Barbell Shrugged - Biological Tipping Points and How to Eliminate Your Back Pain Lifting Weights w/ Dr. Stuart McGill, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #492

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

Dr. Stuart M. McGill is a professor emeritus, University of Waterloo, where he was a professor for 30 years. His laboratory and experimental research clinic investigated issues related to the causal mechanisms of back pain, how to rehabilitate back-pained people and enhance both injury resilience and performance. His advice is often sought by governments, corporations, legal experts, medical groups and elite athletes and teams from around the world.   His work produced over 240 peer-reviewed scientific journal papers, several textbooks, and many international awards. He mentored over 37 graduate students during this scientific journey. During this time he taught thousands of clinicians and practitioners in professional development and continuing education courses around the world.   He continues as the Chief Scientific Officer for Backfitpro Inc.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: Biological Tipping Points Thoughts and recommendations on Reverse Hypers Stance on flexed deadlifts Bilateral v Unilateral Squats Best movements for stabilizing the core properly  What is the core?   Dr. Stuart McGill on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Shadow Creative Studios - Save $200 + Free Consult to start you podcast using code” “Shrugged” at podcast.shadowstud.io   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   http://onelink.to/fittogether - Brand New Fitness Social Media App Fittogether   Purchase our favorite Supplements here and use code “Shrugged” to save 20% on your order: https://bit.ly/2K2Qlq4    Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Shrugged family, this week we are joined by a legend, Dr. Stuart McGill. Quite literally the greatest of all time when it comes to the low back, from rehab to performance to working with the most dangerous MMA fighting humans on the planet to your weekend warrior and everything in between when it comes to low back health, rehab, strength, and performance. And I sat on this interview with a painfully large smile. By the time we were done with this show, my cheeks hurt so bad. It's like cheek hypertrophy because I was just so happy that I got to sit there and talk to Dr. Stuart McGill for as long as we got to talk to Dr. Stuart McGill. Before we get into the show, I want to thank our sponsors over at Bioptimizers. We're talking about some magnesium today.

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Get into the Barbell Shrub group. We have the biggest group on Fit Together right now. And I think I have the most friends on Fit Together except for Scott Bowen who invented it, and I'll let him have it. But I've really been enjoying seeing you guys over there. I'm super stoked on the number of people that are doing the check-in challenge right now,

and life is good. Dr. Stuart Regill is on the show today. I'm stoked. See you guys at the break. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner. Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash,

Dr. Stuart McGill. There's a whole lot of things that you're known for, but none so as important as Coach Travis Mash just called you the most fascinating man in strength and conditioning.

That's pretty impressive. That's very impressive. You probably get mentioned we record three days a week at 6 30 in the morning and travis mentions your name at least six times in those three recordings every week we have a lot to hang out i got to see you speak at perform better i want to say like three years ago at long beach um which was very very cool so it's fantastic that i actually get to talk to you in part well sort of in person on the internet I want to say like three years ago in Long Beach, which was very, very cool. So it's fantastic that I actually get to talk to you in person,

well, sort of in person, on the internet. Yeah, well, same here. G'day, Anders, Doug, and Travis. One of the things that comes up in our show almost daily is biological tipping points. And Coach Travis Mash mentions you the the person that turned him on to this and i would just love to know where where this big idea came from and how we can test it because i think that it goes a little bit maybe not against but there's a belief that we can all train the the perfect way and you know do things the perfect way in the gym and we should be able

to achieve greatness um but the idea that biological tipping points uh are there it kind of means if we all do too much or we we're going we're not performing optimally injuries are going to come and our biology has a lot to do with that. Okay. I'm assuming you want to comment then. Yes. I'm asked. Yeah. I'm the story behind them. All right. Let me start this way.

The human biological system does not have infinite capacity. So I'll start with an example of, say, a nutrient like vitamin D. So we have a fat-soluble nutrient that if a person is deficient in vitamin D, they're ill. And so they take a supplement or get out in the sunshine and bring up the vitamin D to a optimum level. Once they cross that optimum level, which gave them optimal health and function, vitamin D then became a poison. And if you take too much, you become ill once again. So we have a inverted U-shaped function. Now you can think of load, you can think of psychological stress, you can think of getting ready on the platform. If you're emotionally and psychologically flat, you will not pull performance from your body. The right amount is the right amount for optimal neural drive and whatnot. If you get so excited, or I just think of a better example than a lifter

might be an MMA combat athlete. If they get overexcited and can't control it, they then do fine for the first 200 seconds, and then they go through an adrenaline dump, and they can hardly raise their arms. So with everything in biology, there is a tipping point. So another general concept, I suppose, is the job of the coach is to organize through programming, training, to create adaptations that move the tipping point over time.

So you're creating a larger biological capacity. And then the key is don't cross it. So have you heard of this brain? I have a question right out of the gate. Have you heard of Omega Wave? I have a question right out of the gate. Have you heard of OmegaWave, you know, the athlete testing protocols? Anyway. Well, I've heard about it, but I'll not profess any expertise about it. Well, supposedly, like, here's what it – it monitors, you know, your DC brain waves.

So it kind of gives you, you know, feedback on the CNS and then it monitors heart rate variability to supposedly give you feedback on the, you know, the PNS, you know, autonomic nervous system. And then it, you know, monitors your echocardiograms to give you feedback on your, you know, anaerobic and aerobic energy systems. And so on a daily basis, you can make wise decisions. You know, do you think at least that that's something that's feasible? Well, that's been very well supported, I think, Travis, when you look at some sports organizations, and I'm assuming Omega Wave is just a trade name, but what you're really discussing is systematic and timely testing to optimize performance. So if you take a

soccer club like AC Milan, they've been well known for a lot of years in testing all of the players throughout the season. And just to use one example, they might have a test for power. If a player becomes overtrained or fatigued, the power output goes down, they become slower, they're not making the quick cuts, etc. Now, if they're undertrained, they're exactly the same. So in a way, it may not be an abrupt tipping point in terms of injury. However, it's a tipping point in terms of optimal performance. And since you started with the notion of tipping point and injury, Some injuries creep up on you. They have a cumulative trauma mechanism. Others are acute. Now, there might be a slow deterioration, say an M-plate fracture in a power lifter, for example.

They are sustaining micro damage of the trabeculae in the vertebra. They don't know it's occurring and they get a bit greedy. They train a little bit too often and they don't allow the adaptation to take place, which would be a recalicing of those micro breaks. And that's what causes them. So, you know, we have this discussion. Is it a good thing or a bad thing to have that microtrauma? It's a good thing. That's how you build heavy bone. But it becomes a bad thing when all of a sudden, at one point in time, you have a substantial, not a micro fracture,

but a little bit more of a macro fracture. And all of a sudden, you have the clinical signs and whatnot. And people think, well, that was, you know, an injury. You just crossed the tipping point. Actually, they'd been violating the tipping point perhaps for weeks or months. But anyway, so now that you've described the omega wave, I think that concept has been around for a long time. And not only would they test power production, that was just an example, they would test how they're sleeping, look at a nutritional profile, they would ask

about their social life, because we know from studying those groups that if a person is going through a divorce or a breakup with a partner or a spouse, that is a time of elevated injury rate. So, you know, this idea of continual testing is not new and you'll find it in cultures where athletes aren't so expendable. So, you know, if you're a, you know, the classic example that is always used is the Chinese gymnast. If that one gets hurt, there's 30 ready to take their place. Whereas if you're an elite soccer club in Europe, you have to look after your players

because your depth isn't very big. How does a coach or an athlete kind of know that they've gone a little bit too far if these little micro fractures or tiny little things that are beneficial in the short term that were kind of growing the adaptation? How do you know that maybe you've crossed that line too many times, even if they are tiny little micro fracturesures, as you call them along the way. Yeah. Well, now you've hit the art and science of coaching and clinical mastery.

I don't really have an answer for that. Other than there are biologically grouped rules, if you like, but we call them pirates rules. They're, they're generalizations and the variance in the human condition is enormous. Some people just have been touched by the hand of God and others just haven't. So a great coach will know the history of that athlete. They'll know the parents, they'll know the body type, there's variants across gene pools, etc., etc., etc. And then some players get warning signs.

And if they're wise, and the coach is wise, they'll pick up those warning signs. And if they're unwise, they will ignore them. But there's a time and a place to ignore them. There's also a time and a place to pay really good attention to them. And having said that, as you know, I really am, my expertise is simply low back pain. I'm not going to give too many opinions outside of that. So if I then bring that into low back pain, which I know a little bit more about, let's take a virgin disc. So a young adolescent weightlifter or powerlifter, and let's say they are, through their lifting style, creating cumulative delamination stresses

in their annulus. They've got too much motion and too much load. Then all of a sudden, one day, they say, oh, I herniated my disc. But was it that day or was that simply the culminating event? They never had built the hardware yet to detect that creeping up on them. You see, it just came out of the blue. Someone shoved a knife in their back. Now, what happens biologically is that disc, through the delaminated collagen, you've lost a little bit of pressure out of the nucleus. So you're aware that the disc is a hydraulic structure. It's got a gel nuclear core. In a healthy young disc, when a kid weight lifts or dead lifts, there's so much pressure inside that healthy nucleus

that if a nerve root or a vascular vessel were to grow into the disc, it would be killed. It would be taken out. So the health of the disc keeps it from feeling pain, if you know what I mean. But then when you damage an implant and now you lose the ability to contain that pressure, now you will see nerves growing into the disc. Now my answer to your question changes. Now the person has a history of back pain. They are now picking up the warning signs because their body has grown hardware to sense the pain and pick up the warning signs. So they know

I can feel that tipping point starting to come now. I've been through this before. I'm now wise. I have to back off. Yeah. I understand, obviously, totally. I went past, then I learned. That's when I actually started reading Thurman Gill's, mainly his website, all the information on there, backfitpro.com. Shout out. But it was like learning the back. There was a point before I ever broke my first world record

that i got majorly hurt in my low back of course and then obviously he's the go-to guy and then since then i broke multiple world records but because i learned you know how to train how to listen to my body you know from him and how to train the core what does that really mean like how should you train the core yeah it was a life altering moment. Can I just finish off that thought? I don't know if that was a satisfactory answer that I gave or not. But, you know, you get back to wisdom and you look at people who've just been so successful. Yes, they've been touched by the hand of God. to Eddie Cohn. And when you listen to him describing his pre-thought-out records and

personal bests he was going to set, and he said if he set a personal best, that was it. He wasn't even interested in setting another personal best for the next six months. He allowed his body to adapt to that new reality. He was pacing himself and forcing biological adaptation, and he lasted a lot of years. More than anyone I ever know. He's the best. Just a little bit of wisdom. Yes, we have pirate's rules,

but we also have just wisdom in practice, and Eddie would be a prime example of having that. At the, at the highest level, most people that listen to the show, they just, they want to be able to lift weights on a daily basis, not have any pain, get bigger and stronger and perform better. Like from a look from the perspective of low back pain, what are like your highest level concepts for how to train for many, many years without developing any acute or chronic conditions? Well, you know, the answer is it depends. Sounds like you, Doug. I know. Yeah. That's how it feels. No answer. Well, I can't give an answer until we have a person in front of us. So of course, we need a context. And if everybody was the same, I'd be replaced by a computer. Look, there's the algorithm, there's your answer. But

it isn't that way. So having said that, if I have a person general rules of biology and say, if you are average, you are overdriving your capacity right now. Now, there's several quantitative ways to get at that. One would be strictly performance. You map your performance and training load, just like as I was explaining with AC Milan. So on one side of the graph, you'll say, here is my training load and my performance before training was this. And then my performance after training, it should probably go down a little bit if you're pushing the tipping point. And then you have a recovery time. Now, maybe you're a quick recoverer and maybe you're a slow recoverer. If you look at combat athletes, how they scar and

grow scar tissue is really a variable. Some guys can fight quite quickly after they've been cut. The next person takes a lot longer. The same with inflammatory response. Sometimes it takes a long time and sometimes it doesn't. You know, you just, it's, you got to win the genetic lottery. Anyway, what we will do is map the training and then we'll watch performance over time. Now, if the performance is starting to level off, okay, now we can have a discussion about let's increase the stimulus. But if we increase the stimulus, is it the speed? Is it the load? Or do we shorten up the recovery time and just increase the volume? Do you see what I mean? So there's some quantitative ways and you do it through pattern recognition on graphs. But there's also that horse sense that great coaches have

and great athletes will have that same horse sense as well, just to be a little more patient and know where they are in terms of that reserve. How much reserve do I have left? And that razor thin reserve as you're peaking for an event is exactly the razor thin world of a really fragile back pain patient. They've been to brush their teeth the wrong way and they're locked up or the power lifter who uh just made a little one millimeter line of drive error but he had a thousand pounds on his back that's the same razor thin you're but you know anybody can can coach a an average person to lift an average way that's not what we're talking about when you mentioned earlier about kind of the hardware of your body, being able to recognize what the software is telling it

to recognize the pain, and then it sort of starts to grow in a pattern to recognize the pain, tell your brain what's going on. And then it starts to put up a lot of the defense mechanisms that are needed to stay out of pain, or you start changing the way you move to stay away from whatever's causing the pain, how long, and it's going to be a person-by-person thing, but how difficult is it, and a little bit of the plan of attack to getting your brain to down-regulate and not sense that pain so people can get back to some sort of real life like if you build a hardware system that is designed to recognize pain is it possible to redo that process so that it's not something you deal with for the rest of your life well i i unpacked four questions there. I know, because it wasn't a

great question. I was thinking out loud. If I can just go with the last question first, back pain is not a life sentence. And it's just unfortunate how many people continue to suffer. And if I can just make a statement there, if they could only get a thorough assessment so they're locked in onto the mechanism of their pain. Once they have the mechanism, their coaches, their clinicians can hone in on addressing that, wind down the pain, and start building their body back to build this precious capacity that we're talking about. So there's a little bit of a statement, I suppose, for your last question. But in terms of how your body changes after pain,

the answer is it really depends because people are so different, but the mechanisms, there's no such thing as non-specific low back pain. It's all very, very specific. And every person who comes to BackFit Pro forms a subcategory N equals one. They are that unique in their specific mechanism. And they are that specific in what their movement, maladaptive movements, how we're going to change them. If they are an explosive athlete, the way we coach them will be very different from someone who has a little bit more of, say, an endurance profile. But consider this, let's take a pain mechanism that we will call pure out and out

joint instability. So as they move, they will say, oh, I moved and picked up something to the left, and I got a knife in my back. In fact, I heard my back pop and my back pops and grinds. And then in the morning, the pain was in my right buttock. In the afternoon, the pain went into my left backside and then to my left little toe. In other words, the pain is moving. That is yet another clinical sign of instability at the joint. So the vertebrae are experiencing micro movements in a sheer mode, much like a knee that's ACL deficient will shift back and forth, and over time it will become arthritic. Your brain, when it senses an ACL deficient knee that's clinical, won't allow you to send full neural drive and strength to your quadriceps. It'll shut down. And that's exactly

what happens with unstable joints. They've lost the turgor or the stiffness. So they're experiencing micro movements and the brain says, whoops, I'm now going to shut down neural drive. So the answer to your question, if that's the mechanism, is how long? It's immediate. And until you can either through training technique, restore stability, or learn through good coaching and creating muscle memory of really locking into a good lifter's wedge, then and only then will the brain densify neural drive. What's the movement? The movement starts as a thought in the brain, and then the brain outputs a volley, a pulse train to the muscles. If it senses an unstable joint, it shuts it down. And the biggest robber of neural

drive is spine instability. You'll find this really interesting as a lifter. If you go to World's Strongest Man 2018, it was the one in Mogadishu, Africa, and all the boys got under the 750-pound jig and repeatedly squatted for reps. Do you remember that? Yeah, totally. Yeah. So Travis, I think you and I have talked about this together before. And so say one of the lifters, they did 17 reps. Go look at the rep before failure, the 16th rep. And every single time you're going to see the story of why their performance failed on the next subsequent rep. They had a little bit of unstable behavior. And from a clinical eye, you can see it. You'll see on the rep before their hips slide out a

little bit to one side, or they start to pitch forward or just a little bit, or their ankles are just becoming a little soft. And now the next rep, you know, they're going to fail. The brain is going to shut down neural drive. So there's again, a discussion of immediate responses. Um, however, um, that a really good program, the optimal program will have elements of hardware and software training to rebuild that. So that's, that's the, that's why not everybody can build great athletes.

A few can, but give us some examples of like, what would be some good hardware and good software for people who don't know? All right. Well, the, do you want me to stay with that joint micro movement?

So I'm loving everything you're saying. Yeah, just keep going. We don't even have to talk. We got another half hour. Just go. I never talk when you're on. Well, if it's the joint micro-movement mechanism, and, you know, here's the thing. Someone emailed me yesterday, and they said, oh, your name was mentioned on this podcast, and they just slaughtered it. They didn't know your stuff and you said this and they were quoted. And this is

what people don't get. If I have, if I'm making a statement, it always has a context. I might be talking about back pain to people. And then the next context, we're talking about rebuilding a PGA golfer. And the next context, we're talking about restoring a power lifter. So, you know, and then they think whatever you just say, and I'm sure you're misquoted the same way. It's funny how people don't get a context for these discussions. No one's got time for that. Well, you know, I keep coming back.

Internet happens too fast for all that. Yeah. He's being sarcastic. I know. I get it. But there are so few masters of the craft these days. And by the way, I know who I'm talking to today. So I know I'm speaking to masters of the craft.

But there are just so few masters of the craft. You know, we had a friend who bought an old factory here. It was a barrel making factory. And we're just going through there and looking at their tools and thinking, you know, these guys spent 50 years using this one hand tool. They were a master of the craft. They knew a barrel that didn't leak, you know? But anyway, to get back to this idea of restoring the micro movements, and your question, Travis, was the hardware. That, if that person is a power lifter, don't stretch. Become tight. Tighten up your lifting suit, become tight, and then practice spine hygiene throughout the day

and allow the collagen in the disc that has been delaminated. And, you know, imagine letting a little air out of your car tire. It bulges. It's sloppy on the road. We've got to tighten up that tire again. So there is a basic thought on the hardware change. The software though would be the movement patterns and really coaching a better wedge, more co-contraction. Now we could use all kinds of coaching cues, we could use devices, etc. And there are, I mean, I guess every power lifter I see comes with back pain. So every single one of them benefits from both the hardware and the software coaching cues and tricks of the trade, I suppose, to get more stiffness. And then all of a sudden magic happens. The brain just unleashes that ungodly fury of pulse trains to the muscles,

pull the hips through, and that stiffened derrick just comes up. And I know Travis knows what I'm talking about because he's now he feels it but now let's talk about hitting a baseball and the discussion would change entirely you know yeah get into a mobility stability a much different type of control mechanism to allow just appropriate stiffness to engineer out the micro movements but we still have to disassociate build springs load elastic energy and do you know what i mean so yeah or or i had an interesting consult not too long ago with a race car driver do you know the g-forces on on their body as they go through how much is it how much

g-forces on their body when they race? Or I've done them with your aircraft fighters and sometimes they can hit 6G. One of my best friends is Blue Angel Pilot. We're going to do it, Doug. Travis, I don't know if they put you in F-14s.

I don't want to be in that. I'm too strong. I'm too old. I have too much of a prefrontal cortex now. I can discern wrist too well. Stu, a few minutes ago you said something about practicing good spine hygiene throughout the day. What do you mean by that? Well, it depends on the mechanism of a person's pain. So if we were to take, well, you mentioned the book, Travis, Gift of Injury, which I wrote with Brian Carroll. And Brian came to me with a very horrific back injury. His sacrum had split front to back. he'd really fractured l5 the discs were in in very compromised shape so with him to get back just a little bit of capacity so he can take his garbage can down

his driveway and leave it at the end of the drive. He couldn't sit in a lazy boy couch during the day because that would tenderize his injury. So imagine stubbing your toe. If all day long, two or three times you would stub your toe, by Tuesday, I would come along and lightly touch your toe and you would scream. So in other words, stop stubbing your toe. So that's the best analogy I can give you of spine hygiene. The tools are movement hacks that you create for the individual so they can have a movement hack or an ability to still do the task, but in a way that doesn't pick the scab on their specific pain trigger. Those movement hacks are what we call spine hygiene. Movement hack.

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saving you $200 using the code shrugged at podcast.shadowstude.io. Let's get back to Dr. Stuart McGill. I can't believe you used the word hack. You're just looking for things that you know make your condition worse or exacerbate your pain or aggravate it in some way, and you avoid those things at all costs at the highest level? Well, again, you're painting me into a box. You avoid those things at all costs. You avoid them in a practical way.

So if you're driving your car and they're coming to train with you and you have a history of a disc bulge, and if you drive your car or truck without a lumbar support, that would be unwise. You just stole training capacity and it's such an easy movement hack to use a lumbar support in your car. So you've already built more training capacity when you walk in through the gym. So there's an example. Yeah, I got you. That's an easy one. That's low-hanging fruit.

Some movement hacks are a little more tricky and delicate, but some are just massive and people miss them. Give us an example of one of those small ones. I'm just curious like what is like a you know a more of an intricate movement hack uh how many people come to you and say i threw my back up when i sneezed and i say great show me how you sneeze could you and for those who can't see i sneeze downwards if the mechanism of their pain is a posterior disc bulge, they would have been much smarter and wiser. They would have bulletproofed their back by becoming chest proud like a peacock.

And I know it's not a normal movement pattern, but you sneeze upward, there's a hack. Awesome. I'm only sneezing up now. That's exciting. All right. I'm going to give you another one because this is real life. And now we're talking multi-million dollar athletes. There's a player in the NHL. Well, not currently right now, but when they're playing and if he ties up his own skates, there is a chance he could experience an acute attack later on in that hockey game. If the trainer ties up his hockey skates and he ties them up a very particular way,

but he coaches them. And if the trainer ties his skates, he is all-star level. So there you go. What? Wow. All right. Look at some powerlifters. Some powerlifters, they live in Birkenstocks and sandals. Why? Some of them will trigger back pain tying up their shoe and yet they're squatting 800. Huh? Yeah. Yeah. I get that. Am I off the mark on that? No, you're dead on. That's awesome. No, you're totally dead on. I used to have my wife tie my shoe. Yeah. Yeah. These are all little wee hacks and my job is to not miss any of them.

So to get such a thorough understanding of that person's life and because, you know, quite often, in fact, I would say almost every patient I see, I'm the last guy. I'm the end of the road. And I have to know what the impediments were that the previous 12 coaches and clinicians failed. That's actually what I wanted to kind of pick your brain about is where does the conversation and I guess the relationship between clinician and coach, many times those two aren't communicating and you have somebody going to the gym doing certain things and they go to the clinic and it's a completely different message. How does an athlete manage those two relationships and ideally in the perfect world kind of getting them together which doesn't happen often well i i again i i can't give you uh i i can tell you how i do it is is that

a good perfect yes sir yes so when i see an athlete i always have an open invitation, please bring your team with you. So if that is your technique coach, if it's your psychological coach, if it is the trainer, the team doctor, please bring your whole team. And now for the first time, I'm simply the conduit to bring all of those people to the table. And I'll'll say here is what I found in my assessment is there anything anyone can add to this and usually there is and then we put together the program and and then when we leave is there is there any thing that someone needs to voice and there may or may not be but anyway that's how I get everybody all on the, on the same page.

And if you're a golfer on tour, your winnings might not be 50 million a year, but with your endorsements, you are, that's, that's the size of your enterprise. So I want the business manager. I want everybody in that room. And here is the strategy that here are the movement hacks. Here is the time of day they're going to train because laying in bed is stressing their discs. Their discs are swelling at night. You know, again, whatever the mechanism happens to be.

And here's how we're going to just optimize every single little element and give this person the best chance possible. And before people even go to like a clinician or talk to their strength coaches many times, they are putting themselves through something they saw on the internet. And we talk about them all the time. And I sent you in our email just kind of talking about reverse hypers. Can you just dig into the reverse hyper a little bit? And once Louie started talking about them, they started showing up in gyms all over the place. And I don't know if – I'm personally not that great at them

in that I don't feel super comfortable doing it. So if I'm struggling not that great at them in that I don't feel super comfortable doing it. So if I'm struggling with them, I can only imagine the gen pop coming in and thinking they're going to heal their own back pain by jumping on a reverse hyper. Yeah, there's nothing that heals everybody's back pain. Again, as I get back to that notion, there's no such thing as nonspecific or generic back pain. If I said to you, I've got leg pain, what machine should I use? Or I've got head pain, what should I do? Doesn't that give context to the silliness of I've got back pain, what machine are we going to do? So having said that, I can't answer that question about a specific machine or exercise tool or anything else until I have a person in front of me. And now I have a context. So the assessment will, it doesn't lie. It always guides us.

But let me go back with some generalizations because I know we have to give people something here. So you've mentioned the reverse hyper. It's a tool. Every tool that you choose is to satisfy or reach a very specific goal. So when I say to an athlete, in fact, I had one of your Olympians, it was just a Skype consult or a Zoom consult, but I had their team with me. And I said to the athlete, could you describe for me your training goals? And there was silence. Now, this is one of your Olympians. And I asked it a different way because I thought they didn't understand what I said. What are your training goals? They couldn't answer it. Well, in private, I would tell that person, you need a new coaching staff. You are unguided. You

do not know your specific goals. What are you training for? You have no direction here. Your coaches are your problem. You had anlympian and their coaches didn't know their training goal well no the athlete didn't the athlete also the the coaches did not convey well you have no buy-in well the coaches were way off because they brought an injured athlete to me they did not have the expertise to pull this person out of pain. They had no idea of a concept of a tipping point or specificity of back pain. And yeah, they were just throwing the kitchen sink at it, hoping something would stick. And occasionally it does. But anyway, getting back to this idea, every tool now has a risk and a reward ratio. Choose the best tool that has the most reward potential,

the minimal risk to reach the goal. So you got to know three things. What's the goal now? So now at least we have a framework to discuss the reverse hyper. So what's the goal of the reverse hyper? So if it's to create software and more dominance in gluteal-driven and hamstring-driven hip extension, okay, it's a tool. Is it the best tool? Now, that's my next question. So if I said, well, let's push a sled. Let's bound up stadium stairs. And, Travis, I'm going to ask you a specific question now. When I measure the neurology of powerlifters, and this surprises a lot of people, you know, I've heard this saying, and this isn't a derogatory term at all, but they are sort of the grinders of the athletic

world. And if I said a dump truck, what I mean by that is they can carry heavy stuff. An F1 race car can't beat a dump truck carrying heavy stuff. That's what it's built to do. It's gearing, it's everything. So people think powerlifters have a slow, lethargic neurology. And I think they are so lost because to get a white fiber, fast twitch, high strength metabolism, you've got to have an explosive metabolism. That's what comes along with it. You don't train high VO2 max. And then I'll say, all right, you realize that you're actually dealing with a very, very explosive athlete. Every one of us.

Every one of the great power lifters are explosive as hell, but the coaches don't realize this and they won't train them for that. So now let's get- I'm glad. I like winning. Yeah, but if I can get a power lifter to do one-legged bounding, then I put that on steroids and I say, good, bound the stadium stairs. Now watch them pull out of the hole,

just explode and rip out of the hole. So there would be an example of, do I need more slow strength in the reverse hyper? Maybe yes, maybe no, I don't know. I'm just saying that if, you know, consider the goals and the options that you have. And Louis, I mean you got to give him credit. He's been very, very creative at coming up with new machines, various training cycles and all the rest of it. And so I'm just trying to do the same thing here. It may or it may not be. Now, having said all of that, I can tell you that there are some power lifters who do not do well with it. It triggers their back pain. I can also tell you that we've taken lifters, and you know who some of them are, and they really wanted me to help them get back into the groove with the reverse hyper. So, all right, what are their specific pain mechanisms and is the reverse hyper triggering them? Is there a stylistic change we can make? So if you look at our Ultimate Back Fitness book, one of the earliest versions in there, I put in Art McDermott, who was an American strongman, if you remember back to those days.

So instead of laying across the top pad, the reverse hyper, and swinging the hips in extension, I propped him up on his elbows. He posted really high, peacock chest, locked in his elbows, and posted down with pecs and lats. Who can argue against that? In other words, I built a lifter's wedge on the reverse hyper, and there he goes. So with this latest lifter who's been trying for a world record over the past couple of years, that's what we did.

So, you know, but this idea that it pumps blood, I don't know about the tissues around the joint, but I don't think it pumps blood in of the disc. It's avascular. If you've got blood in your disc, you've got a big problem. Yeah, you've probably got a brain bleed. Yeah. But anyway, I've talked to louis about this before and uh you know i could yeah it's one of those things that you but know your goals yes you've chosen the best

tool and that's probably the wisest way to answer that that's the way you showed me to do it on my on my um on my forearms build that wedge and uh it does fine after you showed me how to do it on my, on my, um, on my forearms, build that wedge. And, uh, it does fine after you showed me how to do it. It would trigger me sometimes, you know, if I did it the way Louie did. Travis, I'm going to ask you a question. If, if you took, um, a, a lifter who is highly unconventional and, you know, we all think back to the Latvian Konstantinov who did the dive. And I mean, man, that was a weird lift. Would you, if you, if he came to you and said, coach mash, can you, uh, guide me on my programming now? Would you change that style? Because as far as I know, he never had any back issues. Maybe he did, but I didn't know about it,

but would I change his back style? Because it really goes against what you would say. You got a young lifter. No one would say, Hey, follow that. So would you change them? And I, I wouldn't, the guy's a world-class athlete. So now I walk into mash's gym and there he is. And he wants me to coach him on the uh reverse hyper am i gonna change you hell no i did i did you know like i i definitely listened to the way you taught it and that's the way i do it now and so yeah i've never been a big fan honestly i mean i'll say that i'm a huge fan of louis obviously uh i just have learned to take the good and leave the other stuff you know take what works and leave the other stuff, you know, take what works and leave the other stuff. But I've never been a big fan until you showed me because it would trigger my back sometimes.

So I just didn't do it. You know, but now I do. Can you think of two athletes that have the identical program? No, they shouldn't. No, not in my gym. My weightlifter is not. There are no two that have the same. Right.

They might be similar, but there's differences because each of them have biological tipping points. Oh, gosh, we have seven minutes. Anders, can I ask a really big – it's an important question. Biggest one you got. Let's hear it. All right. So, Dr. McGill, have you ever heard of people talking about neurotransmitters and based on the dominant neurotransmitter in your body

is probably the way, you know, there are certain characteristics of the way you should train that person. I know it was Charles Pulligin talked some about it, but is that true? I'm not the expert. I can't comment on that. Okay. It's not something I deal primarily in mechanics. Have you heard the theory? Oh, of course. Yeah. I mean, yeah, what you eat, how you train, all based on your neurogenetic and how you metabolize different chemicals in your body.

You know, the gene jockeys these days have all kinds of data and thoughts on not only I thought I'd at least throw it out there. Yeah, no, that's a whole world of science that I'm not the expert in. I got to find out more about it anyway. So I thought I'd ask at least. But can I make a comment on that? Yeah, yeah. to ask at least but can i make a comment on that yeah yeah so when the genetic profiling first came out uh i remember working in the uh with with a group of top combat athletes and uh one of them's

uh brother-in-law uh was a uh a gene jockey and they got together and they formed a company where they would take DNA from the athlete and tell them what their athletic profile was. Well, it's commonplace now, but I was one of the first in that. And so they listed 10 traits for athleticism. And I could tell you with a hundred percent accuracy, if you gave me a questionnaire of those 10 traits, what am I really good at? And what am I the bottom of the barrel at? I could have told you, for example, anaerobic recovery. So when I played hockey, you know, hockey is you go for 45 seconds, and then you sit down and get your heart rate back to zero as fast as you can. Totally anaerobic. Yeah.

I was terrible at that. I was the worst guy in the room and the coach would tap me on the head and I'm still breathing hard and my two line mates were ready to go again. So I knew that. But I also knew that if I got my hands on you, if I had your sweater, you're coming down or you know what I mean? I had a good set of mitts and I was ultra. In other words, the absolute top and grip strength. And, you know, I don't look like a strong guy, but I've got good grip strength, but terrible anaerobic recovery. So anyway, my point is, do you really need to do the gene assay or do you know yourself

well enough that you could answer the questionnaire accurately athletes if they were guided on how to answer the questionnaire they get pretty close so now they'd start to know how to train and what to eat and that kind of thing it was more for my younger athletes trying to be like uh expedite the process is what i was, is what I'm after. You know, you have someone new to the game, you know, we did an experiment with volleyball teams twice. The coach said, can you put two or three inches of vertical jump on all of the guys on this volleyball team?

We got exactly the same results when we ran the study twice and a squat training intervention of six weeks in length or whatever it was, but they all did the same squats. Half of the team increased their vertical jump, the target, couple of inches. 40% or 35% lost a couple of inches off their vertical jump, exactly the same training regimen and 15, 10% had no difference. In other words, on average, squat training did not increase the vertical jump, but that's not the statistic you want. What you have to study is the variance because obviously there were a group of super responders and a group of negative responders. Then I learned to ask two questions. The first

one was, and this was to the group of kids that you're coaching, are you naturally quick or are you naturally strong? Quick ones go over that side of the room. Strong ones go over there. Now, which group there do you think just about perfectly predicted whether they were getting the two-inch increase in jump or the two-inch decrease? I would think the quick ones would get the increase. Yeah, of of course you got it so you you know you're coaching force velocity exactly so right more force to strength you uh

because when a muscle yeah it gets stiff you can yeah let it go and relax to get a jump so those who have a naturally quick neurology and you add strength, you just unleash them. Now, that's what you find in powerlifters. They are nearly quick. That's the metabolism they have for their strength. But so there you go. Yet again, did you do a genetic assay to learn that? Or no, you just ask the kid and the kid self-selects themselves.

No, you know, I'm just naturally strong. I'm not the quickest dude. So more of a profile you could do. I like that. Okay. Yeah. I've been sitting here with, like, a big smile on my face, feeling like I just got a personal seminar ran for me.

It's the best. This is the greatest part about this whole job is I get to just sit here and listen to all of the last hour. i'm sorry we have to get going i'm sorry i have to go change into my dad life and uh shut this down why don't we do this again or sorry andrews i would love to i would love to do this whole thing again. I love you guys. You're my people. I seriously have just been sitting here with just a big smile on my face. Just keep going. This is everything I want to hear.

Everything I – like it's the deepest answer to very simple questions that you feel like are simple, but the level of complexity that you can bring into it and how deep we can go. Dr. McGill, thank you. What website and where can people find you? Well, our website is backfitpro.com and that's where our resources are. Instagram backfitpro too. Oh yeah. I, my daughter runs the Facebook and Instagram. I, I,

I'm not so good at that. She puts up good stuff that you've written though. So yeah, it's good. My instruction to her is just put on good content. I, it's good. Yeah.

Yeah. When is, are you, do you have any speaking engagements lined up or is everybody just shut down right now? No, everybody's shut down right now. I did two conferences on the weekend virtual and I have always been, well, when I first started as a professor, I could hardly speak.

I was so terrified of getting in front of groups. That's crazy. Because you're amazing. It was very difficult for me to get in front of people. Anyway, this whole new world of speaking to a computer on Zoom, and there's 500 people around the world on it, there's no energy back. It's a really difficult thing to do.

So I got some old stuffed animals, and I put them all around my computer, and I spoke to my little animals. So I felt like Lady Gaga there. So that got me over the hemp. So I kept calling them my animals. You have to do this thing. You have to go on Hulu or wherever you watch tv

and watch saturday night live on zoom and what typically is hilarious humans in front of crowds vibing off of energy going back and forth comes across as it's the strangest thing to watch a comedian do comedy with nobody laughing and them just in their house it's been just watching saturday night live specifically the weekend update where they give legit one-liner after one-liner after one-liner but there's nobody there to laugh so they're just in their house and it is so weird to watch i felt like i watched the ufc the other day like people are taking big shots and there's no crowd going oh like there's no energy i feel like i watched the ufc the other day like people are taking big shots and there's no crowd going oh like there's no energy it feels i feel like i'm just watching it on mute it was

almost you feel like you're you're watching like a street fight in a cage versus an event right yeah henry smith went out there and and like retired he he's he's like all the way on top of the world retired he's like that's my last fight, everyone. And it was just totally silent. There's no big send-off, no crowd, no cheering, just nothing. Just the way he planned it. I would want to do it in front of a crowd. I would do one more at least.

Yeah. Stu, didn't you, like in two seconds, didn't you work with George St. Pierre? I can't answer that in two seconds. When you say work with him, I certainly tested him, and I know a lot about his athleticism. I didn't really work with him in terms of training. And the advice and my input to it all really went through John Chamber, who was his strength coach at the time. Right.

I remember you talking about him. input to it all really went through John Chamber who was his strength coach at the time. Right. I remember you talking about him when I, I've, I've, you know, obviously watched your, um, you give talks. I mean,

you're talking about the pulsing of MMA athletes. Yeah. So I've, I certainly know George from that perspective and, uh, he's, uh, he's amazing.

That was the talk that you gave at perform better when I was there. Uh, yeah, that was like when I was there. Uh, yeah, that was like, I think that was your, your newest talk at the time that I saw you about three years ago. Right. Uh,

well, I, I've actually collected quite a group of, uh, elite athletes from, from different sports to show that example of, uh, of the neurology.

Um, Travis mash massively.com, but go to back fit pro first, right? neurology. Travis mash massively.com, but go to back fit pro first, right? It's gotta be one really smart person on this podcast. We found them. Doug Larson.

You bet. Stu, I've wanted to have you on the show for many, many years. So I appreciate you coming and hanging out with us today. Thank you. Yeah. Well, I really enjoyed it,

Doug. So thank you very much. You bet. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas C. Larson I'm just going to keep smiling can we also I want to come to Canada because I want to play hockey I used to play hockey I went and like

left home I had to go do like go play up in prep school in New England I want to go play hockey I didn't know you were an actual hockey player you know, it snowed every night here for the last two weeks. Okay.

I'm going to stay in the South. It's a visit, not a, not a full. Yeah. Be careful what you wish for. Playing pond hockey in June. Get excited.

Yeah. In our harbor down, I live in a town in central Ontario called Gravenhurst. We have about 70 hockey rinks plowed into the harbor down in the lake here. We have one of the, I think we have the largest three-on-three hockey

tournament. Amazing. We should come up. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged. Get over to barbellshrugged.com forward slash store. Programs, courses, e-books. Thank you again, Mr.

Or Dr. McGill. We're going to do this again and we'll see you guys next week. Yeah. My pleasure. Bye fellows. That's a wrap. My friends get over to barbell shrugged.com forward slash e-mom.

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