Understanding Your Body Through the Pliability–Strength Matrix

When someone first walks into my clinic, I usually see two types of people:

(1) those who do too little because they’re afraid of pain and

(2) those who do too much because they’re afraid to stop.

Both end up stuck — not because of weakness or willpower, but because their system has lost rhythm.

That’s why I use something called the Pliability–Strength Matrix:

A simple way to help you see where your body sits in the balance between strength (load) and pliability (recovery).

It explains why pain, fatigue, and stiffness aren’t random — they’re just feedback that your stress–recovery equation needs a tune-up.

Before we get to the quadrants, let’s define these two terms pliability and strength.

🌿 What Is Muscle Pliability?

Pliability means your muscles can contract fully and then relax completely.

It’s the ability of your tissue to stretch, adapt, and return to shape — without staying tight, sore, or weak.

When a muscle is pliable, it’s strong and responsive: it can handle stress, move smoothly, and recover quickly.

When it’s not pliable, it feels stiff, heavy, or “switched on” all the time — a sign the body is protecting itself rather than adapting.

In simple terms:
Pliability is your muscle’s ability to tighten when needed and let go when finished — strength with softness.

💪 What Is Muscle Strength?

Muscle strength is your body’s ability to create force and handle load — to lift, move, and stabilize without strain.

Strong muscles support your joints, absorb impact, and protect you from injury. They help you stand taller, move with confidence, and do more with less effort.

When strength drops, your body feels unstable or easily fatigued.

When strength improves, you feel solid, capable, and powerful.

In simple terms:

Strength is your muscle’s ability to produce force and stay steady — power with control.

🧭 The Four Quadrants

Your body constantly adapts to stress.

Too much or too little load, without enough recovery, leads to one of four predictable patterns.

Each has its own story, physiology, and path back to balance.

1. The Stone — Weak + Stiff

State: Low energy, low movement confidence.
Nervous system: “Freeze” mode (dorsal vagal).
Tissue story: Poor blood flow, cold or heavy muscles, dehydrated fascia.
Load–recovery equation: Too little load + too little recovery.
The system has shut down to protect itself.

Feels like: heaviness, chronic tension, fatigue after minimal activity.
Likely background: long periods of sitting, fear of flare-ups, burnout, under-recovery.

What helps:

• Start with FEEL — breathing, gentle movement, warmth, circulation.

• Dry needling can act as a “reboot,” waking up frozen tissues.

• Think micro-steps, not marathons.

• Practice self-compassion: your body isn’t lazy, it’s conserving energy.

Pathway: 🪨 → 🌾 → 🌿
Move from stillness to mobility, then build strength.

2. The Willow — Weak + Pliable

State: Flexible but under-supported.
Nervous system: calm but low-energy ventral state.
Tissue story: under-toned muscles, weak collagen scaffolding, low metabolic drive.
Load–recovery equation: Low load, adequate recovery — but not enough stress to stimulate growth.

Feels like: floppy, unstable, easily tired.
Likely background: lots of stretching or yoga, low protein, minimal resistance work.

What helps:

• Shift into MOVE — isometrics, glute/core activation, controlled tension.

• Dry needling can improve muscle activation, not just release.

• Learn to create healthy stress.

• Self-compassion: your openness is a strength — it just needs grounding.

Pathway: 🌾 → 🌿
Build tone and power without losing flow.

3. The Oak — Strong + Stiff

State: High output, low recovery.
Nervous system: sympathetic “fight/flight” mode.
Tissue story: tight, dehydrated fascia; acidic, over-worked muscles; low sleep recovery.
Load–recovery equation: Too much stress, not enough recovery.

Feels like: tight, wired, sore, restless.
Likely background: heavy training, HIIT, perfectionism, caffeine-fueled days.

What helps:

• Shift into FLOW — breathing, walking, massage, gentle mobility, sleep prioritization.

• Dry needling can restore circulation and decompression.

• Learn that recovery is not the opposite of progress — it is progress.

• Self-compassion: your drive is valuable; it just needs rhythm.

Pathway: 🪵 → 🌿
Learn to bend without losing strength.

4. The Bamboo — Strong + Pliable

State: Adaptive, balanced, responsive.
Nervous system: integrated — sympathetic and parasympathetic in harmony.
Tissue story: hydrated, elastic, well-perfused, mitochondria humming.
Load–recovery equation: Balanced stress and recovery cycles.

Feels like: light, powerful, confident.
What helps: maintain rhythm.
Your job isn’t to do more — it’s to keep the oscillation between effort and ease alive.
That’s what the daily KIN Foundation routine is for — a 7-minute recalibration of breathing, movement, and flow.

The sweet spot isn’t zero stress — it’s oscillation.
Bamboo physiology means your system knows when to tense, when to release, and how to bounce back.

💓 HRV and the Nervous System

• Stone: HRV very low — system frozen, unresponsive.

• Willow: HRV moderate but flat — relaxed, not reactive.

• Oak: HRV low — over-aroused, poor recovery.

• Bamboo: HRV dynamic — flexible, rhythmic.

High variability isn’t the goal — appropriate variability is.
You want HRV that dances with your day: low during effort, high during rest.

🧘 The KIN Foundation Pathway

FEEL → MOVE → FLOW → MAINTAIN

Each phase restores a layer of regulation:

• FEEL: restores interoception and safety.

• MOVE: rebuilds strength through control.

• FLOW: restores pliability and recovery.

• MAINTAIN: keeps the rhythm as life changes.

KIN isn’t about doing more — it’s about recovering smarter.
It’s the missing link between therapy and performance.

Final Thought

Your pain, stiffness, or fatigue isn’t random.
It’s your system asking for rhythm — not punishment.
The KIN Foundation exists to help you rebuild that rhythm: seven minutes a day to Feel, Move, and Flow your way back toward Bamboo.

Bamboo bends but doesn’t break.
That’s not luck — that’s physiology in rhythm.

Daniel O’Grady, Physiotherapist
KIN Foundation™ — Feel. Move. Flow.

10 Things Running and Marathon Training Taught Me Over the Last 10 Years

Ten years ago, I stood on the Verrazzano Bridge in New York City, about to run my first marathon.

I had NO idea how much that experience would change how I think about the human body.

A decade later, running has become more than training or therapy.

It’s been my teacher.

It’s taught me about physiology, resilience, patience, and trust — lessons I could never fully grasped in textbooks or clinic rooms.

Here are ten things I’ve learnt from marathon training that go far beyond pace, finish times, or medals.

🏃 1. Endurance Is the Foundation for Strength

I used to think strength was the key to everything.

If I could just get stronger, everything else would fall into place.

But running taught me the opposite — endurance builds strength.

When your aerobic base is weak, even small loads feel heavy. When it’s strong, recovery speeds up, tissues stay oxygenated, and your whole system adapts better.

Endurance is the foundation of every adaptive system.

⚖️ 2. The Power of Adaptation

For years, I viewed pain through a “wear and tear” lens — that something was breaking down.

Tim Gabbett’s research changed that for me.

It’s not load itself that causes injury — it’s spikes in load beyond what the body’s ready for.
Pain is often feedback from a system not yet adapted, not a sign of fragility.

Through marathon training, I learned to see pain as part of the process.

The body’s constantly negotiating with stress — and it always adapts when the dose is right sand recovery is good.

💊 3. NSAIDs and the Body’s Hidden Intelligence

I haven’t taken an anti-inflammatory in over 10 years.

I learned that inflammation isn’t the enemy; it’s the signal that healing and adaptation are happening.

NSAIDs can mask that process, dulling both pain and progress.

By learning to listen instead of silence my body, I discovered how much healing power it already holds.

Running taught me to work with pain, not mute it.

🧠 4. The Power of Interoception

Running isn’t just physical — it’s deeply physiological.

It’s one of the best forms of interoception training there is.

Pain isn’t just tissue damage….it’s chemistry (pH, inflammation, fatigue metabolites) mixed with context (beliefs, emotions, environment).

Neuroscientist Bud Craig’s research helped me see pain as a homeostatic signal — the body’s way of saying, “Something’s out of balance.”

When I stopped fearing pain and started feeling, everything changed.

Running tuned me into the subtleties — how fatigue feels different from threat, how effort transforms with breath, how awareness itself is therapeutic.

🦵 5. The Paradox of Knee Pain

Almost every new runner feels some form of knee pain…I did too.

It’s frustrating — especially when everyone warns that running “wrecks your knees.”

But as I adapted, something flipped.

The stronger and more consistent I became, the less my knees hurt.

Over time, running didn’t cause pain — it protected me from it.

Research now supports this: experienced runners actually have a lower risk of knee osteoarthritis than non-runners.
It’s one of the great paradoxes — movement that seems to hurt at first often becomes the very thing that heals.

🦶 6. The Calf: The Real Shock Absorber, Not the Cartilage

The knee cartilage is often thought to be the shock absorber of force — but now I know it’s the calf that is the real unsung hero.

The calf muscle and Achilles tendon act as dynamic springs, absorbing and reusing force with every step.

When they’re weak or fatigued, that energy shifts upward — straight into the knee.

Once I learned to build calf endurance (especially hilly easy paced long runs), everything changed.

It’s elegant biology — not engineering.

⏱ 7. Pacing: Staying Relaxed Under Stress

Pacing is the ultimate lesson in self-awareness.

When I force effort, my body fights back — heart rate spikes, form collapses, fatigue sets in early.

But when I relax, breathe, and find rhythm, everything flows.

Good pacing isn’t about running slow or fast — it’s about learning to stay calm inside effort.

That’s not just physical endurance; that’s movement mastery.

🧍‍♂️ 8. Don’t Get Stuck in Perfect Movement

For years, I chased perfect posture and activation.

I lived by the rule: “Move well, THEN move often.”

But somewhere along the way, that became a trap.

I spent so much time correcting that I forgot to adapt.

Marathon training reminded me that progress beats perfection.

You don’t need perfect movement — you need a body that can tolerate imperfection and still function.

That’s what resilience really means.

⚡️ 9. The Power of Dry Needling

Dry needling changed how I understood pain.

When a deep, stubborn ache suddenly released, I realised — this wasn’t structural damage.
It was physiology.

Circulation, pH, muscle tone, and local chemistry can all shift pain in seconds.

Seeing pain change that fast taught me something vital:

If pain can change quickly, it’s not fixed — and neither are we.

✅ 10. Acceptance and Control

I used to believe that if I just worked harder, I could fix everything — old injuries, genetics, structural degeneration.

Now I know that some things we simply can’t change.

But that’s not defeat…it’s direction.

What matters is where we place our effort on the things we CAN control — into functional capacity, load management, recovery, mindset, nutrition, and the stress–recovery rhythm.

Acceptance isn’t giving up…it’s turning your energy toward what can adapt.

💬 Closing Thoughts

Running taught me more about physiology, psychology, and healing than any textbook ever could.

It’s taught me patience, rhythm, and respect for the body’s complexity — and its capacity for change.

Pain isn’t failure; it’s feedback.

The body isn’t fragile; it’s antifragile — waiting for rhythm, recovery, and respect.

Ten years on, I still run to remind myself of that truth.

When More Data Hurts: How Chasing Perfect Numbers Can Keep You in Pain

When More Data Hurts: How Chasing Perfect Numbers Can Keep You in Pain

“More data—such as paying attention to the eye colors of people when crossing the street—can make you miss the big truck.”
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
— Goodhart’s Law

We live in a world that celebrates data.

We track our steps, sleep, heart rate variability, calories, strength, and range of motion.
And in many ways, this is progress — awareness can help us make better choices.

But there’s a tipping point where helpful data becomes noise.

Where tracking starts to replace trust.

Where chasing perfect numbers makes us feel worse, not better.

The Trap of Perfect Metrics

In rehab, we can measure almost anything:

• how strong your muscles are

• how far your joints move

• how many hours you slept

• how fast your heart rate recovers

• your level of structural degeneration on scan

And yet, many people still suffer with persistent pain — even when their numbers look better.
Why?

Because pain doesn’t live in numbers.

It lives in the body’s sense of balance — what neuroscientist Bud Craig calls homeostasis.

The Homeostatic View: Feeling Over Fixing

Bud Craig’s research showed that pain is not just a “damage signal” from tissue.

It’s a message from deep within the brain’s insula, the region that constantly tracks your body’s internal state — things like energy, temperature, oxygen, hydration, and even emotional tone.

Pain is one of the ways your body says,

“Hey, something’s out of tune. Can you listen?”

When we over-focus on data and targets — how many steps, how high our HRV, how long we slept — we can actually increase internal stress.

We lose touch with feeling and get stuck in fixing.

The Inverted U of Data

Like Taleb’s quote, there’s an inverted-U curve with data.

At first, tracking helps.

It brings awareness and motivation.

But too much, for too long, creates pressure and anxiety.

Instead of helping us self-regulate, it can make us second-guess our body’s natural rhythms.

When the measure becomes the target — when “perfect numbers” become the goal — we stop listening to what the body is really trying to tell us.

What Actually Matters

Sometimes, the biggest healing shifts come from the unmeasurable:

• feeling refreshed after a better night’s sleep

• A slow walk after dinner

• A conversation that lifts your mood

• A few deep breaths before reacting

• Letting yourself rest without guilt

These don’t always show up on a graph — but they move the system toward balance.

Simple Is Not the Absence of Science

It’s the refinement of it.

When you understand your body as a dynamic, self-regulating system — not just a collection of metrics — you begin to trust again.

You stop micromanaging the data and start tuning in to the rhythm.

Because healing isn’t about perfect numbers.

It’s about restoring flow.

How to Deal with Endurance Injuries

Matt Fitzgerald —a guy who’s been training for 43 years and written 36 books —reminds us that endurance problems are messy, unclear, and rarely have a single solution.

.

Which is why the first—and perhaps most surprising—thing you actually need when you’re dealing with a running-related injury isn’t a magic stretch or new shoe… it’s Self-Compassion.

.

That’s not what the internet will tell you. Scroll through social media and you’ll be served up endless simplistic fixes: “Just strengthen your glutes ,” “Buy this shoe ,” “Do this magic stretch.” It’s neat, it’s catchy, and it’s… mostly nonsense.

.

Training problems are rarely that clean. They’re messy, complicated, and don’t come with a user manual. And honestly? That’s refreshing to hear in a world obsessed with oversimplification.

.

Your body is not broken. It’s full of wisdom, built over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Every signal—every ache, every niggle, every flat day—is feedback. Not something to fight, but something to listen to.

.

Instead of forcing a fix, sometimes the most therapeutic thing you can do is simply sit with and fully embrace all of the uncertainty and complexity.

.

Endurance training is not about finding the fix. It’s about being open, curious, and creative enough to keep figuring it out. That’s true whether you’ve been running for 40 years or you’re just starting out.

.

Maybe that’s the real lesson: we’re not following a perfect plan. We’re always in the process of learning how to train—one imperfect, human step at a time.

One Good Run

I’d just moved to New York City — fresh start, big dreams, busted knee.

For years I’d been telling myself the same story:

“My left knee is wrecked.
Meniscus surgery after a footy injury.
Physios couldn’t fix it.
I’ll never run again.”

Then one morning I’m out with my physio mentor, Luke Bongiorno.

We’re jogging through the city and I’m moving like a man pushing a shopping trolley with a wonky wheel.

Mid-run, Luke pulls out a metronome.
“Try 180 steps per minute,” he says.

I’m thinking: Seriously? A beeping watch is going to fix my knee?
It still felt uncomfortable, and I was sure I’d wake up with the usual swelling and pain.

But the next morning?
Nothing.
No swelling.
No flare.
My knee was… quiet.

It wasn’t perfect. But it was better than I expected — and that cracked the door open.

Over the next two years in NYC, I rebuilt:

• Foam rolling

• Yoga & Pilates

• DNS breathing & core work

• Pain education

• Strength training

• Stair racing (yes, even the Empire State Building)

Step by step, I wasn’t just rehabbing my knee.
I was rewriting my story.

In 2015, the bloke who was “done” lined up in Staten Island with 50,000 others and ran the New York City Marathon.
Not fast. Not pretty. But once “impossible” — until it wasn’t.

That’s where The Resilient Knee Project™ began.

It’s not a “quick fix” or endless rest.
It’s a jailbreak from:
❌ Doom-talk (“bone-on-bone,” “never again”)
❌ Over-reliance on treatments that keep you stuck
✅ Building capacity so your knee isn’t fragile anymore

We use The New York Protocol — the same blend of top-down mindset shifts and bottom-up capacity building that took me from a hopeless knee to marathon finish line:

• Mindset & flare-up reframing

• Cadence drills & spring training (Achilles and calf)

• Load progressions that make you better, not broken

• Recovery strategies that actually work in real life

Here’s the truth:
Your knee doesn’t need permission from an MRI.
It just needs one small, safe, better-than-expected run to crack the story you’ve been living in.

One run → One win → One new story.

Shoot at email to dan@kinfolkwellness.com.au with “ZERO” in the subject line and I’ll reply with my “Zero → One Running” mini-module — the exact process I used to get my knee back, so you can skip the rehab hamster wheel and get moving again.

Happy Running

Daniel O’Grady