Barbell Shrugged - The Gift of Injury w/ Brian Carroll and Dr. Stuart McGill - The Barbell Life

Episode Date: August 25, 2019

In the highly competitive world of strength athletics, a back injury is seen by many as the ultimate career-ender. In truth, if handled properly, it is far from a death sentence. Follow the journey of international powerlifting champion Brian Carroll, who can attest to this first hand. This remarkable athlete went from 1100 lb squats and 800 lb deadlifts to unending pain and disability after a massive spinal compression injury. After a fortuitous meeting with leading back expert Professor Stuart McGill, he reset his training and his life to fight his way back to the top of the winner’s podium.   Glean expertise from McGill and Carroll, both masters in their field, and learn how to orchestrate your own triumphant comeback. Whether you are a former champion yourself who has fallen on hard times, or someone starting a new foray into the world of strength training who wants to avoid injury and maximize training, the wisdom found within these pages is sure to take your resilience and lifts to the next level.   Minute Breakdown:   1-10 Physical therapy, shots, surgeons, and suicide 11-20 Undertsanding Basic Movement Patterns 21-30 Creating Core Stiffness 31-40 Rethinking your warm ups 41-50 The gift of injury 51-60 Interval walking and relieving back pain 61-70 - The McGill Big 3 Stuart McGill on Instagram   Brian Carroll on Instagram   Travis Mash on Instagram ---------------------------------------------- Please Support Our Sponsors   Savage Barbell Apparel - Save 25% on your first order using the code “BARLIFE”   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged ---------------------------------------------- Join the One Ton Challenge    Registration is LIVE   12 Month Strength training program to increase your snatch, clean, jerk, squat, dead, bench.    Add them up to find your One Ton Total.    The goal is 2,000 pounds for men and 1,200 for women.    http://onetonchallenge.com/join   “What is the One Ton Challenge”   “How Strong is Strong Enough”   “How do I Start the One Ton Challenge”   --------------------------------------------------- Show notes: https://shruggedcollective.com/tbl-mcgill --------------------------------------------------- ► Travel thru Europe with us on the  Shrugged Voyage, more info here: https://www.theshruggedvoyage.com/ ► What is the Shrugged Collective?  Click below for more info: https://youtu.be/iUELlwmn57o ► 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

I am in Logan International Airport. Just got done crushing it in Boston. We got three shows, doing a bunch of business, hanging out with all of our friends up here. Got to hang out over a whoop. Interviewed Kelsey Keels. She's a lot stronger than me. I tried to train with her.

I didn't even make the cut. She goes, no, you can go deadlift over there with my 50% of my 1RM if you'd like. She didn't really say that, but that's how I felt. Uh, shrug family. We're back with Brian Carroll, Stuart McGill,

Dr. Stuart McGill, uh, probably the leading resource in back pain. And the guy has fixed everybody in the world from UFC fighters to strength athletes, power lifters, and Brian Carroll. This is their podcast with Travis Mash, The Gift of Injury.

This is a book that they wrote together. Before we get into the show, I want to thank our sponsors over at Organifi. Make sure you're getting your greens, your reds, your golds, juices, everybody in the Shrug family. We know you love these. We know you love them because they keep working with us, and that means that you're buying the product. So if you're going to buy it, with us, and that means that you're buying the product. So if you're going to buy it, you might as well save 20% using the coupon code shrugged.

Get it over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Use the code shrugged. Save 20%. And then, of course, our friends over at Savage Barbell. Savage Barbell. I'm wearing the shirt right now. Yeah. I've been wearing them all weekend.

You know why? Because when I walk around the streets of Boston, I want everyone to know right now. Yeah. I've been wearing them all weekend. You know why? Because when I walk around streets of Boston, I want everyone to know one thing. Savage. I'm a savage. When you put the shirt on, everyone knows. They're also super comfortable. I work out in them all the time. And anytime I post a video of me getting super huge on the Instagrams wearing the Savage shirt,

people are like, dude, that shirt is so rad. I know. It says Savage on it. It's awesome. Get over to SavageBarbell.com. You can use the coupon code BARLIFE, B-A-R-L-I-F-E, and that code will save you 25% bar life. B-A-R-L-I-F-E at SavageBarbell.com. Friends, we've got a good one for you.

The audio on Dr. Stuart McGill's mic is a little off. So we're really sorry about the technical difficulties on that, but the show is so good. The book is so good that we wanted to get it out anyways. So stick with us on the audio, listen closely. We apologize that it's a little muffled, but really good information, and we're excited to get this one out to you see you guys next week you're listening to the barbell life brought to you by health iq On this episode, we talk with two amazing people, Brian Carroll and the one and only Dr. Stuart McGill. Brian is an amazing competitive power lifter who is in debilitating pain after some disc herniations, but he came back stronger than ever after working with Dr. McGill. For those of you who don't know, Dr. McGill is the expert on the lower back.

After helping Brian return to powerlifting after having a devastating injury, he and Brian teamed up to write their book, The Gift of Injury, to help athletes recover from low back injuries and get back to lifting and competing. We'll talk with Dr. McGill and Brian all about the exercises and core work they use to rehab the lower back and most importantly, how to prevent lower back injuries in the first place. And real quickly, I did want to remind you that we are in the middle of the launch for our new e-book, our Program Sampler 3 Guest Coach Edition. We've got programs in there from Coach Joe Kan of the Carolina Panthers,

Dr. Lane Norton, Greg Knuckles, Zach Evanish, Dr. Andy Galpin, and Sean Waxman. You can go grab it right now at its launch price. Take a peek inside the minds of these amazing experts. And all the proceeds go to support our non-profit weightlifting team.

You can check it out at www.mashelite.com slash program sampler three. That's mashelite.com slash program sampler three. And now I'm Lauren Penelis, joined by Alex Macklin and Travis Mash, as we talk with Brian Carroll and Dr. Stuart McGill. Hey guys, welcome back to the show. And today is going to be a story that is all too familiar, at least to me, and to a lot of strength athletes out there. But I got the book Gift of Injury by Brian Carroll and Stu McGill. And the beginning of the book, it almost made me like depressed because it made me

remember all the stuff I went through as an athlete. But it's a story of Brian Carroll. You know, if you don't know, he's been on the show before. Episode 86. Episode 86. One of the best powerlifters that's ever lived. One of the strongest guys I've ever met and know. But it's all about him hurting his back to the point where he breaks his back

literally and then it's all about the gift of that injury and how he learned so much through it and how if if you guys are listening and you're young you're going to want to know this so you avoid these things but and how you turn to Stuart McGill and today we have them both on the show Stu McGill and Brian Carroll along with my man Alex Mack today we have them both on the show. Stuart McGill and Brian Carroll along with my man Alex Macklin. But thanks for being on the show, boys. Thank you. Good morning,

Travis. Good morning, Brian. Reading your book, Brian, made me have flashbacks and made me very sad because I remember so much. I'm retired. I think you're still going strong. Right, Brian? flashbacks and made me very sad because I remember so much, you know, like I'm retired, but I think you're still going strong. Right, Brian?

Brian. I have won the Arnold twice since coming back. And I, the last meet that I've competed in this last year, which is about a year ago. And I won that as well. But yeah, I've been feeling good for a long time, and it's been a gift for sure. Before we get deep into how you come to really work with Stuart McGill, tell us about how bad your back got. That book, man, was so sad. Talking about looking at your Glock and all that, tell us how bad things got. It was pretty rough because I went down the road that many people go, unfortunately, and

the American way is get physical therapy, then you get referred somewhere else for shots. And eventually, if those shots don't work, you get referred to a surgeon and they start talking about fusions and things of that nature. And it's a tough process if you've been down that road because you think that you found a solution when you've kind of been led astray in many ways. So the book Gift of Injury, we talk about how bad my back was actually beat up. I had basically no disc at L4, L5, L5 S1. It was completely flattened. I had a really nasty break in my sacrum.

And, you know, L4 and L5 had in-plate fractures. I had a lot of stuff going on that was becoming very painful. And obviously it snapped my athletic ability on the platform. And so all those things kind of culminated in the one just kind of dark time for me. And luckily in 2013, I reached out to Stuart McGill and went to see him in May of 2013. And that really changed my life and my lifting trajectory. I mean, it's been five years now, and I can say that I feel really good and never have any kind of back pain whatsoever. And by the way, that was surgery-free. Absolutely.

We'll get into the details of how we did that, um man it was a big blessing for sure all right so my first big question for for um you know really for both of you but um is how important are just general movement patterns whether you're you know picking up your bag or whether you're lifting you know a 700 pound deadlift like how important are just knowing the basic movement patterns that you you know, that are more functional for the body? Steve, do you want me to kind of give how it pertained to me and then you can give the science to it? Yeah, certainly.

Okay, so for me, I was picking the scab constantly. I was, my movement patterns were in a way that perpetually kept me injured. So whether it was picking the, you know, something up off the floor that I dropped or the way I tied my shoes or the way I sat in a flexion all the time, I was always picking the scab and I was flexion intolerant, um, due to, you know, the nature of my injury. So, uh, my movement patterns were garbage. So I was expecting far too much on my body, moving sloppy outside of the gym, moving bad inside the gym, sometimes getting loose with heavy loads in my hands with the deadlift and on my back with the squat. Everything became cumulative. So one of the biggest things that we nipped in the bud right away when I saw Stu was the way I moved.

And I can tell you 100% for a fact that the most amazing thing happened when I started moving better. Within three or four hours of seeing Stu the first time, my pain dropped down a couple notches on the pain scale. And I immediately, almost immediately started to build more resilience in my back just by not loading it all the time with the way I sat and the way I stood. So that was a real eye-opener for me. And I'm sure Stu can elaborate with the science, but not picking the scab at all times is one of the biggest things that people miss. From my perspective, how important are motor patterns? And the answer from a high level perspective, first of all, is it depends if the athlete has pain then we test to see if the pain changes

with specific motions postures and loads so then obviously very specific movement patterns are very important if they're part of the pain trigger pattern. But if there's no pain, but there's non-optimal performance in the athlete, then the algorithm changes a little bit. We begin by understanding the demands of the sport. So powerlifting obviously has different demands from MMA or sprint training or tennis or anything else. And then in powerlifting, there's the three events that you have to know the demands. Then we test the athlete to see how confident they are in meeting those specific demands.

This will reveal what the weaknesses are, what the weak links, and whether the movement patterns are part of the problem in, say, insufficient core stiffness. So now the hip power is leaking into the spine and the core when it should have been directly propelling the thigh. So there's a high-level answer, and you see why the answer is it depends. But in Brian's very specific case, we assessed the pain triggers in the first couple of hours of meeting and I was able to show him immediately what was keeping his pain highly sensitized. And almost immediately, he did get a slight desensitization. But then it took, I think Brian can then give a follow-up. I think he was out of pain in several weeks,

which I think some surgeons had told him was not going to be possible. That's crazy. You know, Ryan and Stuart, I mean, I've read some material from you, Dr. McGill, and you talk about that first assessment is not what most people would think of when they think of a first assessment. You know, it's not like you go to the doctor and he pokes and prods you for three minutes and then you're on your way with a prescription. Dr. McGill has talked about how,

I mean, this is like a multiple hour assessment. Well, it is. I don't see the average back pain patient. I only see those who usually are athletes or VIPs, I guess, and they've been to a dozen different clinicians and never have they received a thorough assessment that gives them a precise understanding of the pain mechanism. And it takes us, typically, I set aside three hours to assess the back, reassess the movement patterns and what causes the pain sensitization. I take a very good history, so I understand the genesis of

what led to it. I try and understand people's habits and impediments, why past approaches to their back pain have failed. Then I might get down to the level of the tissue. Where is the why past approaches to their back pain have failed, then I might get down to the level of the tissue. Where is the pain coming from?

And in Brian's case, we had a very nasty end plate fracture that had split the sacrum front to back. So right away, I knew we had to do a bone callusing procedure and that is when you break a long bone in your arm for example and they set the bone a callus of bone forms over that break due to a piezoelectric mechanism. I can describe that if you like. But what we do is we load the bone ever so slightly. Scientifically, the mechanism, it builds a piezoelectric charge

because bone is a crystal. That charge sucks in magnesium and calcium, deposits it on the fracture site. It builds a scaffold, but then here's the trick. You have to let it sit for two or three days and leave it alone. So when you look at the very successful grand old men and women of powerlifting, you'll notice they train on a natural bone callus and schedule. They'll do a heavy leg day, and then they wait three or four days to let the adaptations take place. But what's going on in the gyms now with a lot of the trainers taking a stay-at-home mom or a business executive, and they do deadlifts three or four times a week, not realizing that they're not allowing the adaptations.

They think muscle, but in this case, we had the callous bone. So there's an example of getting into that level of detail and then knowing the science of what we had to do to build the foundation for Brian to bear load. So he spent several months in a bone callusing procedure, very professionally and patiently building the foundation to eventually bear load. No one else had ever given him that guidance before. And typical with powerlifters and athletes of any type, they have that warrior spirit. And as soon as they start feeling better, they go right back to loading, thinking that they are healed. But absolutely not.

It takes a lot of time for those adaptations to take place. And then in his very professional way, he was able to build a program back to literally a world-class performance. I mean, you know, the thing is, is that, um, athletes need to realize that when they get to the point where they're injured, they have spent X amount of years getting injured. So they have to, you have to be able to say, it's going to take me X amount of time to undo.

So you, cause now you're looking for a whole different adaptation. And so you're going to have to do the same process really, but just on the, you know, doing things the opposite way you've been doing them. So we have to be patient. I mean, like, um, you can't just say, look, you know, I've spent 16 years of powerlifting and gotten jacked up. I need, I need you to fix it. I need it to adapt in one month.

It makes zero sense. It's not mathematically doesn't equate. I need you to fix it. I need it to adapt in one month. It makes zero sense. Mathematically, it doesn't equate. Here's my other question as far as patterns goes. When a strength athlete comes to you, weightlifter, powerlifter, strongman, what are the movement patterns you want to observe first in your assessment? Do you want me to start that, Travis? That's mainly directed at you I guess you know someone yeah okay

fair enough well I'm going to continue on from my previous answer then what patterns do I observe well the answer it's still it depends there is my assessment is a living assessment I don't do the

same assessment on everybody it begins by knowing their sport and what it is they eventually want to do. So if I can use a powerlifting case, and Brian is a specific example here, obviously we know powerlifting and we know what is required. And this is what we describe the gift of injury. It was really focused on the strength athlete. So the first thing we do is I watch them perform. Well, in Brian's case, when he came, the first time I met him at my university office, and

I just observed how he walked in the door, sat down, put down his backpack. And these were all characteristic signature movement patterns of someone who is corrupted with pain. So here we had a great athlete, but they limp. If you hurt your foot, you limp. Well, when you hurt your back you also limp the way you use your feet uh you can even hear in the gate cut in the asymmetries of what different uh pathologies uh sound like so when you're when you're hyper tuned in to the athlete the assessment begins just by watching these these daily movement patterns that's awesome um so uh as he bent down i saw

his spine bend which the hips were generating the power so let me just give you an example let's take a shoulder for example and the bench press the the primary mover of a bench press is the pec major muscle if we can just agree on that so the pec major muscle, if we can just agree on that. So the pec major crosses a single joint, the shoulder joint, which is a ball and socket joint. Distal, or on the arm side, the pec major connects to the humerus. When it shortens, it brings the arm around in flexion, and that's what propels the bar upwards in the bench press. But on the proximal side of the shoulder joint, that pec major bends the ribcage towards the shoulder joint.

So if all you use is a pec major, your ribcage bends proximally and your arm comes around discally and you have a very poor push. push but if you could stiffen your core so that no motion takes place on the proximal side of the ball and socket joint 100 percent of that tech major force is directed to the humerus and pushing the body so you know when we talk about translating a a bench press uh movement to real life say we're training an NFL football player, that's the box on the line or something like that. The stiffer their core, the more efficiency in developing hip and shoulder power that's expressed distally. So now you run and cut faster, you push harder, etc. So I've described the pattern. And when you observe that pattern and these energy leaks that occur, you see them right away if you know what you're looking for.

So that's something else I'd be looking for. I'd be looking for how tuned the athlete is throughout their linkages. Are the things that are supposed to be stable, stable? Are the things that are supposed to be stable, stable? Are the things that are supposed to be mobile, mobile? Are they gripping the ground with their feet when they're setting up the lifter's wedge? Are they gripping the bar confidently? If not, I simply ask them, here, shake my hand. Now, squeeze me as hard as you can.

And right away, I will be able to assess the competency of their hand grip. Are they using the strength of their hand or is it all coming out of their fingers, which is weak? Are some of the fingers weaker than other fingers? And then I'll be able to teach them how to balance up their grip. And then when they grip the bar, all the tricks of creating hamstrings. So when they start out lifting once again after a back injury, they don't need to go into an over-under deadlift grip. They can have a double overhand grip, really lock into the bar and build their back without any asymmetries.

And then at the very end, when they're setting a world record or let's be more modest here, they're setting a record, a personal best record, then they might go to an over-under grip because the grip becomes the failure point. But I see too many lifters compromising their back by having weak hands going to an over-under at too light a load. Anyway, there's just an example of where my logic will start. It's looking for weak links in the linkage. It's looking for odd movement patterns.

When joints become unstable and painful, they tell the brain, hey, back off. It's a fuse box. And the brain won't unleash full neural drive and strength until the body has a very proprioceptive stability pattern through it. And some athletes, they think, oh, you know, I'm out of pain, but they haven't perfected their form yet, and thus the brain is pulling off. It's not going to send full strength. So there's probably a lecture that was too long for you. No, that's good.

No, our listeners are here. Last time we had you on, it was a big hit. So, you know, they're here to hear you, not me. So this is lecture away. Oh, yeah. You could probably talk for hours. Yeah, no one cares. We would just sit here fascinating. Yeah.

We were actually just talking with Blaine Sumner earlier today, and we were pre-recording a podcast with him as well. And he was mentioning that he had worked closely with you, Dr. McGill, I'm sure, in ways very similar to Brian. And he mentioned, of course, the two things that were key were spine hygiene, you know, the movement patterns that you talked about, but also the big three. So what is it about the big three that make them the big three that are the movements that you prescribe so heavily? You might want to talk about them, too, because not everybody. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. We should specify what the big three are.

Yeah, the big three is the curl-ups. McGill curl-ups, the side plank, and bird dogs. Right. Okay. We'll get back to these knowledge bombs real soon, but we're going to take a quick second to drop a huge thanks to our sponsors of our nonprofit Olympic weightlifting team, Intech Strength and Hack Nutrition. If you're enjoying seeing our team lift big weight, crushing records, and bringing home medals, you can support this team by supporting our sponsors. And like I mentioned at the beginning of the show, we want to give a special thank you to the sponsor of today's podcast, Health IQ. Now, they're an insurance company

that helps health-conscious people like runners, cyclists, weightlifters, and vegetarians get lower rates on their life insurance. Now, Travis was telling me, we were talking about this, he was telling me one of his friends was able to get some amazing life insurance rates

through Health IQ because they have different ways of calculating, right? All this insurance underwriting stuff that goes on and the way they do it just makes more sense to me. Like a lot of insurance agencies use BMI, for instance, as a big measurement that they pay attention to, but that doesn't really make sense for weightlifters. It's essentially meaningless for weightlifters. If you use BMI, that doesn't take into account body fat percentage, right? So you could be 6 foot tall, 220 pounds of pure muscle, and your BMI would be the same as a 6 foot tall, 220 pound guy who's really fat.

Well, Health IQ uses different metrics like waist to hip ratio, for instance. So these guys are all about science and data. Health IQ can save customers up to 33% because physically active people, I told you this, they're all about data. Listen to this. Physically active people have a 56% lower risk of heart disease, a 20% lower risk of cancer, and a 58% lower risk of diabetes compared to people who are inactive. See, I told you. So if you're health conscious, if you work out, Health IQ is definitely something you'll want to check out. Now you can go to healthiq.com slash barbell life to support the show and to see if you qualify. Again, help out the show and see if you qualify at healthiq.com slash barbell life. All right, folks.

Appreciate that. Now let's get back to the show. So what is it about the big three that make them the big three that are the movements that you prescribe so heavily? You might want to talk about them, too, because not everybody. Oh, not everybody oh yeah i'm sorry yeah we should specify what the big three are is the mcgill curl ups the side plank and burdocks right right well um here's the argument that you often hear from the powerlifting crowd i'm strong i do power lifts that's all I need for my core and then it was so interesting, I was watching the new

World's Strongest Man competition that was published on YouTube 3 or 4 days ago and just in my own training session sometimes I'll catch up on some of the recent videos and I was just, it was so fascinating to watch you know they

were doing squats for reps i think eddie hall won but every world's strongest man competitor on the left that they failed the core bank their core was the weak link and it caused their failure. So they lacked frontal plane strength. And what I mean by that is side to side strength. So if you bench, power clean, deadlift, squat, these are all done with two feet on the ground and symmetric strength. Not once do they go on one leg. So if they don't carry things and they don't create frontal plane strength that's usually how they fail when they get under a bar and the thrust line down from the bar man we're talking half a ton of load here and if you're out a couple of millimeters on that thrust line you need a correction strategy in your body and what they do is they

sacrifice their spine uh and they don't have the ability to do it so there's a background of why i'm arguing for you can't have too much core or strength uh spine uh core or spine stability so now i can answer the question about the big three, and it's humbling. I don't know how much you got into it with blame, but I can go through top power lifter after top power lifter. When I start working with them, they are weak in their core compared to other joints. So where do we start? We developed the, you know, of course, we didn't invent those exercises, but I measured all of the different ways that we could come up with to create more core stiffness. Those three exercises kept bubbling up to the top in terms of they spare the spine so here we have guys who have a history of uh back pain

uh so we have to respect that um we prescribe them in a way that creates stiffness and an endurance base that's why it's on 10 second holds we don't hold for 15 seconds or 30 seconds in the beginning, no 10 second holds. And then we measured them. After a single training session, the lifter had a stiffer, stable core. Now that lasts for maybe 20 minutes in some lifters and two hours in others, but they actually get more proximal stiffness. So when the hips extend, more power developed in the hips is translated to the legs rather than into sperm bending. So there's a lot of different reasons. There are a few.

And then we program them. You have to do them every day. And I've seen trials published in the literature. Oh, they did a few bird dogs three times a week and it didn't make any difference. No kidding. When we trialed it, you have to do it every day. And this builds a residual stiffness that stays in the athlete's throat today. There will be some athletes that tell you, as soon as I start

my session with the big three, I now feel a palpable, measurable stiffness and control in my core and a confidence. That's what the brain senses. Now it unleashes more neural drive, as I said, proximal to the

ball and socket joints. There's a bit of the scientific evidence and foundation, but Brian, maybe you want to give a firsthand account of how it feels. It was key to my comeback for sure because, like many of the other top powerlifters that Steve's worked with, I'd squatted 1,185 pounds. I had multiple all-time world records in multiple different classes, but my core was weak, and I didn't have good core endurance, which obviously led to my back issues as well.

When you're squatting 1,100 pounds, 1,200 pounds, and you get loose under load like Steve was talking about, and you try to correct, that movement is not good on your spine, under load, obviously. So they really helped stabilize me. For me, I got a lot of bangs from my back out of the bird dogs. And anytime that my back started to feel a little bit tight or a little bit grumpy, it never got back into pain, thankfully. But I found ways to mitigate the little flare-ups that I'd have here and there. And the bird dog with some good hip extension

was my go-to. I would always go through the big three and go back through a couple more sets of bird dogs to really get that hip extended because I did have a lot of damage down in my lower spine, obviously. So everyone that I work with i have the have them start with the mcgill big three every day and of course walking goes along with that very nicely

yes may i chime in travis absolutely i definitely want to you know i want to hear about the walking too i saw that in your book yeah that walking is non-negotiable but let's just go back to the uh the bird dog as brian was describing it some people think you get down on your hands and knees and you extend one leg out in the opposite arm and that's a bird dog they're mistaken that's that's a wet fish um as the uh bird dog begins they set their back into their deadlift position or their squat lift position. Then they harden their core. And then as they extend the arm and leg, they may or may not lift the leg up very high. It's far more important for cues, and everyone has different cues,

but a typical one that worked for Brian was to then push the heel away hard, which really activated his hamstring and glute combination with the proximal side in his full erector spinae. Then he engaged latissimus dorsi in the opposite upper quarter by making a fist and really allowing that radiation of stiffness and power into his core. You should be heavily sweating after a 10-second bird dog if you're then into that phase of programming. So, you know, we're fairly respectful about it. And obviously, when someone's coming out of pain, we're not into the heavy loading. But we can really make that bird dog to the level that will challenge the strongest men and women in the world.

Then, again, we find these things out from assessment, but the brain organizes the erector spinae into neuromuscular compartments, not from medial to lateral. So the physiotherapist, now it's a bit of a trend, they talk about activating multifidus and then you have this and this and this and this. This is not possible. The brain does not organize this. I remember talking to Bill Kazmaier years ago, and he would do exercises to activate his erector spinae and connect them to his brain up and down his spine. And I said, Bill, that's exactly the way the brain organizes it. How did you know this? And he just said, hey, I just knew

what worked. And, you know, it's this fusion of measuring and working with the great ones that you realize the common thought in sometimes in physical therapy is just the physical therapists have never measured a world class athlete, you athlete. And yet when you do, you see the real fusion of real-world producing of results and science. So getting back to that idea, we then adapt the bird dog.

We draw circles and squares with the heel and the hand and we've measured all of this this is these are all tricks and educating your brain on how to activate the whole neuromuscular compartment family up and down the spine so a bird dog is not just a bird dog as people think it when it's very well and confidently coached, it means a lot to them. It definitely makes me want to get more coaching on the bird dog because

now I'm afraid of my even doing it right. Probably not. Let's get to... I'm in North... Aren't you in North Carolina, Travis? Yeah, I am. I'm in North Carolina next Friday. Oh, I am. I'm in North Carolina next Friday. Oh, for real?

I'm going to visit John Brookfield. I don't know if you know him. John, he's an athlete known for hamstring. Where in North Carolina? Pinehurst? Is that the town? Yeah, it's like two hours from me. It's not that far at all.

I know exactly where, but maybe an hour and a half from me. Where do you live? I live in Winston-Salem, Wake Forest University. So he's northeast of, because I'm traveling to Cincinnati the next day to put on a show with Eddie Cohn and Stan Everdeen. Oh, yeah, so you could literally drive right by my you could literally drive right by me after the show let's talk wow oh my gosh it's about to get real you know we have a brand new facility too you're gonna love it like we got all the all the um the cool toys that you'll enjoy and we have you know i don't know but it's an eight hour drive

so i might be able to drop by it an hour. Yeah, that'd be perfect. You know, we have some of the best weightlifters. Well, we have the best weightlifters in the country at our gym and some of the best powerlifters. But anyway, all right, so I'm excited now, but we'll talk about that later. So, but, you know, Brian, the big three, I know that, you know, what Blaine said is, you know, he does them, he does them multiple times a day too, and he says that it gives him this lasting feeling of stability in the low back.

Would you agree the same thing? I wish I'd known. I used to do a lot of the big three just because I read a lot of Stuart McGill's stuff too, but I don't think I did it properly. I don't think I did it right before I trained. Yeah, I have people do it as part of their warm-up every day. And if they're not training, they still do it every day, about 30 minutes after they rise from bed.

So a couple cues with the bird dog that have really helped. You see, I have people do it at seminars, and you see it click with them. Obviously, the heel being back, so you extend the hip. And then obviously, when you have your hand down, you want to push the earth away. And I got that cue from Stu, because most people aren't tall enough. So you're making a nice hard fist, with your extended shoulder, your arm, and you're pushing the earth away with your hand that's down, and you're getting good hip extension as well. Those are a couple of things that really help. You see that light bulb go off with many people that aren't quite feeling it,

and it is a neuromuscular hold and contraction. So people should be shaking and sweating a little bit while doing these. This is just a little passive yoga move. That's cool. Okay, so I'll definitely try that. Yeah, I think I've been doing the passive yoga move. I was curious. My thoughts were I personally do the McGill 3 or other core work at the end of my workout until I was talking to Blaine and talking to you guys today.

The reason my logic was I didn't want to fatigue that muscle right before I needed it for something important like protecting my spine in a squat or a deadlift. But you're saying it's better to do in your warm-up. Absolutely. Now we are going to have a discussion about warm-up philosophy. Way to go. Well, it's so interesting as I travel around the world the differences in warm-up philosophy. It's very typical of Americans to think from a physiological point of view. I'm in a warm-up, and so many Americans actually decrease their performance

because of their warm-up, and they end up getting a little bit tired and whatnot. Here is a programming philosophy to develop a warm-up that potentiates performance and mitigates the means of fatigue. And this would be much more of a Russian, Bulgarian, Polish, Eastern European philosophy to a warm-up. You begin thinking about a final campaign. And what I mean by that is, alright, if something needs a bit more mobility, you start working on some of those basic movements. You round out the joints to get the cartilage round and there's no stress risers. I mean, imagine if you've been standing for a while, you actually put a dent in the cartilage

of your knee and your hip, and it takes a few cycles of movement to take that dent out and take out the stress on the edge of the dent. So there's a beginning thought to that. The next thought goes to physiology. Now it's time to warm up the systems. Get the muscles physiologically ready to contract, get the temperature, get the hormones, get the blood pressure to the level of whatever you're warming up to do. But the third part of the warm-up is pure neurology. Now you're getting the spark to explode or to grind or to whatever the neurological constraint is. When you start organizing your warm-ups along those lines, you will not become fatigued and you will be ready to run through a wall. And I truly mean that. You should be so super excited and just feeling top of the world and neurologically acute.

I don't get that very often with the American approaches. It's far too physiological. Oh, do more reps. And, you know, I was working with some rowers a little while ago, and the coach was saying, well, go warm up on the lake for five kilometers or whatever the distance was. And I was thinking, are you kidding me?

You know, have a little bit of a sweat, get into the boat, and then get your rhythm and then charge with some heavy, pulsed pieces. Now you're ready to race. Do you know what I mean by that? And the rowers were just saying, I've never felt that way before.

We were so pumped up and excited. And they just came under the gates and done things. And these were elite rowers, by the way. I mean, that's crazy. I mean, I think I would like to think that sprinting in America is kind of leading the way more so now because they do a lot of dynamic warm-ups. They do a lot of, like, you know, I would say muscle activation first and then dynamic warm-ups. So, you know, they beat everyone except Jamaica. But I would like to think things are changing.

I guess it depends on the sport. I guess a lot of rowing coaches would probably assume it's just rowing. But your back, I mean, more than anything, I would assume rowing would be rough on the back more than any sport. Well, the rower's disease really is this bulges and i shouldn't call it a disease i should say that the rowers uh injury or dominant story is posterior disc bulges so if we were

talking about them for example and we started a warm-up from the biomechanical sense the first thing i'm going to do if i think that is they lay on their tummies and put their fists under their chin. That balances up biomechanically a disc bulge. Now, if you're a lifter with a disc bulge, I suggest your biomechanical philosophy will lead you to say, what can I do, first of all, to de-stress the disc

and start preparing it to their maximum load? So there's an example where people think, well, it's a warm-up. Miguel says, I'm not kidding. But that's where we would start if we had that information about that individual. And physiology, of course,

we've got to get the blood pressure going, we've got to get the hormones just right so that we get full unleashing of mineral drive. Now we have the foundation to our unleashing of mineral drive. You'll see different methods. They'll get a little aggressive, they get stuck around, they might go through a visual routine or a mental imagery routine, but they're ready to charge.

They will go through a wall for you. That's where you're going to be. But anyway, there's just an example of when you're talking, you can surprise and bow. Yeah, I mean, yeah i agree with you know you know the devil needs to be a few changes for sure so um moving on like what um as far as the low back you know you've got people who want to do stuff that you know builds the absolute strength of the low back just how strong it is you know you some good mornings, five reps, whatever, versus capacity work? Because it sounds like a lot of stuff that you're talking about

is more of the capacity of the low back versus this potential to create force. Or do they go hand in hand? Well, I'll start that, I guess guess it all certainly goes hand in hand when you talk about absolute strength we're dealing with a language here and you have to respect the weak link so if a person has a weak link and it's not the back adding more strength to the back isn't going to help. In fact, it may even hurt. So it's a matter of balancing up the strength throughout that linkage.

So we call it sufficient strength for injury resilience and performance enhancement. But you have to deal with the weak link because that's going to define not only the health and performance, but the load-bearing tolerance of the body as well. But Brian, you probably, we've been through this together, and I know you're, it's so cool when I hear a guy of Brian's caliber saying, you know, I'm still looking for that perfect lift. The issue is building more back strength versus a general capacity in the body

and my argument is test the athlete and understand them enough to know what's their weak link because adding more back strength may not help their injury resilience and performance and maybe bringing up the weak link but you're continually refining your body. Yeah, I'd be a good example of someone who had great absolute strength. I pulled an 850-pound deadlift before, 100 to 300 pounds, but I didn't have any work capacity. I didn't have any good endurance and no core endurance. So I would fatigue and I would get loose under load.

So for me, when I went back to square one in May of 2013, we talk about this gifted injury. I started over. We did the great prong, McGill Big Three. We cleaned up my spine hygiene. I did multiple intervals of walks a day, up to three walks, 10 minutes at a time, walking briskly, swinging my arms and getting a nice effect with that every single day. And when we got back to – before I got back under the bar, we really worked on building my base with McGill Big Three,

building my core capacity, my endurance, and then we worried about the absolute strength in certain areas that I had weak points. And again, once I went back and attacked a lot of my glaring weaknesses, then I started to figure out things that were my weakness that I didn't really know before. So, man, for me, it was all about the capacity and endurance and not so much strength. And I think a lot of people, you see social media posts a lot where people are doing, sadly enough, they're doing the actual injury mechanism thinking that they're, you know, and they'll have a quote with it saying, you know, a strong back is a resilient back. And that's not true. A back with good neuromuscular endurance is less likely to be injured and not just a strong

back. Because if that were the case, I wouldn't have been in the position I was seeing Dr. McGill because I would say my back was pretty strong. You know, like Louie Simmons actually talks a lot about, you know, the capacity of the back and the muscular endurance. You know, they do – man, those guys, having visited Westside, I'm sure you have visited, right, Brian Westside Barbell? Yes. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, he talks more about capacity than any of the –

most of the, you know, powerlifting coaches out there. You know, they use a lot of belt squats, a lot of reverse hypers, glute hams. So my question to you, like, you know, number one, I guess the most controversial of those movements would be the reverse hyper. Like, is there a place for it? Is it good? How should you use it? Or should you not at all?

Can I, uh, say something as I know, both of you, things to say about it. Um, so Louie made the words GPP or the, the acronym GPP,

general physical preparedness, very popular. And that's the capacity that you're talking about for those listening. He's all about GPP and has been preaching it for the 20 years i've been around the sport i'm sure he's been doing it before that but um yeah being able to uh to be in good shape before you're worried about absolute strength is key so uh anyway um for me the reverse hyper did not help me and i could have been doing it wrong, but for years and years, I would feel worse, especially when dealing with my back injury. I would get on the reverse hyper.

I would get about 15 minutes of relief, and then my back would grab and really flare up. Now, some other people swear by it, and it seems to help them in other regard, but for me personally, it didn't help me, and it could have been due to the nature of my injury. Right. Yeah, that's what I'm curious about. We have one, and I use it a lot. It seems to it didn't it didn't help me and it could have been due to the nature of my injury right yeah that's what i'm curious about you know we have one and i use it a lot it seems to you know like it seems to give me you know relief um in my hip and low back but i was i wanted to know scientifically if dr mcgill what his thoughts were well you know what the first two words coming out of my mouth are going to be. It depends. So it depends on, you know, what's the pain trigger in history of that particular athlete?

Are they sheer tolerance through their joints? Are they bending in tolerance? Do they have a dynamic open fissure through their disc bulge? If they have that, I would submit that that would not be my exercise of choice. But if they don't have it, and they are able to really lock in their spine and stimulate the glutes and hams through that range, we both know that there's been a lot of success with that. So what is one man's poison is another man's cure, shall we say, and all part of developing that athleticism.

So that's my answer. But, you know, after the assessment, we will see whether that truly does have GPP. Do they have capacity? And what I think you will find is most people developing that system, and I've seen an awful lot of them they are frontal plane strength deficient they will get that little side to side wobble uh and uh that's the real mechanism of failure in their lip what's the cure well if they would begin by doing some not farmer's carries, balanced stuff, I would add asymmetry to it in a much more modest mode.

And think of a tool like a suitcase carry. And I know Brian started off very humble doing his suitcase carries, even walking in the early stages of his rehab walk three times a day and you know he was in pain but that's how he started to address that building of the foundation that that comes in his recovery um the scheduling he describes and uh because he gave his full training recovery blog posts. What was that, Chapter 3, I think, or Chapter 4? And then he graduated to heavier suitcase carries, and then he went to bottoms-up kettles, which, you know, I really started to appreciate that,

working with Pavel Sotsulin years ago. Well, he's a good friend. People don't realize how good an athlete Pavel is himself. An extremely strong man. But that does special things. It requires more core control. And it certainly has been adding those to his routine as well. So there's my answer to a very specific exercise that you mentioned.

It depends, and I'll just leave it at that. All right, so I have one more of those, and then I have two more big questions. One would be the belt squat machine. Like I've used it and of all the movements I've ever done, you know, as far as the machine goes, nothing has helped my low back or my hips as much as the belt squat. You know, all I can assume is that, you know, I was, you know, I have, my hips are terrible from years of powerlifting. Obviously, you can't get extension without overstimulating the glutes. So I'm assuming it has something to do with femoral control and the forward glide. I probably have been experiencing to get that front, the anterior pain.

But have you ever used or have do you know anything of why the belt you know there's another guy jason coker who i'm sure that brian knows but he's broken his back twice and he said that the belt squat is the thing that keeps him going but like what are your thoughts on the belt squat well uh oh do you want to start uh Whoever you want to go first is fine with me. Well, Brian knows this particular athlete that's in my mind because we both did a little bit of consulting with him. But he's an outstanding lifter, and he's using the belt squat, A, because during his rehab, he needed his back to be loaded,

but he didn't want to lose his leg strength that he'd worked years to develop, and the belt squat kept that for him. So that was a key exercise for him. But here's the other curious thing about belt squats. When you learn a lot by watching an athlete fail. So if I'm going to do a consult, I want tapes of that athlete. I want to see them lifting. I want to see not only the lifts that they make, but the lifts that they fail on. Okay, now I'm starting to learn what is their strategy for recovery when the thrust line gets off a little bit.

So now they have to make a correction. Do they use a leaning tower strategy? In other words, through their ankles, are they athletic on their feet so they can add more toe pressure or more heel pressure or more the outside of their foot, whatever it happens to be to correct that thrust line. Because when you're under a few hundred pounds, those are where mistakes are going to cause injury. Or are their legs weak? Are their feet weak? Now they go to their back and they sacrifice their back to to the pitching

forward a little bit what do they do they round out their back when they didn't need to but had they done more belt squats they could have relied a little bit more on leg power but they were already maxed out so they had nothing left and they had to use their backs. So there's an argument for, you know, had they built up a bit more leg strength and balanced their body that way, that would have been the foundation for them to go to. And as you as a coach, Travis, you can then go and coach corrective mechanisms, but they're not back-centric, and that's another trick of building that out to be very enjoyable. I even found with the belt squat, I could even squat wider. Now, anyone who watches me squat now, my hips, it's forced me to be a narrow squatter, but when I put the belt squat, I don't know if it's the way to be like a narrow squatter but when i put the belt squat i don't know if it's

the way that you know that the tension is it allows me to go a little bit wider with paint you know with like zero pain it's the craziest thing so maybe when you well the belt will fall down like a skirt if you don't have your wide your wide grip on the floor there's another little just component to it yeah no doubt so it has been a lifesaver you know for me like you know I was about to get hip surgery last year and I was able to put it

off I hope for another year or two but alright so like here's the thing let's talk afterwards oh maybe I'll see you in a week I'm hoping I'll see you in a week but I'm going to be in Canada in April so I'm going to I might have to come see you in a week. I'm hoping I'll see you in a week. I'll show you a trick or two. I'm going to be in Canada in April, so I might have to come see you. Either way. Yeah, it'll be fabulous.

Since knowing you and reading your literature, if you come to our gym on any given day, you will see all my athletes doing carries of some type, whether it's the suitcase carry, overhead carry, kettlebell carry, like kettlebell racks, asymmetrical carry, whatever. We do carries very regularly. And almost every day you'll see someone doing a type of carry, Zurcher carries.

So do you think that you can comfortably say that the one assistance movement that all of us should probably be doing is a carry. I know Dan John does, but what do you think? If you're a strength athlete, it's non-negotiable. Perfect. Perfect. So it makes me brilliant. Absolutely.

You are, Travis, you're one of the best power lifters ever, and you're a hell of a coach. So I know you're saying that in jest, but obviously you know what you're doing. If I may make a couple comments on some movements that all strength athletes should be doing. This is what I'm after, yes. Yes, so it really depends, and I'm not trying to steal

Stu's quote from the last question with the reverse hyper, but it really does. It depends on the demands of the sport. Maybe a powerlifter, an Olympic lifter, aic lifter a crossfit athlete strongman it really depends what are their weak link again we talked about earlier about someone that was you know working on different aspects of their game they really didn't need to and they're ignoring their core um it really depends on their weak points it also depends

on their injury history their lifting age versus their biological age. And one movement, like Stu said, that makes a champion could retire another. So you were talking about belt squats and you're a big fan of them. I am as well, especially with someone with a back or a hip history. But also you have to consider this as well. A lot of the belt squat machines out there shear the knees really bad. And I've actually had some problems with my knees, and I've never had knee problems in my life.

It's going to depend on the way the belt squat's built. So it may be relieving my back and my hips, but it might be destroying my knees. So it's really going to depend on so many different factors. And you talked about carries earlier. I think carries and frontal plane strength will be a good part and a big part of just about everyone's strength training program for sure. I hate to say everyone's, but pretty much between the McGill Big Three, the walking, and some kind of carry, it will be a non-negotiable.

But all these other exercises, it's really going to depend on the goals and injury history and weak links. One more on the exercises. What are your guys' thoughts on a good morning? It depends, really. If someone has a history of back issues, especially the bulges, I have them avoid them because it's really easy to let that bar creep out too far over your toes and get a little twinge going.

I think that the juice has to be worth the squeeze and everything you do. But someone that doesn't have the injury history that, you know, concerning a back good morning might be really good bang for their buck. Someone that has to be really, really careful under load. It might not be the best choice. Instead of doing a barbell good morning with the bar on your back and potentially getting a little rounded over your toes, you might want to do a one-legged kettlebell good morning and that's what i always defer to when in doubt with the kettlebell and getting good hamstring work good

lower back work it's good unilateral work once you work on your balance so to me that's a really good option for someone with a back issue i like that you know it's good to hear you saying that too you know a lot of powerlifters you know they saw. I like that. It's good to hear you saying that too. A lot of power lifters, they saw you doing a kettlebell, one-legged, good morning, they'd be like, oh, you're soft. But neither one of us is soft. And so we're just smart. So if you want to call me soft, look, I'll come out of retirement, we'll go at it again. So I'm not saying, I'm trying to be smart.

I agree with you 100%. All right, last question, because it's been about an hour already, right? It's been awesome. But like with the big three, would you both recommend every day, multiple times per day, or like give me an idea of where would you start, what's the goal, where are you trying to get to with an athlete? Do you want me to start, Brian? Sure.

Okay, you know the answer, guys. Look, if there's pain in the athlete, some will say, when I do my big three session, I get two hours of pain relief afterwards. This is not uncommon. If the athlete reports that feeling my suggestion would be to do a modest program of the big three mid morning and a modest program of the victory mid afternoon so now you've created two little sweet spots in your day where you're

teaching your body to be pain free and i use i choose those words very carefully teaching the body to be pain-free because the process of desensitizing pain has several elements and maybe that's a podcast for another day but that would be one particular regimen um but for b Brian's been through that, but now he's back to being a competitive athlete. But building that core of iron is as much about the neural training as it is about the mechanics and the physiology.

And then you do it once a day, whether you're under the bar or or not um it's it's it's the foundation for creating the system to unleash dense neural drive that's the thought of strength that originates in the brain through a linkage that's strategically tuned for stability and mobility, you've eliminated pain, and when you put all of those skills together, you create a system where there's no fuse boxes left in the brain. It just unleashes the neural drive very densely down through the nerves, through the muscles, and the athleticism is expressed.

So there's a, and it depends answer, but you know the assessment will reveal all of that, and then we get into this beautiful synergy of a scientific foundation combined with a real world experience in the network awesome what about Brian what do you think yeah I mean obviously I'm not going to be able to be helping to rehab my back

and we've helped so many people since obviously I have the same feelings concerning that definitely it's non-negotiable every single day. Every single day I get up, we talk about how the discs are extra hydrated the first thing in the morning. So I let my back settle. I'll drink my coffee for about 30 minutes. I'll catch up with my wife every single day. And then I go out and I go for my walk, a brisk walk. Sometimes I'll do 10 minutes, sometimes I'll do 15 or 20. Then I come back, I do my McGill Big 3, and then I start my day.

That's how I do it every single day. And I'm not going to wait to get back into pain or to have a slip-up and say, oh, I should have been doing the McGill Big 3 this whole time. I'm proactive with it. I think that's the problem with a lot of lifters out there. They think they're Superman like I did. I'm sure. How many times did you think you were indestructible uh travis in your career probably multiple times and then

a wake-up call would come knock and you'd be like oh i really am human so it's all about being proactive and doing and controlling the things that you can't control and obviously doing the big three every day and going for a nice little brisk walk is something that's well within your control so i like to keep things simple and part of that wake-up call for you brian came with the gift of injury right and i mean we've kind of referenced it but i guess uh we haven't explicitly talked about it you you and stewart put out a new book and just tell everyone a little bit about it yeah so the gift of injury is the story of the athlete and the professor meeting in 2013. The book actually started organically the first day we met. And I really like telling the story because Stu and I, I went in there as a complete beginner.

I went in there knowing that I hadn't been able to fix my back. I was at a dead end. I was beaten, defeated mentally and physically. So I went in there and said, I'm going to turn all this over to the expert and defer to him. And so once he explained to me what I was doing, I was really open to it. I saw the error of my ways. He told me that he felt that he could get me pain-free. And with that, of course, being the

athlete and the type A that I am, I came back to him and said, okay, well, if you can get me pain-free, just know when I am pain-free, I'm going to come back and lift. And Stu said to me, if you were my son, I would urge you to stop lifting and retire. And once we get you pain-free, enjoy some day-to-day life that isn't an agonizing pain. I looked at my wife. I looked back at Stu and said, when I become pain-free, I want to come back up. So he said, okay, fine. You can be pain-free.

Six months from now, come back up and we'll talk. Who knows? Maybe you're right. Maybe you do return back to the platform and we end up writing a book about it. And we wrote a book about it. And it happened. Paladin is a sport that retires you. I don't think.

You don't retire. Yeah, and you're at the top. I mean, now that I'm on this other side of things, I would say retire while you're on top, but it's probably not going to happen. It's not in us. We're like pit bulls. You've got to put us down.

So, I mean, oh, well. You know, I would – look, I did it until I couldn't do it anymore. I suppose you'll do the same thing. Maybe you'll be 60. Who knows? Yeah, but, Travis, you were so far ahead of someone, of people in 05 and 06, or 04, 05, and 06. I remember when you totaled 2,400 for the first time,

the second place finisher in your division was in the 22s. If you're listening out there, a 200-pound victory at that level is unheard of. That's what Ed Cohn was doing back in the 90s, all right? Yeah, it was a good era. I feel I would like to say that my legacy on the sport was that I opened the doors to you guys to say anything's possible. That's what I would like to think I did. Well, you broke Ed Cohen's 220 record.

A lot of people forget that so easily. You have guys like Frankel that have kind of faded away over the last seven or eight years. Guys like yourself, I believe you did your last meeting at seven. They forget quickly, and you see the new guys that have only been in the sport two or three years, they don't understand the history of chuck vogelpoel and travis mash and sean frankel and andy bolton and gary frank and the legends that came before them not just the the people you hear about steve doggins and ed cohen but the the guys that were in the trenches just as long

that really had to fight to set these records and be kind of forgotten about. It's kind of sad. It is. But this is the way it goes in a sport. Soon, someday, Michael Jordan will not be – well, I mean, right now it's more LeBron. So it's just the nature of things. And as an athlete, like, I'm okay with – I really get as much – probably get more joy out of seeing my athletes do well now,

especially in a whole, you know, weightlifting is a sport that I kind of left behind for powerlifting. So to be doing both and then weightlifting at a high level, it's fun. It keeps me, like, not bored. And I've got a 14-year-old who's going to make me feel insignificant anyway. So he's on a whole different level than most human beings. So it's fun. But, you know, like, to see power they keep going and you guys keep breaking records. I mean,

you know, dude, I'm a part of that stepping stone. So I'm cool with that. So, yeah, I think you're more than just a stepping stone though, but I understand what you're saying.

I appreciate it. Yeah. And, and getting back to a gift of injury, the book is, it grew organically so much. It started off as, hey, let's tell this story. Oh, let's add this.

Let's add that. And it basically turned into an encyclopedia of injury resilience and athletic performance that I am super proud to have been a part of. And I learned so much from Stu. He claims he's learned from me. But jokes aside, we learned from each other, and it was one of those things that was just a great marriage, wasn't it, Stu? Absolutely. We get asked a lot about this, you know, where did that title come from? And when you read Brian's story and then the second half of the book,

which was really a manual on how to regain strength once again and assess your body, figure out the weak spots, etc. The number of athletes from many sports who've said, you know, I never set a world record until after my injury or I never got that performance till after my injury because the injury was a gift it taught me never to train with bad form respect the science etc so it changed their life that injury for the better so that that's that's one thing that's inherent in the title. And the other thing, and this is at a much more personal level, and I think Brian alluded to this, it's created a friendship between he and I that is a very special one.

You know, we come from different worlds, but there's a huge age difference. I think I'm almost twice Brian's age. But it's a fabulous friendship. I can't hardly wait to see him next week. But it also has done other things like the conversation we're having

with you, Travis, and Lauren and Alex. It's this whole friendship that is a gift. We trade ideas. We end up helping other people. It's just fabulous. So that's my little take on it.

Where can people find this book? Well, it's on Amazon. It's probably a little bit cheaper, I think, if they buy it. If you're in the U.S., buy it from Brian's site, powerwrackstrength.com. Or if you're in Canada or really anywhere in the world, uh, you could go to back to it. Pro.com is our website. Then there's other things on those websites that I'll be interested in as well. So Amazon,

that's it. Pro.com and power X. Cool. Well, I appreciate you both very much being on our show, you know, especially if this is kind of a last second request. Yeah.

Thank you so much for being on. That makes sense. I really appreciate you both very much. You guys are awesome. And last time you were on the show, both of you, it was a big hit, so I'm excited to release this to the people. Thank you, Travis. Well, let us know and we'll send it out.

You bet. All right, man. I'll talk to you guys later. You know, as someone who's had a history of low back pain and injury, this episode was so informative and really just gave me a lot of hope. Like I've implemented exercises like Dr. McGill's big three and learning that I need to improve my back hygiene by paying attention to how I move was a really big takeaway for me. And I think many of you out there can benefit from. Thanks, Dr. McGill and Brian, for coming on the show and sharing what you learned from, you know, a seemingly crappy circumstance. Yeah, absolutely.

Brian really went through it without injury, but he learned a lot from his experiences. And I can see why now he can look back and call it the gift of injury. And of course, Dr. McGill, as always, was absolutely fascinating. To check out more podcasts like these, get some free articles, e-books, coaching, go visit us over at mashelite.com. And again, right now, you can go grab our Program Sampler Volume 3 Guest Coach Edition. That's over at mashelite.com slash program sampler 3. Well, thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.