Barbell Shrugged - How getting hurt can improve your career w/ Nicole Torres- Active Life Radio #9

Episode Date: September 6, 2019

Imagine this… You are working out like you always do, you reach down to deadlift the barbell one more time and, bang, your back goes out. You have pain like you have never experienced before. You crawl to your phone and call your spouse and friends to come help you because the pain is so bad. What goes through your mind? . That’s exactly what happened to Nicole’s Active Life 1 on 1 client, Robert. Robert is a CrossFit Affiliate owner in Lakeland Florida. He owns Lift Lakeland, and it is in that gym that he found himself laid out, unable to move without intense pain. . In this podcast we talk about how Nicole helped Robert go from having fear day to day around anything that included a hip hinge, to deadlifting, and olympic lifting again. And we also discuss how that experience changed the course of Robert’s career forever. . In this episode you will have the opportunity to hear how important this all was to Robert’s wife. The thing about pain and injury is that too often we look at it as pain and injury to the body, and we do not consider the impact it has on the mind. In this episode, we put that concept in play.   Minute Breakdown:   0-10 - “I’m scared” 11-20 - Assessment results 21-30 - A handwritten letter from the Robert’s wife 31-40 - 2 month in, pain is reduced, but still no deadlifts 41-50 - Most CrossFit gyms add volume, intensity, and frequency, too fast 51-60 - Teamwork makes the dream work Work with an Active Life Coach like Nicole at activeliferx.com/shrugged Find Nicole at @nt_thecrossfitspt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/alr-torres ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Nicole Torres, welcome to Active Life Radio on the Shrugged Collective Network. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled for having you in multiple places, both on the podcast, on the staff. I mean, thank you. I'm thrilled to be here for sure, 100%. Perfect. both on the podcast, on the staff. I mean, thank you. Thank you for sure. A hundred percent. Perfect. Well, what I'm excited to talk to you about today is one of your clients who you work with, who owns a CrossFit affiliate, who has all of the education that he needs in terms of strength and conditioning to be able to potentially help himself, who found himself stuck on the floor, not being able to stand up because

of back pain and reached out to work with us, set him up with you. And we're going to tell his story. Sounds good. Um, yeah, so I did speak to, uh, my client Robert and he was willing for me to use his name. So we'll just go ahead and use his name as we're speaking. But I started working with Robert. Hold on. Hold on a second.

I don't want you to tell Rob's story. Let's hear who are you. Oh, we're talking about me? Well, yeah. I mean, this is your introduction to the Shrug Collective Network. I mean, who is this mythical creature named Nicole Torres? I feel like every time I answer this, I don't answer it in the way you want. So I won't talk about my employment. So I am definitely a passionate person about

strength and conditioning, physical therapy. I'm a physical therapy student. I'm a recreational CrossFitter myself. I've been involved in the CrossFit community as well. And I'm kind of just trying to deep dive into getting involved with active life as much as possible. And I love working with clients one-on-one and especially excited to talk about Rob's story because I think he has a really great story that a lot of people can associate with. So for some background that Nicole wouldn't share with you, Nicole is someone who we met on Instagram, right? She had a question for me and I answered it and I was just impressed with the way that she acted on the advice that I gave her. And then long story short,

she ends up working for the company. Nicole is one of our coaches on staff who has the unique ability to call me on my bullshit in a way that is both loving and like, no, but seriously, that's bullshit. So, so, uh, she started to work for us in workshops. She comes with us and travels the road. She was recently in Boston. Where else have you been for workshops? You were in Florida and Boston. Those are the first two. Yeah. Then, uh, had a little mishap for DC and apparently canceled as well. So yeah, yeah, that's all right. So, um, yeah. And you just, I mean, you've been an extremely valuable asset to our staff and in building up the pro path, which is what we're now doing for gym owners. Uh, the first person I thought to talk

to about how we should do this was Nicole, because Nicole calls me on my crap, Nicole has an extensive background in both marketing, development, management in a CrossFit gym environment and in a corporate environment. And I just knew that you could bring organization and tact to everything that we were looking to do. So now we're going to – you're welcome. She also happens to be a skilled one-on-one coach for us at Active Life. So I'd like to talk to you now about what it's been like working with Robert. Cool. So Robert comes to us, just so everybody understands. Robert had already purchased and gone through one of our templates. He had gone through Bulletproof back. And for those of you who don't know what our templates are, we have these Bulletproof programs that are, they're good at solving most problems for most people, but they're not the best solution for anybody when we have

one-on-one options available. Right. Makes sense. Yeah. So Robert had some, some back stuff that was bothering him and he decided to try Bulletproof back to solve his issue. And to make a long story short, if he was going to work well with a template, Bulletproof back would have been the wrong one. It just so happens that the name of the area he's hurting in and the name of the template matched up. So that's what he decided to do. And he didn't get the results that he wanted. So when we started talking to him about working with us one-on-one, there was of course some trepidation, but he decided to do it. And now Nicole, take it from there. with Robert specifically scenario is a great kind of starting point for him because, and I think he would agree with this. He's,

he's experienced that through a lot of things, not just one-on-one, but through the additional education that he's doing for himself. And I think that he's starting to realize to really trust himself and trust his judgment because as he's putting his all into thing, he's seeing the outcome. As I'm sure you'll talk about later, just personally and professionally as well. So when we started working together, his main concern was literally not being able to touch

his toes. He had fallen on the ground, like you said, trying to pick a barbell up, empty barbell. And he had done the bulletproof programming, but it and he felt like it was working for him until it wasn't. Right. So so we started working together and I could tell that that fear of an apprehension of movement was a big factor for him. And I knew that that was something that we'd have to focus on along with, you know, movement screens and checking that strength balance. Yeah. So, so to jump in on that, what you're describing there sounds to me like fear is one thing.

Pain is another. And your concern was more that he was going to be afraid to do things that he was capable of doing than that he was actually going to do things that would hurt him. Is that right? Exactly. And actually that was his concern too. One of the last things he put in his survey was he wasn't really sure if he was more afraid of pain or more afraid of the fear of pain. So that was a big thing. And I didn't even really intro with pain because I knew that the pain would subside. It was the fear that was more of the coaching aspect. So that's an important thing to dive into. And we've talked about it in previous

podcasts where a lot of you out there who are dealing with aches and pains and chronic stuff, stuff you've had for a long time, oftentimes there's just a little bit of a switch in your brain that needs to be turned that will allow you to do those things without pain. And right now, the fear that you have around the uncertainty of what could happen when you do it manifests as actual physical discomfort and leads to you not doing the things that you need to do because all we've all ever heard is if it hurts, don't do it. Right? Yeah, for sure. And I think that's a big concept here for sure. So, so how did you start with them on that?, I mean, you're dealing with a client who is self-aware enough to tell you, look, I'm scared. I have pain, but I can deal with pain. I'm scared of what could happen.

Yeah. So first, I think that the fact that vulnerable in a way that is only beneficial for him in the long run because then I can actually truly help him the best that I can. So we started off with the movement screen or after chatting. So after his initial, we had a conversation and I knew right away that I definitely wasn't going to have him doing a couple of things on the screen just because it wouldn't make sense like one of those one of those specifically being deadlift he was apprehensive from pulling from the floor really at all so we skipped deadlift was really the only screen that we didn't do and then at the time he didn't have farmer's handles but by the time a few weeks later he ended ended up purchasing them. So we were able to put them into programming, which was great.

So as far as the assessment went, went through the movement screen, skipped the deadlift, but I told him back squat was a little bit of a concern, but not as much. And I, I told him to, instead of using like the true 50%, which is what our assessment suggests, I just told him to go with a five out of 10 of what he felt comfortable with that day. So, um, not to worry too much about 50% of his one rent max and use that kind of throughout the assessment in general. So what Nicole is talking about for those of you guys who aren't familiar with our assessments, we've talked about them in the past on the show, but we're going to recover them right now, review them right now. Any new client who works with us, we start them off with a questionnaire. And that questionnaire is where Nicole got the information from Robert that he was

afraid of the movement. Following the questionnaire, we go to a phone call, right? Get a phone interview with him next. And on that phone phone interview what we're determining is how are we going to best help you because remember we're not a medical service nicola is not a physical therapist she's a physical therapy student we have coaches on staff who are also not physical therapists or chiropractors because what we do is not therapy it It's strength and movement training to help your joint health. So the interview is how are we going to help you in a gym environment that is not a physical therapy environment? Then we put you through an assessment and the assessment includes a movement screen and then a variety of strength tests where we're looking for

balance, we're looking for strength balance. We're looking for coordination, motor control, all of those things as we watch you move through all of these tests. And Nicole made the decision not to have Robert deadlift because while it's information that we would love to have, it didn't outweigh the risk mentally for Rob. And then on top of that, she scaled back the assessment because the maximal volumes that we had people working on, maximal intensities, I should say, sub-max, also would have been problematic for Rob. And it wouldn't have been a valuable test. So all of our coaches have the ability to change the test to fit the client. That's why it's custom. It's one-on-one.

So you took the deadlift out and what happens next? He goes through all the testing and what did we find? So go through all the testing, limited in some of the movement screens, more specific to the lower half of his body, hip and low back. And when I say low back, full reaching to the ground. So full lumbopelvic flexion so toe touch

essentially but limited and all the other movement screens regarding hip all of them extremity with the exception of ankle dorsiflexion so what she's saying right now if you guys understand is Robert is able to stand up reach reach down, touch the ground, no problem. He was able to get his ankle through full range of motion. But you're saying he was limited in his knees, he was limited in his hips, he was limited in his knees when his hips were involved? Correct. That's a big deal. To some degree.

Not always necessarily range of motion because we market limited if there's pain or discomfort or whatever other associated symptoms or sensations not being felt in the right places. So not always range of motion limitation, but there were some range of motion limitations. I think what's most interesting about that is the movement that he did arguably best on in his lower body was reaching down and touching the floor. Right. And that's the very thing that he did that caused him the most back pain that caused him the most fear. Right. So it's always interesting to me when there's a symptom that somebody would believe is related to a movement and it's related to something totally different. Yeah, that's a great point. So what'd you find in the strength testing? So from strength testing uh just starting off with his lower half uh we a fairly large

deficit right to left on front rack step up so what does that mean so right to left his right side he was able to perform more reps than his left side, uh, at 10 reps on his right and six on his left at what weight, 75 pounds, which we actually ended up lowering down a little bit because after some video review, there was some compensations. So, which is totally normal. Um, and happens very frequently. So we were able to bring it down to a little bit more of a controlled weight in that step-up. And do you know by chance just what Rob at that time, like what his lifetime front squat was, for example? Yes.

So the reason I'm asking you that, I know that Nicole is looking it up right now as we're talking. The reason I'm asking you what his all-time front rack step-up was or front squat was is because when you hear that he can do 10 step-ups with 75 pounds in his front rack, I think what most people are thinking is, wow, that's not that much. And I could probably do way more than that because I can squat all this weight. And I'm interested in hearing what he was able to squat by comparison. Yeah, so 290 was his listed 1RM front squat. So a guy who can front squat 290 pounds failed at a 75-pound front rack step-up, six reps in on one side and 10 reps in on the other.

Yeah. That's crazy. So just to give you an idea, that's 25%. Right. And 25%, he probably should have been able to do that for 20 to 25 reps. Right. That's where he should be for some perspective. So what did you do with that?

So let me real quick, let me just cover the other deficits because I'll go right into programming from there. So I think as far as lower body was concerned, that was our main concern. And then he had some deficits right to left with pushing and pressing and pulling upper extremity. So right showing fairly significant dominance to the left in both pressing and high pulling um in comparison to his body weight and i don't know if you want to get that detailed into we can we can stay out of the ways a little bit yeah so those were kind of our my biggest um indications back squat was uh he was able to back squat using utilizing the um five out of ten rpe and past tension testing in regards to that um but he did have some short

tension testing for some body weight movements which are kind of surprising because that's his strength um so so tension so tension testing guys is when we have an athlete we figure out their projected one rep max based on their ability to do call it anywhere from five to eight reps of something we just put them into a calculator tells us about what their one rep max should be based on that because we don't need to test your one rep maxes that would take way too long and be way too invasive and way too dangerous. Then we take that number and we divide it by 50%. And we want to see if you can do that controlled for 20 reps.

And then when you're done, we're looking at a list of different biofeedback markers to let us know if your body handled that episode well or if it did not handle that episode well, if you were able to complete it. And what Nicole is saying that Rob struggled, his biofeedback markers were telling us that all of his systems were stressed more than anticipated after doing lightweight work for longer time as compared to heavyweight work for shorter time. Right.

And even with things that he would consider to be strong in himself. And when you say strong, you mean? Yeah. Yeah, bodyweight type stuff. That is more in his wheelhouse, if you will. He's an ex-gymnast? Is that what you said? No, just body composition-wise, he is favoring bodyweight movements.

Right. And he would tell you himself that he prefers body weight movements. I think, what is he like? I mean, Rob, five, five,

eight, one 50. Yeah. One 55. Yeah. Or one 60. Yeah. Okay.

So continue on. We find that his, he's lacking stamina. He's struggling left to right unilaterally compared to bilaterally. Like where, where do you even start with that? It sounds to me like this is somebody who has been doing a lot of traditional CrossFit training. Which we see fairly often.

Right. Nothing wrong with CrossFit training to get you fit. The issue is once you start to be symptomatic, all of this stuff starts to get uncovered. If you have longstanding issues, like if you have disc issues in your low back and you're just training on a well-rounded program, you have to understand that you might not be round. You might have corners. Right. And a well-rounded program is going to cut those corners out. They're not your body shape. We're not, we're not talking about you being round. All right. Yeah. So my main concern, which is ironically, cause we didn't test the deadlift was starting to gradually expose hinging to some degree. So that was, um, definitely on my list of

things that we needed to work on. I didn't have any objective testing on it. I just knew that it needed to happen. So, um So that was the one thing, definitely step ups, sack squat. And then we threw in some upper body pressing and pushing just based off of his objective finding. And then on movement screen, really the majority of our movement screen stuff was movement assessment that we built into our programming with a lot of nerve gliding and kind of just getting that nervous system to relax and doing some lateral, more lateral stuff like Cossack squats and adductor rock backs were a big one as well that we incorporate a lot.

How much of what you were doing with him in the beginning had him saying like, oh, this is such a major step back? Was there a conversation like that with him? I would say he was in a place where he was due to kind of the extreme, like the extremeness of not being able to pick something off the ground. I think he was ready to go in and just kind of follow the program from the get go. So, I mean,

I would say that not so much apprehension is following it more on his own end to feel like, uh, because it's also started to happen like right before the open. So, you know, kind of that open FOMO, he was definitely experiencing that. Um,

but one thing I'd say about Robert is he is very dedicated. So he was following the plan consistently. I think it's natural to have that FOMO, especially during the open and all that stuff coming on. So. What I want to get to with you now, I want to kind of get us fast-tracked to Robert starts to feel different. And before we get there, the story ends well. This whole story about Robert ends well. And it's not even over.

We're still working with him. But the story ends well. And we're going to take a short break here in a moment. And when we get back from the break, I'm going to share with you a letter that I received at my home from Robert's wife. It blew everybody on our staff away. So when we get back from the break, I'm going to read this letter to you. And then we're going to get back to Nicole talking to you about exactly how we got from where we started to this letter. What's up, Shrug Nation? Are you enjoying this episode? I bet you are. I'm going to keep this brief. We'll get you right back to the show in a moment. In the meantime, if you're interested

in anything that we're doing at Active Life, make sure that you head to activeliferx.com slash shrug. You want to be a better coach. You want to help your clients better. You want to get out of pain, but you don't want to go to the doctor or miss the gym. ActiveLifeRx.com slash shrugged. That's where you need to be. We'll see you when you get there. Turn pro. Here we go back to the episode. All right. If you heard what you needed to hear on that break and you feel like you're a candidate to be working with us at Active Life, we want you to head to that link, activeliferx.com slash shrugged.

Pause the show. Nicole and I will be right back. You can always come back and listen to us again. Go do what you got to do with that link. What I'm going to do for you now is I'm going to read this letter that Robert's wife sent our way, because it's going to tell you, it's going to give you some perspective for how much good Nicole has been able to do for Robert. And then we're going to bring Nicole back in and she's going to fill in all the blanks as to how we got there. It's going to take me probably, I'd say three, four minutes to read this letter. So stick with me.

Dr. Sean and all Active Life staff. Several months ago, I was at home. By the way, it was handwritten. Several months ago, I was at home while my husband was working out alone in the CrossFit gym that we own. I decided to turn my phone off and disconnect for a couple of hours. Less than half an hour later, there was a persistent knock on my door. It was one of our coaches and close friend who lives just a few blocks from us. She said, have you heard from Robert? Do you want to go get him or should I? When I turn my phone back on, I see several texts from my husband because he needed help. Getting up off the floor. Pound for pound, this man is one of the strongest guys i know he's never had any chronic disabling injuries he doesn't push through the pain ever he can be a bit of a baby sometimes sorry robert actually we were completely lost as to why this happened and what to do

thanks to social media a phrase i never thought i would use both robert and i had seen active life's posts and immediately connected with the no bullshit attitude, the confidence in your words, and the sense that pain and clients were being treated from the perspective that saw a unique people and circumstances instead of a diagnosis and a stretching program. As I remember it, Robert contacted Active Life through social media. I highly expect them to get no response, holy shit was I wrong. He was quickly responded to, told to get off his ass and start moving around to keep updating us on his progress. Then he started looking into the online programs because when Robert started doing the whole posted PCS workouts, looking back, I would change one major thing, and you probably hear this all the time, how long we waited before we hired a one-on-one coach.

We were considering purchasing Bulletproof Back Program and have him doing that on his own, which would have been a huge mistake. As it turns out, his main issue was actually a single leg bias. With the best intentions, we would have been paving a road to pain hell because we just didn't know better and we're trying to save money. The trust posts you guys have up are so on point that I realized getting a little bit of credit card debt built up was worth healing my husband's back for good if you guys were everything you claim to be. Fast forward a few months, we have since enrolled Robert in the immersion coaches, the immersion program for coaches, another major leap of faith. I thought for sure the success stories of the immersion coaches making their

investment back in clients before finishing the program was complete bullshit. And that wouldn't be our story with two weeks left in the immersion. Robert has bought in over what he paid for tuition and has helped several of our members decrease pain that was keeping them from living well outside the gym, putting socks on, sleeping through the night, picking up groceries. These are some of the tasks that he has given back to our members by taking pain out of their lives. But even more valuable is the lessons in marketing, price value,

how to address different personalities, etc. Robert is a grown person and business owner and coach. I thought all he would be doing was getting rid of pain. Wait, I read that wrong. Excuse me. Robert is a grown person, business owner, and coach. And I thought all he'd be doing is learning how to get rid of pain. He's changing people's lives.

The hard conversation, charging what he's worth. As a box owner, we've struggled financially for over five years, improving just enough every month to keep ourselves in the game. Active life has brought so much value in so little time that I'm waiting for a catch. I can't believe what our bank account looks like right now. I read this very long-winded account of the past few months to express the deepest gratitude to Dr. Sean, to Nicole, to everybody at Active Life for making this possible. My husband is pain-free, confident, and has a

renewed passion for coaching. Our business is thriving and achieving better value for our members. We're on the verge of really leveling up. We could not have achieved that without you. I'm so grateful Robert threw out his back months ago, and I'm doubly grateful that Active Life was there to pick him up. Kayla. That gives me the chills, man. I know. I read it, but I like, I like hearing someone else read it. Well, the cool thing for me is that when we look at somebody like Rob and Kayla, who own this gym, they don't end up doing the immersion course with us. If you don't do the job of demonstrating the value on the front end, right?

Yeah. It doesn't happen. There's no reason for them to believe that what we're doing for him is valuable if it doesn't work. So you've changed not only, you have not only changed their lives, but you've changed their members' lives

and the lives of the people who are related to and friendly with their members. So that's a big deal. Dang, well, I don't want to take all the credit. They're doing all the with their members. So that's a big deal. Dang. Well, I don't want to take all the credit. They're doing all the work. I'm not giving you all the credit.

I'm giving, I'm giving you some of it. So I'll take them. Yeah, you can have some. So let's talk about like, when did it, when did he start to turn the corner?

When were you like, yeah, man, this is what we've been waiting for. So honestly, it was fairly quickly. Just, I think the deload for him was really big. And I think that's, we see that fairly often is if someone's truly taking that deload week that we give them when they first sign up as a client, so many people start to feel better just by chilling out for a little bit. So two to three weeks in to step ups,

he was already saying how he was starting to feel the strength improvement right to left. And just as on a programming end, we did put in an extra set on his non on his weaker side. So two to three weeks in, he was reporting that he was feeling stronger on his weaker side so two to three weeks in he was reporting that he was feeling stronger on his weaker side um one of the big things as well that we started off with was just a bent over row to reintroduce hinging which was really which was really big for him even

when he first started that he was somewhat apprehensive was that supported was he able to support on a bench or was he just hinging and holding yeah hands hand supported so it wasn't fully chest supported but yeah like a support with a hand right okay so i think that what what people just heard is something that they probably heard in almost every single episode before this one and that is two things deload was a huge deal it helped a Second, we threw an extra set in on the side he was weaker. You come from a training background. I come from a training background. Until we started to investigate how could we help people better, I had never heard of doing four sets on the left and three sets on the right, for example.

I know. It's silly how it's not a novel concept, but it just makes so much sense. Yeah. So how long did he stay doing more sets on one side than on the other? How did you decide when to transition him to the same number of reps or change the exercise? So we actually retested his step ups about eight weeks in seven to eight weeks in it was more so because I wanted to give him a buy-in like I I knew he was gonna have a positive retest just based on the feedback I was getting so I think it was important to retest it so that he could see the objective results better not just oh it feels stronger so we retested at eight weeks and,

um, just to give you an idea, he used the same weight as before. He did initially 10 on his right and on his retest, he did 19. And then he initially did six on his left and on his retest, he did 17. So on one side, he had doubled his ability to to endure the weight on the other side he tripled it in eight weeks yep guys the reason sorry go on yeah i was just gonna say that was huge and i think i think just from a coach's perspective like for any coaches that are listening that getting that buy-in back and not just like, you know, giving him that, giving us both that was really important for him to be like, he knew that something positive was happening, but I think that was a really

good moment to be like, oh shit, this is like actually happening. Yeah. So think about that for yourself for a moment, guys. When is the last time that you had a 300% PR on something? If you've been training for two or three or four years, the answer is probably two or three or four years ago. When I first started training. Exactly. So why is that? Why is it that we're able to get the kind of PRs for people

that were once reserved for the very beginning of your training life? The answer is because despite the fact that you've been training for four years or five years or 10 years, you may have been neglecting some of the most important movements that your body needs to get you the performance and the pain-free life that you deserve. And when we give them to you, your body drinks the value up like someone who'd been walking through the desert for seven days and is getting their first gallon of water. Chug the whole thing. So instead of making incremental progress, your body just takes all of it and says, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Give me more of that and then everything starts to feel better pretty fast for sure i think he at this time he wasn't his main discomfort concern i wouldn't even use the word pain was some stiffness after back squatting so this is two months in, uh, yeah, about two months in, he was still getting some initial stiffness, but it would subside,

um, by the end of the set. Uh, and was he back to deadlifting yet or not yet? Not yet. So at eight, at around eight weeks in, I added in some kneeling hinges with a band just to add some resistance.

So where was it? Where, where was the band at his hip? So if the band was tied up behind you, it, as he was essentially being eccentrically loaded into the into sitting back onto his butt, if you will, position, and then getting like an explosive hip extension from, from there. Cool. And so, so when would you be comfortable to put deadlifts back in and what was it like on that first day? Do you remember him, him being like, uh, yes. So, um, we, I put in deadlifts about four weeks later, so 12 weeks, so about, about three

months after us starting to work together. Um, it was just a three by six with a slower down than up tempo at, I want to say the five or six out of 10 RPE. Um, at this point he was definitely feeling good with the hinges. Like I knew that he was thinking about wanting to do it, but I, he was also apprehensive once he like, once I was like, Hey, we're going to add deadlift soon. He was super excited. But then when he saw it there, he was like, Oh, I'm like, remember you were excited about

this. You're excited about this. Um, so that first day of deadlifting, he worked up to one 15, which I mean, for not from being scared to pick up an empty barbell three weeks prior. I mean, I think one 15 or three sets of six is pretty phenomenal. Yeah. So in your experience, we waited 12 weeks to give him deadlifts again. A lot of that had to do with his mindset.

When do you think it would have been safe physically to have given him deadlifts? And why did you wait until 12 weeks? Realistically, probably within four weeks. Okay. He was able to touch his toes in the assessment, movement assessment. So arguably we could have even said two to four weeks. Um, so what was, what was, what was the purpose of the weight? I want people to understand how important the mental game is. What was the, what was the purpose of the weight? Yeah. I think, like I said, just getting that buy-in

and apprehension, like he was fearful of just the bent over row initially. So I knew that the level of fear was a bigger hurdle and a lower low-hanging fruit, better low-hanging fruit than just to say, hey, your tissues are technically fine, so let's start picking up a barbell. It was a better long game decision, in my opinion. And I think also, he will know if something happens like this, or whether it's not his back, something else that just life happens. It's just the nature of the beast. He'll know how to respond. He'll know,

Hey, I got to the point where I couldn't pick up anything off the ground. And it, this was the way that I got to picking something off the ground. So, um, I think it'll equip him better for the future to handle anything if it comes. And not only that help other people,

because that's what he's doing now. So, yeah. And so he's five months in now, right? Officially. help other people because that's what he's doing now so yeah and so he's five months in now right officially six actually february was his first full month and it's uh august so yeah okay and what has been the most major kind of transition from oh we're dead lifting 115 again what is he doing now so it took him about i was looking back through his

programming it took him about three weeks of the deadlifting to he was apprehensive apprehensive and then it was like all right like i'm starting to get the hang of this and then i think it was about three or four weeks into deadlifting where he was like actually just stoked to be deadlifting and the weight that he was pulling. So right now he is, he just deadlifted. Well, I'll say this a little bit more impressive here.

Um, week 19 ish, uh, two Oh five for 12, but then this week, two 35 for us for six. Nice. Um, so he's definitely getting up to working weight easily um and i'm sure fairly

probably close to his one rep max if we were to actually do a one rep max i'm not really there yet but i've been working more into that was his controlled deadlifts and we just started introducing power cleans so more of a dynamic pull, like he's been doing really good with the controlling. And then, um, recently started to add in deadlifts in a conditioning piece with modified weight. So, so I want you to spin your mindset here for a second and your perspective right Right now you're talking to me about Robert. What I want you to do now is talk to the people who are listening about why this takes so long. Because I think that part of the thought that someone listening to this on their drive to the gym or on their drive to work or on their train ride, it doesn't matter where you're listening to it.

I don't know why I'm going to a million different places where you listen to it. The thought process could be week 19. I hurt my back. I was out for eight weeks and I just eased back into it and I was fine. Why are we 19 weeks in and we're like, yeah, we're probably another 20 weeks to go before you're doing everything you wanted to do exactly how you wanted to do them and pursuing PRS and everything again. Yeah. I think one of the most important things that I wish people understood was just your ability to handle your tolerance, your ability to handle the load.

And it's not just about volume and intensity. It's the way that you're adding volume and intensity. And I love CrossFit. I do CrossFit, so it's certainly not. I think we all kind of are on that page. But when you're coming back from an injury, you need to load volume and intensity in a more specific manner. And it can't just be based off of a hopper method it needs to

be methodical and you know you're in and linear and increased with reason um and then just kind of start using that method of being able to control the load introducing a new type of load, being able to control that, then adding some intensity, whether that's speed, volume, however it is. It's just to play the long game at the end of the day. It's just essential. I think everything that you just said encapsulates something that people may or may not realize. They should have started with this. Right. I'm on the same page because I've been in Robert's position, not to that extreme, but I've been in that position.

And I've even said it to myself and I say it to other people. It's like, if you're going to have to restart seven more times, why not just start now and do it right? And you're going to save half of the time in the long run. And, you know, it's an uphill battle. But that is one of the biggest reasons why we have to do this slow because it's educating Robert, educating the people that we're working with so that they start to become the example,

because that's really like, I'm sure it's changing in his gym just because he's doing it, that other people are understanding the importance. And I think that's really one of the biggest values of taking it slow and communicating why you're taking it slow. And Robert's really great at, he loves to understand why we're doing things. So the communications will probably a little bit more in depth with him than all of my clients because he likes to learn it as well. But I think that's just a large part of it. I think that that's a microcosm for everything, right? I mean, Robert did our workshop. He did our immersion program and he wants to do our pro path.

And when we were talking about his gym coming onto our pro path, it made more sense to me that in the meantime, he works with somebody like Stu Brower or Mad Lab to get his gym ship more in order. We taught him how to accelerate what's already there. Now he needs to create order, systems, management around all of that. And I told him when he's ready, he can do the ProPath. But right now I want him to do something else first. Build those fundamentals.

Walk before you run. And this goes back to the training. It goes back to, and by the way, I don't want to make it sound like I told him that's what he should do. He also understood that that's what he should do. He's a smart guy. He's tactical. He's practical. He's on the ball. Now, in the gym, how many of you guys came into a gym and day one, you just got thrown into a group. And it was like, go ahead. You're pretty good at that. Add some weight. And maybe you're like, nope, nope, not my gym. I did three one-on-one sessions before I got started. Three, three. I mean, six, even look, I was guilty of this. I owned a gym. We had members do, um, it was, it was six elements classes in a

group. And then when we didn't need the group anymore it was three one-on-one sessions. It wasn't enough. You need to learn how to get these movements down correctly. Then you need to learn how to add intensity to them, meaning weight. Then acclimate to volume,

acclimate to frequency. You need to understand when to scale back for yourself and when to push forward. These are things that clients like Robert are learning from you, Nicole, later in the game that now will be valuable for his own members. For sure. And I think just to speak to the gym situation too, and as a coach, that if you can't necessarily fault your members for doing the things that they're doing, if you're not expecting them to be doing anything differently. So like communicating and educating.

And I think one of the biggest things I see is people are scared to be like, oh, shit, this isn't probably the best method anymore. Let me call myself out and say there's a better way to do this and educate the people around me. Instead, they just kind of like to turn the blind eye and continue doing what was doing and what was comfortable. So I think that people like Robert is able to learn from himself and say, hey, this is a better way of training and start to include that into his gym. And I think being able to call yourself out and say, Hey, that we're growing as CrossFit's growing as the gym industry is going, growing, uh, there's a better way to do this. And not a lot of people are willing to, to take that route. route. And what I want to make sure I pound home here is

Nicole is saying there's a better way to do CrossFit. Not that you shouldn't do CrossFit. If you're a CrossFitter and you're chasing that dopamine drip and the high-intensity training, what you run into is not having the time to do the things that allow you to do that high intensity training that you love to do. So you have these setbacks. You end up with shoulder pain. You get a little bit of knee pain here and there. You're scaling, you're modifying, and you go back to it and then you have to scale and modify again. It's this loop where if you

would just go through fundamental tolerance building in the beginning, you would be able to do all the high intensity training that you want, provided that you have a good recovery pattern. Yeah. And not only that, but one of the biggest things, and I crossfit about two to three times a week now, just depending on where I'm at. But one of the biggest things I've seen is just my body composition and I'm really doing less.

I think it has a lot to do with the removal of the constant stress on my body. I do know for a fact being involved as a manager and coach for the last five years that a lot of females specifically see this like they see guys who start crossfit and just like have a six-pack but i think that this happens frequently it's true a lot of times they're overworking whatever but like it's kind of a known factor that men lose weight easier than females but uh but i think a large part of that is just that hormone and stress level that, um, you just need to chill out for a little bit. And on top of everything else you said, because I've also had shoulder issues and all that stuff.

Yeah. Like one of our, one of, one of our rockstar clients, Christine on Dolly. She talks about that all the time, how she was in adrenal fatigue or it was H something access H H one. Jason Phillips could tell you about that. I forget what the other name of it is. I'm not a specialist in adrenals or hormones. Christine was just, she just found she was doing too much training. And when she scaled the training back, her body improved and her performance improved. Side note, she, I've also scaled back my training.

I recently posted a Friday, like what it's like for me to do on a creative day, what my life is like behind the scenes. Have myself brush my teeth, my shirt off. And Christine texted me. She's like, yo, Dem Abs though. I was like, yep, that's right. And I've been doing less and I'm up like 15 pounds. It's crazy.

Yeah, it's crazy how it works. I wish more like 15 pounds. It's crazy. Yeah. It's crazy how it works. I wish more people understood it, but I understand. I also, because I've been there, I understand the fear and you know, my brother, uh, who programs for brute strength and is an affiliate owner when he used to program for me, I used to be like, okay, well I didn't break a sweat today. So am I going to get fat? Like that's a real concern that people have. So I understand the fear of it. But I think that's why it's important to work with people. Coaches need coaches.

You don't know everything. I learned just being on staff. I'm learning as I'm programming for other people. I'm learning myself. And I'm implementing these things myself. And I'm extremely passionate about it. And I would love to implement it at every CrossFit gym across the world if I could. We're working on it. We're working on it.

So yeah, I think that that kind of all ties in with just setting the foundation, whether it's strength, flexibility, range of motion, or, your body's ability to handle the stress that you're actually putting on it. Nicole, what's harder about your job, the strength and conditioning piece or the mental side for clients? Probably the strength and conditioning piece. It's not that it's harder. I just, I think that I excel if I were to say which one I excel more in. I think I excel more in the relationship side. I mean, you essentially, other people will say they wear their emotions on their sleeve.

I would say you wear your relationships on your wrist. Because when we were at a workshop, your clients were texting you and it was coming to your Apple Watch and we're like, yo, let them know they can email you. They can email you. Yeah, but you know what? I don't know what it is. Like I will be so stressed out one day. And then yesterday, I think the last, yesterday, I think I got two, I got a text from a client

yesterday and it wasn't Robert, but I've had texts from Robert as well. And it was just an extremely positive text that just like lit up my day. So what was the text? I have to look at it. Yeah, you do. Yeah. I mean, look, we were, I was going to wrap the show up, but I can't wrap the show up now without hearing this text.

Okay. So at first I actually thought it was going to be negative for some reason, not negative, but like when I first started reading it and then there was a second part of it. So what she's saying is, stay tuned. Yeah. So my client sends me, since Friday, I've done the following. Power snatches, discomfort during no lingering pain, assault bike, still can't use arms on that thing without bringing on pain, but I won't cry over not using the bike ever again,

with a laughing emoji. Number three, discovered I can get one hand at a time off the ground in a handstand. Did it more times than I care to count demoing in class and taking a class over the last 36 hours. No pain. Number four, sumo deadlifts, no pain, but damn if I'm not 100% a conventional deadlifter. And then the next text said, so everything is working. I kind of needed this to reinforce that I've made progress because it really doesn't feel like it when I'm still hating the wrist strength series, having to drop the bottom leg on side planks and so on. But I am without a doubt and more solid than I was six months ago. And then I said, thanks so much for sharing. And then most of all,

and this is truly how I feel with all of my clients, is thanks for your trust to stick around with me for six months, because she's also been with me for about six months. So she said, I've never been able to shift weight hand to hand with control on a handstand. I've been reintroducing some intensity, some pulling from the floor, and I don't feel beat up from it. It's a good feeling. Thanks for putting up with me. So sounds like a future podcast. An elbow,

elbow person, main concern, like elbow pain and like ridiculous, ridiculous type of symptoms, elbow pain, not being able to pull at all. And, um,

which is, you know, one of the more tricky situations. Yeah. Elbows are tough. Elbows and wrists are really tough. Yeah. So, yeah. So I got that yesterday. So that was, uh, it came at a perfect time. It came at a perfect time to say the least. So I appreciate any time my clients want to reach out and say. And I joke around with Sean about how my clients will text me and they communicate fairly often with me. But really, at the end of the day, I would say it's my fault because I am thinking about them throughout the day. I'm just like, hey, I thought of this different thing.

I just thought about you yesterday. How's it going? What are you doing? How are you feeling? So it's probably me. I'm probably actually the, the needy one, not them. Well, it's not, there's no fault. It's, it's something that you enjoy doing. So we let them do it. And on that case, like, I love the programming side. Don't get me wrong. Um, because sometimes I will just like go in hard for hours and I'm just like, okay, this person really didn't need anything that complicated. But you start to find things and it's, you know, you get excited for them. But definitely the relationship building is more. but about physical therapy and everything else that if you just make people feel good and that's 90 of the intervention or strength conditioning itself it's crazy it's the truth i had a client today share a quick story who um she sent a facebook message we started talking

i was like let's get on the call let's talk about it and she has joint laxity her shoulder dislocates almost every day she had surgery on the other side this one feels the same as the other side did they want to do surgery on both the other one's still hurting and she's like can you guys help me and every fiber in me wanted to say yes, because I know that if she believes she's going to get better, she probably will. And I told her that. And instead I told her, I want to find a local physical therapist for you.

Cause I think that, I think that the reasons I want to work with you are selfish. I think that I just want us to be able to help you, but I think that you're going to get more help in person with a physical therapist. Oh, it sucked. Is it placebo if you tell them? I don't think that's placebo. I don't know.

I don't know. Yeah, I guess technically I'll just – she can write a testimonial later on that she went to physical therapy. No, that's great though. I think – and I see that all the time and I think that that's important too. And I know we share similar quality in that. Who doesn't want to be the one who solves all the problems? But at the end of the day, I think that's going to give other physical therapists, hopefully they're communicating saying, hey, I was going to use this service,

but they said I should do this. So hopefully that physical therapist starts to see the value in the programming. And a lot of my clients, I'll communicate with either – I don't communicate directly with their physical therapist, but they'll be like, hey, the physical therapist said you're doing great. This is exactly what I should be doing. Or, hey, my strength coach doing this says – so there's interaction.

It's not just me and my clients. So I think that's how how we teamwork makes the dream work as they say profound nicole where can people who want to find you find you oh i should have known this was coming uh my instagram handle is nt underscore the crossfit s p t for student physical therapist and Facebook. I don't do the Twitter thing. I don't get it. Honestly, I don't understand. It's like a loud cafeteria. It's basically Instagram.

I'm on Instagram fairly frequently. Twitter is like a loud cafeteria. Everyone is screaming and they're just talking to each other across the room and you're just trying to be the person who's able to get their way onto the table with a megaphone to be like, shut up, listen to me. That's Twitter to me. Yeah. I've tried to dial down my social media use lately, but I'm definitely still on there. This is the nature of the beast of working from home on your computer. I'm a fairly remote student

as well, so I'm pretty much on my computer all day. So I am quote unquote accessible. But one of the things that, one of the things that you taught me personally, John, I remember you said to me one day how if someone wasn't on your schedule or whatever, and they sent you a message, you would just delete it. I don't know if you did that anymore or to everyone, but you had but you did say it to me it was a voicemail if somebody yeah

if someone's not on my schedule and they call and leave me a voicemail and it's not like my mom or dad I just delete it yeah I want to say you said text message but that's okay

but it actually like at first I was like well that's kind of a dick move but then as I really thought about it I was like, well, that's kind of a dick move. But then as I really thought about it, I was like, you know what? That makes sense.

Because realistically, and I love texting, but texting is so invasive. Like people think that they should be able to get a hold of you right away just because texting allows it. And as I've become busier and working remotely, you have so much flexibility, but so little time. So I think making sure that you have boundaries in general with the people around you. And I honestly got that inherently from you initially, trying to still work on the boundaries thing. But that's definitely a big takeaway. One of the many. We can keep working on the boundaries if i can give you one boundary that you should start right away to end this show

go never eat a cannoli out of a public garbage again never eat a cannoli never eat a cannoli out of a public garbage pail again is what i should have said okay that's not fair because everyone's gonna think that it was not in a box or short story nicole nicole nicole got to eat it all nicole got a great cannoli from a cannoli place in boston at our workshop and larry who's also on our staff accidentally threw it out in a municipal garbage pail in the box she turned around she's like hey where's my cannoli and he's like oh i threw it out in a municipal garbage pail in the box she turned around she's like hey where's my cannoli and he's like oh i threw it out and then he went back and got it for her and she took a bite out of it which yeah i would have proceeded to eat the remainder of it but then after that i left it in your car for three days and then the end of that story is when i was driving home with larry he was like i think i can eat this i said dairy that's been in the car for three days he's

like there's probably some preservative in it, right? I said, if you eat that, I'm not driving you home because I don't have room for someone to throw up or have diarrhea in the side of my car. That's amazing. Yeah. All right. We'll wrap it there.

Thank you, guys. I appreciate you listening. Remember, follow us at ActiveLifeRx.com if you're listening to this podcast and you like what you're hearing. Head to the Active Life podcast as well. Drop us a comment. Drop us a like.

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