This episode is brought to you by Thorne and I have some incredible news for any of you
that are in the military, first responder or medical professions.
In an effort to give back, Thorne is now offering you an ongoing 35% off each and every one
of your purchases of their incredible nutritional solutions.
Now Thorne is the official supplement of CrossFit, the UFC, the Mayo Clinic, the Human Performance
Project and multiple special operations organizations.
I myself have used them for several years and that is why I brought them on as a sponsor.
Some of my favorite products they have are their Multivitamin Elite, their Whey Protein,
the Super EPA and then most recently, Cynaquil.
As a firefighter, a stuntman and a martial artist, I've had my share of brain trauma
and sleep deprivation and Cynaquil is their latest brain health supplement.
Now to qualify for the 35% off, go to thorn.com, T-H-O-R-N-E dot com.
Click on sign in and then create a new account.
You will see the opportunity to register as a first responder or member of military.
When you click on that, it will take you through verification with GovX.
You'll simply choose a profession, provide one piece of documentation and then you are
verified for life.
From that point onwards, you will continue to receive 35% off through Thorn.
Now for those of you who don't qualify, there is still the 10% off using the code BTS10,
Behind the Shield 10 for a one time purchase.
Now to learn more about Thorn, go to episode 323 of the Behind the Shield podcast with
Joel Titoro and Wes Barnett.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome back
onto the show the head orthopedic surgeon for the CrossFit Games and lifelong athlete Dr.
Sean Rocket.
Now in this second conversation, we discuss a host of topics from the pandemic's impact
on the nation's gyms, the evolution of CrossFit, workman's comp, rehabbing injuries in the
first responder professions, saving Emily Rolf's arm, firefighter cancer and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment,
go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and
leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of well over 950 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories.
So I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.
So that being said, I welcome back onto the show Dr. Sean Rocket.
Enjoy.
Well Sean, I want to start by saying thank you so much for coming back onto the Behind
the Shield podcast.
The last episode we did was February 2022 and that was episode 571.
So obviously it's been almost two and a half years since we talked.
Love it.
Happy to.
Thanks for having me.
That's a lot of stuff's happened in two years.
So well first, when we spoke, the world was kind of coming out of the pandemic.
Not loading the question at all from a takeaway perspective of lessons learned and or the
ripple effect of those couple of years.
What has been your perspective?
Lessons learned.
Yeah.
I mean, I think back to when we were, you know, just not going outside and not doing
anything and washing groceries and, you know, just the end schools shutting down and all
that.
And you look back and you're just like, did we really go through that?
Did that really just happen?
You know, and there's always the retrospective scope.
But I remember, you know, there was fear, there was uncertainty and we didn't know which
way it was going to go.
And I think, you know, through time, we've been able to see, you know, what we did right
and what we did wrong.
What about the health message?
One of the things that infuriated me the whole time was the truth.
Yeah, that was driving me crazy.
If you exercise, it's good.
And, you know, like having certain things open and certain things shut down, that was
phenomenal.
Yeah.
Well, I feel like we missed a beautiful opportunity of a captive audience, like the fairground,
the merry-go-round stop for a second.
And we could have really made, you know, bolstered PE programs and sent that fitness message,
given subsidies to local farmers to create healthy, you know, organic food, take the
vending machines out of schools.
Again, if you were king for a day, what should have happened that way?
Because what we're seeing is obesity is still getting worse, mental health is still getting
worse, and we saw how it was handled.
If you could do it again and you were now the health guru, what advice would you give
to people?
Yeah, I mean, it's the same advice I give now, you know, diet, exercise.
You know, yeah, the fact that we didn't sort of just drive this home, that it was, you
know, people who are affected were being disproportionately affected.
You know, there's something we can do to change it.
And the fact that, you know, there's still the food, you know, pyramid and things like
that and, you know, not being able to, you know, just address the point that, you know,
we can get our kids healthier, happier, you know, be careful what they eat, watch what
they eat, you know, just the, like, it was always, it was always, it wasn't, it never
came full front to the nightly news.
It was always, you know, what's the presidential meeting and what's the governor meeting and
what's the, it was always just sort of in the background.
Yeah, I agree.
It should have, it should have come full, full, full blown steam ahead, you know, to
everybody's attention.
Yeah.
What I saw in our gym specifically, I want to say our, where I train and coach, but it's
not my gym, CrossFit Iron Legion in Ocala, is there were a lot of people that came every
week because they came every week.
And so, you know, that momentum carried on, you know, the, the, the second law of motion
or whatever it is.
And when this was shut down, what I was seeing is many, many gym owners, businesses failing
and also a lot of people that had made that courageous step to start exercising.
The wind was now taken out the sails and they never came back.
What did you see about those two dynamics in your area?
Yeah.
I saw a lot of yoga, a lot of people out doing outdoor yoga.
We were doing outdoor yoga.
We kept our gym going because we were outside.
We did outside workouts.
You know, when it was inside, you know, there were curtains and there were cubicles that
you could not step out of your cubicles and other gyms.
Yeah.
It was, it, you know, people would walk to the other side of the road.
I remember that like walking down the road and seeing people walk to the other side of
the road.
I got a lot of fear and uncertainty was there.
But yeah, I can't stress enough the importance of, you know, being moderate with your diet
and reasonable and even healthy and exercising and, you know, trying to keep trying to fight
the battle.
It's an, it's an everyday battle.
That's the sugar epidemic that we're seeing.
And what about the ripple effects?
Are you seeing gyms because obviously some gyms were closed down permanently.
Like this put them out of business.
It destroyed their business.
Yeah.
I've seen people, I've seen them bounce back.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
And the membership is growing again.
Cause I mean, our gym is actually thriving again now.
You know, again, I've been to some other gyms and seeing people definitely coming back.
I think, you know, even stronger.
I think, I think there are people out there who, who, yeah, who were like, it was a wakeup
call for them.
And they realize, you know, I hope, you know, I don't think enough people had that wakeup
call, but, you know, I think it's, I think there definitely were, I've seen patients
who are like, yeah, I needed, I needed to do something.
I realized I wasn't doing the right thing.
I realized I was putting myself at risk and everybody else at risk, you know, my families
and what we're eating and, and I've talked to a lot of people who turned it around.
So not, not enough though.
Well, you were kind enough to introduce me to, Emily Rolfe.
And so Kyle and Emily were on the show a few weeks ago.
Talk to me about her case through your eyes.
Cause I mean, not only was it pertinent in the CrossFit space, it's the kind of thing
that we would see, you know, as a paramedic or an EMT that we might miss as well.
And then any other notable kind of orthopedic incidents that you had since we spoke last.
Yeah.
So, so yeah, Emily was a, was a fascinating case of a pale hand after exercise and, and,
and it was a, a pulseless hand.
There was no pulse in it.
And, but the problem is it had pinked up.
So it started to look normal.
She wasn't having severe pain.
She was able to move it.
I think we localized the issue to the fact that she did have some, some needling and
that may have gotten into the artery and that caused some bleeding and then clotting.
And so it turned out she had a clot of her, of her hand and her arm and no blood flow.
There was just a little collateral flow, which made her hand pink up, which was the confusing
part.
And she wanted to go back into the games.
And, and I was saying, you know, you, you, you don't have a pulse in your arm and that's
really a surgical emergency.
And, but she wasn't experiencing the severe, severe pain.
I think part of it is just, she's so tough.
And part of it was she had so much muscle that there was blood flowing down to her fingers.
So it wasn't, she wasn't getting like the tourniquet effect of a pulseless arm.
You know, they, if you don't have blood flowing down into the arm, it's, it's usually horribly
painful like a, like a blood pressure cuff that doesn't go down.
But she had emergency surgery, got back in and came back to see us at the games and is
back at the games now.
She's exercising again and pretty, pretty cool story, pretty weird picture, dramatic
presentation.
And I'm glad, you know, I didn't let her run away and go, go to the warmup area like she
wanted to.
And, you know, we, we got her to the hospital immediately, called ahead, got vascular surgery
involved and they were waiting for her and operated on her within really two hours of
the diagnosis.
What was interesting, she mentioned that there had been blood vessels that had grown around
the issue.
And you hear obviously with that, with, with other areas of the body too, but it was just,
was such a reminder of the innate ability for the body to heal if it's given the right
environment, even if it's just a kind of an emergency vessel.
Yeah, like if you put a big blockade in a river and, you know, like a, like a clot or
a blockade in a river, she had little tiny vessels in the muscle bellies trickling down
into her hand.
So really helping her hand and saving her, saving her fingers in her hand.
And again, that's related to the musculature.
Like if she, she, the muscle has a ton of arteries and veins in them and she had great
flow in her muscles, but not in the arteries.
So, you know, just like if you blocked a dam and you had river flowing around the dam,
that's kind of what happened.
What about other issues?
Were there any other incidents that you had to mitigate?
We spoke about Brooke Wells last time with her elbow, for example.
Yeah, Brooke Wells last time.
The last games after Emily's incident, trying to think, last year was pretty, there was
nothing, nothing that dramatic, which, which we always, we always like to, like we like
to be in the background, you know, sort of the shadows and, you know, we're there, we're
there if you need us and hopefully you don't need us.
Yeah, there was no like major reduction or dislocation or anything like that.
You know, usual bumps and bruises and, but, you know, I always say when somebody says,
did anything come in, it was, it's more of, you know, ice bags and Band-Aids.
What was the, there was one, yeah, I mean, recently there was, you know, an ACL at the
semi-finals, but yeah, nothing, nothing major at the games last year, which is good.
We, we like to think we're learning, learning from our, from our, our, our past.
Kind of injuries.
I had a guest on a couple of days ago and we were talking about the immense, you know,
swell now in the use of TRT and obviously in, in a sport where there's drug testing, you
know, you would, you would think it would be less, but this is just the regular population.
I think there's a lot of high school kids that are getting into it now.
There's a lot of first responders because the shift work is destroying their hormones
and they're not being advised that they can lifestyle change and sleep and, you know,
peptides they're being sent to the TRT.
But when interesting thing the guest said was one of the dangers is that, you know,
this sudden growth in strength is not giving the connective tissue time to strengthen as
well.
You've got a very unique perspective.
So what, what have you seen as far as the, you know, basically steroids coming back in,
whether it's legal or illegal and the injuries that you're seeing?
Yeah.
Um, just as you were talking, uh, it popped into my head.
Roman Krenikoff was last year.
It was a Roman Krenikoff.
I don't know if you remember, he's a Russian athlete and he, um, and he's posted this.
So it's, it's all out there online.
Uh, so nothing, not revealing any secrets, but he was in first place going into the end
of the games, two more events needed.
And he jumped over an obstacle and landed on his foot.
And, uh, and again, this is documented.
There's videos on it, but, um, so he, he immediately said, he told his translator, he goes, I just
broke my foot and, uh, they came and we, I saw him and huge amount of swelling and limping
and trouble moving.
And we got the X-ray and again, this is documented.
So I'm not revealing anything, but he had, he had a fracture of his metatarsal, which
is no big deal, really fracture of the metatarsal on the side of the foot that typically heals
and not an issue.
But then he had a fracture also of the ligament of the, uh, the Lisfranc joint, which is
like the Roman arch of the foot.
So, and we say like Roman arch, like it forms the arch of the foot, like the supporting
structure of the foot.
And there was a fracture there.
And that was the more concerning issue.
And, you know, I, we talked and, you know, we said, you know, you got to be really careful
with this because if you jump on this or lift heavy weight, you might have some issues in
the future.
And, and it came down to, you know, him, the first event we, you know, I said, well, it's
the next event.
I heard it was a parallel bar walking with hands, like just literally walking on the
parallel bars with your hands, like, uh, shuffling.
And I was, oh, that's great.
And then I said, uh, you know, what's the other one?
They said, oh, seated sled pole.
I'm like, that's awesome.
These are two great events.
And then they go, oh, and, and double unders with a heavy, heavy rope.
And I said, okay, that's not as good.
And so I said, you know, you really shouldn't jump on that foot.
And he, I said, can you do it one legged?
Can you try?
And he says, I will do it.
Like in this, and, uh, and that was the best moment of the games that he, he was out there.
The whole crowd was cheering, standing ovation because he was able to do these double unders
on one leg, which no one has ever practiced probably.
And with a heavy, heavy rope was like a garden hose.
The rope was really heavy.
I felt it.
And I, I like was shaking my head thinking this is going to be, this is either going
to go well or it's not going to go well.
And he was able to do his double under workout and stay in the game.
And despite that, you know, third place in the games, despite having come in last on
the last two events.
So people said he, he owes me lunch for, for the podium finish in the games for that one.
And that was the same X-ray machine that you got just before Brooke's injury.
So you're again on scene, you were able to actually diagnose that, but make sure, you
know, you knew what you're dealing with.
Yeah.
The Brooke, uh, and she came out with a great book, resilient, and she, she put that all
out there about what was going on behind the scenes and how we were, you know, part of
it was her arm was so big and she had this big sleeve on the sleeve was tight.
And so it was, I think in retrospect, I should have just immediately got cut the sleeve off,
but I was struggling to try to put it back with the sleeve on.
And, uh, and I was like, oh yeah, you know, the sleeve was probably tight and keeping
it out of position.
And then, and we finally numbed it up.
And once we numbed it up, you know, made it feel so much better.
We popped it right back in.
Brilliant.
Well, back then to the testosterone question.
So what are you seeing about, about that seemingly blowing up and the impact of the injuries
that are happening from that?
Yeah.
You know, so you know, you're getting, you're getting hypertrophy of the muscle, but yeah,
your tendons still need to adapt to that extra weight.
Number one, the extra weight.
If you put on 10 pounds of muscle weight, your tendons over months need to adapt to
that new stress.
The other part is steroids.
We know can have a effect on tendon strength.
You can get tendon ruptures from steroids.
So, you know, we're seeing that as well.
So you've got to be careful with, with, with that.
But yeah, I agree that tendons need to get in shape.
And it happens around, you know, this is what growing pains are.
People are like, what is, what are growing pains?
What does that mean?
And it's your body elongating.
Your bones are getting longer and bones are getting bigger.
You have this growth spurt and your tendons and muscles having caught up to the fact that
you just put on extra weight through bone.
So you get shin splints, you get, you know, tendonitis around the knees or the, and you
get these aching, cramping, terrible pains when, when, you know, 13 year olds or 14 year
olds or 12 year olds are running around.
Their tendons and muscles having caught up to the extra bone.
That literally happened to my son.
He ran track in high school.
And it was the first two years weren't too bad.
And then his junior year, he just had to tap out because he had plantar fasciitis and shin
splints.
And he went from five foot, you know, six all the way through to basically six foot
in those couple of years.
Yeah.
And what do you, what do you recommend?
So for everyone that's got kids experiencing that, what we, what should we be telling them
or what should be hearing from the PTs or doctors?
Number one, don't just write it off as an, as a knife, you know, as a growing pain, like
growing pains have to be dealt with.
And if it is tendonitis or shin splints or stress reaction or stress fracture, as a parent
and as a coach and as a sports medicine doctor, you gotta, you gotta sometimes be, be the,
you know, play the hard guy, you know, or play the, be the villain.
And the villain means that you stop it early.
If you stop it early, you're going to be okay.
But if you let them go, cause they want to keep playing and there's a game and there's
an AAU and there's a four games in the weekend and there's a tournament the following week.
And then there's a showcase and then there's the, the other team, four teams that they're
on and sometimes you need to get off the wheel.
You've got to get off the, off the, the, the mouse wheel there.
The, what do you call it?
The spinning wheel.
The hamster wheel.
Yeah.
So you've got to jump off and stop and, and modify.
But again, if you're getting it, if you get, if you identify it in two or three weeks,
you're going to be okay.
If it's six or eight months, it's going to be a long, long time before you feel better.
So sometimes it's the, it's the, you know, the hard right versus the easy wrong.
The easy wrong is you just keep going.
The hard right is you stop it, you modify, you strengthen.
And so you get to a point where you have no pain and then you can strengthen, but it's
tough to strengthen your leg when you can't even walk, climb or stare.
You know, so that's, that's the, probably the biggest thing I see is just people and
kids and parents pushing the kids so hard that the kids can't walk and they can't walk
stairs and they can't sleep.
So you got to, you got to, you know, listen to your kid and sometimes the kids won't tell
you either.
So that's the tough part, but you're going to watch your kid and say, Hey, why did you,
why were you limping in the fourth quarter or the fourth period?
What was going on there?
And they're like, Oh my, I had some soreness or achiness or tightness.
You know, that's, that's pain.
So you got to listen to that.
Yeah.
My son ended up, like I said, having to stop and it took, I mean, literally probably three
or four months before the pain went away.
But if he'd stayed and just, you know, had that suck it up mentality, A, he would have,
you know, made himself worse and B he already mentally wasn't enjoying it anymore.
So now you're forcing a kid to do something that hurts them.
And now you're lessening the chance of them returning to that sport.
Correct.
So with the, the testosterone side, the TRT side, you know, my, my main lens is the fire
service and what, what really angers me is you've got young firefighters, you know, late
twenties, early thirties that back in the day, it was kind of a, you know, a paradox.
The old way would be like, Oh, you know, your, your testosterone is two 51.
You're within normal limits, you know, and they would be dismissed, you know, and actually
that they probably should be in the eight hundreds at 25 years old or 30 years old.
But now I see the opposite, the predatory practice of a lot of these men's clinics
where you go in and they're just saying, Oh, you need to optimize them.
And I see a lot of young people and members of my CrossFit gym that weren't very big
and all of a sudden now they're really big and then giving me workout tips, you know,
that are using it.
And the reason I say this is they're not being told about the fertility issues, the hair
loss, you know, all these things.
So what are you seeing as far as that overall industry that's kind of seemingly exploded
the last few years?
Yeah, no, I do.
I do see places like that.
I have people asking me if I prescribe it and I don't, but yeah, I've seen a lot of
people on replacement therapy or supplemental therapy with it.
And yeah, you don't hear about, you know, if you're a young person, you don't hear about
the infertility issues or, you know, testicular shrinkage and stuff like that.
It's people, you know, I, again, I think it goes into, you know, why, why are you doing
it?
Why?
What's the purpose?
What, you know, you want to be as fit and healthy as you can on your own.
You don't want to take, why would you take extra drugs to be fit and healthy?
Like you should be able to do this on your own with diet and exercise.
Yeah, you know, you're, you're trying to get it.
You're trying to gain an edge.
And the question is that edge worth it?
And is it detrimental to your tendon?
Yeah, you rip tendons, you can rip pec tendons.
I've seen pec tendons, Achilles, quads, I've seen rips of those.
Yeah, well, I had a friend of mine come over for dinner the other day and he kind of got
into the locker room stuff.
This was probably 10 years ago now.
And you know, it destroyed him.
It destroyed, he's on TRT to this day because of that.
He lost his hair.
I mean, you know, and he could see it.
It just, it bothers him.
So there is absolutely a place for it.
You know, I've got people that are, you know, veterans, especially with TBIs where the body
just won't make it anymore.
So there's a company Transcend that I think are amazing because they have TRT, but they
have peptides and but you do a full blood work first.
They give you a whole kind of overview on dietary changes and sleep and all these other
areas.
And that's the thing.
It's not all or nothing.
It's just this nuanced conversation.
Are you the right candidate?
And if so, which of these would help you become better yourself, not replace diet and exercise
with a needle in your arse?
Yeah.
All right.
Well, then I want to shift, I mean, a completely different direction now, but you and I had
a great conversation about workman's comp last time and the first responder and how
to how to rehab and what to look for and what to ask, you know, the practitioners to make
sure that you're being given the right advice.
I was listening to that again on my on my drive down here.
And another question that I see over and over again, and you'd be a great person to ask
this when it comes to disability.
Now I know, you know, medical disability from from the fire service specifically, but this
applies to the civilians as well.
I can't help but feel like there is a push to not heal because God forbid someone finds
you lifting, you know, a dumbbell and trying to get better.
So what is your philosophy on that?
Because you know, if you're not able to do a job anymore, a certain job, then and you've
shown that like one of my best friends has had multiple back surgeries.
But he was terrified of someone sitting in a tree with a camera watching him pick up
dog food or something.
But that's not being a firefighter is completely different.
And I feel like that totally negates the person mentally and physically healing from that
injury.
So talk to me about that.
I think I think a lot of a lot of the issues are there are some bad apples that have ruined
it for people.
Right.
There are people who have taken advantage of the system.
And now the system is suspicious of every little thing that happens because they've
been burned by other people.
So I think the system is trying to make sure they're not going to get burnt on every, every,
every, everything.
I think I would say 95 percent of the people I see are straight shooters.
They're they get hurt.
They want to get back.
They want to get rehab.
They don't want surgery or some some people push for surgery right away.
And that's my job is to say, I think you're going to get better without surgery.
So I don't think we need to pull the trigger if it needs surgery, then to get it expeditiously
so you can get back on, get back to your lifestyle and your and your work as fast as possible.
But so the people that I've seen and again, it's a small percentage.
You know, I think less than five percent probably are some people who just try to be out for
the summer or, you know, I'm not going back.
I'm going to string this out, you know, stuff like that.
Again, a small percentage.
Most people.
It's you know, with a doctor's note, you know, we cover the person like if we say, you know,
you're you're not going to work right for now.
We're going to get you back.
And we know that the people who get back to work, who don't stay out of work forever,
are the people that get back quicker.
So if you're sitting at home watching TV and every commercial you see is, did you get hurt
at work or injury?
Call this law office.
You see that every commercial break, you're going to start to like think.
And so but again, I think it comes down to personality individuals.
So yeah, I think getting back to work in some capacity, whether it's a light duty work.
And I know there's all issues with light duty and financially and extra overtime hours and
things like that.
But I think just being around your your your crew, getting back to socializing and just
not sitting at home for three months recovering is important.
And it's my job to say like, you can't do this.
If you can't do this, here's a note to say you can't do this.
You got to tell your boss or your case manager or whoever it is.
These are the restrictions.
I've seen some bosses and employers who try to put people beyond my restrictions.
And that's a no go.
Like you can't you just can't do that.
So yeah, there's a lot of it's it's when I see somebody, it's like a social visit.
It's like, you know, do you feel like you can do your regular job?
No.
OK, let's talk.
Can you do you know, can you do desk work?
And I know these people, these guys don't want to do desk work.
I know they hate it.
They're embarrassed by it.
They don't want to sit and just answer phones.
And I get it.
But then there's workers comp who's saying, like, can they sit at a desk?
Can they do whatever?
Can they answer a phone?
So there's there's both sides to the to the everything.
You know, I obviously getting somebody back to full time duty after surgery takes time,
especially if you're repairing something, if you're putting a tendon back together,
you know, you got to it's my goal and the therapist's goal to get them 100 percent back
to feeling normal if they for whatever reason aren't can't get back to full duty.
Then that's you're looking at it like a permanent partial disability if you can't get back to
your full job.
And but, you know, you definitely go for months and months of rehab and strengthening.
And sometimes it's an arthritic shoulder or arthritic knee that prevents it.
You know, you have a bad injury and sometimes you already have preexisting arthritis and
it just doesn't respond as, you know, a joint without arthritis.
So sometimes people don't get back to work.
And that's where you have a permanent partial disability where you can't lift heavy things
because you've demonstrated like you can't lift heavy things.
But typically you tear a rotator cuff, you fix it, it heals.
You have a meniscus, it's torn, you fix it, it heals.
If you have arthritis, that's a different ballgame.
I feel that once people have the disability label, though, there's almost like this, this
kind of sense of, well, don't don't surpass that now for the rest of your life.
And it may be.
Now, please jump in.
Yeah, no, I hear that.
Yeah, that's you always say like we have maximized the amount of time for this injury.
There is a chance.
Yeah, you could start to feel better if you start to feel better and feel like you want
to get back.
And yeah, you can challenge that permanent partial disability.
Sure.
You know, I hate writing it because people haven't progressed normally and I always hate
to write it.
And again, it's a small percentage of people that that don't get back.
You know, most people get back, but it can take months and months for people to get back.
But yeah, if you have that permanent partial and you're starting to feel better than yeah,
I would bring it up again and come back and say, I'm feeling better.
I want to go back to work.
And you can always revisit it.
I don't think it's you know, I don't think we can say, you know, we can guess that this
is probably permanent partial.
But you know, I'm always happy to revisit somebody who's feeling better and wants to
get back to work.
Sure.
Yeah.
Well, that's good to know.
I've never heard anyone say that before, but I think that gives an element of hope.
Like, for example, my back injury when I only talked about this last time, foundation training
was that missing piece.
You know, I think if I just done chiropractic and what I was doing, that healing curve would
have been so slow that they would have hit 12 months and said, you know, I was going
to retire you.
Maybe.
I don't know.
I just discover foundation training and go, wait a second, my back is better now.
So I think that's such an important conversation.
Like if you had both your legs blown off in Afghanistan and you were, you know, a gymnastics
coach or something, there's a little bit more of a challenge there.
I get it.
But you know, you were hurt as a construction worker and you thought that that was going
to be it.
The mindset I feel that's projected is that, well, you know, here's a sticker for your
car.
You can park next to the store.
You are disabled versus the incredible men and women that we see in the adaptive division
who have the complete opposite mindset.
And I feel like if we could apply the adaptive mindset to the disabled concept of the world,
it would put hope like today, I'm going to try and get a little bit better than I was
yesterday.
I know it's been three years now.
I am not going to stop because I'm going to play with my grandkids back injury or not.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think about, you know, people getting worried that someone's going to see them,
you know, lifting something and say, you know, you're not supposed to lift more than 10 pounds.
And yeah, I mean, if you're doing it, I mean, that's the tough part is you got to be honest
because if you're doing it, then you can have a higher weight lifting.
You know, you could climb up and yeah, I mean, look at CrossFit athletes.
Some guys can't do a deadlift and three years later, they're doing clean and jerks over
their head.
Like there's always hope.
There's always hope.
There's always, you know, you never give up hope as always.
And a lot of it is mindset.
Yeah.
If you are, you know, defiant and don't want to be labeled that way, then yeah, again,
you see some of the adaptive athletes.
It's just mind boggling what they're doing and what they can do and what they've been
told not to do that they can't do this.
And they sort of look at that as a challenge.
There's been a lot of reorganization of CrossFit even since we last spoke.
What are you seeing?
Again, I'm not, I don't have my finger on the pulse anywhere near as much as I used
to when it comes to that community.
What have you seen the last two and a half years as far as, you know, whether it's management,
philosophies, you know, the way the games are going?
They're games wise, I think, you know, Castro's back from being away and Boz has done a great
job.
And, you know, so I think games wise, there's still, you know, I did sort of the numbers
and the sort of feelings go back to sort of 2018, 2019, where a lot of people are there.
Obviously we've seen the outsourcing of the masters and the adaptives and the teens.
So that going into Fort Worth, we're looking at a one venue thing, like more like a regional
event versus at Madison and Carson, we had four events going on at the same time.
And that was from the medical team.
That was, you know, we were covering four different things at the same time, including
spectator experience and the grounds and things like that.
So now we have one venue.
The team has definitely sort of sharpened or been, you know, we've lost members because
of the, you know, we don't need 60 people anymore with a one venue event.
That's still coming out, what the events are going to be.
We still don't know, the public still doesn't know.
But it's more like a regional type event where you just have the one stage, one venue, teams
and those guys.
From the HQ point of view, yeah, I mean, I've just been seeing what everybody else is seeing.
There was some turmoil, certainly turmoil with leadership changes and media changes.
And now I think there's a sort of a settling period.
People are talking about the, is there going to be a sale or not?
Who knows?
You know, that is typical, you know, private equity usually purchases to sell.
Who knows?
I'm not in on those levels of developments.
Where I train now, we've made the shift to Wolf Brigade programming.
Greg Walsh was in the CrossFit community.
He kind of went out on his own and all he did was he took the same principles, but there's
a lot more focus on single arm kettlebell work, mace work, and I'm working on a lot of the
imbalances.
And I did CrossFit for 16 years and at 50 years old now, for me, this has become a much
better fit.
Let me work on the damage because I mean, I had two meniscus tears, which again, I healed
everything I had back to full duty as a firefighter.
But there's a lot of us that just don't move well that some of the kind of the CrossFit
game, certainly the high level CrossFit stuff demands.
And so I'm seeing just a metamorphosis, like a growth, like the Rolling Stone is collecting
more moss and adding to all the great stuff that Greg started in the first place.
Are you seeing that, you know, through your travels and experiences that there's a kind
of, you know, because it's not going to stop like this is we made it.
This is everything.
This is perfect.
There's always going to be an evolution.
So are you seeing some interesting growth, even if it's a kind of hybrid of the original
CrossFit and some other things?
Yeah, I think the growth I've seen is the growth that I told Greg, you know, many, many
years ago, you know, about like, you know, you want you want to get the 100, 200 million
people out there who who need to exercise or don't.
And I'm not saying in any way, shape or form that that I helped tell Greg that, you know,
we need to get the whole public involved.
But yeah, I mean, if you look at CrossFit, you know, elite training, forging elite fitness
and getting all these people like sending that message that anybody can do it.
It's good.
It's scalable.
And I think hopefully that is, you know, the future where you can send this message to
everybody, you know, instead of not just the, you know, the servicemen and women, military
seals, you know, firefighter police, but getting everybody involved, getting everybody healthy,
getting everybody fit, getting everybody off processed food and watching the sugar that
they're taking in and and really, you know, making the world look like a CrossFit gym.
You know, it's funny when we travel for the games and we walk through Madison Airport
and it's really, you know, after the games or before the games and you're walking through
Chicago O'Hare and you start to see more people who are going to the games or coming from
the games and and you just you can tell you can tell a CrossFitter and you know, I don't
want to say like you can but like you can not only by the clothes they wear, but you
know, just the way they carry themselves and the fitness level.
And again, to have that as a goal without getting hurt, without getting orthopedic injuries
and that would be, you know, an amazing world to see people, you know, like that walking
around and I know it sounds weird, but you know, I think it's would save a lot of money
on health care would save a lot of effort with medicine and and pills and all that.
It's been interesting watching, you know, the the evolution of CrossFit and we talked
about this last time, but I think that, you know, when you deviate too much, it can be
dangerous and I know for me, this is just purely James Gearing's opinion now when was
it Monster that became the the sponsor of the Monster energy drink that to me was like,
okay, now we've lost you lost your way somewhere like you're trying to send a message and I
say the same thing to the World Cup.
You have McDonald's sponsoring you, you know, a sport.
So I think there's a there's a there's a responsibility that needs to be refound that if you are going
to be in that space, you got to walk the walk even with your sponsorship.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a that's a higher level issue.
Yeah.
All right.
I don't want to back you into a corner.
Um, last time, Owen Velouch was you'd mentioned that there was a firefighter and he had something
he wanted to talk about.
Owen came on the show, you know, we were you know, it was when he was kind of, you know,
really going through his chemo too.
He was pretty sick when he when he came on.
Obviously, now he's doing incredibly well.
So walk me through that journey through your eyes and how is he doing today?
Yeah, he's he's doing amazing.
First of all, he's recovered.
He's feeling great.
He's had follow up scans.
So this was a guy who was on the is the coordinator of the games team and had reached out and
said, you know, he's having some pain and soreness and he had some tests and and they,
you know, found cancer and he's he was sort of facing, you know, mortality.
He was, you know, very scared, worried, nervous and, you know, made everybody.
No, you know, I was nervous.
I was I was worried for him.
But as a doctor trying to, you know, tell him not to stop, you know, like, we don't
know what this is, we don't know what you know, I never use the C word.
And you know, he said, we don't know.
We don't know what it is.
And there were all these options.
And finally, with testing and testing and testing, because a lot of his tests came back
normal.
You know, they found out what it was.
And then, you know, we got into treatment and we got into how you know what what's going
to happen from here.
And then we you know, it was just an amazing story.
Something that I didn't, you know, in retrospect, glad it turned out the way it did.
It was it was touch and go for a long time.
But yeah, I mean, when that happens to a friend who's your age and you start thinking and
you start hearing how scared he was, how nervous he was, it was it was difficult.
Yeah.
And he's a firefighter paramedic.
So he's not, you know, a normally nervous individual.
Yeah.
And he said that, too.
Because everything I've seen has just blown off of me.
Like I never sat back and thought, oh, wow, this, you know, this person just passed away.
This person just died on the road.
And he's like, all of a sudden, it was just right in his face.
Like, and yeah, I mean, if you've ever had any kind of sickness or illness that you thought
may be serious, like it's it's sort of that, you know, come to Jesus moment kind of thing.
One of the things that I try and talk about a lot and I know I spoke to Owen about it
and my other friend, Jim Bernica, but a lot of times these firefighters will get cancer.
And then, you know, if they are fortunate enough to survive and then get back to work,
then they're put back on the same shifts.
And I think that people just don't understand the impact of sleep deprivation on cancer.
It's a known carcinogen.
So I think that's one thing that needs to be a standard.
If one of your firefighters get cancer, you're talking again about, you know, going to a
different mode of work.
You can work in training.
You still wear your gear and, you know, teach young fire recruits or your department.
But to take someone who's just recovered from cancer and then sleep deprived them again,
to me, you're just throwing gasoline on the fire.
Yeah, no, it's yeah.
I mean, just from a, you know, from a point of view of just, you know, having cancer and,
you know, give yourself a break, obviously, if you've been through chemotherapy, you know,
like just give yourself a break and just, you know, take like years or two or three
to recover and, you know, see how you feel, certainly.
But yeah, it's tough.
It was tough.
It was amazing.
It was great to see, you know, he had a follow up study with no pathology and it was amazing.
It was amazing.
Yeah.
Well, also, if you remind me, because it's been a couple of years now, I think, it was
also like he's he's found something on a scan and he wasn't sure, but he asked you.
And I think that was a really important thing because we're so dismissive, like, that's
nothing.
It'll be fine.
So talk to me about that.
I mean, you know, the the fact that you were in that chain of his survival.
Yeah.
You know, he said, Oh, what do you think?
And I said, Oh, you know, so so people don't know this, but every time you ask an orthopod,
what do they think or what's this bump or bruise in the back of our minds?
There's always a what if this is cancer?
And that's it's sad.
I mean, it's not sad.
It's just it's the way we're trained.
Like people complain about us getting an X-ray in the office for six months of shoulder pain.
Well, you know, there's a reason we do that.
You know, people are like, Oh, I didn't fracture anything.
So what are you going to see with that?
You're not going to see a fracture.
And we just go, yeah, we're not going to see a fracture.
And you know, we don't explain we're looking for something else.
But that's literally the reason why if somebody has a traumatic shoulder pain for six months,
we get an X-ray because we've seen a handful of cases in our career.
So that's that's why.
So I hope people understand that now when they know that they're why we're doing it.
Obviously, we don't want to tell them, well, we're looking for the C word.
So but people come in saying, I think I have cancer.
Can you do an X-ray?
And again, the numbers, the number of cancer cases in bones is infant is rare.
You know, it's rare.
It's incredibly rare.
And for the amount of people that we see every day, you know, you see again, I've seen a
handful in my career that I've picked up on an X-ray.
So if I've seen 20,000 people in my career so far, you know, a handful of that.
So it's it's pretty, pretty rare.
What was I going with that?
Well, actually, I was going to send you to what's going on.
But just before you do, what what do you see?
What is the the presentation on an X-ray that would suggest bone cancer just on the off
chance that a physician misses but a patient actually catches it?
So some are subtle.
Some are obvious.
It's an irregular pattern of bone that doesn't look normal where there's eating away of the
bone.
The bone looks like you got a big hole in it.
There's like a big loosened can be.
Depends on the cancer.
Some cancers grow big white sort of fluffy things and other cancers have a little punched
out hole in it.
And so there's different types of cancers.
But for Owen, he was like, yeah, I got this weird hip pain.
It's been going on.
Well, you got to get an X-ray and get checked out.
You know, he's in California and I'm here.
And I say, you know, you got to get checked out.
And then he blew it off and he blew it off.
And then he really had severe, severe pain.
And I said, you know, you really got to get this checked out.
And and and he did.
And they found it.
He was having back pain and they did an MRI of his back and it showed up in his pelvis
that he had something in his pelvis.
So they saw it on the edge of the back scan.
And then they got the pelvic scan.
And that's when they found it.
But he was to the point where like, like he couldn't sleep.
He was having trouble putting weight on that leg.
So it was, you know, it wasn't like, oh, I got, you know, again, I don't want to scare
everybody who has back pain.
But you know, like a little bit of back pain, a little soreness, a little muscle ache.
This was not that this was and 90 percent of the world has a little bit of soreness,
a little bit of ache.
It doesn't, you know, if it affects, you know, you can't sleep.
You're having you know, you can't put weight on it.
That's that's a different story.
I think if my memory serves me right, he he just done a workout with deadlifts or something
as well.
So he was kind of putting it down to the soreness that would be natural.
Yeah.
And that's the weird part, too, is that, you know, he was sore after a workout.
And but then he was having more trouble.
Well, I want to hit one more area and then we'll go to your new project, Rocket Science.
Oh, yeah.
We spoke about PRP and almost a PCP then we didn't talk about that.
Maybe we should.
And then stem cells about two and a half years ago.
Are there any kind of evolutions in technology or therapies that have excited you in your
field in the last couple of years?
Um, PRP has been studied more and been shown to be a viable alternative to cortisone and
gel for tendonitis and arthritis.
Again, not regrowing things, not regenerating rotator cuffs, but, you know, alleviating
pain.
And again, I just had a orthopedic conference and we're looking at some of these studies
and and and that's what they're been shown to help with.
They have anti-inflammatory properties like cortisone, but don't have the side effects
of cortisone, which can be accelerating arthritis and tendon issues, tendon damage.
So yeah, those those are exciting.
There are some there's always companies looking for curing arthritis.
And I was at one company that was showing a little plugs that you put in the bone that
can generate cartilage, you know, next to this.
They're actually using sea coral where you drill a hole in the bone and it's a literally
a piece of sea coral that goes in and it can and they think it stimulates some of the cartilage,
the hyaline cartilage on the surface of the bone.
So that has just, you know, that sort of struck was of interest recently.
Other, you know, there's there they're looking at, you know, the regenerative potentials
of these things and seeing if they can help regenerate tissue.
And I think the key with everything is how do you prevent the breakdown of it as opposed
to how do you get the healing of a tear?
Like how do you prevent the initial from tearing or how do you prevent the initial case of
arthritis?
That's that's the fascinating part for me.
I meant to ask you this earlier, but it's a good segue talking about prevention.
I love doing as much as I can in the gym barefoot.
It just makes sense to me if you know if we were originally barefoot as a species before
we invented Nikes.
What is your perspective of that?
Because we talked about plantar fasciitis and shin splints.
And then obviously you've got knee and up to hips and, you know, and back and beyond
about the impact or, you know, the benefit of barefoot training, if you believe it.
And then your perspective on some of these sports shoes are out there doing damage at
the same time.
Yeah, I think I'm all for it.
It's you know, obviously there's an issue with just the bottom of your feet.
If you have to run outside and there's stuff outside and put landing on hard surfaces or
pebbles or cuts or anything, so there's a protection issue of the bottom of your foot
being protected.
The other part is getting your ligaments and bones and tendons gradually used to that training.
So not just saying, OK, I'm going to be barefoot today and do the same workout that you did.
There's like any tendon and preventing tendon or stress fracture, you have to really gradually
build into it.
Yeah, I have no problems with it.
I think the biggest issue is just protecting the bottom of your feet so you don't get cuts
or possible infections on the bottom of your feet.
Yeah, that's funny.
A number of people say, what if you drop a kettlebell on it?
I'm like, what are you wearing?
Armour shoes?
If you drop a kettlebell on yours, it's going to hurt too.
Steel tip toes.
I tell you, you're a lot more careful where that kettlebell goes when you're not wearing
shoes.
So I would say.
But yeah, I mean, as far as double unders, I could never do barefoot, course running.
But I try and find that I would cry like a baby if I didn't have shoes on double unders.
Yeah, it's great when they don't hit you.
But oh my God, it's so painful.
But then New Balance did an excellent Minimus shoe a few years ago.
But ever since then, I just was totally unable to find any good shoe.
And it seems like the minimal by the mainstream people, they've just shied away from it.
And then the true kind of minimal ones, which are very expensive, the bottom slaps.
It's like hitting a piece of plastic every single footstep.
So the New Balance ones for the running and everywhere where I needed to wear shoes, they
were phenomenal, but they discontinued them.
It was so sad.
Yeah, and if you're hiking, there's the rocks and sticks and yeah, so there's an element
to protection of the bottom of your foot.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, then I know you have a new project now, Rocket Science.
Let's talk about that.
Yeah, this is from Jay Vera, Karen Thompson, Lauren Fulkerson.
They call me up and they're like, what do you think about doing this?
And I said, that's a pretty cool idea.
So that was one goal is to get educational videos out there to let people know about
injury prevention.
And then I have my 321 Go MD, which is online, and making that into a virtual experience.
So we're making an ebook coming out soon where people are going to be able to click on it
and hear testimonials and see videos of people and surgeries.
And so I'm excited about that.
We're shopping that around right now and that'll be coming out hopefully before the games.
But yeah, the Rocket Science, one of the ideas was just calling up these games athletes and
saying, hey, do you have an issue?
Do you have a question?
Go online, answer your question and not giving medical advice, but giving education.
And if other people have this, learning from that and learning what they might have and
having people come see me too.
That's part of it.
Well, I think it's so important though, because between the website and then what you're doing
now, if there is a firefighter or a police officer or someone out there listening who's
got an issue with their shoulder or their knee, they can see, okay, this is the advice
I should be getting or something like this.
This isn't my physician.
I'm watching a video online.
But then when they go to their person, that would be a good barometer then like, is this
the right fit for me or is this person way off?
And I talked last time about the first person I had interaction with with my back injury
was 350 pounds telling me I needed to take anti-inflammatory and opioids.
And I was like, yeah, and you're not the person that's going to be giving me wellness advice,
I'm afraid.
So just understanding what it should look like in itself, I think is very important.
Yeah.
The premise of the book is going to be show me where it hurts or where does it hurt.
And some of the chapters are going to show people pointing, you know, if it hurts there,
that could be a biceps over here, that could be a rotator cuff or bursitis, stuff like
that.
You know, so people can say, oh, that's where my pain is.
And let me look up what that could be.
And again, I can't make a diagnosis, but at least get you in the right direction.
I just interview one of my English friends as a firefighter that became an osteopath.
And he's just written a book, Stronger, it's called.
And it's aimed at the middle-aged person.
So you may have been an athlete before, you may not have been an athlete before, but the
message that he's conveying is the importance of strength training specifically for longevity.
Now obviously, you have the muscles, you have the bone density.
So just talk to me about that.
Yeah.
I mean, just so much importance to muscle, number one, from your ability to get up off
a chair is what's going to keep you out of a nursing home.
And if you have strong quads, and it's literally your quad, your quad muscle, if your quads
are able to get you up off a toilet seat or off a chair, then you don't need assistance
doing that.
And then if you look at some of these studies, your ability to get up off the ground by yourself,
and the mortality numbers that go along with that.
If you can't get yourself off the ground, that is actually an indicator of mortality.
The muscle strength and the muscle building that comes with diabetes management, the mental
health benefits and prevention of Alzheimer's and dementia issues, I think has been shown.
I was at the CrossFit Health Summit, and we talked about that with neurocognitive functioning
and exercise, with diabetic management, osteoporosis prevention, all these things are related to
muscle mass and muscle strength.
Gabriel Lyons has done a good job.
Rhoda Patrick has done a great job.
Tommy Wood gave great lectures on this, and talking about people's ability to think better
after exercise, people's ability to prevent cardiovascular disease with exercise, all
these things.
Brilliant.
I was just with Tommy in November in Pensacola.
He's a great guy.
So the other side of that conversation is now you have someone who's in their 50s or
60s or maybe older, and they've been told, oh, it's too late now.
You're too old.
Oh, God, no.
So talk to me about that, because I remember a study that was done a while ago now, and
even though we're not lifting the same amount of weight, it was like an 18 and an 80-year-old
athlete put on a program at the same time, and their relative improvement was actually
exactly the same.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I haven't read that study.
That's a good one.
Yeah, no, I've seen hundreds of people who have been able to improve muscle mass.
We have a 75-year-old guy in our gym who took off a couple of percentage points of fat and
put on muscle mass.
Everybody's like a 75-year-old, and he's got rheumatoid arthritis.
75-year-old with rheumatoid, and people were shocked that he gained weight, but the weight
was muscle.
And so I've seen videos of him with his air squat from before and after, and it's tremendous.
So I have a video myself.
Back in 15 years ago, I couldn't lift 135 overhead, and I did 185 recently on push presses
overhead on the games and the quarterfinals.
So in 15 years, with the right technique and being reasonable, I've been able to just walk
up the stairs.
And yeah, so the ability to do that is, years ago, decades ago, we were told, you're just
going to get into a wheelchair and roll away into the sunset.
I would encourage everybody.
It's never too late to start.