Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 488 - Stuart McGill

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

Dr. Stuart M. McGill is a former professor at the University of Waterloo, where he was a professor for 30 years. His laboratory and experimental research clinic investigates issues related to the causal mechanisms of back pain, how to rehab back-pain and enhance both injury resilience and performance. He has taught thousands of clinicians and practitioners in professional development and continuing education courses around the world and continues as the Chief Scientific Officer for Backfitpro Inc. Difficult back cases are regularly referred to him for consultation. Dr. McGill's Back Mechanic Book: https://amzn.to/2N1lA9O Video enhanced: https://amzn.to/3rPrI3H Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Hey everybody, this episode of Mark Biles Power Project Podcast is brought to you by Element Electrolytes. What's up guys? So, you know how here, you know, all of us love using these electrolytes. Pre-workout, intra-workout, post-workout, love? Love. Did I say love or love? Love. Anyway, love. Anyway, you know, Mark... L-O-F-E.

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You can go grab yours right now by heading over to drinklmnt.com slash powerproject. Again, it's absolutely free for the Recharge Pack. Or, like I i said we like using the value bundle because that's literally the best value head there right now what up power project crew this is josh setledge aka settlegate here to introduce you to our next guest dr stewart mcgill dr stewart mcgill is a former professor at the university of waterloo where he was a professor for 30 years. His laboratory and experimental research clinic investigates issues related to the causal mechanisms of back pain,

how to rehab from back pain, and how to enhance both injury resilience and performance. His sound advice is often sought out by governments, corporations, legal experts, medical groups, and elite athletes and teams from around the world. Dr. Stuart McGill's work has produced over 240 peer-reviewed scientific journal papers, several textbooks, and many international awards, as well as mentored over 37 graduate students. He has taught thousands of clinicians and practitioners in professional development and continuing education courses around the world and continues as the chief scientific officer for BackFit Pro Incorporated. Difficult back cases are regularly referred to him for consultation.

On a side note, Dr. Stuart McGill has also handcrafted his own boat, but that is a different story. Please enjoy our conversation with our next guest dr stewart mcgill but i think that's even that's the thing even for competitive lifters if they're able to handle themselves kind of like you know stirretted when he came and ended his max he had 70 pounds left in the tank oh yeah but if a competitive lifter can handle themselves in their training and they're um you know even even on meat day, right? Think about this. On meat day, you know, you're going for a PR, but let's say that your actual PR that you hit is eight kilos off what you could actually hit.

Then you're still hitting a meat PR. You're still hitting a new overall total, but you're not reaching that point where you're potentially going to get injured. I mean, I know something can happen even with submaximal lifts, but the likelihood is way less. I think a lot of the Russian lifters have been a great example of that.

They very rarely look like they're doing a real max. They are keeping things within their wheelhouse, so to speak. Who we got coming on the podcast today, Mark? I think Josh Settlegate just introduced him, didn't he? Yeah, but I didn't hear that part. Oh, well, only the audience hears that. How come we didn't hear that? I don't know.

We should hear it too, right? Yeah, we can. Good job, Settlegate. Settlegate, take a lap. Settlegate, drop and give me 100. You know what? You can probably do 100 push-ups in a row, can't you? You can do 100 push-ups. I'mups in a row You know I'm not gonna

I don't take credit for things But I'm gonna take credit for the name Settlegate Because I made that mistake Let's not forget I didn't own it at first because I felt ashamed But now since everyone likes calling him Settlegate I'm like motherfucker I named you I named you

He doesn't even seem thankful for it he's kind of disrespectful yeah in a lot of ways yeah i fucked your name up so thank you hey i gotta mention that uh i don't know when the video is gonna pop up but it's gonna pop up on the super training 06 uh youtube channel but we're uh we're doing some new stuff on there we're doing some fun stuff on there trying to revive the channel um trying to get out get out those paddles that you rub together and you say clear and you go and you hit somebody in the heart with it. I'm trying to inject some life back into it. So we got the Natty Professor is going to take you guys through some really cool stuff that I think you guys will enjoy.

It's stronger in five minutes, right? Stronger in five minutes. Can we really get stronger in five minutes? You said we can get stronger in 30 days. So why can't we do it in 5 Minutes? Yeah, I love how you just chopped that down so much. Stronger in 5 Minutes. As long as no other channels create Stronger in 4 Minutes. No, the video was great, and I think people will like it. You were funny. You were fun.

You shared a lot of great information, and people are going to dig it. So check that out whenever you get a chance. But, yeah, today we got Stuart McGill on the podcast, and he is going to teach us about lower back mechanics. I've been trying to think about the guests that we've had on the show and the level. We've had some tremendous guests. We've had some people who are kind of on the rise in their career,

and we've had some goats on the show as well. And he's a goat. I mean, he's, when you talk about back pain, you talk about biomechanics, and you talk about spinal injuries and how the spine works, his name comes up every single time. This is the guy, you know, almost like you have the ability to ask God questions about how the spine works. This is, this is the, the guy, you know, almost like, uh, you have, uh, the ability to ask God questions about how the spine works in a sense, like this is the opportunity today. So we're going to ask him a lot of stuff that's kind of dumb and kind of elementary, but you

might, you know, that might be the question that you might have, you know, how to stand, how to walk, you know, how to do all these things. What I think is interesting about Stuart McGill is his overall demeanor seems to be like-minded with what we share on the show. It's like, well, it depends, which is the most frustrating answer of all time. So he talks about how he worked with an athlete. This is actually really funny. I would be very curious on who it is. I kind of have in my

mind who i think it is but um i think it might be lorenzo neal that played for the chargers but i'm just purely speculating but he talked about a football player that he worked with um who was like 510 and like 250 and just stacked you know the guy was real jacked and lorenzo neal is one of the greatest fullbacks in the history of football he He used to just level people. He was amazing. Anyway, the guy he was working with, he said his ass was so big that it was hard to try to find a position for him to sleep in because he liked to sleep on his back. But his lower back was miles away from him. Right. So McGill said, he goes, picture this.

He was like, when he was laying down on the floor, he's like, I could crawl my whole body probably underneath. There was so much space on, you know, the guy who was working with, uh, he had a real wagon back there, I guess. Anyway, uh, he said that ultimately he, he built like a bladder for him and he pumped it up with some air to, to kind of, uh, mitigate the stress in the lower back and to give this person, you know, some personalized, you know, personalized thing that fit them and customized to their size. And that's what McGill will tell you time and time again when you ask him, like, hey, how should we deadlift? And he'll kind of be like, well, it depends on how your body moves.

Yeah. I've worked with a lot of people over the years thousands of people on on dead lifting and there's been times where i've had to tell people hey you know you're gonna need to look up you know and they look up and sometimes i gotta have them look up uh you know just out in front of them sometimes i have to have them look up a lot because uh it just sets their chin in the right place and the mechanics of everything else look really good sometimes it's even hard to to describe. There's been other times where I'm like, you got to put your head down. You got to actually look at the ground. I've had people, I'm like, just, you know, look at your feet when you're lifting. And I don't recommend that to everybody because for someone

that's really mobile, that probably wouldn't work very well. They'd probably be rounded over. Yeah. But for someone that's really mobile, it's like you're trying to you're trying to find or for anybody you're trying to find something that they can lock into where the back looks neutral the back looks fairly straight shot of kratom down the old hatch there we go we'll do half of this first we don't want to get too loopy see how it hits me but andrew before steward gets on i just want people to like take some action on something real quick you read the whole of back mechanic i haven't finished it yet and back mechanic such a good book because it allows you as an individual to go through and diagnose yourself with your back issues and figure out how to make it work how'd that book work for you man it's dude

um it's i can't even put it into words but yeah yeah, Back Mechanic, the book, I'll link it down in the YouTube and podcast show notes. But like we had Bo Hightower here and he, you know, he jabbed me and got my psoas loose, I guess that's what he did. Yeah. Yeah. Excuse me? Because he was like, I know, right? Yeah, daddy.

There's the daddy job. Oh my gosh. Sorry, I had to do it. It was early. No, he was like, what, like what movements like hurt your back? And I'm like, well shit, when I do like anything, it freaking hurts. He's like, but what like paint? Like, I'm like, I don't know, dude, it hurts all the time.

So going through back mechanic, he has you do exercises and he tells you up front, like, Hey, like, yeah, we're, we are going to try to aggravate your back a little bit, but it's just that way we can figure out what your issues are and by doing that i'm just like oh shit this whole time you know like learning little tricks here and there to like help kind of ease some of the pain a lot of it is just like he wants you to spend less time in pain more time in positions that don't hurt like okay does it hurt to i don't know do the dishes this certain way? Okay, do them this way. You know, that way it's just a little better.

Dude, why is that? Why does your back get so pumped doing dishes? Fucking terrible. It's so bad. My mom would always say that everything in the house was designed by a man. She's like, because they never spend any time doing any of this shit, and they don't realize how bad it kills your back. It just ruins.

Like doing laundry or using like a vacuum. She's like, this is all created by men. Because if a woman designed it, it would be a lot more efficient for your lower back. It would make a lot of sense. How intimidating is that mustache right now? Look at that. Unbelievable. Good morning, Mark. It's been a long time.

Yeah, I'm absolutely super pumped to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for spending part of your day with us. I appreciate it. You bet. I've been looking forward to this, and we're going to have a blast. Absolutely. So I know that a lot of times in a lot of your interviews, I've been following your work for a long time. I know a lot of times we end up with you saying it depends because it depends on the way someone's built and the way, you know, we're all built very differently. So there doesn't seem to be like, you know, one best exercise or it doesn't seem to be one best position for all of us to hang out in, in terms of trying to manage

lower back pain. Is that right? Yeah. Have we started? We did. We did. Yeah. Okay.

I didn't realize that. Who's with you? I got Insima over here. Hello. And I have- Insima. Yep. Am I saying that right?

You're saying it absolutely perfectly yes okay and we got in sema i've ever uh known so i'm gonna write that down because this is an old brain and we got uh andrew as well andrew is uh andrew yeah andrew thank you for your uh professionalism and getting me uh here in one piece. Of course. We really appreciate your time, so thank you. Yeah. Okay.

And if you've been following what we've been doing, Mark, I've been following you. We have a little hall of – wall of fame, whatever you want to call it here at BackFit Pro. And I can think of two power magazine covers. One with Brian Carroll, and it's signed, of course. And the other one was with the great Blaine Sumner as well. He posted that on our little wall as well. But anyway, thanks for all you do, And, uh, you've been a great, uh, source of entertainment. I know that you've, uh, you've had an opportunity to work with like,

you know, someone like an Ed Cohn, you know, like Ed Cohn is, is considered the greatest power lifter of all time. And most likely he'll, he, he always will be. Um, what was special about Ed Cohn's just body in general that, that allowed him, you know, in all the years of you seeing people lift and perform at such a high level, what made Ed unique and was able to handle the, the, the type of weights that he was able to do and the type of training that he was able to handle over the years? Well, first of all, I haven't worked on the platform. I've only taught with him. So, uh, and you know, I haven't worked with Ed on the platform. I've only taught with him.

So, you know, we've had a couple of dinners together and those kinds of things. So just to clarify that. But what makes Ed, it's just so multifactorial. If you're the best in the world, you're very special. And that specialty, whatever it is, is probably not unidimensional. So, of course, we can talk about Ed's body type with, you know, his massive hands, the length of his hands and his arms. You know, you can read his T-shirt logo and you'll get what I'm talking about. But, you know, this is the thing of an event like powerlifting. What gives you great advantage on the pull, which, you know, he was just light years beyond everybody else, could also be considered a disadvantage for the bench, as you know. So what made him so great? Well, certainly on the pull,

he had the fabulous lever lengths, shorter femurs, longer arms. That means you don't have to pull as far. But the other things about Ed is we can talk about this, and I don't know if now is the time, but very high-level discussions on things like densifying neural drive, it gets to the very core of what strength is and what I measure in the great ones. Do you want to have that? Absolutely. Yeah. People are probably dying to hear more about that. Right. So it doesn't matter. I can tell stories about Bill Kazmaier, I can tell stories about Kaz, Bill Kazmaier, Alexeyev, the great Russian super weight, super heavyweight Olympian, Ed Cohn, Brian Carroll, Andy Bolton, you know, I can just, Blaine Sumner, strength starts with a thought. The brain organizes those thoughts into nerve impulse trains.

Those have to be dense. Now, you know, when I used to arm wrestle and that kind of thing, the first thing I would do is play the psychological game to get the opponent to smile. And right away, I knew I could break their density of neural drive. So where I'm headed with the first part of the story is every one of those men and some of the great women as well who've been on your show all have a very dark place to go in order to densify neural drive you know it's well documented that say a mom might be uh they'll they'll see her child under a car pinned and it's well documented mom goes and picks up the front end of that car she evulses her bicep she burst fractures the vertebra but damn she

lifted the car somewhere in her ability was that densification of neural drive uh it it's different than fight or flight response though you have to be on the verge of the ability to commit murder. It's a full self-sacrifice and your body is full of inhibitors. You have to inhibit the inhibitors. And when you get to that very dark place in your brain, you can now inhibit the inhibitors and we measure that densification. So that's the beginning of it. You know, I can think of some great Olympians on the platform. They say they're doing a clean and jerk to move away from powerlifting to Olympic lifting for a minute. And I think of this one star. He already owned three world records.

He had the next one. It was a clean and jerk. He did the clean and he knew he had the next world record and he allowed himself a little bit of an internal smile, if you know what I mean. He lost his density and of course he lost the lift and the record. So my point is that that game face, which people can relate to, but it's much more than that, that very dark place to go. And I'm sure both of you know what I'm talking about. Most people, most power lifters do not. And that's why they're not Ed Cohn. That's why they're not Kaz or Brian Carroll or anyone else. The next part of the story is to convert that density of thought and the inhibition of all

of the inhibitors to get the nerves to then carry the signal. So the nerves are the highway. Have they been trained to carry the densest possible volley of pulses? So that comes from basically grinding training. So get under the load, grind it out. So, you know, if you're in a bench press situation, I love the bench for teaching density of neural drive to the neural hardware. You know, you're getting to the sticking point, you're transitioning off the pec, moving on to the tricep and whatnot. You're pulling the bar, bending the bar, compressing the bar in a mindful way to densify and don't lose that thought and then keep burning the nerves to carry as much electricity as they possibly can.

You can start the whole thing with the neural charge and the pulse to use a Russian technique, for example. And then, of course, all of the muscular training at the other end. So tricks like more hand grip all help to focus and take away the leakage of the neural drive. the neural drive. You know, so we started this talking about what made Ed Cohn great. There was another feature that, you know, I've had conversations with Ed about this. And I will, I'll give another example. So years before I actually met Bill Kazmar,

when he was world's strongest man in setting the various events, he trained with a fellow named McLaughlin. And I would talk to him and he would describe some of the what I call neuromuscular compartment training in his back. I'd ask him, you know, how does Kazmaier get the back that he gets? in his back. I'd ask him, you know, how does Kazmaier get the back that he gets? And meanwhile, remember that there were physical therapists in Australia and places like this saying, oh, well, if you're trying to activate back muscle, you should focus on the middle of the back, the multifidus muscles, and try and swell up your back muscles and move medial to lateral. And I thought this didn't make sense to me because in the laboratory, we measured the brain never organized the back muscles and the erector spinae to activate medial to lateral,

you know, multifidus, iliocostalis, longissimus thoracis, etc. The brain activates the neuromuscular compartments in the erector spinae up and down the spine. So, you know, this is what we were measuring in the lab. And then McLaughlin tells me that Kazmaier is getting on something like, well, similar to a Saunders total back or using a bench, putting a sharp edge on his chest, focusing his brain on the neuromuscular compartments in that section of the erectors, just getting a unilateral connection of his brain to that compartment, sliding the pad down, going to the next neuromuscular compartment, up and down his spine. In other words, if you're a clinician who works with scoliosis and children, and you're

trying to educate their brain to activate erector spinae on both sides, it's exactly that kind of compartmental training. So when I finally met Kaz and I said, you know, Kaz, how did you know that the brain was organized that way? How did you know that that training was what gave you the ability in your back? And he said, Stu, I only knew what worked. And it was a funny story about that. I don't know if you know the Swiss meetings. Yeah, absolutely. The symposium. Yeah, Ken Kanaken.

Very familiar. Yeah, Ken organizes those. He's a fabulous fella. And he brings, you know, eggheads like me and Kaz and Cone, Dorian Yates. And, you know, just the most magnificent personalities to this thing. And you can, when you go for dinner, the conversations you can have. It's usually held in Canada, correct? Always in Canada. Come on.

Come on, eh? Anyway, see, I'm getting old now. I'm off track. But just so at the last one, he can gets up to the microphone at the dinner banquet. And he says, you know, this next guy, it's a career award we're going to give to this guy. So he calls my name. I was stunned. I could hardly get out of my chair.

And then I get up onto the podium to accept this career award, and he hands me a little note on a piece of paper. And it says, please introduce the next career award winner, Bill Kazmaier. But don't say anything about his name until the end. So I'm standing at the podium, and I've got to concoct an awards speech in 30 milliseconds. Thanks, Ken. Anyway, but I told that story of going back to the very first time I met Kaz. And it was a beautiful demonstration of where hopefully good science. We weren't teaching the great athletes.

The great athletes were confirming some of the observations we were making in the clinic and the lab. Our laboratory, by the way, is a very heavy weight room. But anyway, it was just a wonderful fusion of guys who really were successful at doing it versus honing it through having a little bit more of a knowledge science. Can I add something else just came in my brain? Can I add one more thought to this specification of neural drive? There's some folks on the internet, they have a little go at me every now and then,

and I think, you know, I don't know any of them who've worked with a world-class athlete or brought one from a very dark injury time in their life and brought them back onto the platform. But they still say, oh, this stability stuff doesn't matter. And I said, really? If you put a spine under half a ton of load and if this wonky stack of oranges isn't stabilized, you're in big trouble. But anyway, what happens when a strength athlete damages a joint? You might not be able to see it on an MRI. You might. But here's what happens.

You know, when you damage a knee ligament, the knee is now a little bit lax. It's lost its controlling stiffness. Everybody seems to understand that, but they don't get it with spines for some reason. So consider this joint as normal and the L3 and L5 S1 is normal, but this one has lost a little bit of stiffness. There's a little end plate fracture in there, which I can show you a minute if you wish, but now watch what happens. I'm going to apply a torque from above. Do you see how the majority of the movement is taking place at the joint that's lost its stiffness. So that micro movement is an instability. But here is why it's the kiss of death to a strength athlete. And one of the best demonstrations I have is you go back to World's Strongest Man, I believe it was at 2018 that was in Mogadishu in Africa.

That sounds accurate. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was 2018. And all the lads got under this. It was a jig, and the load on the shoulders was somewhere around 750 pounds. And they had to squat for reps, hitting the weight on an anvil for reps. Whoever squatted 750 for the highest reps won. But it was a magnificent demonstration of how a little bit of instability shuts you down. It's a kiss of death for densifying neural drive. So go back and watch that on YouTube. And don't watch the rep that each competitor failed on. Watch the rep before failure, and you will see it every single time with your eye. You'll see the athlete, if I can just move this down.

Can you still see me from back here? We got you. Yeah. So you'll see the guys under the jig, and they're squatting away to depth. And then on the one before they fail, you'll see the hips just slide out a little bit. Or you'll just see a little buckle. Or you'll see the line of drive from the bar just off two millimeters.

And at that point, they'll get that lift. But they will not get the next one because it's now shut down. The fuse box has been invoked. So the last part of that densification of neural drive is, you know, find your footwear that roots you to the ground. Manage this line of drive and the external stability, but also the internal stability. And my world is the spine, obviously. But you've got to manage out that history legacy of injury in that athlete.

Know what it is and know what is sufficient stiffness to arrest it and allow the full expression of neural drive to take place anyway i have talked way way too much and i want to hear from you no that was uh there's a there's a no there's a little start on no that was absolutely beautifully said um managed a line of you know you're trying, you're trying to, you're trying to manage it and you can't, what we share on this show all the time is it's very difficult to manage it at a hundred percent. So let's reduce the loads the way Ed Cohn used to do after every competition, he would bring the weights down. He would do the lifts correctly every single time. And it was very, very rare to ever see Ed Cohn demonstrate poor form. He might be offline a

little bit, as you kind of worded it. He might be offline a little bit when it was in competition and it was his last deadlift or something like that. But he stuck to the weights that he could manage. And I loved your explanation of how strength can, you know, going for those big numbers can sometimes hurt us when we go past our capacity or when we're brushing up against that capacity. Do you think some of these athletes are able to kind of brush it up against managing this neural drive, maybe a little bit more so in their training than the next person? And maybe it's due to just the way that they're practicing it versus somebody who just kind of runs into a roadblock all the time. Very wise. You're absolutely correct. So to get back to Ed, one of Ed's mantras was don't fail. Every time you fail, you pollute the engram or the muscle memory of that perfect lift so when you talk to ed say how many times in your life have you achieved the perfect lift well you say that

to a kid you know when i was lecturing at the university i'd say does everyone know how to bench press oh yeah they'd put up their hand and i just think oh oh, like hell. They haven't a clue out of bench press. They haven't a clue. And, you know, and then I would say, but here's the greatest lifter of all time. And he will tell you, he still hasn't pulled out that perfect lift from his body yet. And so, but your question about, can they brush up against that defined capacity? And the answer is yes, because they build reserve. So again, in your wisdom in saying Ed wasn't greedy, Ed always had a strategy of when he set a world record

or went to a heavy meet, he would do two a year. And the rest of it, right after the meet, you know, you go on someone's social media and as soon as they've set a record, they say, and now I'm going for my next one. I said, brother, you've got to now allow your body to adapt to what you just did, to brush that capacity a little higher. And failure and getting greedy, you will actually decrease your capacity. We can talk about micro fracturing and delamination of the collagen in the discs and all these kinds of processes where when you work below the tipping point, it's very anabolic. You're stimulating positive adaptation. You can brush the tipping point, but when you cross it, it just became a catabolic

process, which you will get away with for a very brief period of time. And then the rate of repair is running ahead now. Sorry, the rate of accumulative trauma, microtrauma is running ahead of the rate of repair. And that's when people get clobbered and they do it time and time again. It's cyclic. But but again to summarize your point uh people like ed they would build a capacity by never failing uh uh honoring the deload and the tissue adaptation so this is their capacity this is where they would train and they would come up and they tickle their capacity and win. But normally, because they never broke form and they just lift singles and this kind of thing, they had a reserve capacity. And now that reserve capacity gets flipped over and

allows you to brush death and survive. I love the way that you talk about this stuff with such enthusiasm. And then what I also love is that there's some other people that I'll sometimes hear talking about stuff, but I don't really see them, you know, testing it out the way that you're testing it out, like in the weight room. And then on top of you testing it out in the weight room,

you have a lot of evidence of being around and with a lot of these great athletes over the years. It sounds to me the way that you're talking about this, that you recognize that strength is a form of genius. Do you think it's a form of genius? And if you do, can you kind of put into words why you think strength might be a form of genius? form of genius? When I work with someone who has done something that no other human has, and I've been very lucky, I've been with the ones who are the fastest, the strongest in grinding strength, the strongest in power strength, the strongest in the ability to contract and relax muscle. So when I measured some of the top UFC weight division champions,

they contract and relax muscle six times faster than our graduate students in the laboratory. So when they, you know, it is, if I pulse and then I try and, we would measure the punching and kicking forces of the guys with big muscles and they pushed their punches whoa but the guys who you had to look out for are and when we measured what created that magnificent knockout it was the ability to contract muscle so you contract muscle and then you relax muscle with as you increase closing velocity to the target and then when you hit the target, it's a second pulse. So it's a double pulse. It's a boom, boom. And I've talked a lot about this. You know, I'm sure you've heard of GSP, George St. Pierre, the great Canadian welterweight.

You know, when you talk to George, I hear the boom, boom. And what was that when we measured it? It was boom or on a high kick. I mean, when he was going to kick you in the head, the first boom was boom, just that. And then when a muscle contracts, it creates force, but it also creates stiffness. So maximum force, you can't move. And that doesn't serve a fighter very well. So it's a pulse to get it going. You know, you can't fire a shell off a canoe. It's got to come from a battleship, a place of inertia. And then you relax the muscle, let it fly. And then when you come through the target, boom, boom, boom.

muscle let it fly and then when you come through the target boom boom boom and uh they had that ability six times faster so i would say uh to a an olympic lifter you know where are they failing well they might be strong enough and you know, this was always so such a contrast for me with that when I would work with, say, a Russian trained athlete or coaching group versus an American, you know, where the American was more strength-orientated and focused, and the Russian was more muscles on, muscles off, training the brain and the nerves rather than the muscles. So they would pulse, and then they had to relax. And how crazy do you have to be to get under a bar and snatch it in a relaxed way? Because if you carry stiffness, you won't catch the snatch. And, you know, it's 100 kilos that's going to come down and squash you. So what increases that ability? Well, you know, this is what I learned from the Russians.

I would take a stick and the lifter would have their hands hovering over the bar like this. And I would just drop the bar and they would have to try and catch the bar. Now, the ability, you won't do this with muscle. You will only do it being in a relaxed state. And there you've got it. Now we're ready to start adding load. So in those lifting situations, speed came first, that ability to relax. And even with power lifters, too, you know, to start the initial, you know, you load into the elastic region and then really potentiate the recovery of elasticity with a boom.

and then really potentiate the recovery of elastic elasticity with a, you know, and maybe similar to like an Elon Musk or somebody like that, that we look up to, uh, these athletes are able to tap into parts of the brain that for whatever reason, some other people, uh,

aren't able to gain access to it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm sorry. I got so excited. So enthusiastic. I forgot your original question, which was one of genius. And I see you're pulling me back to that. Thank you. Yeah, no, you're right. by all the NBA players know him, but he doesn't play in the NBA. The guy's name is Jordan Kilgannon. He was the halftime show at the NBA All-Star Game three or four years ago. And he put on a show of

dunking that was, you know, he'd leap over a car and a motorcycle and spin in the air, put it behind his back. He did the most amazing dunks. The guy's six foot one. And, but, you know, I, if I said, and the hammer comes out of the gluteals. Boom. And, you know, you can propel a stone through impact, but you can't push a rope. and his ability to organize his body at that instant in time into a stone, hit it with the hammer of the glutes, and just fly as the great NBA player. So yeah, there's a genius there. No question. I got into that fighting analogy with the MMA guys to go a little bit further than that,

in that many people who don't get the opportunity to work with some of these fellows think they're brutes. And I really haven't met one yet. Every one of them is an incredibly intelligent of their mind. Talk to them. What's the most difficult part of what you do in the UFC? And some of the honest ones, well, they're honest. I didn't mean to say it that way. But the ones who are frank will say, you know, when I have to leave that dressing room and my friends and walk through the crowd, I'm going into a cage where I might not come out of. But, you know, I'm going to the hospital anyway. And how do they manage that and that genius, that full spectrum. So anyway, yeah, they're, uh,

you, you, you get my life. It's, uh, absolutely fabulous. You know how I would explain that, uh, Mark and you, you send me in SEMA, it's all good. It's not easy, manma it's all good it's not easy man i'm so sorry it's all good yeah and sema the effort was there okay um you were saying the way you would explain it well well it was it was just the analogy i can give is i don't know how many car mechanics are in the u.s but pick a number say there's 30,000 car mechanics across the u.s how many of them get to work on an f1 race car one week a indy 500 car the next a daytona car the next a baja race car i get to that. I get to play with the absolute Ferraris and Lamborghinis. And it's so cool to go between the different athleticisms and sport. But if you're the best in the world, you're a genius for sure. Dr. McGill, yo, I'm super pumped right now. And there's so many things I wrote down. I got some wood myself over here.

right now and there's so many things i wrote down i got some wood myself over here so dude god um but i think the first thing that i want to kind of see if we can understand a little bit is because when you mentioned the densifying of neural drive and you mentioned that a lot of these top level athletes to achieve these crazy levels of strength or crazy feats of athleticism, they go to a dark place. I know a lot of power lifters or a lot of people were thinking, oh, okay, so just get really angry. Think of some trauma or just like think of something really dark to help me get this lift. But I want to know from you, from what you've seen, how can you see this applied? Because when I personally think of that dark place, I, when I did powerlifting or when I was focused on that, I tried the whole getting pumped and

angry thing or whatever didn't work for me. The best thing that worked for me personally, in terms of that dark place was going to a place of no emotion at all. And when I was able to like, just everything was empty. I was able to just boom like things worked well and i find that with martial arts too if i don't think and if i just like zone in and i'm i'm emotionless and i think i'm i'm thinking of the emotionless thing because you mentioned you could kill a person now i'm not saying i would kill a person but when i do that it's like i get what you're saying so i want to know for for lifters who want to tap into this or get to a point where they can maybe try to tap into that what does that even look like i should run upstairs and get my wife

who's a sports psychologist so you use the magic word getting in the zone and for someone to get in the zone they need such a command of what it is they need to do. A game player has to watch the game evolve. That's partly inherent, of course, but it's also the practice and the years that they've put into this. Then they express what we call engrams or what a coach might call muscle memory. And they have such a bank of muscle memories or engrams that they can call upon those and flow in the zone. And, you know, I just know myself, someone asked me the other day something about quality of lecturing.

And I said, well, you know, I think I've maybe done one good lecture in my life where I was in the zone absolutely completely. I was lost. It flowed. And then when I went back to think about it, I couldn't. It wasn't anywhere in there. But then someone had made a video of it. And I said, damn, that's a good lecture. But I was totally in the zone.

And as you know, you get in there. Now, how do you get there is what eludes a lot of people. And again, I can just offer some examples. I can just offer some examples. You know, there are the headbangers and the guys who get slapped and sniff ammonias and all this kind of stuff before they go on to a powerlifting platform. But then you go back to a guy like Kaz. Again, he would use quite a bit of Russian dictum. Fat tongue.

Lean back. You'll see this with the Eastern Europeans when they approach the platform. And, well, many Americans, too. They lean back and they let the tongue fall to the back of the throat. So, Encima, your description of emotionless relaxation is very much a Russian technique. That's the beginning of it, the fat tongue. Relax, let your arms waver, and then start to organize the engrams in your brain of what you're going to have to execute. And then Kaz would then go into, you could see it, Kaz would then go into, you could see it.

He would get goosebumps. The sweat would start to come off his brow. He wasn't using foul language or swearing or banging his head against the wall. That was someone else's gig. But it was the way he got to that dark place to create the densification. So different strokes for different folks. It sounds to me as though you're more in the Kaz camp. and when it comes to strength i know there's some commonalities you mentioned it very briefly about grip um what what is it about grip and what is it about i i correct me if i'm wrong i think a lot of the neural drive can also come from like neck strength as well uh if there is a

connection what what is the connection between the grip? Like, why do you think the grip and the neck strength? Like, if you're just to test someone who's, you know, if you have a group of 50 people and you test people out, someone's got a stronger grip and a stronger neck, they most likely are going to be the strongest person in the group when you have them demonstrate a bunch of different types of lifts and things like like that depending on whether they've done them before or not obviously but what is the connection between the grip and the neck uh i don't know how eloquent i can be about it except to describe the techniques to make it work because i've measured the techniques i haven't done the full investigations as to what the mechanisms are. So I think there's

a lot of neurology that I can't explain except you inhibit the inhibitors and getting your body tight. So think of the number of sports where you'll hear the coach. It could be gymnastics. It could be the last quarter mile of a marathon even. Don't break form. Stay tight. These kind of mental images to keep stability and control where the body needs it so you keep inhibiting the inhibitors. And grip strength is a huge one. So if you just take your arm at its side, Ansema, and Mark, you put your hand over the deltoid of Ansema's right shoulder. Let's do it. Now, Ansema, yes. Now, just feel what goes on in the shoulder.

Ansema, don't activate your shoulder. What I simply want you to do is in your hand, start to squeeze and keep squeezing. Now go to the dark place and squeeze your hand now because you're going to commit murder. What just went on in the shoulder, Mark? Yeah, I felt the entire shoulder all the way from the front, the side, all the way to the back. Right. So this is the principle of irradiation. So the hand grip, you know, I see these athletes coming in and they're all pumped up on you know what. And then they have these little kitten computer hands and someone forgot to train their hands. And I said, give me a break, son.

You better start climbing a rope. forgot to train their hands. And I said, give me a break, son. You better start climbing a rope, put a towel over that bar and start to get rid of all the handles and start gripping some fat things and pull ropes and towels and all the rest of it and get a pair of mitts. So anyway, that irradiation through the body not only comes distally to proximal but it also comes proximal to distal so if i uh again you know we we would set you up on an arm wrestle uh platform and we'd lock in the core and just with more core more core lock the elbow and then let the big joints just do the work you don't even have to pull with your arm do you see what i mean that's a that's a proximal to distal form of um don't let the weaker joint go into an eccentric contraction just dominate it with the concentrics through the big power centers.

But there's a few thoughts anyway. How do you guys test the density of neural drive? You mentioned doing so with weights. Can you give us a couple examples? Yes. Well, in the laboratory, we would use EMG electromyography. And you're familiar with surface electrodes that you stick onto the skin over muscles. We also did intramuscular EMG. I was one of the first guys in the world ever to have

electrodes implanted into my quadratus lumborum, deep psoas, deep back muscles, and that kind of thing. We did that work. I was a visiting professor for a year at the medical school in Switzerland in the University of Bern, where we did that original intramuscular work. And it was so interesting. Three days a week, I worked at the university. And two days a week, I worked at the Swiss Olympic Training Center, at the Swiss Olympic Training Center, their national training center. So I had access to all the Swiss Olympians, etc. As great an athlete as they were, I would have all of them deadlift. I would be monitoring the back muscle activation.

So, you know, someone will say, oh, well, I want to get strong. I'm going to do a deadlift. And I said, okay, well, what kind of strength are you looking for? Oh, I want back strength. And I usually at that point don't say too much unless they pull it out of me. But you can only activate your erector spinae to about 65, maybe 70% of neural drive and you can be the world champ and if you're doing form you're somewhere in that region you have to do other things to get 100 neural drive so we measure the amplitude of that electromyographic signal. And each one is a pulse. It is a pulse from the brain down the nerve. So it is a one-to-one measurement of the density of neural drive. So that's how we do it. And it's how we evaluate the business I was describing earlier about how the brain organizes neuromuscular compartments,

but within muscles and between muscles. And, you know, I'm working on a project right now, and basically it's weight room barbell strength versus farm boy strength. So carry a couple of hay bales that are wet, you know, 100 pounds a piece versus a couple of kettlebells, which have a very centralized mass versus something that needs control because it's bouncing around a little bit. Or, you know, when we start using earthquake bars, chains, bands, you know, all the great things that I see going on at your operation. So those kinds of things we measure through electromyography on their ability to transition into what we would call a farm boy strength. So there's no weaknesses. Pure barbell training can create and hide some weaknesses. I know firsthand what you mean by farm boy strength, because I've

like, I've done jujitsu with guys that have worked on farms and their bodies don't necessarily look necessarily strong. And also construction workers, their bodies don't look strong. But once they grip your wrist or once they grip your gi, it's like it's demoralizing. It's like I look at myself and I'm like, you know, I thought my grip strength was decent, but this person grabs me and like my wrist goes numb. It's like you can't train that in the gym or you can but you have to be precise about what you do what's more humbling is when you roll around with a farm girl man that's grip strength oh i didn't mean it in probably the way you might have thought. Yeah. I meant real jujitsu. Yeah.

You know, I was curious about this because when you were talking about the kiss of death and the, what happens to the spine, it made me wonder about, um, power lifters specifically who use the mixed grip deadlift. And they, I just wonder doing that over and over same grip year over year, year over year, getting stronger and stronger. Could that lead to long-term issues because like one wrong rep, right? Could it, could that happen? Is it, is there a way to mediate that? Like maybe switching your mixed grip or, I mean, I like hook grip, but not everybody

can necessarily hook grip a deadlift. So is that a problem? And if so, how can power lifters try to mediate that for the long term? With Mark's opening comments, I've been so trying to avoid starting the answer with it depends. This is a it depends. I'm sorry. It's okay.

Anyway, so your synopsis was right on. Absolutely for a lot of people. As soon as you start getting in that asymmetry of, you're hiding the weakness of grip strength to compromise. You're over under and I need more barbell bend to get even more stiffness to unleash more hip horsepower to pull the hips through. And that's where they're failing. It's a problem. It may be a, yeah, they just can't hook up with the shoulder and back on that one side. So we go right back to grip strength when they come in with that back problem, which they say, well, I've got a sore back.

My hands are fine. I said, no, they're not. I need a foundation there. So but, you know, I think of, you know, you ever heard of John Brookfield, who's an American strongman man but he's a manual hand strength strong man so he just takes metal objects and he bends them and forms them with his hand in fact he lives in uh i think it's called pinehurst north carolina and they have a sculpture downtown uh pinehurst, North Carolina, hand bent. Sorry about that. Hand bent by John Brookfield. So John got into all of this because when he was a young man, he felt he had weak hands. So he started to dedicate himself to hand strength training. And now he's at the point where he is just ungodly with his manual strength.

So I think there's a lot of wisdom in what you said. And a lot of people are defined at the end point by their grip strength, which is too bad. So it doesn't matter. Sorry. You teach people all kinds of different things, how to sit, how to stand, how to walk, how to put their shoes on, how to tie their shoes and so forth. What are some things maybe that some people that work, some commonalities that you see amongst some people that have lower back trauma, have lower back issues, something that they might not be aware of, that they're not practicing, you know, in their day to day. And I do understand it really depends on body types and it depends on if your back injuries from a car accident or you just lifting some weights. And I'm sure there's a wide variety of back injuries we can get into,

but just in general, are there some things that you find really common amongst people with some spinal injuries? I don't want to be smart here, Mark, but can I play a game and replace the whole essay you just spoke, but not use back pain, let's use leg pain. Now, just go through the logic of, oh, I've got leg pain, What's the commonality? Do you see? We would never accept that. We would have to say, do you have a broken leg? Are you burned? Do you have a tendon tear, a torn ligament? You know, whatever it is. So that's how I have to bring back the conversation. There's no such thing as nonspespecific back pain, even though you'll read piles of medical literature on non-specific back pain. So apparently nothing

works. You know, we would never have a conversation about this in any other part of the body. So all back pain is very specific. What solves your foundation for your question is get a thorough assessment and know the mechanism or pathway that leads to you. Now we can go back and say, what was the cause? Now we know exactly what we need to address. Was it a programming problem in your training? Was it that you are a sloth and you have no base capacity in your body, so you're easy to kill? You know, wind will blow you over. Or are you the total opposite?

You're an absolute warrior and you think more is better. You're anti-Ed Cohn in what I meant with the whole deload and allowing tissues to adapt. Or have you been in a car accident? And, you know, it's just awful when I see people come in and they say, well, the medical system, the insurance company, well, this is in the U.S. The medical insurance company is denying me any treatment for my neck. They say there's nothing wrong. And then, well, what started this? Oh, I was whiplashed in a car accident.

Well, hold on. Whiplash isn't going to show on an mri unless there's a fracture there but when we uh measure or do you know what a video fluoroscope is it's a real-time moving x-ray machine so when someone takes their neck through the range of motion you'll see the vertebrae flexing through and then all of a sudden that vertebrae will clunk at a certain point. And they go, ugh! You don't see that on a static MRI laying in a bed. You need a dynamic technique to be able to see that clunk occurring. So in a lot of people, they will have that mechanism. And it's very easy to find in a thorough assessment. You know,

I just might say to them, would you stand for me and pick your knee up and do a knee circle? Oh, yeah, there's my pain. I just cracked into pain. Good. Take your fingers and push them laterally into your obliques. Now, push your obliques out laterally. Bang, there they are. Now, do the knee circle. Has that trigger into back pain disappeared? And if they say yes, we just proved that adding more stiffness took away their pain. Or I might say, you know, I'll see them standing like this, and I palpate their erector spinae. They're rock hard. And I don't care how strong you are. If you

walked around with a five-pound dumbbell in your hand all day, you'd have some pretty substantial elbow flexor pain by the end of the day. But someone who walks around like this, no wonder they have erector spinae muscular pain. But I might say, you know, plank on the wall. And now extend your spine, flex your spine, flex your hips, extend your hips. Did any of those modulate your pain and if they say yeah that causes my pain or they might say that causes my pain good back them off that show them how to bend down you know squat 101 slide your hands down to your knees, stiffen, anti-shrug, become a leaning tower, come forward, push your toes down, pull your hips through and stand up.

Oh, Doc, you're amazing. You just took my pain away. So my point is that had to be matched to their very specific, not nons-specific, their very specific back pain. So the pain is just the symptom, but it doesn't give us any clues whatsoever in terms of the spine hygiene or removing the cause, which is the first job, and then allowing us to justify a very specific program to shore up the deficits so that they can start enjoying life or, in our world, load-bearing again. And somebody might have to kind of stand a certain way, maybe because of prior history of, like you said, with the head being forward.

Maybe they had a neck injury years ago that was pretty serious, and so they got to just kind of, that was pretty serious. And so they got to just kind of, the hand they're dealt, they just got to kind of deal with it. And so therefore, maybe their lower back is lit up a little bit more because as we get older, run into different issues and athletes run into all kinds of injuries over the years. So true. Who among us is not managing something? Can you think of an elite athlete who isn't managing something? They're all very successful at managing. They found a strategy that works for them. But again, it's a very personal strategy. And I'm sure if you've ever

had an injury, all your friends say, oh, well, this worked for me. Here, try it. You know, it doesn't work that way. What about the pain itself? Something that I didn't understand as somebody who's had back pain for a really long time now until I picked up your book. up your book, if you can explain the pain gate, because I know there's a lot of people that are in pain and they can't figure out, well, you know, why the heck their back does hurt so much. But in reality, it's like maybe when it first started, you had the same amount of pain,

but you just didn't really recognize it because of that pain gate that you explain in your book. gate that you explain in your book? I'm not exactly sure of what you mean, but are you talking about pain sensitization, for example? Yeah, sorry. Okay, if I stubbed my toe, it would become a bit more sensitive. And if I stubbed it tomorrow, it would become even more sensitive. Actually after, actually, I see Mark laughing. I got a special one for you, Mark. Someone left a rake on your living room floor. And every morning you come out and step on the rake and it comes and smashes you in the face.

And then the second day you walk out, you step on the rake, you get smashed in the face, and you go to the doc and the doc says, well, well here here's a pain pill for your busted nose everything and then uh and sema he comes over for a beer and he says mark let me put that rake away in the garden shed did you see what i mean so yeah it's a matter of what is causing the pain wind up because by the third day mark if you touched your nose, you'd scream. Right? So on the first day, you can get smashed by a rake, and it didn't hurt that much. But by the third day or fourth day, you just lightly touch it. And so this is called sensitization.

This is what happens to some people's backs. The idea is to stop the cause. And so that requires some investigation, but stop the cause. And then you wind down the pain sensitivity. Now you build up pain-free load, postures, movements, activities, the podium. activities, the podium. Dr. McGill, I was listening to one of your lectures and you said something that I think really made me laugh. You said, if you go on one walk a day, you deserve your pain. And I was like, wow, that that's actually a big deal. And we're over here, we're all about like 10 minute walks all the time, multiple times a day. Um, and a lot of people just like,

don't walk often, but I, when you were talking about grip strength and how grip strength can help with your back, it made me wonder what your thoughts are on the feet. Um, because everybody wears different types of shoes, right? And some people, they go to a, you know, a doctor and they say, Oh, get this type of insular, get this type of shoe that has this crazy thing at the bottom. But I'm wondering how can people, because the way I'm trying to ask this question is the way I can help the most people, even though I know there's some specific things. But I want to see what can most people apply. What kind of concepts do people need to think about when they're walking or maybe with their footwear that could help their back and what maybe are they doing or what maybe things are they wearing each day on their feet that could actually cause more back problems in the long run?

Yeah, what a fabulous question. Can I answer the, my brain was still on the first part of your question when you were talking about performance. And then I can dial it back to just walking for the average person. So, you know, an athlete will come in and say, you know, I saw someone lifting in Chuck Taylor's and someone else was wearing an Olympic shoe and someone else was in ballet slippers or whatever. What's going on? And I said, well, for an individual, I have no idea, but I do know how to get there. I know how to answer the question for the individual, but I don't know the answer until we do this. And we call it bracketing. So we will, so from a scientific

point of view, there are some people who really their proprioceptive system gives high priority to what their feet are telling them. You know, you take a person who loves yoga. They love the stretch reflex. It gives them a jolly. To me, yoga is jujitsu. That's a submission hold, man. I'm tapping out. I'm out of there.

Do you see what I mean? That's a submission hold, man. I'm tapping out. I'm out of there. Do you see what I mean? So it depends on your neurology on how you perceive all of these kinds of things. I'm not saying one is better than the other. I'm just saying everyone's different.

So here's the experiment you do. On the lifting platform, start with someone barefoot or in ballet slippers and then lift. And then give them an elevated Olympic shoe, bind up the laces, bind up the buckle really tight. Now they've experienced both ends of the spectrum, and they'll know right away which side their neurology is on. Now go halfway. Go to a more modest shoe, drop the heel, play leaning tower, all these kinds of things. And, you know, oh, my brain just goes too fast sometimes.

When we were talking over there, just doing that, you know, that shortstop squat and pull through, a lot of lifters are repeat offenders into the pain world because they don't have a strategy to correct the bar so you know they'll descend in the squat and they get the thrust line off by two millimeters well if you're squatting a thousand two millimeters is a big deal so what do they do they correct with their back you correct a thousand pounds with your back no wonder you're going to have some micro damage but instead if you could use your feet and teach them a leaning tower so if i'm a leaning tower do you see how this is an ankle strategy versus a spine or versus a hip or it could be a shoulder neck strategy? But usually that correction strategy, if we can adjust that just a little bit, they add to their injury resilience for the future. So feet might be a big part of that if that's what their gig is. Do you see what I mean with your question?

Yeah. So I would do exactly the same bracketing approach for walking. You know, there are some athletes who slop around with their feet turned out in flip-flops all day and they think they're going to get on the platform and set a record, give me a break.

They need to tune an athlete you know let's get back to that analogy of how many car mechanics are there in your country but how many can produce a an indy 500 winner year after year maybe a dozen and it's the same for tuning an athlete. I want that stiffness and mobility just tuned to the fine edge. So when they're pulling, they're right at the end of what the hamstring is going to give. I want it right at the end of stiffness, you know, and then use all the gear. What does gear do? It adds stiffness. It potentiates what you, so why throw away, uh, your natural elasticity through, through willy-nilly stretching, um, anyway, but if you don't have enough mobility, well, that's a problem too,

because, you know, you won't find a power lifter who can throw a football in the NFL 70 yards. So, right. You know, a heavy dead probably isn't their exercise. So that that whole tuning of the feet is huge. If they're lifting, running, how they're using their feet to correct load, uh you name it are there reasons to are there reasons like correct foot positioning like if you stand with your feet you know ducked out quite a bit or if you walk like that is there any reason to examine and look at like you know just i guess pointing your feet more straight or would you only have someone examine that if there's a problem you know if you don't have a problem yeah maybe there's nothing there i'm not sure right well the answer to that question is most of the time i would leave that alone if the person is what we would call

ordinary in terms of the demands on their life yeah i don't want to micromanage that stuff but if they have uh hip impingement and they can't get down into the hole and they're walking pigeon toed on one side, or they run on a treadmill for half an hour every day, and that foot turns in loading the impingement, then now it's a big deal. So did you see what I mean? It gets right back to the, it depends kind of a thing, or they have, uh, you know, they have a true piriformis Genesis to the radiating pain in their glute. Then that one foot is turned out. They're sitting at their desk with their foot turned out.

It's all day long, uh, allowing that nerve to be pressed upon. You're, you're reducing its resilience. You're, it's a catabolic process. So,

you know, but I've, on another hand, I've learned just to let a lot of things go if the person isn't pushing life. Could be causing more harm than good. Sure. I noticed with. You know, I see some people who come in and they're all stiffened up. They're absolutely paralyzed. Oh, I don't know what to do. I said, well, let's jazz knees, man.

Let's see how we're going to learn to flow. Over the years, you know, and seeing a lot of athletes myself and, you know, seeing some of the greats just even on television like Michael Jordan and so forth. I've kind of noticed that it seems like there's some really great athletes that are kind of pigeon-toed. Is there, is that some sort of advantage for jumping or running or anything like that? Or is that just, you know, these particular people, it's their body, it's the way that they manage, you know, for Jordan, it's the way that he was able to manage his six foot six, 210 pound frame. It's both. It's both. There are some, when you look at the hip extensor mechanism, the gluteals, first and foremost, are external rotators. So, you know, to do a hip airplane and really activate those external rotators, if you start your jump a little bit pigeon-toed, and when we look at various combines and players doing a standing horizontal jump, for some of them, when they start pigeon-toed, they not only get hip extensor horsepower, but they potentiate that with external rotation as well. So you see, for some people, the answer is

yes, but it takes me back to an experiment that we did quite a number of years ago. And a team came to us and said, you know, thank you for consulting on our back issue, which was all programming. The trainer was just screwing the team up. But he said, do you have any thoughts about enhancing their jumps? And I said, yeah. But, you know, me being me, I have to prove it. So if you want to enroll your team in a three-month project, we'll find out the answer for sure and uh so we did a squat training program and the coach's instruction was to add x number of centimeters to the height i forget what it was say five centimeters two and a half inches for you americans

anyway um and we did a squat training program. So a squat strength program to increase their vertical jump. We did the experiment and then it was quite controversial. So we repeated the experiment with the second team and we got exactly the same result. So now I'm starting to get a bit more confidence in it. Half the team increased their vertical jump. 30% of the team lost height off their vertical jump, identical training program. 20% had no difference. So it's just slightly over half got better. So then I learned to ask two questions and this will really give context to the magnitude of the question you asked.

I would say to the players, and every player knows this, are you naturally quick or are you naturally strong? If you're naturally quick, you go over there. Naturally strong, you go over there. And that separated the two groups of who jumped higher and who lost. So can you guess which group of are you naturally quick? Are you naturally strong? We're going to train strength squats for, I forget the time. Was it eight weeks? Yeah, the people that were quick probably

got the most benefit. You bet. Absolutely. So when you have the neurology and we're getting right back to that, you know, the idea of pulsing strength, because if you use grinding horsepower strength of a powerlifting squat, I'm not going to get too high off the ground. But when I add the pulse, boom. So if you've got the quick neurology with a strength foundation, you jump higher. But when you activate muscle, you create force plus stiffness. The stiffness runs ahead of the strength in someone who's already naturally strong. So adding more strength to strength reduces their explosiveness and the rate of contraction. So they lost their vertical jump. And then we did that again. So we learned that, you know, to train a powerlifter, fabulous. To train someone to dunk a basketball better or to jump higher or to run and cut in the NFL or to compete at a higher level in the UFC, we have to ask, are you naturally quick or are you naturally strong?

Because we're going to change up the programming now to get you to your optimum. I also learned other things too that you may or may not, which takes you right back to the very initial Ed Cohn question. I would say to the volleyball team, would you now stand tallest to shortest? Just arrange yourself. Name off. One, two, three, four, five, all the way through to the 16 players, whatever it was.

And then I said, everyone sit on the bench. Repeat the exercise. And it really changed the order. And what you're picking up is total body height and then leg length to torso length ratio. and then leg length to torso length ratio. The guys with longer bodies and shorter legs are knee jumpers. They jump, and obviously we're talking about a spectrum, but they are front squat, barbell in front, using the knees.

Do you get what I mean? That's a leg strength. But if you're someone like Michael Jordan or someone who's seven feet tall in the NBA when we all sit down for dinner they're not that much taller but when they stand up they are so they've got a lot longer length if you do a front squat on a seven foot tall basketball player their knees are going to get sore long before you develop jumping horsepower. They are hip jumpers. So they plant the heel on the court and then bam, the hip comes through. But if their toes were on the ground at the time of the hip explosion, the ankles are weak and they would just be forced into eccentric contraction.

So are you going to do toe raises for someone who has long legs to dunk a basketball? I would say not. In fact, I don't even need a muscle between the knee and the ankle. Once the heel is planted, I want massive. I want a hammer out of the hip hitting a stone so it's core stiffness and when you you were getting back uh earlier to talk i thought you were going to talk about carries um uh and sema in when you were going into the walks and loaded carries but man if i want a guy to jump who's longer in the leg, it's loaded carries. It is not ankle, toe raises and things like that. Bigger core. And I can tell you about some of the experiments we did there if you're in. This episode of Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast

is brought to you by Piedmontese Beef. And I really want to talk about Piedmontese Beef because in my opinion, it is the most underrated, most untalked about, just underutilized tools when it comes to bodybuilders and their diets. Can you explain exactly why that is in SEMA? Yeah, man. It's actually pretty awesome because we have a lot of bodybuilders on this podcast. And every single time we get one on, we always tell them about Piedmontese because when a bodybuilder goes on a bodybuilding diet, they're like, to eat low fat and you know i can't eat a lot of calories and they always end up eating chicken breasts tilapia just really weak meats just very weak birds um but piedmont tees is awesome because they have a lot of different options in terms of their meat that have a great amount of protein

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that out right now what about tight muscles tight hamstrings and tight hips we hear that often tight psoas this is really pulling on your back uh this is causing you you know this back dysfunction and things like that is there some truth to some of that? Well, first of all, if I'm a high jumper, I want tight hamstrings. Now the question is, do I need that mitigated to manage back pain? And it may or may not be. If we start out on a neurological level to begin the answer, or not the answer. I'm not giving answers. I'm giving discussions. If we were to start a discussion about that, pain corrupts engrams. Pain corrupts

muscle memory. If you need proof, when I was a professor, I would take a kid off the stage and put him behind and I'd stick a bolt in his shoe or I'd take a bandage and bandage up his hip or something and then put his pants back on and get him to walk across the stage at the front of the lecture hall. And everyone in there had to guess what was going on with this person because of their outward corrupted pattern. So pain corrupts, it causes you to limp. Years ago, have you heard of Vladimir Yanda, the great Czechoslovakian neurologist and cross-pelvis syndrome and things like this? I have not. Okay. What Yanda proposed, and this was before he had the technology to prove it, he proposed through clinical observation that people with hip pain

and back pain get, he would call weak glutes and tight hip flexors. So I believe we were the first to measure this. Is it true? Well, not in everybody with back pain and hip pain, but certainly there were some that when you give them back pain and hip pain, they don't use their gluteals as much anymore for hip extension. They become hamstring dominant. Now, again, you will see this in lifters. They get sore backs. And what do they do? They forget they own a pair of glutes and they go right to their hamstrings. And now they've lost half of their motors. And they're wondering, well, shoot, they start overusing their back. And now they're right back to back pain. And what was the solution? It was to wake up or bring back the gluteals into that pain-corrupted muscle memory or motor pattern. Now, let's go to the other side of the

joint. Less common was the facilitated hip flexors. But when we measured it, it wasn't the hip flexors. It was psoas. It was only psoas. So when you look at the architecture of the hip flexors, so we have the ball on the femur side and the socket on the pelvis side. The iliacus connects the front of the femur and the inside bowl if you will of the ilium so it's just a uniarticular muscle so if the iliacus flexes the hip it bends the femur but it also on the proximal side bends the pelvis through that uniarticular joint it's like doing a bench press if all i had was pec, I would get the desired action of flexing my arm, but I would also bend my rib cage towards my joint, right, on the proximal side. Well, that's a terrible energy leak for a bench press. And can you imagine if all I did was use my hip flexor of the iliacus, I'd walk around like this all day,

hip flexor of the iliacus, I'd walk around like this all day, which would be a terrible stress on the spine. But what we have is a psoas muscle, and now the psoas has the same approximately connection point on the femur, but it comes through the iliopectinial notch and travels to L5, L4, L3, all the way up the spine. So now you anchor the pelvis and the lumbar spine. So when you fire a hip flexion, all of this becomes stiffened and stable. It was one of my graduate students who said, oh, it's like having a sock of wet cement. students who said, oh, it's like having a sock of wet cement. And when you activate psoas, it turns into a stiff column of cement. And another little bit of trivia, I was one of the first guys in the world to have an electrode implanted into my psoas. And, you know, I was fairly aware and I could activate individual muscles if you asked me to. The very first time I had psoas implanted, I would try and flex my torso muscles and we didn't get a signal. And I'd laterally

bend and no signal. And all I did was flex my hip, electrical storm. So the psoas is a hip flexor, end of story. However, what it also contributes because of its connection all the way up the lumbar spine to the diaphragm is stiffness and stability. The brain in some people facilitates activation of psoas. So because of pain or because they've been sitting too long. And when they get out of the chair, the telltale sign is they shoot their hip up with hamstrings, and then they walk their hands up.

And it takes quite a period of time for them to pull their hips through that's usually a psoas and then they'll do a uh a hip flexor stretch they'll do a lunge like this or go down onto a knee and do some kind of hip flexion stretch and they never make any headway because they are not activating sorry sorry, they're not targeting psoas. But I've described the architecture. Psoas connects to the femur and comes all the way up the lumbar spine. So to isolate psoas, if you could palpate, there's the inguinal crease between my torso and my femur. There's the crease. If I palpate the high middle quad, which is quadratus lumborum, now I'm going to drift my fingers medially into the notch. That's the iliopectineal notch. So I'm going to get right on dig deep. Now I'm on psoas tendon. I can do a lunge and I don't feel any tension whatsoever.

I feel tension in iliacus and rectus femoris, but not psoas. And it's not until I'm just going to, sorry, I can't get full height here, but what I'm going to do now is I'm going to do the lunge. But if I push my hand high up over my head, ah, for the first time now, I just stretched psoas as the target. Now I'm going to drop my shoulder back just a little bit and rotate. Whoa, now I've really got psoas. Now, you know, we can have this discussion at a, you know, a grade school level, or I can take you to the PhD level if you like. Do you want to go there? Let's get some. Yeah, continue. Yeah, that's great.

Okay. So, have you heard of a fellow named Thomas Myers on anatomy trains? I have not. Okay, so Tom Meyer has done these magnificent dissections of the fascia through the body and how they create different slings and connections through the body. There is a connection from psoas up through the diaphragm across the pec and into the arm. Well, is this true functionally? And again, I go right back to the bracketing approach to see if in this particular athlete, so if you're a 100 mile an hour fastballer or 110 mile an hour fastball in your major league baseball,

I can guarantee you have a good fascial connection because if you didn't, you wouldn't have the brilliance to throw the ball you can be you can look really quite unimpressive but if you have that fascial connection you have a chance to load the spring across the hip the spring across the shoulders and that spring you you can throw 110 but you you have to have this fascial connection. So now I'll just show you my upper body. I'm palpating my psoas.

For those people, when you push the heel towards the ceiling and you spin the hand around, whoa, there is psoas tightening under my fingers down here on the psoas tendon, and now it's released. So I'm spinning through the shoulder, the fascia. Are you getting it, Nsema? Yeah. You have to. Yeah, I feel it. Is your right hand on the left psoas? My right hand is on the right psoas. So I should put my right hand on the wrong

one. So this is like a Simon Says thing. If you were to stand up and do a lunge with your left leg back, right leg forward, right hand goes across to your left psoas. So feel the high quad drift medially into the iliopectinial notch and you'll be right on the tendon. Okay. Now you can widen your lunge and you will feel hip flexor stress, but it is not psoas. Now put your left arm over your head and push your fingers to the ceiling quite strictly. Now, did you feel anything coming on under your right fingers in the psoas tendon? Not yet. Drop your left shoulder back just a little bit. Drop it and rotate around with it.

Allow your torso to rotate with your left shoulder going back. Now lean to, there you go. Now push the heel of your hand to the ceiling and internal externally rotate around. Is that changing the perception of psoas under your fingers? Yeah. Okay. So you have a fascial connection now. So if.

That's awesome. Oh, well, it's, you know. Oh, great. I compare this. So if you're a jujitsu man and SEMA, I'm not going to pick on jujitsu. I'll pick on any sport. It never ends, does it? Nope. You know, I'm mid-60s and I'm still learning the mastery of the craft of different sports and how to tune the F1 race car. It never ends.

And it's a beautiful, I don't know if I should use the word pastime. It's much more than a pastime. It's a total commitment. But nonetheless, isn't it magical that there's you know something for you to start playing with now and you have to decide do you need to tighten that or do you need to release it to unleash so that you're number one instead of number three or whatever unless you're ed cone which you're so far ahead of everybody else. It doesn't matter. I heard you say on another podcast, I think, how far ahead Ed Cohn was.

You shared that he was like 30% greater than the next guy behind him. And then you shared a number, what that would mean in a race. Can you share that with us? Yeah. Well, say you're Usain Bolt, you know, and you're, you know, a tenth of a second faster than the next three guys in the world. Well, if Ed Cohn was Usain Bolt running 100 meters at the Olympics, he'd be running seven seconds and number two would be running 10. That's how good the GOAT was. Three seconds. You're like sitting there looking at your watch. You're like,

when is the other guy's going to finish? Yeah. Yeah. So, and as I said, you know, as, uh,

Ed is, it's, yes, he's got anatomical gifts, but he's got the brilliance. How do we get, uh, how do we get compliance?

You know, how, how do you get compliance from some people? Um, because sometimes, you know, how, how do you get compliance from some people? Because sometimes, you know, you might have, it sounds like you have to unpack like a lot of different things that's going on with an individual.

And you might say in SEMA, like we got like 17 things we got to work on, but he probably would do a lot better if we could just give them like, you know, one thing. How have you been able to assist people to comply to it? Because if they don't comply to the things they need to do every day to rid themselves of back injury or back pain, they're not going to be successful most likely. Right. You might not

like my answer on this one. I think I attract a certain type of client. In other words, if someone has back pain, they sure wouldn't go up to Canada to see a guy named McGill. They would go elsewhere. I'm sort of the end of the road. Either they're an elite person really, I'm really unknown, I would say. And certainly in the in sport, I'm probably known, but, you know, in the general public, I'm a nobody. And I would, the average person wouldn't come to see me. But if you're an elite trying to tune the final bit, and you're inhibited by back pain, I don't need to worry about the commitment mark. They're there. They're coming. They're traveling internationally. They're committed. Absolutely. Understood. GSP's not going to have a hard time following your

program. Yeah. Right. But, you know, having said that, I will get some athletes and I'll say, well, here's what I found and here's my recommendation. And they'll say, well, I'm not doing that. And then I have several tools. One is a shock. So, and Seema, when you said you heard me say you deserve your pain. You heard me say you deserve your pain. So there might be a strategy to some people need to be empowered. So you empower them with knowledge and skill. But now I have to work on the discipline part so I can empower them by showing them.

Here's what you look. I just proved to you. You've got higher performance and less pain. I've proved that to you. But now I have to work on the other side. And they'll say, oh, but, you know, I do this. And what, do I have to do this? And I said, yeah.

I said, you do realize you deserve your pain. Your behavior is such that it is causing your pain sensitivity and whatever it is. And sometimes that will reduce them to tears. Sometimes, how dare you say that to me? Now, a Russian would never say that to me, but an American would. How dare you talk to me that way? And I said that I'm the first person who, A, has thoroughly assessed you to converge with some understanding on your mechanism. And I'm giving you a justifiable plan.

Life isn't easy. It's not fair. But that we've just proven will work for you. But if you don't like it, there's the door. And then, again, if they're of that emotional state, you know, and to be fair, you know, in their mind, they're losing their career. Their identity is their athleticism.

That's who they are to the world. This is huge emotionally. And then I just let them cool off and they'll gather themselves and come back and they'll say, oh, I'm sorry, I just lost it. Yeah, I get it. Right over here in the clinic is a box of Kleenex. So anyway, I use and I'll play act. Sometimes I'm brutal. I'll go up like a Russian coach and smack them in the chest. And then the next person, they need a hug. They truly do.

And so I'm play acting all the time. Sometimes if they're not listening, I'll speak. So they have to really work to hear me. I'll lower my voice and whisper. And now, or I have to yell. Did you see how I never know where I'm going? But to get the result, I commit to getting the result. You know, doctor, I'm curious about at least try to it.

Yeah, not, not, I don't, I don't have success with everybody. I don't want to give that impression either, but I got you. I'm curious about this because I don't even know how I'm going to go about

this question, but I guess you should be on the radio. Thank you. I'm talking to God here. You're like James Earl Jones. That voice, right? I need him to translate an audio book for me. I absolutely will.

If you want me to, I'll do it for you. You are so, it's beyond eloquence. It's fabulous. Thank you. I really, I really, really appreciate that. Thank you for that. But what I wanted to try to maybe get out here, and I feel like there's going to be, it's, it's going to be like an, it depends thing, but I really want to get your opinion

on this. My goal as an athlete all through, like when I was doing bodybuilding and powerlifting. Um, and now with jujitsu mixed with powerlifting, I wanted to like get my performance to the highest level possible, but I also wanted my body to feel amazing while doing it. So when I was powerlifting, you know, when I, I'd feel stiff, I didn't like that. So I start stretching a little bit more often and my didn't have nearly as much pain and I felt better and I moved better and I walked better and all of that was just amazing. Um, I stretch often now, but what I'm, what I'm really curious about is I know that with powerlifting, you need a level of

stiffness, right? And that is specific to the sport. And if you're at the highest level, like you're probably not going to be a ballerina or be able to do the splits. But with that being said, is it, is it, I guess, is it okay for a lifter to try to seek that out to, to, to seek out a level of flexibility while also trying to be very strong? Because you hear coaches talk about, Hey, you shouldn't be doing too much static stretching and obviously not around a lifting session, a very heavy lifting session. But from my end of one, right, doing that, my body feels I have no pain at all with anything I do. I'm able to move well, but I'm doing things that would contrast the ideas of what strength coaches would tell you to do.

So I'm curious about that. I know there's a lot there and it's really convoluted, but yeah, like, can, can you help us out with that? Well, I thought you said it very well. And it's the deal with the devil. It's the trade-off that you have to commit to. So the question is, do you want to feel good and be healthy, or do you want to win? And they don't equal. So you look at some power lifters, and they have to walk stiff-legged and taking small steps because of the tightness of the hamstring that allows them to

pull ultimate performance out of their body are they easier to kill yes you can chase them down faster and catch them um now let's go to the polar opposite of that someone who stretches so much that they can't organize the ability to... We live in articulated linkage. So if you're a backhoe operator, you know, a backhoe, the first thing you have to do is put down the stabilizers behind the rear tires to anchor proximal stiffness in. Now you can pull dirt. It helps to have a great big belly. It helps to be wide in the hips.

Do you know what I mean? And we add all of this artificial stiffness through gear. And we try and train that. But when you become a unidimensional athlete, like a power lifter or a jiu-jitsu player, some of the best jiu-jitsu players are not very strong. Some of them struggle to do a chin-up even. But they are boa constrictors. If I was to take typical Gracie jiu-jitsu, if they have to start using strength, they get out.

They try another way. And if you've ever been, I always call them sneakers. They sneak up on you in the Gracie system. But man, they're killer boa constrictors. So again, you have to make a commitment as an athlete. Do you want to be healthy and feel good? It doesn't always equal optimum performance. Absolutely.

And if you are a basketball player, you have more leeway now between creating a broader spectrum of abilities because you use all that on the basketball court. But powerlifting is extreme. I'm trying to think of a like a thrower uh or a high jumper they are very extreme as well they do one thing once controlled conditions it's the same thing every time um golf would be another you know i i see so many golfers particularly starting say 15 years ago who lost their careers, fabulous careers, through strength training.

And they just took their body out of tune. Now they're doing deep squats. They're compromising and their hips. Now with a sore hip, where does the next line go in the linkage? Oh, it goes to their spine they blow up a disc uh you know a golfer is is an elastic athlete uh you want to be very very careful strength training a golfer so do you see what i mean yeah is it healthy i i wouldn't enjoy it or here's and again if i'm running off at the mouth stop me but take some sports that are unidimensional sports but they're all in the same

like the archetypical would be train a triathlon they swim they bike and they run i don't know if you've ever gotten off your bike and tried to run. You're a motor moron for the first kilometer. It's a totally different program. Isn't it curious that whoever comes out of the ocean or the lake first on the swim, they never win. The swimmer is a fish. They've got big floppy feet and loose joints and they're flopping fantastic swimming along, but they can't run.

To be a runner, I want to be a bunny rabbit. I want to spring off controlled springs. Tune, do you get what I mean? So if you're a great runner, you're terrible in the pool. And so we have these unidimensional athleticisms and then put them together. And hopefully, the strategy of the guy who wins the triathlon is don't be last out of the lake, but you'll never be first, then be a bit of a grinder on the bike and then tune up the stiffness and just, you know, come home on the, uh, on, on, in

the running. But there would be an example of, you know, you got to make a lot of sacrifices to win. And it's not about feeling good. With utilizing your book, Back Mechanic, I believe I have identified a majority of where my pain comes from and its posture. Like many others that are watching and listening right now, we're at a desk. We're slouched over. We're kind of hunched over, we're just making things worse. Are there any exercises that those of us that do slouch quite a bit can start working on in the gym so that way

we can help try to, you know, just strengthen our back and just start feeling better? Yeah, absolutely. So, I can give a generic, or I can give a individual answer for you. So if I was to give an individual answer for you, which will serve you the best, I have to say this. And the reason I wrote back mechanic is if you go to your doctor, the chance of you getting a thorough assessment to identify why you have pain when you sit is pretty precious, close to zero. So I wrote the book Back Mechanic to guide you through nine tests, I believe it was. And based on the results, you will know the mechanism of your pain. And then we will give you a strategy. So I know you guys hang out with Stan. Short interval walks. You cannot have a healthy back if you don't do short interval walks. I can tell you why if you wish, but it's non-negotiable.

You need proximal stability. You can't be a loosey goose in your core and expect to jump off a curb and not notice and jar your back without pain. However, I do know a little bit more about your particular case, Andrew. So can I give you a model to explain what's going on? Because you did write me an email about your back pain. So just what we're talking about is a very quick little exam. So I'm sitting on a stool and let's go through a very quick assessment of a specific person's pain trigger.

So we're going to sit nice and tall and it might be that the person sits with their knees together and they have such an architecture of their hip joint that when they sit together, the femur collides with the labrum of the hip and now they're forced to slouch. So if it hurts and they have that kind of hip architecture, sitting with the knees apart just liberated the hips and now they can sit upright with less stress. Now let's load it. Grab the seat pan and pull up. Now let's assume that that doesn't cause pain. Then we're going to slouch.

And you can say, well, that starts to get a little bit of my back pain. And then I play with the tension of the spinal cord. So I then add some neck flexion, which pulls the cord up. And in Andrew's case, that took the pain away. Well, wait a second. That's the opposite of the slump test of what they teach the physical therapists in school. So you would have passed the slump test and they would conclude that you do not have a neural component to your pain. It's insufficient. So to repeat, we slouch. That starts have a neural component to your pain. It's insufficient. So to repeat, we slouch.

That starts a little bit of the back pain. Typically, that causes more pain because you're pulling the cord and you're either frictioning it or it might be tensioned against a disc bulge or something like that. I hope it's not against a dick bulge. A number of times I've accidentally said that. I hope it's not against the dick bowl. It's the number of times I've accidentally said that. But anyway, versus you then extend the neck and this is what catches you, Andrew, right? When you bring your neck up, it causes your pain. Am I correct? Oddly enough. So when sitting, the head placement doesn't really affect me too much. It's just more of the,

I believe it's the flexion, like kind of pushing the hip forward and so slouching down. And then when I do like the drop test, actually cranking my neck back will actually rid me of all my pain so much so that when I did the drop test, I actually kind of like hurt my neck because it was the first time that I can like comfortably like kind of, you know, drop down to my heels without feeling pain. It was... All right. Do you have a disc bulge? Do you know?

So when, and again, another awesome part about your book, I went to the doctor, I don't know how many years ago, and they diagnosed me with a bulging disc or what's the one that's exploded? A herniated disc. And I accepted that as the answer and I never once followed up because they wanted to schedule me for back surgery that day. It was nuts. So what your book says is sometimes these doctors don't know what the hell they're talking about. So, I took that and I no longer accept that that's what I have. However, that is what I was told. But again, I did feel kind of empowered thinking like,

okay, just because they told me doesn't necessarily mean it's true. However, maybe it's just bulging and that's what I might have. Right. Well, if I can just explain with this, all of these models, by the way, are built by a company called Dynamic Disk Designs. It's based on what we've documented and observed in the clinic and laboratory for over the years. But these are telling the way it is. So just let me explain to people what's going on. The middle of the disc is a gel. So it's a hydraulic structure. It's a gel contained by collagen. Collagen fibers are an adaptable fabric.

Your spine is not a ball and socket joint. It's an adaptable fabric. Your spine is not a ball and socket joint. It's an adaptable fabric. So if I took a piece of material and I created stress strain reversals back and forth in the material, the fibers would slowly delaminate like this. Now, those fibers, if they delaminate, it's a problem because they're containing a hydraulic pressurized gel. So if you keep flexing with bad form, say you're flexing under load, it's not like bending a credit card and then you get failure. People use that analogy, and it's not true. I would take spines and bend them back and forth 100,000 times, and we never were able to measure the lamination of the collagen however when you add load like you've got a squat bar on your back and then repeat it what happens is the collagen fibers start to delaminate so you can see that little red delamination slit on the back

of that disc now i'm going to squeeze and i'm going to bend forward which pushes i'm going to change the wedge like this so the hydraulic effort is posteriorly i'm going to open up the fissure there it's opening up and i'm going to squeeze do you see the hydraulic gel coming out there yeah and you see that there is the spinal cord and then from the cord at every disc level is a lateral nerve root and those are the things that go into your buttocks and down your legs where you feel the pain but here is the fun little nuance of it i thought when you emailed me that you had what we call an underhook. So when you flex your head forward, I just pulled the spinal cord up. Now, I pull the spinal cord up.

Watch the nerve root pass the disc bulge. When the disc bulge is underneath, do you see how there it's underneath the nerve? If I look up, it pushes the nerve into the pain when i look down it pulls the nerve off and it can pull about a centimeter it's quite an impressive uh range but now the therapy if we found out that your particular disc bulge, when you bend forward and load it, you open up the delaminated fissure. Now I'm not going to allow flexion. You're going to bend forward at the hip instead.

I'm now going to squeeze the spine and you'll see the whole disc move. There it is. It's squeezed. But the fissure at the back does not open up. It stays closed. So in your particular case, Andrew, it's important to keep good form. Use your hips. And so, you know, people will say, oh, well, is butt wink okay? For some people, and I can get into the reasons for it, it's not so important, but for you, it'll be very important. And your head posture, when you do a drop test, which is we're now going

to load the spine and compression, I will bet, and if we go back to Brian Carroll, who I wrote the book Gift of Injury with, Brian had a massive fracture. So we've dyed the gel nucleus blue, but he had an end plate fracture up into the vertebral body. So now I'm going to squeeze and you see the nucleus going up through the fracture into the vertebral body by squeezing. Now let's see if we can stabilize all of these things. So I'm going to stand on a hard platform and I'm going to relax. I'm going to go up on my toes and bounce down on my heels. Boom. And I think, Andrew, you would say that would trigger. Is that correct? Yeah, that actually, I couldn't even fully let go of my core because of how bad that

that would hurt. Okay. That's pretty scary. Can I assume that if I coached you and I said, I'm going to push my fingers into your lateral obliques and you activate your obliques, stiffen up and push out. Now we've created a stiffening girdle and then we did the heel drop that would arrest most of your pain. Is that correct? Absolutely. 100%. Okay. So we've taken out the micro movement because you've lost a little bit of turgor and disc height. Now, with some people, they might say, you know what, that even increases my pain because they had the fracture that Brian had. So then I would say, because they had the fracture that Brian had.

So then I would say, hope you're old enough to remember how to hitchhike, but take your thumbs, externally rotate your hands, and now depress with your pecs and lats. Leave your belly alone. Don't focus there. Pull down. In other words, you're doing the post, the athletic post,

like you're bending a bar or something similar. Post down, externally rotate, and then the person might say, you know, that was the secret sauce. That was the secret tuning of stiffness that took the pain away. Now we have to play with neural tension with you. It might be a combination of the tuned stiffness, now cord length. So when you look down and bounce, that's going to exacerbate your pain. But if you look up and let the cord drift down, so it sounds to me as though you have an overhooking disc bulge on the nerve root that takes your pain away. Okay. So if I was to watch a person like that, we'd progress them, slowly get them back on the platform. You will see some people, and it's

just their motor pattern. They will lift and then there's their finish. Well, wait a second. They just finished into their old pain mechanism. Now, why did they finish with their head down? Well, for some people, we just changed the length tension curve of erector spinae. We just potentiated lockout power. But the next person, we stole lockout power. And maybe their failure was the initial pull from the ground. It wasn't even an issue. But you see what I mean. We just keep peeling the onion and finding out what the mechanism is. This is all so specific. There's no non-specific back pain, very specific. Find out the mechanism and then keep adapting the body, stay under the tipping point, and regain robustness. Now, I'm not promising that we can do this every time either, but anyway, there's a little bit of a logic.

So, I don't know if that resonates, Andrew, or not. Absolutely. A few things, too. While you're sitting in your chair there do you have a uh anything in your lumbar spine just to add a little bit of uh support there yeah i don't know if you can see it but yeah i oh i see it there good for you yeah i do have it's an inflatable one uh similar to you know the one that you pointed out in your book um right um but even i just wanted to get back to a little bit of the like the exercises and movements and stuff um can i overdo the head movement like head placement absolutely

okay yeah you can overdo everything it's always a matter of tuning yeah not too little so converge use remember the bracketing that i've talked about several times uh Talked about several times. It is in California. But keep bracketing and converge on the optimum. And that optimum is also a moving target. As you regain your robustness and athleticism, you will be able to retune and refine just a little bit further. Sounds like farmer's carries might be, might work well for him. I need a full assessment before I can give that.

But do you want to, do you want something cool, Mark? I'm looking at the time. I have a patient at two o'clock. Sure thing. But do you want to hear something really fun that we learned from working with uh strongman competitors absolutely and and farmers walk there was one fella he won the super yolk so the super yolk for the folks who don't know it's they they get under a bar and they pick up this yoke and the yoke has several hundred pounds balanced off either side.

And whoever carries the yoke the furthest wins. So it is a loaded carry. And for the fellow who won, we laid them on a strength table and just on their side. And I just measured the hip abduction strength, the ability to lift their leg laterally, and they could lift 500 Newton meters. So, you know, it's around a hundred Newton meters to torque up the nuts on your truck. So five times that it is an awesome abduction strength. Now, when we measured, um, them, I should back up just a minute. No, actually, this is all right. So, when we measured quadratus lumborum, remember intramuscularly, we were the first people

to measure that muscle being active, and the quadratus lumborum is either side of the spine. When you walk, in order to allow leg swing, the gait biomechanists, the people who are experts in walking, they don't look above the waist as to the mechanics that are going on. Well, I'm a spine guy, so I did. They would say, well, when you stand on one leg, you use the hip abductors to hold your pelvis, allow leg swing, and then hip abductors. In other words, that's how we walk. Well, there was something very wrong with that, and I'll tell you why. Remember, our strongman had 500 meters of strength. So he would be under the super yoke, and then he would get leg swing and use the hip abductors.

But when we measured world-class yoke carries, he needed 750 newton meters. So the demand was 750 newton meters of strength, but he only had 500. It was impossible for him to do the carry, but he did. Where did the missing strength come from? If this left leg stance, hip abductor's full power on, it was the quadratus lumborum that held the pelvic platform up on the other side to supply the missing strength. This was mind-blowing. So there were people who would say, oh, core strength, it doesn't matter. Can you prove that core strength makes you stronger in the rest of your body? I said, yes.

I've only published probably 100 experiments to prove that over 30 some odd years. And this is one of them. But when you get down to the things that really matter, I remember working at the hospital with a little girl in the neurology ward who had a paralyzed quadratus lumborum. It was astounding. walk. As we had measured with electrodes in Switzerland, when you perform leg stance with your left, you use quadratus lumborum to hold up the other side, quadratus lumborum to work with the hips so she couldn't walk. She was deficit on the right side. She could have right leg stance, left leg swing, and on this side, she'd collapse. This is how you walk if you don't have quadratus lumborum. So it's a critical muscle. And when I said to you, Mark, earlier, walking is non-negotiable.

You need it for frontal plane strength. Now, powerlifters. Powerlifters are sagittal plane beasts. They lift in the sagittal plane. They push in the sagittal plane, et cetera. Now, some federations demand a walkout. So you rack the bar and you walk out of the cage and you lift. They get hurt, not in the lift. They get hurt in the walkout. They are frontal plane strength deficit.

They can't stand on one leg. Plain strength deficit. They can't stand on one leg. So I've gone from a little girl who can't walk because she doesn't have core control, whatever you want to call it, fundamental proximal strength, all the way through to a strong man and a power lifter. Walking is fundamental. Now let's put that on steroids. Let's increase the demand with loaded carries. Now we really get into a wonderful conversation on how unleashing of your full strength loaded carries become.

Because they allow you to stand on one leg, perform the farmer's walk, perform the superyoke with short gliding walks, really training quadratus lumborum. So I don't care if you're a running back in the NFL, when you plant and cut and turn, you will be severely limited. If you haven't trained quadratus lumborum, you won't get that through powerlifting. I'm not sure exactly how you stumbled upon this, but you did mention, uh, in our emails back emails back and forth, having a nugget for our audience that you think they would enjoy. And it was in reference to performance in the bedroom. So if you can, this will be our last question, if we can kind of finish off with that, so to speak. Well, I'll put it this way. If you're a frontline clinician, I don't, you know, maybe you're a family doc or a physio or

whatever, you will have had couples who come to you and say, you know, we're now celibate because the last time we had sex, we knackered our backs. What can we do? Do you know there's no guidelines? The physicians don't have any guidelines to guide them. So we set about, and by the way, this was one of the last experiments I did as a professor, and I threatened the ethics committee of the university for years saying, you know what, I'm going to do this one day because it's really, really important. The frontline clinicians don't have an answer for this, and it's a real issue so uh we did do that it took us two years working with the ethics committee and uh you know the did you ever see that movie avatar absolutely yeah yeah so how they made avatar was they would put little infrared reflective markers all over the actors.

And then the computer reconstructs their 3D skeletons, and then they render them with the blue suits and all of that stuff. So we used exactly the same system. It was a Vicon system, 12 camera. So you can imagine how sexy this was. They were covered in wire electrodes, all of these infrared markers all over them. And, you know, the women were instrumented by a female clinician, the male was instrumented by a male clinician, they put on their bathrobes, and they came into

the clinic. And we were sitting at our computers behind a curtain so you know and we we'd hear all the sounds and whatnot and the very first couple that we had we were watching the avatars on the screen doing their their things and all of a sudden all the motion stopped the muscles quietened down and uh uh they started to giggle and we said you know is everything okay in there and they started to giggle. And we said, you know, is everything okay in there? And they said, yeah, we're Velcroed together. So we used Velcro to hold on a lot of our instrumentation. So we had to go back and redesign a lot of that. But the point of it was, could we create an atlas

so that if a couple knackered their backs, first of all, was it the person on top or the person on bottom? And now we test them. Just as I gave that short little test sitting on the stool, is pain caused by flexion, extension, movement, hip hinging? What is the trigger? And then we created an atlas to say, if you are flexion intolerant, do this, don't do that. If you're extension intolerant, do this, don't do that. If you're motion intolerant, do this, don't do that.

And then the several other guidelines, if you're triggered by motion, don't be on the top. The person on top is responsible for motion. The person on the bottom buttresses themselves with appropriate cushions and pillows and this kind of thing. And you can let your imagination go pretty wild here if you like. But it's a real issue. And for the first time, we were able to create an atlas for very specific types of pain triggers. And I have to say this because this is the fun part of it. Okay, we've done the study.

Now the university has to make a news release. But, you know, by the way, this wouldn't be possible in the U.S. You'd have someone saying, we're not giving government funding to fund sex and all this kind of stuff. So I'm assuming one of the few countries in the world where it could have been done was Canada. And our university president got behind this and said, you know, this is a real problem. We're going to do it. But, you know, we had a real problem. We're going to do it. But, you know, we had to mitigate a lot of risk. Obviously, no one from the university community was allowed to,

you know, I had even professors coming up and graduate students. Oh, do we get to choose our partner? You know, no one from the university was allowed to partake as a subject. But anyway. partake as a, as a subject. But, um, anyway, I appreciate your, appreciate your time so much today, uh, in kind of, uh, leaving the room here. Um, I got to ask this question. Is that mustache all genetics or is that something you had to really work for over the years? You need to meet my mother. That was perfect way to end it.

Where can people find if they want to find out more information about you and find your books and stuff like that yeah it's just on our website backfitpro.com it's easy and uh we we do have a few for the clinicians we teach clinical courses and i shouldn't frame it this way but the blessing of covid is i put them online so they're available now but all of our books are there and we've got you know podcasts and i uh you know this power project podcast i hope will be linked there and through to you uh etc but anyway um i hope you enjoyed uh this because i certainly did we did absolutely yeah yeah i hope you had some fun and maybe we'll do it again uh someday and if i ever get to make it down to sacramento i'd love to come into your

place and uh throw a few things around and have some fun what uh what kind of weights are you still able to lift nowadays are you still uh practicing some strength training and stuff like that? Yeah, that's an interesting question because, you know, now I've got obviously a lot of mileage on my body. I'm hip replaced. You know, I broke my neck. I broke my ribs. I've had a fair amount of injury. So I've converged on a program and I have no pain, Mark. I feel fabulous. Two days a week. Well, I do heavy labor anyway. You know, I split all our firewood, uh, you know, shoveling snow.

We got over two meters of the stuff out there right now. Uh, so I, I just to live, I, I do a lot of heavy work. But two days a week, I strength train. Two days a week, I do mobility for my neck, my shoulders, my hips, etc. And two days a week, I make sure I do something for my ticker, whether it's going for a ski, a bike ride, whatever. Now, on a day I split wood, obviously, that's all three. And then one day a week, I do nothing. And that's the magic. One day a week is the day of non-negotiable adaptation. And the other thing is I don't do two things. I don't do two days of one thing. So I'm a passionate snowmobiler.

And you get banged around on those things when you're pushing it with a bunch of the young lads out in the woods. I can't do two days in a row. But as long as I always allow a day of adaptation, I'm pretty good. So I don't lift heavy, but I'm, for my age, probably reasonably able still. Do you work out with your wife or do you try to avoid that? I don't know if you know who my wife is. Yeah, she's like a world champion rower or something like that, right? Yeah, yeah.

Three years ago, she was the world heavyweight champ. So if in terms of that, first of all, she has God-given endurance power it is awesome so if i go for a bike ride with her no i just hold her back and she's totally frustrated but uh you know we do a few other things that uh yeah thanks again she's an awesome woman. But no, I can't keep up to her. That's the bottom line. You pulled that out of me. Thanks again for your time. I appreciate it.

Have a great rest of your day, doctor. Thank you. Same to you guys. And Andrew, I can't see you right now, but thank you once again for putting all of this together. And Seema and Mark, it was a real, real pleasure to finally meet you guys, uh, this way.

Yeah. Thanks so much. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much. All right. Cheers guys. Cheers. See ya.

Yo, Dr. Stuart McGill. He's the hero we need. We talked so much. Yeah. We talked so much about strength in the beginning. That was awesome.

He does kind of remind me of like, I did want to ask him kind of like what was the making of him you know i always find that interesting that's i shut superhero movies off after that part's over after they show like how the guy was like made i won't even watch a second i won't even watch like a part two if it if it starts off you know after how the guy became a superhero because i want to see the making of the person. And I like learning that. So I didn't have a chance to ask him that cause we got to so many other things, but instead of having a cape, he's got that mustache, you know? Yeah. Yeah. He's amazing. It was outstanding information. Oh my gosh. Yo, the, the, like, first off,

there are so many things that we weren't able to get to, but like we talked about at the beginning of this episode, if you guys get the book Back Mechanic, maybe check out some of the other stuff. But Back Mechanic, I think, is probably the book that's best for the general population. Like, Andrew, you're the one who told me about how he talks about the correct way to cough, which most people would think isn't intuitive. But how many times have you sneezed and your back hurt? Yeah. And he speaks about what like what did he talk about, Andrew, in terms of sneezing well i mean so just again it depends right right or it's it's all

person dependent but like for me um it is that uh i believe it's flexion or so it's like the slouching that sort of thing so if i sneeze and i everyone's usually gonna like i don't want to spread my germs everywhere so I gotta cover up I have to sneeze you know sneeze down well now not only am I putting myself in that position that hurts by just literally being right here right now but I'm now bringing force

into it so now I'm like crunching even harder so if I try to like almost just kind of like give that sneeze somewhere to go and like shoot it up so that way I just like it goes just kind of like give that sneeze somewhere to go and like shoot it up so that way i just like it goes out instead of like you know like the whiplash come down on myself like it just it does help it is kind of weird if you don't have like a tissue or something to sneeze into especially if you have like some phlegm working you're gonna end up shooting the uh the projectile the headliner of your car so if you're

in my car don't look up uh but i think most people are trying to like stop a sneeze so they get like they get too tense and then they kind of crunch down and uh you're probably better off just just letting the damn thing it's like when you need to throw up you just yeah just you just got to go through it like you're gonna throw up a couple times it's really nothing you can do to prevent it and with a sneeze i think the same thing if you try to block those things i think i mean there's a reason why you're sneezing your body's trying to get like rid of something but man it is freaking crazy because you know that that drop test all you're doing and you know again if you don't have back pain you're doing. And, you know, again, if you don't have back pain, you're looking at it, like, really do like, that's going to like, that'll floor you. Like,

yeah, if I'm on my toes and I don't brace myself and I let go and I just land on my, my heels, like that's very painful. Like I, I, I can't let myself go. Cause like, that's how painful it is. So I brace the whole time. I've learned that from, you know, training here, like, you know, bracing into the belt and stuff so i do that every day like i do anything like i have to do that but then doing that and then just looking straight like back and then dropping it's like whoa where'd the pain go like i got fired up i did it again and like i seriously gave myself whiplash like it it hurt but like doing stuff like that to where it's like why is it that when i look this certain way like doing a bent over row it doesn't hurt the way it used to

before and that's why i was asking like can you overdo it he's like oh of course i'm like yeah that makes sense you know a lot of it is once you kind of understand a few things it's sort of like diet right like oh wait i can't have carbs fat and protein like once you understand like oh well no shit like i get it right like it makes sense now so it's it's kind of like that with this but when you don't know it's you're just you're lost you know like i don't know why my back hurts like you know it's because i fell on a squat or whatever it is you know like it's just now that you have some information you're like okay maybe i actually can you know attack this with strategy and actually you know kind of gain some momentum and be pain-free it's it's just it's wild he got uh lane norton to be able

to come back or um yeah um yeah he got lane to be able to come back and and hit some big lifts and um he's helped blaine sumner and some of these really high-level lifters. And he works with a lot of great MMA fighters and stuff as well. I mean, I think it's demoralizing for people. I know that Lane had a really hard time when he was in pain. And it's kind of like it becomes your part of your identity whether it should be or not i guess is a a different subject you know we should probably have more things in our life that we can rely on but when you can't do some of the movements that

you really enjoy and then he at the end there he's talking about sex i mean if you can't do that uh you know you're gonna not feel the same you're gonna not feel good you have there's certain things that you uh like want to do certain things that you kind of quote're going to not feel the same. You're going to not feel good. There's certain things that you, like, want to do. There's certain things that you kind of, quote, unquote, need to do every day to kind of feel yourself. And when those things are stripped away and you start to lose some of your health, it's not really just about, like, losing your sport. It's about, you know, inviting in, like, depression.

Because now you don't have anything to do. You're like, what can I do? Then you go and try to do something else and that still hurts your back. And you're like, fuck man, I can't do shit. And the guy yesterday saying idle hands are a great pathway to hell because you're going to do a lot of probably going to do more harm than good when you're just kind of sitting around. And so it's like, yeah, how do we get back in the game? And he gave us a lot of great advice on how to get back in the game, which is just a game of life. Yeah. I think the, uh,

the discussion on the densifying of neural drive was something that a lot of power lifters and a lot of lifters in general are going to get amazing use from, because it's funny. I don't know. I don't think we were recording, but right before the episode you know we were talking about like you know how there are certain lifters that don't always lift the absolute max load they always leave something in the tank ed cone did that that's why he never failed the russian lifters do that that's why they have such longevity but when you see a lot of like american lifters ig posts you always going like you're trying to hit that absolute pr, but you're, you know, you're, you're, you're damaging that ability. You know, he said, the more you fail, it's like creating, what was it that you said?

It pollutes your body and pollute, it pollutes your body. How powerful is that? I never heard anybody say that. And I, and I've been trying to put it into words for so long and he said pollute. And I was like, oh my God, like that's exactly what it's doing. Like, it's not the most detrimental thing. It's not the worst thing you can ever do, but it does partially pollute the system. And it's putting the wrong information in an area, in an area where it doesn't belong. And with something like a heartburn,

heartburn is putting stuff in an area. It doesn't belong. It's gas that's a, or it's, um, acid rather that's in your stomach. that's designed to be there, that's very useful, that's very helpful for our digestion. But as soon as it slips into a different area, well, now it's burning the shit out of your throat, and it's detrimental to you at that moment. And the same thing with your lifting. You know, we take

these risks, we want to do that 405 deadlift to kind of like, you know, put the exclamation point on the deadlift workout when we're using 365 for three sets of three or whatever it is. It's like, what, you know, just, just give me a good, just give me a, give me a good explanation as to why you're doing it. And you might have a good explanation. If you have a good explanation, um, then that's fine. If you just say, Hey, you know what? It's off season and I feel strong today. And last time I tried four or five, I missed it. But now I think I'm well within striking distance

and I want to go for it. That might make some sense, but I would also say, make sure that you're very confident that you can do it. Like maybe you can do it on a day where you didn't feel great. Like you can do it on your worst day. That's a great, that's a great measure. Like what can, if somebody's just to think about their own lifting strength, what can you walk in the gym and, you know, warm up in a very short fashion and just get right to and lift and what is that number that you can do all the time? And for those of you that have a, you know, hard time kind of estimating and you overestimate how strong you really are, maybe say, Hey, what's a good, what's a three rep max that I can go and do

cleanly. That looks good. That's to the depth. That's with a pause, that's a full range of motion and a deadlift or something like that. And then now you have a weight that is manageable. You have a weight that is workable and you're not getting beyond that strength point that he was talking about. Yeah. It's like when we're lifting, we can't always empty the tank. You know, there are certain things that you can empty the tank with when it comes to like bodybuilding, going to failure on certain movements going to failure on a like not a lot of race but like maybe a chest fly or something like that but it's probably not a

good idea to try to empty the take when it comes to your power lifting movements that's i don't see a place where that would be necessary even on something like an amrap you know when someone when someone's doing an amrap typically you're supposed to maybe do one rep shy. You know, hit that last rep. And if you think you can only do one more, put that shit away. Technical limit. Technical limit. Go until, you know, someone looks at it and goes, eh, you should probably rack that.

You know? But you don't want someone to go, oh, like what? I don't even know what lift you're doing, bro. Are you trying to kiss the ground when you're doing those squats? Or like, what the hell's going on over there? You trying to kiss the ground when you're doing those squats? You're like, what the hell's going on over there? You want it to still be a recognizable, really clean lift where someone's like, I don't know, man, maybe you could have got two or three more. I'm not sure.

That looked great. Yeah. But most of the best lifters, they're always lifting like that all the time. And then we marvel at it. We're like, oh, my God, that is so crazy what they're doing. Look at David Goggins. You know, the stuff that he's doing all the time. And I realize he's probably brushed up against it too much, too early at times where he's running and shit's falling off his feet and doing things. But he did teach his body over a long period of time to adapt to these things.

And once you adapt them, then you can adopt them and they can be part of your day to day. you can adopt them and they can be part of your day to day. And when you, if you, I see David Goggins things pop up on YouTube all the time, not really his full videos, but just his stories. And he's always doing something crazy. Like the other day he was just talking and he was doing these split jumps,

like, like lunging jumps. And he was just talking and you know, what he was saying was great. And I was fired up because of that. But I was like, he's been doing this for a little bit, you know, what he was saying was great, and I was fired up because of that, but I was like, he's been doing this for a little bit, you know, I mean, he was going for a good 60, 70 seconds or something without breathing heavy at all, he's just talking

to you casually, you know, saying motherfucker this, motherfucker that in his typical fashion, but, you know, I wasn't really necessarily pumped up and fired up in the context of what he was saying, but watching him do that and it's just such a breeze for him. And then what does he stretch for two hours at night? I mean, if a regular person tries to start to bring upon a lot of the things that he's doing, you're not going to last. I mean, you might not even get through it.

I don't even know if you can make, you're not going to make it a day, you know, with him or Cam Haines. Like you're just going to explode. Like your body's not going to be able to handle any of it. I don't even know if you can make, you're not going to make it a day, you know, with him or Cam Haines, like you're just going to explode. Like your body's not going to be able to handle any of it. And it's not something you're going to be able to really adopt because you won't be able to adapt to it. Cause it will actually crush you and probably do way more harm than good. Yeah. No, think about like when he was talking about just like the, a lot of these top level athletes ability to grind, like the only reason that they get to that level is because of like the reason why Ed Cohn got there is because of the always getting close to that spot, but never really touching it. So every single time

he comes back to it, like, but like he talked about, he takes a day off or whatever, but every single time he comes back to it, he could do a little bit more and a little bit more, but he never lets himself get to that place where it's, it's, he's really gonna actually miss or he's really gonna actually fail. If a lot of athletes could take that type of mentality and put it into what they're doing, they'd last so much longer.

There'd be way, I mean, there's going to be injury despite anything, but there'd be way less injury. Um, and you'd be seeing P I think that's one of the big reasons you kind of see some people going farther and farther in the sport today, like we were talking about the other day.

It's all about different types of training routines, deloading, backing off a little bit so that you can go further and further and further. The strongest lifter we ever had in the gym. I mean, I guess I'd have to say Eric Spoto is the strongest lifter we ever had in the gym i don't really know what else he was capable of but just his overall just brute strength was ridiculous yeah but stan efforting you know is the strongest power lifter we ever had in the gym and just a specimen but you know the one of the strongest things he ever

did was leave the gym all the time you know he was like i'm going to eat i'm going you know and then people you know each workout people like where are to eat i'm going you know and then people you know each workout people like where are you going i'm going to eat and then i remember like there was one day where we were at um uh jack's urban eats and we ate a pretty good amount of food he's like bigs he's like i'm heading over to cheesecake factory you want to go with me? And I was like, you going now? He was like, yeah, absolutely. Why not? I was like, alright, I'm going with you. And we like stopped at his hotel for five minutes

and then we went to Cheesecake Factory. And he's like, by the time they serve us, it's going to be like 90 minutes later. He's like, we got to keep eating, right? Wow. But he knew that it's an adaptation process he's gonna have to feed the machine like he just squatted 850 for a double you know and his

his thought process was i just squatted 850 for a double what the fuck else am i gonna do in the gym for the day what am i gonna do some leg extension some leg curls it's like why yes why even bother taxing the system he's like like, if I was to do it, I probably wouldn't go at it that hard because I just crushed myself with those squats. And here, you know, are all these other people smashing themselves with the assistance exercises. But again, we got to apply what Stuart McGill shared with us. So awesomely on our show today is it's got to be customized,

you know, and Stan doesn't really look like he's a person that needs a lot of assistance work because it looks like he spent his whole life doing a lot of that work because he's got giant biceps and giant ass shoulders and a big chest. It doesn't look like he needs to really, he doesn't have to work on hypertrophy. It's not a huge problem. Conditioning is not a huge problem for him. So he's like, I got the strength I needed for today. I did the lift I needed to do and I'm out the door. I think one big thing that we can take out, like everyone can take away from this is number

one, like, you know, start going on more walks, which we talk about all the time. But also I think some, some really important things and we weren't able to really get into it, but simple things like going down and trying to tie your shoe during the day or standing up or, or just all these different movements coming out of your car every single day, try to pay attention to how you do it and how your back feels as you're doing it. Cause if you, if you pay attention to it, you'll notice something like as you're coming out of your car, when you bend, you're like, Ooh, that doesn't feel too good. You know, maybe you can change the way you hinge at the hip and step out of the car and you can build these better movement mechanics because all of these things, it seems to be

that all of these things are cumulative stresses, you know, bending down and tying your shoe every single day versus in the book, it talks about putting your foot up on a bench, right? Sneezing, um, even rolling over in your bed. He just says like, you might need to, in accordance to how soft or how hard your bed is, an individual with back pain may have to brace themselves a little bit, which sounds crazy. Cause you're like, I'm, I'm just, I'm laying down. All I got to do is roll over. But there are people that have that much discomfort that when they go from one position to another, it hurts. So you might have to think, okay, let me kind of bear down and now I'm going to move.

And obviously when you're sleeping, you might not be able to manage some of that. But I am those people. I have to brace to just roll over. I've had my back screwed up before where it's been like that too. Yeah, many times. Yeah. But along the lines of what you're talking about in SEMA, also like in the book, he describes like the no pain, no gain mentality or whatever.

And, you know, being around the gym so much, it's like, yeah, like, okay, my back hurts, but like I kind of have to fight through this pain, you know, to get to be stronger, to feel better, be in less pain. But in the book, he just says like spend more time not in pain. So like when I go to bed at night and i lay down on my back i've said it on this podcast like yeah i will rest until my back stops hurting um when i lay flat on my back and then from there i might rotate around or whatever but i still i go through probably like 15 minutes of pain before it like fades away or I just stop paying attention to it. Well, now guess what I do?

I go straight to my side and I don't deal with that 15 minutes of pain. So when I get out of bed now, it's a lot easier to actually go from being asleep in bed to actually stand up and getting to walk. Whereas before it's like, fuck, here we go. Like, you know, what, what he explained about like kind of crawling up your leg to get up out of, out of, you know, a seat that I had to do that every day. Like I have to like, okay. And up. And then like, all right, am I going to be able to do it today? Like, yep. All right, cool. Let's go. Now it's nowhere near as bad just because all I did was, oh wait, I don't have to

be in pain, you know, for any, it sounds stupid, right? Like, why would I do that? It's because that's just what I thought. And then now it's like, okay, let's get, let's just skip that completely and just don't even worry about it. And it's like, oh shit, I'm feeling better. This is great. Yeah. A lot of it is ingrained in your head too.

You're like, I have a bad back. Yes. So I'm going to get up like this. Yes. And I'm going to, I'm going to really lean and hold on to stuff. And your back could hurt for the day, but your back might be totally fine for the day. And maybe, you know, sometimes people might need to get more in tune. Does my back actually hurt?

Some of the questions I've been asking myself lately with food, I'm like, do I actually even really like this that much? Like, cause I'll, I'll, I'll be a binger here and there you know I'll go overboard on the food and like I know that I don't need it but still I still want to fulfill some of that need right and when I was in Los Angeles with my wife last weekend we got some pizza like we had a nice dinner and food was fairly clean and all that I had a couple dinner and food was fairly clean and all that.

I had a couple of drinks and we went by an old pizza place that I like a lot. I was like, this place has New York style pizza. I'm like, I got to get a couple of slices. So we got some pizza and I ate the pizza. The pizza tasted really good. But I'm sitting there like chewing on the crust and I'm like, I don't even really like crust, but it's just like, it's an extra opportunity to eat like more stuff that's like bad for me or whatever. And so I just, I tossed it aside and she, she likes the crust. So she ate it.

But yeah, I had to, I was just like asking myself, like, do you really like this that much? You know, if it's something that you like, then that's the different story. It's like, Hey, you know what? You, you're probably going to have to go for it here and there, but you know, that's ingrained into my brain, you know, to kind of do those things. And we have a lot of stuff in our day to day. That's like, it's in our head. And we think that we have to be that person that way. I'm the guy with the bad back, you know, I'm the, I'm the guy that overeats all the time, or I'm the,

whatever your, your thing is that you have, I'm the guy that lifts heavy, you know, whatever you are in a crowd, um, you're, you're going to be living with that all the time because that's what you think. That's what you say. That's what other people start to know you as. And it becomes a huge part of your identity. It's hard to shake it. Yeah. Even just like if I have to bend down to pick something up, I already am preparing myself to be in pain.

That's going to hurt. You look at it, that's going to hurt. That's going to cost me some energy to pick it up whereas somebody else would be like i dropped something boom pick it up yeah and then it what it makes us do that one thing that i believe we're all trying to never do it but you know when you go bend down you know or get up out of your seat you know like why am i making all these fucking sounds? Like it's not that bad. Yeah.

Yeah. Definitely don't want to be that. Yeah, guys, seriously. No, I imagine if you could get rid of a majority of that, I'm not going to say all of it,

but maybe all of it, maybe all of your pain just by doing a certain few things in your life differently, certain few things you wouldn't think about like sneezing. Right. So, I mean, that's awesome. I think stretching has been helping me. I've sneezing. Right. So, I mean, that's awesome. I think stretching has been helping me.

I've been stretching. I will admit I haven't stretched every day, but I've been stretching enough to the point where I find myself just kind of stretching throughout the day now rather than just stretching all at night. And last night I stretched in my sauna, which was like, Oh man, kind of cool.

Cause I was a lot more mobile. I was like, sauna, which was like, oh man, kind of cool. Cause I was a lot more mobile. I was like, damn, I'm like, I'm able to move a lot better in here than I am. Cause, cause it's 194 degrees or whatever. Yeah. Um, and that felt pretty good. It is helping me to relax. It is, it is, uh, it is working. It'd be interesting.

Cause like my hip has been tight, uh, for like 10 years. So like, if I can get it to not feel as tight and for it to open up a little bit i mean shit that would be that would be amazing if i could just move around a little bit better i move around like a fucking robot got the mobility of a trash can over here yo hey real quick before we get before we get off we got to talk about the um the sex study and not the sex study yeah that yeah they got velcro together that's funny dr mcgill thank you for your good work my man he's like that's awesome that is important we can make jokes about it but that's like

people probably really blown out their backs i think i think all three of us have had sex injuries over the years yeah i haven't blown my back out from it, but. Good. So, the unfortunate thing about my back is that the slouching is what hurts. And one of the movements is, in the book he explains, it's kind of like a thrusting movement. And he even says, he's like, you know, pardon my whatever. He's like, that's what you're talking about. Right.

And yeah, my back has lit up, but thankfully not too bad. Cause obviously we have my son here, so it hasn't like totally put me on the sideline. Your wife is like, oh, you're done already. You're like, actually, I just threw out my back. We're still good. Just get on top. Come on. Sorry, babe. That's amazing babe that's amazing yeah so we're good though good show good show it was awesome having uh the doctor on and man he he went over so much stuff and that thing about ed cone you know

uh being 30 stronger i mean he's 30 stronger than the next guy in his weight class, but also, and we mentioned, we talked about one of the greatest strong, or one of the greatest American strongmen of all time, and maybe one of the greatest strongmen, period, Bill Kazmaier. Bill Kazmaier was a ferocious competitor, and sometimes people will really praise two sport athletes,

but sometimes they, they, they sometimes lose sight of, they'll think that some sports are so similar that they don't really credit somebody as a two sport athlete. Bill Kazmaier had the all time world record in powerlifting. He had the biggest total in the history of powerlifting while he was dominating the world's strongest man competition. We don't have anything like that anymore. I mean, he was, he was like a Bo Jackson in a sense. Like I would give him that much credit. I mean, baseball and football, it's, there's still a ball involved, right? When we got, we're lifting

weights, uh, you know, with, with strong man, we're moving around weight and with, so I think people just think that these are big, you know, brutes and makes sense for him to have the highest total but he bench pressed over 600 pounds he was pulling and squatting over 800 pounds all while kicking the shit out of people you know lifting up kegs and doing all these other things but what you need to keep in mind as great as he was the all-time world record was broken by a guy who weighed 220 pounds and stood at 5 feet 5 inches. And his name was fucking Ed Cohn. That motherfucker broke the all-time world record from the super heavyweight. From one of the strongest men to ever walk the face of the earth.

He was able to beat that. And he actually did it with an injury. If you ever see Ed Cohn, he would get a little, you know, he'd get a little fired up here and there. He'd be a little pumped. There's a video of it online. I'm getting goosebumps thinking about it because it gets me so fired up. But there's a video of it online.

You know, Ed Cohn deadlifted 901 sumo. And everyone's like, sumo's cheating. So Ed Cohn in this particular contest had an injury to his back. You can watch some of the videos online. You watch him do, he does like bent over rows. He does a deadlift. And when he puts the bar down, he's in so much pain. He's bracing himself so hard.

I think he's lifting like 585 or 675, which is chump change for the goat. He puts the weight down and he passes out. The next clip, it just goes right to the next clip. It's him still lifting. It's him finishing his workout. He passed out and just like fell right over the bar, took a nosedive, landed on his fucking face. But in this competition, he, you know, going into this competition, he had that, he had

an injury and he was talking about how he's deadlifting conventional to prep for this meet. In the contest, he comes down to the end, and it comes down to him having to pull an 887-pound deadlift. And he did it conventional, and he fucking nailed it. And he gets so fired up, and he's pointing at the crowd. He's talking shit to somebody. But I don't know who. He was fired up. He was really fired up.

And it was just amazing to see him to be able to break that record but I love this conversation so so much with Dr. McGill the way he talked about strength and the way he kept talking about how it's connected to the mind and connected to the brain and and how it is a demonstration of genius I'm just really happy and excited that we had someone to really kind of confirm that. This is things that I've thought for many, many years where it's like, why do we, why do we celebrate the musician so much? Why do we celebrate the artist so much? Why do we celebrate the person that plays the piano, you know, really beautifully, the guitarist, the bassist, all these different things. We kind of put those in a category and we go like, that guy's a genius.

But we don't do the same thing when it comes to lifting. And I think it's about time some lifters get some recognition for that because what they're doing is really masterful. And it's an amazing thing to watch the way that Eddie Hall is going to explain a deadlift or something like that. The way that Michael Hearn explains how to do a lift. I mean, and Seema and I have been lifting for years. We've been around a lot of people.

We've done our share of lap pulldowns and seated rows and deadlifts and stuff. But every exercise that we did in a given workout was completely new and different from, you know, doing it the way Mike was showing us. Yeah. And he's like, oh, this is activating this, this. He's like, no, try it this way. Even like a lap pulldown, you face the opposite way. You know, you face the opposite way on a lap pulldown and you pull it behind your neck.

He's got so many different variations of how he's doing an exercise. And it is genius because he's able to do things that other people can't do. He's able to tap in to parts of his brain and parts of his mind. You're not going to find other people that can do that. And when you do, it's really, really rare. They're the best in the world at it. That story with Bill Kazmaier and his erectors is exactly what we're talking about here. It's like, it's like when, when we've been with Mike and he's adjusted our legs on like

a, it's like a, the squat machine. And he, he did that. He's like trying to focus right here. Like, oh like a, it's like a, the squat machine. And he, he did that. He's like, try to focus right here. Like, Oh my God. Like really like, and this is a thing. This is why I think it's so dope. You know, a lot of people wait for like a science explain, like have science explain why this is so beneficial or why this sucks. And then you see some guy that's like, no, that's actually really dope. Some guy that actually has done it for a long time. I would probably listen more to him or try it and take that into account more than what somebody's article says. Just because sometimes, sometimes a fucking study can't quantify that.

A study can't quantify what Kaz was doing before somebody studied it, you know? Well, yeah. Oftentimes the studies are just speculation based off of something somebody already did. Yeah. Exactly. Right? And then it's like, well, it's like, and then who do they study? They study college kids and it's like, well, college kids are not going to get the same

results as Bill Kazmaier. No. Yeah. Take us on out of here, Andrew. I will. This, yep, this has to be officially the longest podcast of the year thus far. No way. We're at 245 right now.

No way. We need to tell people at the beginning that they need to watch the video version of this because it's like, you know, there's so many visuals that he had that's like, you're selling yourself short if you didn't watch this on YouTube. Yeah. Absolutely. We'll cut an intro before we head out of here. But anyways, thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Sincerely appreciate it. watch this on youtube yeah absolutely we'll cut a intro before we head out of here but anyways

thank you everybody for checking out today's episode sincerely appreciate it make sure you guys subscribe to the newsletter because i don't know if maybe by now it's been released but in sema just uh he put together a really dope uh fasting uh information type thing uh newsletter with the video over the internet i know right He's all over the place. Son of a bitch. So check the links down in the podcast show notes as well as the YouTube description so that way you guys can subscribe so you don't miss out on that. Please make sure you're following the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram, at MB Power Project on Twitter. My Instagram, Twitter, and now Clubhouse is at IamAndrewZ.

We've been having a lot of fun on Clubhouse. Hopefully, you guys can get up on that ASAP. But Nsema, where are you at? Nsema Inyang on Instagram, YouTube, and Clubhouse. Nsema Inyang on Twitter. Mark? At Mark Smelly Bell. I got to say, this is one of the better podcasts that we've ever done.

So, you know, make sure you pay attention to what was going on. If you guys have questions, maybe shoot them at Andrew on our Instagram and maybe we can answer some of them on Clubhouse or something like that. If you've got questions about back pain, I don't know where else they can send questions to, but that might be a good start, right? Yeah, they can

what's it called? The stamped letter to 855 not just joking. Yeah, definitely. I'm Andrew Z or just hit uh hit up yeah just go there at iamandrewz that'd be the easiest way uh at markbellspowerproject2 you know just figure it out youtube comments obviously you can put those comment would be actually probably the easiest and cleanest way to do it so do that sorry do that ask your questions below on anything that you had uh regarding some of the stuff that Stuart McGill said.

We don't know, you know, the things in depth about back pain the way that he does. But Andrew's read the book. And I think between the three of us, we can figure out ways of getting you guys some good answers to your back pain as well. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you all later.