Barbell Shrugged - 860 - Live More, Hurt Less w/ Dr. Sean Pastuch

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Dr. Sean Pastuch sits down with Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, and Dr. Mike Lane to talk about what he's learned the hard way about chronic pain, discipline and how to get back to training pain free. Pulling from his new book *Live More, Hurt Less*, Sean breaks down why so many lifters end up organizing their entire life around avoiding pain, and how that strategy inevitably makes training less fun than it used to be. He shares his own story of dealing with seven years of debilitating neck pain, and how nothing changed until he finally had a compelling reason to change it. That meant hiring a coach, getting serious about sleep and nutrition, delegating the stressors he was carrying, and making recovery the highest priority in his life. The conversation digs into how the story you tell yourself, the things you do every day, and the people you surround yourself with either reinforce your limitations or help you take your agency back. Sean gets practical about how to actually talk to doctors so you can get what you need, as well as how to set real expectations between coaches and clients. The team also gets into what ethical sales actually looks like in coaching, why good coaches need to screen for real commitment, and how the best practitioners stay directionally correct without pretending they have all the answers. If pain, fear, or stagnation has made your world smaller than you want it to be, this episode lays out a framework for rebuilding capacity, getting stronger, restoring confidence, and getting back to the things that actually matter to you.  

Shrug family. Doug Larson here and this week on Barb Bell Shrugged, Dr. Sean Pasthewish is back on the show sharing what has been most effective for him and his clients over the years for reducing pain and restoring function. In this episode, we discussed how to rebuild tissue capacity post-injury through progressive loading rather than simply resting more. We outline how to prioritize sleep, nutrition, and stress management as a part of your rehab plan. And probably most importantly, we dig into the benefits of changing your environment and your accountability structures as a conditional way to remove the stressors and behaviors that were contributing. to your chronic pain. So if you want to reduce pain, restore function, and rebuild a stronger, more capable body. This episode is for you.

Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barrel Shrug. I'm Doug Larsson here with Coach Travis Mash, Dr. Mike Lane, and my dear friend, Sean Pashto. It's good to have you back on the show, my friend. It's been a couple of years now. Yeah, man. It's great to be back with you. I love talking me.

Maybe COVID. What's that? Was it COVID last time you're on? Like, dude, I don't know. That's like two years that I have blacked out. Yeah, me too. Yeah, it was somewhere around then. Been a couple of years.

I'll spend a couple of years since you put a book out. You're putting a new book out now. Live more, hurt less, correct? Yeah. There you go, man. The first book was really, I mean, I loved it, but I wrote it in four days. It was for coaches to be, I didn't have to research anything. It was the stuff I was doing every day all day.

And there was no concern that the stuff that I was putting in that book wasn't scientifically supported or wasn't efficacious. I wrote it in four days. It was about selling to build a career as a personal trainer. This new book is meant to genuinely help people overcome chronic pain stagnation in their life through living more. And it took me a year and a half to write it. And it's another six months to market it and get it out there. So totally different scope of a project. So doing this one more like you would think it would take to write a book.

Yeah. Yeah. The first one, I didn't even, like, I thought it would work. I knew it would work. But I didn't expect, like, I got people sending me testimonials who, like, sell sod in Kentucky. So, Mike, you know, maybe, maybe you know these people. But selling sod and Kentucky, like, I used your sales techniques and I was able to save my family farm and do this full time. Like, that's super cool.

It was written to trainers. But, yeah, it's sales is sales. This book is. Yeah. there's a lot of risk for people who would take it the wrong way and so I had to make sure I was really sound and how I wrote it and it took a lot longer sure I'm sure it could come across aggressive but so true but like it's just well I guess you know we're gonna jump ahead for ourselves but maybe you can tell you know like kind of what is the what's the book about what's the

preface like what what made you want to write it too like well I'll start with the last question first I offer I've offered a service for 20 years that I got good at in the last seven. If we're, you know, like if we're being honest, it takes 10, 15 years of coaching to actually know that you're not that good of coaching and it's time to get good of coaching if you have any introspection. Agreed. And it's wild, by the way, because I know Doug, I know you trained jiu-jitsu.

I don't know, Travis, if you do any martial arts, but I just started three four months ago. And I'm like, how could anybody who's new at anything think that they're good at it? Like, I wish everything had the same dire consequences as martial arts. when you're new at them. So you can just know you suck. Yeah. I got the wait. Yeah.

But anyway, our services are cost prohibitive to a lot of people. My gym that's here in Long Beach, New York, and the one we have in Port Washington is literally four times the price of the second most expensive gym in the town for a monthly membership. The second most expensive is like 200 bucks. We're 834. Our training sessions are 150 bucks. The second most expensive training sessions like 85. and in our second location, they're 180 plus.

Most people, unfortunately, can access our team. And so what we do is we train trainers to be like our team. And I want the general public to know that there are people out there in the world who can help them. And I want people in the general public to be able to help themselves. This book is a guide to becoming the version of yourself that would never have found yourself in this. problem in the first place. So it's called live more, hurt less because we have it all backwards.

We organize our lives to avoid pain. And that shrinks what we're able to do. Yeah. Which is what actually hurts. Nobody calls the doctor because anything hurts. We call the doctor when we stop being able to live life the way that we wanted to live it. No one calls for the pain. And then the solution is do this to.

get out of pain, do this to get out of pain. Stop doing this. Stop doing that. And it ends up being less life, which leads to misery. So this book is about helping people take their agency back. I love this. It's such true. It's like, you always hear, oh, you know, you'll, you'll post some yourself doing squats and someone's going to hurt your back or, you know, you're doing a deadlock. Someone's like, always, you're going to hurt your back. You're going to, you know, you're not going to able to walk when you grow up or when you get older. But my God, man, like, you have to do, you have to put work in to actually be able to not get hurt as you get older, especially now. I'm watching people at my age fall and break a hit because they're brittle already.

I'm like, oh, my God. Like, do some work. Live life. Yeah. And the brittle is, it's common and it's the response to fear. right it's you know it's it's they spend their whole life worried that if they lift heavy weights they're going to get hurt and then they spend the end of their life worried that if they fall they're going to get hurt and that that hurt could lead to death because they didn't spend the

earlier time in their life lifting but it didn't worry right exactly this is that book is brilliant and the whole world needs to read it 100 yes wait from from a tactical standpoint like what of kind of like the big picture advice and suggestions that keeps that keeps someone healthy, keep them living the life that they want to live while being as healthy as possible. There's risk and tradeoffs with any, any way of being as you guys just lay it out. Like if you're strong and muscular where maybe you're going to suffer some injuries at one point or another, but if you don't train at all, then then you're going to be brittle and frail and under muscle and over and overfat and there's pros and cons to all of it.

What are your kind of big picture suggestions? Well, you just dropped one that validates the whole thesis of how I titled and position. to the book, right? You said over fat and undermuscled, which is something Gabriel Lyons started talking about five, six years ago as a paradigm shift, right? Stop trying to lose fat and start trying to gain muscle and the result will be you'll gain muscle and lose fat. Most people today are trying to lose pain. They're trying to lose pain. And as a result, they're also losing life. If we focus on building life, we will lose pain. It's the same paradigm shift that Gabrielle did for fat, but it's for life. It's for pain. So the first

chapter of the book is discipline is a result. Discipline is not an attribute. It is not a characteristic. Nobody has discipline. We find discipline. And the reason we find discipline is because there's something that's really important to us. And we have a way to get it that we think is going to work. if something is really important to us and we have a way to get it that we think is going to work, deviating from that way is actually against the easy thing to do. It's the harder energy thing to do. So, for example, all of us train, all of us lift weights, all of us work out, all of us participate in sport in some way, shape, or form.

That is because we believe it's going to make our lives better. It's not because we believe we should do it. Right. Right. Yeah. So it would be harder for us to decide, I don't want, I'm going to stop doing it because it's, we know that's going to make our life worse. It's a compromise.

It's not a, it's not a sacrifice. It's a compromise. And so what happens is if you have something that's really important to you, A, and then you have a way to get it that you believe is going to work and it proves it's going to work. B, you have discipline or you do belong in an asylum. them. And I start by explaining two things. One, my book got turned down by every publisher I brought it to. The real, like every public. And a reason that they gave me consistently was, Sean, you're not going to change people's minds. They're in pain. They're not going to think they can get out of it. And I explained, my goal is not to change anybody's mind. You're validating my belief that this book

is necessary because I want to help people who already believe the ones who are crazy or the ones who are telling them that they can't have a better life. That's who this is for. It's for the ones who already want the better life, but don't have a way. A quick break in the action here to let you know that I've just recently chosen to get back into coaching. And I specifically am looking to coach Masters, Jiu-Jitsu athletes, just like myself. I've been doing Jiu-Jitsu for 22 years and strength and conditioning for 30 years. I'm a black belt, of course. And I live that life. I understand exactly what goes into it. I understand what's like to run a family, do Jiu-Jitsu, try to tie strength and conditioning into it all and all of the ups and downs that come with it from

from joint pain to busy schedules to travel and all the things. So if you are a master's jujitsu athlete and you're looking for some support, I'm happy to give it. You can DM me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson or you can email me, Doug at barbell shrug.com. Happy to help. Back to the show. That's what before. It's for the ones you've already wanted. the better life but don't have a way. I'm helping them understand that they're actually correct. And then I'm giving them a way to do it. And so go ahead, John. I was going to tell you, like, you know, this summer has been like a big evolution in our family. And my son, the oldest rock 11, he did, he just, he qualified and competed at youth national than weightlifting, which is not

the point. But the point is maybe two months prior. He was like, wanting to skip training and he was being like inside of training he was being frustrated that we're working and i said no problem man i said perfect you don't have to you can stop right now and literally i'm going to let you go get on your iPad if you want but we're not we're just not doing nationals and literally i said matter of fact it's just go call it off i still love you no problem and like and then he starts you know he starts crying of course he's like dad please i want to do i want to do nationals I'm like, then, son, you have to commit. And you can't just do this.

And like, it was so rough. I mean, literally all three of my kids are crying. It's a turning point. It's a turning point in everything they believe. And I'm like, if one more time, it's not even if you skip training, even if you're here and you don't take it seriously, that's it. It's a wrap. Anyway, long story short, he really did. For the rest of the time, he trained hard.

He had a good attitude. dude, which still, they didn't get the point until we're at nationals. And he goes six for six. And he's like smiling. He jumps off to, you know, stays into my arms. And, like, you know, weightlifting, it's a big deal because there's only, you know, power this thing is like a thousand federations. And so it's probably just one kid.

But, you know, it's a big deal. Number one, to qualify number two. He got fourth in his first year out of a huge group. It was like three. It was like A, B, and C group. He's in a group. He got fourth overall. Anyway, so then we're celebrating and our families together and the brother and sister sitting there.

And I looked at them all. I said, now do you see why I said what I said? You see this smile on your face and this feeling you have? You only got it because of the commitment, the time, the dedication, and the discipline. And the whole family, look to switch. Now, like, they get up, they go downstairs, they do pull-ups. Now our entire family from my wife to our kids. can do pull-ups. Even my seven-year-old daughter, their first one to debt this morning. So now the whole

family can do pull-ups. And like, it just changed everything because of that moment. It was so hard for me. He's crying and I'm like tearing up and like everything I, everything in me wanted to be like, I'm just kidding. But like, no, I stuck to it. And like, anyway, but I had to teach him that lesson. Yes. It did. He, you put, you gave him awareness to the purpose. You said, hey, I don't care if you do this is going to nationals important enough to you to do the work right and and he decided himself yes yes it is and then he put the work in every day because going to and performing well at nationals yes is worth it and this work was likely to lead to that and now they know and that's it and for me i was it was about four years ago yeah four years ago i had been dealing with debilitating chronic neck

pain for seven years. People had come to me, Olympic athlete, you know, professional baseball players, CrossFit Games, champions, they were flying out to see me to get help with their aches and pains. And I couldn't resolve my own. And the reason I couldn't resolve my own is because I didn't have something important enough to resolve it for. That was reality. I had started making the compromises that a lot of men make. When I say compromise, I mean the acceptance that living less was acceptable. I was like, look, I'm trying to grow a business. I'm trying to retire my wife. I'm trying to make a name for myself.

I'm trying to, you know, prove something to the world. All of that was very real. And so it was reasonable that I would wake up and go to work and then come home, watch some Netflix to kind of wind down and then go to bed and get my cursory workout in during the day. You know what I mean? Like, I was fine. I do that. But one day.

day, my five-year-old daughter at the time, she was like, Dad, can I sit on your shoulders to go home from this block party? Block party was like three blocks away from our house, like quarter mile. She's 40 pounds, whatever it was at the time. I said, no, you know, Daddy's tired. The truth was Daddy's neck hurt too bad to put her on my shoulders. I was getting out of bed in the morning, grabbing the back of my neck and rolling out of bed like this. And that was a snap wake-up call for me. I now had a reason to fix this neck problem.

I had for seven years because I didn't I never wanted my kids to grow up thinking oh yeah my dad's had neck problems since I was young like and then that becomes normal for them they can they can now have neck problems one day and it's normal like it's just a thing so I decided to overwhelm that problem and now what did you do like I got to know what you do the honest truth is I changed just about everything Travis I hired a member of our team to coach me because I wasn't going to get it done myself. I can always find a way out of my own program. It's, you know, we can be as disciplined.

Whatever. I agree. I can find a way out of my own program. I'm a really good salesperson. I can sell myself out of it. Me too. So there's that. So I had someone to be accountable to who knew what he was doing.

I changed my, my bedtime to go to bed earlier. I was like, listen, if you need to watch Netflix before you go to bed, something is wrong with what's going on during the day. Figure out what's stressing you out during the day and leading you to needing to turn your brain off for two hours before you go to bed at night. So I looked at what I was doing in my work. I started to delegate tasks to people

who were not only as good as me at them, but better than me at them. Yeah. And as a result, the company grew. So that's a nice side benefit. I changed my nutrition. I was eating too much of starchy food, high sugar food, things that were even micro-inflammatory.

And I didn't have room for that. I didn't have the room in my capacity to deal with that. So I stopped doing that. I started, that was it. And as a result of all of that, you start having some different friends. You start having some different conversations. You start saying no to a lot more things. And I just made my neck and my life the number one priority.

for a year. Nice. Six months into that, the pain was, had gone from about an eight to a two. I was able to do everything I wanted to do. And six months after that, it was, it was just, there were days I forget about it now. Nice. That was a few years ago. I'm telling you, I went from getting out of bed with my hand behind my neck to now I train Jiu-Ditsu.

Yeah. There's no world in which I was thinking. about that. That's always a beautiful realization when when something's hurting for a long time and then one day you go, wait a minute, I haven't thought about that thing in a couple days or a week or however long it's been. You're like, oh my God, it's getting better. Holy shit. It's actually working. That's right. Especially if it's been hurting for a long time, like you've got chronic neck pain and then all of a sudden not thinking about it, it's beautiful. Yeah. And the thing is like there's there's really good research that shows if you, if you have experienced some kind of like emotional trauma

in your life and you go to a therapist and you unpack it and you talk about it all the time you actually make it worse because every time that you go and talk about it you're just going back to the problem as opposed to i understand the problem now what is the solution right how do you move forwards yeah what behavior change will drive us forward right and when you when you're in pain the more that you think about what hurts the more that you look for pain the more that you look for things that cause pain, the more that you sense danger, the harder it is for you to go from a sympathetic nervous system state to a parasympathetic nervous system state. The harder it is for you to sleep well, to digest well, to heal well. It's a vicious cycle. But you can't tell

somebody, stop thinking about it. You have to give them a way out. Yeah, it's like, don't think about a pink elephant. And, you know, the rumination piece, and you brought up the stagnation. And I think, I know we want to dive into that, but I couldn't agree with you more of the folks that, unfortunately, it's a bit of a self-affling prophecy of they just kind of keep looking into it. What do you find is the way to kind of break that up? Because you do have to at least like, yeah, this is a problem. But then at a certain point, is it like you have the plan? So like, let's execute the plan.

Let's not bother with focusing on the fact that things suck, for lack of a better term. Chapter one is about finding the reason. So I think what you were just describing, Mike, I think speaks to the person who doesn't actually have the reason yet. Because to that person, it's reasonable that they would just do less. You know, yeah, I would love to do all of those things. But my back, you know, listen, I'm 50 years old. I have this knee thing, you know, like it's how many 50 year olds you know without a knee thing? It's all of that stuff starts to climb up.

right and the reason why the end of the book is all about your social connections is because if all of the people around you commiserate oh yeah dude i remember the days when i could do that stuff like then you're never going to come out of it so number one number one is the reason number two is the story that you tell yourself number three is the action that you take mentally and physically. And then number four is who you allow in your presence. Like I've, I've had conversations with, I set up an a frame on the boardwalk here in Long Beach, New York, and I let people ask me questions about fitness and health. And a common question that I get is how do I start? And my answer is often, do you have friends who already do it? And the answer to that is almost

always know. And the hard part to a person like that who I just met on the boardwalk is you need better friends. You need people who you couldn't hang out with if you weren't physically active, physically fit, or at least physically fit minded. And so I answer your question in that long-winded way, Mike, because I think the person who has a really good reason for resolving this problem we'll do it they're open to finding the way mm-hmm yeah you got to have a reason to do anything and without that like there's no motivation to to go do the thing right and i think it's got to be a singular and specific reason sure absolutely i mean that it's got to be like one of the the reasons that crossfit communities work so well even i even just use the word communities like

you show up at this gym and and all these people are like are aligned on getting healthier together and it kind of becomes people's social circles becomes their friend group like people They start doing CrossFit or whatever at a small gym. And then all of a sudden you have all these people that are also aligned and doing the same thing together. They have the same goals. They all want to be lean and strong and healthy and eat well, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Then all of a sudden, like, you're expected to do it. If you don't do it, then you're like this weird person.

So you want to fit in. So you're going to start doing it too. That's it. It'd be very difficult. We probably can't relate to that. I don't know what it's like they have only friends that don't train. And if I did train, they'd be like, what are you like, Mr. Fitness now? And they're like making fun of you for like trying to get healthy?

That would be tough. Like, leave your friend group to go get healthy. It's hard. Look, I have a friend group. We go to the beach every weekend. There's anywhere from eight to 15 couples and all of our kids. Like, the beach here is the thing. That's like you asked if I've traveled in the summer?

No, and that's why. And there are guys in that group who are really physically active. And there are guys in that group who are less physically active. And there are guys in that group who are more entrepreneurial and guys in that group who are less entrepreneurial. I spend more time with the guys who are more physically active and more entrepreneurial. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the other guys. We just don't want the same life. It's so hard to understand each other. Yeah. I yeah like I is it going to sound callous. I don't want to understand. No. I like for me I I have a life that I wants to live. I can see it.

I can feel it. I can taste it like I can all of that. And if something isn't moving me closer to that, I feel like it's moving me further away from that. And that's not to confuse people with the idea of like, I'll never have a drink because it takes me three to five days to recover. I'll have a drink. Like, I'll smoke a joint. It's not to tell people like, I optimize my life to be perfect. It's the doing things that are imperfect sometimes is the optimization. But overall, it's a question of does this fit into the kind of life that I want to live?

live or not. And if you're not trying to be successful by whatever your definition is, I'm not interested in understanding how you live. And they're not going to want to be around you because they're going to feel bad. That's right. Because they're going to be like, man, this guy does everything I think is impossible. And they're going to feel bad about themselves. So like, it's good. They're not going to want to be around you either. And so like, yeah, I was just with my family this weekend. And like, I'm the only human up there, the only of my family that left the mountains, every single one. They're born there. And there's nothing wrong with it. I love them. And it's the Appalachian Mountains, it's beautiful. But like, when I tell them, A, I'm going to Australia

in September, and I'm going to China in October, it absolutely blows their mind. And they just, everybody will come to my moms and, like, hear my stories. And they're like, aren't you afraid? I was like, I'm afraid, afraid of what? Like, I don't, you know, it's like, aren't you afraid not to? Like, I mean. Yeah. I didn't expect you to say the word afraid just now, by the way. Yeah.

No, that caught me off guard. Yeah, that is the language they use. Are you, aren't you afraid to go to China? I'm like, I don't understand. Why would I be afraid to go to China? And they're like, well, things could happen. I'm like, yeah, but I mean, you're talking, you're talking about a community where one mile from me a lady when she died they found 11 bodies buried under her porch and like and you're

thinking i'm afraid to go into china like i'm from avalachians man there's like like there's more ghost stories up there anywhere in the world so like no i'm absolutely not afraid and what i'm afraid of is the mountains here like going out after midnight in those blue ridge mountains that's what i'm afraid of well the the convert like when you were talking about they you know i don't understand that and they're not, they don't want to understand me. The very simple conversation that makes it obvious that we're not, like, we don't need to hang out, is when they'll say something, like, if I did what you do, my body would explode.

I'm like, okay. And then my answer to that will be something like, do you want it to stay that way, or would you like to change it? And, and, like, there's a moment of, like, it does not compute for a lot of, right, they're like, yeah. What do you mean? I'm like, you could change that. it's okay if you don't want to and you're choosing it if you want if i don't need to sell you anything i don't

need to coach you i don't need to say another sentence but i want you to know because i would be doing you a disservice you can change that yeah these are these are things that my father used to say and i disallowed it i'm like listen you're i have kids now but you're not this is language that they're not going to hear. And let me hear this. Tell me more about this. My father was a chiropractor. And one day he was adjusting a patient who was over 300 pounds.

And the patient thought he was falling off the table and grabbed my father's arm, almost like a Kimora grip and just yanked his whole body and dislocated my father's shoulder, tore all the ligaments. Like it was the end of his chiropractic career could no longer adjust a patient. That was like 20 something years ago. And he couldn't get his arm up over like, you know, know, he's the top of his rib cage. Dr. Solman needed a replacement, but he didn't want to get a shoulder replacement,

all of this. Yeah. And he was in a lot of pain. And that sucks. It's a really hard way to go. And he would say, like, you know, I can't have a cat. Like, you know, ah, get off the couch. I'm like, when are you going to stop?

Like, when are you going to stop making that fucking sound? When does that stop happening? And he's like, what do you want me to do? What are you like, what do you want me to do? I have this injury and I'm like, you do, but we both know that that can change. Do you want to change it? So I got him working with our team. And he's unlimited now.

Like, look, is it reasonable? Is it reasonable he would go back to playing softball or swinging a golf club? Honestly, no. He doesn't have a ligament connecting his shoulder to his shoulder blade. His rotator cuff is completely torn. His bicep doesn't connect. So there are going to be some permanent physical. limitations unless he wants to get a surgery.

Right. But he can live. He doesn't have to make a sound getting off the couch anymore. He takes my son, who's two and a half years old, and puts him on top of the refrigerator. And like, you know, the kid giggles. Like, that's life. That's living. That's awesome.

And he dedicated himself to doing it. My mom takes 20,000 sets a day. She runs a day camp. And she is prone to plant her fascia and Achilles tendonitis. She's 67, 68 years old. 68 now. She, every summer it would come up.

I'm like, do you want that to stop? She's like, I would love that to stop. She works with her. She hasn't had it in five years. Like, these are things that you can resolve. You just have to have a really strong reason to do it and a path that's going to work to get you there. I love it.

Yeah, and to your point from the beginning of the show, like if you don't believe something's going to work, then you're not going to be compliant. How do you, how do you, how do you, If someone doesn't believe something's going to work, if you have a client or anyone who's a coach here and like, you're trying to get someone to lift weights and they just aren't lifting weights or they're not falling to diet or whatever they're not doing, they're not sleeping well. At some level, deep down, whether they say it or not, they probably don't really truly believe what you're telling them is going to work. Despite your best intentions and they trust you and whatever else, they might just not actually like deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply believe it.

How do you, how do you adjust something that's like deeply rooted in you and you just quote unquote know won't work? there was a mistake made in the beginning of that cycle by the trainer, bringing that person on as the client. I imagine if someone came to Travis and said, I want to go to Nationals, I want you to train me. And he was like, okay,

we're going to be lifting heavy. We're going to do it often. You're going to be tired. You got to eat a lot. You got to go to sleep. Like all these things have to happen. And that's exactly what I tell me. Yeah.

And they were like, no. All right. Like, all right, what are we doing here? Yeah, good luck then.

There's no reason to start. He's not going to sign him up until they commit to doing that. No chance. The trainer oftentimes, there's two things that are going on. Number one, the trainer right now is making an average about $19 an hour. There's higher turnover in the training field than any other industry other than hospitality. We're number two in the world.

We almost made it. Like we can't even win at that. Okay. So there's that. So now the next person comes up to them and they're like, I need your help. And like, oh yeah, I can help you. They don't ask what you want help with, how you want to be helped, what you've done before, why this is the right time.

It's just, oh, have credit card and heartbeat, we'll swipe. Let's do it. So a trainer who doesn't fear that the next person isn't coming. Like, as long as a trainer knows, there's somebody behind this person who wants to work with me too. They will screen the person in front of them to make sure that we are aligned before we even start. That's step one. Now, there's a mistake that I made back in the day when I was. coaching with Lindy Barber that taught me a career lesson that I talk about in the book.

For people who don't remember Lindy Barber, she was like the, the CrossFit princess, because she had spina bifida and she broke her back doing some squats. And doctors told her, if you squat the wrong way and it slides, you could find yourself paralyzed. So when she got referred to me for knee pain and back pain, there was a fair amount at stake. Like, I didn't want to be the guy who she was training under when she got paralyzed. Yeah, no doubt. Selfishly, you know? And I didn't want her paralyzed either.

Sure. So she was on Rich Fronings games team at the time, and she was the only person on the team working with me. And I didn't give her enough foresight to what this was going to be like, like what you're going to feel along the way. We started working together in, I think November, Open was in March. and by like four weeks in she's like I don't feel better I feel like I'm getting weaker I'm having like I need you to talk me off this ledge I'm like you know what I did a bad job of giving you enough information to understand how this is going to go so I broke down for her until March we are working purely on getting rid of the knee and the back weakness that

is leading to the pain. So you're overall not going to feel strong, but you will feel strong in those areas. Step one. Yes. You good, I said, are you good with being able to participate in the CrossFit Open but not score for your team? She said, yes. I said, then we'll be fine. Then what's going to happen is we're going to work on overall strength because you've lost a fair amount of it. You will feel weaker. And I want you to be able to get to regionals, which was still a thing at the time, and feel like you can perform. You're going to have the power and the strength, but you're going to lack the muscular endurance and the cardio.

Are you okay? Will your team qualify if you don't have the cardio and the muscular endurance that you're accustomed to having? Yes, great. By the time we get to the games, you are going to be the fittest person on the team because you are going to be so durable to injury. It's not going to be a problem.

She's like, okay, I can go with that. Things started to go along the way. exactly what we described. And we get to the games. They take second place. Fortunately, to a team I was also supporting, which was brute strength, which was weird, going back and forth, by the way.

The games end on a Sunday. Monday, Rich texts me. Can you help me with my knee? Because he missed a clean and jerk at the games that he blames himself for them not winning because he had torniscus and his knee was a problem for him. So the reason I tell that story is because and the next year they won by the way.

And we worked together the whole year, rich's knee problem was gone. When you can help a client understand, this is what you're going to feel along the way if things are going right. If you're not feeling this, I need to know. And then we need to change something.

Then the client isn't left to guess, is this what I'm supposed to feel? You ease their mind. You take all of that anxiety out. I love it. That's something coaches I do. I think that's also another reason why you should charge what you charge as well, too.

Like when someone's paying, you know, the amount that they have to work with you, they're already saying, I believe, like I'm investing this much money because this dude's going to answer my question. And he is the answer. So like, but when you're the cheaper guy, you're not going to get the buy in. They're like, whatever. It's like, you know, like it's not a significant amount. I don't care. But like, I'm coming to you because I believe, you know, and it's one of the big investment.

When we walk coaches and gym owners through our sales process that we do with a client, they're like, how do you have enough time to do that? I'm like, what are you talking about? You're doing 15 sessions a week. You're like, you have plenty of time to do it. It's just that you actually, like, you're rushing to get the payment. Right. It's the fear that the person who's in front of me isn't going to become a client if I don't enroll them today.

where for us, there's a apply for a discovery call. And sometimes we're like, you don't need to work with us. This isn't a fit and we'll refer him somewhere else without even having the call. Then there's the discovery call where we're making sure we think that we can help them. And if we think that we can help them, we'll invite him in. Then we invite him in. Discovery was 30 to 45 minutes. Inviting them in is an hour and a half to two hours.

There's assessment. There's interview. There's explaining the full process. You're not buying sessions from us. We're not buying the whole process. So by the time we get to the end, we just ask our prospects on a scale of 1 to 10. What's your level of confidence that is the right environment for you? What's your level of confidence that we have the right people for you?

What's your level of confidence that our process is going to work for you? And what's your level of confidence that you can trust yourself to see this through? And if they give us anything less than an 8 out of 10 on any of them, we don't even offer them enrollment. Perfect. This is brilliant. Yes. I remember on a show years ago, you were talking about your goal and your goal for yourself and your team was something along the line. of being like the most ethical sales team in all of fitness.

We own the United States trademark on the term ethical sales. Yeah, I trademarked that. And the reason I trademarked it is because there's so many people who sell from a place of scarcity. They have commission breath. There's high pressure. If you get on the phone me, you're either buying today or I'm forgetting about you forever. That's not about the client. It's not like you trainers, business gurus, all these people.

they have a very, very unique way of putting that responsibility on the client, they weren't ready. Why weren't they ready? What didn't they know? Yeah. What did you forget to tell them? What did you forget to ask? Was it even time for them to do this?

Presumably they were ready if they showed up. Yes. Yeah. They're there, you know, for the first time. You know what I mean? Yes. Exactly. Yeah.

They kind of go, sorry, back on that just a second, when you get those folks that are kind of, you think pre-contemplation, contemplation, you know, when they're getting, before they're at the action phase, before they're willing to do it, what are some questions you do to kind of help people be aware of the rut they might be in? Because, you know, like, I mean, how many people are, you brought up stagnation, I kind of keep coming back to it. Like, there, I mean, it's difference between a rut and a groove is how much you enjoy being stuck in it. And how many of those folks are just used to, you know, like this is just the rut of their life. And it's like the cliche in a number of movies. It's like we could go like American Beauty back in the day

of just like Kevin Spacey's sad life in the beginning. Not trying to make extrapolations for the rest of the movie. So we're clear. But like what are the questions that you try to use to kind of unlock some of that awareness to kind of go from that pre-contemplation to like, hey, this is a problem you've been living with, but it's just so part of your life. You don't even really think about it anymore. We don't. You know, again, this is one of those, Mike, I love your line of questioning because it gives me a really good opportunity to separate the people that we actually are trying to talk to.

The person who's in the rut is looking for something to shake things up. They're looking for something to change for them. the person who is coming to us has already decided the rut is not for me anymore i need out of the rut now they might not be in the groove yet they might but but they're no longer looking in the rut and thinking the way out of this hole is to keep digging they've decided i need a rope and i understand i'm going to have to climb that rope but someone's going to lower that rope down. They're going to teach me how to climb. They might even come down into the hole with me and help me climb, but I'm going to have to climb. That's the person we help because I don't

believe the person who isn't ready for the rope is a person that we can help. And so when I described in our sales process, in our brick and mortars, we ask on a scale of one to 10. The reason we don't offer enrollment to someone who's below an eight, and we don't let them choose seven, by the way. Seven is the compromise number. Yeah. It's because we tell them we're going to have to drag you up this hill. And we're coming out of from a 10 out of 10. We only make offers when we know that we can do this.

We only make offers when we think we would enjoy it. I love this. You're not there. And so if you get there, we would love to help you. But you're not yet. And that's okay. All right. So I feel like we talked about the beginning of the book and the end of the book.

and the end of the book. Do we cover like kind of the middle portion there? We did the why and the belief systems. We did the social group. What was the middle chunk? Well, there's a lot in both of those. I want people to know if they end up picking up the book, one of the most important chapters, I think if people are going to not even read the rest of the book, but they want to give this to someone in their family. One of the last chapters of the book is how to talk to your doctor so you get more out of your care. You know, the idea of, for example, walking into a doctor's office and saying my back hurts. So who cares? Why, why does it matter that your back hurts? What are you missing out on? What do you want to get back to? If you go to a doctor and say, my back hurts, it's reasonable the

doctor gives you cortisone shots, pills, surgeries, things of that nature. But if you go to the doctor and say, my back hurts and I want to be able to lift heavy weights, so can you help me get back to doing that? The doctor's forced to answer a very different question. And the doctor, by the way, oftentimes prefers that question. They're stuck dealing with people all day long who are not like us who want the pill, who want the shot,

who want the permission to stop doing the hard thing because it lets them finally sit on the couch. Like I said, that's out of the book is for. I don't relate to those people. I don't want to relate to those people. One of the chapters in the book helps you better talk to your doctor

if you're like me. I love that. So you might have a doctor who says, a lot of times the doctor won't even understand that. Then you're at the wrong doctor. You know, if they're like, if they're like, oh, you can't, you can't lift heavy again. You're going to get hurt again. You're at the wrong place.

I have a problem I want solved. You solve this problem. Oh, you know, no problem. That's it. People forget we're hiring our doctors. Right. The same way that you would hire someone to help you in your house or at your job, you are hiring your doctor to solve a problem for you that you don't know how to solve for yourself. So they should they should say yes, I solve that problem before you hire them. So and any good doctor I know wants that kind of a question. Yes, they should. A good one, but that's the question. Of course, but it's not what I'm trying to get across is it's not an

indictment on the medical system. It's not an indictment on doctors. It's, it's an obviation that there are doctors who want that question and you want to work with those doctors. Right. So the physical portion of the book, the middle section of the book, it explains a little bit about how to work out. You know, the person who's reading this is not trying to qualify for worlds or for nationals. And if they are, they're not going to need the physical workout part of the book as much. It's kind of a chapter. Like the chapter on that is called practical fitness, everything you need, nothing more.

And they're going to be able to go beyond that. But there's stuff in the physical part of the book. book that talks about stuff like tendon health, you don't have tendinitis. I know you think you have tendonitis, but it's been four years and you don't have tendonitis. You don't even have reactive tendinopathy anymore. You have degenerative tendinosis, which means everything that you've been avoiding is exactly what you need to make your tendon better. Amen. Right. And so it's, well, how do I know? how much, what's like, what's the rep scheme? What's, I lay all of that out in the book.

Because tendons, the tendons are such a simple example for people. Tendinitis lasts like two to four weeks most of the time. Tendents have very poor blood supply. Iitis indicates inflammation. You can't inflame something that doesn't get blood. It's really hard to do. So the inflammation phase only lasts a few weeks. What typically comes next or instead of is it's called reactive tendonopathy.

Reactive tendonopathy is when the tendon experiences damage and it physically thickens. It does that with additional plasma, some extra collagen, and it makes itself physically thicker because a physically thicker tendon is more durable than a less thick tendon. But it's really painful when it's like that. And so people avoid using it. reasonably so but unadvisibly so. Isometrics are great during that phase. Amen.

So now. I'm going through this right now, by the way. Yeah, a lot of people could and should be. Now, after that phase is over, which is maybe another month, two months, you're done with all of the babying it. It's now a degenerative tendon, which sounds scary, but isn't because you can regenerate it.

And the way to regenerate a tendon best from what I have seen is through full range of motion. You need to put that tendon on tension and strain with loads that are about as heavy as you can possibly handle on a linear progression that lasts 12 to 24 weeks depending on the severity and duration of your injury. I agree. And I lay out exactly how to do that in the book. And if people are dealing with tendon issues, they might not need the whole. life remedy, they might just be able to go straight to the tendon issue and resolve it. And that chapter is there in the book. But for most people who've been dealing with a tendon issue for four to eight, ten years,

right? Life has changed. Yeah. Even six months, language starts to change. So we cover all of all of that in the book. In the introduction, I explained to people who would read it, if you're looking for a meta-analysis of a bunch of studies with my, linguistic twist, read a different book. Like there's stuff in this book that isn't supported by

research directly. There's stuff in this book that is, and I cite it. But if you're looking to follow exactly what the research says all of the time, then you have to wait until the research proves something works while other people are doing things that work all the time before you get a chance to try it. I would agree 100%. Research validates the innovator. Sure. I think Charles Pollock would agree on him.

If you were still here, rest in peace. But he said a lot of it. And a lot of stuff now still slowly, the research is catching up. You know, some of the things he was wrong for sure. You know, but like, well, and by say wrong, it just might have not been the best answer. I think obviously what he did work, of course. But maybe there's a little bit better.

but he was still so far ahead of, you know, you're like the, the knees over toes guy, which I love him. You know, a lot of, he's still doing what Charles said long, long coming ago.

And so just getting it out to more people. Well, Charles influenced me in, in the strength balance department. He was big on, if you can do this, you should be able to do that. Yeah.

And in the beginning, I was like, to the numbers. It's just like, if he said it, I'm doing it to the number. What I've come to understand is there are some relationships

that are extremely relevant. Like, if you can squat, let's just say 300 pounds for 10 reps, and you can do 150 pounds for 20 reps on the left and for four reps on the right with a step-up, maybe improve your right leg strength. So what I'm describing there is we're all wrong. Like myself included, I'm wrong.

The question is, are we directionally correct? Because as we start getting closer to the end, which doesn't get reached, we can correct our course. But if you find somebody who is positive that they're right about everything, you want to run the other direction from. I remember an old quote was, hang out with those who seek the truth and run from those who claim to have found it.

I like that. A lot of absolutes is a huge red flag. That's the only absolute. Yeah. 100%. Well, Sean, right on, brother. I always enjoy hearing your perspective. The ethical sales piece is something that's always stuck in my brain,

like even when I'm selling and marketing and doing all the business things I do these days, rather, that's still in the back of my mind from many years ago hearing you say that say that. Where can people find the book, learn more about you, social media, websites, all the things? If they come find me on Instagram and Dr. Sean Pastoge, the book is linked in my bio. If they want to go straight to Amazon because they're not an Instagram person, or they didn't like what I had to say, but they want to read the book, Live more, hurt less on Amazon. Beautiful.

Dr. Mike Lane. Yeah, Mike Lane, Ph.D. on Instagram, so come say hello. Beautiful. Coach Travis Mash. Mashlead.com. Thanks for being on, man. It's always such a pleasure. I got to get up there.

Was it Long Beach, New York? I'm going to check you out sometime. That's right. The East Coast Long Beach. Yeah. There you go. I'm Doug Lars on Instagram. Doug C. Larson.

We are Barbara Strugged on Instagram at Barberl underscore Strugged. going to work with Travis Mash, Mike Lane, Andy Galpin, and the whole team at Biomolecular Athlete. You can go to Biomolecularathlete.com. We'll see you guys next week.