Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 509 - Brian Carroll - From Bad Back To A 1306lb Squat

Episode Date: April 8, 2021

Brian is a world-class powerlifter with over two decades of world class powerlifting under his belt. Coming back from a devastating back injury in 2012 that broke multiple bones and that most experts said he would never recover from, he has returned to the pinnacle of world-class lifting (while 100% pain and symptom-free) and is now dedicated to helping others avoid the same mistakes that he made in the past through private and group coaching. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

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What up, Power Project crew? This is Josh Settleage, aka SettleGate, here to introduce you to our next guest, Brian Carroll. Brian is a world-class powerlifter with over two decades of world-class powerlifting experience under his belt, coming back from a devastating back injury in 2012 that broke multiple bones and that most experts said he would never recover from.

Since then, he has returned to the pinnacle of world-class powerlifting while being 100% pain and symptom-free. He is now dedicated to helping others avoid the same mistakes that he made in the past through private and group coaching. Brian's impressive recovery has given him the opportunity to teach and deliver talks to physical therapists, doctors, chiropractors, medical professionals, and strength and conditioning coaches More recently, Brian was labeled as the number two powerlifter in the world during the 2010s Falling only behind Dave Neutronhoff But that's a different story for a different time

Please enjoy this conversation with our guest, Brian Carroll. 1,300 pound squat. His numbers are stupid. His numbers are just mad stupid. It doesn't make sense. Plus, after having such a crazy injury. Yeah.

That comeback is... The doctor said he wouldn't be walking again. Not even walking again but he'd never be able to do the sport again it's funny whenever I hear athletes it's not funny but when you hear doctors say that to athletes and then they manage some kind of crazy recovery

1306 is the squat that's crazy a crazy amount of weight I know there's a lot of haters on his lift and the way it was done or whatever, but he's also done a ton of other. He's got Stuart McGill have him hanging off a chin-up bar. I'm still curious what he did with Stuart McGill.

Right. I'm guessing they probably showed a little bit of video, but like, what was the process like? I heard that he had to like really stop training for a while, which for an athlete like that, that's impressive. Look at how like swayed his back is, you know, like from building it up so much, you know, that, that curvature of the spine. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder what, it'd be great to ask him a lot of questions like that today. Kind of figure out how he,

how he did, how he hurt his back in the first place and how he fixed it. And, uh, I know he, I've heard him talk before about how he's had to like change everything, the way he stands, the way he sits,

the way he walks, pretty much just the way he did everything. An interesting thing about, um, Brian Carroll too, is thatrian carroll was like crushing power lifting as a 220 pound lifter and a 242 pound lifter and then uh i think when he did the 1300 pound squat he was like maybe just a little over 300 pounds whoa which is small in comparison to the other guys that have lifted 1,100, 1,200, and I think he's the only guy to do 1,300.

That's crazy. From what Stuart was saying, obviously completely different scale, but he said what I have going on with my back was similar to what he had going on. Broke Brian Carroll had going on? Yeah. I mean, like I said, not even close. It's just, I guess they were somehow similar in some way to where he had the thing where like one of the discs was really strong, but then the one below it was not strong.

So when that one would, you know, this one would hold, the bottom one would kind of shake and then that's what would ruin everything. What are the main exercises, like other than the McGill Big 3, does he have you do? Are there main exercises or is it just stay out of pain? Yeah, no, just stay out of pain, walk, and the Big 3. The, what's it called? The curl up. He has me doing basically a dead bug instead because doing the curl up actually kind of fucks me up.

So, yeah, it's, um, but I am interested to hear what he actually had him do. What is the curl up? Exactly. I can't really even, I don't need,

I can't do it. So I can't even explain it. The curl up the, uh, like sit up thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's basically on the, on your back and you push your lower back into the floor. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With your,

with your feet flat i believe right your feet are flat and these are kind of up ish and so like the from the what the book says like the goal is to just basically keep your head like weightless like if there was a scale like and your head was on a scale i mean to keep the scale at zero yeah that's basically it. But even just laying down flat and doing that, it'll crush me. Yeah. That's a bummer. Yeah. All those exercises are, they're actually challenging if you're hurt, you know, they're actually really hard if you're hurt.

Yeah. Yeah. Like even doing the, um, the bird dogs, you know, if you can't do it, like, well, can you do one hand? No, no legs. Okay, cool. Can you do one leg? No hands. Yeah. Or do both. Yeah i know yeah i mean there's levels to all of it like there's no like well sorry there's

plenty of excuses but what stewart mcgill is just is saying is like okay if you can't do the full bird dog you can do partial of course or you can do something doing nothing is the only thing that you can't do yeah what about uh knees over toes you guys been staying on top of that yeah keeping that knees over toes yeah gimmick in there andrew and i've been doing like leg work in between our upper body work and it's just been like knees over toes stuff just basically dragging the sled and that's been really great. And then yesterday I did some biceps and triceps. And in between that, I was doing some belt squat.

Yeah. And the weights were really light, but I'm just squatting all the way down until I bottom out the belt squat. Can I get a hey now? Hey now. And I'm pausing at the bottom and trying to like you know come out of shitty positions because the sled is great but the sled's not getting you out of a crappy position so try and just uh continue to expose my knees to more kind of over pressure and to some of ben's suggestions do you know anyone who's said it's a gimmick do i know anyone that said what

ben is doing is a gimmick yeah Yeah. I have not heard that. It's funny. I, um, yeah, no, everyone I know that's actually doing that stuff as that has had any problems is benefiting from it.

And yeah, it's, it's like, Oh, Whoa. I heard that. Yeah. Yeah.

It's going. Um, yeah, the progression on, on his, on his work is really crazy right now. Like all the mobility gains from it. There's even some good...

Have you ever done a Zotman curl? Yeah. I haven't. Yeah. Until this point. Yeah, yeah. This one, right? Boom.

Yeah. Control down. Yeah, that's a Paula Quinn one. Yeah. That one's great. I've been liking the progress I'm seeing on that. So, a Zotman curl, to explain it to our audience, is a curl that you do supinated, or you can supinate as you come up. But most of the time, you're just going to be supinated the whole time.

Yep. And then as you go down, you do a reverse curl. So you just turn it over and you go down. And you control that bitch. And you go down slow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the advantages of it is it works the brachialis and can get into the long head of the bicep, which all these things get worked anyway.

Whenever you're doing biceps, like it's not like one part of your biceps, like, nah, I'm not, I'm not down with this. They're all working, but a reverse curl will kind of hit those areas that, that Phil Heath thing that he flexes. Yes. Like when he flexes on everybody and then everyone's like, I don't know, just flexing as hard as they can. Then he flexes a little bit harder and that thing kind of pops out of his arm.

That's like 3D. Yeah. That's what it's working. Yeah. That's what we're working towards. Yeah. The weight on that has been making some progress recently. And he programs it for elbow, which is really cool.

But I think I'm going to see some gains in that. I think you might notice it helping in jiu-jitsu. Because your arms, your limbs, they'll give up on you if there's a weak link anywhere in there, in the chain. And I wouldn't suspect that your biceps would be weak. But it could be something like your forearm could maybe potentially not be as strong as maybe your grip. Or maybe as strong as your biceps would be weak, but it could be something like your, your forearm could maybe potentially not be, uh, as strong as maybe your grip or maybe as strong as your bicep. And therefore it will shut down when someone goes to do a move to you. Or, um, you also just like in football, someone's going for like a tackle and they grab the

guy's Jersey. A lot of times what will prevent them from like dragging the guy down isn't so much that their bicep isn't strong enough. But a lot of times it's just their fingers aren't strong enough. It's their actual. So they grab the guy and just like grabbing a gi, it fucking hurts really bad. And so you kind of let go because of the pain, but any weakness in the chain and you're going to let go, your grip could be really strong. But if your bicep is weak, your bicep is going to say, Hey, I'm going to tear. You better let go. And so usually you'll let go before you tear anything.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's going to make a big difference there. But yeah, a lot of those movements. I saw Matt Vincent, he added in Nordics. I saw a video he was doing Nordics. I don't know if it's because of the knees over toe stuff or because he just wants to add it in, but I've been seeing more people. It is. He contacted me about it. He said he loves it. Oh, sick. Okay. It's's gonna be interesting with his knee too something for everybody to learn from the knees over toes guy is that you know i think i think we all could do a better job of simplifying things yes i mean what what when you watch his videos like right away i can think of like two or three things that he shares and I've seen a lot of his videos. So I'm not confused about what he does. I do understand he has a program, you know, and the,

and the program is, uh, precise and it's in accordance to what he's learned. And it's maybe even more in accordance to being able to jump like a motherfucker in basketball, right. And be able to stop and cut and all these different things. But I'm not even following any of that. I'm just doing like, he showed me a bunch of different things. I see a bunch of different things on his, um, on his YouTube channel and I'm just doing them. But the three things that come to mind right away are backwards sled drags, the, uh, uh, ass to grass split squat, and then like a Peterson or pull a Quinn step up type thing that he keeps

talking about. So it's like, I don't really need to know any more than that. I just going to do one of those three things. I'm just going to do them like kind of every day. Yeah. One thing not to forget since we have it here is the, um,

sandboard squats. Yeah. The snapboard squats, but, the to be Alice. Oh yeah. To be Alice bar. That is really,

there's like, there's a lot of progression i can make there because if you saw the amount of weight he was doing his tips are super fucking strong and we our tips look well my tips look bigger but they're not as big as they're not as strong as his tips i don't know about your tips but we gotta build up oh be big everywhere low Look at this guy. Oh, can't quite hear him yet. How are we doing? Doing awesome, Brian. Great to have you on the show today.

Yeah, so I appreciate you having me. Let me get this figured out on my angle here. Looking amazing. How's everyone doing? Is that how we say it? Yes. Wow. Holy shit. That is rare. Looking amazing. How's everyone doing? Encima, is that how we say it? Yes. Wow. Holy shit. You nailed it. That is rare. Thank you. Encima

and Mark Bell. As I told you, I've known Mark for quite a while. Yeah. Don't tell him any stories. She canceled, Mark. That's right. That's what these guys are trying to prevent. Encima does Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He's deadlifted 750 pounds or 755 just to give you a little background on him.

Purple belt, right? Purple belt. Purple belt. Very nice. And I heard you crying some wisdom out of stew about uh hey jujitsu and powerlifting and hey i feel better if i mobilize and stretch a little bit and then sue gave you you know the the dad talk yeah you can't have both son yes you did he did he's so good at that trust me i've gotten a lot of those talks over the years. Tell us a little bit about how you met Stuart McGill and what was the progression there?

Because I believe you had a pretty bad back injury. And then I would imagine that you were probably seeking out some help at that point. Yeah, so I went round and round for a while. I'd been competing for quite a bit, quite a bit of time. In 2009, I fell on an obstacle course. I was going to be a police officer. And I got injured actually trying to really smoke the obstacle course. And I fell right on my butt running full speed at like 270. And so I really damaged my back there a bit. And like any smart person, intelligent athlete like myself,

after hurting my back really bad, I squatted my first 1,100 pounds and my first 800-pound deadlift in competition about two months after that. And the problem is my back would start flaring up from time to time. That's in 2009, 2010, 2011. I had big numbers, went over 2,700 on the total, 1,185 on the squat. And when I hit that all-time world record at the Pro-Am, you know, Mark, the famous Pro-Am 2011, where everyone kind of went off. You had Laura Phelps, Donnie breaking 3,000. I went 1,185, Hoff went 2,900, AJ Roberts went 2,800. It was a big meet, but that 1185 squat cost me a bit. And I really think that that damaged my back to another level.

And then from there, it just got worse and worse with daily activities. Pain-free movement was limited. And it all kind of came to a head in 2013 after going to see neurosurgeons, orthopedic doctors, going through the physical therapy and American medicine that happens all the time. You do the shots. They give you pain meds, do shots. None of it really sticks because they never tell you to address the causes and the symptoms. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. But like Stu said on the podcast with YouTube, it was the end of the road for me.

And that's when it's time for Stu to intervene. And I went to see him in May of 2013. And as they say, the rest is history. And we had a very unique conversation that day. He looked at my images after doing his assessment, which lasted about four hours. And he looked me dead in the eye and said, you're done. I can get you out of pain, most likely. But if you continue to lift the level you're doing, you're risking not just catastrophic injury, but potential paralysis and even worse than that. And I said, well, you said you can get me pain free. As I looked at my wife, Rhea, and I looked back at Stu and said, you get me pain free. I'm going to lift. It's in my blood. It's what I've been doing since 1999. I'm going to lift. He said, okay, first things

first. Who knows? Maybe you're right. Maybe you end up writing a book about it. And then you have Gift of Injury that we wrote four years later. Yeah, that's awesome. I think a lot of times for powerlifters, sometimes an injury is like a blessing, you know, in a lot of ways, uh, for me, it was transformative, you know, tearing my peck a bunch of times. And then, um, ultimately just like kind of recognizing like, Hey, my, my time is up. I need to kind of move along. And I competed a little bit more after that, but that was pretty much it. And I gave up on a 600 pound bench. Like I never did bench 600 pounds, but you were able to end up with a really horrible injury. And then you're told that you can't come back from it. And then you now are the current world record holder, all time world record holder in the squat with a 13, a 1306 squat, which doesn't even sound like it makes any sense to anybody 1300 pounds so how were you able to persevere over that and uh come back and hit such a huge squat

well you know the 1300 pound uh barrier was something that a lot of guys chase you know i mean you were talking with donnie a lot when he was chasing it back in the 2009, 10, 11 era. And it was just this mystical number for a long time. And keep in mind, I hadn't even broke 1,200. When I hurt my back and got to 1,185 at 275 all-time world record, that's when my back really started coming apart. And I had a bunch of issues with that.

So I really thought that, honestly, I was just going to have to be happy with getting back on the platform like I did for a few years at 242 post-injury. I won the Arnold two more times. I won the US Open out there at Gracie's Place in 2016. But there was just something missing. I hit better numbers at 242 post-injury with 2651, 1100 squat, 800 deadlift 800 bench but i couldn't hit that magical total that i wanted 2700 to 242 just trying to lose weight cut weight come down it was just too much so i got frustrated to be honest with you so i had a few good years of coming back lighter at 242 hit prs on everything but i was in this no man's land between 265 and 270 where you're too far away from 242, but you're too light to be a 275.

And the problem was my back didn't like me being big for a long time. So over time I got frustrated with cutting a 242. I just kind of let my body do what it wanted to do for a bit. And next thing I know, I grew past 270, 280, didn't have any issues with back tightness, and then just let my body weight do what it wanted to do. And my strength, after holding it back for so long, incorporating the perfect spinal hygiene and the core regimens that Stu and I prescribed, I was able to build a core of iron, which took years after working with Stu. It wasn't just me arriving a year or two after working with Stu. It was

continuing to experiment, bounce ideas off of Stu, and then being delusional enough to think that I could do it and then going out there and just doing it. You mentioned earlier, before we go too far, you said the problems with american medicine so obviously steve's canadian do you think like outside of just what sue does do you think that there are better systems like does the canadian medical system work better when it comes to things like that that have happened to you or was it, you know, the doctors that you dealt with here? Okay, good question. So it's not me just picking on American medicine, because that's what I experienced. But there's a common theme around the world where people are ill equipped to coach people, especially specific to back injury, where it really just depends on the physical therapist

that you get. It depends on the chiropractor you go to and the general physician as well. Most people are not trained in back mechanism injury, how to remove the cause. And here's the big thing that I've learned, at least with America, doctors are not paid to counsel you. There's no billing code for counseling. doctors are not paid to counsel you. There's no billing code for counseling. So they can give you the shot. They can give you the exercises to do while you're on the clock, while insurance is paying for that session.

But beyond that, they have zero monetary incentive to make you get better and give you instruction. So saying that, I've worked with people all over the world, parts of Europe. I've worked with people in Canada the world, parts of Europe. I've worked with people in Canada, of course, the United States, and everyone has that same issue. They go to the doctor and they're told to do for low back pain, stretches, knee to the chest, touch your toes, mobilize it. When in some cases that could be good for that person, but it all depends on their pain triggers.

I would advise people, if they haven't listened to the episode with Stuart McGill that you two did about a month ago or so, definitely listen to that about pain generators and how they're in, and a lot of the time they're getting bad back advice that's further picking the scab and causing tissue damage, and they wonder why they're not getting better. Hey, the doctor, the physical therapist, we know that physical therapists in the States now have to go to school for eight years to get their doctorate. You would think we trust, we have this inherent trust in doctors. They're going to give us the right pathway to get better. They're going to give us the right the right pathway to get better they're going to give us the medicines when unfortunately a lot of the time they just don't have the proper training to see someone's back through or the proper time or there's a lot of problems there so that's where someone like myself who i'm the florida provider for the mcgill, and having been through the

process with Dr. McGill, having worked with a lot of athletes and seen it from both sides, I've been able to help a lot of people just by winding their pain down and unfortunately undoing what a lot of the doctors and physical therapists and chiropractors have done to damage them. Now, I'm not saying they can't get good treatment. It's just not inherently in the system for someone to get proper rehab for their back. It just doesn't happen very often at all. They're given a model that is for the general public, not for athletes, not with people of different mechanisms. And they just ran through the cycles of physical therapy.

I tore my bicep last year, actually right before the big squat. And I went to physical therapy just to kind of check it out and give it the benefit of the doubt. And it was the typical treat me like a lay person, wonder why I don't have great range of motion in my biceps and shoulders. You know, if you just ask a few questions and watch someone move, you might be able to learn quite a bit about where they're coming from, where they're going, and what their goal is. So there's a lot of issues there, and time is one of them. Not having enough time with the patient to actually know what causes their pain. How'd you tear your bicep?

Dead lifting. I was dead lifting about five weeks out. And honestly, I've never torn anything off the bone. And it was just one of those things that I'd played around with the iron for so long. I deserved a lot more tears off the bone than I got. It was just one of those things, a perfect storm. Did it interfere with your plans for your lifts for your squat at all? So when i tore the muscle five weeks out i pretty much thought i was done for the meet and so instead i was a little down about it and i knew i was gonna have to have surgery i saw it tear off and felt it and bled out so i called stew the next day after thinking of it and i said stew i didn't tell him about the

bicep but i said i think that i'm gonna make a push for this meet in five weeks and I said Stu I didn't tell him about the bicep but I said I think that I'm going to make a push for this meet in five weeks and I'm going to try to hit the biggest squat of all time and so I can focus solely these next five weeks on only the squats and what are your thoughts we talked about a couple ideas and such for

priming for it and what he thought and I put together kind of a five week plan and only focused on the squat and i can share some details on that in a little bit what i did but i focused on the squat and uh didn't cut weight and went into the meet full straight full size weighed in at 303 versus 242 like i had in the past and that was the that was the the biggest thing right there and And the bicep didn't bother me. Once I got under the bar and felt, you know, I didn't need much supination with it. It didn't stress it.

Once I squatted 500, I said, let's go. You know, I got to get reattached anyway. Let's just see what happens. Wow. How? How did the, like, how are you going with the torn bicep for five weeks? I mean, I feel like that's just still shocking to me, how you're just training with that. It's just there.

Well, I went to mainly squat movements and variations. I was still able to do suitcase carries. I still had grip because the biceps doesn't affect the grip so much. It's more supination, right? So I was able to still hold on the bar, get the lifter's wedge and lock in. So I was able to still hold on the bar, get the lifter's wedge and lock in. But I just made sure that I didn't, the tension I put on the bar came from my lats being locked down, not from my wrists and forearms. They're just a vessel that I touched the bar with.

Everything else is locked in with my torso. So I get really creative with the belt squat. I'm a big fan of belt squats, one in particular, Squat Max, where it's directly underneath you. And I loaded the crap out of that belt squat for five weeks. I did barbell squats. And then a secondary day, I did my core work really heavy, my belt squats. And I just experimented a little bit in combination of being bigger,

smarter training, and not training other lifts. I kind of just, you know, Mark, when you have those bad meets where everything kind of comes, it's coming together, then it falls apart. This one was really bad and then came together. Wow. What was the key component to be able to squat that kind of weight? Because like, even when you unrack that weight, it looked like you were going to be able to handle it. It looked like you stood up very straight with it.

What do you think was a key component that got you from? Because you said you didn't even squat 1,200 yet, and you went right from mid-11s or high 11s to 13. Well, I'd gotten a lot stronger in the gym. I just couldn't quite accomplish it on the platform just to be screwing it up. I just couldn't quite accomplish it on the platform just to me, screwing it up. So it was the big thing is the mental, the mental part of it that Stu very,

very nicely put about having to want to, you got to want to run through a brick wall. You want to be at the point where you would just crush someone if they got in your way. So that mental, that mental toughness and that mental focus, along with the core of iron, I did it. I didn't skip any of my core work. I did all the little things that I should have done before. And I just knew if I could pick it up out of the rack soundly, that my core was prepared to handle whatever it was that I picked up. The only problem was

if I could pick it up and still stay secure with my arm. That was the only thing I was worried about. But I mean, it's the fear. It's the fear of failing. I've seen your lift a hundred times, Mark, with 1080 or 1092 or whatever it was. And that's, unfortunately, when you're at a bone crushing weight like that, or you're pushing absolute physiology, that's sometimes a likely outcome. And you just got to face that. And sometimes things are going to break. So there came a point in that meet, I knew I was only doing the squat. So what the heck, you know, I don't have to worry about if I get hurt or something, I don't have to worry about benching or deadlifting. I'm already going into surgery in two days. So, you know, Donald says, what the hell? Can you get ready for it? And I did have

one point where I considered not taking the fourth attempt because I already got the all-time world record at 1281. And what I've learned from Stu is not be greedy. Don't be greedy. But I'm like, if I don't this far is loaded and I say, hey, I'm good. My friends were never going to let me live it down. and I would regret it forever and you saw how easy it was but that's the self-preservation fight

that you have internally you have to override and supersede that limit that your brain has and you've got to unleash the fuse box as Stu says and sometimes it comes out really good and other times it's a disaster.

I was lucky enough this time to come out unscathed and it was a good time. It was definitely unexpected from a lot of people because you know Mark, I've been competing since 99 and I don't even think you thought I was still competing.

No, I didn't't i had no idea had no idea until you came back and crushed that big weight do you think you could have done like if they misloaded it do you think you could have done like 1350 i mean you blew the weight up yes sort of irrelevant what's on the bar right yeah i think that i was just locked in and everything was perfect that day i don't know if I could replicate it as easy because it all came together. But the person that was coaching me, he said that if it wasn't just for the 1300 barrier, we would have put 1335 or something on there because the 1280 was my perfect squat. The 1281, I don't have video of it right now, but that was my best squat that I've probably ever done. The 1306 was a little wobbly on my back, maybe due to the arm, not being able to lock it

in, but I still handled it fine. Definitely an interesting experience with that. I didn't expect for it to happen, but I was delusional enough to kind of believe that there's a chance of it happening. You mentioned the, you mentioned Stu said like you gotta unleash the fuse box and if you listen to that stew mcgill episode he mentioned you know going to a dark place etc you mentioned that the big part of that day for you was the mental side of things so for you what has been your mental process to getting yourself ready to hit some of these monstrous weights i practice practice. So I practice sometimes when I'm standing around waiting on clients in my gym. I'll think about going to that dark place. I'll envision myself setting up under the bar, how light it's going to be, how I'll smash it. I go through every possible

scenario of what could happen, how I'm going to adjust. Let's say the bar pitch is forward instead of correcting it with my back. Sue talked having the uh ability to navigate it through your through your ankles and stay in you know the leaning tower being able to stay upright with it if you need to correct it but just practicing and being there so many times and failing sometimes and not wanting me to fail again not wanting myself to come back and say, you know what the worst feeling in the world is? It's the morning after a bad meet and you wake up and you got to catch a plane and then everyone's texting you asking you, how'd it go? What happened? Why didn't you? So that's why I didn't talk about going to do something big because I've done that too many times and came up short and have to answer those questions that suck.

But I practice going there mentally. And so once I went under the bar for the 1300, I'd already been there a couple dozen times mentally. And I just, you know, of course, it was one of those things where you get under the bar and you second guess everything. Like, oh my gosh, am I going to die? No one's ever tried this much weight. but you just overcome it and just do it. You just, you know, you push the feelings aside that you have sometimes and you just override it and do it. So my mental focus is ramped up with each lift. So when I was warming up in the gym,

the week before the meet or two weeks before the meet, I treated every single weight the same. I picked it up with the same intensity settled. So can I say one more thing? I know I'm rambling. Yeah, go for it. That same dark

side that I have is the biggest reason that dark side we talk about getting up for a lift mentally running through a brick wall whatever it takes you're going to do it whether you blow apart you don't give a shit that's why I have to walk away from the sport because that destroys me mentally that same mindset I'll try to replicate in daily life sometimes and it's hard to turn it on and turn it off so it's funny that you asked me how did I And it's hard to turn it on and turn it off. So it's funny that you asked me how did I practice it? You have to practice going to that dark place, 100% neural

drive. The problem is it's not good for you mentally to do over and over. So the mindset that I have the week before a meet, it's pretty dark. I'm pretty short. I'm focused. The morning of a meet, I'm pissy and I'm angry. Everything irritates me. But if I'm happy, go lucky. I'm pretty short. I'm focused. The morning of a meet, I'm pissy and I'm angry. Everything irritates me. But if I'm happy-go-lucky, I know there's something wrong there. That's the thing. So I'm getting around to saying the happy-go-lucky part that I like about me in a normal day, it gets overridden by this dark side when I'm ramping up for me. And that's why I have twin babies now. There'll be one next week. And I see that dark side in me and I can see how I would be at times around the babies. So I want to be nicer and I want to be available. I mean,

Mark, you almost died, you know, squatting. I don't want to, I don't want to die when I'm squatting and I got babies to take care of and I want to be a good dad. So it's kind of been a transition for me since then. I knew the week of the meet that, Hey, if I can do something good and big here, it's a good way to end the story. It's a, it's a good way to add a chapter to gift of injury, which we did. We added a, an epilogue to the book about the 1300 squat and i just kind of think that it'd be hard to bless you oh thank you i think it'd be hard to kind of replicate a better way than to walk away than that you know what i mean it's just what else i didn't ever quite total 2800 or 2900 but you know you can't have everything the way you want it if you keep waiting around long enough, Father Tim's going to catch up to you.

We've got to worry about what we do. You're pulling 755. Mark, you squat close to 1,100. You benched 850. You pulled 550 or whatever your deadlift was. 505. Jokes aside, eventually father time is going to win. And whether it's your blood pressure or your organs or your, your,

your joints and your back, like it always wins. So that to me, that was a good time to kind of walk away and be good with what I did as hard as that is with my type of personality. So I remember it's difficult because you, you love it. You love it,

but you hate it at the same time. Right remember dave tate uh talking about gaining weight and he got advice from another famous lifter jm blakely who uh the jm press is named after uh jm blakely being an amazing uh bench presser and uh dave was trying to gain weight and And JM said, you got to treat your eating just like you treat your training. And so Dave's like that night, he's like, I have boxes of pizza just sitting there on my table. And he's like, I started to get really full. He's like, and I said, fuck this. And he's like, I threw the pizza down for a second. He's like, I got up.

He's like, I paced back and forth. Like I was getting ready for a big squat or a big deadlift. He's like, I sat back down. And he's like, i ate the rest of that fucking pizza the way you're supposed to so yeah trying to have that in all aspects of your life not always great if you're going out to have a glass of wine with the old lady or something it's exhausting trying to balance it out you know and there's no such thing as balance when you're trying to push the the ultimate limit you know relative to your ability there's really no balance there you got trying to push the ultimate limit, you know, relative to your ability. There's really no balance there. You got to try yourself, try your best to have times where you're

a little more relaxed in the off season. And then you have times where you're pushing it. I think Dave has referred to it as dust where you're coasting and blasting when you're blasting off. You got to have times to get the people around you in and out where they actually like to be around you. You're actually participating in family activities and you're available emotionally, physically, that kind of stuff. But, Mark, you summed it up. It's not just the training part that's exhausting. It's the eating.

If you're close to a weight class borderline, that's exhausting, too. You know, you see the fighters battle with it all the time with making huge weight cuts. Uh, it's, it's tough to do, you know, it's really, it's really tough to, to keep doing it for a long time and, and, and not be an absolute maniac all the time. You know, our boy Andrew right here got a, uh, consult with Stu, uh, Stu McGill and like you, Stu was talking about how he has to stay out of injury, right? He like not out of injury has to stay out of pain to be able to progress. Right. I'm assuming for yourself, that was the same thing for you, but also I'm assuming that you had to get away from lifting for a while and being a person who could lift so much, so consistently,

um, how long was the process that you had to get away from the gym or get away from lifting? How long did it take you to reach that full recovery? And what was it doing to you mentally to not be able to actually do what you loved in the gym to be able to recover? It was difficult. It was difficult mentally because that's my identity. It's what I love. It was difficult mentally because that's my identity. It's what I love. It's an addiction. You know, it's addiction to pushing.

And even though you know most of the time you're not going to quite achieve what you want, when you do achieve it, that's what keeps the horse dangling there in front of the – or the carrot dangling in front of the horse. So when I saw Stu in May of 2013, of course, I had to desensitize, remove my causes, my triggers, flexion, extension, compression. I just really sensitized my back and treated it extremely poorly. I just wasn't good to my spine in the gym and outside of the gym. So we did a complete renovation of my movement patterns. So we went with every move that I did. It was either we went to a squat pattern, right? Sucking in your ear, stiffening up, right? Hip hinging.

And then a lunge pattern if I'm going to have to tie my shoes. Lunging in. Then the golfer's pickup where you set your core nice and stiff. You lock in. And then you just reach down, pick it up using your hips. I did none of that. So I was not only demolishing my back in the gym but i was demolishing it outside of the gym and if i was only training 10 hours a week or whatever

a powerlifter would train 12 hours maybe there's 168 hours in the week so the other 158 hours i was abusing my body and then expect them to able to still abuse it. You know, we're pulling a 755 deadlift is abusing your body. I'm not saying it's out, it's egregious, it's bad, but you're not putting athleticism into your body by pulling 750 and squatting 1090 and squatting 1300. So we look at it as a checking account. You've got to put money in to be able to debit it out. And my checking account was

overdrawn. So I had to add athleticism, let it adapt and let my body become resilient again to start building it up. So it was a tedious process of the walks were non-negotiable. The big three was non-negotiable every day. And then I didn't do any lifting for three months or so, none. Then I was allowed to start doing suitcase carries, goblet day. And then I didn't do any lifting for three months or so, none. Then I was allowed to start doing suitcase carries, goblet squats. And then eventually, when my pain was wound down and my stability had come, I was able to do goblet squats without any pain, the carries. Then we started with an unloaded bar just with 55 pounds. And I started working that squat pattern and that deadlift pattern again. And I got back May is when we started.

By December, I was squatting over 1,000 pounds again. But I rushed it a little bit and wasn't quite ready for the Arnold meet in 2014. I still squatted 1070 that meet, but my body was not – I didn't have enough athleticism. I had enough athleticism to squat but I didn't have enough athleticism and resilience to squat bench and deadlift that day so it was kind of disappointing because I was one of the first known powerlifters being on elite at the time to use McGill's methods doing the core core work, the walking. So here I am talking about how good McGill's work is.

And then the next meet that I do, I have to end up taking a token debt lift. So that was a big step. It was a step back for me a little bit where I had to say, hey, I rushed it a little bit. Let's talk to Stu. Let's get another plan. Let's give myself a little bit more time. And we made some uh some adapt adaptations to my my programming and uh i ended up hitting uh going down a weight class instead

losing a little bit of weight and that was what i was missing i was just a little too big for my frame at the time where people have they have sweet spots some people that lose weight and they have a back injury they feel better right other people people that lose weight and they have a back injury, they feel better, right? Other people, when they lose weight, they lose that stiffness, that corset that they have, and then they end up having laxity and they feel worse. So for me, losing weight was a good thing. And so that helped me build back. And then by October that next year, I hit 2,600 at 242 for the first time, which I wasn't even, I was unable to do prior to injury. So we kind of built from there. But what I tell, and Seema, what I tell people when they're dealing with back injury specifically, because that's what I help people with, they have to put the

same amount of effort into their training, into their nutrition as they do in their back protocol holding back. So the same way you push towards a powerlifting meet is the same way you have to look at your back rehab protocol and the same way you have to hold back. Your friends, your training partners are taunting you while you're on the ground doing bird dogs and they're squatting and benching and beating their chest like gorillas, and then you're down on the ground doing Pilates. If you let yourself, that can pilates if you let if you let yourself that can distract you if you let it happen but to me i just put all the more focus

into doing my my core work and getting better and just knowing that it was going to be an investment and that i'd be back but it just wasn't the right time a lot of people get distracted when they're on their way back they're doing well and then like a dog chasing a car, they take off the, you know, from the plan and then they never get better. You know, one, one thing that comes to mind is, you know, you have someone, let's say Andrew, they, they, they have a Skype with Stu, they identify their causes, they get their pain wound down. Um, they get back to training, you know, there's three phases to it. The first phase is removing the cause and building pain-free capacity. The second phase is bridging that gap and adding more pain-free capacity while keeping the cause removed and expanding that capacity. And the third

stage is getting back to lifting. A lot of people skip that second step. They go from desensitizing and winding the pain down right back to lifting with the barbell. And they skip that time where the adaptations take time and that's when you progress. So a lot of people skip that second step. They get better with the consult when they talk to me, and they skip that time that they need to adapt, and they get right back to it, and it's just a continuum over and over. So I really stress when I talk with people that it's a time, it's a period of time that you're going to have to let your body heal, and you can't push things.

You've got to back off and use that same laser focus on not picking the scab with your daily movements, which is, you know, the rehab protocol, the McGill 3, the core stabilization, the walking, the carries, it's not – it's very simple. But simple does not mean easy. Very simple stuff. Remove the cause. If you're flexion intolerant, stop bending all the time. Let your spine desensitize. build some stability and then slowly introduce it back into your training and

if you need to but um it's tedious when you got a tough job when you're working on having to get up every hour and go for a walk or do your core stability simple does not mean easy and along with that i think the one of the most interesting things i heard you mention was that like you had to rebuild your squat patterns you had to rebuild you know things like picking things up etc right when you said squat pattern i was first off wondering well i mean before this you squatted in the thousands of pounds like what could have been wrong with your squat pattern so i'm curious about that what was actually like was there a pattern with the way you a problem with the way you were squatting but outside of that um when you were doing things on a day-to-day basis

like even when i see people like they'll they'll just bend down and pick things up etc was that you or were you were you not like hip hinging to pick things up and what what exactly was your problems on the day-to-day with your movement? And then how was your squat pattern? How did that even need to be changed? Okay. So my movement outside the gym day-to-day was poor. I was the guy that would just bend over and wonder why my back hurt.

And the solution was, oh, it can't be that. You know, I have a strong back. I've squatted 1185. So my spinal hygiene was the biggest thing. And Stu, when we spent time in the lab would trick me. He would, he would say, go grab the kettlebell, go grab that kettlebell, let's do some goblet squats. And I'd go over nonchalantly and grab it.

And he'd say, stop, you're in spine flexion right now. What are your triggers? Spinal flexion. So after he beat me up enough with that, and it was for my own good. It wasn't, he was picking on my poor spine hygiene as he should. That's what I was there to see him. He's telling me what I can do to fix myself. So that was, it was corrupted due to my pain.

I was actually creating my pain over and over, just kind of beat my head against the wall, thinking that the fix was some magical wand that someone's going to wave over me. A surgeon was going to take his magical scalpel, go in, take my pain out, and it'd be great. I'd go back to lifting and everything's fine. That's not the way it works. As we know, there's a lot of the time more than one cause of your pain. That's why surgery does not work a lot of the time. There's multiple causes. That's why surgery does not work a lot of the time. There's multiple causes.

So going back to my squat form and pattern, it had become corrupted due to my back pain. I moved in certain ways that felt better, even though it wasn't optimal for my squat. I would squat into my pain sometimes. I would rush and not lock in like I should and keep a rigid core. It was kind of one of those things that just snowballed. My back pain started to hurt. So my squat form suffered, which made my back pain come further. And then it was a snowball effect. So I had some things that I needed to work on. And one of them was treating every single weight the same, regardless of the load. So before I'd kind of slowly turn it up from four to five to six to eight. Now when I approach the same, regardless of the load. So before I'd kind of slowly turn it up from

four to five to six to eight. Now when I approach the bar, especially when I was pushing for the post-injury PRs in the 1300, every single weight I treated the same. I picked it up with a firm, stiff core. I sucked in my air every single time, pushing out laterally, bending the bar, pulling my lats down, anti-strug, packing my neck every single time. So when I picked up a weight that was heavier than I've ever felt before, those engrams, like Stu talked about, those engrams were there. I didn't have to think about, oh no, what do I do? My hips go back. Now I'm going to spread the floor. I practiced it every single time. so all i had to do was hang on a little more take the pressure that i've never felt before and just wait for my up call because it was ingrained in my brain it was second nature

and and that's a big reason why we treat every single weight the same and that also went along with why i was hurting myself before i'd be loose. I didn't care. It was four or 500 pounds. Why should I care? You know, I was ignorant and knuckleheaded about that. The anti shrug. I like that analogy because it kind of automatically makes you flex your lats. And then by flexing your lats, it just kind of tightens up your thoracic spine and keeps your chest kind of in an upright position.

What are you talking about with like picking stuff up? I find it really interesting. Like that, the way that golfers pick up a golf ball is like a great way to actually pick things up. It actually kind of looks kind of silly. They push the back foot, uh, kind of behind them and they, they, they're on one, they're balancing kind of on one foot and they pick up the golf ball. Um, my understanding of like some of these things, like when it comes to tying your shoes and when

it comes to things like that, picking up something off the ground is that if both your feet are planted on the ground and you bend down and pick something up, if you have a tight back and you're not a very mobile person, you're probably going to be putting quite a bit of stress on your spine without even really thinking about it because you're just getting to that end range and maybe slightly beyond. And that's why we see a lot of big guys when they go to pick something up, they usually have to try to pick it up like two or three times in a row. They got to kind of get a little stretch reflex to pick the thing up.

Or the hardest thing in the gym is to pick up a 45 that's completely flat on the ground. That's why we always lean it up against the squat rack or lean it up against the bench or whatever. And so it's kind of interesting that, you know, pushing that back foot, uh, just allows for more mobility, more comfort in the spine. And then tying the shoes, like you were saying, in like a lunge or step up style position is a much safe, it's just silly to think that we got to talk about how to pick things up all the time and how to tie our shoes. But these are massive things that can be really important they are and i sent stew a video of my my twin girls on in the gym and they were rolling around and they literally people can can search uh infant side planks on my youtube channel or

something but i happened to capture capture my girls in the gym. They were both doing a side plank. I swear to you, they rolled over to a side plank, both of them. You can pull this up and see it for yourself. And I was amazed. I was recording this. So I sent it to Stu and said, Stu, I said side plank, and the girls rolled over to a side plank.

It was coincidental that I said that while they were doing it. But he said that that's the way we move as babies, the way we roll over, the way we transition, that's a natural way to move. And for whatever reason, we get away from that. So when Stu talked about moving well and getting on and off the floor, when you do the McGill Big Three, this kind of is an interesting topic because a lot of the time when people are desensitizing their spine building core stability and trying to get back to lifting again the way they get on and off the floor is sometimes more important than how proficient they are at doing the mcgill three if they throw themselves on the ground do a you know an okay mcgill three and then swing themselves back up in deflection they're undoing

and possibly coming out on the negative wow for going down and doing exercises so let's say that mcgill will put 10 doing the mcgill three will put ten dollars in your bank account right but the way you get on the ground and off the ground is withdrawing 12 so you'd have been better off just moving well and not doing them at all. So the way we transition from a bird dog, then we roll, we're on our stomach, on our chest, we put our arm up, we roll straight over on our back, and then it'd come up, we roll straight over again if we wanted to go back to our stomach. And those are things that babies do naturally, the way they roll over. It's interesting seeing that.

We get away from it for some reason. So in essence, on the outside of the exercises, everything you do on the outside also has to help out your back. You can't be moving incorrectly. You can't be rolling around incorrectly. Everything has to be kind of perfect. like everything has to be kind of perfect. Yeah. And here's a, here's a dirty little secret that unfortunately doctors and surgeons didn't

tell me. And it's something I've come to know is guess what people still have to do after they get a back surgery. They still have to rehab. So they go in and they think that they can just go in and get surgery and fix it. No, that's not,

they still have to rehab. So that's why just go in and get surgery and fix it. No, that's not, they still have to rehab. So that's why Stu talks about and recommends a virtual surgery where you just do nothing as if you had surgery for a week or two, you do a walking program like you would if you had a surgery. And then a lot of the time that downtime, just that little bit of downtime helps gain a little bit of momentum and start winding that pain down. I had a couple of clients that I worked with that were making headway with moving well, doing the big three, and they got COVID. They got COVID last year and were like, crap, no, they can't come see me. We can't do the programming.

They laid around and couldn't work for two weeks. They could still do their big three. They could still walk. But just them being off their feet a little bit more and not picking the scab, they totally eliminated their back pain during that time. It's really weird to think about. It's as if they did the virtual surgery with the COVID, didn't do hardly much. They were sick. They were lethargic.

They were just winding their pain down and didn't even know it. down and didn't even know it. From a structural standpoint, you know, a lot of lifters get big arms and we end up with like a big chest and kind of a tight chest and you walk with the arms kind of forward. I noticed in one of the videos Stu was having you do some pull-ups

and your back is like swayed quite a bit, which is pretty common for a lot of high-level athletes have that kind of physique. Was that something that you had to address or do anything about? Or can we not really mess around and change our own structure too much? Did you like it? It looked sexy.

That's what I'm trying to say. I was turned on by it. Yeah, nice curvy back. We didn't need to address that at all. We didn't really mess with it. People have commented on that. Well, what about his lordosis or anything like that? We didn't have to address it, man.

I don't even know if it's necessarily lordosis as it is being jacked. Yeah, big butt and all that stuff. No, we didn't have to address that at all. The biggest thing for me is just not giving myself time to recover in between lifting sessions, just thinking I was Superman. Then you add in the moving poorly, an accident falling on my butt like I did. I've squatted about 60 times in competition over 1,000 pounds, and that itself could hurt someone else too.

So I did a lot of things that caused my own pain and really thought that my twenties would last forever. So it was a wake up call for me. And through this process, I've learned so much. Dr. Stu and I are really good friends and I've been able to help a lot of people through this process, not just with the book gift of injury, but just meeting people and like helping them, you know, being able to relate to them when they're down and they can't lift. I can say, Hey, I've been there where you are. It's hard,

but it gets better. And then you can show them that they're in control of their own pain. And then the light bulb goes off. They're like, wow, I really am. I didn't have any pain for the last week. They tell their wife, hey, my back pain's gone. And that's a cool thing when they can call you on a Skype call and say, man, just moving better and stabilizing my core. I don't feel like that I'm not going to be able to pick up my kids anymore or I'm not going to go to the park with them anymore. So that's very rewarding to be able to do that.

What have you learned about comparison? You know, like it's really easy in powerlifting. You start climbing the ladder and you're like, oh, okay, cool. I pass that guy. And you're like, my next goal is that guy over there. But then you keep working your way up and you got to, at some point, just recognize like, I'm not this guy. I'm not that guy.

And you got to really have your blinders on and focus in on yourself just as you were mentioning uh laying down the ground and doing the stewart mcgill big three while the other guys are making fun of you uh how were you able to you know concentrate on yourself and have you gotten caught up in trying to compare yourself to a d Hoff and Ed Cohn and so on? Yeah, so those are two of the best to ever do it in different eras. I think that I'm my own worst critic. So I've always had someone that I've been in the shadows of, to be honest with you. So I had Sean Frankel that we went head to head.

He was just a little bit better than me in the 2000s. And then after that, Greg Panora, he was just a little bit better than me. And then you have Dave Hoff. They're just freaks. So it's been hard being the second best guy multiple times. You know what I mean? In a different area,

I would be the top, top guy. But it's one of those things that I've just learned to accept that it's one of those things that I never expected a total or squat 1306 when I started doing this. So when I take perspective and look at the whole thing, I wanted to squat 800 pounds was my goal. I wanted to bench five. I wanted to pull seven. I exceeded those goals within a year and a half of starting powerlifting. So everything's gravy, to be honest with you. Everything's been gravy. If I let myself get caught up in the internet bullshit or let someone take a slide

at me and I take it to heart, I can let myself get a little sappy about it, but I'm happy with what I've been able to do. And I think that you do need to have a realistic perspective of the people around you and where you stand in the rankings and where you are. But also you need to have a little bit of a crazy belief in yourself to where you think you can beat those guys. I have beat Dave Hoff before. in yourself to where you think you can beat those guys. I have beat Dave Hoff before. I've tied Sean Frankel. But if you let it get in your head that these people are unbeatable and that they can't fall at any time,

then you're never going to achieve greatness. So I've been chasing people's numbers like Dave Hoff and Sean Frankel, Greg Penora, and those guys for a long time. And it's kept me sharp. It's kept me sharp chasing people that, you know, the history is going to remember is the greatest of their time. Dave Hoff, Sean Frankel, of course, Ed Coe, Steve Goggins, those guys, man. I'm lucky enough to call those guys friends of mine too. So it's just like, it's just one of those things, man.

It's kind of hard to deal with sometimes. Is Sean Frankel the best equipped power lifter of all time, you think? Hmm. Okay. Here's what I think. Sean, what he did from 2006 to 2010 was pretty ridiculous. You know, he ended up totaling 27, 15 at 220 In 2010, I believe you were there Mark, we watched it happen You'd have to order one of the Hooters We went

Nate with Matt Kroc, I'm sure you remember that Absolutely But he quit He quit in 2010 Dave Hoff has He really kind of started picking up steam around 2010, and for the last 10 years he's been pretty much immortal. So maybe I can just take an out here and say Dave Hoff is the best heavyweight

lifter, equipped lifter of all time. Sean Frankel is the best lightweight, and maybe I'm one of the best middleweights or something. I don't know. I could throw myself in there. I'm not better than Frankel or Hoff, but I'm okay with being second tier to those guys. When it comes to your mice. You've got to have Donnie in there, too, with 3,000.

Donnie set the bar. Andy set the bar with the 1,000-pound deadlift. You know? Yeah. Sorry about that. Gary Franks as well. I can't forget. I mean, there's – he starts to bring up a lot of the great lifters Gary was the first to do 25, 26, 27, 28

when was this? Gary Frank broke 2800 in 04 I'd only been lifting for a few years then and I saw this brontosaurus of a mantle of 2,800. He was a big dude in his time, wasn't he, Mark? Didn't he used to, like, warm up in the back with, like, 315 for deadlift, and then his opening pull was, like, 875 or something? Yeah, him and Tony Conyers would only pull 135 and 315, and they'd go out there and pull.

pull 135 and 315 and they go out there and pull that's actually a russian method where they would just pretty much determine that they were warmed up enough by the end of the day which you are in some respects and they would pull one deadlift and then conyers would go and open up at 650 at 148 gary frank would open at 881 and you know 500 pounds 400 pounds this is a massive guy gary franks was like not somebody you'd ever want to fuck with played for the atlanta falcons and just had some unconventional training too i think he was a guy who just completely just destroyed himself every single workout i think he just went as heavy as he possibly could all the time wow you know so their deadlift workouts really interesting one time they're here in jacksonville for something and they use the gym uh driggers

gym that we were training at and they started training at about 11 30 at night gary just cracked open his energy drink around midnight he loved code red mountain dews so he started his mountain dews about midnight they would train till five in the morning and they would sit for about an hour in between sets and just talk and and. And then they'd be like, okay, time to go pull. They'd pull one, put it down, crack open Mountain Dew, and get back to talking. That's old school powerlifting where we didn't have so many responsibilities and we could just lift all day and night. Jesus. Okay.

I was curious about the mindset that you had about your progression because your athletic career is so long. You could probably remember back to when, like you said, you broke 2,000 your first year. So there's a lot of powerlifters that when they start out, they want to get as strong as possible, as fast as possible. So maybe they rush numbers or maybe they hit things that they shouldn't. And for some people, it shortens their athletic career. For some people, they're able to get lucky get past it but when it comes to your mindset as far as your own strength progression when it comes to you later in your career versus earlier in career what would you have changed

about the way you thought about progressing your strength earlier in career to potentially have done better or been safer or been stronger i would have been a little less obsessive compulsive and I would have had a lot more patience because I kept pushing. Once I saw that I can total more than 2000, I was just all in. I didn't care the consequences, man, whatever, whatever I needed to do, I would do it. And that's the way I approached lifting for a long time. And it got me, you know, I accomplished some good things, but it also got me pretty tore up and in a bad way with my back.

So if I were to speak to a younger Brian, you know, going back to 1999, I could tell you, I wouldn't have listened, number one. So let me put that out there first. But I would say slow down. You got 20 years to really get where you want to go. Because it was 21 years of lifting from 99 to 2000 when I actually hit my best lift. And we talked about reprogramming the squat during my injury. I finally put it all together for one lift 21 years later. And I don't know if I would have wanted to wait 21 years to like really hit something like that but I would have told I would have told myself to be patient you have time there's really no

rush I was always in a rush got to train heavy got to do it now and that's just immaturity on my part and just wanting to get after it just not knowing what I know now about adaptation and how muscles recover different than bone. And your vertebrae need time to recover about five days to do that. You know, you need to toughen the annulus, not bend it, not be flexible and strong where you're trying to pull out two different opposite demands of the body. And I didn't know any of this stuff. You know a lot about training.

When it comes to like central nervous system, you know, you hear some people throwing that out there. I got, you know, central nervous system fatigue or your CNS is fried and these kinds of things. In your experience with lifting these massive weights, how long did it take your body to recover? Like after you, let's say after you did the 1306, what did it take for your body to recover from that? In addition to that, what was the last weight that you touched in training and how far out was it from that competition? Yes. Okay. So, you know, I had surgery, you know, just a couple of days after the squat.

So Sunday we got in the car, drove 10 hours back home from Tennessee with the babies. I didn't have a lick of back pain. My hips weren't even tight. I felt good, man. And I felt very fortunate to be able to say that I came out of that unscathed. My back doesn't hurt. I mean, that's in the back of my mind, I've always wondered, you know, okay, what's going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back? Like what's going to be the one thing I've pulled so much out? I've been greedy. What's going to be the thing, but driving home for 10 hours, I was fine. The next day I prepped for surgery and got surgery. Um, so I was fine, man. You're pretty well conditioned then probably, right? Yes. Uh, as far as the squat two weeks out, I took a uh 1205 or something like that on the spot which

was a pr but i had a lot more in the tank than that and i had a little bit of an experiment so i have a client by the name of oso he's a big guy that lives up in new jersey and he was also looking at a 1200 plus squat and it's pretty cool we were actually the first uh client coach tannin to ever squat 1,200 pounds in competition. So we actually did this at this meet. He squatted 12, and I went 12 and then 13. But I did a little bit of a test. So we were basically doing the same weights in training.

So I programmed for him two weeks out, 1210 free weight, 1265 reverse band for like a third attempt or something like that. I put the 1265 on the bar and then just said you know what after the 1210 i think i'm good i think i'll use this two weeks to completely rest so i did the 1210 shut it down he took the 1265 he missed 1300 and i got it at that meet so there's a little bit of a strategy that I tried both ways. And, you know, in his defense, he kind of misgrew the weight. But I think that reinforced my opinion and experience that you don't always have to handle the weight in the gym to be able to peak in competition and hit numbers you never touched.

Ideally, that's what you would do anyway. But after that 12, 10 10 squat two weeks out it consisted of a week out some really light squats with the bar in my back just greasing the groove a bit but i went really heavy on the belt squat just like 700 some pounds on the belt squat and really worked on building the volume and prepared for four attempts on the squat because i knew that if it there, I would at least put it on the bar for 1300. Did you train heavy almost every week leading up to, uh, before you backed off those two weeks? What I was doing is kind of like a wave. So week one, let's say we're 10 weeks out. I would, I would take around a seven out of 10 RPE or 70% working the groove.

Next week, I'd proceed to an 8. Then I'd back off for a week, get out of the suit, work some raw, give my central nervous system a break too because what happens to me? And I don't have an exact medical term or can hash it out like some other people might be able to. But when I go too hard too long, I start going backwards. I don't sleep. I shake under weight that I shouldn't. My attitude starts to suck.

So I can tell when I'm getting overtrained. And it might just be more of a I'm too overstimulated. Maybe we can use that word and people might, you know, because you got to get up for those lifts. You're taking a bunch of caffeine and you got to get mentally there. So that to me is what exhausts me more than just the physical training. I believe that you can build your physical work capacity up to a point where you're not just going to get burned out and break down just for going five weeks heavy in a row. But I like to plan deloads to avoid that fatigue curve to where you're backing off ahead of schedule before you're

forced to, because eventually you're going to be forced to go in lighter. So those are little indicators. I think the people out there, if they can look for indicators in their training, hey, this happened last time I got hurt. Hey, this happened last time I had a terrible meet. Or this happened last time I had a good meet. Let's follow this path and keep going there. Ed Cohn has talked about you know 100 times and

so is dave tate and everyone else on social about people want to be instagram heroes and i saw this trend start about eight years ago where someone goes and pulls 800 to meet and they pull 725 in the gym because they peaked in the meet they peaked in the gym and not in the meet so and they probably over trainedtrained themselves. They overshot, over-compensated. But if you can ride that wave in training where you're pushing just enough and saving something in the tank, and you push, you back off, and then you recover, as long as you ride that line,

and every line is going to be different, you can hyper-compensate on meet day and hit numbers that you've never touched in training, but there's an art to it and everyone's going to peak a little bit differently. Some people need a little bit heavier going into the meet. Some people like me, I like to take about two to three weeks off from any type of heavy training as long as my training cycle has given me time to do that. Sometimes you got to take a weight at two weeks out like I did in this situation, but optimally I'll take my heaviest lift about three weeks out and then taper down to like a second attempt or open or two weeks out and then come into the meet nice and fresh. The caveat is when you don't cut weight, you can be a lot more flexible in your training the last couple of weeks.

I'm curious to know your thoughts on like, do you feel that especially when athletes start getting to lifts like yours, do you feel that they do need more space between that last time that they hit a fairly heavy weight and a meet versus an athlete that let's say, I mean, 800, 700 still a respectful squat, an amazingly respectful squat, but it's not in the thousands. They could probably tow that line a little bit closer to meet time, maybe two weeks out rather than three weeks out to achieve that kind of similar result. Because in my mind, I feel like if you're moving your types of weights, you need all of this. Like you mentioned five days for spinal recovery, right? So I'm wondering like, well, if you did a fucking thousand pounds on your back, like it's probably more time than five days, right? Or like, what are your thoughts on that? Well, I think that you're, you're definitely onto something. Let me just throw something out too, that, that might be, might be relevant. Might not be. I've noticed when I train female clients, they recover way quicker. It's not just their load, uh, because

sometimes their load relative to body weight is way bigger. Like, Mark, we've seen some of these females that have come out lifting that are just ridiculous, four times body weight deadlifts and everything. So I also think the size of the athlete has something to do with it too. Females and smaller guys, I've noticed, recover well. Now, could it be because the ultimate threshold of weight lifted for that person is less than someone like me? I don't know. I don't know the biology of that, but I have noticed that smaller people, for whatever reason, do recover from loads quicker. I've noticed that a lot of female lifters do really well with high frequency, high volume training

because they have endurance for days and the bigger guys take a little longer to recover um but there's always exceptions to that um i've had some big guys that train like maniacs they can recover a lot a lot of the bigger guys are lethargic they're very lethargic you know some of them don't sleep well you know they can't they can't really sustain a bunch of volume they train in kind of a lazy manner where they just kind of pick a couple days out of the whole cycle. They're going to go heavy, and they go in, and that works for them. That's their program.

That's their approach, and it works for them. I've learned all kinds of different approaches from Louie and the guys at Westside, from Dave Tate. And then I trained with a bunch of studs for 15 years at Samson with Adam Driggers, Clint Smith, Jonathan Bird, Don Dell Blue, but you know, some guys that totaled over 2,500 in competition, thousand pound squats, and everyone has a little bit of a unique thing that works for them. And that's why, you know, I wrote my book 1020 Life seven, I wrote my book, 1020 Life, seven, eight years ago.

And I've learned a lot since then to realize that a lot of things that work for somebody may not work for them simply because they don't believe in it. They think that, no, I have to have this. I have to lift. And see, Mark, I have to lift. Otherwise, I'm going to lose all my muscles in my legs that I've worked hard for the last five years. I can't do it. And then you have the other aspect of that too, is the mental health part. Some people are in the gym and they joined CrossFit because they don't like their significant other, or they have to train for their mental health because of their job, right? Because they're doctor, lawyer, high stress job, they've got to train. So then you have to have a talk

with them and pull them off the ledge and say, look, your back pain that got to train. So then you have to have a talk with them and pull them off the ledge and say, look, your back pain is going to keep winding up. You know, this is going to happen if you keep training. So the mental aspect is, it's huge and everyone's going to respond differently. Yeah. What the science says and what your mind is able to wrap around might be different sometimes. Like, I think I've seen a lot of information saying that you can kind of hold onto your fitness for about like 20 days or so. So that would imply that if you, you know,

if you bench something kind of heavy or squatted something kind of heavy on a particular day that you should be able to hold onto it fairly well for two or three weeks with minimal work. But if you're like, if you're too anxious and nervous about that, and also maybe you're not a gamer, like too anxious and nervous about that, and also maybe you're not a gamer, like maybe when, when it's, uh, when the lights are on and it's game time, maybe you kind of always struggle. And so maybe for that reason, you have to continue to lift all

the way through the competition. You got to play it through your head a million times. You might still lift lighter. Um, but I think I've seen a lot of lifters, you know, still lift, uh, uh, even all the way up to like two or three days before a competition, they're doing a squat. And I agree with you a hundred percent. If the person believes in what they're doing, uh, that's a really powerful anecdote, even if it's not necessarily correct. Cause I don't think any of us really truly know what exactly is right. You mentioned you mentioned uh experimenting with your training before and that's that's all we can do is experiment and try different things yeah that's where the magic is man you learn a lot you learn more through failing because when you succeed you

confirm your biases you say yeah i knew it i'm really that smart and then you fall on your face the next meet then you learn something you don You don't learn by just succeeding because you just confirm that, yeah, I know it. I know it. So it's nice to get humbled, you know, and go back to the drawing board. And then you can help other people, you know, if they want to listen. That's the key if they're willing to listen. And that's what I'm really focusing on doing these days, just helping people avoid a lot of the pitfalls that I've had that can seem as questionable a while ago and helping people see when they're blind to their back pain and causing it,

just helping them realize that just because their doctor said they can never lift again, it's not the death sentence. How long was it after the lift got posted on the internet that the internet police showed up and threw you in jail for a high squat? And what were some of your reactions to that? Because some of the people, like some of the comments I saw on the thing you sent the other day, hey, that's great that he unracked it, but that's not a squat and all those kinds. What are some of your thoughts about some of that? Here's my first thought. Infamous BGC master the high squat.

There we go. Have fun with it, right? Yeah, it's just one of those things like, you know, I squat until my people call me up, and you're not going to make everyone everyone happy no matter what you know what i mean so i'm used to it man it started back in 06 when i hit my first all-time world record when the the internet the lifting internet you know genre whatever was just getting started with go heavy and outlaws and stuff and i got roasted and so when i did my second one in

2011 i was ready for it i was ready to get roasted and this one it was just i'm gonna make fun of myself and just you can't you gotta have thin skin if you're gonna put yourself out there man you know and with gear a lot of people don't understand it they're not sure what they're looking at so i get that so i'm not going to try to convince them of anything i do my lift you know i'll make fun of myself a little bit, then I move on. But if I let the internet or people that sometimes they're friends that will troll you, people that are mad at you or jealous, or just don't like your lift, man,

they'll go to great lengths to sign up for a fake account and like say things that they should just say to your face. So I don't let that bother me. You know, you can't go out there and fight trolls when they know everything about mark bell but they you know nothing about them because they're just a fake a fake profile so i just let it go i've seen you do a good job at deflecting and just kind of making fun of yourself but i'm actually surprised that's the first multiply world record squad that i've ever seen on YouTube that has that

much of a positive like to dislike ratio. I think it's like 1.5 thousand to like 200 dislikes. I would expect it to be flip-flopped honestly. I don't know how it hasn't but maybe it will after this podcast. The trolls will make me pay for that.

People always say I couldn't squat 315 or any of that stuff so I just like to laugh at it. I think, you know, people, people always say, you know, I couldn't squat 315 or any of that stuff. So I just like to, I like to laugh at it. I think a big thing is just that people just have a misunderstanding. You know, there's, there's different types of lifting. They're done different ways. Um, I remember when we've had, uh, Laura Phelps out here and like judging her squats was actually just really difficult. Her, she's very short and her feet are out by the monolift. And even when she would scoot herself just under the bar, I was like looking at it and

I was like kind of shocked. I'm like, I need to get out of this chair because I don't think I can like judge the squat all that well. And so I actually had someone else sit there for multiple reasons. But even just looking at her scoot under the bar, I was like, I think she's already like at parallel just from doing that, you know, because she's so wide and then she's able to force her knees out so well. And it's just it's a different style of squat. It just looks completely different.

It's very difficult to to judge. And then also powerlifting is just kind of fucked in some ways. You know, the human eye cannot look at two things at one time. Like that's a fact. And that's what we're asked to do when we judge a squat. So having some other type of regulations would be nice. Yeah, I mean, look how many times calls are overturned in the NFL. You know, there's however many, excuse me,

referees and umpires in the field, they still get it wrong with instant replay sometimes. So we don't have a chance when we have a judge, we're paying for $14 a day to take a look at squats. Like if they can't get it right with, with six figure salaries and bonuses and cameras in New York, piping in and cameras from every angle, but people overreact to this stuff.

Like, like everything's going to be perfect. And here's another thing that I like to kind of let people, I don argue with them because i really don't care but i'll say remember there's two things here number one the judging on the squat is not such that it should look good from every angle that's the thing it isn't it should break parallel from every angle back of the room side of the room in front it's just what the judge sees in the side and sees in the front. That's their criteria. Number two, cameras are 2D.

They're 2D. It's not real life. You're not seeing. It's only a flat surface. So you can't truly see depth. Like I'm not saying squat depth. I'm saying depth of a picture or a video in general. It's not 3D.

You can't quite see. It's not the same. or video in general, it's not 3D. You can't quite see. It's not the same. So, for instance, when I get people here working with them, showing them the big three or squat form or whatever, I can only do so much and see so much when I'm coaching them on camera.

But when I can see them, I can see them from the side to front. It's a whole different ballgame. It's not to say that, you know, if a squat's blatantly high, it isn't high. I'm not arguing that. I'm just saying that there's two things that you have to consider there. The judge isn't supposed to say, this is clearly good from everywhere and everyone's going to be happy with this. Do you guys think that there is a better way of

going about this that hasn't been implemented? I mean, you did mention cameras. Do they have that at powerlifting meets where somebody, cause I've never seen at a meet where maybe there's video being taken where a judge could go watch a video of some sort. Do they do that at all? Is there anything different than just the three different judges on each side? I don't think there's anything implemented as far as a committee or federation or anything like that. The IPF used to have a jury,

right? Mark, they used to have a jury people sat in a box and they would overturn or, or, or whatever, sometimes potentially a lift. If they saw that it was clearly good or clearly bad. So the lifter could appeal to the jury,

I think is one of the things, but I don't know if they do that anymore. I don't know, man. I think that's, you're really, really, you're nitpicking at that point when you have all that going on and it takes away a little bit. I don't like, do you guys like the instant replay in football and baseball?

I hate it. It kills the flow of the game. It kills the flow of the game. And you second guess every little thing, man. And I understand why they started it, but now they opened a can of worms. It's like every little thing has to be scrutinized. And I just think you should just play it the way it is. I mean, look at baseball when they're changing things.

Like they're looking at whether a pitch was a strike or not. And they have the overhead camera. Oh, it was off the plate by a half inch. this guy doesn't know what he's doing back there it's baseball is a very dynamic sport so is football so there's a there's a lot to it yeah i do think that you know if somebody really cared to like quote unquote clean it up i think there could be a couple of things that that they could do um number one, I would get rid of black singlets. I think when it's dark, when everything's dark and the knee wraps are dark, you can't really tell a lot of times.

I mean, the whole point of a singlet is to have something form-fitting and to be able to see the person's hips, to be able to see that the person's butt is on the bench, on their bench. You could even project even further and say, uh, maybe there should be some lines going down the side of the singlet or something like that. But then, you know, you're going to have people that sew or stitch something, you know, slightly differently, or so you do end up in some really weird spots, but I do think there would be some ways, uh, that could be perhaps agreed upon, but I think even implementing any of those ways would just bring up more questions.

Just like you're saying, like it just might open up a can of worms. I've always been like, well, why isn't there just one judge? Like, why do we do we really need three? But then people are like, well, what if the judge is your buddy? And I mean, one judge should be able to be at such an angle to where he could see whether the lift is good or bad. I don't really think you need like a jury for it necessarily but uh this is my kind of own opinion and maybe you could pay that person more and maybe that person could be more qualified rather than having three people have to sit there for an entire weekend for 12 hours each day or whatever it is

i think that's the overarching theme of uh if if to say, okay, what's wrong with powerlifting or ask the question, there's no money in it. There's no money in it. There's billions in the NFL. There's billions in NBA, billions in MLB. So it's like even a disservice to compare the two, but there's no money in powerlifting. So I wouldn't expect things to get radically better. You know what I mean?

Like it's still a niche sport. So we're talking about like in a utopia, like what we could do, like all squats would be good and bad ones would be thrown out. I get that. But man, that's what, that's,

that's part of the drama, I guess, with, with calls and referee calls in NFL, Major League Baseball and powerlifting. Sometimes calls go your way, and sometimes they don't. That's just human error that goes

along, and it's involved in everything, every sport. Until there's money, I think money's the biggest thing with powerlifting. When there's money, problems will get solved. For people to get paid, people people that are smart these intelligent people that could you know get behind powerlifting

that have money why would they invest in powerlifting you know there's there's not much of a return there so i think that's a that's a big problem with powerlifting and why it hasn't really gone to that next level like strongman has or even arm wrestling or the slap competitions or any of that stuff. How helpful has it been for you to have other things going on other than powerlifting? I think, you know, since I've known you, you've always been a self-starter. You've always had a job. You've always had other things going on outside. I think for a while you were into some real estate.

Is that correct? job. You've always had other things going on outside. I think for a while you were into some real estate. Is that correct? So my wife does real estate, but I was doing massage therapy full-time when I was working with you on the deadlift a little bit back in 08. Yeah. And I think sometimes some of the other lifters, sometimes bodybuilders and people that get way into these hobbies slash sports slash passions end up not having a whole lot else going on. And so sometimes the comments that are made Online could be more hurtful because you don't really have much else and when you get hurt and you can't lift The way that you want to lift yours you identify so hardcore with that

But in your situation, it's different you're married you I believe you've mentioned you had a gym You have a lot of clients that you work with you just had uh you got twin girls that are a year old like that must have been transformative for you in a way to where you're like you know i just don't really i don't fucking care about some dick face on the internet saying that my face looks fat or whatever yeah it's been a process though you know over know, over the last 10 years, mainly, you know, getting hurt, coming back, learning that lifting is important, but it's not the end all be all. It doesn't mean that I want to lose or be any less good at the sport, but just maturing and realizing that, you know, people are way worse to other people concerning other topics go on your local news forum and see just the disgraceful things people say to each other when they get run over by a car or they get beat up or whatever so i'm you know when you think of it that way

you know when someone calls me fat or a high squatter or disgrace or whatever it's's not that bad. You know, people go in on other people really personal and start talking about their kids and stuff. So I just think it's, it's just really not that big of a deal. Um, so having other things going on has been a nice, uh, it's been a nice distraction for me. It helps me see that there's other things out there other than powerlifting, building businesses, helping people, coaching people. Honestly, sometimes I like coaching people more than I actually like lifting because the pressure's off me having to go and execute and get under the bar and go through that whole mental grind.

So when people don't have anything else out there like I have at times, it's kind of a lonely path, man. And that's all you worry about is just your lifting, just your results. And if you get hurt, man, you got nothing else. You know, I see a lot of people that, that power lifted for a long time in their twenties and their thirties and then they're broke down and they haven't done anything. They haven't started businesses like you and Mark, they haven't done anything they can fall back on.

And so they're living in a one-bedroom studio apartment at 40 years old, driving a beater. And they're like, well, what am I going to do now? I've got a felony because I was selling supplements or I was doing this or that. It's like, what do I do now? A lot of people get in that position. So I do think that it's been helpful for me to kind of like have different interests that I do. And that,

and that way my exit from powerlifting competition is, is a lot easier because of that. And definitely having the girls and holding my girls in my, in my arms and saying to myself, how much longer do I want to do this type of risky stuff with very little reward? And I want to be around for my girls. I don't want someone else raising my girls. That was an easy way. Now, the ego in me wants to stay competitive and it wants,

I want to stay on top. I want to hit a 1350 squat. My friends are pushing me. Why don't you try to do this? Try to do that. And I just think it's just a good time but the ego comes out man i still train you know i have the three-car garage that i converted into a gym and i got two monoliths two benches and everything out there so it's hard it's hard but it's only been about six months so i think the real test will be after a year or so no competition and then you know the right perfect storm happens and people are talking the right meat happens so uh i think it's just better that i stay interested in other topics and other uh endeavors and you know work on helping other people what does fitness look like for you right now and like you know as time goes by um what are you going to be doing to i guess continue to enjoy

the gym like are you planning on dropping some weight and then you know like getting down to 220 or something what what are your plans for yourself as far as your personal fitness is concerned so right now i'm slowly dropping some body weight. And what I've learned is it's not going to be as easy as I thought it was going to be. You know, the dense muscle that we build as power lifters, I'm not just, you know, blown up and puffed up. It's a lot of heavy training. So it's going to take work to get some of the muscle off and the fat and water will come off pretty easy. So right now I'm kind of detuning the body. I'm still doing squats, benches and deadlifts. They're just not very heavy. They're raw.

And I'm kind of slowly winding down. I just didn't want to stop after talking with Stu. I didn't want to just stop all my barbell training and who knows what would happen to my core and my back history. So I'm going to slowly detune it where I'm not going as heavy. I'm going to start doing more cardio, like longer walks. I'll be doing those things. Longer sled pushes, longer sled drags, suitcase carries, that type of thing. Just more general

fitness stuff where I'm not so, as Stu and you two put, easy to kill. Because as a power lifter, when you're 300 pounds, I'm only good at a few different planes of movement and uh i don't really like that and that that would bother me at times so i want to be able to swim across the pool without sitting on the bottom you know singing like a rock so

just general fitness looks to me that's slowly getting away from the barbell lifts more cardio more endurance training but slowly getting down to it since I've tuned my body to, to do these type of lifts for so long. And, uh, I'm not going to go start running or anything, but, uh, just a lot, a lot less aggressive, you know, just with the, the overall goal of health, you know, making sure I stay in one piece. Has your wife competed before? My wife has competed in, in figure and in powerlifting.

She did one meet in 2016, and she did well. She pulled 330 at 148, brought us in a belt, her first meet. So she pulled a double bodyweight deadlift after about a year and a half of training. She didn't really enjoy it. She liked just to do it. She benched 155. She pressed that up. Uh, I think she squatted like 250 or something like that. Um, but she would rather go and help me and be like a team mom to everybody than actually compete. But that was cool that we

actually lifted in the same meet about four years ago and did that after her coming, you know, for so long, 10 years, you know, coming to my meets and helping out and kind of seeing what it's about. But that was interesting. How long have you owned your gym for? Well, I mentioned earlier that we trained at Adam Drigger's place for about 15 years. He had a, basically a setup in his backyard and he trained there and he sold his house so uh we didn't have a gym anymore so i basically had my stuff in his garage along with

buying some of the stuff that was in there moved it to my my garage and kind of uh you know about two years ago or so kind of put it together and realized that i wanted to instead of going out and building a place and having a brick and mortar, just having my garage converted. Oh, that's great. Yeah, I get everything I need done there. Multiple times I've heard you mention the phrase core of iron. Now, obviously, I know that you did the McGill Big Three, but I was curious as far as, and I know these movements that McGill had you do were specific to you and your problems, but like the McGill Big Three, are there any staple core exercises that can help an individual build up their core of iron? Because you said you were doing heavy core exercises, right?

So what were some of those? Suitcase carry and bottoms up carry. Those are the moneymakers. So heavy suitcase carries, you walk with a locked-in core. A farmer's carry, you're going to be walking, obviously, with implements in both hands. So when you're doing a suitcase carry, you're locking in your torso like you're posting an arm wrestler will,

and then you hold the kettlebell and you're walking. Using a tight, rigid core and you're walking an arm wrestler will and then you hold the kettlebell and you're walking using a tight rigid core and you're you're you're walking a distance the progression to that is here flipping the kettlebell up and locking that in too so taking a 50 pound kettlebell like this it works your grip it works your frontal plane athleticism obviously overall and of course it works the crap out of your core because any movement that you have in your core the kettlebell is going to want to move and you're going to lose it so grip core and unleashing the hips by walking those are those are very underrated exercises and for suitcase carries i think i went up the heaviest to like a hundred pound kettlebell for 50 yards four sets so it's not like a 300 pound farmer's carry

like you see some strong men do but it's way more difficult than having an 80 in the other hand because you're going to want to lean you got to stay upright control your breathing and lock in and that type of core endurance is what helps you stay locked in for a big squat that might last for 20 seconds or something. That type of core stability. Zurcher squats on the belt squat. So I had the harness and everything on the belt squat. It's wanting to pull me forward. I keep the core nice and rigid and squat reps with that.

Stir the pot is another great one where you're doing a plank with circles on a Swiss ball. Those are beautiful exercise too to warm up with or cool down. on a Swiss ball. Those are beautiful exercise too to warm up with or cool down. For some people, dead bugs are a very good variation or progression from the McGill curl up when you're on your back and you're locking your core in and unleashing your ball and sockets and hips. But those are the mainstays that I do, man. I do a suitcase carry to warm up and then a heavier one to cool down.

I do the big three to warm up and then a heavier one to cool down. I do the big three to warm up. I do a couple to cool down. And I go on a walk to start my training session and end the training session every single day. So I still get three to four 10-minute walks in the day. And I started those right when I got with Stu in 2013. The walks were huge. stew in 2013 the the the walks were huge interval walk suitcase carry just to clarify is that just doing with the dumbbell by your side or you're you're getting it more in a curl position like you had your arm kind of bent like 90 degrees so you want to post and lock in your opposite side so i see aren't it straight is holding the kettlebell i got it you don't have the kettlebell you're locking it i I got it.

And then, is there some things that people could maybe do on their 10-minute walks to kind of help kill multiple birds here with one stone? Like, I believe Stuart McGill, from what I recall, is that he suggests kind of swinging your arms a little bit when you walk.

Is there anything that you do on your walks or anything that you might suggest to some of our listeners? Like, Hey, you know, just as you're walking, if you see a bench,

you know, maybe do a, like a lunge type of stretch to open up the hips or have any suggestions like that. Is this person back pain or is this person out for a walk? Yeah. Say hypothetically they have a, yeah.

A history of back pain. Okay. Well, we'd have to talk about specifically, but let's just say out for a walk yeah say hypothetically they have uh yeah a history of back pain okay well we'd have to talk about specifically but let's say we've got back pain and they're in their walking program to help wind down their pain um some people do well with the slower walk and then other people do better with the faster more jaunty arm swinging type walk where i think stew and I did a video where we talked about walking like you own the world, like based, not quite the Billy struts, like Conor McGregor, right? But a little bit of a swag to it where you're walking and swinging your arms. Some people that soothes them, other people might wind them up. So in back mechanic, he talks about dial it in your walking speed,

depending on what soothes your pain. So each person's going to be a little bit different. I like to start people with like a medium pace. It doesn't feel good. We'll wind it down a little bit or we'll speed them up. But the walks are non-negotiable and that's just natural traction. Stu refers to it as nature's back palm. Just going for a walk and letting your back settle for a little bit versus what the doctor will tell you. Get up, stretch your back, pull your knee to your chest, mobilize it. And then people haven't even started their day yet and they're wound up in pain. And that's the opposite of what we're trying to do with the walks. I will say this is potentially totally irrelevant, but I've been going on some really long hikes in these past few like months and every

time i get back the week after my back well not like my back has a lot of pain but my back feels so much just better like i don't know i think it's just the variable like you know uphill downhill uphill rocks and shit like it's just just feel so much better you have to there's a mental component to it too but i mean yeah you have to move a lot and you're in nature walk walking's good even for people that don't have a back history or severe um you know back pain people just like to get out and walk man it's good i mean i haven't had back pain and since the flare up at the arnold seven years ago um so yeah man uh i walk every day still and sometimes i'll go on a longer walk and i feel good doing it and um i don't really do any other i don't really bike or anything like

that or swim but anyone just about can get out and do a little bit of walking and of course stan talks about how aids in digestion and and things of that nature after your meal. So hell, I might be working with someone and say, hey, after every meal, go on a five or 10 minute walk. And then it hammers the digestion part of it. And then of course, it's good for their spine. So it's like a two for one. The craziest thing to me is that we're sitting here talking about walking. It's just that we've moved so far away from something so normal and something that we should be like i've been guilty of this too i'm not saying this in some like oh like i know about this also but like just the fact that we've moved so far away from walking

that we have to prescribe it is wild it's wild yeah i um i agree i don't really yeah and for back pain too like just think think about this for a minute think about if a doctor let's just say your general practitioner not even a specialist let's just say if your doctor went to a weekend course with dr mcgill let's just say you had someone drug him there and he went to do it. Just think of how much effective this doctor's visit could be if he could just take instead of the 15 minutes, you know, just BS and just kind of going, taking 15 minutes and saying, okay, I see you're here for back pain. What causes your pain? Because when I walked in, I saw you slouched over on your cell phone, bending forward into flexion. You have a bulging disc. Let's work on your posture for a couple of minutes and let's just do some walks two times a

day and come back and see me in two weeks. Instead of here's some pain meds, here's some knee to chest stretches, and I'll see you in a little bit. And when that doesn't work, that escalates you to physical therapy, then pain management, and then surgery. Just think how much of a paradigm shift that could be. What should we do with our, like, chest and shoulders? Like, I know, like, a lot of it depends, you know. That's what Stu kept referencing. And we're like, this is, like, the number one bad guy in the world.

And he keeps saying depends. But I totally understand why. guy in the world and he keeps saying depends, but I totally understand why. When we are looking at our cell phones, is there like a strategic better way to perhaps look at it, be sitting or doing it in a different way that we're not stressing the neck out and stressing the spine out? Well, it's going to depend on your specific pain mechanisms. So it's going to depend. But for someone who is sitting down that might be flexion intolerant, instead of stooping and reaching over and looking down as we do, especially if we get a juicy text or we're ticked off or whatever,

we get all into it, just holding the phone up simply. Holding it up here where you're not looking down, you're not getting into flexion. Just not being on your phone too much too i think is a big one but which is hard to do for some of us i know um but just holding it so you're nice and neutral and not being down here looking down i think that could be potentially a big helper people sitting at a desk having a lumbar support when they're on the computer all day getting up once an hour or so and just going

for a quick walk around the house or going on their 10-minute walk and coming to sit down. Those are little hacks that we've learned that sometimes wind people's pain down from something that really impedes their life down to something that's like next to nothing and they can live with it and it continues to wind down. But just those little hacks of the cell phone the lumbar support and the chair getting up for a walk some people have when their back starts getting a little tight i'll have them stand up put their arms over their head go down do a couple bird dogs and they get back in their chair and they're good for another hour so little things like that is it's key man that the little things and uh i think people again they take lightly how much movement matters earlier uh you had mentioned there was about three steps um in regards to

like kind of getting back into the gym the first one learning the uh the pain-free movement patterns the back hygiene and then the third one being like introducing the barbell again um can you talk more about the second stage in regards to using what you've learned and then kind of getting back into some of the uh the exercises because that's i feel like that's kind of where i'm at although if stew listens to this he'll probably send me an email and be really upset that i said that um but yeah i'm kind of I'm getting back into the gym. I'm doing things that don't hurt. That's my main goal is I'm staying out of pain. But can you explain a little bit more in more depth what that second step looks like?

Well, it's going to depend, but you want to bridge the stage one that I'm not sure exactly what you're doing, it's it's probably a walking program core stability uh i believe you're flexion intolerant you tried reverse hypers they just flared you up correct correct yeah yeah so for you would be expanding that spine stability while avoiding flexion so for you it would be uh some type of a suitcase carry, maybe that would be in this phase, a goblet squat, stir the pot, a front plank, pushups, different things that will help expand your athleticism, but without picking the scab. So eventually when you're up to doing, you know, goblet squats and pull-ups and suitcase

deadlifts, after a period of time where you don't have pain, it's still wound down and your resilience is up, then you can start looking at progressing to the next step from a goblet squat to a barbell squat or to a front squat. But you need to be able to do all those exercises in the second phase without any pain. And they have to be very specific tools. Some can destroy you, some can help build you up. And that's the be very specific tools. Some can destroy you. Some can help build you up. And that's the art of the coaching in this phase. So as far as specific exercises, it would be hard to say,

but that's typically what I program in that phase where you're expanding the athleticism, laying a broader foundation. Also, different variations of the McGill Big Three, whether it be square patterns For the bird dog where you're lining up The ball and socket You're going square patterns with the fist and the heel Up, over, down, back

So you're keeping the core rigid While you're moving through range of motion In your ball and sockets Which that's a good way to get someone who's sick of the bird dogs To get them to turn their brain on a little bit more The rolling planks is another progression. Dead bugs from the McGill curl up is another way to do it. But taking what your body gives you, but not draining it. Taking a little bit, you can do 25 pounds on the goblet squat in this phase for five sets of five. Let's go up and just add a

rep next week, or let's add five pounds. Don't jump from the 25 pound to the 50 pound or jumping a hundred percent there. So the little, little things like that, it could be four to six weeks. It could be 20 weeks. It really just depends on who your parents are, a little bit of luck and how much you adhere to the program. What, and again, we all understand that it's going to be person dependent, but one of the worst things that I used to have to deal with was just simply getting out of bed from a night's sleep. It's gotten so much better now.

The only time where like I will actually feel anything is if I'm just not paying attention. And that's like literally me for everything, bending down to pick up something off the ground. It's like, oh, you idiot. Like you forgot to, you know's kind of set up for it but when it comes to um yeah getting out of bed uh i i know it's person dependent but like how can we if somebody does have back pain how can they kind of you know transition from being in bed to standing up and getting on with their day without experiencing that that this nastiness of feeling. Cause again, I know everyone's, every doctor is going to say, do the knee to chest thing.

When in actuality it's just making everything worse, but yeah, what can we do there? So your sleep hygiene is going to be important, which I know Stu has talked to you about finding positions that are pain-free while you sleep. Try not to flop over in bed. Laying sideline with the pillow between your knees. If you're going to lay on your back, having a small towel. I wouldn't use a full lumbar cushion under your back, but someone like me, I have a nice curve under my back.

I would need something a little more than the typical person. Taking a towel, rolling it up, putting it on your back if you're laying supine and when you get out of bed rolling out of bed in a way that's not picking your scab it's difficult to do whether you you slide your belly and slide off the bed kind of like some people do on the bench press but simply letting your back settle and let those discs dehydrate a little bit because that's how they get nutrients at night. While you're lying down, they get full and they get a little tighter. So just let them settle when you get up, going for a little bit of a walk, not being too demanding of your spine, and let those discs dehydrate and settle. A little walk could help with that.

Some people don't do well with walks in the morning. Other people do. Some people find that a little bit of cat camel helps them in the morning. Other people, it flares them up. I like the idea of letting it settle for about 30 minutes, getting your coffee, your tea, your morning meditation or prayer, depending on what you do. And then just going for a five or 10 minute walk, coming back and then doing a couple of core exercises is a general remedy that I use that worked really well and has worked well for other people. The key when I was talking about people sitting at their desk and finding hacks, this is one of the cases where you have to find hacks where you can wind your pain down and make getting out of the bed a little less demoralizing for you and just not expecting too much out of your spine first thing in the morning.

A little hack of how you slide out of the bed, you know, going to get your coffee and that kind of stuff. Yeah, I think even just like getting up off a bench, you know, I've seen a lot of people they'll go from being like severely arched, you know, in a bench press. And then when they go to get up, they just kick up right out of the position. And for some people, maybe they just have never experienced back pain. But if you ever had any back pain before, you're probably better off figuring out a way to unwind that kind of loaded up back that you just situated so that you can bench properly. I do that.

When I bench, I just kind of kick my feet out a little bit. I flatten my lower back before I go to kick my feet up, and then I get up that way. Same thing with getting out of bed. I don't really just go from laying flat on my back to kicking my legs forward. It seems to just kind of have a lot of shearing force on my lower back for me, So I just, I just don't do that. I just roll over and I, my bed's actually kind of high. I just, when I roll over, I just land on the ground. Yeah. That's what I was kind of talking about. So if you're, you could, uh, if you're sidelined, you can roll to your belly and then angle your feet where they hit the ground and then you can kind of squat down and then stand up is,

is what I have some people do. I know it sounds silly, but you mentioned something on the bench, the people that kick up and pop up. So I've worked with people that are extension intolerant. And when they're getting back to lifting again, the bench is a trigger for them. So they're not quite ready. They're pain free day to day. But we have to get a little creative with hacks to get them benching and keep them pain-free. So one thing that we do, they're setting up in the

arch. We have them release the arch, extend a hand to them to sit them up, and they turn to the side on the bench, put their hands on their knees and just stand up with good form instead of kicking them. And then here's the key that we do with someone like that. We have them drop down and do

two bird dogs or so, offset that extension they've been pulling on, go for a quick walk around the gym, and they're good for their next set. So that's an example of a little hack that I had. One of my clients and friends that was an officer in the Army, they're on a ruck, and they had to carry a guy that got hurt that was really big. He was like 300 pounds. They had to carry him like 10 miles back and it totally

destroyed his L5S1 disc. So he was extremely extension intolerant. That's one little hack that we got him back to lifting pain-free but he has these little maintenance things that he does every bench set and he goes home pain-free every single time.

They could bench with your feet up or do a floor press or something like that as well, right? Yep. Yep. This guy was wanting to do competition bench press in the form. So, you know, you got to make a few adjustments there. You know, a lot of people are, they have this idea that they should be able to lift the way they want forever. And it's just not, it's just not realistic to be able to do that. And sometimes you got to make modifications at least for a period of time mark where you're doing floor press um you know for for people that just have to bench press that aren't quite ready to do it i'll i'll allow them to do sometimes if their spine tolerates

it a bottoms up bench press it's where you're laying on your back you're locking in you hold the kettlebell bottoms up and you're pressing just one side and that's the same you're working your grip you're working your core stability and you're working on driving that line of drive perfectly like you would a bench press so that's another core builder that we use in like a second type phase when we're trying to get them back to benching but they're not quite ready to load a bar so you might try that on a floor press variation and then put them on a bench press slowly when they're ready for that as far as like the hip hinge is concerned because i feel like for a lot of people getting that getting that down is very difficult what are some of your favorite cues in terms of

cueing people to hip hinge because that's like you need to be able to do that successfully to pick something up off the ground or if you're going on one leg you need to hinge down on that one leg right so what are some of your favorite cues because some people you depending on what you say like they're still not getting the hang of that movement right so what i'll do is i'll start i'll start from very very base uh basic so i'll have someone come to me almost invariably where they're So what I'll do is I'll start from very basic. So I'll have someone come to me almost invariably where maybe they're back pain, maybe they aren't. And they tell me they want to squat 800 pounds. And I'll say, okay.

So when they walk in, I'll first, you know, I'll research their social media. I'll see what they're doing. But I'll give them the eye test first. You can look at someone, not always, but you can look at someone and kind of see if they're athletic, the way they move, the way they handle themselves. It's not always the case because there's some sleepers out there, but I get the eye test to see like, how rigid is this guy's core? Does he move well? And simply I'll bring him in the gym and have him stand on one leg, have him stand on one leg for 10 seconds. And a lot of the time they're moving all

over the place and i'm thinking if you can't even stand on one leg for 10 seconds how are you going to squat 800 pounds you've got no stability man so what i'll do is i'll regress them and teach them how to root in and lock lock their their their core in gripping the floor posting down looking through the wall, the gaze going right through the person and picking their leg up with authority and holding it there, holding it there, holding it there. Once they get that down, we get both sides going. I'll teach them the drop down and go into short stuff like Stu was talking about.

We're using a nice neutral spine. We're gripping the floor and externally rotating, locking in. We're locking in our core, sucking in. I'm sorry, we're sucking in air, but pushing out laterally. So here, that's what we're looking for right there. And then we clasp our hands. We pull our lats down into an anti-shrug. And I teach them how to engage their hips and spread the floor.

We might start with shortstop, though, and teach them how. This is what it should feel like. They're already in a hip hinge. They're here. And teaching them, when they squat, it's hips first. The hips, it might be a kettlebell. I teach them how to use their hips. There's different cues that I'll use, but teaching them always on the squats or pulling

down it's hips and then knees, hips, hips every time. And the kettlebell for someone, when they can swing a kettlebell with good form using their hips, they generally do get the hip hinge. But man, sometimes it takes three hours to get someone to really understand how to get their hips out of the way, hip hinge, and then spread the floor with their knees. Whenever someone starts with their knees, they're going to sit straight down. They're not going to be utilizing their posterior chain like someone would if they're using their hips first. And then we teach them to externally rotate, gripping the floor with your feet and externally rotating the femurs,

and externally rotate, gripping the floor with your feet and externally rotating the femurs, opening up. And generally that says, oh, there's two parts of it. Sucking in the air, stiffening up, hip hinge, then spread the floor and just sit back and open up. Sometimes it takes people a long time because they've never really used their hips. They still squat, but they're a quad squatter. They just sit straight down. Their form isn't really that good and just by teaching them how to hip hinge man sometimes they turn their glutes on they start using their hamstrings they get a lot more power

sometimes just a little bit of a form change you guys do the series stronger in five minutes you don't necessarily get stronger i understand that's that's a way to market it but you really can get stronger just by making a small adjustment to your form and are you stronger are you not strong if you lift more weight in five minutes well you're stronger you know so that that's that's a big thing and the queuing on it is is difficult like you said because different people respond to different cues if you got a general lay person layperson that doesn't know anatomy and physiology, they're going to be like, medius? What are you talking about glute medius?

What do you mean externally rotating? So you're going to have to sometimes talk specifically to that person and their knowledge base. And sometimes they might have them grab a band from a monolift and pull down and teach them to sit back and pull the band down to pull into the hole um that was actually a technique that stew used with blaine sumner to open up his hips a little bit because in the ipf you know they want them squatting you know super low and uh blaine's built in a certain way it's hard for him to get that dang low so stew was

teaching him how to open up his hips just a little bit in the bottom and it's hard for him to get that dang low. So Stu was teaching him how to open up his hips just a little bit in the bottom. And it's the same thing. Learning how to use your hips is super important for day-to-day movement and squatting. Yeah, we're a byproduct of what we repeatedly do. And if you are repeatedly moving in directions that aren't great for your body and not knowing about it, then you're going to reproduce these movement patterns that aren't great. I see a lot of people like in SEMA is talking about sometimes when you're trying to cue them, you start to get in recognition of the fact that like, oh, you're like, oh, that person just kind of bends from their spine more so than they're able to do from their hips.

And like you're pointing out, it could take a tremendous amount of time, way more time than you would than you would think. But it's an important thing not to skip over, because if you skip over it that's going to rear its ugly head somewhere, you know, people that I've seen that move that way, they actually are usually very capable of moving around heavy weights, so it's not like they're weak, but a lot of times they might struggle with a lockout and a deadlift, and they end up lifting with a rounded spine. And at some point it's going to be costly. It will catch up to you somewhere.

Yeah. And some people do really well with the rounded spine and deadlift and they get a lot of power out of their back. But they typically don't last for a long time. So, you know, there are ways that you can lift that will, will, will bring you a lot of strength quickly techniques and stuff, but as far as the longevity and be able to do it for a long time, um, it's, that's not going to be the case. Most of the, most of the time that I use your hips. Where can people find out more about your book and where can people find you?

So I have a website called powerxtraint.com and I keep my blogs there. I've got articles going back from 2014. And yeah, so that's where it's my hub basically, where I have Gift of Injury that I co-authored with Dr. McGill and my book 1020 Life, the strength training manual basically. And yeah, powerworkstrength.com, social media, Brian Carroll 81 on Facebook and Brian Carroll 1306 on Instagram. Awesome catching up with you, man. Have a great rest of your day. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you both, Andrew and Seema, Mark. Appreciate it. Mark, it was good to catch up, man. It's been a long time. All right, man. Awesome. Thank you. Catch you later.

Thank you. All right, you guys have a great day. You too. I think it's so sick that someone that's such an amazing athlete also learned all of this shit about the back and is such a great coach, too.

That's dope. I think it's great. He just knew he needed help, and he went to one of the best in the world. I think what happens when things like that occur is that I'm sure Stuart McGill learned a lot from him as well. His experience with training and working side by side with a power that squatted more weight than anybody in the history of the world.

It's not coincidental. they helped each other get to that, get to that point. And, uh, one thing I remember about meeting Kelly Sturette is, um, when he was telling me like, you know, different ways of like squatting and stuff, I was kind of like, this guy doesn't know anything about squatting. But then I realized I, I, I got rid of that mentality and I was like, no, no, no, no. He knows about human movement. So he knows about how to move and how we are supposed to move and how you should move. Having a locked in spine, having a neutral spine is the best way to give yourself the best opportunity to express

the strength through your limbs, your legs or your arms in the safest manner. And so if you kind of just think about that, it's like, okay, well, if that's the safest fashion to do it, even though it's not completely foolproof and completely safe all the time, uh, if that's the safest way to do it, well, you know, what's a, what's one of the most important things with being strong or having a lot of muscle mass, it's usually just time. Yeah. It takes a long time.

And so we can't really do much of anything if we're hurt. Absolutely. I think one of the biggest things that everybody needs to take away from this episode is just like Andrew's always been talking about for minutes since talking to Dr. McGill, just the things that you do on a day-to-day. Like you can't go pick up your backpack or stand up or do all these things with a messed up back, then come train and have all this spinal stability and focus on hip hinge in your training. And outside of that, everything else you do is wrong.

You know what I mean? Or everything else you do is just not good for you. It'll all add up. It'll fuck you up yeah even if you are actually making the attempt what he said about the um uh like getting down to do the big three okay the big three is going to give you 10 bucks but getting onto the floor and off the floor incorrectly is going to cost you 12 dollars like that that's i mean if anybody could have said it i mean nobody can could have said it better like that was me like i would do shit like that all the time where it's like, no, no, no, I'm going to, you know, work on my back.

But then, you know, I would just do something stupid like that. Yeah. It's just like, wow. Like, that was, that was huge. That's so important. So, even if you are paying attention, you got to pay attention all the way through. You can't just kind, you know what I mean? Like, it's, that's so important.

It's like in the beginning of a fight when they say protect yourself at all times. Correct. You know, you got to kind of tell yourself that every day. That's extremely well said, Mark. That's absolutely true. How many times do you fail to check both sides of the street when you walk across it? You know what I mean? Like you, I would imagine you just never take it for granted. Give it a once over. It doesn't hurt anything would imagine you just never take it for granted. Give it a once over. It doesn't hurt anything.

It doesn't really take that much time. Keep going back and forth. Give it a look-see. And so, like, next time you think about getting up the wrong way or maybe you can kind of use that same analogy and just say, I might as well look both ways. Don't get myself fucked up. Yeah. Even to this day, my back is getting much better but i will do the uh like the short stop like stance order i forgot what the exact term yeah jordan i mean michael jordan was always in that position yeah right but like i'll do that to flush the toilet yeah like whereas before i

would just be like oh that hurt but now it's like okay i could do that and it won't hurt but i'm like why wouldn't i like i'm just to make sure this doesn't kill me. It's a weird thing to think of, but I think most of our listeners that, and I think everybody in this room has hurt their back before. So if you, I mean, you don't want to walk around as if your back is always hurt because then you're like too stiff and too rigid and you look like you're a thousand years old. But at the same time, being cautious and just pretending as if're back, like if it's hard to remember the pain that you had and it's, uh, so easy to take it for granted again and hurt yourself again. You're like, how did I do that again? Like all I was wishing for, I was hoping for is to not ever experience this pain again.

And I did the exact same thing that got me hurt last time. Like you're like like you're like you're like scratching your head like i'm total disbelief that i did this again but here i am in the same spot so i think if you kind of move around cautiously and and pay attention uh you should be able to to be okay and to stay out of pain as much as possible yeah that's why i asked him about hip hinge because i've noticed like like hip hinging it's whenever i do things whenever i like pick something up or if i have to pick something up with one hand everything comes down to a hip hinge like everything comes down to a slight opening right um so if if if people can get an understanding of how to hinge at the hips

that would get rid of so many problems off the bat. I mean, along with everything else we talked about here, but just being able to hip hinge. Yeah. Having your upper body be kind of stiff isn't necessarily great either, but being able to hinge at the hips and being able to hinge at the knees, I mean, there's two most important things. Uh, you know, for a squat, we don't really need to hip hinge, uh, at all, hardly. I mean, you, you might, uh, as you get down towards the bottom of the squat, you might tilt over just a pinch, but for the most part, you don't need a lot of that. Uh, but when it comes to

picking something up off the ground, or in the case of like a powerlifting style squat, sometimes you do need to be able to, uh, hip hinge. And then obviously for deadlifts or picking up real heavy stuff. And so it's like, man, if we can just, if we can figure out ways of feeling better, that's what I'm always working on with my lifting currently is like, how do I lift, still build up my legs,

my arms, my shoulders, my back, all these things, get a little leaner, but just mainly mainly feel better and a way for me to feel better is to make myself not feel worse so i'm like how many sets of legs i'm gonna am i gonna do well i'm gonna do a couple of sets and when it starts to feel really good i'm gonna make a decision on how much further i want to push beyond that but it's probably not going to be that much because i'm thinking about tomorrow like i want to be like you and i were on a walk through day andrew and we're like yeah you can come back in tomorrow like there's no there's no rules to any of this like i think that we i think that we uh start was that was that a phone

it's a car someone's car oh like what the hell is that somebody calling us hello intercom but uh there's nothing that says that you can't train your lats one day uh doing pull-ups and pull-downs and then that you can't come in and deadlift and do rows the next i mean there's like a pro bodybuilder might not might say say, Hey, that's not the way I did it. That's not, maybe that's not, somebody could maybe claim that's not the most optimal, but I would also say that they don't know. Somebody comes in and says, all I do is a hundred rep sets and they're shredded and

they look great and they feel great. Belief. That's a great, that's working for them, right? It's working for them. And there's just, I just think there's so much to, there's so much unknown about the human body and what our body can accept, what our body can do, what our body can learn.

I mean, look at Ben Patrick, knees over toes, how bad his knees were, multiple knee surgeries, his knees were screwed up, and he had, what, a 21-inch vert, and now he's dunking a basketball every which way you could possibly think of. Absolutely. I think Brian's whole athletic career is a freaking movie because, like, you know, you have this career-ending injury, and then a few years you come back and hit the biggest squat of your life. One thing I found really interesting, though, it's like when you mentioned Dr. McGill probably learned a lot from him, too, is he's mentioned that when he went to Dr. McGill initially, he was like, yeah, we can get you pain free. But from there, don't do this anymore. Brian was so adamant, like, yo, if I get pain-free, I'm going to lift. Dr. McGill probably learned a lot and figured out some new things in terms of getting an athlete with that type of injury,

a career-ending injury, back to being pain-free and then back to hitting PRs. There's probably some new shit that he came up with or that he started doing to get him to be able to do that. So they both gained so much from each other. started doing to get him to be able to do that. So they both gained so much from each other. At a body weight of 303 pounds, Brian has squatted 1125, 1215, 1285,

and ultimately 1306. Ooh. Absolutely just mind- boggling numbers. Wow. I know that when he was prepping for the meet, he said that he thought he was going to be able to do a thirteen hundred pound squat and eight hundred fifty bench and an eight hundred fifty pound deadlift. That would have been a monumental day. But it's really cool for me to see Brian. see uh brian like i think uh one of my first times checking out the wpo finals brian carroll was lifting in it um so he's lifting with the best powerlifters in the world and this is like i mean this is 20 years ago so to see this guy that was around uh for the times of uh when big iron jim was really big with sean frankel and when Westside Barbell was really a huge thing,

and Equipped Powerlifting was really a huge thing. Now, Equipped Powerlifting has come and gone, and he still stayed consistent with it, and still was able to hang in there long enough to break some all-time world records. It's really cool. But I also think that it's important that he was part of that era. I think that if he didn't learn a lot of those things from those other gyms,

from those other people, uh, didn't experience that extreme side of powerlifting, I don't think it would have been possible for him to have ever done those weights. Cause he just wouldn't have seen, he wouldn't have been around it, you know when you see someone like donnie thompson who was like probably my age now or maybe even a little older he's actually probably like 46 or so when he squatted over 1200 pounds i mean you just it's it's just uh when you see other people do that kind of just opens up your brain you're like man i i mean look two guys squatting 1300 pounds on the same day that's what he said right his client his client we missed it but yeah he uh he attempted it right he set up to be able to try to do it yeah and before that you know i think there was maybe only one

other attempt of it now you have two going on at the same meet it's just it's crazy it's really really cool to see so congratulations brian carroll. That was really cool for him to share all that stuff with us. And I think the fact that he's under Stuart McGill's tutelage kind of leaves him now with the ability to assist people and help people. But when somebody asks him general information, he also has to say well, it kind of depends. It depends. It depends. What's the worst? Just want answers. We know it depends, but well, it depends. I'm excited to do the, uh, the suitcase carries. I was doing them all wrong.

I'd be a way lighter. Oh yeah. I also, I also wonder like, you know, what are some other areas that people are just kind of hurting their backs and not even really recognizing, you know, like the, you know, what are some other areas that people are just kind of hurting their backs and not even really recognizing? You know, like the phone. The phone, I think, is a pretty obvious one. I do think that people should check themselves throughout the day. Pay attention to the way you're standing, the way you're texting.

I know I find myself like in weird positions sometimes. Like, what am I doing? Why am I standing like that? And it doesn't bother you at the moment. So you're like, oh, this is probably totally fine. But then, I don't know, a week or two later, you're doing some movement in the gym and you think it's the movement that hurt you. But it's like, well, your neck is so tight and stiff because your neck is always down looking at your phone or whatever it might be. So just being more conscious, I think think can be really helpful go ahead i'm gonna say probably um just because it's

out of the book but like even like how you brush your teeth you know like kind of he recommends you brace yourself like an elbow on the sink or something but i know i've like because i'll floss or whatever and like i'll just be hanging out over the sink and I'll get up. But Ooh, like, damn, like my back's super tight. Now I got like a little back pump, but things like that,

maybe the way people eat, you know, they kind of just like hovering over the bowl of food and just scarfing it down and can't figure out why, you know, like you said, Mark later down the road, they kind of jack something up in the gym.

It's these small things, man. Like when I stand, like my butt is slightly flexed a little bit, i don't realize no wonder right yummy but you know what i'm do you know what i'm getting at here like like you know when when you feel like a lot of people when they stand their ass is just fully relaxed and there's like this lack of stability going on through the whole system all the time right but because of sport because i'm used to hip hinging and stuff when i'm usually just standing here on the table my butt's slight like i'm not like pinching a penny in between my cheeks

or anything my butt's slightly flexed to allow some stability through my hips my rib cage and it's just like these things are normal now because we've been practicing we've been practicing it for so long right so even that cue of uh the anti shr anti shrug. Oh yeah. It's like, that's a good, a good posture movement, you know? And yeah, he said clamping your hands together in front of you. And then, I mean, you just feel your, your shoulders get away from your ears kind of. And yes, you are getting tighter, but you actually feel like looser because it just takes a lot of pressure. You're not leaning forward. You're, it just feels good.

So all great information from Brian today. Want to take us on out of here, Andrew? Absolutely. Thank you, Pete Montes for sponsoring today's episode, a code power project for 25% off links down in the description and podcast show notes.

Please make sure you're following the podcast at Mark Bell's power project on Instagram at MB power project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram Twitter clubhouse is at I am Andrew Z in SEMA. Where you at? I'm at Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, clubhouse. I'm at Mark's Millie Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength.

Catch you guys later.