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Isaiah Rivera, pro dunker, and John Evans discuss anything related to maximizing athletic performance, and in particular, jump training. Strength and conditioning, jumping technique, weight room practices, and general fitness and health tips and advice are shared on this podcast.
What's up, guys? Welcome back to the TSB Strength podcast. My name is John Evans, and I have coached four of the current six individuals who have tested a 50 inch vertical leap. Today, we're actually gonna be talking to Josh about back pain. So if you don't know who Josh is, Josh is tested.
Speaker 1:What's your vertical? What have you unofficially and officially tested.
Speaker 2:Officially tested a 41, unofficial 44 because I hit my head on a rim.
Speaker 1:Alright. And are we gonna talk about height checks and how that doesn't equate, or are we just gonna let Oh. Wait. How tall are you?
Speaker 2:I'm in shoes, probably six one and a half, barefoot six feet half inch.
Speaker 1:Alright. And you touched your head on what height?
Speaker 2:We're pretty sure the rim was nine nine. We had so we measured it at the end of the So you
Speaker 1:did the difference between that is forty four?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's like yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's probably forty two. Yeah. We'll say it's forty two. But yeah.
Speaker 1:So we're gonna talk actually about back pain because Josh has had quite a bit of problems with his back. So talk about your back pain, what started it, why you think it exists, and, yeah, just give us some insight into your problems, your issues, your personal issues, your physical issues.
Speaker 2:So I had back pain before I got here, but it wasn't like didn't bother me all the time, but then
Speaker 1:Hold the mic closer to
Speaker 2:your face. Came here, and the training intensity increased a lot. And I found out what's wrong with me, what's how what list we should do. Handy dandy belt squat machine back there is a lifesaver for my back.
Speaker 1:Where is it? Low back, mid back? What's
Speaker 2:the Everything. Main mainly mid back, though.
Speaker 1:Have you had back issues in the past?
Speaker 2:I would get lower back pain from forcing a deep squat with, like, my knees behind my toes, so butt wink out the, that would hurt a lot. And my past coaches just say, I need to
Speaker 1:Just get stronger? Stretch my hamstrings. Just stretch your hamstrings.
Speaker 2:It was never
Speaker 1:Everything will get better.
Speaker 2:Because I I, yes, I knew I needed to improve my ankle mobility, but I never realized that improving your ankle mobility eliminated butt wink.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about this a little bit so that you guys can understand it. When you squat, you want a given amount of hip flexion and dorsiflexion. So meaning you're flexing at the ankle and you're flexing at the hip. So if you are trying to keep your shins vertical and you are trying to push your butt back to balance, the weight has to shift forward. The problem is that you're gonna load the living hell out of your spine by doing that.
Speaker 1:And if the deeper you go, you'll also end up rotating your pelvis into posterior tilt or what we call butt wink. And the problem with that is that your spine is not super stable in that position. You're not very strong at handling loads when your spine is not in the neutral position. So neutral position means you have a slight curve in your cervical spine, you have a rounding in the upper back, and then you have an arch in the lower back. So what you don't know about Josh is Josh is a little bit kyphotic, meaning he has a rounding upper back.
Speaker 1:Lordosis is where you're arching the low back. And so both of those, Isaiah's actually a little lordotic. So both of those can cause problems long term because it impacts the weight bearing, load bearing capacity of the spine. And as a result, the ligaments, the muscles, everything has to, in a sense, compensate. And everyone is gonna have a certain amount of lordosis and kyphosis.
Speaker 1:Those are good. You need to have those coverages in your spine. Don't want a straight spine. You should have a natural rounding in the cervical spine, then it kind of rounds outwards for your upper back, and then the low back, you have a natural arch. And the problem is that those can get extreme, and then when you put what's your what's the heaviest weight you've had on your back?
Speaker 2:It's like a back squat? Yeah. Four hundred and fifteen pounds.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So four fifteen, almost two hundred kilos on your back, not quite, then you're going to increase the types of loading that can cause back pain. And oftentimes it manifests in the form of like a herniated disc or you might have like bulging discs or something like that. You could also have just the muscles end up getting spasms. So what do you know what the actual what you have going on?
Speaker 1:Do you know if you have any herniated discs? I've never There's a ton of athletes with herniated discs. Like world class athletes. A lot of world class athletes have herniated discs. I've never, like, had
Speaker 2:it looked at that way, but my the muscles around my t spine are always, always, always, always tight, sore, whatever you wanna call it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And this is Like, this
Speaker 2:right now feels so good.
Speaker 1:Just extending it? Yeah. Just laying like this. So my hypothesis is that Josh was an iPad kid and just was like looking down all the time and then as in development, he just ended up having his spine permanently irreparably rounded the wrong direction.
Speaker 2:My mom does have scoliosis.
Speaker 1:Okay. I'll I'll let you can have that.
Speaker 2:You can have that. I don't think I have scoliosis, but
Speaker 1:I don't think I have scoliosis, but it's possible. Bad backs do run-in the family. I also have bad backs in my family. My dad had a lot of auto back issues. He actually, he, he, his pain was so bad, he was like on a shitload of pain medication and ended up getting addicted to him, that's how bad it was.
Speaker 1:So it definitely runs in my family. My brother has had herniated disc surgery. So both of us have had ongoing back issues. Now the next question is, how is your back when you do the things you're supposed to do and make the changes you're supposed to?
Speaker 2:For instance, we deloaded or did the John Evans special. So that's just feel good a feel good lift. I did belt squat instead to offload my back, and I had a dunk session or contest, we wanna call that last week. And up until this week right now, my back feels great because I have not barbell back squatted in, like, a week and a half now. We're also doing snatch, that's a very comfortable position for my mid back as well.
Speaker 2:So I feel great right now because we offloaded
Speaker 1:Yes. Everything. So One of the well, I mean, it definitely always comes back to load with the spine. I don't know if you guys have looked into Stu McGill's research, but he's one of the best back researchers, and we pull a lot from the stuff that he says. And loading the spine, it's not like a tendon.
Speaker 1:Loading the spine more is not necessarily better. You want to load it correctly in neutral positions to strengthen the spine like a stiff chassis. And if you guys have ever done the training and you've seen that circuit stiff chassis, the goal is to strengthen lateral flexion, extension, and also resisting I guess, more or less resisting flexion and resisting extension so that you can handle the types of forces that you're gonna see on your torso when you're jumping or playing basketball or anything like that. When you're jumping, you've got to stop all of your momentum and it takes a lot of intra abdominal strength to be able to not only stop that momentum, but then stabilize the forces that you're going to be putting into the ground. And so if you do have this wobbly, you know, long torso, it's gonna be really hard for you to put a lot of force on the ground without leaking it or potentially getting hurt.
Speaker 1:So we want to have very strong musculature in the, not just your back, but also the abdomen. You need to have it in your your abs, got to have it in your sides. And sometimes it's like a compensatory adaptation, like, for example, my obliques are ridiculous. I look like a box and my brother doesn't. But I deal with different types of loads than he does.
Speaker 1:He's a distance runner and I wear identical twins. I do a lot of Olympic lifting, heavy lifting, obviously I do vertical jump training. So those compensations to those muscles have actually stabilized a lot of the issues I previously had in high school or even in early college and I don't have any issues. So that's what I was gonna say too is, even though I've herniated two or three discs in my low back, I don't have any symptoms. I don't have referred pain, I don't have sciatica or pain running down my leg.
Speaker 1:I can power clean twice a week, I can jump, I can sprint. And sometimes my back will get sore, but it's not like a, it's never impeding and it's just, it goes away within a day or two. That would be the big I
Speaker 2:used to think it was pulling from the floor that messed my back up. Does it? Not as much as barbell back squat.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I think too, what's interesting with back pain is when I watch you pull from the floor, you know, I try to always tell you, okay, pull your shoulder blades down in your back pocket, but you really can't. And like, sometimes it'll actually cause more problems than alleviating issues because it's just not the way that your body's built. So there has to be a certain level of flexibility in viewing certain movements. So an easy way to fix it would just be pull from the blocks, right?
Speaker 1:Because he can be in a more upright position, he's not at those end ranges for his spine, at least for him. And another part is your Snatching. What are
Speaker 2:gonna say? I'm just gonna say snap I was just thinking about snatching. We we did that a little bit. And you're like, come on, straighten your back up. I'm like
Speaker 1:I literally can't. I literally can't. And I'm like, alright. We're pulling from the blocks here. So that's been something that we've we've had to work through.
Speaker 1:I think, you know, when we adjusted his his squatting because I wanted it to be a little bit more jump specific. I like guys to be upright. I like them to push their knees over the toe and keep the feet flat and the hips come down and it's a very balanced position. But Josh has really, really long legs, along with the fact that his ankles are really tight, so he will inherently kind of lean forward a little bit, but not, he still is letting the knees travel forward so that you're able to stay as upright as possible without going into posterior tilt. The other thing we adjusted is the range of motion on squatting because going too deep was causing you to round the low back and causing a lot of issues.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Got some hip pain, but I can usually do it like once a week, you know, if I'm smart about it and warm up properly. But now my social media accounts are my anytime I post my squats, my heels come up, people are
Speaker 1:like, what the heck What are you are you doing? Yeah. It's gonna be terrible. You're gonna die. Your knees are gonna blow up.
Speaker 2:No different than putting heels underneath your Yeah. Plates underneath your heels.
Speaker 1:It's literally no different. It it is just like it's a little harder to balance, but at the end of the day, you're
Speaker 2:still pretty swat for I was, like, actually falling over when you first had me do it. When I first got here, I like, what the hell am I doing? And now it's like, oh, I like,
Speaker 1:I there is no Instability.
Speaker 2:Feels weird to squat with my heels flat now, almost.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You just feel like you you feel like the tightness in your hips and your back versus like if you go up on the toe a little bit. I mean, you could put plates underneath it, but the weight's gonna be shifted so far forward anyways, I but it's wanna not gonna
Speaker 2:pressure my knees, I don't do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Don't do that. So I think to backtrack talk about some of the changes, the first thing that we changed is the range of motion in some of the exercises. So we don't do, like, snatch for example. It's probably not gonna snatch from the floor.
Speaker 1:I can
Speaker 2:I can do it, but
Speaker 1:Oftentimes it's better to go from a hang or from the blocks? And if he does it, it's in low volume so that he doesn't end up exceeding the capacity of his spine. Another big change that we made is not back squatting with a bar as much. So we'll integrate the belt squat quite a bit. We will do back squat, but would you say maybe once a week or once once every other week?
Speaker 2:It's like what we always said, get the axial loading on Monday and then
Speaker 1:Axial loading on Wednesday's belt. And the thing is you're gonna get axial loading through the clean, so it's like not even that big of a deal. We'll do that
Speaker 2:for though does get in the
Speaker 1:way. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Know. I always say, no one asks what's your max belt squat? They ask what your max back squat is.
Speaker 1:And I always say, Josh, we're not trying to be a power lifter. We're trying to jump higher. It doesn't matter. Like, it's arb it's it's like arbitrary. It literally doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah. And yeah. So that's another change that we made. Another one that we've regularly integrated is doing stability exercises for the spine, and then there's also some neurological benefits.
Speaker 1:So when we do McGill Big Three, you're not only training those anti flexion and anti rotation and stability in the spine, oftentimes you'll actually see desensitat desensitization? Is that a word? Yeah. In some of the areas that are a little bit provocated. So if you're doing, you know, the Big O Big three basically is a curl up, it's a side plank, and then a bird dog.
Speaker 1:And typically, by doing those with a neutral spine, you'll end up leaving that kind of like warm up feeling stable, better, you know, you get fluid moving into the discs and especially if it's earlier in the morning, that can be really, really helpful. And then another thing I've noticed works really well is the walks with the big arm swings. I think Dom, myself, Josh, time we have a day where we're feeling a little bit stiff, we just go out, we go for a ten, fifteen minute walk with big arm swings, come back and you feel infinitely better. The last one is just supporting your spine when you're sitting. Are you just thinking about it
Speaker 2:now? Yeah. Like the walks, like, I don't notice like an instant effect, but it's like if I do them days of day after day, it's like, oh, I feel better.
Speaker 1:Josh likes to hold it down here. So if you guys can't hear him, make sure you troll him in the comments.
Speaker 2:I can troll no matter what, so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. I do too. So it's just part of it. You know, when you dunk with the best in the world every week, you're gonna look shitty. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That just happens. It's just part of it. Alright. Last last question to your last things to cover. We're we're coming up on a year here, Josh.
Speaker 1:What are some some things that you've discovered about yourself in the last year? This this what would you call it? Like, you're finding yourself. You know? What have you found about yourself?
Speaker 2:Wasn't as strong as I actually thought I was. What? Because I'm just You use
Speaker 1:fake weights of pious. Is that why?
Speaker 2:Fake mixture of fake weights and then not squatting the way that we actually Every
Speaker 1:time Josh goes home, he hits a PR. Every time he's here,
Speaker 2:I'm measured the weights at my home gym and there there was like they're forty four point four pounds. So it's like
Speaker 1:A little bit off, but it's really not that I
Speaker 2:don't feels infinitely less heavy.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's just a comfort thing, but your cluster here has gone up Oh, yeah. Dramatically. I think when you came in, you weren't hitting two seventy five. Like, it was, two sixty five, two sixty five. Last couple weeks, you've gone how many weeks in a row did you hit two seventy five and then eventually two eighty five?
Speaker 1:On a
Speaker 2:power clean, five weeks in a row. That was like, I've never done that before.
Speaker 1:His cluster is rising quickly, which is a good sign that usually means losing weight. Yeah. And he's losing weight, which is crazy. He lost 10 pounds, and his power clean is higher than it's ever been, or at least the cluster is. Hopefully, his max will follow soon.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I wanna talk about is the jump technique thing because I think
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:This this one maybe could be tomorrow's podcast, actually. We'll cover this tomorrow because there are some changes, and I don't talk about this often because I would like to give it time, but we've definitely made some changes to the recommendations on technique. But that's the video, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. Like, comment, subscribe.
Speaker 1:If you're looking for coaching, click the link in the pinned comment, and we'll see you next time. Bye.