40. Understanding Overstretching with Jennifer Milner, NCPT

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00:00 

Linda Bluestein 

Welcome back to bendy bodies with hypermobility MD, where we explore the intersection of health and  hypermobility focusing on dancers and other aesthetic athletes. This is the founder of Bendy Bodies, Dr. Linda  Bluestein here today to interview the co-founder of bendy bodies, Jennifer Milner.  

00:28 

Linda Bluestein 

Hello, Jennifer. I'm super excited to chat with you today about stretching, getting the most flexibility that a  dancer can in a safe way and things like overstretching, but some listeners are new to the podcast probably.  Could you start out by just telling us about yourself?  

00:53 

Jen Milner 

Sure. So I am a retired dancer. I danced professionally as a ballet dancer and as a music theater dancer, and  enjoyed that for several years before an injury took me out of performing. Along that way, I learned about my  body and that my hyper mobile body wasn't normal and that not everybody took their shoulders out of the  socket. I had to start learning how to take care of myself in that respect. When I stopped dancing, I became a  certified Pilates teacher and realized I really loved working with dancers. I worked for west side dance, physical  therapy in New York city for a long time, working as the official PT clinic for New York city ballet and training  dancers from all across the world. Now that I live in Texas, I train dancers still, thanks to zoom from all across the world, specializing in hypermobility, just trying to pass on some of the hard-fought lessons that I've learned  myself and then, learning a lot from you as well.  

01:59 

Linda Bluestein 

Well, great. Well, yeah, I've learned so much from you already and I've wanted to have this conversation for  such a long time, so I'm super excited. I'm sure I'm going to learn a lot. So you work a lot with hyper mobile  dancers, but I'm sure you also work with some that are not hypermobile, particularly when it comes to stretching  an injury. What are some of the differences that you observed between those two groups?  

02:25 

Jen Milner 

Well, so first of all, it's important to say that you can be hyper mobile for a lot of different reasons that hyper  mobile simply means, because I hear you say this all the time, that you have a greater range of motion than  normal in a specific joint. You might have greater range of motion just in one joint. You might have lots of  joints in your body that are hyper mobile. You might have hypermobility and other issues that go along with it,  right? It's a huge topic that is a big umbrella that covers a lot of different aspects of it. Today I just want to talk  about joint hypermobility and leaving the other issues out of it and kind of setting that to the side. If we're  looking at a joint, why might a joint be hyper mobile? Well, for one, it could be the shape of your bones.  

03:14 

Jen Milner 

If we're looking at your hips, one hip socket, isn't always the perfect replica of the other hip socket. In fact, it  rarely is. If we imagine as a lot of dancers know, maybe your left has more turnout than your right, that could be  soft tissue, but it could also be that you just have a slightly different shape to your socket. If we think about a  bowl and if we have a really nice shallow bowl and we have a spoon with a long handle on it, we can do a lot of  stirring in that bowl with the spoon and the spoon can go to all the different corners of the bowl, and it can really  angle steeply as you're kind of whisking it around. Now, if we transfer that bowl or transform it into a really  deep bowl or even a tall glass, and imagine that spoon in the glass and how the spoons hitting the edge over and  over again, along the rim.  

04:02 

Jen Milner 

It's a very different kind of excursion and different kinds of movement. That's purely based on the shape of the  bowl, which is the shape of your hip. You might have a really loose joint in one hip and not as loose in the other  hip, purely based on your bones. You could also have isolated joint laxity. You could have. When we talk about  the things that kind of are in your joint, we have ligaments which connect bone to bone, and then we have  tendons which connect muscle to bone. Those are what gives structure and support to that joint. And then of  course attach the muscles. For whatever reasons, you might have looser ligaments, just in one particular joint,  right? Your knee, for example, you might have loose ligaments in your knee and you might have a patella  kneecap. This has a tendency to slip off and subluxate, or even dislocate at the same time, you might have a  knee that tends to dislocate because the muscles are actually tighter and those tight muscles are pulling the  kneecap.  

05:03 

Jen Milner 

You could have what we would call hypermobility in that knee talking about the knee dislocating, but it might  be actually because of tightness and not because you have super loose connective tissue. Another reason that  you might have a hypermobile joint would be connective tissue quality, your ligaments, your tendons, your joint  capsules, your fascia might all be built differently than a lot of people. You might manufacture college in  differently than other people do. That would mean that your, a lot of your joint capsules, a lot of your joints  would have a different movement, quality, and a different structural stability than a lot of other people's. If that  joint capsule is less firm and less structurally sound, then it might mean that your muscles are actually again,  more tight as your muscles are trying to do the job of your connective tissue. For hypermobility, you might have  what I would call an artificial hypermobility.  

06:01 

Jen Milner 

You may not have been born with it, but you may have stretched yourself and done some of this overstretching  that we're talking about to encourage a joint that is now a hypermobile joint. You've pushed for it, but in stretching you haven't just stretched your muscles. You've stretched the entire joint capsule. We'll get into that in  a minute. If I'm working with a hypermobile person, I often see, as I just mentioned, joint instability, that will be  an issue for me. I'll see that they have a lot of difficulty controlling their body, that they can't quite tell their  body what to do. They don't necessarily stretch for the aesthetics of it because they don't think they need to  stretch, especially if they're super hypermobile and they're really floppy, but they might tell me that they feel  really tight because their muscles in comparison, again, like were talking are doing the work of those joint  capsules and those and that connective tissue.  

06:59 

Jen Milner 

So the muscles are actually really tight. As far as injuries would go with the hyper mobile population. I see  connective tissue injuries, such as Achilles tendinopathies, joint instability things along that line where the  connective tissue again, is being asked to handle a load, and it's not really qualified to do the job. I'll see those  low grade connective tissue injuries pretty frequently with them. If I was going to see, say a hamstring strain, I  would see that hamstring strain more frequently at the origin of the hamstring, right, where it attaches to the sits  bones. I would see it in that the tendon where the hamstring connects, because they might use it as a stabilizer. If  you think about someone going into a penche where they're standing one leg and the leg behind them goes into  an arabesque, and they go so far on the arabesque, that foot is pointing to the ceiling.  

07:53 

Jen Milner 

They're in a nice six o'clock penche, but that standing leg they're really resting back into that hyper extended  knee. They're leaning all the way into the back of that hip socket. That poor little hamstring tendon is working  really hard. That's a commonplace for me to see a hamstring issue in the hypermobile population. In the non  hypermobile population, I would say, I see maybe 80% of non hypermobile dancers come to me and say, I need  to work my flexibility. I need to work on getting more flexible, more stretching, more bendy. They are often  frustrated with it because they feel like they've been working on it and they're not getting anywhere with it. If I  see an injury in them, if I see a hamstring injury in them, it's going to be more likely to be an injury in the belly  of their hamstring, like in the meat of the muscle of the middle of their thigh, the back of their thigh, rather than  all the way up on their sitz bone, because they're stretching that muscle a lot when it's not really prepared to.  

08:52 

Jen Milner 

They're kind of pushing it too far in that stretch and muscle is going to recoil and protect itself so that it can  repair. I'll see more muscular issues with them, maybe using the wrong hip flexor muscle for extension as they  try to get their leg even higher. I'll see different approaches to the way that they move and just different needs  for each of them. Of course, all of this is being said with the huge generality, like nobody fits exactly that mold.  So, these are just speaking in generalities, like what I generally see.  

09:26 

Linda Bluestein 

Sure. I'm glad that you explained about hypermobility and then joint instability, because those are separate  things, right? The joint instability, the keeping the joint in proper alignment as compared to joint hypermobility,  meaning that it has excessive range of motion. You were talking about some of the injuries, which is very  helpful, pointing out some of the differences that you see. Do you see those differences, whether it's an overuse  injury or a traumatic injury, or do you see traumatic injuries differently in one population as compared to the  other?  

10:02 

Jen Milner 

That's a really interesting question. The vast majority of the injuries that I see and keeping in mind, I'm not a  physical therapist. People may not come to me when they are fresh out of a trauma, right. The vast majority of  the injuries that I see are overuse injuries, especially because I work with so many hypermobile people, they  kind of seek me out. I can recognize if a tendinopathy is starting to creep up in or a bad pattern. I can say, Hey,  we've got to get on top of that before it becomes something bigger. The biggest exception to that would be ankle  injuries because in my hypermobile population, I do see a lot of sprained ankles and ankle rolls and no matter  how strong and how hard they come back from it, once you've sprained ankle, you're at such a high risk to  sprain your ankle again, because again, we're stretching out those ligaments and they don't bounce back the way  that muscle does. 

10:58 

Jen Milner 

I would say more ankle sprains, but usually with the hypermobile population, I would say, I see more overuse  injuries. In the non hypermobile population, I see more overused as well. But again, it's more muscular. I see  those muscles, the wrong muscles working, which might lead to having some a, a tendon or ligament.  

11:28 

Linda Bluestein 

Okay. That's so helpful. Let's talk about overstretching. Can you start out by telling us what is overstretching  and what are some of the problems that might occur?  

11:38 

Jen Milner 

We're talking about overstretching, we're talking about trying to take that joint into a bigger range of motion  then it's built for right then it's actually designed to go. Most commonly people overstretched their hips and their  knees. Some people think that it's very desirable right now to have hyperextended knees and to have that kind of  backwards swoop to the knee. If people don't have that big hyperextension in their knees, they might try to  stretch and achieve that hyperextension in their knees. And then the hips get stretched out. Whether people mean  it or not, when they're doing over splits, because again, some people consider it desirable to have that over split  for your jumps, for your ground. When we're, when we're talking about the joint, though, when we're talking  about overstretching, we're actually talking about stretching all that connective tissue.  

12:30 

Jen Milner 

We're not talking about the muscles that attach inside the joint that are coming to the joint. We're talking about  hanging in that joint in your over splits, you're stretching the capsule of the hip. You're stretching all the tendons  and ligaments that are around it. You're not really effectively targeting the muscles that are crossing that joint. I  think that people think they're stretching their muscles, but they're actually really stretching all of that passive  connective tissue. I talk about how it's like, if your muscles are a rubber band and we can pull that rubber band  and stretch it, and you can feel that energy buildup, and then you release it and it comes back together, which is  why we have to stretch for our splits every day. We can't just like stretch once and be like, got it. And never  have to do it again.  

13:15 

Jen Milner 

Although that would be so great. But if your muscles are like that rubber band, then I talk about how your  connective tissue, your joint capsules, your ligaments and tendons, they're like silly putty you stretch it. And it  stays like that. It's not going to rebound come back together magically. That's why with ankle sprain, once  you've stretched that ligament it's going to stay stretched. With ankle sprain, you have to work to get the  muscles, to do a better job to stabilize that ankle. Because the ligaments won't same thing with your hips. If  you've overstretched that connective tissue, then you don't have that labor. Which is kind of a docking port for  your femur. You don't have that labor. I'm doing the job that it's supposed to be doing, right? If you're doing  overstretching, then you could have loose connective tissue.  

14:02 

Jen Milner 

You have capsular instability, you could have poor proprioception, which is your body's awareness of where  you are in space. You'll have reduced passive muscle tension. If you think about when you have pizza dough,  you can either have like one really small pizza with a really thick crust, or you can stretch it and have a much  

thinner crust for a bigger pizza. As you're stretching that crest, sometimes it'll get really thin and it'll be  transparent. You'll think this is not going to be enough to hold my pizza toppings. We're stretching that muscle  and it's getting really kind of window panes in there, perhaps not really, but it's getting thin there. It's not going  to have what it needs to have that immediate firing that immediate work that we're talking about the muscle  here. As we're stretching it and taking it into those further reaches, we're not going to have that muscle tension  that we need to be able to do what we want in a really fast manner.  

15:01 

Jen Milner 

That limp overstretched capsule is not going to be able to absorb force for your big jumps and for your big moves. If you think about those high bouncy balls, those really hard rubber balls when you bounce, it bounces  way back up high. If you take like a hacky sack ball with like rice filling or something and you throw it on the  ground, it just kind of splats and stays there and doesn't rebound. We don't want to be like a hacky sack ball. We  want to have that strength and that attention to be able when it drops for it to reabsorb that energy right away  and go right back up, we want to be able to take that force that's going into the ground, store it all up as that  potential energy and immediately turn it back into that kinetic energy and fire up. If you are overstretched or if  your joint, your capsule is over stretched that energy, that force just dissipates and it's all gone.  

15:53 

Jen Milner 

You have to start all over again and regather that force to be able to jump. Every single jump feels like your first  jump and the first jumps the hardest. Once you get going, it's easier, right? If we have those overstretched  capsules, you're going to feel that you're going to have a slower response time. You might have lower jumps,  you might be faster to fatigue. There's a whole host of things that can happen with that. Even if it's artificial  hypermobility, you're going to experience that as well. I just got a new dancer who has come to me because she  spent a couple of years working with a stretch coach and said she is having a lot of trouble jumping and she  couldn't figure out why. I can tell by working with her that we're going to have a lot to do to build up those  muscles again, to get them to come back online faster and have a faster response time, because she now has that  artificial hypermobility to her and her dance teacher said her plea age is kind of dies.  

16:52 

Jen Milner 

You can see that energy just kind of dies with it, right? I mean, everything you want to think about with  overstretching is as you're opening up one side of your capsule or one side of your joint, what's happening to the  other side of the joint. As you're stretching the back of your knee, if you've got your, if you're sitting on the floor  and you've got one foot up on a chair, and you're just pushing that knee down the back of your knee is opening  up. What's happening to the front. You're putting a whole lot of pressure on your meniscus in there. You're  putting a whole lot of pressure in there that doesn't need to be happening and isn't super healthy for it. Or if you  think about those foot stretchers and how, when you use it, you're trying to stretch open the front of that arch to  give you that nice arts, but what you're stretching, isn't really the arched part of your foot.  

17:38 

Jen Milner 

You're stretching higher up on the ankle. As you're opening that up, you're pinching the back of the ankle. As  you're pinching back of the ankle, especially if it's in someone who's not finished growing, we've had some  studies suggest that can actually encourage the growth of an in the back of the ankle, which is that bone that can  inhibit going to a full point to a nice full point. As you're opening up the top of the foot, you're pinching and  putting a lot of impingement pressure on the back of that ankle, which can lead to a lot of Achilles tendinopathy,  FHL tendinopathies, etc. One thing might be getting longer and looser, but you're putting pressure on something  somewhere else. There's going to be some a, a give and take if you're doing overstretching and it may not be  what you're hoping for.  

18:29 

Linda Bluestein 

Yeah. It definitely sounds like it's not what it's cracked up to be. That you could be thinking, this is such a great  idea, but you lose other things in the process quite significantly. Not that it's just not effective for stretching. So  is overstretching ever indicated?  

18:45 

Jen Milner 

I have a really hard time thinking of a time when it would be indicated to overstretch. I know there are people  sometimes that come to me that feel like they can't straighten their knees all the way. In dance, you at least have  to have the look of having a straight leg, right? We're not looking for hyperextended necessarily, but at least a  straight leg. And sometimes that's your bony structure. Again, that's the way your knee fits together, your femur  and your tibia. Sometimes it's because you have really tight connective tissue in the back of your leg and people  can have tight connective tissue. The back of your knee is where your calf, big calf muscle crosses your  hamstring. Your hamstrings come down behind the knee. Your calf comes up behind the knee and may cross.  There's a lot of connective tissue that can happen back there. 

19:35 

Jen Milner 

If it's really tight for some reason, then that can inhibit the fact that your knee can straighten. I may do really  safe exercises of contracting their hamstring and their quad at the same time to try to get that leg, to learn how to  work in a straight and long position. It might seem to the dancer, like I'm helping move their knee into an over  stretched position, but we're never passively stretching it. We're working it to try to get there. We do other  exercises to try to release behind the knee. Even for them, I wouldn't advocate sitting in an overstretch for that  spot. I guess the short answer is not that I can think of. There might be one that exists, but I don't know what it  is.  

20:18 

Linda Bluestein 

Sure, sure. What are some of the other unsafe stretching practices that you see?  

20:27 

Jen Milner 

Well, related to overstretching, I might see people adding weight to the stretch, like a friend sitting on their back  when they're in the straddle splits to try to push them closer to the ground, or if you've got one leg up on the  chair, trying to put books on your knees, press your knee closer to the so adding weights. I mean, if I don't want  you to sit there in the first place, adding weights, certainly not going to be moving in the correct direction of  making it better. Also I would say static stretching in general, there've been lots of studies in the past five to 10  years that have said static stretching doesn't really prepare you to dance. It doesn't really decrease your chance  of injury. Especially coming out of Australia, the Australian ballet, their studies show that strength training  actually is better for you than passive stretching as far as increasing your flexibility.  

21:25 

Jen Milner 

Static stretching may have a place at the end of the day at the end of your dance day to hang out in them for a  few gentle seconds. Definitely not something that I would want to see at the beginning of dance or in the middle  of class when you're still trying to dance, it's still trying to work.  

21:45 

Linda Bluestein 

That makes sense. You've been working with hyper mobile dancers for many years. What, if any signs have you  observed that a dancer needs to be particularly vigilant when it comes to these kind of stretching practices that  can be unsafe?  

22:02 

Jen Milner 

I'll have dancers say I'm feeling a lot of pain in the back of my knee. Like when I stand at bar one leg, the back  of my knee gets really tired. If I have them show me what they do, they're locking their knee and I can see them  hanging back in their hyperextension or trying to push back into a hyperextension and not supporting the back  of their knee with their muscles. I might see that if dancers tell me that they're feeling a pulled muscle or a  muscle strain pretty regularly, that'll be assigned to me that they're not warming up well or that they're trying to  do too much static stretching. We'll talk through the routine that they've got before class starts to make sure that  they're priming themselves well, by doing dynamic stretching, instead of passive chronic hip issues, popping  hips is really common in a lot of dancers and is not something that you should ever go well, it doesn't hurt.  

22:51 

Jen Milner 

So I'm sure it's fine, right? If something's popping regularly, that should get looked at, we should talk about why  it's happening. It's usually a biomechanical issue of your body trying to make a shortcut. You either don't have  enough strength where you should have it, or you're trying to force a range of motion that you don't comfortably  have or both. If there's chronic hip issues, I'm going to say, Hey, let's look at what you're doing in your  stretching. Let's make sure the right muscles are coming online. Let's make sure we have access to everything  we need access to, and let's make sure you have the strength to hold your end range of motion as well. I also  have seen and heard, a big increase just in the past five, maybe 10 years of serious hip issues in the younger  dancer. And, and I do think that there is a correlation between that and the overstretching and the number of hip  surgeries that we're seeing hip replacements and teenagers that we're seeing, which is just crazy to me. 

23:54 

Jen Milner 

I do think that's one of the biggest areas we see and who knows what we're going to see 10 years from now.  

24:03 

Linda Bluestein 

Right. And that's, and that's tragic. I mean, you know that, but it makes sense that like you were saying about the  labrum and then, you know, pulling on the vascular structures, ligamentum teres and all these things. I mean,  hips are not meant to go into those positions with the femur, angulating this direction and the, being pushed  down, isn't it just not anatomically correct at all. Yeah. Okay. Those are, those are a lot of great pointers. I know  you can't get inside the heads of the dance teachers who advocate some of these overstretching practices. Do  you have any ideas though, as to why they might be doing those types of practices in their studio?  

24:54 

Jen Milner 

Right. Well, I don't think there's a lot of teachers out there going, Hey, let's see how I can ruin my kids and my  sisters’ lives. Right? I think that the vast majority of dance teachers are acting from a place of trying actively  trying to help the kids better dancers and move forward in their career. I think most dance teachers genuinely  don't understand these practices and the ramifications of them, even though these dance teachers may have their  own issues, I've worked with dance teachers who have said, oh my gosh, I just realized my hip issues are  because of the way that I used to stretch or to do the things I used to do. And I was dancing. Like, I just thought,  oh, bad luck. I'm a dancer. Now I can realize, oh, it's because of this thing that I did. I think if we, if they could  see, Hey, they're going to get a hip replacement when they're 20, if you keep doing these sorts of things, I don't  think there's a lot of teachers who would be like, it's worth it.  

25:53 

Jen Milner 

I think that they would, I think they would go, oh my gosh, I didn't realize that. There's also, dance studios  operate on a very thin profit margin and they're always working hard just to keep the doors open. You're  constantly trying to stay competitive and trying to keep up and make sure that you can attract dance students.  So, entering competitions, whether you're a competition school or a ballet school, competitions are everywhere  now. When you go in these competitions, you want the judges to score you high so that you can talk about that  to bring in more students, your students want things they can put on Instagram. They want the fancy stuff that  looks cool. Your students see the stuff on social media and they say, I want to do that. Will you help me do it? I  think these teachers are going well, I see it else is doing it.  

26:44 

Jen Milner 

I've got to try to keep up. I do honestly think that as teachers become better educated on this, as we get the word  out, I do think the pendulum is going to, I think it actually is starting to swing back in the other direction. It's, it's  mostly just not knowing and trying really hard to just stay competitive in today's market. And, and I think some  of it too comes from when were dancers, right. We just take what was done with us and we keep doing it and  hand it down. I can't tell you how many times I've taught a dance class and said something and gone what just  came out of my mouth. That was my teacher. I kept it. Do I really believe that? I just said that. I think so we  kind of instinctively move in that fashion, but the world has moved so much faster.  

27:36 

Jen Milner 

The dance world has moved so much faster. I mean, I have, ten-year-olds coming to me for help on their turns.  When I was 10, I couldn't do these things. Like no way I couldn't even do on when I was 20, probably, but it  gets so much harder at such a younger age. We take the rules that applied to us when were younger and forget  that dance is moving so much faster and so much more extreme than when were dancing. I think it's a  combination of things.  

28:06 

Linda Bluestein 

Wow. That's that blows me away. Because right. I, I think probably when I was in my early twenties or  something, maybe I would have done that like a handful of times. I don't even think I ever did it in a  performance, but yeah, to be doing that at age 10, that is really crazy. Obviously for most forms of dance, flexibility is extremely important and aesthetics are important. You want the nice lines and everything. What are  some alternatives to overstretching and other unsafe practices in order to optimize and maximize flexibility?  

28:44 

Jen Milner 

Well, flexibility is the key word here because we want to be flexible. We don't want to be hyper mobile. We  don't want to force hypermobility. Right? People say, I want to work on stretching, that's different than saying, I  want to work on my flexibility and I want people to get through their head, that any good program that's going  to work with you on increasing your range of motion will work on your strength, just as much as it's going to  work on your stretching. So there's two types of stretching. I mentioned earlier, there's dynamic and static,  stretching and dynamic is going to be using that muscle through an entire range of motion with muscle  activation. Right? Sitting in the splits is going to be a static stretch, moving it is going to be a dynamic stretch.  Cause you're going to stretch your hamstring on the way up.  

29:31 

Jen Milner 

If you're working hard to bring it back down, you're going to use that hamstring to bring it back down. You're  going to take it through a range of motion without stopping in any one spot and staying there and really primes  the pump. It brings it oxygenates the muscle. It brings awareness to it. It's booting up your computer and getting  it ready to work for the day. But your computer is your body. Dynamic stretching is the key at the beginning of  class, when you're trying to increase your flexibility, using those dynamic stretches and making sure you go  through that full range of motion. If you feel really tight, then working with someone who understands the safe  principles of building flexibility is going to be so important. You want to know that there's a difference between  neural tension, connective tissue tightness, like the way you're built, like your joint capsules, fascial tightness.  

30:27 

Jen Milner 

Neural tension, like your nerves might not glide through your body as smoothly as they can. It's like when you  floss, if you feel it gets stuck on something and that floss doesn't slide as smoothly, what that might be your  nerves, getting stuck somewhere and going like, I feel like I can't go any further. You just try to like force it that  can really hurt. With nerves you want to kind of floss it. Then they stretch. They don't stretch, but you release  them in a different way than you'd released the muscle. Knowing something like that, as opposed to fascial  tightness, which is like having a piece of saran wrap kind of stuck to you and then expecting the muscles  underneath you to be able to glide smoothly. The saran wrap is kind of stuck and not letting the muscles do the  move that they need to.  

31:12 

Jen Milner 

You may have some fascial work that needs to happen to be released as well. Or it could truly be muscle  tightness. Is it muscle tightness? Because the joint is unstable and the muscles are doing the work that they don't  necessarily weren't designed to do or are the muscles just built tight. We want to work on trying to figure out  how to release them. Working with someone who really understands how to spot the difference between the  kinds of tightness and the appropriate ways to try to release through them, whether it's, releasing with a ball or  doing dynamic stretching or different modalities is going to be super important to try to figure out how to get the  most out of your flexibility. Of course, making sure that you also know how to strengthen that full range of  motion, that you're not just contracting your hamstring and a short range of motion, but you're making it work at  your active insufficiency as well.  

32:07 

Jen Milner 

Not just in a nice hamstring curl. All of those things are going to improve your flexibility, but you want to make  sure that you're doing them correctly. Getting eyes on you is a really great way to do that.  

32:20 

Linda Bluestein 

Sure. And, and all of that makes a lot of sense. In terms of dancers, dance parents who are trying to find a studio  or an instructor that supports safe stretching practices, safe practices for improving flexibility, where do you  suggest that they can find that kind of information or sort that out for themselves? 

32:47 

Jen Milner 

Well, there's a lot of great resources on the internet now, thankfully. We're both members of the international  association of dance medicine and science, and you can go to adams.org and they've got a directory of different  practitioners across the country. That's a great way to find someone near you. There's also doctors for dancers,  but I think it's doctorsfordancers.com and they also have a directory as well as dance Medica Medica, which has  a great directory of practitioners as well. So you can do it. You can find people local to you, or you can find  people who zoom a lot of people zoom now, and that's made it a lot easier to find things like that. You don't  necessarily have to find someone in your backyard. If you're going to look for a group program, because you  can't really afford a lot of privates because privates are expensive, for sure, we have got our very own Jen Crane,  who is a fellow bendy body team member.  

33:49 

Jen Milner 

She has got the, my flex program out, which is a fantastic flexibility program that does release work as well as  strengthening. If you're going to try to find a group program that you can buy and download that you work for at  your own pace, without someone supervising you really want to look into who wrote it, how, what, who are  they? Are they a physical therapist? Are they a retired dance teacher? Where does their knowledge come from?  What kind of results matter to them? Like, do they want to point and say, look at this super bendy person, or do  they want to say this person's been healthy and dancing for 10 years? Do your research, if you're going to try to  do a group program online as well, because you won't have somebody supervising you closely.  

34:35 

Linda Bluestein 

Sure. That's good. You could, even, if you were looking for a studio, you could even, I Adams would have some  dance teachers in there as well. Right. So, and I believe dance Medica now is also open to two dance teachers,  but you could maybe also ask someone like yourself, what studios in Dallas w what do you recommend for my  child who is, 12 years old, very serious professional, what do about the local studios and what do you  recommend?  

35:11 

Jen Milner 

Absolutely. And, and it's important to remember that you just want to find that one person, we always talk about  that find that one person who is really knowledgeable, and even if this isn't their lane, they can help you find the  person that will help you in that lane. I have dancers all the time, ask me for referrals for studios. I'm not  strongly affiliated with any studio, so I can speak pretty honestly about all the different studios that I've worked  with. I know there are other people out there like me that do the same thing, and I have worked with dance  studios all across the world. I can provide input in that way. Sometimes I'll just scrub through companies or  studios, social media, you can learn a lot, just looking through there, seeing what do they hold up? What do they  hold up and value? You can do a lot of your own kind of detective work online, but then yeah, you can  absolutely find someone like me and I'm happy to chat through different options.  

36:15 

Linda Bluestein 

Okay, well, that's a wonderful offer. In terms of the hypermobile dancers themselves, what would, what do you  wish that every hypermobile dancer knew about flexibility?  

36:29 

Jen Milner 

Flexibility is an aesthetically pleasing range of motion to me, right? People, what I wish that everybody  understood was that flexibility is strength and a full range of motion. So to me, that's what flexibility is. It's that  how people talk about how gentleness is controlled strength and flexibility is controlled range of motion and  having a really aesthetically, pleasing, full range of motion, but also having the strength to control it. Everybody  says, I can hold my leg over my head if I use my arm. As soon as I let go, my leg falls, well, Giselle's not  allowed to use your hand to hold her leg over her head. You better figure out a way to do it. Having the strength  and that's what I wish people with hypermobility understood, is find someone to help you get that strength and  the right person. Isn't going to try to limit you and hold you to 90 degrees or tell you, no, you shouldn't be doing  that. 

37:29

Jen Milner 

They're going to say, you want to lift your leg over your head. Okay. Let's figure out a way to give you the  strength to do it safely. Sure.  

37:36 

Linda Bluestein 

Can you wrap up by telling us where people can find you? Was there anything else that we didn't talk about that  you wanted to share with people today?  

37:47 

Jen Milner 

I think as far as things that I, that we didn't talk about yet, just overstretching is a complicated issue because it's  a decision made as a young dancer, as a professional dancer, you might feel like you're in an uncomfortable  position. When your school tells you to overstretch, you might feel pressure from competitions where judges  have made comments that you feel like you need to do more of that work. So I gathered it's a complicated  conversation. I'm not always the best person for that conversation because there's just limits that I'm not willing  to go past, to try to make you a more marketable dancer. I think it's good to have someone like that in your  corner. I know it can be complicated, and we're certainly not trying to vilify all the people who have done  overstretching. We just want to bring that in for more information so that people can make more informed  decisions and understand the inherent dangers and concerns behind doing a lot of passive overstretching like  that.  

38:50 

Jen Milner 

As far as where people can find me, you can go to my website, Jennifer-Milner.com. You can find me at bendy  bodies, of course, @bendy_bodies on Instagram. Or you can find me on Instagram at Jennifer.Milner.  

39:05 

Linda Bluestein 

Terrific. We will have links to all that on the show notes, as well as the links to the organizations that Jennifer  mentioned. So well. Great. Well, it's been fabulous to chat with you and you all have been listening to bendy  bodies with hypermobility MD. Today. We've been chatting with the co-founder of bendy bodies, Jennifer  Milner. It was great to chat with you.  

39:29 

Jen Milner 

And you too! 

39:37 

Linda Bluestein 

Bye. Bye. Thank you for joining us for this episode of bendy bodies, with the hypermobility MD, where we  explore the intersection of health and hypermobility for dancers and other aesthetic athletes. If you found this  information valuable, please share it with a colleague or friend and leave us a review on your favorite podcast  player. Remember to subscribe so you won't miss future episodes. If you want to follow us on Instagram, it's at  bendy underscore bodies and our website is www.bendybodies.org. If you want to follow bendy bodies,  founder, and co-host Dr. On Instagram, it's @hypermobilityMD, and her website is www.hypermobilitymd.com.  If you want to follow cohost, Jennifer Milner on Instagram, it's at Jennifer.milner. And her website is  www.jennifer-milner.com. Thank you for helping us spread the word about hypermobility and associated  conditions. We want to hear from you.  

40:43 

Linda Bluestein 

Please email us@infoatbendybodies.org to share feedback. The thoughts and opinions expressed on this podcast  are solely of the cohost and their guests. They do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of any  organization. The thoughts and opinions do not constitute medical advice and should not be used in any legal  capacity whatsoever. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease as this  information is for quality educational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please refer to your local qualified health practitioner for all medical concerns. We'll catch you next  time on the bendy bodies podcast.