Fitness for Functional Neurorecovery
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[00:01:39] Kate Grandbois: We're so excited for today's guest because we love talking to people - content experts - , who are going to teach us about things we know nothing about.
And this is one of those topics we're so excited to welcome. Jenna Muri-Rosenthal, welcome Jenna!.
[00:01:54] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Hi, thanks for having me
[00:01:56] Amy Wonkka: now, Jenna, you are here to discuss fitness for [00:02:00] recovery before we get started. Can you please tell us just a little bit about yourself?
[00:02:04] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Absolutely. So I'm a speech pathologist. I'm also a certified brain injury specialist.
I've worked in TBI and neuro recovery for a dozen years at this point. I worked at the brain injury unit. Adult neuro is really my thing. I'm also an adjunct professor at the MGH IHP where I teach the brain injury course and I guess lecture at Northeastern as well.
And in addition to all of my sort of speech and brain injury kind of passions, I'm also a certified level two CrossFit trainer and what we call an adaptive and inclusive trainer. And I coach at Invictus Boston, and I also have a program I'm the founder of called Fit to Function Recovery.
[00:02:46] Kate Grandbois: This whole question right off the bat there.
So as a fellow SLP, I enjoy exercise in my personal human life. How did you come to merge these two, [00:03:00] these two things, like what, what part of your journey led you into this, this area of nerd Ville? This is really interesting.
[00:03:07] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Thanks. And you know, that question very directly sort of answers the, how did Fit to Function come to be?
Which was that, you know, I had a lot of folks in my inpatient years in rehab and recovery. And then at MGH, I had a lot of folks who would kind of come back to me after they had left the rehab world and kind of said, insurance has run out, I'm looking to continue my therapy. I'm sort of at this place where I need a little bit more, can we continue speech therapy?
And that's how I sort of started acquiring private clients alongside that. I was, I got into CrossFit on my own as a former college athlete and just looking for something new and different. Started gaining interest in just like this is kind of for everyone. So many people can benefit. And along with seeing the clients I was seeing for their functional recovery in speech and language and getting them back to work, I thought, you know, the gym is a great place for a lot of these individuals, , [00:04:00] because people lose so much of their general sort of, , their endurance, their confidence. And I sort of thought, I bet a lot of these people could make their way in the gym. , and that's sort of how it got started.
[00:04:15] Kate Grandbois: Interesting. I mean, of all therapeutic environments, we talk a lot about the importance of different environments and communication on this show. I don't think we've talked about the gym one time, maybe like a PT room.
[00:04:28] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Yeah. And, and, you know, I think when we do co-treatments and things like that, we have always had that ability to see like, wow, I see how we can work on your memory here in the gym. I mean, I remember. My early days as a, a young SLP getting sent to the MSK unit, the musculoskeletal unit for the elderly individuals, who've broken their hip.
And I would sit in there and just drill with them the steps to using their Walker. Where do you put it? How do you stand? How do you transfer? And you would just do memory with that. And so that has functional carry over, right? It's teaching people how to move. [00:05:00] So it's not that different when you think there are ways that we need to move better, but we also need to remember how to do that.
And that's sort of where the blend came from. But for me, it was taking it a little bit beyond that, you know, you know, I use the tagline Fitness's for everybody and every body. , and I think that as folks are recovering from things like a stroke or a brain injury, they get to this point where they're, we have kind of says, oh, you're good enough.
You can walk. You know, they sometimes get discharged, being able to just walk. And what if, what if that's not good enough for you? What if you want to run?. What if you want to jump, what if you want to lift weights? , and it, it was seemingly off the table for a lot of individuals and I thought, how can we get people back into this environment?
[00:05:45] Kate Grandbois: Okay. I have like 70 more questions.
[00:05:47] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: I want to ask, take it away,
[00:05:49] Kate Grandbois: We need to go through the boring stuff first. So, so, , I need to read before I assault you with curiosity. Uh, hopefully it's not an assault. Hopefully it's a, a gentle [00:06:00] trickle of curiosity. I love curiosity. Oh, good. I'm really just on fire today here, I guess.
So I need, we need to read the learning objectives, , and disclosures. So some people do write in sometimes and say that, , this is boring and they want us to skip it. We can skip it. ASHA makes me read it. So hang in there. I'll get through it as quickly as I can. Learning objectives for the day. , learning objective, number one, describe the relationship between fitness, speech, language pathology, and brain injury, recovery learning. Objective, number two, describe the role of fitness and social engagement and community re-entry. After a brain injury learning objective number three, identify three movements and functional fitness and their real world application learning objective number four, describe three cognitive communication skills or domains and how they can be applied to treatment in the gym or fitness setting, financial and nonfinancial disclosures.
Jenna Muri-Rosenthal's financial disclosure as Jenna is the owner of fit to function, a program for brain injury survivors in the gym. She is also a certified level two CrossFit trainer,
[00:07:00] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal's nonfinancial disclosures. Jenna has no nonfinancial relationships to disclose Kate that's me financial disclosures. I'm the owner and founder of groundwater therapy and consultant LLC, and co-founder of SLP nerd cast my nonfinancial disclosures.
I'm a member of ASHA, SIG 12, and serve on the AAC advisory group for Massachusetts advocates for children. I'm also a member of the Berkshire association for behavior analysis and therapy MASSABA the association for behavior analysis international and the corresponding speech pathology and applied behavior analysis specialist.
All right,
[00:07:29] Amy Wonkka: Amy, that's me, uh, financial disclosures. I'm an employee of a public school system and co-founder of SLP nerd cast. And my non-financial disclosures are that I'm a member of ASHA, SIG 12, and I serve on the AAC advisory group from Massachusetts advocates, for children. All right. Onto the fun stuff onto the good stuff.
, Jenna, can you start off by talking to us a little bit about just what is the fitness and wellness continuum?
[00:07:54] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Yeah, absolutely. So when we think about health, right, , everyone [00:08:00] wants to feel well.So we think about the things that we can do to control. So eating well, sleeping well, doing activities that, , help maintain our general feeling of healthiness and our general wellness.
Right. And all of these things are great, but in reality, wellness is more than that. , if we think about our global health and wellness in terms of, so, so think of it like a, it's a savings account. Okay. , we want to continually deposit into that bank account so that it grows. And so that we have a little bit of a safety net.
So if I can, for example, lose some weight, , lower, my blood pressure starts sleeping eight hours a night. Maybe I take something, you know, take my vitamins, I'm filling my bank account and I'm starting to move the needle towards well, right. We don't want to be sick. We want to be well. But if we think about what truly opposes sickness, the opposite of sickness, isn't just wellness, it's fitness.
So if I'm healthy and well and fit and active, I've really fully loaded that bank. And that helps me [00:09:00] potentially battle illness.
[00:09:03] Kate Grandbois: Oh my God. I need to be well and fit now. I know my, my savings account is depleted. Okay. We need to focus because, because I think, I guess what I'm curious about, I mean, I had a million personal thoughts run through my head, but when you're talking about the field of speech pathology and the concept of wellness and the fitness and wellness continuum, where does speech pathology, like, how is that related to the field of speech and language?
[00:09:35] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: I mean, there are a couple of different ways, right? For one is that everyone, everyone, everyone can benefit from increased fitness. Right? We know that to be true, especially if we think about that sort of wellness continuum. , but if you think about, on a very simple level, like a brain injury survivor, , if we can improve their coordination and balance and the way that we move, we can , we can save off the potential for future injury, right?
Like people who suffer a brain injury are, are twice as likely to suffer a second [00:10:00] one, , often because either because of their impaired cognition and they use poor judgment or because they fall because they don't have good balance. , if we can improve, for example, your cardiovascular health, your fitness, can we help you promote, excuse me, prevent further strokes or brain injury or bleeds.
So when you think about what we do is speak to the biologists, we were treating the brain, but in order for the brain to be healthy, the body has to be healthy. And in a lot of ways, Interesting. I could say more, but I can see the questions on your face.
[00:10:31] Kate Grandbois: I know I'm like drilling you with my eyes. I have so much inquisitive look so .
But before you go on, I think it might be worth. Cause when you say the opposite of wellness, the true opposite of wellness is fitness. I imagine the true opposite
of sickness, the sickness,
sorry. The true opposite of sicknesses is fitness. I imagine like, uh, I want to say beefy, but that's not appropriate.
Like, you know, muscly sort of really trim 1% [00:11:00] body fat kind of situation, but that's not really what you're talking about. When you say fitness, you mean, I feel like the word function belongs in there somehow.
[00:11:09] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we can talk a lot about functional fitness, but you know, we talk about in, in CrossFit in particular, which is my brand of fitness, right?
And every brand that fitness sort of has their own ethos and their, their own structure. , we talk about general physical preparedness in CrossFit. So one of the things that we do is we want to make sure that you are trained kind of across a realm of things. And so that's weightlifting, but that's also going for a long run, but also going for a short sprint, but also doing gymnastics and having core coordination.
So it's a range of everything it's endurance and stability and coordination and balance and strength and all of those things. What that looks like on an individual varies from person to person. Absolutely. So to be fit, you don't have to have that sort of supermodel, you know, television painted version of, you're not going to use the word beefy.[00:12:00]
You could use beefy. You could, you know, you could, you know, it's, it's whatever, it's however you view it, but that's even some of those individuals just because their bodies look like that doesn't mean that they have all of the wellness right across the wellness continu. And one of the things that at least cross.
, likes to train for and, and, or against is we'd like you to be trained for it, like kind of prepared for anything. So you're, you're weightlifters who only weightlift. What if I asked them to go run a mile? How hard would that be for them? Pretty hard. Now, if I'm just a runner and you asked me to deadlift a few hundred pounds, that's also going to be very hard.
So the idea is that by like a better sort of range of, , preparedness, your, your cardiovascular health is better, your strength is better. Your poor coordination is better. Your bone density is better. You know, the list goes on and on
[00:12:50] Kate Grandbois: and on. Is it fair
[00:12:51] Amy Wonkka: to say you're better off being pretty good at a lot of things then really good at just one thing?
[00:12:57] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Yes, absolutely. All
[00:12:59] Kate Grandbois: right. I'm getting the [00:13:00] picture. And at the intersection of all of these things, when we talk about the field of speech and language pathology in this fitness continuum, you're really, and there is this emphasis on. An overall function and wellness for brain health, for cognitive function for living your daily activities, walking from your couch.
I was about to say, walking from your couch to the fridge, that's how fit I am. You know, walking, walking ad to get the mail, you know, functional activities of daily living is really what you're, what you're talking about.
[00:13:33] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, quite simply as a treating clinician, no matter, I feel like no matter which domain you're in, you want your clients or your survivors to be well.
And if possible, you want them to be better than you. So recovery is hard work and we know that, , and in addition to wanting better life and recovery, we also know how hard it is to function. , if how hard it is for good to have good brain function when [00:14:00] you're not, well, if you're not taking care of yourself, if you're not sleeping well, if you're not eating well, we all know the experience of increased like word, finding difficulties, even if you've never had a brain injury under fatigue or under duress.
, so if we're encouraging our clients to be, to be, well, why not take that a step further to be fit to also help foster better brain health, right. And what might the potential be with that? What can we do with our brains? And of course, with our bodies by just kind of pushing that, that needle along that wellness continuum towards it.
[00:14:29] Amy Wonkka: I think it's so interesting. We talk a lot, Kate, Kate and I work in AAC and we talk a lot on this podcast about thinking about the whole person in terms of all of their different communication environments and all of their different communication partners. And to me, this feels like an extension of that.
And you're thinking about the whole person in terms of like all of their body systems and all of the different ways that you want everything to be sort of optimized so that, you know, you're, you're maximizing your speech and language, , outcomes and ability to be functional and independent with those
[00:14:59] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: skills.[00:15:00]
Yeah. That, that has a lot to do with it. And that's so let me, I'll backtrack a little bit and talk about what exactly functional fitness means. Cause that sort of speaks to exactly, you know, exactly what you're talking about. Right? So like I said before, any fitness routine is defined by the movements that prioritize it.
So functional movements are in CrossFit. It's what we consider natural. Meaning it's a movement pattern that's using real life, not just. Okay. So these are movements that are sort of found everywhere. They're embedded into human behavior and they occur spontaneously in response to your life. So for example, getting up off the couch, out of a chair or on and off the toilet, what is that?
It's a squat. Okay. Yeah. So it's a squat
[00:15:41] Kate Grandbois: for thought about this book,
[00:15:42] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: right? Right. Lewis goes on and on. Right. So picking up groceries from the floor, sag publishers, that's deadlifts. Exactly. , if you have to pick up like a heavy, like a big jug from the floor or a bag of dog, food needs to like, get it up on the table.
That's something we call a power clean [00:16:00] where you actually lean down, you braced views, hip drive lifted up and you voiced it up. So you don't hurt yourself. Right. And then something like putting something up on a shelf, you have to have shoulder health and shoulder strength to push something and get it up high.
Right. And my favorite example is what is a burpee? It's getting up off the ground. If you've. Right. Very simply put it is a functional movement. We put it into workouts to make people suffer, but for any individual, regardless of age or ability, we all end up on the floor sometimes. And if we can train you to be able to get there safely and, or get out of it safely, then we're doing you a good amount of service.
[00:16:38] Kate Grandbois: So, I mean, now I'm thinking about this. I'm like, well, I need to join CrossFit, obviously, but, but aside from that completely, I'm thinking about the SLPs who are listening and could be working in a school or could be working in, you know, an outpatient facility. How does this, how does this, you know, touch our scope of competence, right?
Because you're talking, I mean, you are how you [00:17:00] have this, you know, area of expertise with a separate set of credentials that you have, but, you know, is this really, because this, it seems to make a lot of sense in terms of what Amy was saying with supporting the whole person and supporting their, their whole wellness and, you know, moving that needle to fitness, but w as an S and there's obviously, you know, a lot that we can talk about in terms of working on.
What is within the scope of practice of a speech pathologist in a gym. And I do want to get to that, but where does this touch our competence? And what is the role of a collaborative practice in terms of like reaching out to your PT and really having, because I feel like we, as a speech pathologist, we collaborate with OTs a lot, but I don't know that I've collaborated with PTs officially.
So I feel like this is really a collaborative relationship. That's
[00:17:44] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: underexplored maybe. Yeah, absolutely. And so think about it like this, right? So let's let me, you know, we are an SLP nerd cast. So let me nerd out for you a little bit about great. And then we can talk about how that kind of fits into anyone's scope.
So like I said, for anyone can [00:18:00] benefit from fitness, right? But there's also, there's a lot of research out there about fitness and mental health. There's a growing body of evidence. That's not quite as deep as those with mental health, but about cognition and fitness. So we know that on a very simple level, that when we work out, our neuro-transmitters are firing right.
And all kinds of positive ways. So our, you know, our senses are heightened. Our mood is improved, our focus is better. We're motivated more invigorated, right? So those are some of the things that we know sort of fitness, , primes our state of mind, we know that from the mental health literature, add to that though, that this new body of evidence that talks about really how, , exercise directly influences learning at the cellular level.
So there are studies that show, , that exercise can improve the brain's potential for new learning. , studies really particularly have shown like total nerd moment that, uh, BDNF, which is brain drive neurotrophic factor. , [00:19:00] it's a molecule involved in plastic changes related to new learning and memory, right?
So neuro-plasticity specifically in the hippocampus, which is responsible for new learning are activated through fitness. So through fitness in a lot of ways, we're priming the brain to learn. So now to tie that back into, how does this fit into your scope? It could be at the most simple level, you're sitting in your outplay patient room with your fine, and you go for a walk, can you do some air squats?
You do some pushups, you get those neurotransmitters firing, you get the endorphins rushing. , and the brain does its thing. And so we carry that into the gym, but it doesn't have to be in the gym. Moving helps us perform better.
[00:19:40] Kate Grandbois: I am so sorry to every PT. I have never worked with listening to that because that makes so much sense.
And I asked, I feel like, you know, there's probably a lot of room for collaboration when you are working with someone who may be. Has some safety issues around like air squats and all those kinds of things, you know, like I, [00:20:00] but it also speaks to all of the things that we have seen in our great collaborations with, with OTs and movement in terms of, you know, playing games, running outside, being on the playground.
I mean, that, that duh, like that makes, that makes sense.
[00:20:15] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: A lot of sense. Right. You know, and I can say, so I have this certification, right? I'm an adaptive and inclusive trainer. Anybody can get that certification. It's a one day course. And it's with a bunch of really cool adaptive athletes who show you how to adapt fitness for anything.
And the individuals that have come to the forest, I've taken it twice because I'm a nerd. , and then my place, uh, you know, there were folks there who are working with all ages, some with kids, so much children on autism, spectrum, some with down syndrome and they show you, how do you modify fitness on the simplest level for all levels?
And so one of the examples they did, they were trying to, they were showing for, they call it their intellectual disability sort of training, , [00:21:00] doing so for a kiddo on the spectrum with, uh, some visual and hearing impairments. How do you make burpees? So you do them in synchro. So we look at each other, we go down to the ground and then we high five double high five, and then we stand up and then we high five at the top of my head.
It's a social interaction too. Exactly, exactly. And so there are all these ways that you can adapt to the most simple of fitness without needing to have some sort of other fitness certification. CrossFit is my brand of fitness, but the adaptive component just helps me adapt and include in the CrossFit model.
But you could do that with, with any kind of thing.
[00:21:36] Kate Grandbois: So we're going to put a link to that in our show notes, I'm going to find it. And you're, I'm going to ask you to give it to me and we will put it in our show notes because I think that seems like a really wonderful low barrier, you know, easy entry point complimentary skill set too.
I mean, if, if not, if what you're saying is true, I know what you're telling me is true cited literature, but you know, that [00:22:00] relationship between neurology and learning potential and movement is, is something that I think would be really, really critical to include in our therapy sessions. Yeah. And possible, and done safely, please.
Don't like the giant disclaimer.
[00:22:17] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Yes. I should have done more disclaimers for fitness. , yeah, but you know, I think so I work primarily with adults. Those are, those are my people. I did work in the schools for a little while, but, , you know, I think there are so many different ways to modify, adapt and include.
So for this, in this example, working with the children, the, the, that they were giving for children, one of the things they did was they made pictures. They made visual schedules. They had various fun ways to count the number of repetitions. So there are all these ways of the things that we do in speech.
Now you're taking something that potentially is very motivating, , to a child because it's a game and they're in the gym and they're in this new environment and you're finding ways to apply your speech, your [00:23:00] communication, your social interaction, all of the goal, whatever goals you're targeting now for if I can kind of go on a little bit, the way I think about it with adults, I use all of those principles that I was just talking about as I nerded out a little bit to prime for language and cognitive learning within the gym.
So for example, I might ask you to do five rounds of five pushups, 10 air squats, 15. So I'm going to have him do a round of that. And then I'm going to pause for a minute and I'm going to drill you on language, whatever your goal is, it might be naming. It might be describing, it might be something more related to short-term memory.
And then we're going to do another round of that. You're going to work out a little bit of prime your brain, and then sounds was intense.
[00:23:42] Kate Grandbois: I was going to say
[00:23:44] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: it's intense, but what is really cool and it, you know, it doesn't always work. Just like everything we do it doesn't sometimes it's too much, sometimes it's overstimulating.
But what tends to happen is all of those mood type things that I talked about. So now your adrenaline is [00:24:00] pumping. You're happy. You're invigorated. Your fitness is flowing. You're a little salt, little less. Self-conscious potentially about dripping
[00:24:06] Kate Grandbois: sweat and grimacing in front of someone and making moaning noises.
I do burpees. I know that's, they're tough. They're hard.
[00:24:14] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Right. But, you know, and, and people kind of like, they just come and they just fire away and they do their drills and I'm like, all right, go work out. And then they do the next round and then they come back and we do a little bit more. And then. Ways that we're using how the body helps the brain to help the brain help the brain.
It's an interesting,
[00:24:31] Amy Wonkka: like social construct too, to think about that though, because when you're at the gym, you're sort of accustomed to like, oh, I'm going to do this kind of hard stuff because that's what I do here. And so that's interesting too, to kind of take an overlay, the speech and language tasks on top of that.
Cause often, you know, when you're in just a speech therapy room, you're, you're not necessarily in that mindset. You're serving I'm here. I'm talking to this lady and she we're gonna have a conversation about stuff we're working on things, but it's not the same. I don't know, I guess [00:25:00] at least in my sessions, it hasn't been kind of that same vibe that same, like Jim, you're trying hard, you're striving toward things, just kind of feeling going into this space.
, so that's really interesting too. Yeah. And,
[00:25:11] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: and I also think right. All of us in our practice, we try really hard not to make what we're doing boring. Like we try not, there's always that way where you're trying to kind of like sneak in a task where they don't know that they're doing a task. Like I always ask my clients like, what'd you do.
And I'm definitely testing their memory and their language, but they don't need to know that that's the easy example. But within the gym, I asked them to name objects. I asked them to remember things like, oh, what did we just do over there? Oh, what comes next? You know, oh, do you remember what this piece of equipment is?
And you sort of start to embed that in, you introduce them to people in the gym and they have to remember names. And, you know, we, we bridge that sometimes into, , fitness logs. So they have to like talk about what they did that day when they got home and you know, all these kinds of ways to just naturally, you know, I always say about one of the coolest things about treating cognition in languages that it's everywhere and it's in everything we do.[00:26:00]
So you can just kind of have a conversation and at the same time be working on the things you want to work on. But in
[00:26:05] Amy Wonkka: your example, it's much more contextual. Right. Like, like that is, that is so much more real use of the scale then, you know, doing some flashcards or even if you try and come up with a nice engaging activity that doesn't feel as dry as flashcards.
Like it's still not quite as functional as, oh, I, I literally just have to remember these exercises because that's what I'm doing right now. And so it's super relevant to my actual
[00:26:26] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: what I'm doing. Yeah. And one of the jokes with, I, you know, I have a lot of language clients where they're just learning to count again, not learning, learning is the wrong word, but counting and using automatics is one of the ways that they're getting back to.
, and also, you know, you're going to do eight of these and they either forget, or they just keep counting or they just keep doing it. I always joke while you're just going to get more fitness, because if you don't know, if you don't get the counting down that you did 14 reps, but for you
[00:26:54] Kate Grandbois: funny, I also feel like I keep thinking about how this is just a wonderful opportunity for [00:27:00] generalization and how as SLPs, you know, working in our sterile white rooms or in our speech rooms, or even in, , you know, it's, it's often difficult for us to think of or suggest or accommodate for generalization opportunities.
And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about, , I mean, as I'm an AAC person, so I'm thinking about visual supports, like, do you have additional visual supports in your, in the gym? Like what kind of accommodations do you often see in the gym? Because I think that's just a great example of accommodations you can make in other places, like in, in the home, because this is all related to functional tasks.
[00:27:42] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Yeah. I mean, I often often talk about it. The, the ways that we modify and adapt and scaffolds to make it easier for folks then become the, the, the treatment and the things that we're handing over them to be independent from an [00:28:00] independent perspective. So like counting, right? When you first come to the gym, I'm going to count your reps for you.
But eventually you're going to count. We're going to kind of use that sort of staff where I'm helping you do something. Eventually you're doing it on your own. And I, you know, we always say that anything kind of going back to, , my sort of fitness is for everybody and every body we can modify anything, no matter how you need it.
So you need a visual schedule. We'll make it. You need me to write it down for you. We'll do that. Sometimes we use posters. To count reps. So you have something that you tackle that you can use. , sometimes we take pictures and videos and put them into a little booklet to take home to help you talk about it later.
I'm not sure if that answers your question, but
[00:28:39] Kate Grandbois: no, it does. And I think that there, I I'm just imagining, you know, the other generalization opportunities that presents itself. So if they have practice counting poker chips, then maybe they need, they can use that strategy to facilitate remembering counting when they're looking at a recipe and it's three tablespoons of butter.
Obviously [00:29:00] this fitness conversation is making me think about really delicious.
[00:29:03] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Obviously we'll actually say here's that here's a, now that you said as a perfect example. So one of the first, one of the first clients that I brought into the gym, who, you know how those first clients are, they just stay with.
He one of them moments that was like such a big aha moment was he had had a massive, , uh, intraparenchymal hemorrhage. , and he globally aphasic, wasn't speaking, you know, couldn't speak, couldn't eat, couldn't walk. All of those things in the early phases of his recovery. By the time I got to him, we were doing some language stuff.
And after a few weeks in the gym, his wife said to me, he helped unload the groceries and it was for her enormous. He took the initiative to go pick up the bag to bring it into the kitchen, to take out the items and put them away.
Now it was that because of the fitness. I don't know, but I like to think so. I like to think that it coming in and moving better and it gives you a little bit of sense of [00:30:00] confidence and ownership to be like, I can participate. In my life, because I can do all these things. I'm going out into the world and go into the gym and picking stuff up, putting it back down again.
I can do that.
[00:30:12] Kate Grandbois: I love the intersection of the cognitive approach of planning, , you know, processing and the physical interaction, because I think so often we're speech pathologists to be done language, but we think of receptive and expressive language, but there are so many integrative components of language that lend themselves to these non-verbal planning tasks that are so relevant and important to our daily lives and have a such a positive, , that's a great story.
I mean, it has such a positive impact on our communication partners on our environments, on our lives, like across
[00:30:46] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: the board. Right. And, and one of the things that like I do for my clients. I, I work towards them, scheduling their own sessions, getting to, and from the gym, you know, be it an Uber, the T finding their way and then like [00:31:00] paying for their sessions and navigating all of that in such a big, it's a small thing, but it's a big thing.
, when suddenly the significant other or the parent doesn't have to be the point person for everything. And so that's also one of the ways that I like to think that there's better carry over because you're now leaving your home to come to this place, to do this thing. So my independently, you're going to get here and back and you're gonna be in charge of the whole, the whole thing of it.
That's
[00:31:25] Kate Grandbois: huge.
[00:31:25] Amy Wonkka: All of those components are huge. And all of those things that you just talked about are things that are then opportunities to repeat those same things in other parts of their life. Right? If you can get to the gym, then where else can you get to, if you can pay for your session, what else can you pay for?
You know, if you can plan your ride here, where else can you plan a ride to? I mean, that's, that's, that's a huge, that's, that's gotta be so huge and impactful for people.
[00:31:51] Kate Grandbois: I also feel like that's something that you can do, even if you don't, I'm just thinking of all the SLPs listening who may not have access to a gym and may not be with their, with [00:32:00] their patients or their clients in a gym, but how all of these things can be functionally applicable across the board.
, and, and how important that is and how social I love the social component of this. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit.
[00:32:16] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Yeah. , you know, I, when I talk to people about sort of my practice, that's one of the things I say is that brain injury is so isolated. , because people will always talk about how they have all the support upfront and they're in the hospital or in rehab, they get home.
And then slowly that support started starts to, to drift the drift away and people lose their work. So they lose their, their kind of work community. Oftentimes they lose their, their general social network because they can't engage the way that they used to. , and one of the things I liked so much about the idea of bringing people into the gym is that it gives them a place to be in a sense of community and CrossFit is very community focused.
, and so I've sort of. My hope for most [00:33:00] clients is that they, while they're adapting the fitness a lot, they need, they may need some one-on-one support, but that eventually they join a gym. So if you've never stepped foot inside a CrossFit gym, and I promise I'm not just selling, selling the listeners on CrossFit, but most people will tell you, like, it's a cult.
Like we all love what we
[00:33:15] Kate Grandbois: do. Okay. It was done. I was, I did want to ask you about that.
[00:33:18] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: You can, you can
[00:33:20] Kate Grandbois: we'll we'll table that for a
[00:33:22] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: second. Give you this example. So this, so say that workout that I said before, so you can do five, five pushups and you know, 10 air squats and 15 setups. And you're going to work for 15 minutes.
Everybody in the room is doing the same thing. Maybe with a little bit of an adaptation, like you, I might need to do my pushups, like elevated to a box. If I'm not that strong, some people might need to squat to a box if they can't get to kind of just squat and free space, but we're all doing the same thing and what will happen in any CrossFit gym.
Everybody is cheering everybody else on. So in that example, we're all working for 50 minutes, but say, I said, you're going to do six rounds for time of [00:34:00] that. Someone's going to finish in six minutes and someone's going to finish as wealth. And you better believe that every single person in the room is cheering on those individuals until they get to the finish.
And that's sort of part of what CrossFit is. And so the idea with this was that I want these individuals to find community. My father does CrossFit. He's 72. He refers to it as a brotherhood of suffering. Right. But the idea that we're kind of like we're all in this together applies no matter what your scale or modification is.
So that is, you know, for these individuals who are, , a little bit more isolated, that's the hope. And even in my practice, I have all these clients who don't know each other, but they very much support each other. I had a client come in and do a competition. And my one, two of my clients helped on zoom. So they could watch her do the competition.
It forms community because again, there's that sort of shared stuff.
[00:34:52] Amy Wonkka: I just feel like it's, I'm getting so excited about it. I'm just having so many feelings, just like nice feelings, picturing what this looks like and what this feels like for [00:35:00] everybody who's participating, whether through your clients or, or other folks just at the gym.
, and I do, I think that that's social component, you know, we, that's another big back to Kate scope of competence, you know, point earlier, we, we do work on social pragmatics. That is a big piece of what we're doing. And I'm sure that that is an area of focus for some of your clients as well. That's probably part of what they're working, they're working on the memory, they're working on cognition, but probably also some of that pragmatic stuff and having those relationships.
[00:35:32] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Yeah. There's definitely the pragmatic aspect. And also for some individual individuals. Having the confidence to use their language skills again, especially adults. , you know, if you've suffered, you have now severe aphasia and you're like, I can't talk to anybody, even for people who are getting much better having that, the opportunity, right.
Cause you go home and you just talk to your sneeze and other and your therapists. So that kind of novelty effect as well is really good.
[00:35:58] Kate Grandbois: For sure. And I love the [00:36:00] point you made about how isolating brain injury is and how important community is. And I mean, I know the CrossFit is the example that we're using a lot, but there are fitness communities everywhere there.
I view when my daughter was born, I went to the gym all the time. I'm being totally honest. I put her in the daycare and then I sat in the, I was in grad school for the second time. And I was, I was, did a lot of studying in the gym waiting room I exercise to do, but there were, there were groups of women who would sit and have coffee every Thursday at 10 o'clock before they went into their aerobics class.
And they, they were like, they gossiped about all the other people in the aerobics class. I mean, they were a community of people. I don't often think about the social and community important component of, , re-entry into the community. I guess once someone is discharged out of your office and how you really, I mean, as an adult, it's really hard to make friends.
[00:37:00] Sometimes it's brilliant. There is no, like, you know, you could join a community theater. I mean, there's not a lot of choices, but unless
[00:37:07] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: it
[00:37:09] Kate Grandbois: right, and fitness is a huge industry. So there are so many opportunities. There's CrossFit, there's, there's Pilates classes. There's huge gyms with yoga. Exactly. So I love the idea of using fitness as a bridge to community re-entry to generalize all of these skills.
It's just, it's
[00:37:29] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: awesome. Right. And I, and I think what's cool too, you know, uh, I've spoken at a bunch of support groups and. One of the neat things. Neat. One of the few good things to come out of COVID is the ability to connect people via zoom. And the fitness industry in particular has really found ways to, to continue and to bring people together.
And so you can do yoga on zoom and CrossFit and all kinds of fitness, uh, entities that are an opportunity for community, for people who maybe don't leave their [00:38:00] homes.
[00:38:00] Amy Wonkka: Yeah. I think that's such a great point. And I heard you mentioned earlier that you had two clients who were there by zoom just to cheer your other client on.
And I think that, that is, I agree with you. I mean, silver linings of COVID I suppose, but like, we, we have become a lot more comfortable with some of these modalities that really help break down some of those barriers for people.
[00:38:18] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I spoke at the stroke support group at Spalding and they were saying how, you know, as soon as COVID hits there, This is it like, what are we going to do for our support groups?
And their support group is stronger than ever. They had almost 30 people there, the day that I was on. And they said they would have never had that kind of turnout in person. So it's just a really cool that, you know, this opens the door and it enables us to reach more clients in general and to help connect clients together.
I just connected one of my stroke survivors here with one of my stroke survivors in Germany, because they're about the same age and they're going through the same thing. I wonder
[00:38:54] Kate Grandbois: if you have ever, and maybe this is a little off topic, but I know you mentioned [00:39:00] earlier, the relationship between fitness and mood, and I have to make some assumptions here.
The isolation re-entry into the community, some risk factors for depression or anxiety. , do you find yourself as a speech pathologist or do you think it's within our scope as speech pathologists to really look at those risk factors through a communicative lens and, you know, embracing components like mindfulness, for example, in a routine or as part of the cognitive, you know, addressing cognitive deficits?
Yeah, I, I, yeah,
[00:39:40] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: absolutely. I, you know, I tell people all the time that like, so I worked, there was a physician who I used to work with . He used to say that the brain is the final frontier of medicine. And, and I love that. And I always tell people, like I work with the brain, so I work with all of it.
How do we [00:40:00] separate? What is mood versus cognition? How do you know what is memory or attention versus like something else is going on with this individual? Maybe they're fascinated that this neighbor that, that said within our scope, I think it's our job to connect the dots at a minimum. , and, and, and to sometimes being the communication experts, we are the only people who can really see that connection.
, because we're reading between the lines of language, because we're reading between the lines of what the person may be able to express or even remember. And so I think. I do think it fits within our realm to say like, we've got to find other ways to kind of help support this individual's mood food in particular.
And I think a lot of people, like I was saying, once they've left the rehab setting and they're not really in a clinic and they're not, they don't have close followup. Nobody's really quarterbacking care for them anymore. And so if you're the significant other of a stroke survivor and he's kind of feeling down, you kind of just [00:41:00] feel like, well, I, yeah, of course he feels down.
He'd had a stroke and he can't communicate as well anymore, but there are actually changes happening in the brain that medication may play a role for. And I feel like that fits within our scope because we're the experts that can at least connect people back to the services. Even if we don't make a blanket recommendation, we can say you should probably talk to your physician about X, Y, and Z.
Cause I don't think people are able to parse through all that.
[00:41:25] Kate Grandbois: You know, what else this is making me think about is the, the importance of, I know you mentioned this briefly support groups and we interviewed, , Dr. David Luterman about six months ago. , and, uh, with, uh, we did an episode on counseling and the importance of counseling and how counseling and forming support groups is completely within our scope as SLPs.
And we don't really embrace that as part of our workplace environments and workplace norms. And we think of them as like social skills groups, but that's different support group [00:42:00] is different than, you know, than a, a therapeutic group with, you know, has a different focus. , and I love the concept of these, you know, blending a little bit of all of this.
So you've got this community of individuals who are supporting each other. , you've got the component of fitness, which is priming the brain for learning, improving mood. This really seems like. You're just, it's just like, you're just hitting all the, all the points with these, with these fitness groups giant,
[00:42:32] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: I'm trying.
And, and, you know, I do think I almost, all of my clients say the same thing, that support groups aren't for them. , I think people struggle with seeing themselves in others. , they often show up to a support group and they're like, oh, they're way worse than me. Or everybody's older. I hear that all the time.
Everybody's old, too old. They think of stroke. You know, like a stroke support group is everybody being 70 plus. [00:43:00] And they're too old. I have a 56 year old client who said that to me. I went to one of those stroke groups and everybody was too old. And I think helping people connect. Is more than just saying, Hey, go to that group.
It's supporting them through other ways, through other things that they have in common, potentially, other than just their Schroep, , helping to find interest to connect clients, helping people just find the community, wherever that may be, because they need, they need the support in whatever way they find it.
But I think there's a stigma, unfortunately, attached to just going through a support group. Well, that's
[00:43:32] Kate Grandbois: what I was just about to say. So if you are, you know, as an SLP listening, making recommendations to find that community through a fitness group, Pilates, yoga, CrossFit, whatever, you're removing that barrier of the stigma.
Yeah. I mean, you're really just like cutting through the, you know, and finding peers, you know, people the same age, people who have the same interests, just being out in the community. I mean, there's a lot of benefit to them.
[00:43:56] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Yeah. And I think that's what is lacking for survivors. [00:44:00] Like said they come, they come home now from rehab and they don't, they don't work and they can't socialize like they used to, and they don't know what to do with themselves.
And so whatever kinds of things we can be encouraging people to do, and it doesn't just have to be other stroke survivors, you know, it can be, or, or people with the same type of experiences you it's, it's about also piquing their personal interests. Who were you before this, your injury. And how do we get you back to that person?
Did you love book groups? Okay. I don't care if you can't read anymore. Come to my book group, sit here and listen, you know, did you love cooking? Can we tend to do a cooking class? It doesn't really matter what it is, but I do think there is, there's a lack in connectivity for people. We don't know how to get them to what they need and what they need is to find a way back to feeling like themselves.
[00:44:47] Kate Grandbois: Yes, they do. I love the way that you just phrase that. I mean, that seems like it's such a critical piece of ethics and integrity. Yeah, it should be a cornerstone of what we're doing. [00:45:00] Right.
[00:45:00] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: You know, and I, and I think that people are individuals very much are delivered the message and rehab that they're good enough and people want to be better than good enough.
And they deserve to be. , and so how can we help them do that? How, and it's even things like, you know, so many individuals with any level of cognitive or language disorder after an injury, they don't work because maybe they can't do the job that they used to do. But that doesn't mean they can't work.
Right. There are things, there are jobs out there that could get them doing something, finding community, finding interests, finding passion, but they just don't people. A lot of people don't take that initiative because it's, it's hard to pull yourself out of your injured self, because most people are looking to get back to a hundred percent of what they were before their injury.
And often until they feel like that's where they are, they're not going to move forward. Well, it's our job. As, as speech pathologists to say, like, there are ways you can exist out there in the world. I
[00:45:58] Kate Grandbois: mean, I very inspired. [00:46:00] I
[00:46:01] Amy Wonkka: feel like you have made so many good points about. Helping connect people and whether that's helping connect people with, you know, the appropriate referral, like if, if perhaps maybe medication would help, we don't know, we're not, uh, you know, a prescriber, but you can make that referral.
If it's connecting people to a social experience, maybe that's exercise, maybe that's a Booker bird cooking class or all of those great things that, you know, you, you listed off. , but I think, I think that piece is really important. And I think that. I, I sometimes go off a little bit and get grouchy about like our, our medical system here in this country and how hard it is to get reimbursed for services and all that for that I know, but, but
[00:46:49] Kate Grandbois: you, I support you.
I didn't mean for that to sound condescending.
[00:46:53] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: That's how I ended up with this practice, but carry on. No, we'll do it. We'll
[00:46:56] Amy Wonkka: just to say, like, if you do find yourself, whether you find yourself, you [00:47:00] know, in, in a private practice role where you're maybe able to be a bit more fluid in kind of making some of those connections and having a little flexibility, but you know, as I've listened to you speaking, even being someone who who's in primarily school-based environments, you know, we could be making more connections within those environments probably than we already are as well.
You know, I mean, if you're a speech pathologist working in a public school, your kid is probably also needing to follow directions in gym class and follow directions in art class. And have you ever been to gym class or art class to even see. If, if those are interest areas or if there's like a nice, fun, different way, you could work on those same skills.
I think some of those same ideas that you've been talking about that are so incredibly cool with your population are, are also really broadly applicable if
[00:47:46] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: you like zoom out a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And that's my premise as a treating clinician has always been what is functional for you, right? What matters to you?
One of my private clients, one of the first private clients I've brought into the gym before we even did that. [00:48:00] She was a PE teacher and she had a severe aphasia and she wanted to go back to work. And so we had one of her coworkers take pictures of all the things, all the games and the toys and the things in the PE closet.
And we practiced naming those. Right. I can show you a book of standard aphasia therapy type things, but you want to name this weird little scooter, which by the way, I was like, I don't know what that's called, but we'll work with it. , but you know, it's, it's, it's gotta be functional for the individual to be motivating and that's true across age.
I heard
[00:48:28] Amy Wonkka: you talking. I have to, I have to say an apology to all the physical education teachers out there. I was raised in the eighties. I call it gym. I know it's wrong. Physical education.
[00:48:35] Kate Grandbois: Sorry. Oh, we don't call it gym anymore.
[00:48:39] Amy Wonkka: Physical education. It was always gym class for me too. And obviously old habits die hard anyway.
[00:48:45] Kate Grandbois: And I learned in the eighties, turned out it was all trash, but we're not going to talk about that because that's a whole other, but anyways, , I, I wonder if I'm going to refocus here, , in terms [00:49:00] of, so we've, we've covered a lot of really important concepts through this conversation in terms of, you know, the role of the role of fitness, the role of exercise, the role of, you know, we've covered a lot of things.
So we, we, I, , I have a question. I mentioned this question earlier in the episode, and I said, we were going to shelf it, shelve it. We were going to put it to the side CrossFit. We've talked a lot about fitness in general. CrossFit is your, as you've said, your brand of fitness, I have this and I enjoy fitness.
I enjoy exercising and I have heard extreme views of CrossFit. I have heard it's the most amazing thing on the earth. And then I have heard it's. Cause you mentioned that those were your words, not mine. So can you, for those of, for people who are listening and really appreciating the community aspect that you've described of CrossFit and are thinking about maybe making referrals for their existing clients or patients to CrossFit, what [00:50:00] can you tell us about the CrossFit culture or environment pluses
[00:50:06] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: and minuses?
Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm glad you brought that up because I think that like, look, CrossFit gets a bad rap. Like we, we know that, , it's viewed as like, whoa, crazy. What are those crazy people doing? , and in my neighborhood, people always say like, I see people running up and down the street, like carrying plates, like plates and dumbbells and kettlebells while they run, like, what's up with that.
You people are crazy right now. But if you take, dial back to what I said before, about things that are functional, sometimes we have to carry heavy things. Sometimes we have to like run across the street, like with a toddler or a baby under our arm. Right? Like you do things where you carry things. So that's the application.
You know, like I said, a fitness routine is defined by the movements that it chooses to prioritize and CrossFit prioritizes functional movements. So what. The world sees is maybe what the elite athletes are doing. So if you tuned into a CrossFit competition, you'd be like, I'm sorry,
[00:50:58] Amy Wonkka: there's a big tires or [00:51:00] ropes.
This is what I think of.
[00:51:01] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Yeah. Legless rope climbs. They're doing 600 pound deadlift. They're doing things that like your average individual doesn't do, which is what elite athletics are. And CrossFit is an elite sport. There. It has an aspect to it that's a week, but really what CrossFit is, you know, if you define it, take it a step further, define it by its three elements.
It's constantly. Movements that are functional executed at a high intensity. We talked about this a little bit before where we talk about general physical preparedness CrossFit talks a lot about preparing you for the unknown than the unknowable. So we take all of those functional movements. We vary the stimuli and we make sure that you're kind of ready for anything is sort of the ethos behind it.
So, you know, there are benefits embedded within that very nature of the workouts and those variations on load intensity duration, et cetera. So that looks wild to the outside individual. But if I can take it back to like an adaptive kind of thought process, so a ring muscle up is one of the hardest [00:52:00] movements, and it's something that as I'm going to try to describe it to you.
So something that gymnasts do so you hold the rings, the two rings hanging from the ceiling. You pull yourself up sort of in a poem and you kind of pull yourself through the middle, into a, into a ring dip. So you're pressing, so you're kind of pulling yourself up and. The rinks. Does that make
[00:52:20] Kate Grandbois: sense? A little bit glaring at you because that's physically impossible.
It's very, very hard.
[00:52:25] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Now that is one of those movements that you look at and you're like, that's not my brand. I'm never going to be able to do that. Now this adaptive course that I talked about, one of the things that they talk about for our seated athletes. So our wheelchair dependent level level athletes, if they can do a ring muscle up from a seated position, there's not a fall or a situation they can't get out of because what is it it's just pulling themselves up, leaning their body over and pushing their body into position.
So you can take that view of, wow, that's crazy. And cult-like and why would I ever need to do that? [00:53:00] But everything we do in CrossFit, you can strip it down to its functional nature.
[00:53:05] Kate Grandbois: Interesting. Yeah. Can I ask you one more question about CrossFit that I have a rumor that I heard and you can prove it or disprove it?
I have heard a rumor that it's unsafe.
[00:53:18] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: So I always tell people this about CrossFit. There are two reasons that people get hurt in CrossFit. One is ego. Two is bad coaching, which just like any other profession. There are people out there who don't take their job as seriously as they should, but in any CrossFit gym, it is among the most safe.
If you come in, you check your ego at the door, you learn the things you're supposed to do, and you follow the coach's instruction, just like in any other sport or any other exercise class, any other exercise class, right? You have to, you have to leave your ego at the door. And if the coach says, Hey, maybe that's too heavy for you today.
You have to be able to accept that. And the coaches job when they teach us to coach, the first thing that we're taught is.
[00:53:57] Kate Grandbois: That makes sense. I mean it's yeah, [00:54:00] but see, people
[00:54:01] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: get hurt, right? Like most of the people that I know who I work out with, they got hurt outside of the gym because they like turned an ankle on a rock.
You know, like these things happen, blew my knee out, walking
[00:54:10] Kate Grandbois: like three weeks. Amy did too. One time I'm going to, I'm going to blow up your spot. So people, people, people do get hurt. Okay. Well, so thank you for clearing that up. And I, I think, you know, I think there is something there is, like we had already mentioned earlier in the episode, it's hard to make friends as an adult.
If you don't have a job to go to. I mean, I think of a friend of mine recently had to move to a new city with her spouse. And she was so concerned that she wasn't going to meet anyone. She was a full-time stay-at-home mom. How do you get out there? You need to, if you don't make friends at a job, if you don't make friends in the class, how do you, how do you establish a community in a new place?
, and if we're identifying that reentering a community after a brain injury is very isolated. [00:55:00] I love the idea of using the fitness industry to establish that. And if there is a safe and non cult-like, now that you've cleared up those things, fitness community, , that really has a fundamental principle of a state of having community embedded in it.
That's, that's really wonderful because I know a lot of exercise classes, you know, you walk in and you're just like, well, stop staring at me. You know, I'm not going to talk to anybody. I'm just going to look at the floor and sit my water bottle in my tight pants. So, you know, there's already this, this, this feeling of vulnerability when you're, when you're in a, in a group exercise and fitness, , you know, situation.
So thank you for clearing that up. Of course.
[00:55:41] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: , yeah. Think about like walking into a Globo gym, like a planet fitness type, like a big, just a big, you know, like a type of franchise gym, you go in there and you're on your own. Like you go in, you do your own thing and then you leave. But CrossFit, you show up, the coach runs a class, everybody does [00:56:00] the same thing or some version of it.
You celebrate your successes together and you leave at the end together. So it's, it's that sort of misconception of what is gym and not all gyms are created equal. Not all fitness programs are created equal, and even I don't, you know, I don't really spin or do yoga or anything like that, but I would imagine that some of those are very well done in a community centric environment.
Others probably aren't so much. So it's all about it. You just got to find your people. Right.
[00:56:24] Kate Grandbois: Right. And also I would imagine, you know, listen to the, the client and prospective values, like perhaps they did yoga pre-baked brain injury. Perhaps they really enjoyed X, Y or Z fitness. And I feel like a lot of the things that you're talking about could really be found in a variety of different community fitness-based activities, right.
[00:56:44] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Activities are just a bridge, right? Like you go into a community fitness and then you find that somebody else in the group. Sewing or whatever. It's all about. It's all about finding, finding your people. And, but in order to do that, you've got to get out of the house and get somewhere. So fitness is the way that we can do [00:57:00] that then.
Great. Okay.
[00:57:01] Kate Grandbois: So in the last couple of minutes that we have, I wonder if you could leave our listeners with some resources that you like. So in terms of, I don't know where they can go to learn more information, other things that you think would be beneficial to our listeners.
[00:57:15] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: Yeah. Well, since we were just talking about the cult that has crossed it, I will just say, go out and drop into a CrossFit gym, take a class, see for yourself what it's all about.
So for, but at 95% of gyms, your first class is free. You just come, you get to experience it. You see if you like it, come see that. Try that community thing. , that's my CrossFit plug just cause I do think fitness is for everybody. , but as far as resources, go, go out and read the book spark by genre. , and that's the new science of exercise in the brain.
And that's where these got a lot of really good information. , kind of the nerdy stuff I was talking about before you, you won't be disappointed and he covers all different ranges of things related to brain health and fit and just exercise. , [00:58:00] go look up the adaptive training academy. Uh, that's the place that does the adaptive and inclusive fitness certification that, like I said, anyone can take it's a one day seminar.
It's really, really, really great. Uh, there's a podcast that I love, uh, it's called docs in the box. , and that's because we call CrossFit gyms, they're called boxes. , so a couple of PMNR physicians, so physical medicine and rehabilitation doctors, those are the doctors that run your rehabs, , who are involved in the fitness world, running this podcast.
So it gives you a lot of, uh, sort of a medicine type scope, but from a fitness type perspective, , And honestly check out my Instagram page, not, not to, not to plug what I do, but just because I think that it's really hard to conceptualize that like functional fitness on like a stroke survivor in the gym, , until you see it.
But I have, I put a lot of videos on there because I think that's what really helps people be like, oh, I can, I could do that. That's for me,
[00:58:54] Kate Grandbois: that's tremendously helpful. , in our last little bit, before we, before [00:59:00] we leave you, or before you leave us, do you have any final words of wisdom for any SLPs who are listening and feeling either appropriately outside their comfort zone, because, and they're curious, or who would like to try and implement some of these things?
What are your final words of wisdom and parting thoughts?
[00:59:21] Jenna Muri-Rosenthal: You know, I think everything we do is trial and error, right? We're making it up as we go. And so much of the things that we do in rehab, and it's all about just trying until we find that thing that hits. , for each individual, every client that we serve.
And so don't be afraid to try stuff. Don't be afraid to reach out and ask questions. , I don't know. I think always keeping what you do in your practice, functional for the client. The most important things that I can say no matter what that means, be it that they have a certain interest in a certain kind of game or a certain artist or a certain fitness find the thing that speaks to them and help, help bring them back to [01:00:00] who they were, where they want to be.
[01:00:02] Kate Grandbois: That's all. Thank you so much for joining us. This was really fun. Awesome. Thanks for having me really, really fun. If anybody is listening and would like to use this episode for Ashesi use, you can purchase a Ashesi. You processing on our website, www dot SLP. Now podcast.com. All of the references and resources listed in the episode will be available in the show notes.
So if you're running or commuting, don't worry. You didn't write anything down. We'll have it all written there for you. , and if you have a second, please cruise on over to whatever podcasting platform you're using and leave us a review or send us a note. We love hearing from our listeners and thanks so much for showing up today and hope everybody learned a little something.
Thanks everyone. Thank
[01:00:48] Amy Wonkka: you.