Marrero movement coaches are fix-it-men for OBJ, Ja'Marr Chase and others

Former LSU and current Cleveland Browns receiver Odell Beckham Jr. is superb at promoting his brand through social media.

So are sports movement coaches Gary Scheffler and Jose Boesch of Marrero publicizing their system of correct human movements to alleviate pain and increase performance.

So, with Beckham still nagged by a hip injury after the first week of this 2019 season, it made sense he and Scheffler and Boesch found each other through social media.

“Odell was like `What do I have to do?’” Scheffler said when Beckham called him. “He’s tired of being hurt and he’s looking for an answer. You’re talking about one of the top 10 athletes in the world. All these trainers and doctors he’s paid big money let him down.”

Scheffler, owner and long-time personal trainer at GLS Next Level Performance, and Boesch flew to Cleveland and spent two afternoons at Beckham's house.

“His right hip wasn’t closing when he ran,” Scheffler said. “When it doesn’t close, it’s causing him not to have any flexion around the middle of the leg. He’s landing straight legged and he’s beating up his hip every time his foot strikes the ground.”

Boesch told Beckham, “You’ve got to step out of all the medical stuff and say `Look, this is how body works and this is how you’re doing it. Does your left leg hurt? No. Let’s tell the right leg to do the same thing. You’ve got to rep it out. You’ve got to change the neurological system, so you need a lot of reps and it will go away.’”

It wasn’t too long before Beckham noticed the results.

“Once we started working with him," Scheffler said, "Odell said `My hip feels real good and my calf feels great, I feel the outside of my legs more than I have.’”

Several days later on a Monday night in Cleveland’s second game of the season, Beckham had six catches for 161 yards including an 89-yard TD in a 23-3 win over the New York Jets.

Beckham reached out via his Twitter, thanking Scheffler and Boesch by saying “Much luvvvvv my guy I really appreciate y’all comin through and getting me right.”

Just the latest of 500 or so satisfied clients of Scheffler and Boesch, including several current LSU football players.

What is GOATA?

Scheffler and Boesch refer to their process of teaching correct human movement as “recoding” in what they’ve named the GOATA Locomotive System. GOATA stands for Greatest of All-Time Actions creating Greatest of All-Time Athletes.

The GOATA Locomotive System’s three pre-movement fundamentals are:

Shape and alignment: Aligning certain joints of the body – the shoulder, hip, knee and foot – into columns.

Backchain dominance: A body driven by glutes and hamstrings with a long safe spine that sits about three degrees in front of the glutes.

Symmetrical suppleness: The ability to handle certain stresses on an inside ankle high.

“Then, there’s movement fundamentals such as controlling the human head, which is 15 to 20 pounds,” Schaeffer said. “If it doesn’t slide over your landing foot, then you’re being pulled off your stride in one direction or the other. That repetitive irregular movement creates supination and pronation problems.

“The spine starts to go dead. The glutes start to go dead. The feet externally rotate and you have a bunch of problems.”

Boesch compares the re-coding process to adjusting a golf swing or a swim stroke.

“Anything related to speciality movement, you have to identify the irregular behavior,” Boesch said. “You have to identify the misbehaving parts causing the misbehaving movement. Then, you can supply a re-code strategy to make it better.

“There are plenty of people in the rabbit hole, from physical therapists to strength coaches, who have done the same powerlifting workouts for years that don’t understand this.

“But there are no studies to explain the explosion of non-contact catastrophic injuries in athletes or why the hip degenerative rate is now 400,000 people a year in America and knees are being replaced over 800,000 a year. People are destroying their bodies by traditional strength and fitness training.”

Boesch’s quest to understand human movement started when he was 21 years old and injured his back squatting 225 pounds.

“That turned into eight years of degenerative discs,” he said, “and a bunch of ways to try and heal the injury before I found The Pareto Principle.”

The Pareto Principle, named after esteemed economist Vilfredo Pareto, specifies that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes, asserting an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs. It’s a reminder that the relationship between inputs and outputs is not balanced.

“I had to find the 20 percent of the cause in my movement that led to my 80 percent of consequences in my back pain,” Boesch said.

Scheffler said he saw the light five years ago when long-time friend Boesch (whose nickname is Gilly) approached him with the movement system.

"I had to have an awakening,” Scheffler said. “Gilly came back and said, `Listen, you are hurting athletes more than you are helping them.’ “I said, “Are you crazy? I train 20 kids a year who get scholarships.’

“He said, `It don’t matter. They aren’t going to be able to walk in 20 years.’

“When somebody brings you information like that and you don’t pay attention to it, you don’t give a crap about your athletes.”

Success stories

GOATA training is affordable. Clients get a videotaped 12-point assessment for $100. Then, it’s often $50 or $60 a session, such as 10 sessions for $500 or eight sessions for $700.

“In the eight-week plan, we take what we do and marry it with what the client is doing,” Scheffler said. “We call it GOATIFYING your workout. And in the 10-session plan, a lot of clients don’t need us anymore after that.”

The GOATA database contains young to extremely old athletes to average Joes and Josephines who have been successfully re-coded by Scheffler and Boesch.

One of more notable GOATA clients beside Beckham is Detroit Tigers pitcher Tyson Ross, a 10-year major league veteran.

“He had a compression in his neck because of the way his shoulder was hanging,” Scheffler said. “It was precornered, not in the position it’s supposed to be, so naturally a nerve is being pinched.

“They sent him to the doctor and cut on him. The next season he has the same issue again. I’m removing the compression from his neck and he’s going to be able to play another three years.

“He hired me about a month ago. He sent me a text message that said, `Gary, it’s like overnight my strength is coming back.’

“This guy made $6 million last year. He’s going to make another $20 million before his career us over. Because I got to fix his arm, he’s able to set his family up the rest of his life.”

Scheffler and Boesch have worked GOATA with former LSU running back Darrell Williams of the Kansas City Chiefs and with current Tigers including receivers Ja’Marr Chase and Trey Palmer, cornerback Kristian Fulton and tight end Jamal Pettigrew.

“He (Scheffler) worked on my feet and keep my body structure straight,” Chase said recently. “I used to walk wrong with my feet turned out. He got me to move them in to prevent injuries. It (the GOATA system) has worked a lot for me.”

Palmer was in such back pain when he was playing for Kentwood High that he was close to getting surgery until Scheffler and Boesch went to work.

“We decompressed him and got him out of back pain,” Scheffler said. “He went on to become who he is.”

Scheffler said Fulton stopped in for re-code a few days ago during LSU’s open date weekend.

“He had contact injury last year, something you can’t completely avoid,” Scheffler said. “But after the injury, he hasn’t been completely right because he’s lost the movement on that side of his body. He’s still maybe the best DB in college football, but he needed to be re-coded.”

Scheffler likes to check in with his GOATA athletes, especially those at LSU, during the season.

“These kids get away from you and it (GOATA) needs to be preached to them,” Scheffler said. “It needs to be in the program at LSU.

“LSU needs a movement coach. Or they need to implement our program, get the staff certified, whatever it may take. It just needs to be part of the program and not taking the place of how they are training.”

Wall of resistance

Scheffler and Boesch have met with trainers and strength coaches at LSU and Alabama.

The problem has been the “buy-in.” Both schools listened and politely declined because they said they don’t know how to apply what Scheffler and Boesch are doing.

“That’s our job, not their job because they know nothing about it,” Scheffler said. “That’s the baffling thing. We’re telling them these guys are going to get hurt. We’re showing them why. We’re showing them we’re already re-coding a bunch of athletes.

“And they are doing nothing with it. It blows me away. We’re talking about human beings that have to live a life after football. And you’re also crippling some of their careers.”

Scheffler said he’s told schools that they don’t have to totally scrap what they’ve usually done in weight training.

“It just needs to be re-visited from a neurological standpoint,” Scheffler said. “When we explain and show why we do what we do – re-coding that unlocks spines to provide constant rotation during movement – schools have told us it makes sense.

“But they don’t want to make the change. They are sacrificing athletes, and that’s what has me so upset. I’m showing them it can be done a different way. I’m not saying they are completely wrong. We’re saying a change has to be made to protect the athletes, and they just won’t get away from what they know.

“Our way and their way can be married together. Once you re-code an athlete, once you teach him and he understands about his body, he can develop the innate movement pattern he needs.”

Scheffler feels by now he has plenty of proof that the GOATA system works.

“I have the 500 recodes, the athletes and the parents walking around saying `You’ve got to get your kid there',” Scheffler said. “The people ignoring it are the ones in position of authority.”