Ep 76: Durable Performance: Chiropractic, Strength Standards, & Mindset with Dr. Alex Lee

Join us this week as Dr. Alex Lee, from Circadian Chiropractic & Sport in Sarasota, FL, shares his journey from pro baseball to pioneering a unique chiropractic approach that melds sports training with holistic care.

In this episode, we cover:

• – Dr. Lee’s path from the baseball field to chiropractic.
• – The core goal behind chiropractic adjustment.
• – The care continuum from passive assessments to active assessment with Neubie.
• – The significance of grip strength as a measure of readiness and the benefits of hanging exercises.
• – Cultivating athletic durability from competitive to recreational sports.

Tune in to discover how chiropractic care and foundational training can elevate your performance and durability, with Dr. Lee’s innovative practices.

You can find Dr. Alex Lee’s clinic at www.circadiansrq.com or you can find him on Instagram at @dr.alexlee 

Read the transcript:

Garrett Salpeter (00:02.342)
Hello, New Fit Nation. Welcome back to the undercurrent podcast. My guest today is Dr. Alex Lee, a chiropractor based in Sarasota, Florida, and his clinic is circadian chiropractic and sport. I have been there to work out and get adjusted and use the newbie and loved the experience. So if you’re in Sarasota, be sure to check them out. And, uh, Alex and I actually go way back. I knew him before he became a chiropractor back when he was playing professional baseball.

And it’s been very cool to, you know, to maintain our relationship over all these years and see him go through chiropractic school, be an associate, and now have his own clinic for a couple of years. So I guess we’re, I’m certainly dating myself through all of that. And Alex, welcome.

Dr. Alex Lee (00:49.866)
Yeah, thank you. Thank you, man. It’s good to be here.

Garrett Salpeter (00:52.618)
Can you share a little bit about your journey from playing professional baseball, all these adventurous places, and then how you decided to go to chiropractic school and what inspired that transition?

Dr. Alex Lee (01:07.842)
Yeah, of course. And cut me off if I get too long-winded here, but 11 years ago, I walked into a chiropractic office for the first time, had been dealing with some issues and in a pretty short amount of time after that, just felt just a huge change within myself, just with how my body felt, how my mind was operating. At the same time, I started training with using direct current, similar to what we do now with newbies.

A year after that is when I met you. I lived in Austin for a little bit. I was running a baseball academy there and I was coming in on some of the mornings before we opened just to come in and train and just learn some things from you. And yeah, right after I lived in Austin, I played two seasons in Europe, two seasons in Australia. And then after that, I went to chiropractic school and then finishing up school. I’m given a very abbreviated version of it here, but associated for a year and then moved to Sarasota with my wife. We have a kid on the way.

So, this is a, yeah, I get to, you know, for the last two years since we opened, just been able to work with a ton of families, ton of athletes, and really, you know, get to change lives in a lot of different ways. But, you know, primarily at the practice here we use, we have the NuFit, we have the Newbie, and also, you know, family chiropractic care for athletes and families. So, but yeah, going back a little bit, I had a, you know, a different version of, you know,

wasn’t direct current, but we used it for, I tried to use it for similar functions to what the newbie can do now. Obviously it doesn’t have the same, didn’t have the same capabilities, but yeah, I was definitely the teammate and the guy that had the STEM machine that we’re training guys with, either in the locker room or in the living rooms of, just like wherever we could find an outlet and plug something in, we’d go train and work with guys for anything.

shoulder stuff that would come up for guys that were throwing a lot, anything related to the spine, any knee injuries, anything like that. And then also, once people were good, I think that the people that stand to benefit the most from this approach are people that don’t have these huge limitations and injuries. I feel like it’s people that are, that they have in their head, there’s really no limitations for what they can do. And that’s kind of where people can just start to get started to really feel.

Dr. Alex Lee (03:34.146)
You know, like some of the really huge impacts of what we can do. So, you know, I feel like I’ve been at that point for, you know, personally for about 10 years where there’s really no limitations to, you know, if I want to go do something physically I’m able to go do it. And this approach and this, I don’t know, philosophy and just way of thinking about health and life and the approach to training really benefits people that are in this circumstance.

as much as people that need to get to a point where there’s no limitations. But that’s what I love about it. It’s something that’s been something that continually evolves. And every year I feel like I’m learning more and more. And 11 years of really doing this and thinking about this and living this way now, I feel like I’m just kind of getting started. So that’s been cool. And it’s been cool to have a relationship with you on a professional level and also just we’re able to hang out and kick it and talk about really.

anything, but it’s been cool to see your growth as well because, you know, I always thought that, you know, you were going to evolve out of the first location that you were working at the little, I don’t know, 800 square foot dungeon with no lights, a little cinder block basement. But there was some awesome training and things that were going on down there, but it’s really awesome to see where you’re at now and to be able to, you know, help you grow this in whatever way that I can.

Garrett Salpeter (04:57.382)
Thank you, thank you so much. I love that perspective around limitations and what’s possible and how many of our limitations, most perhaps all are self-imposed. And so I’m glad you’ve mentioned that, that philosophical underpinning, although the newbie is certainly a part of that and is a powerful tool, it works best.

when combined with this approach and you know, you have to have sort of a mindset under a philosophical underpinning whenever you have an approach. You’re going to have one, even if you don’t choose one, there will be one there by default. So you’re better off making it intentional. So I’m glad you mentioned that. And I also just on a personal level can relate to your story, you know, being also being the guy that would plug something in, work with teammates back in college. And it is, it is fun to just, you know, a little nostalgic to reflect back on those laboratory days. So

I’ve told my story in different places, but my first office, it was a 120 square foot room within a room that was upstairs in that same room within a clinic for the chiropractor for the UT Longhorns football team within that same building. And then after a couple of years, we actually moved downstairs. We were like, huh, we’re kind of, you know, this room’s a little small. So I talked to the landlord, said, you know, there’s this like storage room down here in the basement with no windows. Would you rent that?

Would you rent that to me? So yeah, we had this 800 square foot, we call it our dungeon. This is part of my laboratory phase, using older generations of technology, trying to refine the methodology and all that. But it was a lot of time down there, a lot of full days with no natural light at all. That was…

Dr. Alex Lee (06:39.894)
I didn’t realize that was a basement, but I mean a storage closet, but that does make sense now because I remember the first time I came in, I got in the elevator and there was like the basement level and then there was like one even lower, I think. And I was like, where am I going right now? But yeah, the person who sent me in was like, yeah, just trust me. So yeah, and I think that’s a really important part of my story that I maybe kind of didn’t

think about and remember at the front of my mind as much, just kind of being the guy that was trying everything out for a few years. And I invested in buying a machine that was gonna, I don’t know, let me really work with it all the time as far as working on myself and then also working with other people once I felt confident enough and just getting a lot more confidence before I really kept going with what I was doing.

Garrett Salpeter (07:38.002)
Awesome. Well, with that foundation laid for our conversation, let’s talk about some of the nuts and bolts and how you do things at Circadian, because you have a unique model. I’ve gotten to be there and see it and experience it firsthand. And there’s a lot of things that you’re doing that I really like and I’m excited to highlight. So to kick off that phase of the conversation, can you talk please about the strength evaluation?

that you do, or generally the evaluation process that you do with new patients when they come in to see you.

Dr. Alex Lee (08:11.566)
Sure. Yeah. So we have a chiropractic assessment that everybody will go through. So we have a couple of different functional nervous system scans. So spinal thermography, so measuring inflammation along the spine, spinal EMG, which is measuring basically muscular tension, and also a heart rate variability scan. So it gives us just a pretty good functional look of what’s going on in the nervous system. And then, you know, a pretty standard chiropractic analysis. And then after that, what we have is, you know,

rather than just being able to see somebody kind of at rest, you can kind of break it up in your head this way. Like the chiropractic assessment is somebody at rest and then the strength and the movement evaluation would be somebody like under some sort of physical stress. And obviously there’s emotional stress and other things that kind of come into that too when there’s the physical part. But yeah, we have a few different things that we look at. If we’re looking at somebody who has some sort of limitations like I had kind of mentioned before,

what we’re probably gonna do is do just the mapping process with the newbie. And then from there, we’re looking at like, what’s the biggest imposed limitation or perceived threat that the nervous system has surrounding different movement. So, as an example, we have a lot of baseball pitchers that come in. If we’re looking for something where they’re saying, hey, like recovery is not as good after starts, or I have some sort of shoulder or elbow pain when I’m throwing.

then on top of what we’re going to do with chiropractic, we’re also going to look at what could be some of the guarding and protective mechanisms around that throwing motion and muscles that are either shut off or stuck in like that on mode all the time that’s not allowing them to be able to throw a baseball and absorb force and absorb shock with every single muscle that’s supposed to work in that chain in that tenth of a second of when they release the ball. So…

There’s that component and then, you know, I’d also mentioned once there’s like no limitations on somebody and things are good. Yeah, I think where people stand to benefit the most is through just the training approach, which can be done either with the newbie or without the newbie. So you know, a lot of long duration isometric holds, a lot of high repetition, either no weight or low weight. So doing different things like rebounds and drops.

Dr. Alex Lee (10:35.994)
and just really being able to master moving with the body weight before loading and adding complexity through external stimulus. So whether that be weight or just, well, I guess traditionally people would think of loading it up with like a barbell. But I’d say kind of to come back to the philosophy thing that you were talking about before, the biggest thing is we’re really focused on what the hardware, or sorry, what the software is functioning like rather than the hardware.

Software would be just how we’re wired, how brain connects to every part of the body and specifically to skeletal muscle through movement. So if we can find a limitation that’s really holding somebody back in a certain way, we can make huge changes. I mean, I’ve done a couple trade shows with you now and we’ll do demos with people and in four or five minutes, we can get somebody who’s had an issue that’s been going on for months or years or decades and be able to make a huge change in a really, really short amount of time.

So when we can get somebody to really feel the difference and to feel something unlocked that had been stuck, it’s usually not a situation where we see, you know, like huge muscle atrophy from one side compared to the other. We’re just trying to tap into the potential reservoir of strength that’s already there and reconnect that muscle to the brain and reconnect that movement pattern in a clear way. So, you know, to make it simple, if somebody’s got something going on in the shoulder, we’ll find what the weak points are and then.

put a ball in their hand and say, okay, go through a throwing motion and go through any motion that would feel kind of sticky or just not as smooth as it should be and then have them work through that. And what’s cool is that you get to see people like actively relearn and reengage a movement pattern. I kind of compare it to watching a toddler learn how to walk and get upright on their feet. They’re literally retraining a movement pattern that they’ve lost the ability to use.

right in front of you in five to 15 minutes, whatever it takes. So I kind of touched on a few things there. But as far as what the assessment kind of tells us is what the appropriate spot to start is, is this 100% a chiropractic issue? Is it chiropractic plus some sort of active rehabilitation that they need to do too? And that’s the starting point. From there, we go through care and every visit that somebody has is kind of like a mini check-in.

Dr. Alex Lee (13:00.054)
you know, progress and see where they go and then we just kind of change courses as we keep going.

Garrett Salpeter (13:06.146)
Awesome, so there’s three phases there and I’d like to dive a little more deeply into each one. We’ve got the more passive, how someone’s doing at rest. You talked about thermography, EMG and HRV. Then we’ve got the rehab portion, looking at movement patterns, guarding, inhibition, et cetera with the newbie.

And then we’ve got sort of, once we’ve worked through those initial stages of limitations, then the strength phase, and you talked about doing long duration isometrics and rebounds and altitudes. So I wanna get, I wanna just drill a little more deeply into that one, but let’s go in order here. So in terms of chiropractic, I’m curious to hear your perspective. And when you talk about it in the context of looking at, you know,

EMG, so just actually just one quick clarifying question. You talk about EMG, you’re looking at muscle activity asymmetrically on either side of the spine, right? Okay. And then of course we know heart rate variability is a measurement of the autonomic nervous system and where it is on the continuum between sympathetic and fight or flight or parasympathetic and rest and digest, feed and breed, those sides of the nervous system. So when you find something with

that’s, you know, with a patient that shows up on one of those tests or thermography you mentioned also, but find something that shows up with one of those patients. And then you do chiropractic. I guess this is probably a leading question. You already talked about software versus hardware, but you know, I’m curious about how you look at adjustments in terms of whether you’re more focused on creating that afferent neurological feedback or whether you’re more focused on, you know, biomechanics and how facet joints move relative to each other or stuff like that, or.

you know, kind of what you’re looking at and how the field of chiropractic, because it seems, it seems to me from the outside looking in, like it’s gone. There, there, well, there’s like, there’s different schools of thought. You know, there’s this functional neurology where you can look at. If you’re creating adjustment, a certain direction at the C five vertebrae, you know, that’s going to, you know, in the functional neurology side, you know, that’s going to light up certain parts of the brain, increase activity, up, regulate certain areas, down, regulate certain areas of the brain.

Garrett Salpeter (15:18.266)
But then there’s also some people that just look at it as, you know, pure biomechanics and, you know, can you tell us where you fall into that school of thought? And then also tie that into how you expect to be able to make changes in those measurements if any of those first three tests are off, how you’d like to bring those back to a normal, healthy baseline.

Dr. Alex Lee (15:37.958)
Sure. So there’s some really, really powerful work done by a chiropractor who’s also a researcher named Heidi Havik. We have her book in the front of our practice here, just on the coffee table. And it’s called Havik, H-A-A-V-I-K. The book is called The Reality Check. And she’s come up with a… She’s done a ton of research. And one of the things about chiropractic where it kind of gets a knock is there’s…

Garrett Salpeter (15:51.218)
So, we’ll see you in a standby.

Dr. Alex Lee (16:05.346)
There’s not much research on it. And a lot of people that are, you know, busy in private practice aren’t gonna get together and come up with these like research projects. They’re just gonna kind of focus on serving their patients and working through there on a day-to-day basis. And there’s not a ton of, there is a ton of great research in chiropractic, but the point that I’m getting to is she came out with something very recently that’s been something that I’ve been sharing with a lot of patients is that when there’s dysfunctional segments of the spine,

that’s putting pressure on the brain and the nervous system through the spine, when that area gets adjusted and that area clears, it immediately changes how the brain functions. So when we’re looking to affect how the brain functions, like the chiropractic subluxation, so where there’s either abnormal motion or misalignment that’s putting some sort of pressure on the spine, they say like the subluxation is a devastation to the nervous system. It’s just making it so that afferent information going to the brain is thrown off. So then…

the ephrine information coming back down is also going to be thrown off. And you know, primarily like where, where the biggest change happens in my experience in the shortest amount of time like that is the upper neck. So upper cervical spine in relation to brainstem. And then also how a lot of the muscles in like the suboccipital triangle and right at the base of the neck, how those send so much aphrine information to the brain as far as joint position and mechanoreception, proprioception as far as like where we are in space. So

Literally, if anything’s off up here, that’s going to throw off how everything functions down through the rest of the spine. And then, you know, we’ll see immediate changes in the thermography and the EMG, anything related to that in certain areas. I just, I look at it more as like a pattern that somebody has from like a nervous system standpoint. And then after we adjust it, the pattern is going to change. And you know, eventually it should be, you know, things are pretty calm from a thermography standpoint. Things are pretty calm from an EMG standpoint.

and that the nervous system is just more resilient and more adaptable. And this is a process. It’s not just like a one-off situation. There’s things that we kind of have to track over time. And what’s cool is that we see things work really quick with the people that don’t necessarily have a bias towards what we do. So like kids under the age of five respond so quick to certain things that are going on, especially when we see like sensory issues and things as far as like constipation, digestion issues.

Dr. Alex Lee (18:30.258)
anything related to sleep, colic, things like that. There’s no preconceived notion on their end of this is gonna work or this isn’t gonna work. It just, it does what it does and it gets results. But you think about what happens when some of those people grow up and they’re adults. It still works, there’s just more of a conversation that kinda needs to be had rather than, hey, go get on the table. So to me, I’ve seen everything, so.

to even zoom out, I’ve seen everything work individually. I’ve seen training in this style work individually. I’ve seen new fit work individually. I’ve seen chiropractic work individually on its own. I know that it all works. And then it just comes down to like, all right, like what do we think is gonna make the most sense for this person in the most honoring way to get the results that we’re kind of trying to see. And, you know, one thing with athletes is I think every single competitive athlete, if I could go back and change anything about my past, I would have gotten.

and had my parents to go take me to a chiropractor at least twice a month, grown up. With everything that I was doing, in-season, out-of-season, whatever it was, just because I know the difference that I’ve felt in my own body and just in my own health through that. And to take that maybe a step further is that one way that I’ve seen a disconnect between athletes either high school level, collegiate level, professional level.

is that there isn’t something in addition to the chiropractic that’s gonna make them start to feel changes and shifts like that. And that’s where New Fit is just like a perfect, like slam dunk, gets people in the door that need things that may kind of traditionally fall out of just, hey, we’re gonna assess the spine and the nervous system through chiropractic and get you adjusted. That’s where I think New Fit’s just like a slam dunk with what we’re able to do. Like we’re able to get guys that

I’ve had shoulder and different injuries from a sports standpoint that have been going on that are really purely just a software nervous system limitation that’s coming up, that’s been going on for years. And one or two sessions see huge, huge shifts with them that they hadn’t seen elsewhere. So I kind of answered a couple of the questions there. But yeah, cut me off if I’m just going.

Garrett Salpeter (20:46.001)
Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (20:49.37)
Well, that was good. I mean, in terms of where chiropractic fits in to the overall rehabilitation scheme that you’re describing or the overall rehabilitation strategy, I think that makes sense to sort of start there because like you said, if anything is.

is off, especially in the upper neck, in terms of, there’s some sort of significant asymmetry or deficit in mechanoreceptor input into the brain. These muscles in the neck have the highest muscle spindle concentration of any muscles in the entire body. It’s so important, there’s so many reflexes related to the writing reflex and keeping our eyes oriented towards the horizon. Of course, there’s big reflexes between eye movement and neck muscle activation.

head position and all these things. So, so I think that it makes a ton of sense where you address that first, get the body in a state where autonomic nervous system is more balanced, where the muscle tone is more balanced up there. So because if you don’t address that and you go, you go right to the newbie, I mean, like you said, there’s, we go to a lot of these events and we see these five minute miracles and we see them in our, in our clinics every day and great things, but it’s still to some degree, you know, will be.

fighting an uphill battle because those influences are still going to be present. They still could be slowing down progress or causing you to regress in between sessions more than you otherwise would. So I like that going within the neuromuscular system as far upstream as you can, finding these root cause contributions to whatever pain or injury or limitation someone’s experiencing. So I like that approach. And that makes a lot of sense. If you can see changes immediately in autonomic balance

in muscle activity, evening out between both sides of the spine. We expect to see some level of symmetry if you’re not and it’s restored. That’s good. So I think that’s an excellent first step.

Dr. Alex Lee (22:54.006)
If I could add one thing too, not to butt in, but we’ve also seen, which has been cool, we had a guy go out of order one day and get mapped on the newbie before he got adjusted. So like a normal visit, they get adjusted and then go to newbie. So the same way that maybe some other practitioners would use like some of the manual muscle activations, we’d get them adjusted and then have them go do their newbie. But we forgot and we had them come back and do newbie first.

Garrett Salpeter (22:57.019)
course.

Dr. Alex Lee (23:22.598)
and we got them mapped and we were like, hey, hold on, you haven’t been adjusted yet. So we sent them up front, got them adjusted, and then he came back and we remapped them and he had like two spots that were killer, like right around his shoulder. That after we got them adjusted, just the spine, after we got them adjusted, the spots were gone in that same, in like five minutes later. So I guess a point being with that is it can, it can come to the same end that.

that we’re trying to get to with some of the manual muscle activations or anything like that but just in a different way because if we’re talking about what controls muscle, it’s brain and nervous system and the nerves that exit the spine. So there’s that. And then the other thing I always say is just less is more. So it’s not like when somebody comes in, it’s not 30 minutes where we’re adjusting 15 different areas of the body and all that. It’s two or three adjustments tops.

Dr. Alex Lee (24:19.138)
There can be the ego where you try to do more and say, hey, if I adjust more things, then this person’s gonna get better quicker. And that just hasn’t been my experience. I’ve gotten adjusted by chiropractors that are way more skilled than I am as far as delivering the adjustment, but they’ll do eight or 10 or 15 things. And it’s too much input from a nervous system standpoint. And I don’t think that those adjustments hold and are as honoring as far as what we’re trying to do. It’d be like if we tried to hit…

16 different hotspots in one session. Like there’s just a limit to what we can kind of adapt to and use from an input standpoint and then use that constructively to have a different health output.

Garrett Salpeter (25:02.838)
Yeah, that’s a great, great perspective there. A couple of good points, but most recently they’re talking about, you know, trying to apply the 80 20 principle, working on the, the one or a few things that are going to make the greatest difference. And yeah, like you said, if you’re adjusting everywhere, putting newbie pads everywhere, how does the brain know what to prioritize and what to adapt to? It just, uh, it can’t, you know, we have limited resources. Our brains.

you know, try to conserve energy. They never want to expend more energy to up-regulate neurological pathways or build new muscles and tissues unless there’s a clear reason to do so. Uh, and so you have to be very precise with those in order to, in order to guide the process, stimulate the process, you know, and prioritize it the way that you liked her. So I think that’s a great, a great point. Um, and I, you know, it makes a lot of sense. We do for, for non.

Chiropractic clinicians, you know, we do manual muscle testing or different types of therapy first with an eye towards establishing a similar baseline where you’ve gotten rid of some of these underlying issues that could impede progress. But as, you know, chiropractic, obviously, a very direct and powerful way to do it. And I love that story where you talked about how that patient…

had these couple of hotspots show up on the newbie. And then after proper strategic adjustment, they went away. So that shows you, you could have worked on those spots and that person may have felt better, but the spots likely would come back. And instead of one session being enough for weeks or months or instead of whatever, they might’ve just regressed back to baseline two days later.

and you come back and do another newbie session, they feel better. But if you’re not getting to that, getting that first domino or getting to the root cause, yeah, I totally hear you on that. So I think that’s a great perspective. If we can, if there’s anything more for you to say there, we certainly can. Otherwise we can move along the progression here.

Dr. Alex Lee (27:11.978)
No, we can keep going.

Garrett Salpeter (27:14.114)
So we talked about chiropractic, the looking passively at how people are, their state of their software at rest. Then we get into movement. And we’ve talked a lot on this podcast. People at Newbies certainly know our process of mapping that you already touched on there. Doing corrective exercises. So there’s a lot there, but for the sake of time here, I don’t know necessarily we’ll dive deep into that because yeah.

previous episodes we’ve covered, if people are familiar with that sort of thing. So let’s go to your third phase, where you talk about strength and work that you have, your patients do, patients clients do, with or without the newbie. You talked about long duration isometrics, you talked about rebounds and altitude, you talked about some of these concepts that people might be familiar with, but can you, whether it’s a couple of examples, or all of them, can you talk about your strength standards and sort of the goals that you…

set for your patients just so people can kind of get more clear, take that abstract idea and just see some examples around it.

Dr. Alex Lee (28:18.702)
Sure, yeah. So I think something that a lot of people are familiar with is kind of the idea of like a you know building a foundation before you kind of move on to You know the more maybe fine motor skills or skills of competing in a sport So just basic traits that everybody should have so things like being able to balance Cross-crawl patterning being able to bend at the knee push pull being able to bend twist grip strength being able to hang all these different things and then

when you start to combine a lot of these traits that turns into you displaying some sort of athletic skill that can be used in a sport. So as far as what the training is essentially trying to do is get people to rebuild whatever the sort of holes in their foundation would be or whatever the cracks are. So we take people through an assessment. It’s five different movements that in my opinion cover pretty much every…

type of movement that there is. So one is just a standing straight leg raise. So balance on one leg. Wanna see, I mean, our like, our full standard assessment would be like where we’d want everybody to get to. So being able to go five plus minutes on each leg. So standing straight leg raise. Next one would be the bottom position of a lunge. So shin, front leg perpendicular to the ground, 90 degree angle there in a lunge pattern.

So bottom position of a lunge with the front heel up. Wanna see three plus minutes there. Bottom position of a pushup isometric. So hands elevated on like pushup blocks or handles and then pulled down to the bottom position. So that’d be two and a half plus minutes there. A dead hang, so scap hang, iso. Bottom position of a hang with the arms straight. Be two plus minutes there. And then cross-cross supermans. So alternating right and so face down.

right and left arm alternating, going up and down, 250 plus each side in five minutes. So that’d be like a walking pace right there. And in and of itself, I mean, that’s a training session right there. That’s phenomenal for recovery. And then also just not really having to sell people on what their weaknesses are. There’s one or two or maybe all of them that people will try to do and they’ll be like, wow, I did not realize that was such a weak pattern for me or with lunge or with straight leg raise.

Dr. Alex Lee (30:45.058)
there may be one side that feels normal and the other side that doesn’t. We’ve worked with people before that can squat 500 plus pounds and then they can stand for five minutes on one leg and then only 30 seconds on the other. And they’re like, what’s going on there? So is that something coming from the ankle? Is it something coming from the glute? Is it something coming from the brain? Is it like, where is it coming from? And then we try to take everything together.

and just see progress and make sure that we’re going in the right direction with everything there. But, I guess, going back, that assessment was basically born out of needing some sort of standard and needing something to measure. Those aren’t the five ISOs or movements that I’d say every single person needs to be able to do perfectly, but it’s something that measures.

the basics, being able to balance, being able to lunge, being able to push and pull, being able to hang, and then a cross crawl. So that can be, you know, digressed or progressed for, I guess, any sort of age group, male, female. Obviously, there’s things that are going to be more appropriate for, you know, people in their 30s than maybe kids under the age of 10. I mean, kids under the age of 10 just need unstructured play. But you know, more than that, it’s just a good way of us to kind of see what, where people are at and what…

they need to focus on going forward from there. So the training, or sorry, the test kind of becomes the training for a lot of the people. We’ll say, definitely make sure you’re not only focusing on the two that you’re, the one or two that you need the most improvement on, focus on everything, but maybe just hitting the ones that you really need to get back up to the level of everything else. Really focus on that. So I know that you’ve talked in a couple other episodes about the difference between rehab and training.

like rehab, we’re trying to get everything back up to the level that everything else is at in the body. And then training, we’re trying to get everything to elevate. So I don’t love using the word rehab, but yeah, it’s like, let’s get that recovered and get that up to the level that everything else is at from like a weak link standpoint. So the thing I love the most about the ISOs too is I played college baseball, played through high school, college, played after.

Dr. Alex Lee (33:09.154)
probably my junior high school when I started really to get into some of the strength training and the performance side, I never really felt that the strength that I was acquiring in the weight room was transferring over to the field. And, you know, within probably a couple of weeks of starting to do the ISOs, I really felt like I was able to translate what I had from a, like a strength standpoint within my body over to any sort of skill that I wanted to, um, just because I had a better mastery of my body.

There’s a lot of things that the ISOs really require you to do when it’s, you know, from the science standpoint, we’re cycling through different energy systems, but, you know, from the psychological standpoint, you’re cycling through some really deep layers of your own psychology and your own, you know, just so many different things are tested. And you know, we can see that with people and see how they do in kind of uncomfortable and sketchy situations, you know, being able to hang on a bar for two minutes. You got to…

You got to quiet the mind down because everything’s trying to tell you to stop. And you can go to that really sympathetic, like stressed out breathing of a, or you can calm everything down and slow it down and realize that you probably don’t need the extra tension that you’re holding in your face in that moment. You can relax, relax your eyebrows and relax everything there and just breathe calmly through the nose and slow things back down. And to me, that’s what carries over to sport and to life when you learn how to do those things. And a lot of, you know, I…

could squat a lot and I could do a lot of things in the weight room that I didn’t feel equipped me to do anything on a baseball field or just outside of that environment whatsoever. And what ISOs did is I felt like it was just the glue that kind of allowed me to hold everything together. If we’re talking sports performance, I think the number one thing is being able to be healthy enough to play the sport in the first place. And everything that I’m seeing now is it’s so much that’s just like, hey, let’s

try to gain 10 miles an hour of velocity in eight weeks or all these things that are just these like unsustainable practices that are, you know, really kind of Robin Peter to pay Paul. And I think that, you know, everybody needs to be recovered first and then whatever result you go get on the field, come back and then reassess from there and say, hey, do I need to add more? You know, things that are gonna make me more explosive or things that are gonna add to my strength endurance base rather than just going straight to like, hey, let’s do the.

Dr. Alex Lee (35:32.374)
the sexy stuff that we’re gonna see on Instagram reels. And that’s kind of where a lot of things have kind of gone.

Garrett Salpeter (35:38.118)
That’s a great, a great perspective. I love, there’s a few things there that I want to, I want to just call out and emphasize one is that notion of building the foundation, which you started with and then sort of came back to there. You need to, if you want to build a, a tall building, you need to have a strong foundation, otherwise it’s going to get blown over in the wind. So you, you know, a lot of people spend time, spend so much time trying to work on the 30th floor of the building, working at the top.

trying to work on sport specific skill or adding those, uh, you know, miles per hour to your fast ball in that instance, whatever it might be. But if there’s no foundation there is going to lead to injury or a artificially low ceiling on performance. So I think you said that beautifully. Um, in terms of the emphasis on these, these isometric based exercises, you know, I really like these, we call these, uh, or, you know,

at least when you’re standing trying to hold up your leg, we would call that the yielding iso. We call those the end range activation when you’re trying to pull into the lunge position, just to tie it together for people who are thinking this may sound familiar. So in our new fit curriculum, or in my book, we call these end range activation where you’re in that lunge position, push up, trying to actively pull yourself down lower and lower. So you’re actually getting eccentric,

Dr. Alex Lee (36:39.726)
Sure. Yeah, of course.

Garrett Salpeter (36:59.99)
leaning towards eccentric rather than isometric, even though it may look like an isometric to the outside from a neurological perspective, it’s sort of leaning more in that direction.

Dr. Alex Lee (37:09.714)
And can I butt in for one second because there’s a diagram, it’s either in the New Fit Method book or it’s in the Level 1 New Fit Certification course. It might be in both.

Garrett Salpeter (37:18.6)
Oh, with the circles and the motor units? Or the…

Dr. Alex Lee (37:21.046)
That one, that one’s really good. That’s not the one I was talking about, but do you wanna share a little bit about that since you just talked about it?

Garrett Salpeter (37:30.267)
Yeah, nah, it’s my turn to butt in. So that’s…

Dr. Alex Lee (37:33.647)
You start, I’ll interrupt. No, keep going.

Garrett Salpeter (37:36.582)
So what I was talking about is this image that’s in my book, The New Fit Method, and this notion I first read about in, was it Virgo Shansky or Yesis, one of these famous sports science guys talked about

Dr. Alex Lee (37:59.098)
I only trust people with Soviet names, so… Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (38:01.842)
That’s right. Alexander, is it good? There you go, you got it, it’s you. So, this notion that you could be holding your arm out, for example, with a two pound weight in your hand, like you’re just doing a delt raise, you might only need 20% of your motor units to lift that up and hold it there for a few seconds. But, as those motor units begin to fatigue,

Dr. Alex Lee (38:06.369)
There we go.

Garrett Salpeter (38:27.802)
And this is why these ERA movements, you can simultaneously work on mobility and strength and endurance and this element of mental, emotional, spiritual fortitude that you talked about there. But just on the strength piece, you could be holding that. And then after some number of seconds, those motor units start to fatigue and you start calling upon more and more motor units. And then as those fatigue, you start calling on even more. Eventually you’re at 60%, 70%, 80%. Eventually, when enough motor units fatigue, you might actually activate.

the most powerful motor units that you normally would have to lift very, very heavy or sprint or move at max effort in order to actually activate those at all. You can be activating them just holding a two pound weight or just holding your body weight in a lunge position or holding your body weight at the bottom of a pushup position. And so you end up getting a strength stimulus in a very safe way. You can get some, not all, but some of the effects of

lifting hundreds of pounds like a max effort lift, you can get some of those effects, but without the associated risks of injury. A lot of people try to squat heavy, but they don’t even have the mobility to get into a squat position in the first place. That’s a recipe for disaster. So there’s a strength component there. So back to what you were talking about, image. Were you talking about the pyramid image or something? What were you talking about? What were you gonna talk about?

Dr. Alex Lee (39:43.258)
No, and just to kind of add onto the end range activations, these positions, they allow you along with New Fit to recruit more muscle through the nervous system than you otherwise would have. That’s where I think like the magic of it is. And it’s not magic, it’s just normal physiology. But this is, in my opinion, the greatest benefit of it. No, the image that I was specifically talking about wasn’t the one with the bubbles, but that one’s really good too.

The one that I really like is the analogy of the bow and arrow. So what kind of makes some of these positions kind of like a paradox is that the more that you pull down into the position, so if we’re going to use pushup as an example, you have pushup handles at the start, hands are straight. When you pull yourself down into the bottom position of a pushup, you want to like…

row yourself into that bottom position as far down as you possibly can, the same way that you’d want to pull like more tension into a bow and arrow so that you could shoot it with more velocity. You want to be able to pull yourself down to that position. That’s where the start is. And then, you know, if say you’re doing a three minute, the thumbs up just came up on the screen here. If you’re holding yourself down in that position, you’re not just pushing up that whole time, you’re trying to actually like go to a deeper, deeper range. So that eccentric, that lowering portion.

you’re trying to pull yourself down into a lower and lower pushup and gain strength at that end range. So the end range activation is a really good name for it. You’re trying to get as strong as you possibly can in what is technically the most vulnerable position that you can be in, which is the end range of any sort of movement, whether that be the bottom of a lunge, where you’d be when you make contact with the ground when you’re in a full sprint, or the bottom of a pushup position. We’re trying to gain as much.

ability and confidence and confidence in ourselves in those in those positions and if If we don’t pull that arrow all the way back like that bow and arrow analogy if we’re only at you know Like maybe 50% of our max range with a push-up We’re we’re leaving so much on the table So what the paradox is with some of these positions is once you get better at it and you can start in like a really Deep like end range position right at the beginning like it’s a beast from the start

Dr. Alex Lee (42:02.078)
It’s not just like, it could be three minutes, but it’s like, you know, you could get so much better over the course of doing these for a month that, you know, a month later you’re starting in such a better position than you were before that your time may actually, like from the very beginning, be very difficult rather than maybe it takes a minute before to fatigue some of those motor units to a point that you’re gonna start to feel the effect and the adaptation that you’re trying to.

So I just wanted to add that. That was specifically the image that I was talking about in the book. And I’m not sure which course it’s in, but I love it.

Garrett Salpeter (42:34.994)
Awesome, yeah, good metaphor. I like that. I think that really, I think people get. Well played, well played. You’re gonna, gosh, I’m so glad that you’re finally gonna have a kid, because your dad jokes. They’re gonna be. That’s good, that’s good, you’re well prepared. Let’s, so that, I think really good conversation topics. I mean, yes, and then just to emphasize again, you talked about you can.

Dr. Alex Lee (42:38.986)
Never metaphor I didn’t like.

Sorry.

Dr. Alex Lee (42:48.694)
I know. I’ve been getting them ready for a while.

Dr. Alex Lee (42:54.807)
Thank you.

Garrett Salpeter (43:03.642)
learn a lot about how someone handles stress and you can see where they tense up and you see kind of how they do they try to grip through it or do they try to relax into it and control their focus, which is one of the only things over which they have any control in that moment. And so you can learn a lot. And if you’re you talk about going to the more vulnerable position. So I think there’s just an interesting dot to connect there in terms of seeing how people handle vulnerable.

positions, right? How to handle that vulnerability because you’re trying to progressively seek for those three minutes the more and more vulnerable position. So there’s really something powerful about it beyond just the physiological benefits for sure.

Dr. Alex Lee (43:47.302)
And that’s the newbie session too with hot spots, right? You’re finding the vulnerable areas to the brain as far as where that is with muscle. And then you’re trying to do vulnerable movements that maybe the last time you did them, there was a pretty significant injury or something that happened. And that’s if you’re using it for sports injuries or surgeries. We haven’t even really touched some of the neurological.

you know, conditions, so like the, you know, the MS and all that. And we don’t, we don’t deal with a ton of that here. Um, but it is just same thing, right? It’s the, it’s the, uh, I know they’re really protected and guarded and vulnerable positions and, you know, areas.

Garrett Salpeter (44:31.97)
Yes, yes, beautifully said there. So bring it back to your practice here. So how do you implement these? I kind of have a sense of it, but can you share with our audience how you, when you give someone their program, I know you have a gym set up, talk about from the business side, do you have open gym hours? Do you have people come in and work out individually or in groups or how do you create this opportunity for people to come in and continue to work on these when they’re in that?

strength phase, that kind of long-term foundational phase of maintenance or improving performance.

Dr. Alex Lee (45:09.366)
Yeah, and we don’t have this like explicitly kind of written out anywhere, but we had talked about people have limitations versus when people don’t have limitations. So I kind of think of it as, you know, there’s four different types of people that’ll come in kind of like on a matrix. So there’ll be the people that come in really strong, really able, no limitations. Then there’s going to be people that are coming in maybe really strong, really able, resilient nervous system, but then they have some sort of limitation and injury. So it could have been, you know, a recent sports injury.

Those people are probably gonna heal pretty quick as long as there’s not like a significant hardware type, you know 100% tear something like that So there’s like kind of that like the people that are strong and resilient They may kind of float back and forth between the two depending on what’s going on Then there’s like the people that you know that they need more resilience in the nervous system They just need more general overall strength And they may not have any limitations or they may have some pretty significant ones, too so we’re always trying to kind of trend upward to that position of

like being as strong and able as possible without any limitations. So it depends, but to come back to your question there, as far as what it looks like from the business standpoint with us, we have a 2,600 square foot building with a thousand square foot backyard that’s in the sun. So our unofficial slogan for the gym is we have the best gym lighting in Sarasota. You can’t technically accuse me of anything for that. We’re just out in the sun, so you can’t really say that I’m.

right or wrong, it’s not false advertising, it’s just the best, you can’t get better in the sun. Right, of course, so there’s always little pockets of shade, but in the middle of the summer, the turf that we have back there is like 115 degrees or whatever, it’s pretty nasty, so people avoid that for obvious reasons. But as far as business standpoint, people coming in, front 1,000, maybe 1,200 square feet is the chiropractic office, the back 1,400 to 1,600 square feet is the gym.

Garrett Salpeter (46:39.854)
depends on the time of day and the cloud cover.

Dr. Alex Lee (47:05.958)
As long as people come in and they’re a practice member on the chiropractic side, they can come back and use the gym any hours that we’re open here. There’s some guys that play baseball at a local college here. Some of them come in after hours. They know to open up and lock up. But anybody who comes in can come in and train. They know that we’re a resource as far as if they need a training plan or a program, we give them what they can do. And what’s really awesome about some of these…

athletic positions and isometrics or end range activations or whatever we’re calling them this year. You learn them once and they’re pretty simple. Since they’re such slow movements, you can make corrections on your own and you should be able to feel what feels correct from an athletic standpoint and what doesn’t feel like a position that you would ever have, you know, whatever get into in a game situation or anything that you’d want to then express.

you know, with doing something for two or three minutes or five minutes, whatever it is, you’re not only building strength, but you’re re-ingrating that neural pattern of how your body wants to move. So I mean, you want to be in as perfect position as you can that entire time because that’s what you’re going to then carry over. But yeah, coming back to the question, anybody who’s a practice member can come in and use the space while we’re open.

And then we have two guys that work on our strength team right now that do all the new fit sessions for us. So I’ll normally be up in the front adjusting people and then also doing assessments. And then, you know, the first time that anybody gets on the newbie, I’ll do the assessment with them. Normally, going forward, once they’re like on some sort of plan, they’ll come in and do the sessions with the new fit guys. So we bought our new fit, I think, 16 months ago. And

Yeah, I mean, we see, I don’t know, probably a third of our visits of people coming in are our new fit sessions. So we’ve had weeks where we only had, at the start of the week, only two or three available time slots for the entire week left over for scheduling. So that probably means it’s time to buy another newbie. But yeah, and it’s cool to see that…

Dr. Alex Lee (49:29.078)
You know, it’s from a business standpoint, it’s pretty easy to have somebody replicate the results that I would get. You know, it’s not solely dependent on me, which is great because, you know, you can have a bunch of people, you know, working with you. When there’s more people here, the environment only gets better. So it’s great when there’s a couple people really training. It’s, you know, fun sometimes when it’s either like family members or spouses that are, you know, doing new fit sessions at the same time because they try to see who can.

dial it up higher and there’s a competitiveness to it that I think is healthy. And yeah, it’s a great setup that we have. Some people are doing their, I’d say 90% of people are doing more of the hotspot, you know, like recovery and rehabilitation type work. And then we also use it for, we have a couple different sessions that we take people through for using different frequencies for hypertrophy. So like muscle building.

And then there’s also some people that we use it for the FSM, so the frequency-specific microcurrent for whether it be ligament tears, tendon issues, inflammation of the spinal cord. There’s a lot of different settings that we can use with that. So those are the big three. There’s a lot to kind of dive into with each of those individually. But I know that some of the other podcasts that I’ve flipped through on your podcast, on your channel.

kind of go into each of those individually. We really got a lot out of the podcast that you did on FSM with Dr. McMakin. That was a great episode there. Some really stuff that, I mean, you can, there’s so much versatility with what you can do with the newbie. You can really take it kind of wherever you want. And I mean, for us with having a little bit more of an active population, what we do with hot spots and training is very conducive to the environment that we’ve created here.

Garrett Salpeter (51:02.194)
Thanks.

Garrett Salpeter (51:22.55)
Awesome. And that episode with Dr. McMakin, by the way, I think is in back in the twenties or thirties. I was pulling up my app to see if I could, see if I could find it here. But I…

Dr. Alex Lee (51:37.371)
I saw you go on your phone. I thought I was boring you.

Garrett Salpeter (51:43.644)
Episode 31 of our podcast is the moment Dr. McMakin and she’s been the leader of this frequency specific microcurrent, kind of the head of the education certification body that trains clinicians and how to use this. So she came on and of course, yes, there’s many ways you can use the newbie with those same principles and techniques too. So yeah, thanks for sharing that. I appreciate the insight. We’re bouncing back a little bit between.

Dr. Alex Lee (51:43.766)
Nice.

Garrett Salpeter (52:08.626)
clinical and business topics and I’m just gonna keep bouncing. I’m gonna go back to it. Yeah, it is when your business is providing those services, you gotta be aware of both. If you’re not aware of the business side, you won’t be able to provide the services for long.

Dr. Alex Lee (52:13.195)
It’s tough to draw the line. Yeah.

Dr. Alex Lee (52:25.274)
That’s correct. I would add too that in the 15 months or 16 months that we’ve had New Fit, if anybody is listening and considering adding one to their practice, it paid for itself like five or six times over in that short amount of time. So now I don’t have to make payments on it anymore because I own it. So that’s great.

Garrett Salpeter (52:43.602)
Nice, nice. Yeah, well thank you for sharing that. I’m so glad it’s been a, you know, a boost for circadian and I appreciate you sharing that. That’s great. Let’s bounce back to a little bit more on the strength side and some of these functional topics. I know you think a lot about and test often grip strength. So can you share your thoughts on?

grip strength and not only just generally why it’s important, also specifically how you use, you know, a handheld grip dynamometer within sessions. So, so kind of big picture why, and then how you actually look at it on a regular basis and progressing over time and all those things.

Dr. Alex Lee (53:27.958)
Sure. Yeah, there’s something cool about getting a lot of results with pretty minimal equipment or no equipment. I remember when I started doing all the training, I was doing like glute ham raises by like wedging my feet between like the incline part of a bench and just like bending forward until my hamstrings felt like they were gonna rip. So there’s a lot that I’ve kind of just.

I don’t know, figured out, hey, if I didn’t have any sort of resources, could I still get all this done? I mean, good example would be like hanging from a door frame or hanging from a tree branch. Like you can still, you still kind of get that done wherever. So the reason I bring that up is because grip strength, I feel like is, is probably the cheapest thing that you can, can measure. So I have a couple of different dynamometers. That’s the gauge that measures what grip strength is. One of the ones that I have, I think it’s like $30 on Amazon. So I have a few of those.

I have one at the house and then I have a couple here at the practice. And, you know, I like to just kind of look throughout the day as far as, all right, mine’s a little bit lower until, you know, uh, early in the morning and then it starts to peak a little bit more when I train, I can start a training session and then go through five minutes or 20 minutes and the grip is going up 20% in that amount of time. Um, or, you know, maybe it peaks after I do bench press, but then it crashes after I do newbie or.

Maybe the day that I get adjusted, it’s up another 15%. I just like to kind of measure what the trends are as far as where my grip is compared to what I’ve done. And it’s down if I get worse sleep or it’s up if I’m recovered well and certain things are just going in the right direction. So I just like to look at it because it’s a really good indicator of what nervous system readiness looks like. And then also what activities can kind of get me to a point where I feel like I’m able to just effortlessly put out more.

So it’s a really, really simple and kind of cheap and easy tool to kind of look at. Whereas, you know, heart rate variability watch or a ring or anything like that could be a couple hundred dollars. This is something that’s pretty cheap. I’ve also found too that one thing that I guess a conclusion that I’ve kind of drawn and this has been something going back for probably 11 years now, but just the difference between feeling maybe emotionally tired.

Dr. Alex Lee (55:49.97)
or intellectually tired versus psychologically tired, which I guess I’d kind of lump in the same category, versus actually being tired. So if my grip strength is like 140 plus, but I feel like I’m just kind of out of it and not really there, I know that I’m not physically tired. I know that wouldn’t be a day where I, okay, I can’t train today because the tank is empty. It’s like, no, I should train. I’m just kind of not locked in from a mental, psychological standpoint.

I like to look at it like that. I think people look a little too deeply at some of their recovery score stuff and some of their strain level and some of that. It’s like, just go train, man. I found that probably 99% of the time I’m not physically tired. It’s not something there. It’s more just nervous system isn’t ready for some reason and psychologically there’s some sort of disconnect between what I feel like I could actually physically put out versus what I can.

That’s how I use grip. And then just from more of like a clinical standpoint, if there’s more than a 15% difference between right and left side for somebody’s grip, it’s usually pretty indicative that there’s something significant going on, whether it’s a nervous system with chiropractic, whether it’s more of an injury to a certain joint or elbow or anything like that. So that’s kind of how I use it. And then it’s another thing that we just kind of use as a measuring stick.

Garrett Salpeter (57:15.83)
Awesome, and what’s your personal goal for your own grip strength?

Dr. Alex Lee (57:19.998)
Yeah, mine has been to pop one that’s higher than my body weight. So I’m for people that don’t know, I’m six foot 12, 300. No, I’m 5’8″, 150 to 155. I’ve popped like 149. So just below. But yeah, I want to I want to be in the 150s. And I have actually.

This is probably six years ago when I was in chiropractic school on it’s a metal dynamometer that it’s a little, I don’t know, it’s kind of a letdown when you use it because it doesn’t, the grip doesn’t like get closer. They don’t approximate each other when you squeeze it. It’s not like squeezing a tennis ball that’ll kind of have a give. It’s just like this metal thing that you squeeze and it doesn’t move. So you’re like, I gripped that wrong. And then you look and it says.

you know, 130 or whatever it was. And you’re like, oh, okay, I guess it actually read something. But I did 155 on that. This is probably six or seven years ago. And then so far on the plastic ones that I have from Amazon, I mean, they’re quality. Like I’ve done them side by side with some of the, you know, $1,000 dynamometer and it reads almost exactly the same and is very accurate. So yeah, the goal would be to go above the body weight for no reason other than why not.

Garrett Salpeter (58:46.926)
I like that. If you’ve got those standards, you know, you can hang, you have enough strength to hang from one arm. That seems like a functional standard.

Dr. Alex Lee (58:58.698)
Yeah, I feel like if everybody just each year tries to get better in some way, shape and form than they were the year before, then you’re just going to keep going up. At 35 right now, I don’t feel like I’ve slowed down at all. From a physical standpoint, I feel better than I ever have, ever. So that should be the norm. That should be what everybody’s doing. I feel like I’ve still got, I don’t know how long.

I feel like I’m a better athlete than I was in college and I feel like I’m a better athlete than I was when I was playing ball in my mid-20s when I feel like I peaked from a skill standpoint.

Garrett Salpeter (59:39.89)
I think it was before, sorry if I’m being repetitive, I think it was before we hit record though, you were telling me you in men’s league baseball in Florida yesterday, you went out and pitched 90 pitches, right?

Dr. Alex Lee (59:47.082)
I did. I did.

Yes. So we have a group chat for the team. So for context here, my last season that I played in Australia was 2016. And then I played in a men’s league back in Boston, a very competitive men’s league. There’s three different leagues in like the greater Boston area that at that point all had like anywhere between 10 and 16 teams. And it was a lot of guys that played there currently in college, they were using it like as their summer ball. And then there was guys that, you know, were done playing either.

college or professionally and then still played on a competitive men’s league together. And you’d see guys that were, you know, the best guys weren’t the college guys. It was the guys that were between 25 and 35. Like that was when things peaked and we played pretty much three games a week. So we’d play like Monday, Tuesday, Thursday nights, 7.30 p.m. games. Everybody’s wives and girlfriends would come. It was just fun. Like you played a 30 game season in the summer.

played like a 10 week season, then you had playoffs. And I mean, they were, they were guys, like it was, it was good baseball. Yeah, obviously there was times where it was kind of sloppy, but you know, it was, it was pretty good. And I kind of missed that. I’d been talking to some of my buddies back home in Boston and you know, they were saying I should find a league to play in down here. And one thing that I’ve seen is that, you know, just adult sports have kind of dropped off, at least baseball. I mean, you kind of think of it as like, you know, America’s pastime and everyone.

Everyone plays when they’re a kid, but then after college, really not like the culture of it is that people don’t really play after. I couldn’t tell you how many of my college teammates have played a game of baseball after college. So, which I think kind of stinks. You look at other sports, like most guys that play hockey probably got back out on the ice. Like I’m sure you’ve skated and done all that. Guys that played basketball in college, I’m sure still play pickup hoops or playing some sort of rec league. But baseball is one of those sports that guys are done and they don’t really.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:01:44.982)
They may play like slow pitch softball, but I mean, everybody goes towards golf and I’m not going to knock pickleball, but I mean, everybody’s going towards that now. But yeah, with, uh, with what I was kind of feeling lately, I was like, well, you know, we work with so many baseball players here at the practice that it’d be, it’d be cool for me to go. Like I feel like I’m around baseball all the time, but I’m not because I’m not playing. So I was like, all right, let’s just, let’s just go out and play. So I joined this team or this men’s league. It’s got six teams and I think there’s 12 guys on each team.

like pretty small rosters. It’s a pretty new league. But I went and played first game, I guess this was like four weeks ago, five weeks ago. And it felt like I hadn’t lost a step. I mean, it felt like I was, it was weird hitting a ball that’s moving because I’ve been playing golf pretty much primarily for the past four years. So to actually face a pitcher again was a little bit of an adjustment for me. But actions in the field, playing shortstop felt great. It felt great running the bases. Instincts were still there.

and good and solid. And then I think two weeks ago was the first time I felt kind of comfortable with the plate again. So I’ve actually been hitting batting practice with some of my some of the practice members here, some of the guys that they come in to get adjusted during their season. So that’s been cool for all of us just to kind of be around baseball again. But yeah, they asked me the first night if I could pitch and I said, Sure, I’ll throw an inning felt really good. Felt like I was throwing hard like I haven’t thrown a baseball. I probably didn’t throw for like five years.

You know, I went out there first night and was throwing basketball slider change up. Things were throwing strikes, struck a couple guys out, felt good. The next week they asked if I could throw again, so I threw. And then last night, the day, like yesterday in the morning, the manager texted me. He’s like, hey, we’ve only got, we’ve only got like you and one other guy that can throw tonight because a couple of guys are out of town for work. And I was like, all right, what do you need? He’s like, I need five or six innings out of you. I was like, all right. I was like, all right, let’s do this. So.

Yeah, I pitched last night. We mercy ruled the other team through six innings, 90 pitches, struck some guys out. Felt really good. Actually did a newbie session Monday on some old hotspots. I just threw kind of pads on the same area. I couldn’t really find anything because I’ve worked through everything. But yeah, arm felt really good. And then, you know, the game got over around 9.15 last night.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:04:10.146)
in my garage at like 10 o’clock last night before eight dinner. I trained for half hour, did a bunch of the end range activations and ISOs and just some training and then eight dinner, went to bed, got up at 730 this morning, made some coffee, trained for an hour before we did all this. So, you know, just really changing the… 10 or 11 years ago, I just really changed the entire way I thought about recovery and training. And, you know, when you’re…

when you’ve done something from a skill standpoint and you’ve done it hard, you gotta get yourself back to that baseline with training. It’s not just, hey, go rest and go sit there and wait till you feel better. It’s like, no, I just threw 90 pitches and I’m gonna, like, I’m still in the window of I’m not even sore yet. So I don’t know what tomorrow’s gonna feel like, but I did as much as I could so far last night and this morning before doing this to make sure that I’m getting everything recovered and getting…

all the muscles back to the length they need to be and then as much blood flow as possible to there and getting stronger. So I feel like a misconception for every athlete is that they’re not gonna get stronger throughout the season and that things are, it’s like, no, you can train to whatever level. If you stimulate to this level all the time, you can stay there throughout the whole year. Like there’s no need for a dip. So that’s something too. And it’s cool to, you know, I feel like I just, I practice what I preach, not just so I can say, hey,

I do this. This is just the way that I’ve found makes the most sense. So of course I’m going to keep doing it. And then I look at every sport or golf or baseball or pick up hoop. It’s just, it’s me testing, hey, does this work? Is what I’m doing the right thing? And if I find something that I think works better and simpler, then I’ll do it. But this is what I found.

Garrett Salpeter (01:05:42.734)
Yeah, for sure.

Garrett Salpeter (01:06:01.586)
That’s awesome. I mean, just as a thought experiment, obviously we don’t have the counterfactual opposite here to test, but for someone who played, played professional baseball, they go, not throw a ball for five years and then come back. If you’re not continuing to rebuild and reinforce that athletic foundation that we talked about earlier.

you know, that could lead to some serious problems, but instead you had that foundation. So, you know, if the wind blows and the building will still stand or whatever the metaphor is, you know, so you’re able to go out and do that without having to totally change up or risk some sort of minor or catastrophic injury. So I just wanna emphasize that because I think that’s very cool that when you have that foundation, it sort of gives you that.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:06:38.958)
Sure. Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (01:06:58.99)
It’s like a great, you know, Jocko Willink has that great phrase, discipline equals freedom. If you have the discipline to do this for a long enough period of time, then you have the freedom to go out and play in a baseball game or a hockey game or pick a basketball game, whatever it might be.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:07:13.89)
And I think too that the training in this style and going through some of the grueling hotspot sessions, there’s a certain mental image that you need in your head, which is like the evolved version of yourself, the healed version of yourself. And that’s something that you almost meditate on while you’re doing it. And the intent and the intensity that you need to bring into it is, for me, it’s been in my head. Maybe it’s the last shot of the club championship.

in golf or maybe it’s the bottom of the ninth in a big situation and you need to put yourself in there with the same intensity when you go do a three minute push-up or when you go do a three minute hang or whatever it is. So I’ve been mentally rehearsing that for years. Like I’ve never stopped. So just stepping back into the arena with baseball pants on and my spikes and in that environment it’s almost like you never left. And then obviously…

you just, you change the intent and the intensity and what that cue is in your head, depending on what it is that you’re training for. And then for me, I always put the mental image in my head of, yeah, like a healed and evolved version of myself, but then also, my accountability partner for myself is me at 80 years old or 90 years old or a hundred years old. And for me, that’s like, that’s one of the highest forms of self-love, me being like, hey, what I’m doing right now for training is gonna make sure that I’m,

prepared for when I’m 80, 90, 100 that I’m in a spot where I’m physically independent and capable to do all these things. That plus just the mental image and feeling of love. One of the things that I think is really fascinating about using the 500 Hertz frequency on Newbie is that there’s a list of all these different energetic…

frequencies that I’ve seen that shows okay a thousand is enlightenment and 500 is love and then you keep going lower and lower and like five Hertz is anger and fear So like all these higher frequency feelings or you know kind of emotions that we can feel are Kind of geared towards what we also use with new fit for hotspots So like I don’t know 500 Hertz doing hotspots like to me like that’s a form of in a way

Dr. Alex Lee (01:09:38.926)
through love, like needs to be something that we express through what we’re doing with our rehab and our movement and relearning how to do certain things. It’s because you need, there needs to be love that leads that because you’re trying to get to do something that you couldn’t do before that you did love. That’s something that I’ve maybe, maybe I’m reaching a little bit there, but to me in my head, that’s what, that’s what makes sense. So if there’s another newbie that has up to a thousand Hertz, maybe people will be talking about.

how enlightened they are after everything that they do. I don’t know.

Garrett Salpeter (01:10:12.086)
That’s something, yeah, definitely gotta work on that. It reminds me of a couple things. So I saw that frequency list. I’ve seen that in a couple places. The first time I think I really saw it, or at least it landed with me, was in David Hawkins’ book. It was either, I can go, or, yeah. Yeah. So really good there. And then also, speaking of books, thinking of Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, you know, sort of the original,

Dr. Alex Lee (01:10:26.59)
Yeah, that was the one I was talking about. I forgot his name though. I blanked on it.

Garrett Salpeter (01:10:40.926)
mindset book, the original book that talked about the power of belief and how thoughts are important and influence our reality, influence our behavior, sense of identity, all these things. So he talked about the biggest creative forces in the world being faith and love. And yeah, so there’s definitely something there. And I’ll share, as we wind down here, I’ll share one other quick story so you don’t have to talk about

yourself or brag here but you know

Dr. Alex Lee (01:11:10.719)
Is it about you beating me three out of four times in a hundred meter dash in a parking lot in Atlanta last September?

Garrett Salpeter (01:11:17.082)
That’s right. We were at a trade show together. I’m glad you mentioned it. I wouldn’t have. But yeah, that’s right. That’s a question. We both have to be prepared for anything because when we’re at events together, you better believe we’re doing some sprinting races out in the parking lot.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:11:21.866)
Oh, I thought that was actually what you were gonna say. I was like, come on, man.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:11:35.138)
I mean, you could call me on three days notice and say, we got a trade show. And in my head, the first thing I think of is when was the last time I ran a sprint. I got to be ready.

Garrett Salpeter (01:11:42.13)
That’s right. So also, you being in Sarasota, us being in Austin, Texas, you’re near, you’re the hub of all these, half the major league baseball teams are doing, their spring training facilities or their rehab facilities there near you. And so you graciously have done a few training sessions or demonstrations with the staff from some of these major league baseball teams. And I won’t name any of them in the context of the story here, but you went and did a demo.

with one of the teams that have, they have had a newbie for two years and you went to do some additional training with them. And they were talking about how, you know, they weren’t able to get their guys on shoulder hotspots up above, you know, say 50 or 60. And you’re like, I can get to a hundred. And they were like, okay, show me. And they literally put it on you and you and turn it up to a hundred and you showed them. And I think that really, you know,

Dr. Alex Lee (01:12:18.196)
Yes.

Garrett Salpeter (01:12:37.938)
It’s like the four minute mile. It’s impossible until Roger Bannister does it. And then people realize, oh, okay, we can do this. And then, you know, a few thousand people have done it since then. So when they see that you’re able to do it, it also speaks to you maintaining yourself at a high level and that foundation. So that’s part of why you’re able to go out and pitch 90 pitches without having thrown, you know, in X number of years, you know, that sort of thing. But then it also shows them what’s possible and can help them get to that level.

that level there as well. So I think there’s a lot to that and, you know, it kind of comes full circle to being able to work through vulnerability, being able to stimulate to the level that, you know, build, build the foundation as deep and strong as we want to be able to build up high, you know, it kind of speaks to a lot of the pieces and ties together a lot of those conversation topics here as we wind down. So thank you for doing that, by the way.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:13:31.99)
Yeah, I had told you that story in confidence, Garrett. So, I know, I’m just kidding. I definitely felt like a psycho when the guys from the team here were like, hey, how’d the demo go? And I was like, well, it was good. I, within 45 minutes, took my shirt off and showed them how to turn the machine to 100. They were like, wait, what, really? I was like, yeah, I don’t know. They asked for a demo. So, we, yeah, we’re working with some of their trainers as far as like, hey, what…

what are the most common injuries that you guys are seeing and then did some stuff the same way that we would in a trade show like, hey, what’s going on? What can we kind of help you work through? And yeah, it’s cool to see, you know, like the highest levels of sport, people being able to use it and really the approach not being any different than it would be for, you know, a regular person coming in here or a high school athlete or a college athlete. It’s really the same principles and then just kind of work up from there. But yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (01:14:27.854)
Yes. Amen to that. So as we, as we wrap up the conversation here, can you let people know the best place to follow you? I know on Instagram, you have your personal page, the Alex Lee page and the circadian page. You’re also launching your podcast. Can you just kind of talk about where people can, can follow along with you and your work?

Dr. Alex Lee (01:14:50.182)
I’m not a big self marketer self promoter, but it’s at dr.alexlee on Instagram, A-L-E-X-L-E-E. And then our practice page is at circadian s-r-q. So C-I-R-C-A-D-I-A-N. And then s-r-q is the airport code here in Sarasota, which a lot of people… Yeah, I know. Yeah. Right.

Garrett Salpeter (01:15:13.635)
It took me a while to figure that out. I was like, who’s the SRQ?

Dr. Alex Lee (01:15:18.718)
So those are the two pages. I don’t love using social media and doing all that, but I have found that a really kind of powerful way to share information is through stories and podcasting feels like it’s an avenue that I need to kind of step into a little bit more. So I have a podcast that hopefully I’ll have a couple episodes up by the time that this is released. The way that I plan to structure the first season is to have

you know, handful of topics that I talk about. So, I mean, if new fit and direct current is one of them, then this would be, you know, that I’d probably just rip this episode and put it online. And then I’d have like a follow-up episode where it’s just me kind of talking about maybe anything that I feel like we missed. But, you know, if somebody does come in and they’re starting with what we do with new fit, this is something that they can listen to while they’re driving and just get a little bit more, you know, insight as far as what it is that we’re doing and just be able to.

kind of guide the process a little bit better through that. When I started going about all this, and I think this was 2013, there was no real… I mean, podcasts weren’t really out yet at that point. I couldn’t tell you if I even knew where to download a podcast from. But as far as piecing together information on all the training, I mean, it was not there. And I think it’s a really, really… I’d say probably more than anything. I’ve seen change in the last…

12 or so years has been how much information there is and how much access there is to information. Whereas I think when I was trying to… Yeah, yeah, yeah. And more than that, I’m seeing it with kids too. So when I met you, I was managing a baseball and softball academy. It was the second one that I had helped open. So I was doing private lessons and clinics and all that and working with kids. And I saw that even with young kids, it was…

Garrett Salpeter (01:16:52.53)
Unfortunately not always good quality information.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:17:14.59)
It was not to their advantage to be given information. I think that the natural learning process needs to be something that’s explored and led from curiosity. And I think a lot of the time that wasn’t what was happening with younger kids and now those kids are 10 or 12 years older. And I think that that’s just kind of become the standard kind of across the board for a lot of one-on-one coaching and all that. There’s just so much information that you’ll get dumped on you immediately when really

Like I found that when I’m doing new fit sessions, the less I talk, the better people do. So if I’m over coaching and trying to over like explain certain things, it’s robbing those people of having that as their own experience. So I think that’s something that, you know, just kind of being a student of the intergame, intergame of tennis is probably my most gifted book of all time. I sent you one.

Garrett Salpeter (01:18:06.77)
That’s right, Ruby just told me, it’s at the office. I’ll grab it.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:18:10.049)
Do not go to the office. I sent that to you like a month ago, man.

Garrett Salpeter (01:18:13.992)
It was in her office and instead of mine I was going…

Dr. Alex Lee (01:18:16.614)
Okay, got it. I sent it and I got a picture sent of it being delivered, and it’s just like a package leaning up against the door, and I’m like, I hope that’s Garrett’s door. I don’t know what his door looks like. But yeah, like.

Garrett Salpeter (01:18:24.85)
That’s right. Since then, I had the next conference after when you and I were at, then we were on our spring break trip. I may not have been there since then, but I will get it. I will get it.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:18:35.57)
Yeah, you’re welcome. I almost gave Sam a copy to take home, but I was like, well, that defeats the purpose of me giving it to Sam to give to you, because I was gonna have you read it on the flight. But it’s a really easy read, and it’s the number one, like if I could go back and give myself a book when I was 13 or 14, just sports psychology that carries over into other areas of life, that’d be the one. But it just talks about your relationship to yourself, and basically.

you being able to get out of your own way, which I’ve found is probably the most important thing as far as owning a business and then also any athletic endeavor, but also just goes into your relationship with yourself and yourself talking and all that. So I don’t know how I segued into that one.

Garrett Salpeter (01:19:19.762)
Awesome. I’m excited. I’m excited. I’m fired up, fired up not only to read that book, but also as soon as we stop recording to do a hang from the pull up bar I have right here beside my desk in my home office.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:19:31.838)
I was about to say, it’s a cool office. I saw the tour. That was a very well done video. I realized that I’ve probably overcomplicated the idea of air quotes creating content. You can just kind of walk around the room you’re in and show people what each thing in the room. I was like, man, this is brilliant. Garrett’s got it. He’s cracked the code, man.

Garrett Salpeter (01:19:51.657)
Thank you, thank you. So I’ll shout out my own Instagram page, I suppose, here since we talked about Alex’s too. But I think… Thanks for watching.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:19:57.438)
Yeah. Also, I want to shout out Sam Maxey. Worked with him in Vegas. Love that guy. He’s awesome. And then Dr. John Marquesi, who’s a chiropractor who has a newbie in Massachusetts. He’s helped my mom a ton through a rotator cuff surgery that she had. Yeah. Correct. Yeah, I knew what you meant. Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (01:20:02.843)
Yes.

Garrett Salpeter (01:20:14.79)
Fabulous, not the shape of surgery, but that she’s working with Dr. John. And good shout out, Sam Maxey is a trainer, former professional offensive lineman, and now trainer on our team here in Austin. Yeah, so he was at that conference, the last one you and I were at together. And yes, John Marchese, two great individuals, a shout out here. And all of New Fit Nation, we’ll give you a shout out, and a thank you for tuning in to this episode.

Thank you, Alex. Thanks for coming on here and for your support and friendship. And I’m just fired up that we get to do events together and collaborate and I can’t wait to come to our next partner workout by the way. So which we’ll talk about later.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:20:56.074)
Yeah, likewise, man. Seriously, this has been a lot of fun being able to jump on this morning. And yeah, you’re doing really great work. And it’s fun to see how much, I mean, you’ve evolved out of a basement with no windows, a storage closet with no windows. And I think people underestimate, I heard this a couple of weekends ago in the event I was at in Texas, people tend to overestimate what they can get done in a year, but they underestimate what they can do in 10.

And that was about 10, I think it was 10 years ago, because it would have been like winter, spring of 2014 when I went off for my first season. So to see where you’re at now and see where I’m at now. I mean, I said it before, I feel like I am just getting started. So it’s cool to be like, all right, we’ll wonder what 10 years from now will look like.

Garrett Salpeter (01:21:47.43)
That’s a beautiful note on which to end. It couldn’t agree more. And I appreciate that and everything else you shared here today. And thank you everybody again for tuning in. We’ll see you on the next episode of the undercurrent podcast.

Dr. Alex Lee (01:21:59.438)
Thanks, Garrett.

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