greatest PR on the bike that I’d ever had. I just rode it like I stole it. And so ever since then, it’s really excited me to want to use reboot right before a race so that I get up and when I get up at 3:30 in the morning, obviously coffee is important. My food nutrition is important, right? I’m getting ready for this massive race, but then I get my reboot going. So, I do some stretching, do my reboot, and then I’m ready to race.
Kim Pittis:
Reboot is part of the sports course for everybody listening. It’s the last day do for performance enhancement. Nicole’s reboot is a little bit different than the one that we use in rehab, and we’ve just made it different just for her. So it is the series of 40/89 for just one minute, a little bit of 40/84, 40/92, which is what that kind of wiping load part. But it has a heavy emphasis on increasing the secretions to the sensory-motor cortex and the cerebellum. Right. We really want to make sure her central nervous system is just like ready to go. And then there’s a couple of little extra pieces in there for her as well.
Nicole Nicolay:
So I kind of feel like a superhero ready to go once I finish that protocol.
Kim Pittis:
That’s awesome. And the fact that you’re running it like before the race, I have a lot of athletes that run things before games as well, and I know some people are, oh, would you run it the same day or would you? Because some people are worried about that sedative effect. We talk about feeling stoned when the concussion protocol runs, but when your intent is to get that nervous system ready to go and obviously you wouldn’t just try it for the first time before a race, you would try it before a trial run.
Nicole Nicolay:
I definitely tried it before a big training ride, and that’s how I knew, like I had an epic training ride. It felt great, I felt grounded, I felt like it was not only prepping again my body, it was also prepping my mind to make good choices while I’m in the throes of competing.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah, that’s aAn interesting side point because we talk just about like, movement. But the choice of the movement happens before the movement. That’s interesting that you’re able to dial that in.
Nicole Nicolay:
Yeah. And then of course post-race, there’s nothing that makes me happier than being in a bathtub running DOMS with the leads in. That’s fantastic. But I will admit, this time I did not make it into the bathtub because I gave it all. So I laid on the bed and had my FSM in bed while I was eating my turkey sandwich and drinking my congratulatory beer.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah, your finish line for this last race was probably my favorite finish line moment ever. And I have a little bit of OCD with my athletes. So I try to watch games and kind of something that you can’t really watch, but you have an app and there’s a tracker. So I felt I was neglecting a lot of my other athletes, and I was just watching this little blip all over the map in the entire day.
Nicole Nicolay:
But it was it was actually definitely I felt the best at that finish line. It. Was a grueling race, obviously in Kona, it’s 87 degrees with high humidity and you’re swimming a lot. You’re riding your bike up a mountain and you’re running in black lava fields. So it’s definitely a challenging race. It’s everything that you would want a world championship endurance race to be. And I think the most proud that I am is it’s all of this preparation and you being a part of that preparation, of course, and FSM being a part of that, it enabled me to really enjoy the suffering and to really sit with the suffering, to lean into the suffering. And I think it was even though I probably was in the most pain that I’ve ever been in one of my races because I was pushing so hard, it was also the most enjoyable.
Kim Pittis:
Wow, what a gift that whole lesson is to be able to lean into the discomfort and know it’s not going to break you, and it will make you better.
Nicole Nicolay:
Yeah. And now I’m recovering for the next one. Right.
Kim Pittis:
I thought you were done. No.
Nicole Nicolay:
We’ll see. Never say never. I’m definitely reach this goal. That was the goal that I set ten years ago is. But I’m a seven-time Ironman now. I’ve done this seven times, and I definitely do want to take care of my body. And I’m sure I will race other distances and probably just race even on the bike, because that’s my favorite. But I can never say never.
Kim Pittis:
No. That’s right. And on the flip side, when I was in college, I said I would never work with machines. And look at me now.
Nicole Nicolay:
Wonderful things with machines. And I’m grateful for you.
Kim Pittis:
Thank you. And we’re grateful for your time. I know this one a little bit over what I promised I would talk to you, because you just have so many little nuggets that I wanted to unpack, but I’ll let you off the hook. Thank you so much for talking to us and giving us this kind of unique perspective as a patient, as an athlete who’s using it. So we’re talking we’re seeing it on the other side.
Nicole Nicolay:
So thanks for having me.
Kim Pittis:
I’m going to just wrap things up with some questions, so I will let Nicole go here. I don’t know how to unpin you. I will remove you. How about that? I will remove you as a panelist. Oh, there she goes.
Kim Pittis:
Hopefully, you guys enjoyed seeing, like I said, the other side. And I think it’s really important that we hear from patients. So I think this may be something that we do more of. So some of my patients who are maybe not athletes but chronic pain patients, I think it might be interesting to hear about just pain reduction, not necessarily getting a beautiful medal around your neck, but being able to go back to work and do hobbies and hug their family members again. So, I think if it’s something that you would like to see, maybe we’ll add more of these patient stories. There are a couple questions that came in on the Q&A that I might roll over for next week because I had some people that were writing in also that I wanted to address first if I could. We talked a little bit about some specific post-operative frequencies. So obviously working in rehabilitation, we do a ton of post-op work, and Dr. McMakin has such a wonderful mode bank that you can almost pick from anything knee, hip, jaw, you name it. It’s sort of on there, but within that, don’t forget about the ability that you have to really dial it in to the specific tissue types for whatever the surgery is. So when we’re talking about an ACL, which I’m going to get into, not next week, but the week after ACL post-op, I’m going to break down what what I did and the results for that.
Kim Pittis:
Julian, I do see your question. If you wouldn’t mind just emailing that to me so I can spend more time unpacking that next week, if I could. Speaking of next week, we’re going to have Dr. David Musnick on. Oh, there goes my alarm to stop talking. Dr. David Musnick is going to be on joining us. So though he is again somebody else that you want to just sit down, have your herbal tea put on your seatbelt because he talks really fast and he’s going to impact a lot of different things. I’m not going to give away the topic that we’re going to talk about, but it’s going to be fantastic. Thank you, everybody for joining me on my solo flight once again without Dr. McMakin here. I hope it was enjoyable for you. Like I said, if you have any other questions, we have two more weeks together before everybody comes back from Australia, so feel free to email those at kim@fsmsports365.com, and I will be able to string some of those questions together for myself and Dr. Musnick to unpack next week. And then we have one more after that. Don’t forget to sign up for the sports courses and the advanced courses. Those are starting to fill up. So if you’re thinking about joining us in Arizona the first week of March, we’d love to see everybody. It’s so much fun. Thanks, everybody for coming and we’ll see you all next week. Bye.
Kevin:
The Frequency Specific Microcurrent podcast has been produced by Frequency Specific Seminars for entertainment, educational, and information purposes only. The information and opinions provided in the podcast are not medical advice. Do not create any type of doctor-patient relationship and, unless expressly stated, do not reflect the opinions of its affiliates, subsidiaries, sponsors, hosts, or any of the podcast guests or affiliated professional organizations. No person should act or refrain from acting on the basis of the content provided in any podcast, without first seeking appropriate medical advice and counseling. No information provided in any podcast should be used as a substitute for personalized medical advice and counseling. FSS Expressly disclaims any and all liability relating to any actions taken or not taken based on any contents of this podcast.
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