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Almost all athletes experience low back pain during their training / athletic career. How can we intelligently train and rehab to avoid this injury or rehab to get back to 100%? Today, we dive into what the research shows.
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 is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the THP Strength podcast. My name is Isaiah Rivera. I am a professional dunker and I also coach athletes on how to jump higher and run faster. I've been obsessively doing this for years now.
Isaiah:And John, if you wanna introduce yourself as well.
John:My name is John Evans. I am the coach of Isaiah Rivera. The Isaiah Rivera. I also coach other pro donkers, have worked with a lot of other pro donkers, have done coaching at the division level for track and have a master's degree, undergraduate degree in sports science, worked with the OTC, worked with the athletic lab, doing sports performance with pro and soccer and pro semi pro track and field athletes, as well as working at Altus and turning at Altus. I'm not gonna go.
John:I know my shit. Anyways, Isaiah, go ahead.
Isaiah:This week's podcast is brought to you by Allegiant Supplements. One of the biggest questions we get asked is how can I improve my recovery? One of the only ways to do this is to give your body more of what it already needs. Increasing bioavailability of these nutrients can help you. In other words, it lets your body do what it is already trying to do during recovery but better.
Isaiah:Use the code THP at checkout and you will get a discount. Solvents are awesome. Make sure you go check them out. Secondly, we want to shout out Hawkins Dynamics. If you're looking for force plates to fact check us, go check them out.
Isaiah:They have great leasing options. Lastly, if you're looking to get coached by both me and John Evans, go to thpstrength.com. You can sign up for a consultation call, see if you're a good fit for our program. Today's episode, we are going to be covering back pain which is one of the most common injuries. I think it is the most common injury that Americans face in this day and age.
Isaiah:In terms of jump training athletes, it's probably the second most common problem that they deal with, second to knee pain. It is very common and the chances are at some point in your life you're going to experience it. We're going to go over our personal experiences first. So for me, first time I ever experienced back pain was when I was around 19, 20 years old and I experienced it doing a lot of deadlifts, went and did a dunk session. I remember my back was super tight.
Isaiah:I didn't know what was going on. Took some time off. It got better. Then I would experience bouts of it every now and then over the next two years, specifically when I would deadlift and back squat in the exact same workout. So I just stopped deadlifting completely around two years ago.
Isaiah:Didn't really have any issues for a long time and then this past year I started getting a lot of issues. It started when I did super heavy power clean in a deep squat, my spine went into flexion, then I went right into back squatting, that same workout. Didn't warm up didn't warm up at all right before the squat. I think I went straight to I think I put I started with two twenty five then went straight to two ninety five on the back squat and then that wrecked my back. Tried to jump through it over the next couple months, that was really bad and I think it was from around July to I want to say November this year, extremely bad back pain because of that.
Isaiah:Was able to get rid of it right now. It's giving me no issues pretty much. I did experience it a little bit when I got rim stuffed and I landed really bad.
John:You never get rim stuffed, Brad. I've never seen you get rim stuffed. It just doesn't happen.
Isaiah:It's funny in the YouTube video that I posted recently, I talked about it. Was like, yeah, got RIM stuff last session and then CJ put in every RIM stuff back to back. It was like 10 of them in a row. But yeah, other than that, I can basically train pain free as far as my back goes and it is because of the principles that we are going to be covering today. And then John, if you want to go over your experience with back pain?
Isaiah:Yeah, so
John:I actually started having back pain. It was actually the first serious injury that I ever had other than like maybe an ankle sprain or something like that. When I was 13, I started high jumping like a lot basically every day along with lifting, doing heavy half squats, and trying to learn how to deadlift and do all this unsupervised in my basement with, like, metal plates and this, like, shitty bar. And I really just started to get hurt, like, specifically my back. So at the time, I remember I it was, back spasms.
John:I was, like, walking around, and I was, like, 13 or 14, and my back would just lock up. And I remember talking to my uncle who was a PT, he, like, kinda felt around and was, yeah. It looks like you're starting to get back spasms and stuff. And I couldn't do shit. Like, I couldn't walk without pain.
John:Like, every time I put my foot out in front of me, remember it was, a stabbing pain in my low back and, like, grabbing would kinda suck the wind out of you. And I knew it was, a muscle, but it was just so annoying. I think I just used ibuprofen. I probably did heat or something like that and, honestly, just trained through it and didn't really pay attention to the pain at all. Just was like, I want to jump higher like my back feels good enough for me to do stuff so I'm just going to do stuff.
John:And it just kept getting worse and worse and I remember when I was like 14 or 15. So I think I started having spasms at 14. So maybe a little after that time. I was like actually outside dunking and it they like it like locked up. And I was low rimming actually.
John:One of the few times I specifically remember low rimming. And we're at my cousin's house and then locked up. Like I said, my uncle felt it. And I remember like being back in my house and I was trying to to stretch out my back. I was like, my low back is just so inflexible.
John:I feel like I can't bend over at all. I can't do anything. And it really got bad after I did a volleyball. I it was actually really bad. So, I lifted in the morning, did half squats or back squats at two eighty five or something when I was 14 and then I went to track practice, summer track practice and high jumped for one or two hours.
John:And then I went to an all night volleyball tournament and jumped all night. Jesus. This volleyball tournament, like, whatever else. Like, I just love volleyball all the time. And my back, I just remember the next day, it was so bad.
John:I couldn't walk. I couldn't get up. It was just really bad. I couldn't even sit in a chair for an extended period of time. My back was so painful.
John:Yeah. And that probably lasted for three or four months. Honestly, we thought that I had a herniated disc. We went to the that was one of one of the few times my mom has taken me to the doctor in my entire life. Remember this.
John:Went to get an MRI and they were like, you have bulging discs like they're not herniated yet and then I had another MRI, I think when I was like a senior in high school and then they did confirm that I had several herniated discs actually. I think it was like L3, L4, L5, S1 were herniated and I had sciatica. I started having sciatica when I was like a 17 or 18 just not training properly. You know what I mean? It's part of the reason what makes me a good coach today is all the stuff that I've experienced.
John:So you guys don't do the same thing. But I didn't really, honestly, I just trained through it. I really just trained through it and I was like, I'm not getting surgery. My brother my twin brother actually had back surgery and his was like good but it was honestly like, he still was like, I can't do stuff, like I'm limited and it took him years to get back to a point where he was like really pain free. Dan Gross is calling, should I answer it?
John:And so
Isaiah:Power ties podcast. Yeah. Well, wanted to
John:put him on the podcast. That'd be hilarious. So, yeah, I ended up yeah. Now I I really just trained through it, didn't get surgery, and eventually it just started to get better and went away. And my sciatica, just lived with until it went away.
John:And I can talk more about why I think that is. But, yeah, that's basically what happened.
Isaiah:You saying the day after you woke up from the volleyball tournament, like how bad it was reminds me of I remember the specific day. It was my back was at its absolute worst. So it had flared up. Right? It was after playing basketball and doing all my squatting and stuff like that.
Isaiah:Then I had a plane ride to New Jersey. This is when I went to go get Austin. And in the plane ride, I fell asleep cause I had a whole road to myself and I fell asleep leaning against the window of the plane and I was like in flexion and it was maybe like a two hour flight. I remember waking up and I couldn't move and it was horrible. And I went to Austin's house and I remember just lying down, cause pain.
Isaiah:Walking, I couldn't really walk very far because I also had sciatica. I couldn't stretch my leg out in front of me or else my glute would feel like it had a freaking knife being driven through it. And so, yeah, it was really bad. I'm looking back at that time. So I guess now we will go into the the good stuff.
Isaiah:So just to give you guys some background, a lot of the information that we use in terms of back health comes from Stuart McGill. I highly recommend you guys check him out. Specifically, got two books that I've really studied a lot from him. One of them is called Back Mechanic and the other one is called Gift of Injury. Specifically, Gift of Injury is really good if just in general you're going through any kind of injury.
Isaiah:It can put you into a good mindset. It can give you a lot of confidence in terms of the path to recovery and stuff like that. That book is about a power lifter who was one of the strongest power lifters of all time and he literally had a like he cracked his vertebrae and his discs were, like, basically completely gone. And McGill was able to get him back to being a very elite power lifter back to breaking world records and stuff like that. So highly recommend you guys check that out.
Isaiah:So the way we're gonna do this is John I'm
John:basically gonna quiz him.
Isaiah:Yeah. John's gonna ask me questions and I'm gonna answer his questions regarding back pain.
John:So just in general, when you're looking at back pain, could be like a number of things. How do you decide what is the cause of the issue? Is there a way to tell or is it just we don't really know? I guess I have my kind of approach to this but I wanna hear yours. How would you Yeah.
John:Identify what the problem actually was or do you have a way to do that?
Isaiah:Yeah. In terms of just seeing what the actual problem is, it's basically what you're able to what causes pain, what movement strategies are causing pain. So there could be a lot of different things. Someone might feel pain through flexion, someone might feel pain through hyperextension of the spine, someone might feel pain through dynamic loading, compression which is loading the spine up from the top, just putting a bar on your back. And then it can be made worse through things like neck flexion.
Isaiah:So if you have a loaded bar on you and then you look down, that might trigger pain. Or if you look up, that might trigger pain. Generally, from what I know off the top of my head, know we were talking about it right before the podcast, the most common type of pain, especially for athletes that are younger, 55 is disc bulges. Like you said you had a disc bulge when
John:That's right baby. When you
Isaiah:were a teen. And generally that is caused through spinal flexion. That's the biggest issue that even we've personally seen through our athletes. Most guys will deadlift with a rounded back. They'll sit slouched in a chair.
Isaiah:And over time, I think I have an analogy here that I put in the notes, but you to think of your spine like a rod, like a metal rod. Think of coat hanger. Discs, they're made of collagen and they're built to handle a little bit of flexion, right? So, the spine, like the vertebrae bends and then the disc bends and it allows to have a little bit range of motion. Over time, a coat hanger, you can move that over and over again but eventually it's going to get compromised and it's going to break.
Isaiah:So that's the same thing as the discs degenerating and that's generally what causes pain. So through the disc bulging, then it starts pressing on nerves and then it can cause a whole buttload of issues. But generally to give you a too long didn't read, didn't listen, most problems are caused by flexion which is disc bulging but you need to find your pain triggers, find exactly what they are.
John:So real quick, does it matter, does the actual internal issue, like whether it's an actual bulging disc or whether it's a crack in the vertebrae or whether it's pressing on a nerve, does that matter as much as functionally what is causing pain and addressing more of, okay, this is the thing that's causing pain. That's what's going to guide my intervention versus it's a disc bulge or it's a crack or it's whatever else or is it both? Yeah.
Isaiah:It's mostly about function. Now, there's rare cases where there might be a specific issue that needs to be addressed but it's 90% of the time it's gonna be about function. That's why surgery is usually the wrong route to go.
John:Yeah, I was gonna ask. Is surgery like I didn't have surgery, you didn't have surgery. Is surgery the right option my brother did?
Isaiah:Yeah. So surgery, it's remember the analogy you always give, you're just putting a band aid on the issue but you're not addressing the main root cause of the issue. Mhmm. You can have surgery and it'll right? You can go in and open up the body and fix all the root cause and stuff like that.
Isaiah:But if you still have poor movement strategies, if you still do stupid stuff in the weight room, if you still go out and keep doing things that cause pain, if you don't strengthen strengthen and stiffen your core, the pain is going to come back because you didn't address the root cause. So, surgery is normal. Ninety nine percent of the time is not the thing you want to do. Same thing with taking ibuprofen or anti inflammatories. That's just putting a band aid on a bigger issue.
Isaiah:It's like breaking a bone and you're trying to put a band aid on to fix it. So it's definitely more about function. Function meaning find out what your pain triggers are, avoid them and then learn how to move better and train properly.
John:Yeah. I think that was a question I had even just in general. Know that if you were to put people underneath microscope and look at them, they're like, yeah, the majority of people have issues. But Yeah. One of the best solutions is not having surgery and using other interventions for back pain.
Isaiah:Yeah. And just because you might have like a disc bulge, a cracked vertebrae, whatever it is, just because it looks like that under an x-ray or an MRI doesn't mean it can't be fixed because, right, just like tendons, bones remodel, it takes longer for them to remodel. Same thing with your vertebrae, your discs, all that stuff. The example of Brian Carroll, the power lifter that I mentioned earlier, his x-ray showed a I think it was his sacrum was cracked. His discs were completely herniated.
Isaiah:I think L3 through L5 or something like that. The X-ray looked horrible. And then I think after a year, they took another MRI and it looked mostly healthy. There was still some disc bulging, but the sacrum remodeled itself. It was solid bone again.
Isaiah:The vertebrae looked healthy. So the yeah. The the body can heal itself. It takes a long time, but if you if you use proper load management, it can remodel itself, get healthy again.
John:So you have talked about a couple different issues. You could have nerve pain where maybe the disc itself ruptures and the nucleus of the disc is like pushing on the nerve root or you could have a crack in the actual bone, like the actual vertebra and you could also have the muscles causing pain. So there's like different, you know, internal forms of back pain that could cause different different types of pain and I guess and I've said this as well, how would you approach kind of each one of those? Would it be the same approach or like you said, is it really just come back to function where it's if that hurts, then do this. If this hurts, do this.
Isaiah:Yeah. So in terms of what how each of those affect pain and how you feel because of those different things, that's more about the initial healing process because the pain you feel from nerve damage compared to disc bulging and stuff like that, it might be different movements that cause the pain. One of them, you might feel pain when you're walking or sprinting or something like that versus another one, you might only feel pain when you feel flex or when you go into flexion. It's more about addressing the pain triggers when your back is very sensitive. Yeah.
Isaiah:And with that, how you figure out how to do that, you have to learn your body, you have to go see a specialist, see what it is that is causing the pain and take a look your day to day life and what is it that you're doing. Sleep could be another thing for example. Are you sleeping in the wrong way? The first step is always write down exactly what causes your pain. Pay attention.
Isaiah:Also, I wanna say this right now because it's relevant. Don't ever test your back pain because that can mess you up even more.
John:It's like activities of daily living are the test. Like, just by living your life, you'll figure out what like what is hurting
Isaiah:your back.
John:Don't be like, I wonder if I can flip upside Touch
Isaiah:my toes.
John:Yeah. Touch my toes really fast and like, and do it go into a back flip. I wonder if that'll hurt hurt my back. Yeah. Will.
John:It will. So don't do that.
Isaiah:Yeah. You you just have to be very introspective. You have to be very aware about Maybe what's causing body.
John:Yeah. So another thing I wanted to ask is, should you can you train around let's say I know that RDLs bother my back. I know every time I fucking do RDLs, they bother my back. But back squatting is fine. It doesn't bother Does that mean that okay.
John:Just because the back squats aren't bothering me, I shouldn't do them because I'm actually causing more damage. Even though I if I did them every day, it would cause no issues. But by as soon as I do an RDL, I'm screwed. So does that tell you, okay, avoid back squats altogether because that's why the RDLs hurt? Or is it like, no, actually, the squatting is totally fine.
John:You just wanna avoid the RDLs. Like, how would you approach that?
Isaiah:Yeah. You can so you can generally train around back pain. For example, can do upper body, you can do calf raises, things like that. But generally, you want to avoid the thing that's hurting. But you don't want to completely skip it.
Isaiah:You don't want to avoid RDLs for the rest of your life. You want to address why RDLs are hurting. Most likely RDLs are hurting because you're hip hinging in the wrong way. The general progression, I think this would be a good point to go into the progression of what you can train versus what you cannot train generally. So let's say you wrote down what your pain triggers are, you avoided everything that hurts, and now your pain is settled.
Isaiah:You can do day to day activities with little to no pain. The first thing you want to be doing is you want to do the McGill Big three. If you don't know what the McGill Big three is, they're the curl up. And I can't really demonstrate right now, especially if you're listening, you can literally just Google it, McGill Big three, but they consist of the curl up, the side plank, and the bird dog. So you want to start these as soon as possible.
Isaiah:The objective of the McGillbig three is to increase your the stiffness in your core.
John:I was just about to Yeah. Ask
Isaiah:So this so I I wrote in my notes here, the muscles of the spine are designed to stop motion. This is different from the muscles in the rest of your body, your limbs and your hips. Those muscles are designed to create motion. So, the spine is is supposed to be stable, right? It's it's not meant to go into a lot of bending, flexion.
Isaiah:You don't wanna stretch it. You want to be as stiff as possible in your core. And it's also kinda like
John:the chassis. Like, the movement Yeah. Is not the spine is not the driver of movement. It is the chassis that allows you to apply force optimally. If I'm going around a bend in a Corvette, the last thing I want is for the center of that car to turn into rubber and start flexing in the wrong direction.
John:I want the tires to stick. I want the car to be stiff, a stiff chassis so I can take that bend quickly and there's no flexion. That's why cars are like made of carbon fiber and why they are made of these very stiff materials so that you can I guess there you probably need some level of flexibility obviously? I think even in a car there, you don't want it to be totally stiff. But there is a certain amount of stiffness is usually better.
John:That's correct.
Isaiah:Yeah. Yeah. And not even just for health, it also helps in for athletic performance as well because you can transfer energy a lot easier through some of the stiff there's not gonna be energy
John:It's why you push through the long axis of your body in sprinting, it's why when you jump, you generally want to have strong posture and good posture whenever you're at the bottom of the jump or whatever else and if you don't, that's where you start to have issues and things like that.
Isaiah:Yeah. And I like I wrote this analogy as well. Imagine stacking up oranges and then you place a heavy weight on top of it. The oranges are going to crumple. Right?
Isaiah:And but imagine you stack up those oranges, put a long toothpick right through the middle, that's gonna stiffen up the oranges and then you're gonna put the weight on top and it's not going to crumble. So, it's the same thing day to day. If you're slouching, that's like the oranges crumbling down. Right? That's you're slowly adding tiny bits of load over and over again.
Isaiah:Eventually, your spine is going to get fucked up. But if you have good posture, if you're in stack, you have the natural s curve, your core is slightly braced throughout the day, that's gonna create stiffness, it's gonna create a healthier spine. So, the point of the McGill Big three, it's a way to train your core without going into flexion and increasing stiffness. It increases the endurance of all your muscles that stabilize the spine. So you so that like you can do things like sit with good posture all day and you're not gonna get tired so that you can walk long distance and not you're not gonna compromise your spine.
Isaiah:So the MIGOBIK three, you wanna start that as soon as possible. So generally, if you are mindful about your day to day posture, you can generally bring the pain down within a week. Like within a week, it can be controllable to the point where you can do McGill Big three. From there, you wanna do the McGill Big three three times a day, as soon as you wake up, mid afternoon, nighttime. Try to work up to a minute each and then there's progressions of the MyGlobic three that you can work into after that.
John:I was like, these exercises are easy, Isaiah, because honestly I've had back pain for years and I was like, why what do I have to do about this? He's like, oh, do this one. It's way harder. Do this one. It's way harder.
John:And I'm like, perfect. So those progressions actually really if you're someone like me whose core is incredibly stiff.
Isaiah:Yeah. And generally, you also wanna do if there's one of the meglubic three that you're worse at, you want to focus your time on that one. The goal is to bring them up so that they're even, so that they're equally as difficult. So in my
John:case That's new to me. I didn't know that. Yeah.
Isaiah:Yeah. So in my case, I was really freaking bad at the curl up. I've always had a pretty weak core and yeah, I was really bad at the curl up, so I focused on just doing the curl up. And I found that it gave me the most relief as well out of all the McGill big threes. So every morning, as soon as I woke up, I would into a curl up.
Isaiah:I would do ten seconds at a time. And then I built it up to where I could hold it for a minute straight and that was a huge key in getting my back healthier. So that's kind of the first step in getting your back is focusing on the McGill Big three. Then you're gonna get to a point where you're basically pain free day to day and you have your posture under control. Oh, another thing that I forgot.
Isaiah:Step one, walking.
John:What about the walking? Yeah. Tell them
Isaiah:but wait, there's more. So walking is huge. It is a big like it's one of the most important parts of in recovery and I think it's something that a lot of people, miss out on. So when you walk, the musculature that you use, it works right? When you're walking, all your weight is usually just on on one leg.
Isaiah:Right? It's on your right leg's on the ground, left leg is up. The good walking posture, you have a stiff core, you're bracing at the core, using good posture. Shoulders are back, chest up, head is up, don't look down straight at the ground so that your neck is in flexion. It trains a lot of the lateral muscles of the core and the spine and then also on the hip.
Isaiah:So that and it's not very intense. Right? You're not going for a one rep max every step when you're walking. So it's very low intensity. McGill recommends walking three times a day for thirty minutes on each of your walks.
Isaiah:That's so much. So that's something you also wanna start.
John:Hate walks. It's so much walking. My girlfriend's always, you wanna go on a walk? I'm like, your walks are like four hours long. No.
John:I'm like, I wanna walk around the block with my dog. That's it.
Isaiah:I personally I love walking.
John:Yeah. Well, move to Pittsburgh, bro. Move to Pittsburgh where it's feels like 11 degrees. You won't love walks. Okay?
Isaiah:I remember there was one time we were on the phone and we were working. I think, like we were like talking about work or something like that. I was literally out there for like an hour and a half, like on the phone. But yeah, walking is really important. So make sure you're doing that along with the McGill Big three.
Isaiah:That's also something you can do really early in the recovery process. And then I also want to put this quote that McGill had in one of the books. And I think this applies to anybody that's going through any kind of pain or load management. He says, When you experience pain throughout the day, instead of obsessing over it, acknowledge that you feel it and use this as a reminder to adjust your postures and movement patterns. Focus on the solution and not the problem.
Isaiah:Mhmm. I think a lot of times with pain, whether it be knee pain or back pain, you there's like a flare up and instantly your brain goes into freak out mode. And you're like, oh my God, what am I gonna do? My life is over. I'm not gonna be able to train.
Isaiah:I'm not gonna be able to improve. Blah. When the pain should be used as a reminder that you're doing something wrong, that you did something wrong. And you should use that pain as a guide to guide you through your recovery process and to see what you're what it was that you're doing wrong. I think Kabaya put something on a story.
Isaiah:Do you remember the quote that Daniel Kabaya put in a story?
John:It was it was something like don't ignore. Pain is your body's way of telling you that something's wrong. I think it was like something like that.
Isaiah:I don't remember exactly what it was but So pain, there's a reason we feel pain. There's a reason God put made us made us feel pain. Right? It's wrong.
John:It's Stop doing it.
Isaiah:Yeah. It's telling us something's wrong. So that's the like the beginner steps of walking in the middle of the big three. From there, it's about learning how to move I was gonna ask you
John:about this. This was interesting to me because I was always like, oh, that's all you do. This is it. And then you're like, oh, no. You're supposed to do hip thrust.
John:You're supposed to do like hinging. You're supposed to do a squat. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, hold on. You never talked about this stuff. Like, you started teaching me because you were the one that studied a lot of his stuff.
John:I just like, I don't have the luxury of reading this whole book right now because I'm focusing on work and I don't really feel like doing this and you're already doing it. So why don't you just read the book and you could tell me what you learned. And you read the book three or four times and concurrently taught me in the same way that I've taught you things and you become the expert on the back things and I just paid attention. So now, getting into that progression, how do you start the progression? How do you know when to start it and what is the progression?
Isaiah:Yeah. You want to look at where you want to end up in terms of the progression. So if you're a jumping athlete, you want to progress up to jumping. If you're focused on lifting, you want to get to the point where you can deadlift and squat without pain. And in general, you want to start by working on the hips.
Isaiah:The hips are really important in terms of back pain. You want to have good motor control over them. You want your hips to be strong. You want to focus on being able to stiffen your core while moving your legs through and your hips are like the main driver of that. So think you're in a bird dog.
Isaiah:Right? And you're one hands up, hands back. You want to be able to move your arms and your legs while staying stiff at the core. A general progression from that is going over to hip thrust. A common mistake people do when they do hip thrust is they have a lot of movement at the spine.
Isaiah:Though they'll go down on the eccentric and like their spine will go into like hyperextension. And then when they come up, they don't stiffen the core. So their their spine is like still in hyperextension. That's really bad. So you wanna lighten the weight.
Isaiah:You first, you wanna start with stuff like clamshells, single leg, glute bridging until you you can master stiffening at the core. Then you wanna move on to hip thrust with very low weights. And then you get to the point where you can go pretty heavy on hip thrust while staying stiff at the core, there's no pain. From there, the next progression would be an RDL. So remember, there's basically two ways to add load to a spine.
Isaiah:There's shear loading and then there's compressive loading. RDLs, they are going to increase the shear load on the spine. Now, this is okay as long as your spine is moving the way it's intended to, which is by stiffening up, not go into flexion. So you want to learn how to hip hinge properly after you do hip thrusts. Go to YouTube, type in how to deadlift Isaiah Rivera and on there we show a drill on how to do proper hip hinging.
Isaiah:You basically put a broomstick on your spine and you do hip hinges, making and the broomstick is a good reference point to see if you're flexing at the spine or not. So from you wanna be able to master RDLs, start loading RDLs up, get to the point where you're flexible enough and you have enough motor control and a stiff core that you can do RDLs properly at a heavy weight. Also, while you're doing RDLs, can also get to squatting. Now squatting is something that personally for me, this is this was my main cause of back pain. I've been doing deep squats and been obsessed with deep squats since I was like 14, 15.
Isaiah:I was always obsessed with Olympic weightlifting. Like, I look up to those guys like Clarence Kennedy on YouTube and stuff like that doing super deep squats. I've been doing deep squats forever. Right? Now my body anatomy, I have long ass femurs.
Isaiah:I have pretty good ankle mobility where I can deep squat, but I don't have the mobility to deep squat without going into a little bit of back flexion. Now normally this wouldn't be an issue, but when I started getting strong as shit, being able to back squat close to 400 pounds, my deep back squat, would go into a little bit of butt wink and then just over time, over months and months of loading that up and then add jumping to the equation and add bad posture when I'm sitting down, it wrecked my back. So squatting was something I had to relearn. I had to humble myself and be like, alright, you're not going be able to deep back squat without going into flexion. So let's keep it at parallel.
Isaiah:Front squat didn't cause any problems because my spine doesn't go into flexion. I have the flexibility to do a deep front squat with no pain, so focus on that instead. But you want to really look at your squatting, never ever go into spinal flexion when you're lifting. If you're doing a deep squat body weight that's unloaded, that isn't as bad. But if you're going to be lifting and pushing heavy weights, especially if you're on THP, heavy weights is an integral part of our training.
Isaiah:Don't go into flexion in your squats, right? There's a lot of ways you can go around that, right? You can elevate your heels, you can buy weight lifting shoes that allows you to squat a lot easier. Yeah, you want to look at your technique, make sure it's good, and then start with just the bar. And every week, it's just it's just like getting your knees healthy.
Isaiah:Add ten, twenty pounds every single workout. Make sure you're focusing on stiffening your core up. And over time, you're gonna be able to get your RDL and your squat up to a point where it's pain free and you can go heavy. And then from there, generally, you're healthy enough to jump as well. Got it.
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:I feel that progression there more clearly and concisely explained the progression and why we do what we do than maybe any other piece of information we put out. So, Isaiah, hats off to you for doing the research and putting that in a very clear order so that if listening to this, you're an athlete, you're maybe one of our athletes or you are someone that is looking to training or is currently training for jump jumping or basketball or whatever it is that following those guidelines are going to help you create a framework for what you need to do to get back. I know when I had back pain in was it that been June or July maybe? Isaiah played an integral part in keeping me grounded, reminding me that, hey, it's okay. Like, you need you're you're gonna get back.
John:Just take time and helping me guide my decision making which obviously helped me as a coach moving forward. So all that said, guys, I feel like we've done a a pretty good job and, maybe thoroughly explaining things. The only other thing I would say we probably need to discuss is and I guess maybe we did a little bit, but I guess did you really discuss flexibility in the whole, like, like, stretching the spine or, like, whatever else? Because I think one thing that we maybe lastly wanna end on is you see really often right now our guys are getting into this, oh, we need to load the spine in flexion. We need to do cat cow.
John:We need to do these not curl ups, but they're like where you're on your like, going to a toe touch and then curl your spine up loaded, like, with a barbell. And it it just think it's a terrible idea because it really is contrary to everything you just said and all of the research. But it's contraindicated so people are like, I'm gonna do it. And you know what they say, like fake news travels 10 times faster than real news. So Yeah.
John:You just see things like that. And for me, I cringe and I'm like, this is the last thing that I want to be doing or it's never worked for me. It's only made my back worse experientially. Because I think everyone is like, oh, load's the answer. Not always the way that maybe people think it should be.
John:So Yeah.
Isaiah:And remember the musculature at the spine is different from the rest of your body and and, like, specifically, your spine is different from other bones.
John:Your spine is not meant, as we said,
Isaiah:to propel a knee. It's not a hip.
John:It's not a it's not meant for locomotion. It's not like your chassis of a car is not meant to propel the car. It is not meant it is not the tires. It is not the engine. It is not the transmission.
John:It is not meant to take you forward. It is not propelling you. It is holding things together so that the engine can function optimally. So the the transmission can function optimally. So the tires can function optimally.
John:So your drive shaft can do what it's supposed to do. So I think whenever we just assume, oh, everything in the body is the same. Every injury is the same and injury is injury and you just load it and that's how get the right answer. Like, not necessarily true. How you repair chassis is very different than how you repair transmission.
John:How you repair your knee is very different than how you deal with the spine. How you deal with your brain is very different than how you deal with cancer or some other, not every pathology is created And it seems so simple, but for whatever reason, people are, like, assuming that, oh, stretching is always the answer and loading inflection and loading in full range of motion is always the answer. And it's not. And I think that is a big misconception and something that people are running with, but it's not the answer. You see these seated good mornings or whatever else, and I cringe.
John:I'm like, you're just going into spinal flexion at l five s one, like a lot of it. And that is totally contraindicated for what you should do for your back. And then you see it's not like the hip is flexing and they're supporting it. You know what I mean? And and with perfect posture, they're just rounding their morning.
John:Low
Isaiah:Like a seated good morning. So seated good mornings came from the Chinese Olympic weightlifting team, I believe. And those guys are crazy mobile and they're able to do a seated good morning without flexing.
John:I was gonna ask, do they do they flex the spine when they do them?
Isaiah:They don't so they don't flex
John:So it's a hip exercise. So they do it like a hip exercise. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.
Isaiah:It's like a it's like a RDL on steroids, basically, how they do it. Yeah. But then guys try to recreate the seated good morning.
John:They don't have the hip mobility to do that. They don't have
Isaiah:hip mobility. And half the time, they don't even know how to hinge Yeah. At the hip either. So it just turns into a fucking seated spine bend.
John:The other one that that I've seen, I don't know who popularized this, but it's like the like, you hold the barbell. I used to see it whenever I worked in North Carolina. You hold a barbell and you, like, curl up, like, vertebrae by vertebrae with a barbell in your hand.
Isaiah:Yeah. It's like
John:a stiff leg deadlift on steroids or something like that. I don't know where that started. I've been That's you came
Isaiah:for a while.
John:Was that gymnastics? Yeah.
Isaiah:And it is it is. And then a popular program popularized it.
John:Oh, okay. So it became popularized and now it's I I just don't think that exercise is good at all. Based on everything you just said
Isaiah:It's not.
John:That would be something I
Isaiah:should McGill be has done studies on that like specific exercise. I'm pretty sure. Like, he has a video talking about just that exercise.
John:And being like, this is
Isaiah:Look up. Stuart McGill, big three. He talked about it for forty five minutes.
John:He really wants to get into that. So basically Yeah. Don't load it in flexion. Don't do the exercises. Stop stretching your spine.
John:Hips.
Isaiah:Don't stretch. Don't do Stretch your hips. Stretching stretching your hips is good. Stretching the spine is not good. You can also stretch your hamstrings without going into flexion.
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:I think that's a big miss. So reason that you feel a stretch more when you touch your toes is because oftentimes your pelvis is moving your posterior tilt. And when you're flexing, that gives your hamstring more slack because if your hamstring is attached to the ischial tuberosity, if your pelvis kind of turns into this butt up position or as I say, like, big booty Judy, you stick your ass up like these fit chicks. You know, that's anterior tilt. You're stretching at the proximal portion of the hamstring.
John:You're stretching it. Even if you're just standing still and you're to enter your toe, you're putting your hamstring on stretch. So if you don't touch your toes and you're holding true anterior tilt, it is very hard, if not near impossible to touch your toes if you're in really good anterior tilt. It's just like really tough to stretch your hamstrings that much. What most people do is they tuck their pelvis a bunch and they round their low back when they touch their toes to get much of the range of motion.
John:It's not coming from the hip. And so to get that in some hurlers and stuff like that, we'll use those strategies to get over to hurdle or like some sprinters will use that that strategy a little bit to the blocks a little bit more efficiently but it's not true mobility. They're just compensating their movement patterns so that they're able to hit certain positions which is somewhat normal for certain sports but to load it, to do an activity where that's loaded or even just use that as a stretching like protocol, I think you're just every, it just conflicts with everything that you just said, right? If the spine is a stabilizer and it's a chassis, you don't want to treat it like a rubber band. You don't want to treat it like this rubber fucking imagine a steel bar that all of sudden just became rubber.
John:And then you don't want to treat it that way. You don't want to load it that way. That's not how you're going to build strength. That's not how you're to build stability. It's not how you're going build support.
John:My back is better and my hips are better when I don't go into these compromising positions. I think maybe the last piece I would add is your hips are mega important. It's called lumbopelvic rhythm, meaning your pelvis and your hips are sorry. Your pelvis, your hips, and your low back are intimately related and the coordination of one impacts another and if you can maintain that neutral spine, especially in jumping and lifting and squatting and hinging and all of those activities, you're going to be way better off and like I said, there's some activities where you're you might move into some flexion but like Isaiah said, there is an acceptable amount of flexion that that is there's an acceptable amount of flexion. If you don't have the hip mobility to do that, then you need to address your hip mobility.
John:You need to work on internal rotation, external rotation, flexion, extension, and abduction adduction. But if you don't, if you if you don't have that mobility or whatever else or maybe it's a bone block, don't compensate by flexing your spine. Like you're twisting your spine. I think that's going to cause so many more issues. So, yeah, that's kind of my two cents on it if I were to really just say, based on everything he just said, maintain your posture, do McGill big three, go on the walks, and lift with good posture, and do the progression he talked about, and you're going to cure your back pain.
John:You're going to get rid of your back pain. We've seen it time and time again with our athletes and
Isaiah:even with ourselves. Don't and remove your don't ego lift. Remove your ego from the equation.
John:That's one of the biggest reasons that lifting in a like apartment or lifting outside of a commercial gym is beneficial. Yeah. Like, you're just focused. It's you versus you. That's how your mindset should be.
John:So
Isaiah:Yeah. Because that's another thing that like I I the big mistake I made the last couple months is I was trying to just post big numbers on social media. Strictly for social media, like, just a stunt. And I started feeling a lot healthier when I was just like, look, I'm gonna set my ego aside. I know I'm gonna jump high regardless.
Isaiah:I'm gonna lift to make myself better, not to impress people. So yeah, don't eagle lift.
John:Yeah. Alright guys. I feel like that closes the podcast out. Those are our closing remarks on it. If you're listening, make sure that you like, comment, subscribe if you're listening on Spotify or Apple on those streaming service.
John:If you're on YouTube, which we are starting to put these podcasts back up on because Hunter's been able to help us edit them fortunately because Isaiah and I don't really have the luxury to do that. Make sure again that you like, comment, subscribe, tag me. I try to be super active in the comment section within the first twenty four hours of posting a podcast on YouTube. So feel free to ask away, guys. With that all said, peace out, and we will catch you on tomorrow's episode.