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them Welcome guys to episode 95 of Behind the
Shield podcast. My name is James Geering and
my guest this week is the back mechanic aka Dr.
Stuart McGill. This interview was incredible.
Now if you do not have a spine you can turn off
now it's going to be of no benefit for you whatsoever
but everyone else I highly recommend listening.
We delve into an array of topics from the posterior
chain, hinging, training barefoot the direct
correlation between sleep deprivation and musculoskeletal
injuries and a host of other areas dr mcgill
is a wealth of knowledge and he opened multiple
rabbit holes that i'm going to start going down
myself So that being said, please go to iTunes,
rate the show. If you use an Android app, rate
the show there. And then again, as I always say,
please just share it. Put it on your social media,
send it to friends. You probably know a thousand
people that have back pain and then 10 ,000 that
you wish didn't have back pain. So let's share
this episode and many other episodes and get
this incredible knowledge to our fellow firefighters,
police officers, medics, and every other human
being around the planet. That being said, I introduce
to you Dr. Stuart McGill. Enjoy. Welcome to the
Behind the Shield podcast. Dr. McGill, firstly,
where are we finding you on planet Earth today?
Well, I'm at home in Gravenhurst, Ontario, which
is halfway between North Bay and Toronto. I believe
the last two days are our first two days above
freezing this year. We're on the opposite side
of the spectrum here in Florida. So we mentioned
this briefly before we start recording, but again,
I want to offer my condolences to everyone in
Toronto after that horrible attack that you guys
had this week. It's, again, being in Canada,
we think we're immune to such things. Uh, but,
uh, absolutely not. My mother who's 90 called
me last night in tears and she just can't sleep
thinking about the, uh, the families and, and
all involved. But, uh, yeah, it's a crazy world
we live in. It is. It is. And I hope one day
we can figure out, you know, the, the common
denominators behind all these attacks. Um, so
were you born in that area? Yes. Okay, so just
briefly, what was your family unit like? What
did your parents do, and how many siblings did
you have? I had one sister who's seven years
younger than I. I'm married to my wife, Catherine,
and I'm going to make you sick for a minute here.
And she has four sisters, but I've known them
all my life. My dad worked for her dad, believe
it or not. And I remember her. I shouldn't say
this. I'm five years older or four and a half,
as she likes to say. I remember her in diapers.
So that is a bit weird. It is a bit weird. Yeah.
Now, my wife's six years younger than me, too.
So I'm right there with you. Yeah. Brilliant.
And then what did your parents do? Well, my dad
emigrated here, actually. He had Irish parents,
grew up his teenage years in Liverpool, England,
and then first emigrated to Australia. And I
said, Dad, why did you ever leave? And he just
said, well, I got fed up with beautiful sunny
weather. And he wanted a challenge. So he then
emigrated to Canada. And his original plan was
to be a hard rock miner, but then decided that
with kids, he better get responsible. And he
took an accounting course and he ended up being
an accountant at a bank. I think he was bored
for the rest of his life. You know, he'd been
through the war. And, of course, he was in the
Navy. And when that settled, he said, you know,
it was the best and worst of times. So exciting
to be a young fella, you know, commanding a small
gunboat and then spent the rest of his life bored
to tears, I think. It's hard to match that adrenaline
though, World War II. Yeah. All right. So when
you were young, I mean, obviously, you're well
involved with athletes and tactical athletes
as well. Were you a sportsman yourself? Well,
yes. I don't want to give the wrong impression,
though. I was not a natural athlete by any stretch.
But in high school, I played American football.
And in fact, that's what took me to university.
I really had no academic interest at all. I was
on track to be a plumber. And I went to university
and the football coach said, well, what do you
want to study? And I said, well, I really have
no interest. And he said, good, we stick you
guys in physical education. So I actually started
in phys ed. But with meeting some professors
who were very influential, I ended up taking
mathematics and physics. And then long story
short, I then. did a master's in biomechanics,
primarily because at that time I was interested
in road cycling. So I went to the University
of Ottawa so I could ride my bike in the French
Gatineau part of Canada. And then I was... playing
hockey with the professors team at the University
of Ottawa. And it's like rugby, I guess, which
is a game you're familiar with. The professors
play different universities and the host team,
everyone sits in the same dressing room afterwards
and has a beer together after they've beaten
the hell out of one another for a couple of hours.
And I sat beside a professor from Waterloo named
Bob Norman, and he just happened to say, why
don't you come and see my lab? And I did, and
I switched to spine biomechanics for my PhD.
So that's how I ended up being a professor of
spine biomechanics. Brilliant. Yeah, I went through
the University of Florida exercise physiology
program, and it was great, but I was not destined
to stay within the educational system. Right.
So from that point then, were there any... moments
leading up to that where you had encountered
either your own back injuries or seen other people
that you kind of had an aha moment that that
was another area that you really want to delve
into Well, people ask, did I end up in the spine
area because of my own back? Not really. I did
fracture C4 in my neck, believe it or not, playing
hockey and fractured my hip and had numerous
injuries. But that wasn't the driver in this
at all. I just have a personality. I think that
whatever I get into, I just study it and enjoy
it. But as I became a young professor, our starting
question was simple. How does the spine work?
So our line of investigations were to answer
that question. But I'd get invited to different
medical meetings, orthopedic meetings and neurology
meetings and occupational health meetings, et
cetera, and be invited to speak about how the
spine works and becomes injured. And the docs
would say, that's a very interesting perspective
on disc bulges or end plate fractures or whatever
the topic was. Would you come and see a patient
with us? And I said, well, no, I'm not a clinician.
And they'd say, well, don't worry, we will be
there with you. And I learned very quickly that
our perspective was very different than the traditional
medical model. And I was trained quite quickly
then to see. patients and I mean as you know
now that's I've retired from the university and
I have a clinic at my home here and athletes
now fly in from around the world for a consult
because for the first time we are honing in on
a precision diagnosis and once they have that
they now know very precisely what to stop doing
so they don't mimic the causation mechanism and
then we guide them on what they need to build
to create a foundation for pain -free activity
and whether that is Working on the fire ground
as a firefighter or it's to get the gold at the
next Olympics we define what the demands of that
task will be we see if their body currently has
the capacity to meet those demands if they don't
we then create the training program and select
the most appropriate training tools to get them
there in the most efficient way brilliant all
right well i want to start at the very beginning
so You look at a lot of, I guess you'd say, less
developed countries around the world, and it
appears that they have very well -functioning
bodies through to late, late elderly time. You
see, obviously, pictures of elderly women in
Southeast Asia in paddy fields still working,
pulling out the rice, and African ladies carrying
water, and obviously these very generic National
Geographic images. But then you see us. And I
know from the path that I've delved down, things
like sitting have really created a lot of problems.
So from you, pretty much one of the top people
on spine, what is it that Western culture is
doing to the human body that's creating some
of these issues that you're seeing? Well, I don't
know if I necessarily agree that Asians and Africans
and European Caucasians and whatnot have all
that a differential rate in some of the back
issues. There are certainly different back issues
and different exposures. But as I've traveled
to these areas. I'm still dealing with back pain.
However, having said that, from an anthropological
point of view, which is not my area of expertise
at all, of course, the new a relatively new exposure
to computers and cell phones and the amount of
time that people spend sitting does create a
very specific stress for the back. Then if we
look at the typical American who walks very little,
walking is absolutely essential for spine health
and many health systems in the body. I mean,
it's the best way to to train the quadratus lumborum,
the obliques, et cetera, in a way that that pretty
much guarantees spine stability and hip mobility
and all the rest of it. So it's that balance
that is is is being lost. And then they go to
the gym. to try and make up for it. Whereas I
don't think that pattern of sitting for eight
hours and then going for a very intense workout
for one hour at the gym would be quite as typical,
say, in other areas of the world. But having
said that as well, the anatomy is quite different.
I mean, I don't know how specific we want to
get down into this, but I should probably conclude
with this because this is probably the point
that will be most interesting to your listeners.
In my world, all back injuries and all back pain
has a very precise cause. the north american
medical system there is no provision for a person
to get a precise diagnosis of their back pain
they go to the medic they might get 10 or 15
minutes and they kind of guess as to what's causing
the pain when we assess a patient we spend uh
usually around three hours to go through the
full pathways to their pain we start out with
an interview and uh i just let them talk and
never before has anyone ever listened to what
their passions are what the physical exposures
are why they have failed previous attempts at
back rehab because no one ask them to describe
what the impediments were. And I'll give you
an example. Say you have a person who's been
told, well, you should go out and walk three
times a day. But then the person reveals in that
conversation, she'll say, well, I don't want
to walk out in my neighborhood when it's dark.
I don't feel safe. So what do you think the compliance
would be to that healthful practice? It's going
to be zero. So until you just listen. and find
out why the person has failed, you're going to
fail again as well. So that's the beginning of
it. And then pain pathways form. uh clusters
and patterns and once a pattern starts emerging
then we will ask very specific questions you
know if they uh describe a pattern of back attacks
where they might say well i sneezed and and i
threw my back out or i picked up a pencil and
threw my back out or i reached and flushed the
toilet and it felt like someone threw a knife
in my back I would then say to them, when you
roll over in bed, have you ever had a sharp pain?
And if they said yes, this is the sure sign of
spine instability. So there's micro -movements
occurring at a spinal joint that's trapping a
nerve, and they may even be locked up for four
or five days, and then it slowly dissipates over
the next couple of weeks, and then they're fine
again, living in fear, not knowing when the next
acute attack will occur. Well, that scenario
I've just described has a very specific cause
and it is really quite simple to give them a
movement strategy that completely eliminates
the mechanistic cause. So now all of a sudden
you show them that they are completely empowered.
all of the movement fear goes away. So if we're
talking of a firefighter now, they can pull on
their boots, bend down, pick up a hose, advance
a loaded fire hose into the... the battle, so
to speak, and they just know how to move and
zero risk of an occurrence. But the next person
comes in and tells much more of a slow onset,
slow recovery, episodic kind of pain. So I guess
in a nutshell, people have been told they have
chronic back pain. Almost always when you hone
in on the mechanism, it's not chronic back pain
at all. It is many acute attacks throughout the
day because of the way that they're moving that's
causing stress concentrations on the pain mechanism.
They just keep picking the scab. But once they're
shown how to wind down the mechanism, those tissues
desensitize, become less painful, we know what
the healing and adaptation should now be because
we've defined that so we can give them proper
training and rest ratios and then we rebuild
the foundation that that individual needs. to
move pain -free, whether it's on the fire ground,
in the police force, playing in the NFL, or they
just want to be a stay -at -home mom. They've
got a new kid and their biggest challenge is
to, it's two o 'clock in the morning and the
baby needs feeding. How do you pick that child
out of the crib in a way that is bulletproof
for the back? So anyway, that's it in a nutshell.
Right. I mean, you walk around England, you walk
around America. These are two places I'm at most
of the time recently. And you see, and this is
from, again, a very, very... um what's the right
word novice set of eyes with with mine but you
see the the feet splayed out you know the the
the pronation of the feet you see the the anterior
pelvic tilt the shoulders pull forward and and
this human spine that we're getting now it seems
you see a lot in our fellow men and women um
just seems like a recipe for disaster so the
the da vinci's man the way the way he holds himself
in that that painting is Is that the goal to
try and maintain that? I mean, these things that
I'm seeing with my eyes, are they the same kind
of diagnostic tools you're looking at when it
comes to posture? Well, yes, it is. Once you
get enough... uh foundational knowledge your
eye is the best pattern recognizer that there
is it's better than any instrument but you know
when i go back to the university now and in in
in my last years when i was uh at the university
i i i hate to use this word but it was almost
disgusting viscerally disgusting to me to watch
The majority of young people almost crippled
walking around campus how they would. It's OK
now to be disrespectful of your body, have incredibly
poor posture. And I think in some of the cultures
that you were describing earlier, it's not acceptable.
to be disrespectful for your body to the point
where it's disabled through very poor fitness
very poor posture but it's it's now become acceptable
so that's that's one thing the amount of time
that people sit and then when they have a break
they get on their phone this is not conducive
to uh good health even the walking style as as
you described with the feet out when you measure
an obese person walking they don't have a spring
in their knees because their knees cannot tolerate
the weight so they if you watch it's and it's
a walk that people use when they walk in sandals
or flip -flops for example in florida They throw
their feet forward and lock their knee hard into
extension. And I see young people walking this
way now, which we never used to see before. And
it is an obese gait pattern that they're copying
almost from one another, but it's the most unathletic.
joint conserving method. So I don't know if I'm
a bit off topic there or not, but... No, that
was great. I'm seeing so many common denominators.
The more of these episodes I do, the more of
these lines intersect. And I just had an interview
with Dr. Gregory Smith who had a couple of documentaries
about the opiate epidemics. He said exactly the
same thing. He's like, when I sit down with my
patients, I talk to them for, I believe it was
about three hours as well as initial consultation.
And again, to delve into their pattern and what's
the history of their addiction. And that seems
to be something that we're really lacking in
modern day medicine is they're having to bang
through these patients to get whatever insurance
money they're trying to get. And the people that
are losing are the men and women that are walking
through those doors. In many ways, you know,
I think the medics who spend 10 minutes with
a person with back pain and then they give them
Demerol or a narcotic for their back pain when
in fact their back pain was so simple to address
the cause. But they are untrained and didn't
know how to assess the cause and they didn't
have the time that it took to do a thorough proper.
assessment. If you went to the orthopod 30 years
ago, you would get a good assessment. Now you
will get a chances are either you're passed off
and told, oh, go do Pilates because you've got
back pain. Well, the Pilates is just as much
a chance to hurt their back as it does to help
their back. You know, it depends on what the
mechanism is. But the number of back patients
who are referred to me, addicted. It's a real
indictment of what's going on in medical practice
now. Right. So when these men and women come
to you, you've done the diagnosis, you've figured
out a specific movement pattern or weakness that's
creating this. does the exercise recommendations
look like? And I understand everyone's completely
different, but what are some of the main exercises
that you do use with a lot of your patients?
Well, I have to go back one level now that that's
a bit of a myth that they're going to exercise
their way out of back pain. The highest priority
is to get rid of the cause. So once we finish
the interview stage, we then go into the clinic
and we do provocative testing. We provoke their
back pain. So we know. exactly what makes it
better and what makes it worse so we identify
the specific motions the postures the loads that
increase or decrease their back pain and most
people unless they have something like say a
sinister cancerous tumor that's causing their
back pain which is very rare But if it's mechanical
back pain, you will change it by changing their
posture and the load and that kind of thing.
So once we've defined that, we then show them,
you know, every time you get out of the chair,
you bend forward, you have a disc bulge. We've
just proven that's causing your back pain. It's
trapping a nerve root. And that's why your big
toe is falling asleep. You know, that's just
an example. Once we show them. Before you get
out of a chair, we want you to sniff a little
air, sit tall in the seat, bend forward through
your hips, and then transfer the weight onto
your feet. You spread your knees and pull your
feet underneath you. Basically, I'm teaching
mechanics of weightlifting 101. Then you pull
the hips through and stand up using a hip hinge.
Now we've just completely eliminated the pain
trigger. And they'll say, wow, that didn't hurt.
No one has ever shown me that before. Good. Now
we're going to show you how to bend over and
brush your teeth. Get on and off the toilet,
in and out of your car. How do you tie your shoes?
And these are all real life. Now, this is the
phase that we call spine hygiene. If it's a firefighter,
we then, when I was at the university, we had
a clinic paid for by the firefighters. It had
ladders. It had a mock -up of an elevator where
you had to pike open the door. It had a instrumented
anvil that you had to take a sledgehammer and
hit so many joules of energy on the anvil to
simulate breaching a door. We had a loaded fire
hose advance, which was a heavy shipping rope
with resistance on the end. We had a body drag.
We had a obstacle course that would be filled
up with vapor to simulate smoke. The guys would
put on full bunker gear, go in and pull out to
crash test dummies. So, you know, all of these
things, they were taught to move in a way that
didn't trigger their specific back pain mechanism.
So this is the first stage of winding down back
pain. You must desensitize the painful tissues
first. And if the tissues have damage, we have
to create a schedule and a regimen for the tissues
to heal. Now, once we've created a body that
is tolerant, we now build strategic stability
and mobility. uh is a flexible rod It's flexible.
It allows you to dance and move and enjoy life.
But when you're pulling a body out of a car wreck,
you better stiffen that flexible rod. Otherwise,
you will create a stress concentration and it
will fail. It's a structure. So the whole spine
hygiene and work technique is critical. But then
teaching them strategic stability of their back.
When is it? okay to move their back around, but
when must you stiffen it through coordinated
activation of the abdominal wall, quadratus lumborum,
latissimus dorsi, et cetera. And then they may
or may not, it depends on the person, need strategic
mobility. They might need mobility at the hips
or the thoracic spine or the shoulder joints.
Then we move on to transferring this ability
and your body is an articulated linkage. It follows
very specific laws and rules. We then get into
patterns of pushing, pulling, lifting, carrying,
all things that a physical occupational athlete
like a firefighter or a military person requires.
And there you go. Now, if you're going to the
Olympics, then the final stage, of course, is
to ramp up and create loading that will optimize
the adaptations in their bodies so that they're
ready to compete in whatever it is. So it is
a myth, though, back exercise is going to fix
my back. First of all, get rid of the cause.
Then strategically build the athleticism with
exercise. Right. And the area you talked about
in your facility that had all the fire -specific
tasks, that's something that's definitely missing
in all the instances I've had. And kudos to the
places I've been to. They've done their best.
But I mean, I would say certainly in the Florida
area, a majority of the... Patients in the PT
clinics that I go to are elderly, so they're
not used to a 30 -something muscular tactical
athlete walking in and saying, I need you to
get me strong enough to be able to drag a 200
-pound person out of a building. So that's fantastic
that you had that array of tools to use to get
your men and women back to duty. Well, this is
the... maybe i'm offending everybody in this
podcast but physical therapists are not taught
athletes in their training. They sometimes are
quite happy to get a person to stand up off the
toilet and that's the end of it. To work with
a martial artist or an NFL football player or
a police officer or a firefighter, you've got
to know the job. And if you don't know the job,
you shouldn't be trying to rebuild their body
to meet those specific demands. So it takes a
very special clinician who has knowledge. One
of the joys of my life. I mean, I'm a little
bit older now, but when I have, say, an athlete
from the UFC, which is the MMA combat league,
I love to have a role in the cage with them.
I love to feel their athleticism, the demands
and their techniques. So I understand what it
is that they need to do. Um, so, I mean, we always
joke, I say, okay, I'm going to show you something
about your back pain, but you're going to show
me something about your athleticism. And, and
every good worker has a skillset and you can
learn so much. I remember, uh, uh, I was asked
to do a consult with, uh, a hydro utility and
these are lads that go out and climb hydro poles.
Uh, so the first thing I had to do was put on
a pair of climbing spurs. and a utility built.
And I put something over my shoulder. I forget
what it was and climb a 60 foot pole. And boy,
that teaches you what the demands are of this,
that particular job. But, you know, we've done
the same thing with military, the police and
the firefighting communities. Yeah, that's funny
you say that. um i had a guy that i trained in
my gym saying he had foot pain recently um and
i think was it foot pain maybe it was back pain
but he was talking about doing a lot of climbing
he works for the the power company utility company
and they've been doing all the utility poles
and in their climbing shoes the way they climb
those little spikes on either side of the pole
they have to put it on the arch of their foot.
They can't go on the ball of their foot, how
you'd want to climb. And he said he could just
feel there's no comfortable way of doing it.
And then he could feel that movement pattern
creating, you know, like a, not so much an injury,
but an aches and pains within the rest of his
body just from changing that from the normal
climb. Right. I know exactly what he's talking
about. Yeah. Well, I want to kind of go back
to one thing that you said. So this is something
that I have, been enlightened to after i hurt
my back and then i preach now as well the hip
hinge now that's something that you would think
would be natural but as a as a fireman teaching
my fellow uh you know peers on the fitness side
and then as a coach in the gym where i coach
it's incredible how the hinge has been lost and
all those strong muscles that were designed to
use in the back you know the posterior chain
to do these lifts and the ability to keep the
the scapula back as well so challenging for people
is that something that you see where you are
as well absolutely yeah and then worse yet they
then go to a gym with a trainer and the trainer
starts teaching them dead lifting not a clue
on how to strategically uh stiffen the body to
perform the deadlift they don't do an assessment
of the person's hips so they know the starting
height they don't teach them how to grip the
bar with a double overhook, not an over and an
underhook with the hands, but a double overhook
and then bend the bar, locking it down with latissimus
dorsi, stiffen the core, unleash the hips and
pull the hips through to perform the deadlift.
And it's quite a technical lift and they end
up far too many good men and women are being.
damaged, and I use that word carefully chosen,
being damaged by trainers telling them they should
be deadlifting their body weight. And yet they
hadn't been experienced enough themselves to
know what the technique was to perform a deadlift.
And I will say that probably over half of the
people I see as back patients have been either
created or made worse by trainers not knowing
their craft. Yeah, I see that myself as well.
And especially if you get, I train in a CrossFit
gym and... You get these workouts, especially
in the open that they have every year, and it
will be deadlifts and it will be higher reps.
And you just hear it. You hear everyone's how
much pain they're in the next day, and especially
in the wrong place. They're feeling it in their
lower back. And please correct me if I'm wrong,
but you should be feeling a deadlift really in
your glutes. That's the thing they should be
lifting. You should be feeling it in your whole
body if it's done correctly. But really, you
shouldn't be feeling it at all. a training session
should be giving you more back than it is taking
away. And there's another issue. When someone
says they're trashed or really sore after a training
session, whoever was guiding them doesn't understand
foundational biology. Every system... in biology
has what we call a tipping point so just let's
i'll start the example with a vitamin if if you
took vitamin d for example and you didn't have
enough you'd be ill you'd be vitamin d deficient
but if you have too much it now becomes a poison
and you'll be sick so there was a tipping point
there somewhere exercise is exactly the same
so let's use dead lifting now as the variable
in the example if you don't do enough you're
not going to get a biological adaptation but
if you cross the tipping point um there's two
kinds of patterns of back injury with deadlifting
the first pattern is they flex their spine their
hips are too tight they're pulling from too low
a level and they might use what is popularly
known as butt wink their spine bends and some
trainers say well oh butt wink is okay under
heavy load it is not it will slowly delaminate
the collagen fibers of the discs They are not
ball and socket joints. Those are your hips.
The discs are fibers of collagen held together
with a ground substance. They follow the laws
of a fabric. And if you work the fibers back
and forth under stress strain reversals in a
fabric, you will get a delamination and eventually
a tear in the fabric. And this is exactly the
mechanism of what people will do to their discs
because they're... treating them like the ball
and socket joint rather than their hip. Or another
pattern is the deadlift is too heavy in magnitude,
and they create microfracturing of the end plates.
Now the fibers pull out of their connection to
the vertebra because the scaffolding has now
been broken, and they don't feel this, by the
way. There's no pain at this point. And now the
fibers get loose because their ends are no longer
fully connected. And then with more deadlifts
and worse form because they're doing 10 reps
to fatigue, they then pressurize the nucleus.
And with each deadlift, the nucleus works its
way a little bit further through the delaminated
collagen and they end up with a disc bulge again.
Never do deadlifts to fatigue. Never. Do a single
with perfect form. Then put the weight down and
regather your perfect form. Then do the next
rep. If you want to go to the Olympics, do you
think Olympians are doing 10 Olympic lifts in
a row? They never would. I know it's a CrossFit
competition, but it's not how you would get to
the Olympics as an Olympic lifter. What you're
doing... is with the perfect lift is establishing
what we call an engram an engram is the representation
of the movement in the brain and with every repetition
your brain records that as as muscle memory you
want to record a perfect engram but when you
do 10 lifts you now pollute the engram with a
fatigued pattern Your brain doesn't know what
to do to start lifting that heart attack victim
out of the bathtub, which might be a common lift
for a firefighter, for example, or any emergency
personnel. You want perfect engrams and train
them with singles of perfect lifts. Now, the
lifts might be heavy. That's fine. But don't
go to fatigue. And I can prove this, by the way.
We won an award. Europe as as the top study three
years ago in the world we took the Toronto ETF
so that was the the SWAT team or the emergency
task force there was 70 officers in the ETF we
followed them for five years we had zero attrition
so the same 70 officers started as finished we
measured health variables and habits. And we
spent, I believe it was six hours assessing every
single. Sorry, that was just another colleague
coming through on Skype. No problem. Yeah, I
can't prevent that. I'm sorry. But anyway, back
to the police officer study. We spent six hours
assessing their movement patterns and their strength,
their mobility, their endurance, etc. Then we
watched them for five years to see who got back
pain to the point that they lost a day of work.
Do you think the most fit? firefighters the ones
who trained the hardest were resilient to back
injury or Those are the ones getting back injuries
and you would assume the fit ones were the most
resilient No, we saw exactly the opposite and
then we went in and watched them train the ones
who did 10 Olympic lifts or 10 deadlifts were
breaking their perfect form, getting into fatigue,
and those were the ones who were getting back
injuries. So I'm not talking through my hat here.
We've proven this several times. Train with perfect
form. The next study we did with the Pensacola,
Florida Fire Department. Once again, we started
with 75 men. uh yes they were all men one group
of 25 formed a control group the next 25 uh did
fitness training for a period of time now it
was very much the style of doing you know 10
burpees which creates spine mobility then do
10 olympic lifts which now you need precisely
the opposite Mobility in your spine is very detrimental.
So now they had to stiffen their spine and do
10 reps. But of course, when you get tired, your
spine breaks form. And then the third group were
the what we called the movement matters group.
We worked with very high level coaches and trainers
from used to be called Athletes Performance.
Now they're called Exos, which they've partnered
with the Andrews Institute in Pensacola. Anyway,
prior to the study, we measured all the firefighters
doing their fire ground tasks. We measured injury
markers. So if their knee buckled inwards while
they were advancing a fire hose or they used
too much spine flexion under heavy load lifting
a crash test dummy or something like that. These
are all markers that we know increase the risk
of future injury. The ones who just trained,
and I'll use the expression, well, I don't need
to use that, but the ones who just did repeated
lifting and, you know, the coach encourages them
to keep doing more reps and that kind of thing.
When they went back out onto the fire ground,
they were moving with more injury markers. In
other words, you've created an occupational athlete,
a firefighter, who's now stronger and lifting
more with worse form. The third group who had
excellent coaching all the time, we never coached
them on fire ground activities. We only coached
them on how to do a proper hip hinge, a proper
deadlift, a proper push pattern, a proper pull
pattern. How do you carry objects properly? They
went back out onto the fire ground with much
fewer. Injury markers they had a movement wisdom
now that produced resilience in their body I
don't I can prove now that good coaching is Worth
the money and those who just want to train and
get strong in the gym with repeated repetitions
I hope they enjoy their pain because I can stand
by that particular study. Yeah. Yeah, and then
the thing is I think it would be foolish to even
question that because that's the goal of anyone
that goes to see a coach is that they're supposed
to be the leader and they're supposed to be someone
who will guide them into the correct movement
pattern, whether it's a professional sport or
whether it's a CrossFit environment or Olympic
lifting or whatever it is. And I actually 100
% align with you that and I'm kind of... laughed
at sometimes in my gym because of my resistance
to the competitions and it's not the competitions
themselves i've got some amazing athletes that
are perfectly capable of doing very well in a
competition very safely but the majority of the
men and women that come to our gym aren't moving
correctly just like you said so you know to them
i'm like there are going to be no medals handed
out at the end of this workout So you've got
nothing to injure yourself for in the first place,
even if that was a philosophy. So do every single
rep the way it's supposed to be done. And in
your mind, tell yourself that if you don't do
it right, imagine there will be someone giving
you a no rep. So you wouldn't even be able to
count that one anyway. Well, well said. We just
paused for a moment and you were talking about
people on the Internet discussing movement fear.
So would you mind elaborating on that for me?
Well, there are many people on the Internet who
I don't feel they've done appropriate scientific
investigation. And I think they're very good
at marketing. on the internet and they tell people
that back pain is in their head or it doesn't
matter how you move, just keep moving because
you don't want to become what's called kinesiophobic
or afraid of movement. When I get those kinds
of patients, I find they are the most fearful
of movement because they never know when a certain
movement will end up feeling as though someone
threw a knife in their back. But when they're
shown, their precise mechanism of, uh, an episodic
back pain, uh, and, and how to avoid it. They
are suddenly so empowered and all of the movement,
uh, fear goes away. I'll, I'll, I'll just pull
out another, uh, example of, of another study
that we, uh, we're, we're, we're given an award
for. Um, and it's, it's, it's, you'll, you'll
see why it's so interesting. This work could
never have been done in the United States. If
you're a frontline clinician, you will have had
couples coming to you saying, we are now celibate
because six months ago when we had sex, we injured
our backs quite badly. And we're so fearful now
that it's not worth it. And the clinicians have
zero. references to guide them on what to tell
the patients. So this is a real problem. And
what we did was with that motivation to provide
clinicians with recommendations, we then studied
couples having sex. We were measuring spine load,
hip load. muscle activation levels etc uh and
as i said this this was not possible to conduct
in the u .s they they they just it would never
have been allowed but uh you can imagine the
ethics concerns of the university and we worked
through it for for two years the one of my graduate
students natalie sudorkowitz took this on as
her graduate work But anyway, we were able to
create an atlas and provide that to the medical
community. So now for the first time, they have
guidelines on what to tell patients. So there's
just yet another example of taking this fear
that many. Clinicians will say, look, it's just
in your head. Don't worry about it. Well, just
hold on. I've just given you an example now of
massive behavior change because of fear. And
the solution was not to ignore it. The solution
was to study it and understand the mechanism
so you can have a quantifiable and justifiable
intervention to change people's lives. anyway
it's how you get rid of movement fear and uh
you know i'm not saying the psychological is
unimportant i'm not saying that at all uh because
uh very much uh how a person uh deals with uh
chronic pain um the depression the uh upset and
stress on their family you know look how many
first responders are under family pressure now
because they can't earn money it's an enormous
psychological stress however you can go ahead
and treat the psychological or and in conjunction
with treat what is causing their back pain. And
when the pain goes away, they start sleeping
better. They become psychologically more resilient.
And most often, and again, I'm not talking through
my hat, we follow up with every patient we've
ever seen. So we know the score and the behavior.
The psychological issues diminish and disappear
when the pain goes away. Yeah, again, that makes
perfect sense. I wanted to kind of elaborate
on that and then also kind of tie in one of your
books. So one of your books is called The Gift
of Injury. When I hurt my back, which is about
five years ago now, that phrase couldn't be more
true because what it did is it gave me an opportunity
to delve into, yes, my back was hurt, but obviously
just like your speciality is finding out what
the hell it was that... created the environment
that I would even get hurt in the first place
so the philosophy of an injury being an opportunity
to not only heal but then come back even stronger
which is my goal for every time I've been hurt
Again, that seems to be a philosophy that's not
very well understood in the workplace injury
and then rehab arena. So when you have these
men and women that come to you, is that the same
kind of thing that you're not just trying to
get them out of pain, but also get them at least
as strong, if not stronger, if there were weaknesses
than they were before they even got hurt in the
first place? Well, absolutely. People want me
to come in and put together. injury prevention
programs. Well, we talked about the state of
our young students on campuses these days. Do
you think if I came in and said, if you continue
with this, you're going to have back pain. So
I suggest you start changing your ways. What
do you think the compliance and effect would
be? I'm going to, because I've done this, it's
going to be just about zero. So once a person
has back pain, it's too bad. I wish we had a
better way. all of a sudden they are now motivated
to listen. They don't want to go back to that
again. So this idea, it required the injury and
the disability, unfortunately, to wake them up.
Well, if you consider it in the right light,
is the gift. And I've proven this many times
as well, because I'll stand by our record of
restoring careers in professional sport around
the world, many Olympic programs. I've had Olympic
lifters, weightlifters. I know one fella who
has three Olympic records, and he will say, I
never hurt my back until I had a disc herniation.
Sorry, I never won a gold medal until I had a
disc herniation because that was the gift that
taught me how to train pristinely and perfectly
understand the biological tipping points of my
body and understand the adaptation schedules.
I can give you an example on that one as well.
You'll find a lot of young people who get into
bodybuilding. And when they go to powerlifting
a little bit later in their life, they get hurt.
And here's the typical mechanism. As a bodybuilder,
typically they'll train three days a week because
what you're doing is creating adaptation to the
muscle and the muscle grows. But the muscle doesn't
grow when you train. It grows in the day off
between the training. So the whole training purpose
is to create the adaptation on the rest day.
Well, now let's go to powerlifting. When you
examine the training schedules of the grand old
men and women of powerlifting, what you'll find
is you'll consider them under -trained. They
will have a very heavy squat day, for example,
and then they take five days off. But five days
is what's required for the bone. When we measure
the bone after a heavy squat day, at the molecular
level, there's microfracturing that goes on.
And it takes five days for the bone to go through
its piezoelectric adaptation response. It draws
in fresh calcium and magnesium ions. It scaffolds
it into the bone and gets it to stick. That takes
five days. So if you start training very, very
heavy loads like a powerlifter on a bodybuilding
schedule of three days a week, the microfracturing
actually accumulates. It doesn't have time. for
that adaptation. And then they come in with an
end plate fracture in their back and wonder why
now they have a disc bulge. Again, it wasn't
a mystery. It was a violation of that biological
process that no one had ever explained to them
before. So anyway, there's again, just another
example. Yeah, well, I want to hit on something
that I haven't talked about yet with you, which
is the recovery phase or sleep in first responders
specifically, especially the firefighters where
they're constantly up for 24 hours. Or if they
do the split schedule like the police do, then
it's nights and days and nights and days. Do
you see the effects of sleep deprivation, the
inability to heal those micro tears more predominantly
in first responders on those schedules? Yes,
absolutely. There's no question. But I see it
at two different levels. The first level is the
one that you're talking about with the actual
disruption of the tissue adaptation and repair
process. But what is also a concern, and you're
probably well aware of the science on this, if
you've been deprived of sleep, your performance
actually goes to the level of being impaired
with alcohol. for example. So now your movement
patterns are not as pristine as before. It's
like doing 10 deadlifts. Your last deadlift is
now so poor in form, the stress concentrations
on particular vulnerable tissues exceed the tipping
point and you get hurt. So this is also a problem
as well. As you know, if you're operating sleep
deprived and you've got a very heavy lift to
do, You know, let's go into an apartment building
now. It's on fire. There's a person who needs
assistance out of their bathtub. You carry them
down the stairs. You can imagine how you are
highly perturbed if you've been sleep deprived.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the other thing, you
know, not to interrupt, James, but just again,
that is a heroic Olympic effort. That's what
you guys do on a regular basis. You perform heroic
Olympic efforts. Now, if we were sending you
to the Olympics to perform that, you would have
been on a highly controlled diet, a highly controlled
sleep schedule and rest schedule. Everything
would be fit together to allow you to win without
breaking your body in that heroic Olympic effort.
But that's not. what happens in the reality of
your life yeah so you know of course it's a compromise
brilliant well thank you for that because i think
one of the ways that we are going to get our
employers to understand that maybe the The hours
work. I mean, a lot of firefighters work 56 hour
weeks, you know, every third day they're awake.
But if it's a financial concern that we can show
that if these men and women are given more time
to recover and rest after these shifts that lock
down the road, the workplace injuries will probably
be reduced as well. Well, you used the word probably.
I can be more strong in that and I can prove
reduction in injury rates. They had a very, very
good health and safety officer who happened to
be responsible for the physical training of the
fire department. And he documented the costs
of back injuries falling to one quarter once
they put together the programs and the principles
that we've documented. First of all, in my clinical
textbooks and then in my recent book for. a public
back mechanic. Which department was that, if
you don't mind me asking? Well, I don't know
if I should reveal the name. I'm hedging on whether
they want the publicity or not. I'd have to call
them and ask. No problem. There might be a sensitivity
there. But the fact that you said that there
had been a study done, and I'm talking to Dr.
Stuart McGill, who's saying this, then... That's
really great to hear because I only have hypotheses.
I'm sitting here in a house in Ocala. All right.
Well, another thing you talked about as well,
about the weight -bearing, breaking down micro
tears, but then making bones stronger. I remember
way, way back when I was doing exercise physiology
in London University there. they talked about
that was the most effective way of keeping bone
density strong and avoiding osteoporosis. So
A, is that still the case? And B, what kind of
exercises do you recommend to maintain that bone
density, especially obviously in our female firefighters
post -menopause? Right. What a huge question.
You may be aware that I was on the Osteoporosis
Canada team that put together the recommended
guidelines for stopping mineral loss. So I'm
somewhat familiar with the science on this, although
it isn't obviously my main area of expertise.
But when I read the osteoporosis literature,
it's almost always done. on women who lead quite
a sedentary life. They don't investigate the
best and strongest female power lifters in the
world, for example. It's like my criticism of
so much of what the medical profession knows
about many medical conditions. They're measuring
graduate students and sick people. There's not
much difference sometimes. But when you measure
the greatest athletes in the world, it's like
driving an F1 race car. Now you suddenly learn
what the automobile potential really is. And
now can we bring that down to the mundane passenger
car? So with that perspective said. The current
feeling about bone density is that it's very
important for young adolescent women to be quite
active in an impact kind of way. Run, jump, play
basketball. It's that impact that densifies the
bone, which the sweet spot for densifying bone
is at 15. Now. go to your local high school and
look at all the mothers driving their kids to
school right at the age when they had the biggest
chance to create robust bone for the rest of
their lives. So now we start to see something
much more endemic and larger in scale. But now
I'm going to get to the powerlifting story. So
as I said, the current wisdom in the osteoporosis
world is try and densify bone and then. For the
rest of their lives, they can't really build
bone. All they can do is stop the loss. And you
stop the loss by walking with impact on the heels.
In other words, have a stiffer soled shoe that
actually gives you a little bit of a heel strike
rather than these softened heels that take away
all heel strike. That's not natural and nor is
it the best for the bones. But having said that,
that world believes you can't build bone. But
none of them, to my knowledge, have. understood,
measured, and worked with powerlifters. When
I work with world -class strength women, so these
are heavy field athletes and things like shot
put, hammer throw, and then powerlifters, they
have heavy sclerotic bone, big welded plates,
if you want to think of the bone actually grows.
plates rather than thin trabeculae in the vertebra.
We see these in women who have power lifted and
done it cleverly for many years. Absolutely,
you can build bone with the right stimulus through
training and the proper adaptation of that five
day schedule that I was telling you about. So
there's a perspective on why I believe. the uh
common uh street wisdom exists on osteoporosis
and why i think uh it may not be entirely correct
right and another area and and i'm not sure if
this is something that you are you know well
versed in but i know in some of the nutritional
I've read and documentaries I've seen, they talk
about the way I was raised was you drink milk
for healthy bones and strong teeth. We consume
more dairy, I think, than I think we're number
two in the world. There was another country ahead
of us, Hungary or something. But, you know, you
would assume then if it was dietary that we would
all have extremely strong bones. But then supposedly
we have a very, very high incidence of osteoporosis
compared to many countries. And again, I'm not
100 % if that statistic is true. fundamentally
I've been told that that milk actually creates
an acidity in the body and then calcium is drawn
from the bones to buffer that acidity through
your studies is what I said correct is it completely
incorrect I don't know that's that's not my world
at all okay All right, then I will delve some
more. But another thing you said about was the
shoes. I have personally, it just, it feels good
to me. I've started doing many of the things
in the gym that aren't impact. So I'm not doing
like, you know, like a catch of a snatch or a
clean, but slow squats and a lot of the other
things I'll do barefoot now to try and create
that connection with the floor again. Have you
delved into the footwear side much? Yes, but
that's not a bone -densifying rationale at all.
To densify bone, you need impact. And just to
give a scientific foundation for that and what
causes bone growth and bone healing. Bone is
a piezoelectric crystal. So if you think back
to when you were a kid at camp or whatever at
night, you would take two pieces of quartz and
rub them together at night and you would see
lightning flashes going through the quartz. So
what that was demonstrating was when you stress
a piezoelectric crystal, quartz it builds a charge
and then you liberate that charge when you when
you take the stress off the crystal so bone is
a piezoelectric material when you bend bone it
forms a charge at the highest stress point. That
charge draws in free negative ions of calcium
and magnesium and things like that, and it sticks
the new ions onto the high stress point. So you
actually lay down bone very cleverly at the highest
stress point. Well, impact turns out to be one
of the best. signalers to lay down bone. So first
of all, if you don't walk, that's a big problem.
And if you walk... in very soft air shoes or
whatever you want to call those, you're taking
out the shock that your body thrives on. So if
you go barefoot or walk with more stiff heels,
you will actually create more impact up through
your articulated linkage to maintain that charge.
lays down a new bone um but that wasn't your
your question your question was really on footwear
while you're lifting now we get into quite a
different discussion uh there's one you said
you wanted to be better connected to the ground
and that was a very clever thing to say because
now lifters some put great priority in the proprioceptive
system. So for example, when you can grip the
ground with your toes and your heels and really
root, as it's called in the lifting world, and
you create a good stiff spine with an appropriate
hip hinge, this creates the highest density.
of neural drive. So your brain thinks of the
movement and it sends out a volley of electrical
pulses strategically throughout your body. That
density determines your strength. If your body
detects a poor root on the ground and you're
slightly unable to control the center of mass
and the base of support, your brain shuts down
the neural drive. If it detects a little bit
of instability in your low back through injury,
it shuts down the neural drive to your hips.
There's almost a fuse box there where your proprioceptive
system says, you know, let's preserve this system
because right now it's non -optimal. So now the
next layer of discussion goes, what footwear?
creates the greatest root and therefore the potential
for the greatest strength in neural drive. Well,
now it's interesting. We get into the full spectrum
of biological response. So some lifters and how
we just do the grand experiment. We put them
into Olympic lifting shoes, which, as you know,
have very stiff, either plastic or wooden soles.
in the shoes they have a elevated heel and they
have a buckle that goes over the top of the laces
to really stiffen the foot and lock it down and
yet you will find other lifters who lift barefoot
or in ballet slippers the absolute polar opposite
they have a different proprioceptive and neurological
system so what we do is we'll give the lifter
uh, what we're going to do have two lifting sessions
and we'll go back and forth. The first time they
get really bound down tight in the Olympic lifting
shoes. The next session they go to the ballet
slippers and then we find out how did their system
respond. And usually they're so aware they say,
no, you know, for me, I like the lifting shoes
and the stiffness and connection I get there.
And the next man or woman will say, no, I love
barefoot. That really unleashes my neurology.
So that's how we bracket it and discover what
is best for the individual. Okay, fantastic.
Now I want to touch on one other area, moving
away from that, before we do some wrap -up questions,
because you've been very, very generous. I know
we're getting on past the hour now. But you talked
about the military changing their PT tests, and
obviously one of the reasons is something that
you're well -known for discussing, which is the
sit -up. So would you mind elaborating on that
for me? Yes. It's been military tradition for
decades, particularly in the US, but around the
world as well, to have speed sit -ups as part
of the annual fitness test. Well, when you talk
to some of the people, some of the physical therapists
in the US military, they will tell you that the
soldiers train. to pass the physical fitness
test, and one report suggested that the number
one cause of GIs returning from, I believe it
was Afghanistan, it might have been Iran, I can't
remember now, was a back pain associated with
soldiers training the test. And every day...
I get emails from American military personnel
saying, oh, I dread the test. It's coming up.
I've hurt my back training for it. Do you have
any suggestions? So listening to all of this,
there's been some leadership in the military.
I believe the Navy. Uh, and, and factions of
the air force have now taken out, uh, sit -ups
and they've replaced them with front planks,
which has another issue because the front plank
is limited by shoulder, uh, integrity. But, uh,
anyway, and there was another group, uh, in the
States. Uh, I, I, I know one of the, uh, military
captains, she, she's probably a general by now,
but, but Deidre Tayen was, was one of the, uh,
officers in charge of the study. And, uh, they,
uh, took soldiers in basic training. I believe
it was Fort Bragg, but I might know it was the
one in Texas. Anyway, Fort Hood, maybe, uh, anyway,
uh, they, uh, uh, in basic training had, uh,
some of the soldiers not doing sit -ups. Instead,
they did exercises that we would recommend. Front
planks, the modified curls, which really isn't
a curl up at all. Stir the pod exercise on a
gym ball, etc. And then at the end of basic training,
they compared the two groups. The ones who didn't
train sit -ups. but did it in spine -conserving
ways, actually had higher athleticism. They performed
better on the sit -up test once it was administered.
I also have enough experience in the world of
MMA because, you know, we've restored careers
of jiu -jitsu fighters and top MMA fighters who
did. By tradition of karate and some of these
other martial arts, they might do a thousand
sit -ups every day, which is fabulous until they're
22 or 23 years of age. And then all of that motion
and stress is now accumulated and they're so
painful they can't practice jujitsu on the floor,
which requires... bending their spine and deflection
to go into guard and that kind of thing. So what
we do is take out all of the sit -ups and replace
them with stir the pod exercises and planks and
rolling planks and these kinds of things. And
lo and behold, they become even more athletic
and their pain goes away. So there's a little
bit of a start on the... sit up issue from a
practical and applied point of view without really
getting into the heavy discussion of how, for
example. why do some people tolerate lots of
sit -ups and the next person doesn't well a quick
explanation to start that one would be if you
took a thin willow branch you could bend it back
and forth with no stress so it's not an issue
but if you took a thicker branch and bent it
a few times to the same amount of bend it would
shatter right away because the stress in a round
tube which is the spine basically is a function
of its thickness or radial distance. So you would
never, I hope, take an offensive tackle from
the NFL and ask them to do sit -ups. Because
by definition, they will have a heavier, thicker
spine. Those are the ones that succumb much sooner
than a very slender person who might be adept
at gymnastics, for example, or they might be
a yoga master, which is terrific. But they wouldn't
last one play in surviving in the NFL. So, you
know, there's wheels within wheels in understanding
the nuances of programming exercise. Why? what
is one person's poison is the next person's you
know secret sauce to developing their athleticism
it's it's something i've spent my my whole academic
life and trying to understand all the variables
that come into play so you know there isn't a
single answer but i i keep coming back to this
get a thorough assessment of the mechanism of
the back pain and that will show you Is sit -ups
really the preferred exercise tool for you? Or
would you be far more athletic with a stir the
pot or a front plank? Or, you know, instead of
doing a deadlift, you might be far more athletic
and injury resilient if you simply pushed your
car back and forth in the parking lot. You know,
people who only do deadlifts do that because...
That's the only tool they have in their toolbox,
not realizing that there are many other ways
that would be more clever in attempting to build
a resilient high performance back and body. Yeah,
yeah. And I agree. The strongman type exercises,
so the sled pushes and pulls and pulling the
sled towards you with a thick rope and carrying
sandbags, I found those have been great for me.
But also when you take a step back and look at
what we do on the fire ground, they're far more
pertinent than standing there and cleaning or
snatching or squatting where you're never going
left, right, left, right like we would in real
life. Well, exactly. So the Canadian military,
we consulted with them, oh, a decade and a half
ago, and they took out the speed sit -ups from
their fitness test. And it is all strongmen now.
It's all sandbag carries and tire lifts and those
kinds of things because they're highly correlated
with battleground performance. Yeah, exactly.
All right. Well, I'm going to do some wrap up
questions then so we can let you go. But you've
been an absolute wealth of information. Thank
you so much. So the first question I always ask
is I'm going to list on the Web page that we
have at JamesGerian .com all of your books. And
we'll talk about where we can find you in a minute
as well. But are there any books by other people
that you love to recommend, whether it's about
what we've spoken about today or something completely
different? Well, you can't give me such an open
question. I would need a parameter on that. And
I might not be the best to recommend those. I,
you know, I know my area and I'm confident to.
talk about that to get into other areas like,
you know, nutrition and some of these other things.
I wouldn't be the expert to make those recommendations.
Okay, what about fiction then? Is there a fictional
novel that you've loved that you've always told
people? I don't know if I've ever read a fictional
novel in my life. All right, we'll move on to
the next one then. What about a movie and or
a documentary? I watch documentaries when I train.
And it wasn't really a documentary. I found the
testimony of James Comey the other night incredibly
fascinating. I've watched a documentary on your
president, which, again, I found very interesting.
Warren Buffett. Good people are good for a reason.
And once again, you see patterns. And it's a
matter of pattern recognition. So I enjoy those
kinds of documentaries on successful people and
the reason for it. Right. Okay. Now, is there
a person that you would recommend to come on
this podcast as a guest to talk to the police,
fire, EMS, military of the world? Yeah, absolutely.
He's a wonderful speaker and one of the graduate
students that worked with me both on the Toronto
Police Force study and on the Pensacola study
is a young professor, University of Toronto,
Dave Frost. He would be a fabulous guest for
you, for the first responders. He knows that
world inside and out. He's a favorite guest for
the... what is it, the IAFF, International Firefighters,
whatever that one is. He's spoken to their medical
groups many, many times. There are other people,
though, that are really world leaders. Have you
ever heard of Pavel Sotsulin? I have, yes, of
Strong First. Yeah, Pavel is a Russian. I've
known him many years. He knows strength. He's
also a wonderful friend. He's taught me so much.
He's been there and he knows the science and
he knows how to put it in practice. And he loves
working with first responders. He loves the toughness
and that synergy of psychological and physical.
Let me tell you a story of the first time I met
Pavel. You'll enjoy this. At least the first
responders will. I was a keynote speaker in Minneapolis.
at the National Strength and Conditioning Association,
NSCA. And I did my talk. And after the talk,
there was this large group of people, you know,
that sort of descend on the podium at the end
of these things to ask questions and whatnot.
And people would ask me questions. And there
was this fella in the back. And he said, sir,
what do you think of this? And he asked a big
fella to lay on his back on the ground. And then
he bent down and he picked this guy up. And just
lifted him right up on his shoulder. And he said,
what did you think of that? And I said, that
was perfect. And the people around me went, ooh,
oh, that's terrible. And I said, sir, you did
that absolutely perfectly. And, you know, in
my own mind, there's no easy way to pick a body
off the ground. But he did. it perfectly employing
every principle perfectly and uh so afterwards
of course i was very intrigued on on who this
guy was and we went to lunch and long story short
we've been best friends ever since so he would
be a fabulous guest um dan john have you heard
of dan john you know it's funny because i saw
uh david frost talk at t -sac and i did a clinic
with dan john at t -sac as well OK, so, you know,
look, it's a small world, but but these are the
stars that I'm describing. Dan John is it's funny.
We're both of the same age, same vintage, same
sort of background, although he's a lot stronger
than I am. But Dan just has good old fashioned
wisdom. He's just a sensible guy. So. he's able
to take complex things and he makes them simple.
Like, let me give you his statement on nutrition.
Eat like an adult. Now, can you see how much
wisdom that one sentence has? You know, if you
asked me, you know, to make a statement on nutrition,
it would be a five -page report. And then Dan
would say, oh. Eat like an adult. And, you know,
it just makes so much sense. And his wisdom on
rest and recovery and patterns of movement, it's
just good old -fashioned wisdom. Anyway, I can
go on and on. But there's a few, three guests,
I guess, for you that would be fabulous for your
audience. Yeah, I will genuinely reach out to
all three of them. And I know I've had one of
Pavel's master instructors, Zar Horton, who was
a… A firefighter. I think he's a chief now in
Albuquerque. And I had him on early on this podcast.
And I'd love to reach out to Pavel because, yeah,
I have, you know, several of his books and I've
used kettlebells for years, too. And, yeah, I
think the man's a genius. He is. And he's a wonderful
human being as well. When you look at the number
of careers he has started. You know, all these
strength guys on the Internet doing this and
that. So many of them got their start with Pavel.
And I don't hear very often him being credited,
but he should get a tremendous amount of credit
for what he's done in the whole world of resilient
strength. Absolutely. Well, it would be an honor
if I was able to get him on. I would definitely.
Work on that. So the very last question before
we talk about where we can find all of your work
is what do you do to decompress, to blow off
steam? Oh, wow. What an insightful question.
I used to do heavy physical exercise. So I would
either train heavy or I would get on the heavy
bag or something like that. And I used to joke
with my wife that it kept me from committing
murder. You know, if someone was getting under
my skin, I'd just go and train a bit. But what
do I do now? That's interesting. Well, I live
in God's country. I live in northern Ontario.
So in the winter, I do outside things. And in
the summer, I... I do boating and, you know,
just everything on the beautiful lakes here.
And I love my dog and we go out and train and
play. And yeah, that's such an, it's just a habit.
I have my little routine every day. The first
thing I do is I get up, have a coffee and go
for a long walk. Brilliant. Yeah, I see when
I ask this question, I see a lot of common denominators,
too. And one of the big ones is just being out
in nature, especially when people have a high
stress job, you know, just to get out there and
feel the sunshine on their face and cool air
in their lungs. It seems to be very resetting
for the soul. Well, if you can train outdoors,
it's magical. And that's exactly what we have
here. We have our training center in my house,
which happens to be downstairs. And out in the
back, we've got chin -up bars and ropes between
trees. There's kettlebells out there. I did have
1 ,000 pounds on an Olympic bar, believe it or
not, but I just went and sold that. They were
putting too many holes in my lawn out there.
Oh, there's a stud out there to drag. Yeah, I
agree as well. Why be in a big building with
no windows when you can just be outside pushing
things around in the grass or on the asphalt?
And also, another thing is I split my own firewood.
And I purposefully use a heavy splitting mall.
And that is my training session. It's got just
enough violence in it that it takes down the
psychological stress a bit. That was a game I
used to play with my graduate students. Some
of them would train heavy and then I'd say, come
on over. Let's split some firewood. And of course,
they had no idea. So the skinny old white haired
professor would give them a lesson on super stiffness
and how to create impact. I said this to someone
the other day in an interview as well. There's
something very masculine about chopping your
own wood, too. At the end of it, you feel quite
accomplished. Oh, yeah. And there's not too much
more that makes the beer taste good. Yeah, exactly.
All right. So then the most important question
then. So how can people, after listening to this
incredible interview, find your books, find the
McGill Method and all the other platforms that
you have online? Yeah, well, thank you for that.
Our website is backfitpro .com and my books and
DVDs and the various back supports that we've
developed for people driving and whatnot are
all on there together with we try and keep the
content quite rich. People can also buy my books
from Amazon and there's numerous vendors around
the world. But if you go to BackFit Pro, the
flags of the countries are on there. come from
another country you can click on your flag um
but may i just talk about the the books themselves
for just a moment please yes yeah uh so i started
i wrote my first book in the year 2000 And it
was a heavy clinical textbook. I never in a million
years thought I'd write for the lay public. So
that was my first book. The second one was Ultimate
Back Fitness and Performance. And again, I wrote
that for the training crowd, the coaches, but
people who had a little bit of savvy regarding
training. And then the public. asked me and some
publishers as well, would you write a book for
the lay public? And that was something I'd never
thought I would do. But I spent five years writing
Back Mechanic. And it was the hardest book I
wrote because I had to seek the balance between
being truthful and honest versus making simple
enough for the lay public. The book publisher
said, oh, this won't sell. You've got to have
a title. cure your back pain in five easy steps.
And I said, but that's a lie. Anyone who sells
you that might get a couple of backs better by
dumb luck, but it's not possible. And I'm not
doing it. So I wrote Back Mechanic, which is
17 chapters, but it guides the reader through
an understanding of the pain mechanisms. Then
it guides them through a self -assessment. putting
themselves into different motions, postures and
loads, and really getting an understanding of
the category of pain mechanism. Then we show,
based on their category, what they should stop
doing and then what they need to do to build
a pain -free foundation for whatever activity
it is. But my last book Gift of Injury, I wrote
that with Brian Carroll. Brian is a highly accomplished
strength athlete. He's the only lifter that I
know of who's lifted over a thousand pounds over
50 times in national and international competition.
But he came to me with a horrible fracture. He'd
split his sacrum front to back and crushed L5.
And it was his story. of uh what led to the injury
and how he uh we bone calloused all through clever
matched exercise regimens and then he spent another
year getting his strength back and he went back
to win the arnold's for the next two years after
that so it's a Well, you said you read it. It's
a very emotional read. I found out Brian could
write. And when I read the first chapter that
he wrote on how he got to the very dark place
that he got to with the injury. We then turned
the book into a manual for recovery of the strength
athlete. And again, that was never anticipated.
It just grew organically as I learned what a
great writer Brian was. So anyway, those are
four books anyway. All have different purposes.
But if you're struggling with back pain, start
with Back Mechanic. If you're interested in then.
making the transition to redeveloping pain -free
athleticism. If you're a strength athlete, go
with a gift of injury. If you're an athlete or
an occupational athlete, I would go more for
ultimate back fitness. Fantastic. Well, I'll
put all those books on the webpage jamesgearian
.com for this episode. So they'll all be written
down there as well as the link for the website.
So I just want to say thank you so much. I knew
this was going to be an incredible interview,
but there's just so much information here. And
again, so many rabbit holes for people to decide
which area they want to go down and then explore
more about their own unique, whether it's pain
or hopefully the prevention route if they haven't
got to that point. Well, terrific. Thank you
very much, James. You got me with a couple of
questions there that I normally don't get asked.
So thanks for your thoughts in putting together
your interview. And thanks once again as well
for the support you provide to the first responders.
I have to say I love the community. I love working
with the men and women. And the jobs they do
are, they are now getting their public recognition.
But when I see them on the street, I quite often
go up to them and just thank them for all they
do. So thank you for your support of not only
what you do, but what you do for them as well.