Modern Wisdom - #094 - Brian Carroll - What Does It Feel Like To Squat 1000lbs?

Episode Date: August 15, 2019

Brian Carroll is a coach, author and multiple world record holding powerlifter. Brian is one of the strongest men on the planet, having squatted 1000lbs+ more than 50 times in official meets. He suffered a catastrophic spinal injury which would have stopped many athletic careers but has recovered to not only be pain free, but now has his eyes set on more world records. Expect to learn about the genesis of powerlifting as a sport, Brian's advice for strength athletes and those beginning their lifting journey, his mindset before he is about to lift, his diet and training plan and much more... Extra Stuff: Buy Brian's Book - https://www.powerrackstrength.com Follow Brian on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/briancarroll81 Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, welcome back to Modern Wisdom. My guest today is Powerlifter and all-round fascinating human, Brian Carroll. You may remember Brian from the episode I did with Dr. Stu McGill as the guy who split his sacrum front to back and obliterated two of his discs. This left him unable to walk or live without pain, and over the course of a number of years he tried numerous different approaches to fix it, eventually settling on Dr. McGill himself and now after a long time rehabilitating his back has come back to not only squat over a thousand pounds again but has his sights set

on a twelve hundred pound squat at two hundred and seventy five pound body weight which will be the first man on the planet to ever lift it. So all of the heavy weights and stuff aside, today's conversation discusses the genesis of powerlifting, Brian's advice for strength lifters and other athletes out there, his thoughts on spine health, raw versus equipped powerlifting, advice for injured athletes, advice for people who are looking to begin powerlifting or their journey into strength sports and everything else. Not only that, but you invited me out to Florida, so you may be seeing me getting wholly bitched by Brian Carroll within the next 12 months or so. It was an absolute pleasure having him on.

Gentle Giant indeed. Thank you very much Mr. Brian Carroll. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I am joined by, without a doubt, the strongest man that I have ever had on this podcast, Mr. Brian Carroll. welcome to the show. Thank you for having me Chris. I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to having a chat with you. Yeah, me too. Recently had mutual friend of ours, Dr. Stuart McGill on the show, and he was singing your praises, and we also briefly discussed the work that you two did together. So I'm excited to hear the other side of that story as we get through today. Yes, it's been a very interesting journey.

The last six years that I've known Dr. McGill. And I met him in May of 2013, where I went to see him for a very complicated back injury that I had. The actual injury was basically had no disc at L4, L5, L5, S1. It was flattened just the same at L5, or L4, L5, L5S1. It was flattened just the same at L4, L5, L5S1, but the discs were gone. It had a couple in plate fractures working down to the sacrum where it was almost split in half. So I was in a bad spot where surgeons were wanting to do

a spinal fusion on me. They were talking all this crazy stuff about how I'd never be out of pain. And Stu, right away, I said that I can get you out of pain, but your lifting is done. You have absolutely no athleticism left in your back. And I'm telling you this, as if you were my son, I would urge you to retire and never consider lifting heavy again. And I said, well, you just said that you could help get me out of pain. So I looked at him and I looked at my wife and I've barely calmly said, I'm going to lift against let's get me out of pain. And he said, well, you know, my thoughts on this first things first. Let's get you out of pain. And then we'll proceed. You come back in six months. We'll see where you are.

And then who knows? Maybe you're right. maybe we end up writing a book about it. And that was the first meeting that we had, May of 2013. And we wrote the book in 2017. And I held him to his feet to the fire when he said this about the book. And it's it. Have you ever heard the phrase, Fact of Stranger, the Infection? It's super true, man. Some stories that I could tell you, you'd be like,

how does that even happen? How does a guy from, how are two men from totally different worlds, one in the lab clinic training center, one from in the whole in the wall, parallel to Jim? How do they merge and write a book that helps people out over the world? So it's a pretty awesome story. I'm looking forward to getting into it today and I'm sure that a lot of the listeners will be as well. So can you give us a little bit of a background to your powerlifting career where you got yourself to and the build up to this and some of your achievements?

Yeah, so I started, I did my first bench competition in 1999 when I was a senior in high school. We just actually had a 20 year reunion for high school this past weekend. So I'm feeling kind of old. I just turned 38. I just turned 38 last week. But I started when I was 17 and I actually got really serious about lifting when I was 16 when I was legally able to join the local gym. So from there, I just fell in love with lifting. I didn't party in high school. All I did was lift, eat well and run, and I played baseball.

So that was kind of my prerequisite to taking to the next level. Once I graduated, I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do. So what I did is I kept working myself's job at Coca-Cola, and I just lifted. I lifted it lifted. I did some bodybuilding for a little bit. I kept competing and powerlifting. And then finally, the bug fully bit me in 2003, where I did my first full competition meet,

which consists of the squat, the bench to dead, lived for total. So I did that in early, I started training for that in early 2002, the 2003, that was it, man. That's all I thought about for the next 15, 20 years, it was just, you know, and it's still that way. But I've gotten a little bit more sure with my approach to lifting my patients because coming up, it didn't take long until I hit some big, big numbers.

I within three and a half years of my first full meat competition, I squatted a thousand thirty at two twenty, which broke the all time world record held by Chuck Vogel pull of Westside Barbell. No one saw it coming. So here I am a kid at 25 years old, break this world record. The next thing you know, I think I'm untouchable. I think I'm Superman. I ended up going up a couple of weight classes, setting records there.

1185 squad at 275 in 2011. But that lift cost me. You know, I had a number one time at a number two total, ever to 20, number two total, 242 multiple times, and a number two total all time at 275. But after a while, that cumulative trauma of abusing my body, meat after meat after meat, and not necessarily investing back into my body

after each competition, I kind of became physically in some ways mentally bankrupt because I was pushing, pushing, pushing. And you see people, whether it be CrossFit, whether it be fighting, wrestling, powerlifting, Olympic lifting bodybuilding, you have to have rest, you have to have downtime. And one of my good friends is arguably the best bodybuilder of all time, Dexter Jackson. He takes a lot of downtime every year. He just won the Tampa Pro. And he's actually in line to win the Olympia this year

with Sean Rodin pulling out, Kai Greens and not competing Phil. He doesn't compete against wide open. So you know how old Dexter is? He's 49, he'll be 50 on Thanksgiving. Thought my Vip my is a beast. So, but I've learned from him, take time off, come off supplementation. Don't train so hard and give your body a rest so you become hungry once again,

and do it. And unfortunately, I didn't always have that approach. And my body got badly beaten up. How would you describe your training style in those years when you were getting yourself up towards a thousand pound and then moving from the thousand thirty five to like the eleven forty five squat and stuff like that? Yeah, so the eleven eighty five. We're ended up. Yeah, like every pound counts.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, you fought hard for them. It was whatever it took. Whatever it took, it did not matter. I trained whether I felt good or not. I didn't always listen to my body. I'm like I alluded to earlier, I thought I was Superman. I thought I could do everything without any consequence. And after a while, everyone's human, we see it every field, eventually you slow down, and Dexter slowed down, so he didn't win a pro show for three years.

And this is his first pro win in a while. So we all slow down. So what we have to do is become more cerebral as we get older as our lifting age or lifting age and biological age are two different things. I know many people that just started lifting heavy at 40 years old and they don't have the miles that I have on my body even though they're older than me from a biological standpoint. So it was reckless, it was heavy, it was pushing at all costs. Now I've kind of developed a little better philosophy over the last six or seven years, where I skill training back, I have program D loads where I take lightweight every few weeks. If I don't fill up to a lift one day, I'll ask myself, it might be an at coward or it

might be in smart. And I'll weigh all my options. If something fills off and it starts to lift one day, I'll ask myself, it might be an coward or it might be in smart. And I'll weigh all my options if something fills off and it starts to feel better, maybe I keep going. Or if it fills off, I shut it down and just helped other guys for that day. So I'm a lot more cerebral these days and I have to credit Dr. McGill for a lot of that. Cause he helped me a great deal.

Yeah, I can hear the narrative, the Stuart narrative seeping through in some of the words that you say. And I'm doing the same, right? I went to go and spend a day with Dr. McGill very fortunately in Canada a couple of weeks ago and I did my podcast with him and we've been in touch a lot over email

and stuff like that. And I find myself drinking the Kool-Aid or singing from the same him sheet now as well because it appears to be the right one. And I want to get on to the whole the whole ethos behind your injury and your recovery and stuff like that. But there will be some big fan powerlifters out there who want to know what sort of split you are doing in the build-up to your main meets in the the I guess the heyday of your comp prep and stuff like that

Can you take us through the typical sort of day and who was programming for you? What were you eating etc etc good? Okay So it all dependent on what what weight class does lift tonight I lifted a 220 240 to 275 and even 308 I've been spread so much range so it really depends on what weight class I was lifting at. After a while, I got really big for the 220 class. And so I had to go up to 242.

And then that allowed me to eat a little bit more. So at the end of the day, it comes down to caloric consumption and you're timing. Your timing is, to me, important. You need to eat enough, but not too much for you store body fat. So at times, I've experimented, I've eaten too much, I've gotten fatter, but with powerlifting it's tricky because it isn't about who looks good. It's about the person who's most functional and strong at that time. So just like the whole mobility flexibility thing for powerlifting is you need enough, but

not too much. It's the same thing with body fat. You don't want too much body fat, where you go up or wait class, or you need enough, but not too much. It's the same thing on body fat. You don't want too much body fat and where you go up or weight class or you're unhealthy, but at the same time, and you start talking about lower than 12% body fat, you're joints in them getting a little bit less supported. You have less fluid in them.

Your core becomes smaller, which your trunk is the pillar of strength. That is the catalyst to big lifts. You unleash athleticism through a stiff proximal core and it leads to distal mobility throughout the shoulders and hips. Now that is straight out of the Dr. McGill playbook. That is voice. You even said it in a Canadian accent I think. I did. I did. I did. Hey, dude, excuse my man. So basically, right now, I'm still

going to train for competition right now. I'm taking time off. And very fortunately, I just got my blood work back. And I am completely healthy in every way. My cholesterol, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Everything came back as good and really good on some things. Overall, cardiac risk was like off the charts low. So that's a good thing after all this heavy lifting.

Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. So I'm gonna probably pick back up in 2020 for some competitions. There's still some numbers that I'd like to hit. I'd like to get that 1,200 pounds squat in because 1185 is 1,200, but it's not quite 1200 pounds. There's only been 10 men never squat 1200 pounds ever.

Wow. And there are all over 300 pounds. So you could potentially be the lightest man. Yeah, you'd be trying to do that 28285. I would probably try to do that 275, yep. Oh, wow. 125 kilo. So right now my diet consists of a lot of steak, a lot of rice, a lot of spinach,

carrots, Greek yogurt, oranges, orange juice, and a whole eggs. That's really what I eat now. And I think it's my blood works a testament to eating the right foods. You can still be big and strong and healthy at the same time. But in the past, I would be on the right foods. You can still be big and strong and healthy at the same time. But in the past, I would be on the seafood diet. Whatever I saw, I ate. I ate, I loved to eat. I love junk food. So that's something I've been working on as well. It's just scaling back to junk food and not feeding my brain those happy feelings by eating it in a serotonin or whatever it is. It releases

when you eat a big piece of pie or a big piece of cake or a big bowl of ice cream. I've gotten better about that. But my overall philosophy is eat it, eat for performance, eat to perform and whatever fuels your body to lift the best is what you need to eat. And that's going to range a lot from different people. I think stand effortings vertical diet is a great, great diet for the strength athlete. And hell, I've been following it. And my health is better than ever, too. I eat a lot of red meat, cholesterol, L HDL went up, LDL went down. Imagine that triglycerides right on.

People are scared to red meat. And I don't really think that it's, uh, it's the poison that a lot of people think. Now for some people, maybe they respond poorly to start your carbs like rice and, and, you know, a high fat meat like red meat or ground beef, but for me, it works really well. So that's been my, I've always liked eat a lot of stickin, sorry, steak, chicken, fish, shrimp, and then rice, pasta, oatmeal for my carbs, then I've always like spinach, squash, carrots, you know, get my microbes in. And then I like to supplement with some vitamin D. I'll take some fiber to make sure everything's

you know, nice and cleaned out and fish oil. So other than that, man, that's really the basis of what I've used as my diet overall. And then if I feel myself leaning out too much I'll add more calories, I'll add more carbs and fat usually the protein stays about the same and then you know depending on where my body weight is it might be more carbs and fat or less carbs and fat and I use the mirror to be that indicator for me. Not necessarily the scale but I can't disregard the scale because I lived in a weight class. So there's a lot of variables there.

Now, as far as my training split, what I've found works best for me, and it was corroborated by Stu's wisdom, is I'd like to squat and deadlift on day one. There's a couple of reasons for that. It allows me a full week of recovery before I squat or deadlift again. So I don't have to worry about squatting, saturday, and then deadlifting Wednesday that having to turn around and squat again on Saturday. So that's been something I've done for the better part of the last 12 years or so, but it really hit home when Stu told me, you need to give yourself at least five days in between loading. So day one is squatting deadlift with a little bit of assistance.

Day two is off. Day three is bench press and bench press assistance. Day four is off, which is Tuesday. Wednesday is squat and deadlift assistance. So I'll do my hamstring work, my quad work, my upper back work, my mid back work, my bicep work, and then I take Thursday off after that day. And then Friday, I do a little bit of a pump workout where I just get some blood flowing. I'll do a little bit of sled dragging and cardio and carries, which I do at the end of each workout, but it's more of a focal point on Friday. And that kind of gets me ready and the blood flowing for Saturday morning when I squat

and deadlift again. Interesting. Four days a week. And that's that rotation. Yep. Yep. And then every three or four weeks weeks I take a lighter week on the main movement So I might only work up to 50% of what a capable of that day And that's why I think a sliding scale something like RPE the rate of

Rative perceived exertion or effort however you want to put it I think it's good because depending on what you have going on in your life, the weights are going to fluctuate. You can't always go off of percentages. What if you're on a honeymoon and you're in Jamaica and the weight room is not up to snuff, you're going to have to scale back the weights you use. If you're only going off percentages, it's going to lead to a lot of disappointment eventually. So what you do is you look at what you're capable of today, then work off of that max. What you feel like you have in the tank that day.

So a lot of the time every three or four weeks, I'll just work it like a five RPE or 50% of what I'm capable of that day and just do singles. So I reiterate those in grams of perfect form every single time. So it gives me not only a refresher from my brain, but a refresher from my body. And then I'm ready.

You know, I'm a little more motivated to get back under the bar with heavier weight the following weeks. And what I like to do is take a light week before you're absolutely crippled and forced to take a light week. Because then we know that over training can last up to a month for some people. They're overstimulated. They might get sick, they might not sleep well, they might have regression in their strength, achy, the flu. There's a lot of symptoms that come along with training too hard for too long, and I've been there multiple times. You just, everything feels like crap. You become depressed, everything's heavy.

So why not stay ahead of that wave before it crashes on you? Why not write it like a surfer? Yeah, one of the things that you touched on earlier on that made me think something I know a lot of athletes that are listening will consider, which is how much of my not unwillingness to train, but my concern about the session that I have in front of me or the difficulty that I'm finding in this session, how much of that is because my current makeup is not in a very optimal state. I've under-slapped, I'm not eating very well. I might be getting the onset of a book and how much of that is me being a pussy. How much of that do I need to push through? And that line is, of that do I need to push through. And that line is, it's very difficult to define right. And I'm going to guess that even more so in a sport like powerlifting, where spitting sawdust, guys like Louis Simmons, West Side Baba, you know, get it done. How do you, how

do you make that judgment and how do you swallow the ego? Whenever I figure it out, I'll do another podcast. Because it's a ever, it's a, it's a, it's a constant battle to figure that out. And you know what? You can read all these textbooks. You can read my book, 1020 live. You can read GIF into the injury, ultimate back fitness and performance, so on and so forth, back mechanic, but until you understand the art of coaching and application, all that knowledge is crap. It's useless. So I say that to tell you, it's about the art. It's the art

of knowing your body and paying attention to indicators, indicators, meaning physical, mental, psychological, spiritual, whatever you have going on, you've got to say, Hey, is a juice worth the squeeze today? Am I close to a competition? Do I really need these lifts? Yes. Okay. Let's push a little bit. Hey, I'm 12 weeks out from a meat.

I don't need to go heavy today. I'm going to shut it down. Maybe I'll come back tomorrow and feel a little bit better. My girlfriend just broke up with me. I didn't sleep all night because the neighbors were fighting. You know, I didn't eat good today because, you know, my child was sick at school. So it's, there's going to be a lot of things and not everything is going to be optimal every single time. But with that said, I think preparation beforehand

having your food cooked in case you can't, you know, run and cook your food or go home and get it. No one places where you can get your food while you're out to eat and always stay up to date on your sleep and not staying up all night every night and you know, get on a schedule because that's important. A lot of people seem to think that it needs to be regimen in every single day. So that means getting an embedded 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock

and sleep until six or seven and doing that every single day, which will get your body in a nice rhythm there. But I've still yet to optimize my sleep. I like to stay up late, man. I like to read. I like to research. I like to see what's going on, man.

And the thing about being up late is no one's going to bother you. You know, no one's going to bother you. Do your research. I like to read study. And that's a problem bother you, do your research, I like to read study and that's a problem for recovery though. Yeah, naturally I'm a night owl as well. I recently read a blog post saying that people have a genetic predisposition to being early

birds or night owls and that's really quite difficult to flip around. All I've worked as hard as I can to get myself on at the same like daily cadence as everyone else, but it's I'm still bouncing off that limit or a little bit. Another thing that came to mind when you were talking about routine and routines, their blog posts from Ryan Holiday, which I've discussed on the podcast before, which is very says that you don't need a routine. You need a number of routines. And he talks about how he has his, I'm away on a book tour routine.

When he's in an unoptimized hotel room and there's a blinking light over the far side and it's not quiet and it's this and the other, but he's realized I need an eye mask, I need ear plugs, I need et cetera, et cetera, and you're saying the same. It's like, okay, what, you have this particular day coming up and over time, a little bit of experience

will show you that you need to prepare better for this. I need to have my food prep for the full day, not just for lunch. I need to make sure I've got water because I'm going to be driving a long journey or whatever it might be, all that sort of stuff. And I think that comes across with experience, right, which is obviously what you've been able to tap into now. Yeah. And that stuff isn't going to come from a book. It's going to come from experience. And I wish I knew back then what I know now, but we all say that, whether it be about relationships, whether it be about nutrition, about high school,

whatever it may be. And I mentioned high school because I just had my 20 year reunion. And it's definitely interesting. The perspective that I have now versus back then. Yeah, so it's all about preparation. And that's gonna give you the most likely chance of success. And that's being prepared, also being flexible and being able to roll up the punches because not everything, not everything's gonna be gonna go your way.

And it's very frustrating and I've struggled with that too. So you have to tow the line of being an absolute control freak and also be able to go with the flow. Which is, it's like saying, I want my food super hot, but at the same time I want it super cold. It's impossible. So you gotta optimize. You gotta pick your battles.

I get it. So many people that are listening may have seen powerlifting, they'll know what it is, squat bench and deadlift those three lifts, but there's kind of two broads leagues of powerlifting. I guess you could call it in being equipped and unequipped, is that fair to say? Very fair. So, back in the days of, let's say, Bill Kazmire, he's the guy that wrote the Ford for gift of injury, great strength athlete. I don't know if you saw, but we had Swiss last year and Mrs. Saga Canada. And we had a powerlifting panel with myself, Jim

Wendler, Jail holds Worth, Ken Wedham, Ed Cohn and Bill Kazmire. That's a big a big name. That's a big name. Yes, big names. And we had some great talks. You know, Bill wore what he could back in the day. And that was a very, not very helpful squat suit, a Spanish knee wraps. They wear tiny t-shirts to help them bench press more. So it's evolved over the years.

The bench press shirt was invented in the 80s. And what that did initially was help protect the pecs and the shoulders from heavy bench presses. Eventually, it's evolved where the gear helps a lot more than it used to. So now what you have is the belts, the knee wraps and the sleeves that give support to the, you know, the elbows, the knees and the core, they are way more beyond anything that was going on in the 70s and 80s and even 90s. So with technology, everything evolves. So in 2006, everyone lifted a quit. There weren't people that lifted raw because you'd be bringing a knife to a gunfight basically. You would be, you'd be very overwhelmed. And the only people that lifted raw because you'd be bringing a knife to a gun fight basically. You would be very overwhelmed.

And the only people that lifted raw without equipment were the people that couldn't quite figure out their equipment because there's an art to it. It isn't just about putting equipment on and lifting big weights. You have to acclimate your central nervous system to that heavier load, to that extra hundred pounds on the squat that you can't lift without the suit. So it's an art to it. You have to be strong in and outside of the suit and that's a balancing act. So once the raw movement hit in 2006, a lot of people started lifting without parallel lifting gear or just wearing wraps and sleeves in a belt without the suit.

They call that raw, but it's not really raw unless you're not using anything, right? Because I know people get 50 pounds out of a belt. They get 150 pounds out of a tight knee wrap and then, you know, so on and so forth. But it's kind of, it kind of had a big split back in 2006 because then they have first official raw meat, the New England record breakers up in Massachusetts And then a lot of people started getting into the sport because the gear turned them off because it's a lot of work You have to have people there helping them so Shortly after the birth of raw powerlifting crossfit started coming over and competing a lot in powerlifting

And so that made powerlifting you explode But the quality of it kind of went to the wayside. It wasn't as thick in the competitions. And yet a lot of beginner level streak athletes coming into powerlifting and as crossfitters they're not going to wear the gear. So that's how powerlifting, raw kind of took over the last 10 to 10 to 13 years or so. And that's where we are now. I've always lifted equipped because when I started in the 90s, Jim, right, as we call it, would lift heavy weight in the gym, but a power lifter would put the gear on and go and compete in a

meet if they're a power lifter. So that's why I came up, our knee wraps, our squat, suit, our bench press shirt, even in the 90s, because everyone else did. Now things have changed a little bit because people think that the suits and the shirts have gotten way too excessive and way too complicated to use. But I've just evolved with the technology the whole time while other people have taken the gear off and lifted raw. At the end of the day, it is all still powerlifting. It's just a bit of a different sport. And I can get into the pros and cons of each two. That would be great. One thing that's

interesting, I have to say because I don't know the lineage of powerlifting sufficiently well, I presumed that equipped had come out of raw. Why was it appears that it's actually the other way around. Absolutely. The bench press was invented. The bench press shirt was invented in the 80s. Wow. And everyone wore one, including, including a lot of the people that don't like gear now. You know, a lot of people don't know that, you know, some of the best slippers ever, Mike Bridges, Osby Alexander, Lamar Gant, Ed Cohen, they wore gear. They wore power lift and gear. They wore knee wraps, they wore suits, they wore shirts sometimes. So, yeah, so it's always been equipped. Now, Fred Hatfield, Dr. Squat, one of the first guys to squat over a thousand pounds, he actually was known to kind of bend the rules a little bit,

whether he put in tennis balls behind the knees or wearing really tight jeans is lifted. So that's literally my reaction to laughing. That's a laughing I have when people talk about power lifted me in a pure sport. I'm like, he have no idea. They would have done anything back then to lift more weight, just like we're doing now.

So to me, the only level playing field is where would you want to wear, take what you want to take, and then come compete like a drag race. You know what I mean? Because otherwise, the testing is flawed. That's why so many people every couple of years in the IPF are booted out. They change the weight classes. They change their records because the cops will always be behind the robbers, the criminals.

They're always going to find ways to beat the drug test. Now you have rules that are implemented in the IPF where you can't have someone assist you put on your knee sleeves or elbow sleeves because it helps you too much. You have to be able to put them on and take them off by yourself because everyone has been in the rules. They're aware of sleeves that took three people to put them on and they're getting 50 pounds on their squat. So that's not wrong to me. but again, it's just my opinion I Some it the problem there is that as you start to add layers and layers of nuance and say you can't this and you can't that Everyone is going to find a way to

Do those things that you've now prohibited and I agree I think we've I've heard it on a million podcasts before People saying I want to see how fast the fastest man on a planet can run with everything that he's got behind him With his testosterone as high as he wants it with his human growth hormone as he wants it with all of the assistants all the kit in a Wind tunnel at what because that's what you want to see at the extremes and the limits of human performance limiting anything to do with it to me is if it's for safety, I don't know, it's at that bit to new ones point, but definitely is a spectator of the sport. I want to see someone goes fast, lift is heavy. That's what I want. There's been more homeruns hitting baseball this year and ever in history. This year in

American baseball and even more than the so-called steroid era and the problem with that is people want to see action. They don't want to see a pitcher's battle. A pitcher's goal. They want to see the ball hit hard and far. That's what they want to see. So, you know, baseball suffered for a long time after the so-called steroid era. And it died. It died a little bit. It's coming back now, but also the common denominator is a lot of people think they're wrapping the baseball tighter. And they're changing the ball, right? It's got a cork center or something now.

Well, yeah, they've changed a few things about it. And it's made the ball with the call more lively where it jumps up the bat further and a lot of pictures are very mad about it because it's making their job harder because it's harder to get people out. No one goes to the to the baseball. We went to a New York Yankees game recently on the stagdew in New York. We went to New York Yankees game, not a single. I don't think there is anything more than a double that was hit. I'm like, I was been there for three hours. I mean, like, come on. You want to get your buddies worth. Yeah. And that's good. And that's going to be from seeing action.

Yeah. Home runs, doubles, triples, plays at the plate, action, clashing. Yes. That's what you go to see. Exactly. So there's a, there's a very good episode of Victor Conti, the guy behind Balco on Joe Rogan from about seven years ago. It is brilliant. And it talks about how there's no truly drug-free sports out there. There's always dirt. I don't know if you saw that I can't Icarus or Icarus or whatever Netflix. It goes to show you that everyone's doping to some extent for the most part, they're always trying to beat the

system. If they're not taking things that are prohibited, they're taking things that are almost prohibited or a slight deviation of that chemical and then they pass and then there's always stuff and that's how Victor Conti Developed those designer steroids that people forgot about then drug companies and developed long ago and they weren't on the band list So he took them and said hey these aren't banned. Let's go. Let's go then Baseball blew up football blew up track and field weightlifting all that stuff did You might even notice that the action stars were more muscular back then too. Christian Bale is one of them, Brad Pitt is another, they're

all a lot more muscular than. So I think a lot of people are dabbling and that and not to get on a tangent, but this is an interesting rabbit hole. You know, we talked about the government and the bodies that be, the powers that be concerned about health. That's, that's so hypocritical when they allow alcohol, hauls, sails, and cigarette smells, or cells and tobacco, and pharmaceuticals that are killing people left and right. Don't tell me that you drug test for the safety of athletes when you allow all these crazy things to be, to be taken and used.

That's the problem I have with it because I think that the use of performance enhancing drugs is not, I won't say it's safe, but there's a lot more dangerous things that we do into being ingest on a regular basis. I know lots of people that have taken performance enhancing drugs for 20 and 30 years, and they've literally had no side effects other than a little bit of stuff that will happen. Blood pressure will come up. The cholesterol will get out of whack, but all of it returns to normal when they come off of it.

Just like other medicines, they will screw you up for a little while. You get done what you need to, then you come off. So I think that a lot of that's overblown, and that was exposed by real sports with Bryant Gumball about 10 years ago, when they went and talked to these doctors that research testosterone and other performance to enhancing drugs, and they said there's a lot of medicinal benefit

to some of these as long as they're taken properly. And the dosage is gonna range, and the tolerance is gonna range just like with any drug from person to person, so it really just depends. So I get why they want to clean up sports. I don't necessarily agree with why. I don't say it's a safety concern. That's silly.

I think a fair play concern seems to be a good shout. It allows you to have contiguous records and stuff you're on your right, like if it wasn't happening back then, it's difficult to rate what's happening now. If you've seen, I'm gonna guess that you will have done Chris Bell's biggest stronger faster. Yes. Yeah, fantastic documentary.

I don't think it's still available on Netflix actually. Did you watch prescription thugs, which was the sequel? Yes. And he's got a new one on that leaf, that plant leaf, what it called. Cratum, Cratum. Yes, he's got that coming out soon. Although it might not be out, maybe out.

Yeah. Anyway, yeah, bigger, stronger, faster. He says on that, he has this particular quote where he says, they litigated testosterone and other performance enhancing drugs to stop cheating in sport and stopped 99% of people taking it who weren't cheating in sport because it was the gym rat in the gym who wanted to get big arms or someone who wanted to, you know, there wasn't someone that was competing in a professional organization. So on that point, I think, yeah, I agree with what you say. So getting back to powerlifting itself and talking about what the

kit consists of now. So we've spoken about kind of the heritage coming up. So you're going to go to meet next week what's what's in your kit bag and what you put in on for what lift and why and what's it consist of. So for the squad aware, squat briefs underneath, So for the squad aware squat briefs underneath, um, squat briefs. Yes, squat briefs. So they're, they're like, uh, you know, they're knee linked or a little bit shorter actually, and they support the hips. Okay. And, uh, so it helps a bit. And now different people get different amounts out of each piece of gear and how much they fine tune it, how much they can utilize it. Because you got to think when you start putting restrictive clothing on or restrictive apparel, it changes the groove if you let it.

You have to keep it in the same groove. So if the bars harder to bring down or the bars harder to come down with on the squat, then that's another variable you have to control. You have to force yourself to get down, you have to stay tight, your blood pressure is up higher. So I wear briefs under the squat suit and I'm sponsored by Inzer Advanced Design. So I wear their Leviathan squat suit that's adjustable. And that allows me to on any given day when I have it tuned in and locked in really nice. I can get another 200 pounds over my raw squat, but with that said, some people only get 50 pounds, but I've mastered it.

I've mastered it to make my equipped squat as we call it the best possible without compromising anything else. I don't care about my raw squat when I'm training for the meat. That's the way I'm training for the meat. That's the way I'm training for the last 20 years. All it matters is what you do in competition. And to me, that's the real sport of power lifting the variables there. You know, anyone can literally, someone that just started lifting weights in the gym can go and do a raw power lifting

meat. That isn't take much skill. They may not lift very much weight, but it doesn't take any skill to squat 50 pounds, to bench 50 pounds or to dead lift, you know, 250, 125, whatever it may be, that takes no skill. Now you add in gear and equipment. There has to be a bit of pedigree in development of that skill and harnessing it. So it kind of eliminates a lot of people

that should not be powerlifting from even trying it So that's what I liked about it with powerlifting being mainstream. There's pros and cons It used to be scary and a lot of people didn't want to do it because the people were crazy now. It's widely accepted and you know, you can't You can't look down on someone for me and a beginner. I get all that stuff you shouldn't, but at the same time, these string sports aren't for everyone. And I think the pendulum is swung and the favor of anyone can do it. Everyone's accepted all this stuff.

And I think it should be a little more scary, a little more violent, like it used to be in the days with Kazmaren, Kohn and Goggins and all those guys. And when I came up in the 90s and early 2000s. So that's a little bit about the squat gear and of course I wear a heavy duty weight lift and belt to create that stiffness and that intra abdominal pressure and the trunk. And it's an art to it, man. It's an art to be able to hold more weight than your body can actually lift. So you have to program and build your

search from central nervous system so it doesn't just shut off when you pick that weight up on the squat. Because a lot of people's lights go out on a big bench press, a big squat, they go out because they have too much blood pressure, they get light-headed and they go out or they crumble because it's too much pressure. What does it feel like physically, what not mentally yet? What does it feel like physically to have all of those layers on? Is it just like being compressed down an awful lot? How does it feel to be in the squat suit? It's very uncomfortable.

And a lot of people who have knocked it the past haven't tried it. And an interesting tidbit is there's been a lot of lifters that left equipped lifting and went and did the raw and did really well. I've yet to see more than a couple lifters ever leave raw lifting and come to equipped and dominate. There's only been a couple people do that. Yeah and that's what I mean by the skill. If you can squat well in a squat suit with all those variables, you damn sure can squat well without all those things. So I advise everyone to start off raw. Everyone to start off raw, get the form, create those end grams, and then from there, if you want to add equipment and so be it,

but build the base level of strength and have some technical proficiency before you even worry about that. What does it feel like? Sometimes everything in your body hurts. Squatsuit is very cumbersome. So that's why you have to stay calm. You have knee wraps on, you have a squat suit on, you have to shimmy under the bar, you have to get tight, you have to pick the weight up, and then you have to squat or pristine form with all those layers on. So it's very difficult. Another thing that people don't realize, it's hard to tell where you are depth wise. So you might think that you're going super deep

and you're still that much above parallels. So there's a lot of variables there that add some difficulty to it. Yeah. So that touches on a question that I want you to ask. And I'm sure a lot of people are thinking, what do you do before a lift? And what is the inside of your head like

before you're about to put 1,000 pounds on your back in a meet? It's really focused, and I go to a dark place in my head where I don't care about anything else. And the last thing I want in the world to happen when I'm under the bar is to miss the lift and embarrass myself. So everything is extremely tight. I visualize and see the lift being completed effortlessly before I even approach the platform. I already see it happen. I see

the crowds reaction. And I strive for that feeling to happen before it even happens. So I get out there and I just go to my default mode, I tune everything out, I tune everyone out, I go and lift and I fight for my life for a couple of seconds and I put it back down then I try to breathe and relax. So you turn it on, you turn it off, you turn it on, you turn it off, collect a fighter, UFC fighter between rounds, you got a chill.

Breathe and relax, then you go, you turn it back on and you relax. So it's a dark place that I go to for sure. I love hearing about that. Listeners who heard the episode with Sony Webster, Olympic Weightlifter, he said something interesting and I'm going to ask you the same. He said that he does the same before he steps up to the platform, he visualizes himself completing the lift. He gets asked the question often. I wondered the same for you. Do you visualize yourself doing it from the first person or do you watch yourself doing it from behind the stage? Both. Okay. Interesting. I'll watch myself from the crowd. Yeah. I see myself in the crowd. How I'm going to look how I look so sturdy.

I'll look so sturdy and stiff on the squat that as soon as I pick it up, everyone in the crowd knows that I'm gonna crush the weight. I see that happen. I go through the squat, I come up, I grind through it if I have to, and then I know I've already done a dry run in my head.

I go out there and do it. I'll also see myself doing it, picking up the weight, feel myself doing it. So I look at it from all perspectives. Isn't that interesting that we view it for some reason, we decide to view it from not ourselves. We look at it from someone else. I think that's really, I don't know, I don't know what that is about, about PrEP, but obviously, you know, some of the best athletes in the world, in the world choose to use that. So moving on. I think it's, I think it's self awareness too.

It's a bit of self awareness that comes with the maturity of lifting. And you want to be, you want to, you know what is expected up there on the platform. And you know when someone is up there and they know what they're doing, that's what you expect from yourself. So you automatically want to see that from yourself, I think. I don't know, that's a little weird, but that's what I think. It's good, interesting. If you've got any ideas or if you're someone listening

who has any more information, feel free to get at me. So you mentioned that the 1,185 pounds cost you. Yes. Can you tell us what and why? So I'd squatted 1130 just before that squat and I wanted to go for the all-time world record of 1180 so I had to beat that by five pounds or two kilos So I was feeling good. I figured I could get the lift as I was doing the lift It it's the heaviest way I've ever picked up and I saw stars. I saw black spots everywhere and I picked it up. It was very heavy and I was like, here we go.

So I came up with it and as I was locking out, my left leg stopped working a bit and I had a hard time locking it all the way up and at that time I felt like I re-herniated a couple discs or damaged something pretty bad. And that caused me a bit because my lifting started to regress after that lift a little bit. And so I got with Dr. McGill and got that figured out. But I knew that I'd messed something up as soon as I got from underneath the squat and walked away. I knew. I got a little bit forward, a little bit bed forward with it. and I got out of a position which cost me. But still stood up. Still stood up, so I got credit for it, and had to get basically helped off the platform after that. And I still finished the meat and did well, but that I left a little bit of something to myself out there that day. And that interesting.

So moving on to the progression or the regression, I suppose we could call it, from that point up to when you sat down with Dr. McGill, also there's a story about when you were in a parking lot as well, which I think a lot of people might be interested to hear. So you had a, so I'll ask you, do you think that there was any other significant acute episodes other than that particular squat? Or was it cumulative over time? Is it just volume and volume and volume and? There is a lot of things.

I think the first, first incident was a 10th grade. I was running the stadiums and I tweaked my back a little bit. The second, so that's 1995 or 96. The second incident that I had was in 2003, I strained my back a little bit and I fell to pop when I was dead lifting. That settled after a little while. Then in 2009, I was on an obstacle course. I was trying out for a scholarship, the police department. And I was the first person to run that morning. And it was eight o'clock in the morning on a July, July day. So we had a lot of humidity. And as I was jumping over a barricade, there was dew all over it. And I slipped and landed right on my butt, my back like that. And that's when I was

laying in the park, I went afterward, my legs weren't working and I barely was able to drive myself home. It took everything I had, but like any brilliant athlete like myself, I I did my first 1100 squat 800 dead left about three weeks after that. So That's just to kind of answer your question. I did a lot of stupid stuff and I just kept pushing like I was Superman and stupid stuff and I just kept pushing like I was Superman. And finally, in 2011, that big lift, it was another little thing that chipped away at it. And then in 2012, about eight months after that 1185 squat, I was warming up, I was on pace to squat 1200 at this meet. And when I was warming up, I felt my back go. I felt, man, a lot of burning sensation locally in my Lombard spine. And I had to very, very, very much battle through that mean.

I ended up winning that one, but my back started regressing. So that was 12 and then 13, he got really bad. And that's what I finally gave up after seeing multiple neurosurgeons, multiple orthopedic surgeons. I'd gotten my shots, you know, people get these shots, these facet joint injections, nerve root blocks. The problem is if you're not removing the cause, they're totally useless because it's only a numbing sensation. So until you remove the cause of the pain and build more pain-free capacity, those

epidurals are useless. So I went through that thinking they're just magically going to cure me, then I went down the path of trying to get surgery thinking that would just be, I'm going to go on to get surgery, then everything's going to be great. And that's not the way it works. Thank God, my client suggested I see Dr. McGill, and within a month I was there with him in his laboratory. It's crazy to think, speaking to Dr. McGill and also having read back mechanic

and a fair chunk of the gift of injury, your book with him as well. Surgery appears to be a very, very rapid option. I think perhaps a little more so in America. In fact, I was with Dr. McGill when he took a phone call from a lady who said she'd had back pain for eight days, had been to see a consultant, and the consultant had said, we need to get you in for surgery. And I'm thinking to myself,

you've had back pain for eight days. Like, there could be anything you could have like a splinter in your back like you literally could sat on a bit of wood so Yeah, the the the root of surgery Dr. McGill went through a number of the reasons why that's a bad idea in in his estimation I think this that is now are 80% of back surgeries are back to the same baseline level of pain within 12 months. Yeah. I think that's a bit around about right.

Yeah. So you didn't go for that. You went to go see Dr. McGill and split sacrum front to back, L4, L5 and L5, S1 are just obliterated. I think was the terminology that he used. Yes. And from there, what happened? Because you're used to doing deadlift and squat on a Monday and bench on a Wednesday and all this sort of stuff and Dr. McGill, Dr. McGill does the

thing where he pushes his mustache to one side. And he looks at you, he looks at you like this. And then he gets his finger out and he points at you. And what does he say? He says that my spine hygiene is terrible. It's not of a top athlete. So I had to reprogram the way I moved and that meant squatting.

So everything I did when I'm sitting in a chair, I'm standing up, pushing my hips through. Then when I sit down, I'm not plopping, sit down easily. So I had to get the hip hinge down the same way you push yourself off the toilet. I had to learn to lunge to tie my shoes. So for instance, it's here, put my foot up on a chair and then lean forward and lunge into it. And then the last thing is a golfers pick up where you basically stand

on one leg and then reach down with the nice and flat back. All I was doing was bending, bending flexion under load, further perpetuating my injury and picking the scab everyday. So you have a lot of people and I was included. I would do reverse hypers. I would do love bar stretches, a silly stretch as he calls them. I'd pull my knee to my chest. I'd bend down and touch my toes, which is not inherently bad,

but it is bad for a power lifter, especially one with back pain. Now, if you're trying to be a gymnast, those stretches are probably gonna help you, or they might help you, right? But you've got to pick. If you want to be a power lifter, you have to tune the body to be a power lifter.

If you want to be a gymnast, you need a lot of flexibility, but don't expect that strength out of it, just like a power lifter. You want to be a gymnast? You need a lot of flexibility, but don't expect that strength out of it, just like the power lifter shouldn't expect that mobility out of their back. You have to choose wisely with every exercise that you put in a program. So I was doing the reverse hypers,

I was doing this stretching, I was doing weighted sit-ups, I was basically creating the perfect recipe for a painful back. So I know you'll be very surprised, Chris, but as soon as I removed the hammer, the hammer that was always nailing my, my paint triggers, I felt a lot better within a couple of days

and my pain wound way down almost immediately. Can you take us from what was it at daily? Was it eight out of 10, was seven out of 10? Where'd it go to? It was within 24 hours, and even a couple hours in the lab, it went down to like a three, of just me being conscientious of, okay.

Sitting up properly, not leaning forward, not bending. Within a couple hours, it felt a whole lot better. And within a couple days, it was down to about a two or one. How did that fit after being in so much pain for so long? It was a huge relief. My wife couldn't believe it because she came along for the ride. And she said, you haven't talked about your back hurt. And one time since you left Dr. McGill and I said, I know it's crazy. And I like to share this information with people and they can get out of pain.

The problem is they're too blind to see how simple it really is. They think that they have to take this medicine. They think that the back surgeons are they endowed be all, and they're really, they're designed to do one thing and that's the cut on you. And like Dr. McGill says, and he probably explained to you, they're not likely to go in there

and cut your own the pain trigger out. A lot of times there's multiple pain triggers. There's no guarantee they're gonna get that one. And likely they're gonna open you up. They're gonna destabilize your back that might fuse it together. And then the above and below of the fusion's gonna suffer after that, I've yet to meet more than a couple of people

that have ever had a less than one back surgery. There's always more that follow. There's always more because you know what? They don't remove the cause. Have you ever met someone who's been through back surgery and has come back to be athletically capable? Yes. I have met, but they had three surgeries. And they still are inhibited in certain ways because they don't have, they're locked up. They have a spinal fusion, so they've had three fusions. And the first one didn't take. The second one ended up reversing itself

and the screws came loose. The third one took, but they have a lot of struggles and a lot of pain daily that come and go. Because you know what, when you cut through those nerves and you cut through that musculature, sometimes it's never the same again. The nerves might reattach somewhere else and then you have weird pain randomly.

So there's a lot that you're risking when you let someone open you up like that. That doesn't understand how the spine is supposed to work. It's not supposed to be open you up like that that doesn't understand how the spine is supposed to work. It's not supposed to be a bending rod like that unless you're turning it for it to be that. And the PT's just blindly prescribing stretching or really hurt a lot of people when they when they get about a surgery or or referred to to PT to prevent surgery, they just further complicated a lot of the time.

Yeah, what's the quote from the gift of injury? Do not cut open that which God designed to stay closed? Yes, that is what a anesthesiologist surgeon told me. Because I was wanting to get back surgery. And he said, you know what, avoid back surgery. Avoid it at all costs because I have colleagues that do it and they are not successful. And it's going to further complicate everything.

And that's when he used that line, keep it closed. And actually this weekend, I saw a couple of people that had seen it a while, both of them worked for a back surgeon. I'm sorry, they worked for a medical device company that works alongside surgeons for spinal fusions. And he sorry, they worked for a medical device company that works alongside surgeons for spinal fusions. And he said, dude, you do not want these surgeons, they mess them up all the time. And they my friends are, they work alongside the surgeons to ensure that

the tools they're using that they sell them are being utilized properly. He said, man, these surgeons mess up all the time. You do not want to ever get a back surgery. Little do they know. I already knew all that. Yeah. I've spoken to patient zero, Dr. Stuart McGail himself. He knows all of this. So moving forward from you've had your consultation, you're now at least a little bit less pain-free, but you're not able to get under a bar without pain. I'm going to guess and start squatting. So what was the next few months, the next year, like after that consultation with Dr. McGill?

So it was all about discipline. It was desensitizing and removing the cause. So it was a lot of McGill, big three, and a lot of walking for a couple of months. And then eventually when the pain was totally gone, I called them up and he said, well, you're pain free. That was my job. Now it's your job to get back to the platform. So I took that on and I learned a lot. And thankfully because of me learning how to progress from stage one ever moving the

cause to building pain free capacity and so on and so forth, I become pretty well versed in helping other people progress. They need to read back mechanic and gift a vendory to find their pain triggers and to remove them. Once they remove them, I can show them how to implement the exercises to build them back. And I do that with a lot of people. I'm actually a McGill provider now for Florida. Amazing.

It's a clinician. Yeah. So I see a lot of people here in Florida for their pain. And again, the prerequisite is reading back mechanic and gift of injury. That way I'm covered. They need to they need to diagnose themselves. They need to remove the cause that I can help them train as a trainer getting back to sports and whatever that may be.

So for me, it was a lot of McGill three, a lot of carries, a lot of walking and just perfect spine hygiene, whether it be sleeping, moving, working, traveling, every single day. And what this did was put dollars in my bank account. I was in bank hearing, I'm hearing the McGill accent just pouring out here. It's fantastic. So I put, I put deposits in the McGill accent just pouring out here. It's fantastic. So I put, I put deposits in the bank account. So when, uh, so I saw him in May, so when November rolled around,

I had enough to start withdrawing. So I put it in outside of the gym so I could pull it out inside of the gym. And, uh, so what's I progressed from the carries and such? I had it in goblet squats. I had it in elevated dead lifts and rack pulls. Then eventually by November, I was getting back to the competition lifts. And then I think by January, I squatted over a thousand pounds again, pain free.

And I still had a couple roads to cross and hurdles to jump over. As I went to competed March. That was 10 months after seeing McGill. I was just flat out too big. I've gotten too big, too heavy. And at the meet, I was actually winning it and going into the deadlift, my back got grumpy on me. And so I pulled out of the meet.

I didn't finish. That was a blow to my ego because the whole year after that I'd been working on getting back, getting pain-free, you know, excuse me, a lot of people had seen my progress, right? And it was disappointing to me that I was able to finish. So, stew and I devised a plan where I would drop some body weight and I would build more capacity by squatting, benching, and deadlifting all in the same day that would simulate the meat. So you got to get into a little bit of extension when you're squatting, a little bit of flexion sometimes, a little bit, and then a lot of extension on the bench, and then a little bit of flexion and extension on the deadlift. So I was able to build more tolerance and more athleticism slowly. And then if I felt like I was pushing

too hard, I'd back off. So I was really in tune with my body by then. And then within the next few months, I had a personal record at a lighter weight class, better than injury, pre-injury. And then I won the Arnold two more times after that with better lifts post-injury than I did pre-android. You see, you touched on ego there and the fact that you had to say no to this deadlift. Going back to the first few months, because there will be a lot of people listening and I'm one of them. I'm personally interested. I've recently seen Dr. McGill, there will be other people out there who will be suffering

with an injury and they may have been prescribed a course of rehabilitation which requires them to take a big slice of humble pie. They're going to swallow an awful lot of ego. So for you, one of the strongest men on the planet, how did it feel? Did you have any trouble with that or was your goal to become pain free? Did you see this as a part of your journey? Or were there some questions in there where you began to get frustrated and stuff like that? When you were doing bird dog for, you know, 10 minutes a day and side plank for 10 minutes a day, etc, etc. It was a blow to my ego, but I looked it at this way. Nothing was more devastating to me than losing my athleticism. So after trying to do it my way, researching on my own,

thinking I knew everything, getting the shots, getting the consults, I caved. And when I talked with Dr. McGill, I was a little skeptical about what he had to say. And then after a little while, I realized that he knew what he was talking about. So when I met him in that May, in that, on that May day in 2013, I went into his lab as a complete beginner. I went in there like I knew nothing. And the only thing I held tight to, concerning my ego and my pride, was that I'm gonna compete again.

Everything else, I turned over to him completely. Now I've met a lot of athletes that are world class, world record holders, you name it, that are done now because they couldn't step away from the barbell or step away from the track or the octagon and get pain free. Now I've met a lot of people that say they can't do it for a variety of reasons and what I say to that is biology is very binary. It doesn't care about your mental state. It doesn't care about what you have going on, your bills. Either you're giving yourself enough stimulus to build and be better or you're tearing your body down. And so if you can't stop lifting

for the sake of your mental health or your wallet, then I wouldn't expect to get out of pain. And that's what I tell them. And then they go on and have a surgery, thinking they could just get their pain cut out and they're good and then they never return back to the platform or the octagon or the track or whatever it may be. So it's very hard for a lot of people because there's a lot of stress going on right now

throughout the world with the climate, social media, everyone's wound up and fighting. And so they use exercise for an outlet to de-stress and when you take that away from them, they freak out. Well, you can still walk, you can still do your core work, but you're going to have to take time away from going out there and drilling the barbell every day. So it was hard, but once I got going, because I've caught some, I caught some, some stuff from friends when I wasn't lifting and I would still go to the gym every day,

but I'd be doing my big old three and my carries and all that stuff. So I didn't care the way I looked at it was this. I'd beaten just about every one of the past and I was doing what I needed to do to get back there once again and I'd get the last last. Well, fantastic philosophy. Well, fantastic philosophy. I mean, when you are one of the strongest men on the planet, that's the sort of thing that you can say. But I hope that that has reframed for a lot of people that might be listening just the sort of sacrifices that you do need to make. I've certainly, having seen Dr. McGill and I sent him a couple of emails afterwards just asking for some clarity on some of the prescriptions that he'd given me moving forward. One of these questions asked the, asked something which I shouldn't have asked, which

was, can I go to failure on any of these slash? Slash, do you have an RPE or reps and sets, like suggestion? Because that's the language that I talk in. That's what, that's all I've known. I've known, how hard should I go on? And it was T.R. X Ring Rose pushups, Front Racketalbalkari and single leg knee raise. How hard should I go?

Can I go to failure? And I just got this email back and I was like, oh no. He was just like, he shouted at me. It was shouting. There wasn't any capital letters, but it was in quite big text. And it was just, Chris, you are talking like a body builder. You want this is not the route to get pain free. You need to be focusing on movement quality first and foremost. I have athletes who have done nothing but XXX for six months to one year to two years before they move on to anything, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And I was just, I'm like, okay. Yeah. So I have, I have a lot of athletes that I work with, uh, through online coaching. And I get them to read back the cannon, get them regept of injury and ultimate back. And then once they get pain free, I progress some of it. Sometimes they relapse and that might be because the new stress in their life, uh, they may have gained some weight and they may have lost some weight. There's a lot of things that change, you know, our body is ever evolving and adapting. So sometimes they're on a very light regimen for a year

and they think that 10 weeks of working with me is going to cure everything and I'm thinking, man, some flare ups can last three months or longer. You know what I mean? If the nerves really pissed off. So it takes time and there's no magical wand, there's no magic bullet. It's all about removing the cause and giving your time, your body time to let biology do its thing. And you can't contradict it with things that are not cohesive. And

that's a big thing that I think a lot of people miss. Concerning your question about RPE and my experience. What's up, honey? Just the fact that I asked that question, too. Just when I think back to the email, I just, I think about how in trouble I was. I'll be just, Don't worry, I get corrected all the time, too.

Don't worry about it. I'm still learning. So yeah, don't feel bad about that. I sometimes I'll send something to him and like, that was stupid. Why don't I even say that? Yeah, that's, that's, you can't take yourself too serious. So you're going to mess up, right? Especially to the, the Godfather, right? So in my experience with my athletes and my lifting, the, the line share of your gains

are going to be made between 70% or seven RPE with three reps left in the tank. So about 85% or an 8 and a half RPE with one to two reps left in the tank. Because when you go to failure a lot of things happen. Number one, you're not happy about it. You know, if you're going for a max rep set and you want five reps with 200 kilos and you only get four and you've milk, you fail and miss on the fifth one. That kind of crushes your day and ruins your day a little bit. So pick your times when you push and go out of your numbers. Other times you want to train and not test.

Training and testing are way different things. When you go to failure, you're testing. You're going to the absolute limit of your body to find out where you are. Too much testing is problematic. Again, 70 to 85% of your max on a given day is the sweet spot. You can get a lot of volume in there. You're not going to be missing anything. Then you can pick your days where you go 100%.

But it's got to be few and far between. I understand. One question I've been thinking actually, do you guys ever do walkouts? Like very, very heavy walkouts? Yes. Yes. So we'll do heavy pickups, heavy walkouts, we'll do overload sets. So one good thing about powerlifting is Louis VII specifically, he's really changed the game for strength training in the National Football League here with American football with the baseball players with college football

powerlifters have shown that Barbell Use and implementation is not just gonna take away your athleticism, you know, I mean you need to You know Assess the demands for the sport, but at the same time weightlifting is it just this dangerous thing when it's done right? So it's pretty cool to see a lot of the things that we do and in powerlifting, I've carried over to all the sports. You know, Louis Simmons has done a great job with that. One thing that we've done,

and I've utilized for a long time, is a reverse band method. And I got that from Louis Simmons, he calls it the light method. I also got it from Rick Hussey, a big iron gym, a legendary powerlifting coach. What you do is on the squat, you hang the bands from the top, the top of the rack, and you hook it around the barbells. So as you go down the load gets lighter, as you come back up, it returns to a normal weight. So what that teaches you is to pick it up and

not be scared of the weight, you adjust to that load and the pressure. Then as you go down the lower you go the lighter it gets and as you turn it around it comes out of the bands. That's almost like a training wheel for a new exercise or a new weight. We do a lot of those that are really good for tuning the central nervous system. That's really interesting. Holds, negatives, pauses, all the tempo, all that stuff has its proper time for implementation, but one of the biggest things that I'd like to tell the listeners out

there is you have to be able to ask yourself and answer why am I doing this exercise? And if you can't answer that, you need to remove it. Because I see people all the time that send me their programming, they'll say, what do you think about this Brian? And I'll say, well, it looks pretty good, but why are you doing the one leg bulgain split squat? Well, I saw my favorite lift, that's a bad answer to say that. What you should say is I want to work on my quads a little bit more, you know, for the squat lockout or for the deadlift lockout or off the floor I'm doing pause squats because I need more explosiveness. I'm doing speed work because I'm slow

I'm a good grinder, but I'm not good at exploding out of the hole and these things can be talked So your program needs to be built around the your weaknesses and everything that I do I can answer specifically as to why I do them or why I have my clients do them and I think that's half the battle right there. So it needs to be built around weaknesses but also around education of the athlete by the coach. Is that right? Yep, you nailed it and never doing exercises just because they're hard or at random. Everything needs to be specific to the needs of that fleet. And for you, it might be 180 degrees opposite of what I need.

You know, you look like you're a really lean guy. You know, you stay in good shape. I don't think you need to restrict your calories anytime soon. Me, on the other hand, I've put on some body fat this year, right? You're lean, I'm not so lean right now. So for me, just to say Chris and Brian and everyone needs to eat 4,000 calories today, I'm like, no, I'll get fat.

You may need that, but I'm gonna get fat. So that's what I mean. You have to be able to answer these questions because they're so important. It's not just a one size fits all rehab, training program, diet supplementation. It has to be customized. That's a really good way to, to, to comment on the coach and athlete dynamic.

I certainly know a lot of people who are at both ends of the spectrum, right? I know some athletes who understand and I'm one of them. I'm inquisitive, even if it's not that I'm questioning what my coach is putting in as to question the validity of it, I just want to know. I'm like, okay, so why have I got this particular movement in, or why are we using that time domain, or why are we doing this particular number of reps, just because I'm interested. Well, I also know people on the other end of the spectrum who just want the prescription

that's put in front of them and they just want to go through with it. So I guess again, you know, for the coaches that I'm sure will be listening out there, that's something that you're going to need to take on as well, right? You're going to need to see what the particular absorption rate of mental space for my client and how much info can I give them to get them educated? Yes, you got to think objectively for sure. And man, the key is, like he said, some people, they want you to hand them the fish. Other people want you to give them the fishing pole, right? The people that want the fishing pole

are innate, they're innately wired to be coaches, I think, because they want to learn, they just don't want to be spoon fed and have success. They want to be able to replicate that success and my experience. So the people that are asking questions, those are going to be the future leaders and not just the followers. Fantastic. Brian, I will be linking back mechanic, gift of injury. Is there anything else? If anyone's interested wants to find out some more info, why would you send them? They should go to poweracstring.com.

That's where we have all those books that you named. We also sell them on Amazon, backfitpro.com, kabukistring.com. So we have a bunch of different outlets where you can get those books. I personally, from poweracstring.com, ship worldwide to anyone wants those. But for a lot of content that goes above and beyond

the books that we've talked about, my website poweracstring has a lot of articles that I above and beyond the books that we've talked about, my website PowerX Strength has a lot of articles that I've written over the last five or six years that are there and they're free. So all of that, along with my training philosophy is called 1020 Life. And that's the book that I sell concerning my strength training philosophy. And there's bits of it and gift of injury, a lot of it actually. But the strength manual itself without the rehab without my story is 10 20 life. But I'm on social media, Brian Carol, 81 on Instagram and Facebook and man, I really

enjoy this conversation. I say conversation because it's what I felt like and not just a podcast. I really enjoyed talking to you. I'm located in Jacksonville, Florida anytime you want to come over or if you're in the States, come. I've got a full training center here in my garage. From my wife, let me deck it out. I got two model lifts, a deadlift platform, two competition measures, a rack, a belt squat, a lifting platform that's competition grade, kettle bells, to 50 kilos and dumbbells up to 80 kilos. So, do you ever leave the house?

I wouldn't leave the house. I don't believe I need to believe the house every once in a while. I get food, but I get the food shipped here too. But I want to thank you for coming on. I want to thank Dr. McGill for everything. My sponsor, Anzer Advanced Designs and Jackson nutrition. I appreciate all the help that I've gotten. And I can say that the last six years of having the chance to meet Dr. McGill, it's really helped my ego, it's helped my pride, it's helped me to be more grateful, thankful for my athleticism.

And I wish I didn't own this in my 20s, so I could have embraced it a little bit more. But I'm in a good place now, so I'm grateful for everything that's happened. I'm so happy for you, man. It's really lovely to hear that story of redemption. I'm going to be following this journey to a £1,200 squat. I'm sure a lot of the listeners will be, you'll have gained a lot of new fans today. You're incredibly gracious, and I think for a, for such a terrifying man on a lifting platform, you're incredibly incredibly humble and easy to talk to

off it. So thank you so much for coming on. Everything that Brian has mentioned today will be linked in the show notes below. As always, make sure that you get at him. If there's any questions you've got, you know what, find me at Chris Willex on all social media, like share, subscribe, do all that good stuff. But for now, Brian, thank you so much, man. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.