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What helps people move beyond pain and limitation, build resilience, and keep doing the things that give life meaning?
The Power of Doing What Matters is hosted by Dr. Clayton Skaggs, founder and CEO of the Central Institute for Human Performance and author of the book that inspired the show. For more than three decades, Dr. Skaggs and his team have worked at the intersection of persistent pain, rehabilitation, movement, and human performance. His career has included years of study with pioneering Czech neurologists Vladimir Janda and Karel Lewit, service on postdoctoral and research faculties at eight universities, published clinical research, and work with people ranging from those facing unresolved pain to elite athletes, military professionals, and executives.
Dr. Skaggs and his team have found that the best stories and learning come from the patients and clients. Each episode will combine stories from and about real-life experiences with clients, practitioners, athletes, researchers and others. Episodes combine practical knowledge, lived experience, and a CIHP Insight—a short reading that opens a larger conversation about the mind, body, and the choices that shape our capacity. Reading, contemplation and learning.
The conversations are educational and are not a substitute for personalized medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Come to Your Senses: Thinking What Matters
The Power of Doing What Matters
Host: Dr. Clayton Skaggs
Guest: Tim Sirmon, DPT
Final transcript
Tim Sirmon: [00:00:00] And when it comes to performance we try to simplify that even more by having them just soften their knees or just observe their belly.
Once they're performing, it seems as if they-- when they try to belly breathe or if they try to do too much with their feet or knees, they end up missing the target versus just observing or having that light kinesthetic sense.
Clayton Skaggs: Hello, and welcome again to an audio production of our insights. I'm Clayton Skaggs, and today I'm joined by Tim Sirmon. Many of you probably know Tim from the institute, he is a doctor of physical therapy and a lead [00:01:00] practitioner at the institute. Works with just a broad, broad variety of our clients and is a key member of many of those teams for folks coming from all over the country, all over the world.
He also is an integral pillar of our technical development. He's been side by side with all of our platform development, communications moving forward video production, and as well as this audio production that we're just launching now. So very excited to have him on today and get his valued comments to help help others contemplate and hopefully absorb some of this stuff.
So Tim, hello. Thanks for joining today. [00:02:00]
Tim Sirmon: Hello. Thanks for having me.
Clayton Skaggs: So I'm gonna just jump in and read this insight here in a moment, but I know in my memo last week, I mentioned a valued client from Idaho who you've been on his team and we've talked about him numerous times relative to his, his articulation of the process and, and his resilience journey. Maybe as we get started here any comment or story you wanna say about that young man and how he's gone from not being able to stand on one leg and now he's hiking, biking and really enjoying, enjoying life?
Tim Sirmon: Yeah, he's been, fascinating to watch where he couldn't stand on one leg initially, and then through a period of some regressions followed by some progressions he had some tough [00:03:00] roads when he first started, so he's ... He made it through some of these times where we've asked him to do less, and it didn't necessarily go straight to good.
Clayton Skaggs: Yeah, yeah. Maybe just speak to that too, that, I mean, this, this young man, obviously we had to really do less with him in the beginning and then there were several points where we had him do more, more than he, he actually thought he could and that actually lit his system up and really got things moving.
Tim Sirmon: Yeah. As he made it through those, those tough times of doing less he was one where, like a lot of our clients, where we eventually have to nudge them forward to doing things like CNS warmup where they're, they're skipping and box jumps and some things that they, they don't think they can do and it really helped helped [00:04:00] him with a phase transition.
Clayton Skaggs: Yeah. And that, that, that really links up with our insight this week that, you know, box jumps and skipping, those certainly are things that can engage the nervous system when you're ready. And, and, and so he certainly wasn't ready when he couldn't stand on one leg.
That, that wouldn't have been a time to do box jumps or skipping. But then as he progressed and we, we saw him hitting good markers with his movement tolerance and, and some of those things then he was, he was, he was ready and fit for that. And and then, then his nervous system thankfully engaged him, and he really, he really took off.
So let me, let me go ahead and begin the reading this and, and then we'll we'll have some comments after
Come to your senses. Thinking what matters. Bones and [00:05:00] muscle. That's all I say when I'm pushing the sled. This is what our sixty-five-year-old client said. She has recently added a day of training, and we have added new intensity to her programs.
She received a report that her bone density score had dropped since her last study. She also had been discussing the need to gain muscle for health and her health and longevity. She relates that pushing the sled is hard. Most would agree. Pulling the sled is okay, but pushing a weighted sled down a carpeted path can seem like the sled is pushing back, or there's glue on the bottom of the sled.
Most do not like it in their program. Her motivating phrase helps her get it done. "It actually feels good to be doing it," she says, "especially when I'm finished." Our client has developed her singular simple phrase, her mantra. You might say she is thinking what matters. Like Molly Seidel, Olympic [00:06:00] medalist in the marathon, who said she was just going to send it and nothing else was going to get in.
Thinking what matters and nothing else. In our last insight, we reviewed the complex data collection, interpretation, and training that Kate Douglass used for her preparation for the two thousand and twenty-four Paris Olympics and for most of her career. Like our client, once the competition begins, Douglass reports she has a singular focus.
On the podcast, People I Mostly Admire, Stephen Levitt asked Douglass what she thinks about when she begins the two hundred meter breaststroke, her best event. Fascinatingly, she replied, "I actually have a stroke count that I stick to and that I want to hit to be able to get my best time. And so I dive in and just start counting my strokes, and I focus on hitting the stroke [00:07:00] count that I want for each lap, and that's the only thing going through my brain while I'm swimming."
She is not thinking about technique, data, or how hard it is. She is counting her strokes, thinking what matters and nothing else. When you identify a singular simple phrase that is aligned with doing what matters for your pursuit and or purpose, you can create a precision that produces remarkable changes, a precision that grows bones and muscles, a precision that wins Olympic medals.
Importantly, both our client and Kate Douglass must be fit and prepared for these events for their mantra to work. They must be fit for their purpose. What phrases do you have for your current pursuits? What if you had some that were daily? Do they align with your two [00:08:00] lists, what is important and what you can control?
Are you fit and prepared to do it? Is your circle of advisors helping with this process? Extraordinary results like Douglass, our client, and many clients we have experienced at the institute are due to a combination of hard, deliberate, and consistent work and unwavering congruent focus on doing what matters.
It seems that having a visual, auditory, and kinesthetic target for what matters is an essential ingredient. Your senses are the information highway that connect your mind and body. To allow hard work and precision to come through, thinking what matters and nothing else may be one of the most important things you do.
There's a lot, you know, that, you know, we often talk about that is covered in this, [00:09:00] in this insight, Tim. And I think the idea of a relentless, uh, pursuit, so an unwavering congruent focus on doing what matters is what we often see in clients that, that change their life, that, that start walking on two legs versus one.
And, and we're, we're sometimes curious when it happens, right? So can you, can you lean into that a little bit?
Tim Sirmon: Yeah. One, one thing that comes to mind when listening to this again, is that, that singular simple phrase of doing of doing what matters for the swimming reminds me of any performance that we have clients or people do, which a performance would be, you know, walking or going up and down stairs [00:10:00] or simply standing.
We go into the weeds a bit when we ask them to do simple remedials sometimes, and they play and they explore, and they might focus on where they're breathing and what they're doing. And when it comes to performance we try to simplify that even more by having them just soften their knees or just observe their belly.
Once they're performing, it seems as if they-- when they try to belly breathe or if they try to do too much with their feet or knees, they end up missing the target versus just observing or having that light kinesthetic sense.
Clayton Skaggs: Yeah.
And I think, I think what, what what helps move folks along, and I think Douglass really understands this consciously and, or at least speaks to it in all, a lot of the interviews I've [00:11:00] heard her do, is she just picks that target and then executes. And doesn't, doesn't... you know, she's not trying to do her stroke count.
She's not trying to keep her head in a certain position. She's just doing it. And, and, and certainly having a keen sense of, of different parts of her body but not analyzing it, not, not trying, as you said. And I think that's, that's why folks who, who change their life, folks who win Olympic medals, you know, have, have such amazing success, is they just, they just do it.
And, and then of course knowing what to do is keen. And, so when we, we ask someone to breathe and do it in this position, if they'll just put attention to certain [00:12:00] areas and explore it, like you say, and, and discover what they're that'll usually hit the mark. But it is hard sometimes to, to keep it that simple.
And that, that's where obviously some teamwork, some coaching helps, helps folks get there
Tim Sirmon: Absolutely
Clayton Skaggs: Cool.
So reach for the stars. Reach for the stars for yourself and, and definitely for others. Imagine 100 million people focused on doing what matters.