.

CLICK FOR AUDIO OF PODCAST

Guest: Julia Blackwell

Release Date: 4/13/2025

Welcome to Trulyfit the online fitness marketplace connecting pros and clients through unique fitness business software.

Steve Washuta : Welcome to Trulyfit. Welcome to the Trulyfit podcast where we interview experts in fitness and health to expand our wisdom and wealth. I’m your host, Steve Washuta. Co Founder of Trulyfit and author of Fitness Business 101.

Steve Washuta   Welcome to truly fit. Welcome to the truly fit podcast, where we interview experts in fitness and health to expand our wisdom and wealth. I’m your host. Steve Washuta, co founder of truly fit and author of fitness business 101

Steve Washuta   On today’s episode, I have on Julia Blackwell, you can find everything about her at movement by Julia on Instagram. Julia has been on the podcast. Previously we discussed pain and fascia. She is a fascia expert, and we go over some of the things we did on the original podcast to give some people insights into the generalities surrounding fascia.  

Steve Washuta   So I do what I call like a who, what, where, when, how, who needs it? What is the goal when we’re rolling out? Let’s say where on our body is important when before, during, after a workout. How do we know it was effective? We go over that. We go over common hip issues that fascia plays a role in.  

Steve Washuta   We also go down the rabbit hole of if you’re somebody who’s interested in pursuing this as a career, if you’re a personal trainer, somebody in the fitness and health industry and fascial work is something you’re interested in. How exactly do you go about that, whether it’s incorporating it into your current practice or just doing it solo on its own, you know, Julia’s insights has, she’s done this now for, you know, 13 plus years. It was a great conversation.  

Steve Washuta   And I want to remind listeners that the first episode we did was called pain and fascia you can go back and listen or watch the episode, and it was also fantastic. I would say, actually, the first episode was a deeper dive into fascia. It was more of a 400 level college course. This is sort of a 101, and then we go into more specific issues surrounding the hip complex.  

Steve Washuta   But make sure to follow Julia at movement. By Julia on Instagram with no further ado, here’s Julia and I. Julia, welcome back to the truly fit podcast for the second time. The first episode was fantastic for those who did not hear it, why don’t you give a brief background and bio of who you are, sort of your credentials, your bonafide days, and what you do day to day in the health industry.  

Julia Blackwell   Yeah. Thanks, Steve. I’m so excited to be back. I am a Fauci release expert, educator and practitioner. I’ve had a in person practice in Golden Colorado for the last 13 years. I believe time is flying, so I help both with pain as well as issues with mobility and performance recovery and even relieving stress and trauma out of the body with strategic fascia release work.  

Julia Blackwell   So I work both in person but also virtually. I help a lot of people through virtual courses and even virtual sessions these days, as so many of us had have since 2020 so it’s a wide range. You know, I work with anyone from just an everyday mover all the way up to professional athletes, and it’s been a really fun and exciting time for the last decade, plus the first episode was called pain and fascia.  

Steve Washuta   For anyone who thinks that that was just sort of an intro. It was not so you could actually probably, after this episode, go back and listen to that, because we did a really deep dive into into all things fascia. I would call it more of like a three, like a fascia 301, it was like a 300 level college class where we started to talk a little bit more sciencey.

Steve Washuta   I don’t know if we’ll get there today, because we want to focus on some other things. We’ll probably just going to go more one on one level, so we can go back and listen to that episode. I’m glad I did this morning, so we can maybe avoid some of that talk and go in different directions.  

Steve Washuta   But let’s, let’s first start with you. To do you feel like your practice has changed since I’ve last spoken with you? Or do you do anything else outside of the fascia work? Or do you really just focus on that right now?  

Julia Blackwell   Yeah, well, in the last six months, I’ve hired a new practitioner to join my practice, which has been really exciting. I’ve been training her really since 2020 and it’s been such a fun time to add such an incredible addition, but also it allows me to step away from my practice a little bit I was doing so so many sessions, and I love it, but I’m now stepping into more of an educator role.  

Julia Blackwell   I have two different certifications now, so I have one that is more of an entry level, understanding fascia, pain patterns, how to work with fascia, how to assess clients alignment and movement, and then be able to help address that fascia through the use of recovery tools. And that could be, you know, foam rollers, lacrosse balls, soft Pilates balls, things like that.  

Julia Blackwell   And then I also have a bodywork Mastery program that I’m teaching people how to do the actual physical body work side of this very unique work. So I’ve been stepping much more into the teacher role. It’s really fun to wear that teacher hat. Actually, I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit.  

Steve Washuta   Yeah, one would think you would have to even quicker than someone like myself, a personal trainer, I could go through a whole session without touching a weight, without demons. Trading. Of course, I still do those sorts of things, but with you, there’s so much that’s hands on, right?  

Steve Washuta   So you have to worry about whatever, you know, arthritis and things of that nature afterwards. And it’s just, it’s, it can be, it can be intensive, almost like massage therapy esque, where eventually you have to maybe dial back the, you know, the physical part of the job and work into more of the educational realm.  

Julia Blackwell   Sure, I also am just I’ve seen so many incredible results over the years. I you know, I have incredible testimonials and clients that have gone through such wild transformations. It’s more of like, I’m tired of keeping this to myself.  

Julia Blackwell   I can only work so many hours physically, but also my impact is so much smaller if it’s just me at my office all day, every day. So I’m starting to get, you know, that same really excited feeling I used to get at the beginning when you know, I’d help someone resolve a pain.  

Julia Blackwell   I’m now getting that same feeling when one of my practitioners is like, oh my gosh, this person came in and I fixed their plantar fasciitis, or whatever it is. I’m like, oh, there’s that feeling again, it’s really exciting to to get more impact and start bringing this work to such a wider range of people.  

Steve Washuta   Yeah, not to mention that sort of intrinsic or internal motivation is going to drive you more than money or just expanding, right? The fact that you want to help more people, that’s, that’s really how you’re going to end up, you know, expanding in a more prolific way.  

Julia Blackwell   Yeah. I mean, if you go back and listen to our first episode, I talk more in depth about my own story and how this work has really helped in a way that nothing else could when it came to the nerve damage in my arm. But I’m also an active person, and pain is part of life, right?  

Julia Blackwell   Sometimes you get knee pain, or you wake up with a crick in your neck, and being able to be resolve these things on your own when you can address it quickly, because you know how that’s it’s something again, you get so excited. You just want everyone to know that it’s possible for them too.  

Steve Washuta   Let’s quickly go over the episode as far as the fascia is concerned, just so people have an understanding, I would like to do it from maybe two angles. One, you know, what is fascia? You’re talking to a 12 year old, right?  

Steve Washuta   Or you’re talking to just somebody who has no idea about the body. And then two, what is fascia that you could explain to a personal trainer? Maybe something they don’t know and they think that they know. When we’re talking about fascia, Okay, maybe I’ll try to combine these.  

Julia Blackwell   So fascia is, scientifically speaking, it’s the biological fabric that weaves through every single cell that we have, and it’s what organizes all of the water and material in our body.  

Julia Blackwell   For your 12 year old person, think of it like plastic wrap that wraps around every single thing, so every muscle fibril, every muscle fiber, every muscle, tendon, ligament, joint, organ, bone, nerve, it’s all wrapped like a three dimensional plastic wrap suit that we have on the inside.  

Julia Blackwell   And so because fascia wraps around every single thing, it’s therefore going to influence the position and function of everything. So it’s what gives us our shape and our structure. It’s what allows our muscles and bones to or muscles and joints to glide. It’s also what gives us our, you know, bouncy springiness. It’s how we absorb shock and have resilience in our body.  

Julia Blackwell   It’s also how we get all hydration and nutrients down to the cellular level, to all of the things that are required. So essentially, it is plastic wrap that has a little hydration irrigation system built in.  

Julia Blackwell   That is this secret system that’s doing so many different things on the back end and really influences how our body is able to move and function as a whole. If that is combining both to each combine.  

Steve Washuta   That’s fantastic. And I’ll just, I’ll just add something to that, because my first thought is, I’m always trying to put my myself in the general public populations mindset, right? What would they ask? They would go, well, Julia, if it’s all that, how come I’ve never heard of it? Well, you have heard of it, but they call it connective tissue.  

Julia Blackwell   Yes, they call it connective tissue. They also call it myofascial, which you absolutely can call it that, however, Myo scientifically that that means muscle. So myofascial is really only referring to fascia around the muscle. And fascia is an entire system. It wraps around organs. It wraps around bones.  

Julia Blackwell   That’s so I like to think of it as just one whole system. It’s so much more than just the muscles. And I’ve also heard people refer to it like it’s some kind of a sausage casing that simply goes around the outside of the muscle. So it’s important to understand the layer upon layer upon layer system that it is, which we’ll definitely talk more about as we dive into these questions.  

Steve Washuta   And then another sort of one on one question here is, what role does it play in flexibility and mobility? Does it work in both of those and what do you consider the difference between those two?  

Julia Blackwell   Good question? So let’s start with flexibility for a moment. So most of us, when we think flexibility, we think stretching right. And that’s really lengthening the muscle fiber in one plane of motion, or it’s really only focused on one muscle or one muscle group at a time.  

Julia Blackwell   And I think of this more as an old model of thinking. I really care fairly little about flexibility. I’ve seen plenty of gymnasts and other people over the years that have great flexibility in some areas and a lot of other struggles in other areas. So what I’m more concerned about is mobility.  

Julia Blackwell   And mobility, to me, means more active movement. So it’s full range of motion throughout a joint and most importantly, it’s motion in a three dimensional way. And so facially speaking, I care way more about the ability of all of our muscles and joints to be moving in a three dimensional way across multiple planes of motion, kind of hand in hand with mobility.  

Julia Blackwell   I would also talk about stability, right? And that’s our ability to control the mobility that we have with the impact of gravity. And so, you know, all of our the force that goes through our body is traveling through our fascial system.  

Julia Blackwell   We have 10 times as many proprioceptors in our fascia than we do in our muscles. So a lot of the way we understand how to move our body, where to move our body, and how to control it, is coming from our facial system as well.  

Steve Washuta   Who needs facial work? That’s the next question. The general population would say, How do I know when I need it? And I would love to do this, what I call the who, what, where, when and how.  

Steve Washuta   Situation here, right? So, like, if we’re going through, you know, foam rolling techniques, let’s say somebody who’s going to use the foam roller, you know, who needs it? Let’s go with who first?  

Julia Blackwell   Oh, man. Well, truly, the vast majority of people do. I’ve worked on kids as young as eight years old, and I have a current client right now who is 81 and there is everyone in between that usually needs this work if you’re experiencing any kind of pain, stiffness, injury, or like you kind of feel every time you work out.  

Julia Blackwell   There’s something else that’s bothering you. You know, those consistent things that keep popping up if you have slow recovery times, if you wake up feeling stiff in the morning, really, anything where your body is not functioning optimally is a sign that you could use some fascia work.  

Steve Washuta   Now on to the what? What is the goal?  

Julia Blackwell   What is the goal? Well, ideally, it’s to rehydrate, re pattern our fascia that’s going to allow us to restore all of our movement capabilities and essentially be author.  

Julia Blackwell   Another analogy at you fascia is a bit like a wet sponge that encases everything in our body, and the more you know we sit, the more movement patterns we repeat over and over, the more injuries we sustain. We start to get a version of a dried out sponge happening in our body.  

Julia Blackwell   So if you think about trying to twist and bend a dry sponge, it’s way more brittle. It doesn’t move very easily. It’s more likely to snap right this. That’s the the analogy for injury. What we want is the most wet sponge, hydrated version, which allows us to again, move any way we want, feel fluid in whatever we do, and really have no limitations.  

Steve Washuta   The next one is where and where on my body is important, and I don’t want to lead the witness too much, but I’m think you would agree with the statement when I say many of times where the pain is isn’t where the problem is. So how do we how do we make those distinctions?  

Julia Blackwell   Well, ideally, we want to work everywhere in our fascia, because it’s all one system that’s connected. We want everything to be a nice, hydrated sponge, so that can be all the way from bigger muscle groups, like in the quads and in the core, all the way down to between our metacarpals.  

Julia Blackwell   But I do find over the years, there are some spots that tend to be more tight on most people. So the quads, the adductors, the core fascia, the lats and the pecs are probably the top areas. I would say most everyone needs because we do so much sitting, we do so much poor breathing due to stress or just a general slouch position that we have.

Julia Blackwell   We don’t often do a lot of overhead arm movements. And so most of those areas are certainly the top ones that I would start with that are contributing to a lot of different types of aches and pains. But you’re right, really, where you feel pain is almost never the problem. And so there is a bit of discovery and learning involved to discover what really is necessary for your specific pain that you’re. Experiencing.  

Steve Washuta   When is next? Do we do this? Pre Workout, Intro workout, post workout, on days, on off days, all the above.  

Julia Blackwell   It depends on what your intention is. So if you’re looking to really warm up your muscles or improve your mobility a little bit so that you can have a more successful workout.  

Julia Blackwell   You know, if you’re about to do a bunch of overhead squats and you need the best mobility you can have, to drop down as low as you can go, it’s great to do it before workout. If you’re looking to improve your recovery time or reduce soreness, or just generally, hope to improve your sports performance over time.  

Julia Blackwell   I would suggest doing it after your workout. But yeah, if you’re experiencing a lot of pain, you don’t need to wait for a workout. I would say on your rest day, anytime you’re starting to feel that pain, come on. I would tackle it sooner rather than later.  

Steve Washuta   Okay, I thought maybe the hardest one was what or where, but maybe this is the hardest one. Now it’s, it’s how and how do I know it was effective? Is it just a subjective Well, now, now there, there once was pain, and now there isn’t. Is there some sort of objective measures? How do we know that this has been effective?  

Julia Blackwell   Well, there’s two parts to the how I think so the number one part, and what I’ve found over the years is that we have to address fascia in a way that combines compression, cross fibering and active movement. So instead of simply rolling up and down on our roller or laying on a massage ball for 10 minutes at a time, we need to compress an area of fascia and then actively move.  

Julia Blackwell   Usually, the cross fibering is happening with the active movement due to the movement, but that’s a very important part in order to rehydrate and re pattern fascia. So that is part of the how it’s probably different from most of the things that you’ve done before. But there’s other things. As far as, how do you know it was effective? There’s usually a feeling of warmth.  

Julia Blackwell   Occasionally, I’ve heard people have a cool rush as well, but a feeling of a rush of warmth right after that’s a great sign that blood flow is getting to that place and hydration is coming back to that area. I usually get a bit of a gentle tingling or a light type of feeling. That’s one of the most common things I hear from others as well.  

Julia Blackwell   You may feel an immediate decrease in your pain or an increase in your mobility, and typically, the more consistent you are with that, the quicker the results are going to be. You know, in the long term, you should feel more loose, more fluid, more pain free, have better performance, all of the main things that we’re all hoping for when it comes to feeling our best.   

Steve Washuta   That was  great information. I’m going to ask you to just elaborate a little bit on what you consider and call this kind of active movement without using the roller. I know what you’re talking about. You’re saying the roller is in one place and your body is moving. You’re using it almost like a fulcrum, back and forth. But give us maybe a better picture of what you’re speaking of.   

Julia Blackwell   Well, again, you know we talked about stretching before, how lengthening muscles in one plane of motion is is really doing so very little. So it’s the idea here is, can we press a massage ball or roller into a certain area?  

Julia Blackwell   Let’s say, for example, the calf. If I press a ball into my calf and start flexing and pointing from my ankle and circling from my ankle, I’m now starting to move all kinds of different parts of that muscle and in that area in a more three dimensional way through different planes of motion.  

Julia Blackwell   So really, that’s the key, and it doesn’t need to be your entire body, although there are some fun, interesting ways that you can start to incorporate bigger, more dynamic body movements with this type of work.  

Julia Blackwell   But sometimes it’s as simple as, yeah, pressing a lacrosse ball into your pec and reaching your arm over your head, doing some internal, external rotation. All of that three dimensional movement is really what starts to remold and restructure that fascia.  

Steve Washuta   You don’t see that enough, at least, I don’t, anecdotally looking around the gym, you know, people are using the roller as one would assume, right? I need to roll on this instead of, maybe even if you’re putting it across your back, kind of perpendicular, and you know, opening up your shoulder blades, closing your shoulder blades.  

Steve Washuta   Putting your hands behind your head, hugging yourself, making sure that we can get inside of those smaller muscles around the scapula and put some pressure on there and move around, rather than just roll back and forth, which seems way more superficial, correct?  

Julia Blackwell   Right? We’re getting those first few layers of fascia, and again, we’re just kind of going up and down roughly with the grain of the fibers. So. So when we start to incorporate, especially those shearing type of movements, where we’re we’re moving perpendicular to the way our muscle fibers run, it will actually activate a cell within our fascia called a fascist site.  

Julia Blackwell   That is the Kickstarter to producing hyaluronic acid in the body, which is essentially full body grease for both your joints and your muscles. So if you’re not getting any kind of cross fibering, we’re not affecting those deeper layers, and we’re not really maximizing the amount of hydration we can get to that spot.  

Steve Washuta   Something I deal with a lot in my industry is that personal trainers, even and general population will assume that if a muscle is very tight, that it’s overworked. They go, Oh, muscles tight, it’s overworked.  

Steve Washuta   They don’t they can’t put the concept together that something can be both weak and tight. Can you explain why that is actually maybe the case more often than not, especially for the general population, and how what we do really affects that issue.  

Julia Blackwell   Sure. I mean, there is the possibility that something can be both tight and strong that usually has to do with the volume of workout you’re doing or the amount of repeated times you’re doing the same thing. That’s certainly possible. But there’s two. I’d say there’s two different versions of this.  

Julia Blackwell   So tight week is very common. So the body is going to send all of its resources to the areas you’re actually using. So if you’re not very active, or you’re doing the same movements over and over, where you’re really only using a specific set of muscles, everything else does not get allocated the same resources. So fascia is going to start to shrink a little bit and stick to itself.  

Julia Blackwell   We can go back to that plastic wrap analogy. It’s starting to kind of adhere to itself, and now it’s pushing hydration out so there’s less blood flow getting to it, the brain will probably send less innervation there, you know, like our like capacity to fire nerves, and there’s no longer going to be able be the same type of ability to expand and contract that muscle at its full capacity.  

Julia Blackwell   So as it starts to shrink down with everything inside of it, yeah, that muscle will absolutely become weak, but it’s also very tight, so that’s very common. There’s also a concept of being tight long, like it’s tight in a lengthened position. And I’m it’s a little bit different than being weak, although it absolutely can be weak as well. And I see this a lot.  

Julia Blackwell   The hamstrings are a perfect example, where people are like, Oh my gosh, my hamstrings are so tight, and they stretch them and stretch them and crank away on them, but it doesn’t seem to be resolving. And the issue that I find is it’s because there’s actually tension happening on the opposite side. So usually within the quads and hip flexors.  

Julia Blackwell   Most people, we all do mostly quad dominant activities, unless you’re very intentional. And so when all of the fascia and those quad hip flexor areas gets tense. It tends to pull the pelvis forward into a more anterior tilt. It bails the hips forward a bit.  

Julia Blackwell   And your hamstrings, which are attached to the backside of your pelvis right now, they’re being lengthened because of that anterior tilt, and they’re going to lock down in an attempt to prevent your pelvis from just completely toppling over and having your entire spine and body go with it.  

Julia Blackwell   And so there’s not going to be any opportunity for your hamstrings to let go until you’ve actually addressed the problem that’s on the opposite side. This is also true in the upper body. So most people have this terrible you know, back of their neck or upper back pain, and the issue is actually coming from the front.  

Julia Blackwell   There’s tension through the pecs, the scalenes, the front part of the neck, and that’s actually contributing to this lengthening of the back and the pain that they’re feeling in the back.  

Julia Blackwell   So it’s important to know that, yeah, those muscles might feel really tight or really stiff, but they’re just holding on for dear life to prevent some terrible misalignment or spinal compromise position from happening.  

Julia Blackwell   And it’s going to be really difficult for that muscle to get a whole lot stronger if it can’t fully let go and also contract, if that makes sense?  

Steve Washuta   It does. Yeah, and I think it’s a good segue into our next topic here, which is the common hip issues, because you did mention anterior pelvic tilt. How do you deal with that from a fascial perspective or otherwise? A lot of the general population has this, as you say, because there.  

Steve Washuta   Sitting down all day. Things get weak. Things get lengthen. That shouldn’t be lengthen. Things get tight, whatever. And we see that. I mean, at least, I see that more people have anterior pelvic tilt than a certainly, a posterior pelvic tilt, definitely that are just sort of a neutral pelvis.  

Steve Washuta   And it takes a while for people to even kind of understand that, like if I try to teach somebody how to push themselves into anterior and posterior pelvic tilt. The general population can’t do that without a lot of practice.  

Steve Washuta   So how exactly do you go about working with people? Do you see it as a big problem, and do you see it also, I guess, as a secondary issue of something else, or do you see it as sort of the primary issue? Or does that not matter?

Julia Blackwell   Yeah, good question. So a little bit of an anterior and posterior tilt I’m honestly not super concerned about. But the reality is, rarely ever I see, if I can avoid the word never, but rarely ever does a tilt present alone, because everything in our body is connected.  

Julia Blackwell   So a lot of times I see when there’s an excessive anterior tilt, so that big arch is happening in the low back right. There’s usually outwardly rotated feet, like duck feet. There’s a little bit of external rotation in the femur and a forward head. Those usually all present at the same time, same thing with an excessive posterior tilt.  

Julia Blackwell   I usually see a lot of kyphosis that rounding forward of the upper back and shoulders, and some either a bend in the knee or a hyper extension of the knee happening at the same time. So it’s more of a clue to look at the bigger picture and see how the rest of the body is holding itself.  

Julia Blackwell   But I think even more so concerning than a tilt is a rotation happening in the pelvis. I truly see rotations even more often than I’m seeing tilt. So that means, you know, you might be rotated forward and down on one side and then sort of shifted up and back on the other.  

Julia Blackwell   And rotation in the body tends to be more problematic because your spine is no longer on a very stable surface, and so a rotation in the pelvis could cause low back pain, sciatica, SI pain, knee pain, plantar fasciitis. There’s kind of a whole list of things that might happen when the body is functioning at this really strange rotation,  

Steve Washuta   not to mention, you Sorry to interrupt. Not to mention a lot of times you get this, like synthetic for lack of a better term, like leg length discrepancy, because your pelvis is turned right.  

Steve Washuta   And then people start to obviously, now muscles on one side are being used more than the other, because of the legs being off, because of the hips being twisted.  

Julia Blackwell   Yeah. And then you end up with, you know, arthritis on one knee, or you just have an issue on one side of your body. And then, you know, you think, oh, you know, it’s just a problem with this is my bad leg. Or, you know, we have all these justifications.  

Julia Blackwell   It’s like, no, if your hips were in a neutral position, there would be the same wear and tear pattern, pattern happening on both sides, and likely this one sided pain wouldn’t be happening. That’s really the real question was, is like, why is this pain only on my left side and not on my right?  

Julia Blackwell   The answer is, always in the way your alignment looks, and that’s what gives me a huge indication, as far as, like, what’s happening in the fascia. I would say, though you know, if you know you have a big tilt happening in your pelvis, one of the little known facts is the adductors, which are the inner thighs.  

Julia Blackwell   Those are the biggest indicators of your pelvic tilt, especially the mid to high up towards the tendon of the adductor, those influence the pelvic tilt more than anything else, more than the hamstrings and the quads.  

Julia Blackwell   I know we want to beat up on them quite a bit, but that would be my number one spot for you to start working on your own, as high up as you can get, into the adductor it’s really helpful for that.  

Steve Washuta   Well, why don’t we give some sort of tangible ways in which one can do that? What is your recommendation if you’re not working with a practitioner like you? If I’m sitting at home and I have some sort of foam roller. How do I work on my adductors?  

Julia Blackwell   Yeah, you can use a foam roller. But you know what, if you have access to a basketball, that might be even better if you lay on the floor a bit like you’re in a plank position, and then lift one leg and put your high inner thigh up on the top of a basketball.  

Julia Blackwell   Or, again, it could be a foam roller. I just find sometimes I need more leverage, you know, something that’s higher off the ground to get up into the high spot of the adductor. But I’m going to place my weight down on it. So I know it’s a bit hard to visualize, but if you’re laying in a position.  

Steve Washuta   I’ll give another analogy. Sorry, it’s like the dog peeing on the fire hydrant.  

Julia Blackwell   Oh, yeah, there you go. You’ve got it, yeah. As close as you can get to about a 90 degree angle with the hip and the knee, that would be great. And then from there you would straighten and bend your knee a few times slowly, if you can bend your knee back to 90 degrees, and then lift and lower your heel a few times.  

Julia Blackwell   Times. That’s where that lovely cross fibering action comes in. Doing that, you know, four to 10 times come off that spot, walk it out. You can do, you know, two three spots on each side, depending on how tight it feels in there. But yeah, you could do that with a foam roller or a medicine ball.  

Julia Blackwell   You know, you can be creative with what you have. It’s the tool is less important as long as there’s a good amount of compression happening. You know, it can’t be a pillow, right? You can’t just put a pillow under there.  

Steve Washuta   And to go back to something you said before, which I think all sort of merges together perfectly, is the reason why the adductors are also a very important part of this problem is because what you said before, when things aren’t being worked, they sort of atrophy.  

Steve Washuta   And the adductors, because they’re smaller muscles, they’re not going to be used in the same way in the traditional exercises, working in sagittal plane, right? So when you’re doing your heavy squats and your deadlifts and even your lunges, right, the abductors are at best a tertiary, if not a fourth level muscle, right? They’re not firing because the big muscles are taking over.  

Steve Washuta   So unless you’re doing specific exercises to get those muscles to fire, what happens the atrophy, and then the fascia, according to you, which makes perfect sense, says, well, we don’t need to be in this area. So it sort of crinkles up around that area. It takes water from that area, and then the proprioception of that area is off, and everything gets sort of thrown off.  

Steve Washuta   So that’s why we do need to focus on smaller muscles and make sure that we’re firing those muscles, not, you know, because even if you do the fascial work and then you don’t actually use your adductors, you’re going to have to continue to do the facial work.  

Julia Blackwell   Yeah, perfectly said. And all the one addition I’ll say is we all tend to, you know, so many of us sit with our legs crossed, and even in just a normal sitting position, our femurs tend to rotate inward a little bit.  

Julia Blackwell   So all of this shortening of the adductors between a lack of working them when we’re actually doing our workout, and then they’re continuing to be in a shortened position when we do things like sit, it’s just a recipe for all of this tension to accumulate there.  

Steve Washuta   Let’s go into less sciencey stuff and some more of the business stuff here for fun, especially for people who are in our industry working with people, somebody listens to this conversation, or maybe they’ve been going down this route and they said, You know what?  

Steve Washuta   This is, what I want to do. I was a personal trainer. I’ve been working with clients. I see that this fashion release is really helping them. I’m more in tune with this, and I want to go this route.  

Steve Washuta   What advice would you give to them? Is there a course that they should be taking? Is should they maybe fuse it first with their business already? Because it’s hard to just get a bunch of clients who are doing this?  

Julia Blackwell   Yeah, good question. So of course, I’m going to be a little bit biased that, you know, I have a fascia release Specialist certification that I feel has the newest research and the most holistic view of how to really assess pain and posture and get fascia to be in its best possible stage.  

Julia Blackwell   But, you know, I actually started as a personal trainer roughly ages 22 to 26 and I mainly focused on corrective exercise. I’ve always been in the world of rehab. It’s, you know, being born with nerve damage, you get obsessed and on a one way track from a young age, I think, with that, but I was already getting all of these clients that were coming to me with issues, with pain, with limitations in some capacity.  

Julia Blackwell   And so as I started learning about fascia work, it was actually the perfect combination of things, where I’d work out with someone with 45 minutes, and then for the last 15 minutes we would do fascia release work.  

Julia Blackwell   But I found, you know, it became, you know, 30 and 30, and then some people just wanted to come for fascia, because I was getting so much better results with the fascia work than I was with corrective exercise alone. So I think the combination is really powerful, like, ultimately, I fell out of love with training, and I’ve just been completely in love with fascia instead.  

Julia Blackwell   But that would have been a great career path had I kept both of those together honestly, because no one is really, is really doing it well, at least in the general pool.  

Julia Blackwell   So I think it’s a really big deal to have this extra skill set. It’s also enabled me, you know, with the recovery tool work, it’s enabled me to take virtual clients, which is something really I didn’t know that I could do until 2020, with the rest of us, where I’m like, How can I still help people from afar?  

Julia Blackwell   And that’s another way you could possibly expand your business and reach a bigger target audience, because I’m able to still see what people’s alignment looks like, and help talk them through how to do this recovery type of work on their own. So it’s also a possibility that you can expand how many clients you’re able to work with as well.  

Steve Washuta   What do you feel. How is the difference? Because I talk about this a lot in personal training, between doing your virtual work and your non virtual work. Obviously, it’s not the same.  

Steve Washuta   You can’t be 100% the same if you, if you and I are working together in a room and you’re able to, you know, actually palpate and put your hands on me and do things, you’re always gonna have a little bit more information.  

Steve Washuta   So how do you how do you navigate that and like, what is, what is maybe important to to be concerned with when you’re doing virtual training in the facial space?  

Julia Blackwell   Well, I do have people, they’re required to submit photos of their standing posture. To me, it’s very difficult to see it on Zoom. So I need someone to take pictures in a specific way from all angles that really helps me understand what alignment is really going on.  

Julia Blackwell   But you know, ultimately, it’s not the same. I would much rather see someone in person, especially if I’m able to combine the recovery work with the actual body work I do. It’s just more powerful, because I can add more weight. I’ll often be standing with a significant amount of weight, occasionally, my full body weight on an area of fascia.  

Julia Blackwell   And the change that you can make in such a small amount of time is just it’s kind of unbeatable. But I have been able to work with people even all over the world at this point, talking them through the right way to do the recovery techniques, let’s call them, or, you know, the fascial release techniques on their own, and it takes a little bit longer.  

Julia Blackwell   But the results are the same because we’re still using the same principle of compressing with active movement and then also going to the right places within their facial system that’s likely causing the pain. So it’s taking a little bit longer, I think, out of the lack of intense compression, but it’s still working.  

Steve Washuta   This is just something I was thinking about, and I want your take on it. When everybody is zigging, I think sometimes it’s good to zag. So what I mean by that is, yes, you’re going online. That’s great. A lot of everyone’s online now. You can’t not have a foot online.  

Steve Washuta   You’re missing out on a piece of the pie, so to speak. Right? And it’s important for lifestyle. We can’t work however many hours a day, however, when everybody’s going online, when we have aI here to at least in my space, who can probably design a better workout than I can, at least maybe least maybe in the next few years.  

Steve Washuta   I think it’s important to be able to have that hands on personal touch in our industry. And I believe what you do is even more sort of personal than personal training, right? It’s there. There’s a there’s a connection there when you’re helping people.  

Steve Washuta   So I think I’m just speaking sort of the general population. It’s it’s good to keep your practice, also your physical practice, and be able to work with people hands on, because that’s really what you can up charge for. You’re not going to be able to upcharge for the online stuff, because everybody’s ordering that.  

Steve Washuta   But what you can is imagine there was somebody with your skill set who is also personal training. And now you give two hours to them. You go the first 15 minutes, we warm up, and then we do a 45 minute workout, and then we do a special cool down, then we do a facial release, and we do all these things, right?  

Steve Washuta   That is something that’s not offered anywhere. So I would just tell everyone else, when everyone else is running through online, think about all that you can do, like this, right? Having more of a hands on approach, where you can build a connection with a client.  

Julia Blackwell   Absolutely and really. We, you know, in that same sense, or in that same vein. I guess, is everyone wants to feel a difference in whatever they’re doing. They want to feel a difference as soon as they possibly can.  

Julia Blackwell   Right. No one wants to hear when they go into the chiropractor that they’re going to need to come three times a week for six months to solve their back pain. Sorry, my dogs are going absolutely bananas.  

Julia Blackwell   But this type of work, if you really can understand, you know. Simply through feeling someone’s tissue and looking to see how they’re moving or what their alignment does. If you can provide a quick relief moment for them, which I’ve seen more times than not with this work, you also will get the most raving fans like.  

Julia Blackwell   I don’t want this to sound like a brag fully. But I have not had to market for my practice in about six or seven years now. Because I’m able To help people understand their own body. And go to where these pain patterns are contributing to like the real root cause of their pain.  

Julia Blackwell   And it’s such an incredible way to build like they’ll tell everyone about it. They will tell all of their friends. And that’ll really set you apart from the average person that is. You know, only has one thing to offer, or they’re not really understanding why you have knee pain.  

Julia Blackwell   So they’re just avoiding lunges or just avoiding anything. That makes it hurt like you’ll have better longevity of your clients. If you can really help eliminate or eliminate their pain. Or at the very least make it completely manageable, if you. Have an extra skill set like that.  

Steve Washuta   Is your course connected to any CEUs from any of the other training programs.  

Julia Blackwell   Not yet, not yet, but it is actually an application that I’m going to be submitting soon.  

Steve Washuta   We could talk off camera about it. I’ve done it with my courses for a bunch of it. And we can talk off camera about it’s I would love that it’s worthwhile and not that difficult. So okay, well, let’s get into that now.  

Steve Washuta   Where do people find your course? Where do they find more about you? Specifically, if they have maybe a question from the course side. As a somebody in my industry. Or if they’re just general population and they have questions about their pain. Where do they where do they reach out? Yeah,  

Julia Blackwell   I think the easiest place to go is movement by julia.com. That will give you more information about me and my practice. But it also has my certification courses listed, and if there is any you know. For any reason, you need more info.  

Julia Blackwell   Or you want to make sure it’s a good fit, or you know the right fit for you. Depending on your industry or what your other credentials are. I’m happy to hop on a call with you. And make sure that it is something that is going to perfectly work out.  

Steve Washuta   I will put all those links in the podcast description. As well as the link to the last podcast, which is not just audio, but also video. You can watch it. It was fantastic. So I would tell everyone to go back there if you want even a deeper dive.  

Steve Washuta   Deeper dive into the facial release. My guest today has been Julia Blackwell. Julia. Thank you for joining the truly fit podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the truly fit podcast as a reminder.  

Steve Washuta   If you prefer watching the episodes, you can go to Spotify or YouTube. Please subscribe, rate and review on your listening platform, and feel free to email us at any time social@trulyfit.app.

https://www.movementbyjulia.com/

CLICK FOR AUDIO OF PODCAST