Modern Wisdom - #270 - Dr Stu McGill - Protecting Spinal Health When Working From Home

Episode Date: January 16, 2021

Dr Stuart McGill is a professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo and a world expert in back pain. In the new WFH world, many people are changing their routines, desk setups and posture. Combined with limited access to gyms and less chance to move and exercise, this is a perfect storm for creating back pain. Expect to learn the number one cause of back pain Stu sees in his patients, why most physicians are wholly unprepared to deal with spinal injuries, why social media can stop you from being a master of your craft, whether our ancestors suffered with back pain and much more... Sponsors: Get 35% discount on everything I use from The Protein Works at https://www.theproteinworks.com/modernwisdom/ (use code MODERN35) Extra Stuff: Check out Stu's Website - https://www.backfitpro.com/  Follow Stu on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/backfitpro/  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/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

Oh hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Dr. Stu McGill, the world expert in back pain. In this new working from home world, many people are changing their routines, desk setups and posture, combined with limited access to gyms and less chance to move and exercise, this is the perfect storm for creating back pain. So I thought it would be a good opportunity to bring Stu back on the show to delve into his insight around spinal health. So today, I expect to learn the number one cause of back pain, Stu sees in his patients.

Why most physicians are wholly unprepared to deal with spinal injuries, why social media can stop you from being a master of your craft, whether our ancestors suffered with back pain and much more. Lots of takeaways from today and I basically I wish that I'd had this podcast before years ago because it would have saved me an awful lot of discomfort but we have it now. Please welcome the wise and wonderful Dr. Doctus, Jume Gel, welcome to the show. Thanks so much Chris. A little bit of what's the word now?

Familiarity and I know I'm going to enjoy this, so I'll just let you work your magic. Thank you. Yeah, for everyone who's listening, you've been on the show before us, you and in between then and now, I decided to take a pilgrimage up to CU2. I was north of Toronto,

so at the end of a road trip last year, I had been driving around a fair bit. So I got used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Flu on my own to Toronto, the first time I'd ever set foot in Canada, didn't realise I needed a different visa to that of the US. So got stopped at the border, I had to sort of thing out, got into Toronto on a different flight, got a car, went up and stayed in the Gravenhurst and then came to see you and went out on your boat and you did a huge big long assessment. We've been in contact ever since, so it definitely feels like long overdue fondness, I think, today. And one of the first things that I wanted to discuss is just how

different everybody's routines have become at the moment. Everyone's life has changed north a lot since we last spoke, which is about 18 months ago. People are working from home. They've got different desks. They've got different routines. Perhaps with no gym, restricted exercise regime, what do you see as the biggest risks to spinal health for everyone in this new world? Yeah, well, there's no question that it's too much sitting primarily. When you look at not only

spinal health, but cardiovascular health, mental health, every single one of those systems requires appropriate movement for optimal health. Force movement really is one of the major languages of cells. And when they are starved of signaling, they will decline and lose optimal health. So that's a short and sweet answer. People are being sat down a lot at work as well though, right? Is it just the little movements in between? Is that making that much of a difference? The walk to the car, the little set of steps to go up to the office?

Well, I don't think that's nowhere near enough. That's a very soft pedestrian life if we're down to the short strokes of the basic physical challenge of their life is walking to their car. So we didn't evolve to have optimal health with that level or lack of stimulation. My thinking is what's the difference between the old world and this one. People are sat perhaps now in the houses, but the

only differences they're sat in the house instead of in an office. Yes, and they get up in the morning and they go to their home office and they don't go outside for a walk, which at least they did before. And there's just no question about it. The longer you sit, the more accumulated stress in your body. And I think it's showing on many levels. Let's talk specifically from a spinal position then. A lot of people will have reconstructed home offices, perhaps not with the perfect lumber support chair that they may have been given at work or an office environment. What are some of the things that you think people should absolutely steer clear of?

What are the most common issues that you can imagine when someone's recreated their working environment at home? Well, I know what works for me, Chris. So I'm an older fella now. And what works for me now wouldn't have worked for me when I was in my 30s. But if you want to talk about that biblical training week, we can. That would be a personal answer. But a generic answer is what I think you're looking for. And it's a matter of managing demand and capacity. And there really is a minimum demand that's needed.

So people need to artificially create that demand in their lives. Institute, movement blocks throughout the day. I will often say to patients every time you eat. Go for a 15-minute walk, it's non-negotiable, you build it into your program. There's nothing stopping them from doing a round of the big three exercises, which you're familiar with a few push-ups, going climbing the stairs, a few air squats, you know, you cannot sit hour upon hour and expect to be pain-free. I shock people sometimes by saying you behave and you deserve your pain. And that really is, it's a psychological technique to really shock them. How dare you say I deserve my pet? No one deserves this and I say, well, actually,

through your behavior, you're not feeding the signaling process that your body requires to be pain-free. So we can get into the subcategories of people who, you know, we can get into the subcategories of people who, well, they will sit at their desk far too long without interruption, and then they go and have a absolute blowout, a physiological blowout for 45 minutes, either in their basement or in their home gym. That is not optimal either if they are seeking minimum pain and optimal function. Everyone is a little bit different, but those are some of the big rocks. If I can coin gray cook who is well known, he is very good at making things simple and grace as move well and move often.

You know, it's a wonderfully simplistic way to put it, but there's a lot of wisdom behind it. You described the old world of me there with someone who is incredibly sedentary for long periods of time and then would consider that a barn burner of a workout for an hour to 90 minutes. I remember for a long time, I was going and working in Manchester, which is around about a two and a half hour drive from where I am. Now, the car that I have is a small coupé, it's quite low down. I didn't have my lumbar, which is a lumbar support pillow that you can slot behind you back to maintain a nice S curve

and you lower back. And I would go from working all day, I'd be sat in my desk, sat down, I didn't have a standing desk as I do now, sat down working, I'd go in and cross fit, I'd warm up, I'd do my 10 minutes of warm up, I'd do whatever the workout was, and then I'd go and quickly change into some different clothes because the other ones were all sweaty, and then go and sit in my small coupé for two and a half hours as I cooled down. That would be my cool down. Or maybe I'd put the heated seats on it, sort of a mid-range, and I'd cool down musselily. And that would be the way that I did it. And now, thinking back, it was simply a matter of time.

Every time that I decided to do that, I was rolling the dice of what my physiology, how my physiology was going to respond to two periods of extreme sedentaryness with one of extreme intensity, slightly in the middle. And yeah, you deserve your pain. It's a difficult pill to swallow, but I think I'm getting towards, I caused my pain, I caused my pain, I deserve my pain is the next level

that I need to get to in terms of acceptance. Well, that's a psychological tool that I use to shock them into a behavior change. And when I say you deserve it, I entombed in that, is that it's in your change. And when I say you deserve it, I intoned in that is that it's in your control. You deserve it. It's in your control. So now undeserved change your behavior and make damn sure you don't replicate that perfect storm. But it's a way to empower them, but if I just say it, you know, look at you. I would put you in as a typical cross-fitter, and when you look at the CrossFit community, you do not find sloths

in the CrossFit community. They are all very keen people. They are very encouraging people, but it's always encouraging to more and the next level. Seeking biological optimums is usually not in their mindset. So, they would tune me out if I said, oh, I think you should change your programming a little bit. Wait a second, I need my personal best. You see, that's the philosophy that's fed in the culture. And so I have to shock them a little bit

and say, you know, biology isn't infinite. You violated a principle of biology and you cannot have five personal bests in a year. Biology does not allow it. So you see what I mean. It's a bit of a shock, but that's the level of shock that with certain people now, if there was someone who had a very timid personality, where you will not find that person across it. It's just the culture and the nature of the beast. The very timid person, I would never say you deserve your pain. Now, that's a very different play acting, where I would be very sympathetic and quiet, and show them, prove to them that we

can shift the locus of control. And every time they get pain, instead of recoiling from it with the attitude of a victim, oh, why me, I would never say you deserve this to the victim, but I would show them, here is your pain. Understand that. Now, here's the antidote to that pain. Try it. Ah, you just accomplished getting off the toilet.

Pain free, you just accomplished working on your computer for 20 minutes. Pain free. Wasn't that magnificent? So the pain is no longer the tyrant that working on your computer for 20 minutes, pain-free. Wasn't that magnificent? So the pain is no longer the tyrant that turns them into the victim. The pain now transforms into a tutor. And they'll say, okay, I get it.

I understand now that because I did this, I got pain. Let me go back and repeat that task with the new N-gram, that new way of moving, and I just accomplished that without the pain. I am now empowered. I'm no longer a victim. I'm in control. So do you see there's two psychological extremes, and they would require two very different types of psychologically-based, if I use the word drickery or just good coaching. This may be a biased question given your background in spinal health for many decades. Is back pain the most debilitating sort of injury that people can get, that people will commonly have. Well, I guess that would depend on who you talk to. You know, certainly some athletes will tell you that when you're back is

Nackered, you can't do anything. There are many people who do do anything. There are many people who do physical work who will tell you that. Now, I spent my career for the most part as a professor. I could have a knackered back and it wouldn't matter. I could still do my job. But if I was a construction worker, it would have been impossible to do my job. And so do you see, I guess, it needs context because having a bad hip and a bad knee is no fun either. But anyway, there's some of the demands. Yeah. And again, I could take it into an extra.

There's just different ideas that are popping into my head as you're saying that. Say we took a strength athlete who had some spine instability as their major mechanism for their back pain. Well, when they're under load, they might be performing a feat of strength. If the body detects a little bit of joint instability, it not only gives them pain, but it entirely shuts down their neural drive. So they fail on the next repetition, or they fail mid-lift. So there's much bigger consequences, but I could say that with a bad knee. If the brain senses the unstable knee, say the ACL deficient, it shuts down the knee, they buckle, they walk with a limp, et cetera. So it's hard to say.

Back pain as someone who is absolutely in the trenches, this sort of heritage of suffering with lower back discomfort is very difficult to escape in a way that I'm not sure that other pains would be. Perhaps in the hip as well, but as you start to move out towards the extremities of the body, there's particular positions, usually you can get yourself into, you know, just had in a killi's rupture repair. I know.

Certain positions for that were quite uncomfortable, but other positions for I could hide it away. And I could get myself into some places you can imagine I've got to go into that elevated position. That became a little bit uncomfortable on my back. So I needed to do an adapted moon boot big three variation where I had to try and reinforce that stability, but back pain to me is the one that it's just so inescapable, you can get it when you're lying down, you can get it when you're

standing up, it's always there reminding you that you're injured, you're injured, something's not right, you've got instability, you've got fragileness, you are not robust. Well, if the person has not seen a very competent clinician, who has the skills to really assess the mechanism of their pain to create a precise and accurate diagnosis that will lead them to an effective intervention. Yeah, they just feel helpless. And truth be known, when you speak to a lot of clinicians, they say, I fear when a back pain patient comes to the door,

because I don't know what to do with them. You know, look at the medical education. Medics really get no education on how to deal with a back pain patient. When you see what goes on in physical therapy schools now and how little they get on mechanical back pain. It's the really equipped in my view. Is there something unique about the spine or would it be, would a clinician say the same about knee pain or ankle pain?

Is there a particular hole in their understanding or a complexity that they need to get to? I've given that so much thought and I still can't converge on an answer. You know, I remember when I was training students and they would say to me, oh, well, why did you choose the spine? It's so hard. And I said, geez, spine's easy for me. Why did you choose the shoulder? And anyway, I just don't know, but it just seems there's so few masters of the craft these days.

And masters look craft in anything. You know, a colleague of mine showed me a video the other day of the Cooper's at Guinness Brewery in Dublin. So these are the fellows who make the barrels. And it was an old video from the 40s and how those craftsmen spent their lifetime to become a master Cooper. Well, you know, technology these days just doesn't allow very many to become a master of anything.

But that was one thing. That was one thing I was very struck by when I spent, I think on in total around about 36 hours with you last year, actually, a year and a half ago now. One of the things that I was struck by was something you said to me around social media, and I think that it was something along the lines of, there are no masters of the craft who were also posting online. And this, you could call it old school, approach, I suppose, to dedicating to narrow and deep, especially in something that, although you might find it easy, I think it is, the spine is a complex mechanism to work out what's going on. You had to do a lot of experiments to, I do think that it requires you to...

I think if you're going to take on a task like that, it requires you to go narrow and deep. And I also am concerned about what the long-term outcomes of degradation of focus and increases in stimulation are I worry that we're not going to have any savants over the next 25 years because everybody's just one button press away from giving themselves a little dopamine kick. Well certainly in the medical field I would agree with you 100%. I think the orthopedic assessments of 30 years ago were far more competent than what is current practice today. Sad to say, isn't it? Especially when we have potential increases in sedentiness.

And the demand of patients is higher and the ability of clinicians is lower. I can tell you a story, Chris, and stop me if I've told you this. But there was a police officer from your area of the world, Newcastle. I was asked to see him as a patient. And this was a police officer who was a veteran, a very tough man, a man with experience, a physical man, and he went to the NHS, and not once did he get a thorough assessment of what was going on in his back.

And he was given very inappropriate, you know, here's a list of exercises on a piece of paper, go away and do them with no coaching. No coaching on how to reduce the cause through his daily lifestyle. And it got so bad that he couldn't do his job anymore. So the NHS therapist gave him a book, and I forget what the book was called, something like learning to live with your pain. He couldn't do his job anymore. So the NHS therapist gave him a book, and I forget what the book was called, something like learning to live with your pain. And they started to put into his mind that it was a psychological issue.

The pain was magnified in his head. Can you imagine how destroying this would be for a police officer and someone who's who lives by laws and enforces them and yet is just held to such a level? Anyway, this man was suicidal. Do you mean that I am so mentally weak that I am magnifying this pain? And he had to retire. So I saw him and I showed him how to, I'm assuming this is on video, but you know, the gig you go down and like to mimic that cricketers posture in the cricket outfielder for the Americans

it would be a shortstop position in baseball. And then how to stiffen, change the curve of the back. So you've taken the stresses away from the pain triggers. You become a leaning tower, develop athleticism through the ankle, push the toes down, and then pull the hips through. And then I showed them now sit down. Now stand up and get off the toilet and do all of these things. The man broke down in tears. He said, I just did all this pain-free. Do you mean that I've had this ability all the time. It's not in my head and no one has ever shown me how to stand up, how not to get pain when I sit, how not to get pain when I walk, how not to get pain when I use techniques of martial arts to frog March a person out of the pub and all of these kinds of things. And he emotionally broke down,

but that was the instant that he started to now build it all back up again. And I can tell that story in many different forms from many different experiences, but there's something that may or may not resonate. Now look, I know the NHS, it's absolutely fabulous for cancer and all of these other things. However, for musculoskeletal injury, there's a massive, massive hole. And why is that? Why are they not getting,

I had a call from someone from the UK, was that two days ago? Oh, I showed your book, The Back Mechanic, to my physical therapist, and they flew into a rage. Don't you believe it? Don't you do that? And then, you know, it was all, well, we're going to do cognitive behavioral therapy to this person, which again was frustrating to them. They had no clue what was causing their pain and it proceeded without an assessment. So I don't know why it is that way. It's a shame, I mean, I fully wall away to Canada

to come and get an assessment with yourself. So it speaks for me to- Did it help you? I have done... Here's one thing I wonder whether you ever consider this. Have you thought about the cumulative amount of time that people across the planet have done the big three? No. You should do.

Because I've done hundreds, I've spent hundreds of hours in three positions because of something that you said. Hundreds of hours. Did positions because of something that you said. Hundreds of hours. Did it make you robust? It's improved me more so than any other routine that I've done. It's the... Is it built a foundation for you to get back to enjoying your life? I also need to regrow in a kill ease. So, yes.

Yes. I keep one... I keep one putting littlegrow in a kill-y's. So, yes. I keep on putting little hurdles in the way. What are your most important habits for maintaining spine health? Someone isn't familiar with your work. They're entering this conversation fresh. What are the most important habits? Well, when you say you're most important, I certainly have some personal habits. We can talk about those in a minute,

but I think you're talking about more of a generic sense. I don't want to use words that are unfamiliar, but let me start with them because they're very correct. So those would be managed, demand, and capacity. So if you were to go out and play rugby, there are demands made of rugby on your body. Do you have the capacity to meet them? If your job is to sit in front of a computer

to do your work, you must understand those specific demands and then make sure your body has the capacity to meet them. Because if the capacity does not meet the demand, you will have suboptimal function pain. Now, let me just describe that issue of pain. Let's consider laying in bed. If you lay in bed for a while and don't change posture, slowly you will develop a discomfort.

And if you ignore that discomfort and continue to lay in bed, you will then go to pain. And if you continue to ignore that pain, you will then go to injury. You will develop bed sores, where the pressure stress concentrations in the skin will cause a breakdown. So it should be easy to understand how different positions, different postures, habitual

movement patterns, progress from discomfort to pain to actual tissue breakdown. You know, there are those who say, oh, we couldn't see the tissue breakdown in the MRIs, well, I'm the guy who developed the laboratory, made those radiological measures, and then did micro-dyssection afterwards. And there was all kinds of damage that was invisible on the scans. So of course, the scans don't recognize the damage.

But anyway, managed demand capacity. The second thing is goal setting. So we talked about the culture of CrossFit. And again, to point out, I love the CrossFit community. What a fabulous community, based on movement and keen people interested in their health. The downside of it is there is inherent in the structure goal setting for personal bests. Well, that's a bit of a problem. When you talk to someone

like Ed Cohn, so Ed Cohn set the world powerlifting records. And when he won, he was about a third greater than anybody else. So it would be like Usain Bolt running a six second hundred meter and everybody else running 10. That's how dominant he was. And he set the goal of only two personal bests per year. So once you set a personal best, your body has to adapt into that state. And that takes quite a while. So I think people, A, have a myth

that setting too many personal bests too frequently, biology won't allow that. And secondly, the number of personal bests that you keep setting when they start to get up there, you shorten your athletic career. So you don't see too many Olympians, true Olympians, who are really rocking it as master athletes. They're worn out.

Go to the orthopedic surgeons waiting room and see who's in there. And that's usually the ones who had two little stimulation or ones who had too much. Too much and too little. You either rust out or you wear out. And then so when people come here and they'll see their personality,, I got to set my next personal best. I got to get my weight down to this number or whatever the thing is. And I said, yes, but that's why you're getting into back pain. You're just too aggressive in what you are doing. I don't have to encourage you. I need to hold you back. And then I say, how about this for a goal? And I believe this might be somewhat familiar to you, Chris. I would say to them, how about if I said to you, would you like

to be the most rocking 80 year old granddad on this planet? How's that for a goal? Do you want to get there? If that's what your goal is, you're going out of the wrong way. If you are more modest in the level of athleticism, now you will be a far more able and fit 80-year-old. How does that grab you? You'll be amazed at how that stops people in their tracks and I'll get a message from them a year later and they will say, you know, I'm pain free, I'm happy, I'm fit. However, I'm not deadlifting 600 pounds and I look good, I feel fabulous, and my daughter had her grandchild. So when you say what are the most important habits, there's just a few thoughts. Of course, if they have pain, I to put a plug in I say you've got

to follow the principles and back mechanic but if you don't have pain life opens up be more modest in your in your goals or if your goals are under the mark you better up your goals you know what I mean it's a difficult conversation to have until we have an individual in front of us to give us context, but when we have that context, we will set reasonable girls manage capacity demand and optimize health That seems very scalable which is one of the things that I look for when trying to find fundamental principles that underlies stuff managing capacity versus demand and setting realistic goals. I think I almost wish that I'd been able to have a camera on my shoulder during some

of the exchanges that I had when I came to see you. The reason is, the main reason is, it was an inflection point for me, so I came to see you when I was 30. It was such an inflection point because it was me realizing that I wasn't made of rubber and magic and that mismatching capacity and demand was going to result. I don't just bounce back from injury immediately now, like you do in your teenage years or your early 20s. And on top of that, the more existential question it asked, made me ask myself was,

why am I training? What am I doing with my physical output here? Because I'm training in a gym surrounded by people whose goals are to compete, to make it to regionals in CrossFit, to make it to nationals in powerlifting, to go and step on stage in bodybuilding competitions. Like, is that my goal? And it's hard to say no, right? Because especially if you like the idea of the glory

and the valor and the accomplishment, and well, why can't I have that? And this has been part of a longer journey of essentialism by Greg McEwan, do less, but better. You want to focus on the vital few, not the trivial many, and accepting that if you want to become close to the best at what you do, or you want to actualize your potential within a narrow domain, you have to let go of other things. That being said, some people go too far. They don't train at all, which actually negatively

impacts them. I know that I podcast better and my speech is more precise if I've trained because physical health enables my mental health. But I don't need to go full-send six days a week trying to keep up with people for whom that's their Everest because that's not my Everest. I need to find something that facilitates me long term and this is a word Which I'm seeing coming up more in a smart context, longevity, training for longevity. Not life extension, not taking drugs so that you can live to 150,

but thinking about your health and your wellness on decade-long timescales, on life line, long timescales. And that, for for me is a realization that I've tried to give to a lot of other guys who are mid-twenties, late-twenties, early-30s. Look, man, like, you need to think, like, what are you training for? Why are you going into the gym and doing these things? Why are you going to the club on a, not the moment? Why are you going to a nightclub every weekend at the moment? Why are you going to a nightclub every weekend

at the moment? Is that part of your, does that contribute to the end goal that you want? Working out what you want and then working out if the things you're doing are contributing towards getting you there? And it's a difficult pill to swallow. Like it's hard, right?

I don't want to think that I need to give up something that I enjoy doing and perhaps could have brought a bit more glory into my life. But that realization was really, really important. And yeah, it's a gift that I wish that I could give other people. If I could bottle it somehow and give it to a bunch of different sort of garage gym athletes, I think it would probably make their lives a lot happier. I think it would probably make their lives a lot happier. Well, I don't know if you want me to react to that or not, but on one hand, I think of

people and I would certainly put myself in this category. If I didn't train hard, balls to the wall all out in my later teenage years and in my early 20s, I probably would have gone to jail. So you've got to have an outlet for the testosterone and finding your way in this world. And if you're a fighter by nature, you've got to have that socially acceptable outlet and train heavy. I'm a little older now. I've got a new wisdom and but so you know, there you go but you're right for longevity. I mean the injuries that you've accumulated, the injury list that I've accumulated that I now have to manage

however, I've got a little bit of wisdom to manage them. But, you know, I think you were talking about, how do we scale all of this up? We can talk about that if you're... I wanted the first thing that I've been thinking about. The first thing I've been thinking about is why do we even have spine instability? Like, if our ancestors had bulging discs and sciaticer all the time, they wouldn't have lived very long. And why have we got that now?

Well, I've thought long and heard about this question, Chris, and I anticipated it, so I brought along a little model. Injury to a joint creates laxity. And in fact, that's the definition of injury in many circles, certainly in medical and scientific biomechanical circles. So if you tear a knee ligament, you will get laxity in the joint. You've lost stiffness, and stiffness is the variable that the body uses to control and guide movement. So if you have uncontrolled joint movement, it will create pain. Let me show you what I mean with this spine example.

So these are made by DynamicDisc Designs, a fabulous company that builds about the most highly biophademic models of body parts for coaching. So this top disk is normal. This bottom disk is normal. This one has been injured. It's lost stiffness, observe. I'm going to apply a little torque to the spine.

Do you see where it moves? It moves massively at the joint that's lost stiffness. So now you see that that will trigger off and irritate all sorts of tissues at that very specific level and not others. Look at the loads now that get transferred to the facet joints in behind. So instability causes pain, but it then sets off a cascade, unlike getting a broken leg, let's say. So you break a femur within three months at heels, your back to normal, the bone is actually

formed a callus over the fracture, and it's stronger than what we started with. But look what we've done here. We've now created a lax joint and a legacy that in two or three years from now, you now have facet joints that are irritated. They're growing bone, they're becoming our threadic. So what started out initially as you you shear the spine and trigger pain, now when you bend back you create pain with our threadic facet joints. And then over time this will gristle and that process takes probably about

10 years. So there is why we have joint instability. And I've explained a little bit about the Cascade. Now let's talk about our ancestors. None of us really know what back pain they had. All we can do is go back to the Egyptian hieroglyphics and clearly they are bent over in pain some of them are retreat are receiving positional postural treatments when we consume Viking graves. We see the same evidence of spine instability, arthritic facet joints at single levels together with bones, for as at single levels. So they had it.

However, you've experienced yourself that when you create core fitness, you become resilient to those micro movements. You create an exo-gurdle around that core. So a power lifter and a weight lifter put on lifting suits and backbelts to create an exo-support system to arrest the micro-movants and create that stability. Now, where I'm headed towards this is I have a feeling our ancestors were tougher than we were. The management of demand and capacity was very different. There was no question.

They had to be extremely physical to live and survive. I now go to the world of sport. Last week, I had a consult with an NHL hockey team. So top pro hockey team. And the discussion was, when we get a farm boy from the planes of Canada, Saskatchewan and whatnot, they're really hard to push off the puck. They are innately strong throughout the whole linkage. Versus you get a city kid who went to the best gyms. They lifted barbells, they pulled on cables. They're so easy to push off the puck.

They score higher on bench press and squat, but they can't compete with the farm kids. So I get back to this idea when I get an elite athlete with back pain, and if you were to rephrase your question and say, why is that? I would say almost every time it's because they have an underperforming core in the context of their athleticism, rebuild their core, and I hate that word core, but at least you know what I'm talking about. When we rebuild that core, rebuild stability in a farm boy fashion, we have quite often really progressed in restoring their pain-free athleticism. So it's kind of a teleological circular argument,

but I hope that at least that's where I'm currently at now. Did our ancestors have these same injuries? No question they did. We have evidence for that. Did it affect them? Maybe if they were a tailor that sat at a sewing desk all day or they were a writer and accountant, maybe they did as well. But maybe they also had 15 minute walks throughout the day. They weren't... To go and pick up some new leather to go and fix the commerce and the blacksmith, et cetera.

But yes. to go and pick up some new leather to go and fix the commerce and the blacksmith, etc. Yes. So those are some thoughts. And you know, there's even evidence from whales, believe it or not, of the old Welsh coal mines. Those lads who went down the coal mines when they were 16 had less discogenic back pain than the ones who went down when they were older. So was there an adaptive response, shall we say, that gave them a greater capacity? I'm assuming the demands were the same. They were miners. Anyway, these are all discussions. They're very interesting, but that's where I'm currently at right now. And can I just finish off with one final thought.

Think of every great religion, Chris. Every great religion has one day a week where you don't do anything. Now, when I grew up, we had one day a week where my dad would insist there's no business. You take it easy that day. You just do. And, you know, my current training schedule now is I take one day and I don't do anything. And that is the day that ensures biological adaptation. And I know he grew up that way. And all of his colleagues did, that's, you know, he was an Irish guy, it's the way the whole country did it. And in every religion, there is that practice of one day a week for the Lord, or if you're a biologist, you would say, to allow a biological adaptation to occur. And think of the typical cross-fitter who will go on Facebook and say, oh, I had my day

off, I only banged out tantalamic lifts and went for a 5K run. You know, it doesn't make sense in a violates biology. So anyway, there's a little bit of an efficient diatribe. The thing, the thing that I'm struck by, especially recently, the last few years has been this move toward a much more simplistic view that tries to get people to comply with the training regime. I think it may be trying to fix the problems of surplus of calories, surplus of convenience, surplus of sedentary ness, surplus of information and stimulation. And what we've realized is that aiming for something

which is more easy to comply to and just sticks to getting the basics right, it sounded when you said that I need to go for three to four, 50 minute walk today, I was thinking, I've got, I've got like really bad back pain. Why am I going for, what a walk going to do. Why am I bothered about getting up and standing? Why do I have to do a 22nd stretch where I put my hands over my head like this? Is it really making that much of a difference

if I stand like I'm standing in the slips when I go to brush my teeth at the bathroom and all of these different things. But what you realize is that those sorts of applications, the bars set so low that it's almost ridiculous that you can't do it. And talking about the most advanced methods in the world, not only are they further away from how we evolved to operate and to move, but on top of that, they're actually really, really hard to do. Like, they're not, you can go for a walk anywhere in the world at any time, whether you've been at work, I've got back in from a nightlife shift at three in the morning and go for a walk and go for a little

stretch after I stand up. And I'm really enjoying watching the fluff and the complexity that I think I saw go into the fitness world probably like 2006 to 2016. I'm enjoying seeing some of that noise dissipate and it be a little bit more signal. Does that make sense? 100% that was a nice overview. That's why they call lists the modern wisdom. That's correct. That is correct. Okay. So where do you see most people going wrong when they try to deal with back pain? There may be some people listening.

And there will almost definitely be people listening who have it. Where what are the things that people do mostly, which is either not helping or perhaps making it worse? Number one, without question, failure to get a thorough assessment to reveal the mechanism of their pain without question. So if a person is able to get a read on the precise cause, they now have a precise targeted strategy to a get rid of the cause, allow the pain to wind down

and be built up the linkage, tune the linkage with strategic mobility and stability, build appropriate endurance, build strength and appropriate patterns, and then coach it in a way that transfers to the end goal. And as you know, I've done experiments in every single one of those stages. For example, we know that a certain style of instructional coaching transfers those movement skills to real life. We did that study on firefighters, for example, as you know in Pensacola, Florida.

We took the whole firefighting force and divided them up in different styles of training groups and those who were coached in a way that they became educated as to how they were loading their body. It just transferred when they were doing real firefighting tasks. We never coached them how to do firefighting tasks, but they had much less injury markers in their movements afterwards. So that would be my number one answer in a generic sense to that. What's number two? If people, perhaps, considered going for an assessment, but they're also doing some other things to try and fix their back pain. They've watched a YouTube video that doesn't include you. Well, this will sound very self-serving, but it's very difficult to find a competent assessment.

Nowhere in the medical system, is it available? It certainly isn't available in the UK. I don't think it's available in the American insurance-based medical system. It's not available in Canada. So there are individual clinicians. There are a few in UK that do very thorough, competent back assessments. There are a few scattered around the world. But in the absence of the average person to get that assessment,

that's why I wrote back mechanic. It guides the person through a self-assessment. Is it as good as seeing a master clinician? No. But it's better than I hate to say it close to 100% of the family docs and many of the physios and chiro's that they will see, although there are someone who are especially trained in that. So then I have to say subcategorize your back pain. In one person, they might need more core fitness, more stiffness, more control. And what are they doing? Oh, well, they're stretching their hamstrings, touching their toes, pulling their knees to their chest. And that is the very thing that's causing their pain. And yet the very next person is overly stiff. They are so stiff and in control, they're petrified by their pain, they're locked up. And just to get them to stand up and say, no muscle. them to stand up and say, no muscle. Hover your ears over your shoulders. Hover your shoulders over your hips.

Jazz knees, loosen your knees. Put your hands behind your back and float. You're at military at ease, and they'll say, oh, doc, you're magical. You just took my pain away. And I said, well, all we did was shut your muscles down. I would have a muscle cramp as well if I walked around holding five pounds of butter in my hand, but that's what you're doing all day long clenching your back. So do you see there's two subcategories of back pain and two polar extreme opposite interventions that are needed? So you've got to have the assessment and then you keep peeling the

onion. Now some of the people I get are really challenging. They take me to the end of my clinical smarts in the consult. And they might have three or four things all interacting together. And then there's the whole psychosocial milieu. You might have someone who I said, you know, I need you to go for a walk every time you eat for 15 minutes. And they look at you with a blank stare and they'll say, well, I can't do that. I'm afraid to go out where I live at night and go for a walk.

So what do you think the compliance is gonna be with that kind of person? We have an impediment there that if we don't deal with that, we've just guaranteed failure. So there is a social force now impeding their band or they were treated like a psychological warrior when they're really a psychological mouse, very timid person or vice versa. So there's no end to this and we get back to that master of the craft. You know, and there are clinicians who come to me and they say,

you know, I want to become a master of the craft. Can we come and work with you and what not. And after five minutes of talking with them, I know that they will never, ever be a master of the craft. We're beating a dead horse. So not everyone can be a master healer. How can people find McGill certified clinicians? What's the website? Backfitfro.com. And there's just to find your country, find someone near you function on there as a? Yeah, there's two portals of entry. Are you a patient, back pain patient, or are you a clinician? If you're back pain patient, the next

question is, you know, if you want to find a master clinician, click here. And direct some people there. Hopefully they'll be able to get some somehow. One thing that obviously with my Achilles injury that I've been considering a lot is the role at mental state plays in the physical recovery process. We've got some insight around that. Well, I think I have a lot. We've already talked about how once you can shift the locus of control to a person they're empowered and a lot of the psychological dissonance

then disappears. The key in all of that is to get the person to realize their pain. So I did provocative testing on you when you were here. I purposefully provoked your pain. We loaded you in compression, we shared you, we bend you, we went through extension, torsion, twisting, we did ballistic loading, we did traction, we probably did a few, oh, and then I provoked your nerve roots.

We pulled on different nerve roots. I loved it. It was absolutely loads of fun. You even got your wife in and she contributed to you poking and prodding different bits of my spine as well. It was a multiple, multiple vector attack. I recall that now because you had a little bit of friction on the nerve root. So as the nerve root moved, you got friction on that nerve root. So I had to pull on your ankles and

your knees in certain directions to migrate the nerves away from your spine down your leg, and she had to release your head at the same time because the nerve pathway is basically a long rope. And if you're going to pull it at one end, you have to release it at the other to get the slide. And it's the slide that causes pain in some people. So yes, I do need an assistant with some of the tests, but never will you get that assessment anywhere else than when you got it here. And for the first time, we really learned, you know, it's this particular disc bulge that shrinks and grows. So we then did an intervention to shrink the disc bulge and immediately we got a better slide on the nerve root.

So we knew there was potential. Anyway. We got a better slide on the nerve, so we knew there was potential. Anyway, once we've empowered the person by showing them exactly what their pain is, then we give them the mechanical antidote. And all of a sudden, and I keep coming back to use a psychological word, shifting the locus of control to the person and that empowerment immediately addresses a lot of their psychological concerns, because before they were a victim, but now they're an active participant in them becoming stronger. And then, you know, now we have to talk about the interplay.

And then, you know, now we have to talk about the interplay. They can now sleep better. If you want to give someone psychological distress, so you break them down to the point that they're willing to divulge information. So let's go to torture mechanics 101. You deprive a person of sleep, you make them hungry, and you give them chronic low grade pain. That's torture, but that's how you extract information out of a mentally strong person.

You break them down, but I just describe back pain for a lot of people. So we interrupt that, and then they start getting their mental toughness back again, and away we go. We build it all back up. So yes, is mental state? Yeah, you know, they come here suicidal. Absolutely hopeless. I've had people say, if you can't help me duck next week, I'm ending it all. Some therapist told me the pain was in my head and I can't live with that. That means I'm crazy. I don't think I'm crazy, but if that's what it is, I don't deserve to live. And I say,

hold on now, give me a week. And can we start to change the course? And I remember one fella who did come and he said, Doc, I hear you're different, but I'm telling you, I've been to the pain clinic. If this is in my head, I'm putting an end to it next week. And I said, well, tell me about your symptoms. And you know, stop me if I've told this story before. But he said, well, most of the time, I'm pretty good. But when I move a certain way, it feels as though someone has opened up my hamstring with a shard of glass. It's

the most excruciating pain. And I said to him, can you show me that? He said, what, you want me to cause that pain? And I said, yes, it's the only way I have to understand the mechanism of your pain and then show you how to deal with it, do something about it. So he did this very funny maneuver, it was a circular maneuver, and then he got, you know, we gave him some drills to decompress his back, and he was okay, and after two or three days, and I said, come back, but again, don't think about lead poisoning here, Just keep working with me. Anyway, he never did have another attack. Never once. So people will ask me, how long does it take to cure

back pain? Well, I can say in some cases it took 10 minutes of coaching and they never ever had an acute back pain again. And remember he was labeled as having chronic pain and it was in his head. So you don't have chronic pain. You have many acute insults all day long. It appears to be chronic, but it's not. It's acute pain over and over again. Let's understand the acute cause and deal with it. I met him just a few years ago again.

I lost track of him. And this was about 10 years later. He brought his daughter to me who was a heavy field athlete on scholarship down in the U.S. I can't remember whether a discus thrower or a shop putter or something like that. I said, well, tell me, how's your back these days? He's just fabulous. He's never, ever, ever.

Did I have another shot of pain? So how about that for mental state that had driven them to the point of suicide and becoming empowered changed his life that it became an absolute non-issue. So that's the first step. Now I failed a few times too, by the way. Yeah, this is the highlight reel. Yes, yeah, of course. That's the first step to take control, to understand that you're an agent, as opposed to a victim.

And this comes up in a ton of different situations. I've spoken to a bunch of endurance athletes, ultra endurance runners who've done 50 hour long races without sleep, going vertically up mountain sides in pitch black and scrambling down hill tops and all sorts of stuff. And they say the same thing that you need to internalize that locus of control.

But even once you've made that change, even once you've said, okay, I'm the architect of my own recovery, or at least I'm the builder of my own recovery, and perhaps I have an experienced clinician who's giving me the building plans that I'm following. But it can still be quite draining, long-term, dealing with discomfort, watching your friends have to be able to go and do things, and you know that you can't anymore. Have you got any more long-term strategies for how people can continue to stay mentally robust during injury? I don't know if I have any great secrets in this. It's just a systematic scientific approach that never really waivers. Get an assessment, know the cause, address it appropriately, wind it down, build it all back up again,

and then at the end of the day, I told you about my Irish father, he had a saying, a little bit of what tickles your fancy is good for you. So if that was a little bit of Irish whiskey, all right. But what it really meant was go and have a little bit of joy and a little bit of fun and make sure that you do. And that's whatever that little tickling you fancy is, is very different for each person. And it may have an element of danger or risk for your back, but you just keep learning how to do it. And you know, when we finish this call, I'm going out, I've bought myself probably the most athletic racing snowmobile made in production in your 2012. How quick does this thing go? It's an easy 100 mile an hour sled.

On snow. On snow, yeah. But I probably, I'm going out to do some jumps and pop a few wheelies and things like that. So I'm not going to be getting 100 miles an hour, but I'm going to a golf course and all the lads around here all have these machines but I'm the oldest of them so I've got to you know go and tickle my fancy a little bit so I'm going to be have to be very careful on the landings but damn I'm going to do a few and it tickles my fancy and I'm going to have a little bit of a push.

You know, over the years I've had a few injuries. I remember one winter I broke my ribs twice. One day. Oh, snowmobile accidents. I came up a hill one time and I've always told my kids, if you go up a hill and you catch air, know where you're gonna land. I came up this hill and caught air,

and then I looked down where I'm gonna land and it was a picnic table right there. And I hit the picnic table and I broke the table, broke my sled, broke my ribs, and then it was probably two months later, I hit a log that I didn't see, so. Something that strikes me about that, kind of leaping back to what we said at the very beginning,

is about no way. I don't know, maybe we should edit that out. No, I think that's totally irresponsible. No, you were young and foolish. What strikes me? I've been year older this year. I've been year older this year. I have a Y chromosome, how's that?

We'll blame it on that. We'll blame it on the testosterone. What strikes me is that what we're talking about is what do you want to want, what are you prepared to pay to get the thing that you want? Have you actually considered what it is that you want from life? You know, for some reason that you like to go close to triple figures on a snowmobile on a golf course, and you have thought that through. But you're not trying to do that whilst jumping

out of a plane, whilst bungee jumping, whilst base jumping jumping whilst doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, whilst doing all of these other things. It's a conscious decision to make and this sort of consciously designed life stepping into your programming as I call it is something that I really, really wish that I'd started to do more early. Being intentional with the things that I do, why am I doing this? What's it serving? Like, what is going back to the social media example? What is the prize that I win for constantly being on my phone? It doesn't serve the things that I want to do in life. So, upon knowing that, I actually see when I pick it up as, oh, I don't need to. That's actually

your reminder. It can put it down because I've got other things that I want to do more. I've other things that serve the things that I want to do. And that, have a little of what tickles your fancy is predicated on knowing what your fancy is. It's not, have a little bit of what the social norms say should tickle your fancy. Have a little bit of what all of your friends say should tickle your fancy or your genetic predisposition or the way that you dealt with past traumas or whatever it is.

Being conscious and intentional with the things that you do almost always ensures that the outcomes you get are going to be somewhere along aligned with what you're supposed to be trying to achieve. You've said two things that are hitting very close to home to me in this podcast. I push it on a snowmobile. My wife pushes it on cross-country skis in the winter in a rowing shell in the summer as you know. I have to train to do what I do. So it is now a motivation by the end of the summer I'm thinking all right dedicated

training now I've got to get sled snowmobile fit. And then at the end of the season, okay, I'm going to have to get a kayak and canoe fit. Do you know what I mean? So it's something that doesn't build up too much trauma and I do it 12 months a year, but I some, well, I do, I justify my sled addiction, A, I like to work on motors and machines and that kind of thing. And I'll tune them all year long. But B, it motivates me to stay with a certain level of fitness to do it. It's a good thing. Anyway, that's how I would justify. I went out with you on a boat that you built yourself.

That's beautiful. Oh, the little mahogany one. Yeah, that beautiful thing. Yeah, yes, yeah, I built that primarily with my daughter in mind, and the name of the boat was sweet loretta, if you recall that. I do. The little plaque that your friend that lives nearby had made. And I think he had a spare one as well.

Yes. Yeah, man. I mean, first off, thank you for today. I really enjoy it. I the takeaways, the main takeaways, I think are the importance, especially with back pain of finding someone who is trained and understands what's going on. I don't think we necessarily got to talk about that. The first time that we spoke, not the lack of training, the lack of sufficient training perhaps, that is given to people who are the front line

for a lot of general citizens to go to when they are suffering with back pain. The matching between demanding capacity, I think, is a really good analogy. And I like things that scale. I like things that you can utilize across time. A good example of this is some of the goals I have for the show this year, includes upregulating how much I'm going to publish. But I know that I can't get to the end result of how much I want to publish tomorrow.

I know that this is going to be something I'm going to build tolerance to over time. I can't just start making three YouTube videos a week because it's going to be too hard and I'll fail. So I'm going to start with one of Fortnite and then after a couple of months, maybe I'll do one a week and then after a couple of months, so on and so forth. So those things in terms of scaling, I really like. But more than that, I just wanted to thank you as well. Like your assistance to me has been very, very appreciated. It's been a massive change in terms of how I see my fitness, how I see my physiology.

The specifics around spinal health are important, but the principles around looking at longevity, looking at demanding capacity, realizing that you do have control over the way that your body moves. Those have been big changes, so yeah, I wanted to say thank you. Well, I'm going to repeat the thank yous back in your direction. What you do is so important. You're very good at speaking to the public and taking what we all do at which sometimes is fairly complex

and you can pull out the salient points. But you also do it with such a wisdom. And I would say it's a wisdom beyond your years as well. So you're a bit of an old soul, Chris. And thank you. I Listen to your podcasts by the way. That's that's about as high of an accolade as I think I can get from a man who tends to Swerve away from technology. I think that's about as good as it can be so BackfitPro.com If you want to find... Yes, for people who are looking for our self-help guides, back mechanic, training to regain

your fitness, ultimate back fitness and performance, and looking for some of our trained clinicians who can do assessments and create a program for you. That's backfitpro.com. And I wish I was a great social media. What's the word I'm looking for? Influencer? Influencer. That's why you've got adults. That's why you've got. I can't. Sarah, yeah. I can't stand social media. To me, it's just a colossal, you know, as we said last time, I think you can be on social media or you can do your work and become a master of the craft, you cannot do both. So, to me, it's just a distraction. Sorry. Well, you can, you can, you can pass that onto Sarah until she's got some subordinate that she

can pass it onto as well. But to you, everything that we've spoken about will be linked in the show notes below. Back mechanic is a book. If you need to pick up one thing that you can do that can help you to identify your own back pain, it was the best gift that you gave me. In fact, I would say another life hack that immediately almost anybody who has back pain can probably look at implementing

would be to get a lumbar pillow. I have so many now, there's one in my car, there's one that goes in the bag that I travel with, there's one on the seat there, and then there's some just strewn around my house. If you go on to get lumbar, which is... Your lumbar is the one that we recommend for cars and your office chair. We have the embrace air for larger couches for watching the telly. We have one for sleeping with. If people sleep on their back or they're your curvy woman, for example, and you're sleep on your side, it fills in the middle of your waist and stops some of the deviations that

trigger pain. We even have them for post-surgical patients who have a scar up their midline and a middle tenderness and the whole middle is scalloped out and just puts pressure on either side. So there's several variants and they were all developed because of need and requests by specific individuals. Why can people go to get that? Backfitpro.com once again. Okay, fantastic. It's you and they ship worldwide.

Thank you, man. It's such a shame I was looking forward to coming to see you again last year, but a global pandemic stopped us, but it will be soon I will get to see you again. Well, come in the winter next time. You'll have a different experience. Oh, well, on your turbo on your turbocharged snowmobile. It's not turbocharged, you know, I... It will be if you get finished with it. If someone doesn't stop you from tinkering with it, you're going to put a super charger on it. No, I don't need a supercharger.

If you give me a cold, like it's minus 20 out there now, you give it. It's, you know, I'm pushing 140 horsepower right now. And if you get, it's a two-stroke engine, minus 20 when you crack the throttle, you cannot get any more traction that one, then one I'm gonna get now. So a turbo charge, if you wanna go 140 miles an hour,

you will need a turbo. I don't. Just take it steady, okay? Please, with the love of God. Look, thank you so much for your time. Fantastic. Thanks again, Chris for all you. Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah