Dr. Richard Ulm, DC - DNS and Neurology Behind Movement Quality

What actually makes DNS so powerful—and why does it matter for athletes, clinicians, and strength coaches?
In this deep-dive conversation, Dr. Beau Beard sits down with Dr. Richard Ulm, lead architect of the DNS Strength Training curriculum, to unpack the evolution of DNS, how neurology drives movement, why quality stabilization changes everything, and why strength coaches desperately need a more precise model of human function.

From the origins of DNS Strength Training 1–3, to biomechanics vs. neurology, to the real-world decisions clinicians make when technique and performance collide, this episode is a masterclass in understanding movement at the highest level. If you've ever wondered why DNS “works,” how to apply it in sport, or why athletes break down even when they’re strong, this conversation will change how you think forever.

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Full Transcript

Beau Beard (03:24.438)

You you're going to come into Nashville teach DNSB at the end of January 2026. Correct me if I'm wrong on any of this. You created DNS strength training, correct?

Richard Ulm (03:37.298)

Yeah. So that was, that was, I don't know how far into the rabbit hole you want to go here, but it was. Okay. So the backstory was, um, meathead strength coach went to school and Cairo school and was just really interested in figuring out how the body works on it's kind of stuff. And one of the things I was interested in was how the core works. Um, our good friend, Brett Winchester and also Robert Lardner, they said, you know, Hey, you gotta take this class. Cool.

Beau Beard (03:42.126)

Give us a little backstory.

Richard Ulm (04:06.748)

So then I went down actually to St. Louis and went to CIHP and I watched all on a teaching A course in like maybe like 2009 or 10. And after the first lecture, I was like, man, this is really cool shit. I need to try this in the weight room. And I literally had like a heavy snatch workout that day. And I was trying to figure out how to brace, you know, with a snatch just day one. Just like that was just the first thing that my brain went to. Well then fast forward.

They eventually brought me on and I had sort of like thought from the beginning that this information was very, very useful for strength coaches. And I had been speaking at like NSCA events and things like that and trying to apply to strength training as best I can. And then they brought me on as an instructor. And then in 2000, I think 14 or 15, I did a presentation to them about strength training principles. Like, you know, Hey, what's the difference between a sumo deadlift and a deadlift or competitive bench press and, and, and, know, typical bench press.

And then from that, I built out, you know, DNS strength training 1.0, which was DNS weightlifting. And that course was me trying to sort of apply DNS to strength training in its, in its early forms. And then now as we sit here, I just like sealed and finished DNS strength training three. And so that one's done. So it went from a one three day class drinking from a fire hose, too much information.

jumbled mixed with other DNS slides. was driving me crazy. And so then I've now just completely created three three-day courses and it's much more logically laid out. So I think people can actually, you know, take these three courses and actually successfully apply DNS to strength training.

Beau Beard (05:41.358)

.

Beau Beard (05:54.563)

So, and again, I want to kind of, you know, for people that aren't familiar with DNS all the way to people that are maybe practitioners listening to this and everything in between, we'll get in, we'll go backwards into just bare bones DNS. But if we go for a second here and knowing what I know, are there any other specialty courses within DNS outside of the actual just DNS, A, B, C, D that are three, three day courses?

Richard Ulm (06:20.347)

I mean, the clinical courses, if you do that, have A, B, C, and D. D is sort of the monster course that you've done and that's a five and a half day course and all that kind of stuff. But then they have A is three days, B is three days, and then C is three days, and there's a test after each one. Exercise, you can become an exercise trainer and exercise is going to be three two day courses with a test at the end. And then the pediatric courses, can do the same thing. So.

The only difference here is this is the only training course. So exercise one, two, and three are essentially, I look at them as more for people that are really interested in the DNS developmental positions and the movement flows, where they're, they're going to learn about those exercises. They're for Pilates instructors and yoga people and physical therapy assistants or Cairo assistants or Kairos that want to freshen their brain about the DNS stuff, the clinical classes, of course, like I'm going to do in

in Nashville, those who can do hands-on stuff, and there's a lot of clinical stuff that we were able to dig into really, really deep. And since I do so much manual techniques, I show a ton of manual stuff in the clinical courses. I show zero in the strength training courses. And have now gotten to the point that we put our hands on the athletes. So we're working with athletes in this class, not clients, or sorry, not patients, or clients or athletes. We put them on only, I say only to break the tie. So if you're not sure,

what's going on when you're assessing the patient or the client, then you put your hands on to break the tie. Other than that, there's no scenario where we want to put our hands on them. I guess, other than like maybe cueing a little bit of tactile stuff, but over the 10 years that I've been working on this, I have tried to completely wash the strength training class of anything hands on. And that's because the class is designed for strength coaches and personal trainers, most of whom will not put their hands on them. So the big difference between the strength training class and the other

tracks that we offer in DNS is really more that this one is absolutely for strength coaches and the other ones are kind of very clinician adjacent or directly clinical classes.

Beau Beard (08:31.63)

Okay, so let's put a pin in that and we'll come back. Because you basically just laid a primer for where you're at on your DNS journey, right? You started taking the courses, you became an instructor, now you developed this course. This course is thorough. You're teaching it, people are putting it into practice. So for somebody that's literally just like listening to podcast that has no clue what DNS is, what's the 30 second elevator speech on what DNS is? Or if a patient asks you.

Richard Ulm (08:58.979)

Is this a for, is this a, am I talking to an athlete or a potential patient? That doesn't matter. Actually it doesn't matter. So for the athlete or to answer maybe a slightly separate question, like why would you take the DNS strength training classes or why would you be interested in DNS? The answer is it's going to help you or your clients or your athletes or your patients move the way that we have evolved to move. That's going to maximize performance and minimize risk of injury.

Beau Beard (09:03.874)

Go athlete. Yeah.

Beau Beard (09:13.976)

Mm-hmm.

Beau Beard (09:26.862)

Okay, so now with that brief description, let's go back. So nine days of coursework aimed at just strength training. What is this rewriting or is it rewriting anything? Like if a coach goes and takes this and they're, let's say a certified strength condition coach, they've got some experience behind their name, regardless of what level, what is it doing for them? Is it adding, is it?

reshaping what they already know just a little bit differently? Is it rewriting something that they know? Is it blowing their minds and they're just like, Jesus, I can't believe this is how I've been operating without this knowledge. What do you think is the first big takeaway when somebody goes into DNS strength training one and then we'll kind of go from there?

Richard Ulm (10:15.355)

So it's probably going to be a combination of, I don't want to say blowing their mind, but flipping your paradigm maybe. So you're going to really understand that neurology kind of drives the system. And so it's going to flip. A lot of strength coaches are really looking at the body through the lens of biomechanics and anatomy, which of course we have to cover. But in DNS, obviously it's a neurocentric way to look at the body. So everything that we're doing is through the lens of neurology.

That's sort of like the hallmark of the Prague schools, you know? But really what it's gonna teach them to do, the theme that we have in every single class, we go over assessment, prescription, and training. So assess, prescribe, train is the theme. And in each class, we cover an assessment, or the pile of assessments.

And then we cover the appropriate corrective exercises, which are obviously based in developmental kinesiology, which is sort of the foundation DNS. And then we have to then train those patterns in those athletes. So in strength training one, everything is gonna be bilateral and symmetrical. So we're constricted to the sagittal plane. So all the tests, all the corrective exercises, and all the strength movements are all bilateral symmetrical, okay?

And in strength training two, we break out of the sagittal plane and everything is asymmetrical or unilateral, which exposes the body, the torsional forces and opens up the degrees of freedom. So now the assessments, the correctives and the strength training movements are all going to be unconstrained movements. So now we, we get into single leg stuff and single arm stuff and we, and we really are able to dig into all the rest of the movements that we couldn't cover in strength training. One we can do in two.

And then in three, it's about mastering integration. sort of bring everything together and we just hammer the ability to quickly assess an athlete, find the target dysfunction, prescribe the appropriate corrective exercise, and then program appropriately so that you are training that athlete to be able to move properly, the way Kolaj describes, in whatever environment the sport demands. So if that's golf, that's a different environment than swimming, triathlon, soccer, Olympic weightlifting, basketball.

Richard Ulm (12:29.584)

hockey, they're all different. And then three, we get to dig into the programming part of that and how do you actually do that? So the, at the end of strength training, one, two, and three, you will have a deeper understanding of human movement, the anatomy and the mechanics from the neurology of human movement. And you will be able to confidently assess, prescribe, and train your athletes to move the way in which we describe in DNS.

Beau Beard (12:36.002)

Mm-hmm.

Richard Ulm (12:55.842)

again, in whatever environment their sport demands, whether that's in Olympic games or that's just live in a healthy lifestyle.

Beau Beard (13:02.156)

So I'm just curious from my own edification here. So hands off from the class perspective aimed at coaches, what's the triage look like or how does it work if you get a coach that picks up something that isn't going to be able to and maybe everything can be, won't be able to be changed through corrective exercises they're gonna program? What is the assessment to knock them into the medical realm or a hands-on practitioner or something different?

Richard Ulm (13:31.29)

So we talk about green light, yellow light, orange light, red light for everything. So your green lights are no pain, no movement, aberration, just everything's good, cool. Your yellow lights are going to be either, not either, they're going to be mild movement dysfunction, something that you would cue from across the room, but maybe not something you're gonna run across the gym and say, dude, cut that shit out. And it has a longer time for correction.

So somebody comes in, they can't brace exactly well, or they're squatting down and their pelvis tilts forward a little bit and their back turns on, whatever, yellow light, move on. That's something that they're just gonna be working on in their warmups, their cool downs, their queuing, maybe some accessory exercises. Perhaps you give them some homework, but they're just gonna work on that over time. Your orange lights, now you're gonna have moderate movement dysfunction. These are the ones that you might walk across the gym and be like, cut that shit out.

Beau Beard (14:22.594)

Hmm.

Richard Ulm (14:30.458)

they don't have pain or they might have mild tightness or maybe a little bit of discomfort, but no actual pain. And then in that scenario, you're going to walk across the gym and shut that shit down. So they're squatting and their knees are collapsing inward. Do they have any pain? Not at the moment, but if they keep doing that shit, they're going to get pain. That's your orange lights. Your red lights are going to be and so the orange lights are going to have a shorter, like a more immediate, but not sorry, sorry, urgent, but not immediate. So they'll have a

urgent time correction. All right, man. The orange lights are when we get into we have a whole tier of how do you actually if someone's an orange light, how do you make them a yellow light? If they're a yellow light, how do you make them a green light? Or if they're a red light, which is pain or major movement dysfunction, and it warrants immediate movement correction or modification, we go into that. And that's where we sort of walk through this progression that might be just from queuing them to reducing the load.

to, and we have a whole thing that we break out called the load stance matrix, which is essentially manipulating the degrees of freedom so that the athlete or the coach is able to appropriately progress or regress an exercise. And we talk about when you would stay in the movement pattern or when you would scrap the movement pattern altogether. And then of course, when you would just shut them down and send them somewhere else. we have in strength training too, we're able to get into that in detail because in one,

Beau Beard (15:32.846)

.

Richard Ulm (15:55.94)

their universe gets flipped upside down because they're learning about neurology and intravenous pressure and stabilization and all this, all this stuff that for most strength coaches, when they come in the door, they're like, what is going on here? And then in strength training too, they've seen it, they've worked shopped it a little bit. And then we can really sort of get into the weeds and hammer that out. And then we of course are doing that in strength training three, but teaching them the red light, yellow light, orange light, green, sorry, red lights.

orange light, yellow light, green light is a very quick way for them to be able to know what do they need to do with these. You want to make the

and you wanna make the orange light, did I lose the camera? I lost the camera, think. Do we still have one? Fantastic, let me just turn this down.

Beau Beard (16:37.088)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, here. Yeah, just tilt it.

Beau Beard (16:51.214)

looks roganesque now.

Richard Ulm (16:55.065)

know what happened, but that was a well done, well done, Riverside for switching around. anyway, so basically going in and from day one, talking about the different lights is a quick way for them to say, okay, cool. You know, here's, here's where you need to go with them. And, we want to keep them in the weight room. We want to modify before we sort of like shut them down as best we can. and so that's, that's kind of the.

Beau Beard (16:56.323)

Nuh.

Yeah, catching it.

Richard Ulm (17:24.569)

The trick there.

Beau Beard (17:25.998)

So I'm trying to play, not devil's act of it, just somebody listening, maybe that's a strength coach that kind of has a little knowledge. To some people, this might sound like you're just saying, we're kind of paying attention to movement quality, not just programming, right? We're not looking at output or RPE or periodization. Now we're looking at, cause you mentioned stabilization and bracing and urge of abdominal pressure. So.

Richard Ulm (17:31.704)

Do it.

Beau Beard (17:53.304)

for somebody that maybe is thinking, is he just, know, Greg Cook talks about this. Yeah, we know quality should be, you know, precede, you know, volume or quantity. What's the nuance there? Like, I know that could be a very deep question of all the details, but is there any big differentiator? Like, no, no, no, it's not just movement quality, because you mentioned neurology, but I think that's a big, you know, like you said, you're kind of flipping a paradigm.

Richard Ulm (18:13.141)

It's a broad sweeping term there.

Beau Beard (18:16.78)

Yeah, so when maybe if somebody has anybody ask that question of like, well, yeah, I get the, or maybe they broaden it, right? They say, yeah, I get it. Or we want to make sure their knees don't collapse in. We're gonna make sure they're not, you know, their backs not cranked on. If it goes deeper than that, how do you jump that hurdle? No, it's not just quality. We're looking at this neurodevelopmental model, which I understand, but if you didn't, what's that next, you know, what's that conversation piece there?

Richard Ulm (18:42.605)

So there's essentially gross movement dysfunction and there's more sort of subtle movement dysfunction. again, Greg Cook's great and those guys are, just sort of broadly answer the question, what's the difference between the specificity where we go to in DNS versus what they're doing. So let's just broadly speaking, you've got like, your knees collapsed in, hey, your back's rounded over, that's obviously bad.

In DNS though, we care about a concept that you're well familiar with called functional centration. And so that's going to be balanced co-activation of the muscles around each and all of the joints. And so we want to make sure that in whatever exercise we're doing, we are queuing and loading that athlete appropriately so that they're able to improve their ability to maintain centration in whatever movement they're doing.

So the standard for what is a high quality movement is quite different. We're not just looking from across the room and saying like, okay, it looks like they're back straight, so I guess they're centrated. No, it's are they actually pressurizing? Are they getting decent elongation? Are they loading their feet correctly? Looking at the scaps, there's a lot of a little bit more specific detail that we would go into in the strength training, actually, screw it, all of the clinical classes.

but the strength training class as well to make sure that the athlete is moving with what we would call functional centration. So functional centration on its broadest level is just the most efficient way, the correct way to move. Okay, there's the broadest one. This is how we're supposed to move. Another way to think about it. This is the way in which we have evolved to move over millennia. So this is what's made it through all of evolution.

If you go into the joint a little bit, or sorry, if we stay macroscopic, functional centration is going to use the entire kinetic chain to try to maintain each of the joints along that chain within a middle-ish range of motion, or trying to keep them away from end range motion. So if you get to end range of motion in a joint, that's where the load on the passive tissue skyrockets, and that's where you start losing motor control, and that's where lot of injuries happen.

Richard Ulm (21:05.537)

a functionally centrated or an athlete that's moving well is going to keep the, you know, each of the individual joints along the kinetic chain out of end range loading as often as possible. But in sports, we're constantly challenging that throwing a curve ball is a great example. You have to put your shoulder in near end range extension, external rotation to do that. But we want to do that as little as possible. Then if you double Yeah.

Beau Beard (21:31.0)

Can we zoom on that just for a second? I know what somebody might think out there. Well, how are you capacitizing tissues that you're not loading in end range if they're going to get to end range in a sporter activity?

Richard Ulm (21:43.491)

So, great question. So you have what we do in DNS, and this is, I think, the people that train capacity of tissues better than anybody is gonna be FRC. So functional range conditioning. So they're going to basically put the joint in end range position and then try to improve the tissue's capacity in that position to handle tension or compression or whatever it is. Great, it's amazing.

In DNS, we're going to start more in a middle range position, train the co-activation, which they would consider a skill, right? They wouldn't consider a tissue thing. That's not so much a preparation for movements. That's more of a skill. And they're training the capacity. Okay, cool. So we are trying to train the ability to maintain co-activation. And then we're going to, from the middle-ish range,

we're going to move towards the extreme so that you're able to maintain that co-activation. Now the critical piece here is when you have functional centration at its most fundamental level is an efficient way to move. that's efficiency is the ratio between input, muscular output, and the actual force output of the body. When you move efficiently, you have less internal stress

on the actual tissues of the body. So FRC does a brilliant job of improving the tissues capacity to handle stress. DNS minimizes the amount of stress exposed to the bodies in all positions, as long as you can maintain functional centration. So we're not doing anything specifically to handle the tissues capacity to manage the tension or stress or whatever.

Beau Beard (23:32.238)

specifically handle issues.

Richard Ulm (23:40.448)

We are reducing the internal stress necessary for performance. So they're working on the same equation, but from, two different sides.

Beau Beard (23:51.138)

Can you just discuss a little bit also how, you know, operating in that, that, that function or functional centration, how that's going to improve neurologic input for improved output when you have decreased stresses, what we're saying is basically, stresses that are going beyond physiologic norms, right? Stress is not just like mechanical input because

specific mechanical input that is coming from a centric joint is going to improve motor output due to the input. So how do you, if we go back to the strength training, is there a way that you're kind of explaining to a strength coach or an athlete that like, this isn't just about quality of movement. This is also about like this improves strength or this improves motor efficiency and what's that look like?

Richard Ulm (24:39.476)

So I would say that there's two issues there. One is actual force production and one is neurology. But to answer the other question first, we talk about functional centration as efficiency of movement. So you're going to maximize performance for two reasons. Directly by improving the efficiency of their movement. Okay, so less input required for the same output or the same input produces a better output.

Cool, and that could be bench press, running in a straight line, whatever. But from the neurological standpoint, achieving functional centration or training an athlete to be able to successfully functionally centrate their joints is really all about improving afferentation and motor control. And the only path to centration is through afferentation. So afferentation is gonna be sensory information going to the brain. So in...

in the corrective process, we're essentially, if you're in the clinic, you're going to start with tactile force, you know, with the, in the muscles and the joints and mobilizations and the manipulations. And then you're going to work them into DNS corrective or any corrective exercise for that matter. Any movement is going to be providing afferent information to the brain. And then you're basically exposing the brain.

to the proper stabilizing strategy or the proper position or muscle synergy or whatever you wanna call it. And then through repetition, you're able to reinforce that pattern and then you have to expose them to that, you have to stress that new neurological pattern that you've sort of like evoked or brought back from their childhood.

so that they're able to use that pattern in their sport. So we go through three phases. You have skill acquisition, I'll just stick to the core. Can you contract your diaphragm to produce an outward foot pushing force in your belly that results in intramuscular pressure? Yes or no. If the answer is no, then you can't apply that to the movement. Once you acquire the necessary skills, then you have to go through skill application.

Richard Ulm (26:52.568)

and that's going to be really motor learning. So now we're taking a bracing strategy and we're putting you in scenarios that are from a motor learning standpoint, not from a load standpoint or a speed or a duration standpoint, but we're going to get you closer and closer and closer to the movement. So this would be like, you you're a runner. So if I'm working on someone's foot and I can stand there and I do a lot of like manual stuff, so I'm digging into their feet and I'm working on that stuff and I'm trying to activate.

you know, different muscles there. But ultimately I need their foot to be able to do its job when they're standing up on it. So then, okay, well then we'll use an overhanging position that you're familiar with where like half the, you know, the knee's on the table, they're supporting on the table, but they still got a little bit of foot there. That's not quite as intense, but the movement's a little bit closer. And then you work them towards, I'm always working them towards mid stance in the clinic. And then once they're in mid stance, we can kind of like shimmy forward and backwards.

And then we ultimately want them to actually do with running. When we're talking about the core, they work on some of the fundamental ability to stabilize and brace. Then we would say, let's say we're applying it to Olympic weightlifting. Okay, well, let's just start in a static hinge position. Can you brace and actually do the thing there? Okay, cool. Then we can go through small ranges of motion. The middle part, the skill application is pure motor learning. Then after that,

we just start increasing the load of those movements. And that's the skill strengthening phase where then we're improving the resilience of the pattern that we're trying to train so that the athlete is able to express that pattern in whatever environment their sport demands.

Beau Beard (28:30.686)

So I a question here kind of exploring concepts within DNS versus like technique within strength training or weightlifting. So, you know, we could talk about generalizations that have occurred in the last five years within strength conditioning and the rehab profession of move away from technical specificity and, you know, bad movement, good movement to just load management. Hey, because you went, you know, acquisition application, yeah, management.

Richard Ulm (28:49.207)

I know what you're gonna say.

Richard Ulm (28:56.641)

Garb- that's garbage. Garbage. Garbage.

Beau Beard (29:00.28)

So just touch on why.

Richard Ulm (29:03.159)

So when you have this, the movement doesn't matter, just the fact that they're moving or load management is more important. So I'll just use an athlete that we, that this, just became a certified DNS strength coach, Francesca Duncan. She just snatched 102 kilos, I think, which is a lot for a girl that weighs 71 kilos. So 1.4 times body weight for a female is pretty incredible. And I think she cleaned and jerked 117 kilos.

So for her, if we're trying to get her to stabilize well, which she does stabilize well, thanks to Drew and Chelsea Dillon at Project Lyft, you can't just reduce the load down. That's hilarious. Like she had national, well, American Open Tech, but like the idea that you'd be like, you just keep lowering them down until you find a load where they can stabilize correctly. That's comical.

It'd be like telling you, like, you can't run any faster than 17 minute miles. And you've got a race coming up that you're doing a five K if you're doing a century or something like that, that's probably not bad, but.

Beau Beard (30:11.17)

But if you but if you looked at training, I think longevity stuff.

Richard Ulm (30:15.861)

I love this, because I can hear in your voice, you're genuinely pushing back now, I love it, go for it.

Beau Beard (30:21.326)

Well, no, no, no, no. And I'm on your side. What I'm saying is longevity applications are bleeding into actual training, especially on the endurance side. And I think you would hear a lot of coaches say what you just said that seems comical of, we're just going to, where's that kind of break point where you can run before mechanics break down or you drop into ventilatory threshold two. And you're like, that's 15 minutes and you're a month away from a marathon. And you're like,

Richard Ulm (30:46.295)

Yeah, I got I'm doing I'm I'm doing a century in the mountains, right? I'm doing Leadville. Yes.

Beau Beard (30:50.19)

Yeah. It's just, but you see that and I'm just like, well, I can see why people think that's a thing, but I think it gets conflated from other information out there. But if you go back to strength training and within the weightlifting world and, know, CrossFit and just training for sport, then the idea of load management with an athlete, just the idea to me seems illogical. It just seems comical. You're like, well, you can't do that. Like their sport is load.

Richard Ulm (31:16.193)

Well, so it's one of the variables that you can go through. well, I'm going to bring this up and then we'll talk about in a second. There are different types of athletes. you've got, I'll just pin that and we'll talk about in a second. So what you're going to do with different types of athletes is completely different between those subsets. Okay? So if you have a professional athlete or a person where performance

Beau Beard (31:25.614)

Mm-hmm.

Richard Ulm (31:45.469)

is the priority that's entirely different than the rest of the universe. So for those people, you have to push the line a little bit. we're all, well, not everybody, athletes are trying to find their maximum physical expression in a given thing, right? So for me, it was throwing a metal ball as far as I could. And the only way to find your physical limitations is to cross that line. You can't...

You never know. So to me, it's like trying to find a cliff on a dark night, a dark, foggy night. You just hope that you don't, you know, abstain a really bad injury while you're doing it. But if you baby step too much, you're never going to get there. But if you push too hard, you're to get injured really, really badly. So the idea of the load management will just reduce it and don't ever have them. Well, they, those are athletes. have to kind of figure this out. The other one is that's a little bit of a cop out because

What if I could just let's go back to the knees collapsing in person? OK, so they've got 225 pounds on the bar and this is going to be a high school junior kid that's placed on the football team, right? He's a running back, so he's he's got 200. Let's say 275 pounds and he's trying to do sets of three, so nothing crazy and his knees are collapsing in. OK, so what if I just cued him to keep his knees out?

And I could then have him execute that same squat with the same dose, 275 for three reps. And now he moves fine. Why would I reduce the load all the way down until his knees don't do that? Which by the way, might be 95 pounds. He might do it with a body weight squat. So with just load management, we're just going to reduce him all the way down to this hilariously low dose. That's completely ineffective.

So I would just say, yeah, with some people, you're going to have to reduce the load, but let's try to cue them to a better position first. And if they can't, so that's making your yellow lights green lights. If I can't cue them to a better position, then sure, reduce the load. Of course, reduce the load. Somewhat with the athletes, it gets a little more dicey, but let's not, let's have a good faith argument here. So yeah.

Richard Ulm (34:09.035)

Me managing the load is one of the things that needs to happen, but I'm for sure going to cue them into a better position first. I wouldn't just reduce the load.

Beau Beard (34:20.502)

And I let us here on purpose because I think one of the, well, I don't think, one of the knocks on DNS is this hyper specificity. You know, a lot of people beat up, neutral spine, all those things. Why, so conceptually, within the greater profession that we all live or exist in, why do think that even became a thing? That this became such a vehement, I'd say, debate or argument.

your knees can collapse, you're fine. Look at this, you know, Olympic weightlifter doing this. Your back can be round. Look at this person, round back deadlifting. When you run, you can have your shoulders elevated and rotate across your body. Why did that become such a popular thing? You know, I would say the peak about two to three years ago where people were like, doesn't matter. People are over killing this thing. If you go to somebody and they're telling you, it's got to be like this, they're, know, they're not doing you a benefit. Why did that come about? Like what led the profession that way?

Richard Ulm (35:13.462)

I mean, truthfully, I think some people, you know, with the rise of social media, and we don't need to go off this rabbit hole here, I think it's just contrarians. They love seeing, like, you know, I have three disc injuries and three, one centimeter disc herniation on my back and I have minimal back pain. I still wouldn't tell someone to lift the way that I lifted before. what? So both of those things can be true at the same time. It can be true that,

dysfunction does not equal pain, but that doesn't mean that then allow the dysfunction to continue. Like I'm going to hedge my bets if your knees are collapsing in the bottom of a squat, or you're rounding your back over into this 30 degree butt wink, and you're squatting three days a week, I'm going to hedge my bets that you're going to fuck your backup and you're going to have problems. But that doesn't mean that having a rounded over backs going to produce injury. So I

they can both be correct. But what I think is a lot of times to get clicks and likes and views, you have to say something like, if you think disc herniation is cause pain, then you're an idiot. If you think butt wings bad, then you're you're stupid. It's like, okay, so I don't. That's all like, like, both parties are correct. That the people trying to set have someone move with more

Beau Beard (36:27.267)

Mm-hmm.

Richard Ulm (36:31.895)

Um, congruence joints, centrated joints, as we would say with, or better movement patterns. Um, great. Those people are correct. And the people that say, just cause you have dysfunction doesn't mean that you have pain. Those people are also correct. But where I disagree with that group is when they say, therefore any movement correction is false. That's right. I just like, this doesn't make any sense. Or again, Mike Boyle's is like.

Beau Beard (36:51.836)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Richard Ulm (37:00.66)

He's the father of pragmatism. He's just like, talk, do that for 15 years and then come talk to me. Like, cool. Do Jeff, do heavy Jefferson curls at body weight, you know, twice a week for 10 years and come back to me. You won't because you won't do that for that long. Like you're going to break. So it's a matter of just sort of like not getting stuck up in the, argument and just thinking pragmatically. And yeah, like I have big disc herniations and back.

Beau Beard (37:06.456)

Hmm.

Richard Ulm (37:28.672)

pain or even back tightness is rare for me, but I still wouldn't go back to cranking my back on that extension compression, stabilizing strategy and squatting as heavy as I can. And I mean, I'm going to injure my back at some point. yeah, long story short, they both can be correct, but I'm still going to hedge my bets in the, it's better to encourage them to move in a way that most biomechanists and anatomists and kinesiologists and PTs and Kairos sort of know.

It's better to keep your knees relatively over your feet most of the time. Yes, they can go past your toes. Yes, the bottom of a very deep squat and Olympic weightlifting, they can collapse into valgus a little bit, but we don't want to just cue them to do that all the time or allow it to go unchecked.

Beau Beard (38:14.296)

So take that a little further. So we're talking about movement, which gets into technique. But if you looked at the concepts of DNS and then specifically DNS strength trading, are there any big colliding conceptual like friction in there where you're like, hey, some of the way that we have people do certain movements, you know, that's a snatch or a deadlift, not just like knees collapsing in rounding back where you're like the way it's coached brushes up against it. Yeah.

Richard Ulm (38:36.951)

yeah. That's so the, Nope. I got how much time do you have? So in the strength training classes, you know, it's all about trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. mean, it is just, it's in sports, we are pushing the limits of human function to their absolute edges. Okay. So are, have we evolved actually running long distances is a bad example. Have we, yeah. Have we evolved.

Beau Beard (39:03.202)

Maybe.

Richard Ulm (39:06.26)

to snatch double bodyweight. No, have we evolved to throw a baseball 105 miles an hour, multiple times a week? No. Can we? We can, but we haven't evolved to do that, right? And so in strength training or in sports, you have to kind of factor three different things. We're always focusing, well, sorry, we got to go back to the types of athletes here in a little bit, but you have biomechanics.

you have orthopedic safety and you have the pattern, the pattern meaning like what we talk about DNS. And in most cases, those are all going to sort of overlap. So if we're talking about a squat, if I'm squatting heavy weight, it's better to maintain a middle range position. It's better to maintain the DNS pattern, right? That's going to provide biomechanical efficiency for the most part. But I'm going to give you an example of where it doesn't. And it's also going to then give you

maximal orthopedic safety. Pressure in the belly decompress the spine a little bit, protects the disc, yada yada yada. But if you have long legs and a short torso, then sliding the bar down your back into a low bar back position, back squat position, arching your back actually shortens the lever arm, which then reduces the moment arm, which then reduces the torque demand. So now you have a scenario where like, well, coach,

If I slide the bar back here, I crank my back on, I've shortened the lever, I've reduced the torque demand in that position, why wouldn't I do that? And now you have to make a decision between do I want them to with it's technically a more biomechanically efficient position that will demolish their spine over time, or do I want them to lift for the strategy that we describe in DNS?

And so then there are, you know, arching your back, low bar back squat as an example, an easy one that actually, so in that case, in the squat case, I say, we want to stabilize the way that we describe in DNS. And I think that long-term you're going to benefit from maintaining the positions that we describe in DNS. So you're going to favor the pattern. That's going to give you better orthopedic safety. And you're doing that at the expense of biomechanical efficiency.

Richard Ulm (41:29.877)

Okay. So I would say in that case, DNS wins, go with the pattern orthopedic safety. In the case of the bench press, that's an example where competitive bench press, you've got your back arch, your shoulder blades cranked back, the hands way out. You're in this really, really decentrated position. However, if you think about the bench press and let's just ignore performance, cause you're basically reducing the range of motion by 50%. So in that case, from a performance standpoint, like we're out, like

Beau Beard (41:59.66)

Mm-hmm.

Richard Ulm (41:59.975)

Of course that's going to be better. But let's talk about it. Let's make it a little bit more complex here. Let's talk about it from an injury standpoint. If I'm in that position, or sorry, if I'm in the correct position in terms of centrated for the shoulder, the shoulder blade should be depressed and slightly abducted. Now this is a little bit hard to envision. So let's have this be the medial border of my scapula. And this is actually the glenoid itself. So if I'm in a

Beau Beard (42:27.107)

Mm.

Richard Ulm (42:28.98)

If I'm in a retracted position, let's just assume that my shoulder blade is almost touching the other one. The shape or the direction that my glenoid is facing is such that, so this is my humeral head. When my elbow drops down at the bottom of the bench, I'm still maintaining more of a middle range position, or at the very least you would say I'm staying out of end range position, a position in which the load on the passive tissue skyrockets. Now,

Beau Beard (42:49.538)

Mm-hmm.

Richard Ulm (42:58.119)

If you watch, so I'm here, right? So here's the bottom of the bench. This is a retracted shoulder blade like you would have in the bench press. So decentrated. Okay. And I'm in this position. Watch this angle right here. So as I protract my shoulder into position, I've now increased the horizontal abduction and thereby brought my glenohumeral joint, the weakest joint in the system into an end range position.

So now I've got a scenario where it's like, well, shit, DNS tells me I need to keep my shoulder blades depressed and a little bit abducted. But in that position, you expose yourself to a very dangerous biomechanical position. So now in the case of the bench press, we would teach keep the shoulder blades back. Fuck it, because we want to maintain better biomechanical positioning and better orthopedic safety. And we are doing that at the expense of the

pattern. Now I have no problem saying this out loud on a podcast because that is the game we're playing in sports. No one evolved to bench press, you know, of lay on a bench and grab a barbell and press this maximum amount of weight. So rules have to be bent and broken. So that's an example. Scapular positioning, where I would actually side with biomechanics and orthopedic safety over the pattern.

Beau Beard (44:16.814)

Mm-hmm.

Beau Beard (44:26.776)

Mm-hmm.

Richard Ulm (44:27.316)

And we do this all day long in the DNS strength training classes where you, you know, for the most part, they, tend to overlap a lot and it's not really an issue, but the bench press is a great example of it where you have to just kind of say, okay, you know, what's the debate here? I was just talking with an amazing, strength coach from a Providence barbell club and I was teaching a class at his place last year and he was arguing for, well,

I want the knees to go past the toes, which of course your knees should be able to go past the toes. But as you know, the more often and the more load under which they go past the toes, the more likely they're going to get patellofemoral stuff. And so in DNS we teach you want to keep the knees over the foot as often as possible and let the load dictate the knee position. So if I've only got 60 kilos on the, excuse me, 135 pounds in the bar,

Then I want my knees over my toes and I'm just going to catch and then come back up. And then as the load gets, so this is my shin. This is my spine. As my load gets heavier and heavier and heavier and heavier and heavier, eventually I'm in a position where my spine's mostly vertical and my knees are way forward because in that position I'm protecting my spine at the expense of my knees. He was arguing, well, I want the needs to go forward because I want them practicing the movement that they're going to receive the bar in their sport.

Beau Beard (45:32.341)

Mm-hmm.

Beau Beard (45:40.183)

Mm-hmm.

Richard Ulm (45:51.815)

Is he wrong? He's not. Do I agree with him? No, but no one's right here. And so he and I were having this great conversation and it was just like, well, as long as you have reasoning behind what you're doing, cool. But in that case, he's going to favor a worst position over the performance. Whereas I would side with the pattern a little bit, but we talk, we, we, we parse through these every single class all day long because

Beau Beard (45:56.813)

Right.

Richard Ulm (46:19.113)

When you're talking about maximizing the human body for sports performance, it's not designed to do a lot of the shit we ask it to do in sports. So you really, you can't say here's how we were supposed to move. And this is in every position in every sport, golf, running, hammer throw, Olympic weightlifting, pitching, serving. You have to do it this way. That doesn't work like that. Sports is about performance, not about longevity.

What we try to do in the strength training courses is minimize the risk for injury without compromising the performance. That's the goal. So if we have somebody come and say, all right, cool. You have to do these things. If you did it this way, you can still get to the finish line, but you're not going to beat your body up along the way. But there are times when it's just like, okay, dude, you're throwing a curve ball. You need that elbow back. So to tell them to go from, you know,

to stay away from this position and stay here because I don't want you in end range position. Okay, cool. I just took 10 miles off your velocity and I just reduced the amount of movement you had by 90%. So have a great time in quadruple A or whatever you're going to be in because you're never getting into the major leagues. So there are many, many cases where you're just not supposed to do those things, right? And we have to talk about that in DNS.

trying to think of one for like ultra-marathoning or marathoning that would sort of be apropos to what we're talking about here.

Beau Beard (47:51.502)

Well, if you're Mark Sisson, we shouldn't be running at all. We were just born to walk. But, um, no, I think, I think in running what you, know, the evolutionary slide is kind of moving backwards, right? So you might say, yeah, we weren't, you know, we, yeah, we have Chuck Spears for a long time and maybe not as long as it takes to kind of make morphology change per se. Um, but now we're throwing baseballs, but it's the same token. It's like, yeah, we ran for a long time, but now you are having people run in environments that aren't the same.

So you're run into injuries where you still don't want to, if I can apply the same structure that you just went through, we don't want to expose you to joint limitations over and over when you're running in shoes that allow you to create force that you couldn't create barefoot on surfaces that you can't do that time and time again without the shoe to do it. Yeah, like the force production coming from the shoe and not from the knee, musculoskeletal below the knee. I think you could say, yeah, we got there and now we're like, ee.

people aren't what they used to be, how can we help them out? And then it kind of spins back on its head. It's like, well, what do you do when you're training outside of running or in running to decrease the likelihood of injury and the face performance? I, in running in particular, we just see people say what? Turn off, they don't want to be injured, but they turn off everything that could help them in lieu of getting the miles, you know, hitting the pace. And that happens in the weight room and everywhere else too.

What I wanted to, I wanted to like dive into this a little bit. when, if we talk about the clinical side for a second, so we look at the clinical side of DNS. So we've kind of really taken a deep dive through strength, conditioning and you know, application of DNS. We go into the clinical model.

We sometimes see that, you know, this gets called baby exercises or baby movements and what are we doing to change these things? So if we go back to one of those athletes in a strength training course that a coach has picked up a possible red light, a movement discrepancy that they're not able to change through programming or cueing. Why do you think for those that are unaware, why is DNS so powerful at the ability to change?

Beau Beard (50:04.75)

joint restriction, tissue pliability, trigger points, motor input output.

Beau Beard (50:13.954)

And I know you use a lot of other tools, so I'm not just saying that's all you're doing to make these changes.

Richard Ulm (50:14.29)

Well, yeah, no, that's a great, it's a very, it's a great question. So before I answer the question, I would say that one of the major differences between the DNS strength training classes and the clinical classes is the

the threshold where you're trying to get the athlete, so the standard, the standard is much higher in the clinic than it is in the weight room. And that was, it took me literally a decade to figure this out. I always knew it was a thing, but I wasn't able to kind of really figure it out. So if you've got an athlete that has a back injury and you're treating them, okay, well you want them to move with as close to perfect stabilizing strategy as absolutely possible. But if you've got an athlete that has no pain,

no injury to speak of, and you're watching them sort of squat or move. You can't just like pull the rip cord and shut it down every time that their rectus abdominis turns on a little bit too much. Like you can't train. So the big difference is in the strength training classes, we're trying to always move them towards better in the clinical scenario. We have to get them to move really, really well right now. And then later work on applying it to the sport.

So the things that I'm doing or the reason that DNS I think is better at it than other people ties into the question that you were asking before about does it matter like the movement stuff? And the answer is we have a more detailed, a higher standard for what is good movement than I think most people. So the best example, like I spend a lot of my day with people

laying on their back with their legs up and what strength coaches call triple flexion when DNS, what we call supported three month position, hips are flexed degrees, their knees are flexed 90 degrees. So their shins are parallel to the ground. And I am going through a tremendous amount of nuance with getting them to stabilize exactly the way that they want to. In most cases, you know,

Richard Ulm (52:24.02)

In a lot of rehab classes, they'll just take a theraband and just like, all right, stretch it, just put it overhead. Okay, cool. Now your core is activated. All right. Well, how did they activate their core? So the, like the, the strategy that they use matters. And in DNS, we actually go in particularly with foot loading scapula and the trunk and the neck. We get into specifics like, no, no, no, no, this is how you're supposed to do it.

And we're always trying to model it towards the way that we've evolved to do it. Right. So it works so well, because we're so dang picky about it. And we instead of just saying like, all right, cool, you know, tighten up your core. All right, great. Core is activated. Cool. Check. Move on to the next thing. No, no, no, no, no, no. How did you stabilize your core? You know, and you know this, you know, you're a certified DNS guy. So it's not just like, can you stabilize your core? Yes or no.

Can you consciously brace? Okay, great. Did you use too much abs? Did you crank your back on? What'd do? All right, let's assume that they're trying to pressurize and stabilize correctly. Did you get expansion into the posterior part of your back? Okay, you did. Cool, great. That means your erectors are letting go. But did you do it with too much concentric activation of the abdominal wall? Ooh, in that case, that's not great. So there's a ton of nuance in there and that...

Beau Beard (53:46.378)

you

Richard Ulm (53:50.388)

because the standards are so high, I think that there's just so much that you can get out of really dialing in how somebody stabilizes the spine, the hip, the foot, the shoulder, the neck. And the standards for the quality of the movement are such that it's gonna get them better results faster. So it's specificity basically.

Beau Beard (54:12.364)

I'm curious, because yeah, and again, echo everything you say in the treatment room every day. A very common question, especially from people that have a high training age or come from a sports background is if that is how I'm supposed to move, right? That's the ideal or that's evolutionary accepted pattern. Why do I move this way?

Richard Ulm (54:38.462)

like the evolutionary accepted pattern. like that. Go ahead.

Beau Beard (54:41.88)

Cause a lot of people will say, you know, I thought I, or they do move pretty well, right? They might express full movement patterns. We even tell them that. And then when we get them into some of these positions, right? Like three months, two pine or something, and they just fall to pieces or they can't do the things we're asking. And it's hard for them to conceptualize. What is, know, what are some of the ways that you explain that to people? Like the reason you are having trouble with this or the reason you move this way is X, Y, Z.

Richard Ulm (55:07.987)

I mean, that's a very broad answer. So, you know, one of them, know, static positioning, injury, vanity, you know, repetitive training. I just talk about, we just sort of like lose it along the way. Life's hard, and so we end up losing it. And we're just trying to restore maximum efficiency of their movement. And I, again, I know that I explain efficiency to patients every single day, all day long, because I need them to understand the why behind the what.

why we're doing this is to improve their movement efficiency, to minimize their, their tissue tension and the risk of injury. So to them, they lost it for a myriad of reasons. It could be that they sat in a classroom for eight hours a day for 12 years. It could be that their coaches were telling them to, you know, suck in their belly and arch their back. It could be that they have a little bit of a belly and they want to just try to suck their stomach in. So I don't.

I don't necessarily care why it happened, nor could anyone really know for sure. And the reason I don't care, and this is going to get a little more on the clinical side of it, is I want them to feel the difference on that day. So it's not like a, trust me, bro. Like I know my shit. Like see that plaque on the wall? That means I know what I'm talking about. I want them to stand up and give me the like, the fuck did you just do to me face? Like,

They're like, I can touch my toes and I have no pain anymore. Or, you know, now I've doubled my rotation range of motion or like, I can't even make my shoulder pop anymore. You do that. And they're like, okay, I get it. Okay, cool. They'd actually, they don't even give a shit about the reasons to be honest with you. So I of course love, you know, just being the, the product of two great teachers. I love teaching things to people, but at the end of the day, what actually lands with the patient is do they feel different when they stand up off the table? Yes or no.

If they don't feel different, you can give them the greatest explanation possible and it's still just not going to work.

Beau Beard (57:14.83)

So, you know, the previous question I asked is, you know, why is DNS so wildly effective at changing things in the human body that are, if we want to call them dysfunctional or a bear or, you pain, but you kind of said, well, movement efficiency, the more efficient they move, but like, you got to go deeper there. Why does that actually change tissue tension or joint range of motion or a movement? Like what is going on? Cause I can hear a clinician out there saying, we just said movement efficiency matters. Well, yeah, cool.

Somebody can understand, hey, I manipulate somebody's thoracic spine. I can understand how that's gonna help them extend and move better. I understand I stick a needle into somebody's muscle and that muscle might have some sort of neurologic response where it relaxes. But when you say, well, if they move better, what is going on? Again, I'm just asking from the trying to get more out of you, what are you telling the patient or what are you telling a clinician of like, this is what we think's going on from this concept within DNS.

Richard Ulm (58:12.593)

Well, number one, a patient wouldn't ask that kind of question. That's a bow beard question for sure.

Beau Beard (58:17.226)

I've just had the head AIDS researcher in the world come in with acute low back pain. Yeah. Yeah. he's hilarious by the way, but he was like, so this little movement, he's German and terrible German accent, but he goes, this little movement is going to change my back. you're kind of having to be like, okay, here we go.

Richard Ulm (58:20.649)

well fine. great. A triple PhD who read 40 studies that morning. Anyways, no,

Richard Ulm (58:36.413)

Great.

No, those people, those patients make you so good at your job. So the answer is you've got really, again, it comes down to biomechanics and neurology. The biomechanical piece is just straight up efficiency, less muscular activity, less muscular effort, less muscle force contractile output to get whatever you need to do. I got to pick up my kid off the ground. If you move more efficiently, it requires less muscle activity, less internal stress on the body.

Beau Beard (58:41.773)

Yeah.

Richard Ulm (59:07.911)

the discs are happier, the tissue's happier. Cool. That's just from a structural, physiological, biomechanical realm. However, the real reason has to do with biomechanics. That's right, it has to do with neurology. So when you're doing the DNS thing, we're essentially trying to evoke or reinforce or remind the brain how it...

originally learned to stabilize the shoulder how it was originally learned to sort of upright the neck or stabilize the spine or the foot or the hip or the knee or whatever. And when you get in there and you're doing, you know, the things that we do in DNS or I mean, to be honest with you, I think the mechanism of action for every manual every technique that we do as a chiropractor a PT short of devices that I don't use like ultrasound and cold laser. It's all afferentations. It's all neural neurological

Beau Beard (59:59.627)

Mm-hmm

Richard Ulm (01:00:01.265)

So when you get in there and you're sort of waking the brain up and you're just like assaulting the brain with afferent information and waking it up to that stuff, the change that the patient feels is really more neurological. So yes, I can explain it in terms of, all right, I've now got you to stabilize your lumbar spine with less erector activity. So then the back feels better because there's less of a compressive load on the spine. So you're not aggravating the discs. There's not.

Increased intradisical pressure, there's less tension in the annular fibers, yay, no more symptoms into the leg. But that was all made possible by the change in the output from the brain that was stimulated by the afferent information that you sent the brain. It's always going through the brain. So there is a biomechanical, structural, physiological explanation for it, but the mechanism is neurological.

Beau Beard (01:00:58.742)

Mm-hmm.

Richard Ulm (01:00:59.6)

And that's the big difference. That's the big difference. And I think a lot of times in other systems, they're all going to say, yeah, we're talking about neurology. But in DNS, we actually are sort of hammering it. Now, I think a lot of people that have only sort of dipped their toes into DNS, they think, it's the baby exercises. Yeah, and they're using broad terms like, yeah, I'm getting them to move the way that we learned when we were little babies. And I'm kind of waking that back up. It's like,

okay, cool. Because the strength coach, it just sounds stupid. But what we're doing is we're actually getting the brain, it's a neurological system. So we are getting the brain to move as efficiently as possible. So it's sort of like re evoking that, the that movement strategy that has made it through the test of time. And so it's a it's a neurological system, the baby exercises are means to an end.

they're not the end in themselves. So we use the babies as the model for healthy movement, which we could talk about that in a little bit if you want, because that's a question that people have a lot of times. Like what is optimal movement is a great question to have. But we also use them, of course, as assessments. So you're going to compare, all right, a baby does this in this position, what do you look like? And then we use them as corrective exercises. But the ultimate goal is functional centration. The ultimate goal is not that you

move like a baby, we just use baby exercises because, know, collage and the other instructors have found that that's the most efficient path to getting them to move with functional centration, to move as efficiently as possible, to move in a way that maximizes performance and reduces injury. It's not the baby thing. So we say in the strength training class all the time, you can do, you can honor DNS principles, you can express DNS.

Beau Beard (01:02:41.07)

Mm.

Richard Ulm (01:02:52.09)

in a movement in the weight room that is not a developmental position like snatch. You can also be using a developmental position and not be doing DNS. So just because you're in a position that a low oblique sit or a position that we get into during development, if you've got them in a shitty position and they don't have functional centration, you're not doing DNS in my opinion. So I can do DNS with a kettlebell swing.

We didn't learn to do single arm, no Turkish getup is a better example. I know that it's getup, but it's nothing like a normal pattern how we would get up as a kid. But I can use and express DNS patterns and honor DNS principles with a human made game, the Turkish getup, in the same way that I could use those patterns in a developmental position. But I can also lift weights and I can use developmental positions in a way that does not honor those patterns.

So to me, DNS is all about training and expressing functional centration. It's not about using the baby position. That's just, that's just, they're convenient exercises where we learned what these optimal movement strategies are, but doing DNS does not require using developmental positions. And honestly, in the strength training classes, over the last 10 years, I have pulled more and more of those out. So in the beginning,

The strength training class has literally just dovetailed strength training one and two, and then three was a little bit different. Now they're nothing like those. I'm not showing developmental flows anymore. There's just too many things to cover about applying the principles of movement laid out by Pavel Kolaj for me to sit down and say, okay, we're just going to hammer all the developmental positions. Those are like, that's what the exercise class is for.

So if you wanna learn about how to apply these principles of strength training, take the strength training classes. If you wanna learn more about movement flow and the developmental exercises and have a bunch of rehab exercises in your quiver, cool, take the exercise classes. If you wanna learn how to apply it strength training, take the strength training classes.

Beau Beard (01:04:59.532)

Yeah, and that's when we have a lot of people shadow or interns and you know, they'll always they'll kind of ask me the same question. Like, you know, why did you choose to dive into DNS and spend all this time and why is it such a big part of your practice? And I kind of said, you know, like you see a guitar back in the wall back here, you know, my daughter could pick up a guitar and play it, but it's not music per se. Right. Or you'd be like, that sounds terrible, but she's still playing guitar.

then you could have somebody pick up a guitar and make music. Yeah, there's gonna be perception differences there and everything. Both conceptually fit into the music realm. You're doing the exact same thing, like you said, but one is the thing, one is not, and they look very similar, and it's the nuance behind it. It's how you put things together, the strategy, the order, the pattern. And I think that's gets misconstrued within the profession a lot, and I'm talking to the clinicians here, is that that

you do get the kind of dumbed down, oh, it's the baby exercise, we're trying to go back in time and reintegrate this, it's like, that's the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, that's getting you a portal of entry into the concept, but that doesn't scrape the surface, which then leaves you with, oh, why would I pick this thing? And like you said, for me, the question that got answered with DNS was everything else fit into DNS, right? You do instrument-assisted stuff, you do dry-needling, you adjust somebody and you're like,

I can understand better why that stuff works because of the concepts or the underlay of DNS. That was really exciting to me when I first started learning about it. So talking about those concepts, you said, yeah.

Richard Ulm (01:06:38.802)

I mean, that's a, but just to cut you at, just add, add something, I cut you off. I guess I did both, but so we talk. So it's always, it's a little bit of a trigger for me because I, when I first saw DNS, I thought it was the dumbest thing ever. Cause it's like baby stuff. I was stupid. And Brett Winchester and Robert were like, no, no, no, take the class. So to me, destiny or sorry, DNS is a comprehensive explanation of movement and function that appreciates the full impact that neurology has on these processes.

So we have learned through the observation of athletes, reflex locomotion, and babies the optimal way that we should be moving. And those are neurological principles of movement that we lay out in the DNS strength training classes, like stabilization precedes movement, like the quality of your support influences the quality of your movement, like neurology is the foundation of movement, like respiration is, you know,

the way in which we stabilize. Like all those, these are fundamental principles of movement. And so the strength training classes, we look at DNS like that, like as an explanation of movement and function, not as, DNS is where you learn baby exercises. It's where you learn how to move right and train proper movement strategies for sport. That's what those classes are about.

Beau Beard (01:07:51.81)

Mm-hmm.

Beau Beard (01:07:59.406)

Well, as we get towards the end here, you had went through the kind of timeline of strength training one, two, and three and how you break it down. And so for people that aren't familiar, you're teaching DNSB in Nashville. If you take DNSA, what is DNSA look like versus like DNSB? You're always going over the general premise or concept to kind of get a refresher after the first one.

But what is the difference for each class and why is DNSB, why is it separated into four classes A, B, C, and D? Why did they break it up like that?

Richard Ulm (01:08:30.844)

So DNSB is great because you're going to get exposed to a lot of exercises that we just can't show in A. So in A, we go over the fundamental principles. We're talking about functional centration. We introduce intradominal pressure. We're showing a lot of basic positions. And everything that we show in that class is bilateral and symmetrical, or what we call in DNS, the clinical class, we would say they're all homologous.

You're laying on your back. have symmetrical loading. Your legs are up in the air, three month position. Then you get into quadruped. You're on your hands and your knees symmetrical. Then you sort of come up off your knees and now you're in bear position. Then you do a squat. Now you're in squat. So they're all, everything is symmetrical. Everything is basically what I would say is constrained into the sagittal plane. That's also going to restrict you to the number of exercises that we can actually show you.

Beau Beard (01:09:20.078)

Mm-hmm.

Richard Ulm (01:09:27.729)

So there's a lot of asymmetrical exercises that are of course critical for really, really good treatment. In the DNSB classes, we're able to take what we learned in A and we're able to essentially add to them and give you a myriad of additional exercises and assessments that you can then use with your clients and your athletes to get these patterns better. So in A, we can't show

oblique sit or tripod or all these other cool positions that are incredibly powerful because it's all about learning the fundamental concepts and sort of sticking to the sagittal plane. The other thing is we dig a little bit deeper into the neurology. There's more stuff about the ontogenesis, the, the, the neural, the neurophysiological process of going from an immature, you know, baby all the way up to a mature adult.

so that's understanding the neurological foundations, I think is a very, very important thing to understand why we're doing what we're doing. will give you a deeper understanding of what you're seeing when you're doing the assessments. And that will then allow you to make better, faster, more productive clinical decisions. And so the DNS class is also where for most people, if they started with a DNS B is where the light bulb goes off.

Beau Beard (01:10:51.982)

And I mean, it kind of never stops. I mean, I'll steal the quote that people have heard if they've heard him speak before for sure. But as Brett Winchester would say, what happened there? I know what happened. We're still good. I can't hear you. Oh, boy.

Beau Beard (01:11:27.246)

Well, if Rich doesn't join me, I'll kind of finish with this quote that Brett Winchester always says that DNS is like looking out into the ocean. it's a, as Rich said, it's basically the firmament or the underlying concept of how we develop to move as humans. And I think that knowing that, realizing that, you know, there's these four major clinical pillars or steps, the A, B, C, D. Rich is back with us. Can I hear you? I can't hear you, man.

I got nothing. I don't know if you can hear me. was trying to wrap this up in case you didn't come back.

Beau Beard (01:12:06.734)

Let me see what this says over here.

Beau Beard (01:12:32.056)

But to wrap us up on a clean note as Rich is trying to get back, I'll try to get him back here so he can sign off before we jump. those four major pillars of the clinical course, one of which Rich will be teaching in Nashville, literally, I know this sounds crazy to say, like you might go through four clinical courses, a three, three, three, and then five day course and still be kind of at the beginning. But that's not completely how I felt and there's a lot more.

involved in there even to get to that last clinical course of having to take you know an exercise course and specialty courses. But it is something that is kind of a lifelong journey that kind of opens your eyes or at least open my eyes to looking at things different realizing all the things I didn't know but then allowing me also to apply the things that I was already doing even better. So that's one of the things that we didn't discuss was

It's literally sharpening the sword on all those other techniques because of the understanding. So when you understand something better, in my opinion, it allows you to implement it just a little bit better. And that is completely the case with DNS. Rich is still trying to get the technical aspect of this down. I swear he is 10 times, 10x better at teaching a seminar than he is because I tried to coach him up on the server side thing. So that's my sales point for the DNSV seminar.

And the thing is, we're not doing that virtual. You'll be live in Nashville, having a good time, live in the course. We'll have to listen to us try to figure out how to talk to each other multiple states away in a time zone away. But he's trying to come back, so I'll fill time like a radio DJ here. If you are listening to this and you're interested in how to sign up, go to blackjackeducation.com. You can sign up again. That course is January 30th.

through February 1st, so the 30th, 31st, and 1st 3-day course Friday, Saturday, Sunday in Nashville, Tennessee. We are 95 % sure we, yeah, we got them back, yeah. But I was just saying, we will be hosting that course more than likely at Dr. Audra Lance, my partner in crime in Blackjack, at her new clinical space. But again, you can go to blackjackeducation.com and register for that course. And if you have any questions,

Richard Ulm (01:14:23.542)

I get it. Fuck you. Yeah. Hold on.

Beau Beard (01:14:42.571)

You can always hit me up. Everybody should know my email, drbeaubeard at gmail.com. But also maybe you want to save those questions for the real pro and wait till Rich is teaching that course in late January here.

Richard Ulm (01:14:54.602)

That light off made it very ominous. I was, using my, my ADD brain was unable to hear what you were saying. So why don't we, can we finish with talking about what's cool about B a little bit? Can I do that? Okay. can I turn the lights on so I don't look like a Halloween thing?

Beau Beard (01:15:08.738)

Yeah, hit it.

Beau Beard (01:15:14.926)

I hope so.

Richard Ulm (01:15:20.406)

You can't delete any of this from the actual you can't do it. I know that a boy. All right. So the, you know, a having being able to have you and Audra, which I think are fantastically good docs and to get in the room with you guys or chatting somewhere at dinner is like super exciting to me. So the people that are going to go to this class.

Beau Beard (01:15:24.66)

I don't. Yeah.

Richard Ulm (01:15:46.39)

And I say this with 100 % authenticity. I think it's a special thing for them to actually have someone like you or have someone like Audra, both of whom are extremely successful clinicians to sort of be there. You're both certified DNS practitioners. So now you have three at a minimum. So if there's six people in the class, you know, I guess

there'd be six people total. So, so you've got three people that are certified clinicians. That is an amazing thing. So the first thing I do when I teach a class, who's a certified clinician? And immediately right there, we have people that I will lean on. So I'm not the kind of instructor that's going to say, okay, everybody shut your mouth. This is the way we're going to do this. We want to talk through this. And so when we have, you know, someone like Audra that, I mean, she does amazing stuff with like

vocal things and uses DNS and soft tissue work to help with a lot of the Nashville singer she works with. You know, she's working with football players and hockey players. You've got, course, tennis players, runners and all this other stuff. So there's a ton of information that we can do. And I think that people that are going to learn the scenario in which people are going to learn the best is where we're all sort of like chatting through this. So the more that I've been in clinic, the more experience I have as a clinician, the more of these classes end up being sort of like.

Beau Beard (01:16:55.756)

Mm-hmm.

Richard Ulm (01:17:03.968)

discussions where we can sort of talk about these things because sitting there and just listening to me lecture on DNS and then just go through this. All right. Well, here's this position. Here's this one. Here's this one is not nearly as effective as like, all right, you know, how are we using it? Here's how I use it. Like I'm the teacher. So here's how I use it, but what are you doing? How do you like this? Audra? What about you? And Hey, you know, you that took a

six months ago, like where are you at with this? And working through that, we can really get them to sharpen their skills with DNS. And when the better you get at DNS, as you know, you just get better results. It brings, it's the glue that brings everything together. So I'm a McKenzie certified doc. When and where I'm using McKenzie can be explained and justified by DNS, where I'm using soft tissue work, dry needling, FRC, whatever.

Beau Beard (01:17:42.7)

Mm-hmm.

Richard Ulm (01:17:59.24)

it's all going to be explained and organized by DNS. So in the DNS B classes, they've been exposed to it. And we can go a little bit deeper. Another thing, so I'm heavily influenced by Robert Lardner. So I do an absolute ton of manual techniques, and I'm able to show those. So I teach the DNS manual therapy class.

I show a lot of manual techniques in DNS, DSB, when I'm DNS, my clinic, I'm not sitting off at the other end of the treatment room counting reps. I'm within six inches of the patient the entire time controlling the position, doing manual techniques. And so we're able to show a lot of these techniques in this class that I cannot show in the strength training classes. I don't show in the exercise classes.

My DNS AB and C classes are very, heavily influenced, or not influenced, but they involve a lot of manual techniques. Because I think manual techniques are absolutely essential to get that afferentation necessary to get the patient moving the way that they need to. And I will show that a ton in the DNSB class.

Beau Beard (01:19:15.366)

and to just kind of wrap it up overall, the whole philosophy or kind of the universe that Blackjack Education wants to live in is that continues outside of the seminar, right? All those conversations, whether you want to stick in the DNS lane, mean, everybody is, you know, it's a nonstop thing. So everybody that goes to the, you know, one of our seminars always said it's kind of like a little, you know, college get together. Like you're kind of, you're at the seminar and everybody's getting together after we have events planned. And that's where

you know whether it's friendships or clinical mentorship or just ideas conversations come up that that's the game changer to us because you know absolutely no knock on other any other DNS course like they're all fantastic all the instructors are great what we're trying to do is build an environment where we everybody gets fired up with the go to seminar we want that to be maximized right you're always going to learn something from any one of these world-class instructors like rich

We want you to learn as much as you can, to get fired up as much as you can, make some relationships, make some memories, and then be like, how can I do more of this, whether it's with us or somebody else? So that's the magic that we're trying to create in one of these weekends. So it's not just your regular old seminar. Yeah, what else?

Richard Ulm (01:20:24.182)

But I think that's super important so that you're not just going to a seminar, sitting in a classroom for seven to eight hours and then grabbing some dinner and then going back to the hotel. You're talking to people that are certified clinicians or, you know, have successful careers. So whether you're a successful clinician yourself, like I want to be around those people or whether you're new to practice, you want to be around those people. It's just.

It's a great environment. And I know last year you guys were sending me like, you know, too bad you're not here to give me a FOMO with Brett there teaching a, so that's, that's just super awesome. So, I mean, besides just off the record, you know, hanging out with you and Audra is of course always on my, short list of things to do. I think for people that are interested in getting into DNS, or maybe they're trying to get back into DNS and they haven't had a class in a while because you guys are doing all this stuff.

outside the class. think it's worth the trip. Plus, Nashville is of course a great town.

Beau Beard (01:21:25.038)

And we're not gonna force you to have fun if you want to go to your go eat dinner and then go to your hotel go for it You can do that, too But hey, man, I just want to thank you for a I know we could have talked for hours Just you and I but like trying to explain what we were trying to explain you did a fantastic job being concise Lay, you know put a foundation out there for people to explore to this and if you don't explore this further I mean, you know go take a course with whoever it is if you have to start that journey You know whether your clinician or a trainer or coach?

Richard Ulm (01:21:31.605)

you

Beau Beard (01:21:54.53)

you know, check out the DNS website, check out Rich's Instagram, athlete enhancement, tons of information, his website, athleteenhancement.com, dash, yeah. You'd find it, Google him. Yeah, nobody has business cards, just Google him. And you can always check us out at Blackjack Education, so thanks again for doing this, man, and yeah, we'll see you in less than two months. Hit it.

Richard Ulm (01:22:02.557)

Athlete Dashing, actually I own both now but Athlete Dashing, it doesn't matter. Both will send you to the right place. Google them.

Richard Ulm (01:22:18.41)

I know I can't wait Nashville.