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Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my job to interview an attempt to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types from all different fields my guest today Stephie Cohen St. EFI Cohen on Instagram at Steffi Cohen. She is a twenty five time world record holding power lifter in the first woman in the history of the sport to deadlift four point four times her body weight. We will we will give some examples of what that might mean.
We're on a hundred seventy pounds. That means I have to deadlift I think around 700 48 pounds. I've got a ways to go but we're not going to turn this into my therapy session just yet Stephie is Doctor of physical therapy author podcast host and business owner passionately educating people with her evidence-based view on all things training and nutrition. She's the co-owner of hybrid performance method where hundreds of thousands of strength Seekers go monthly to find Progressive strength training and nutrition programs plus tons of free articles and videos Steph is creative mind loves collaborating with the hybrid.
Team and partners to develop powerful content inspired fashion and both Fitness and Nutrition tools for a stronger life. Her new book is back in motion, which we will certainly talk about at one point and you can find all over the place website hybrid performance method.com Instagram, if you want to be both impressed astonished, maybe feel like you need to put in some more work. You can go to Instagram for / Steffi Cohen. Again. That's St. EFI. You can find on YouTube easily. She has podcast hybrid on
Limited Stephie welcome to the
show. Thank you so much Tim. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be
here. I'm excited to have you on I've been texting with some mutual friends of ours. I want to give credit where credit is due to Matt Vincent for initially suggesting that this happened. So for those who don't know Matt incredible athlete Highland Games and Beyond also an all-around wacky hilarious character who despite being built like a grizzly bear can also out mountain bike me over.
Many many hundreds of miles which really broke my spirit but that's a separate story is that sound that is so yeah. I was like, he's gonna look like a bear on a tricycle. Definitely. I won't be in last place. He just had knee surgery and then smoked completely smoke me Kelly Starrett also and I have an embarrassment of riches here in terms of questions for you because I have done my homework, I believe and there are an infinite number of directions we can go. I thought we would start and I very rarely start.
Biographically, but I think here could be interesting at least it's my curiosity. Where were you born? And what was your childhood? Like I was born
in Caracas Venezuela to South America. I was born. I'm up Venezuelan Jew. So I was born in a very traditional household most of my childhood. I spent playing soccer. I played soccer for the national Venezuelan soccer team which sounds a lot more impressive than what it actually was like there was not a lot of funding from the government for professional sports.
Sports back home. So we kind of played in dirt fields. We played in a field that was located at the military base, which was interesting traveling in the inner parts of the country was super eye-opening for me given that I come from a more kind of like sheltered family environment, you know, my dream would soccer was always to get into a D1 team or play professional soccer. I really wanted to
Play professionally in any capacity for a long time ended up moving to the states looking for a soccer scholarship move to San Diego. And I guess I don't know how far you want me to go there. But well, I guess that's where I come from.
Yeah, we're gonna go pretty far with it for those who have never been to Venezuela. You're actually the second Venezuelan born guests have had on the show. The first is Jason Silva who is definitely, you know, Venezuelan oil and I would love to just
Just hear you describe what your experience was like or rather the reasons for leaving Venezuela. And at what age
I don't have many memories of Venezuela as a, you know, peaceful tranquil friendly country when I was already growing up when I was 10 12 the country started getting pretty dangerous. There was a lot of political and economical unrest there was a lot of divide between social classes.
There was a lot of corruption dictatorship disguised as a socialist government growing up. There is very differently than anything in any other country really like talking about bulletproof cars. I'm talking about bodyguards talking about, you know, the fear of constant fear any time you get out of your house to either be kidnapped either be shot. Either be armed robbery or be. I don't know take it into your house and getting everything stolen from you. So sad.
Very kind of high stress high alert way to live and I guess when you don't know anything better that just kind of becomes your Norm right when you grow up in an environment. That's a certain way. You just grow up to accept that that's just I guess how the world works. So very sheltered, you know, you you're always kind of spending time with in the same groups with the same people going to and from the same places not really like socializing much outside of that you live in a in your little kind of crystal ball.
Essentially and at the time I think this was 1998 or 2000 and to I can't remember which one of those elections was when there was a civil war Chavez the president at that time didn't win the elections and there was this huge Civil War ton of people died. My my dad was in this in the protest. I went to the protest. It was very graphic. It was very interesting time to live and very interesting experience as well. And I guess that's when one of that
Happen and I guess Travis got back into the into Power somehow even though he wasn't elected by the people at that time. It was very clear to me and my family that there was just not going to be anything that could save that country. Right like the wrong people are in power and the wrong people will seemingly continue to be in power and there's nothing that anybody can do. So I actually was one of the first of kind of my circle of friends to venture out of the country and
Make the decision to move out of the country. It was a time where you know people were still a little bit optimistic there were elections coming up again. There were some things to look forward to but my mom didn't want to take the risk and she was actually the one that encouraged me to apply for scholarship in the US and in to make the decision to move which was very difficult, especially given that you know, how I said that when you live in such a sheltered environment stepping outside of that kind of comfort zone is terrifying
It makes you feel really vulnerable and an afraid I guess so I was 17 when I moved out of it as well. And it was tough because at that time, like I said, we were still optimistic that things could get better. So it almost felt like I was giving up on my country. I'm very patriotic about my country such as you know, I'm assuming like a lot of people are when you grow up in a country you develop emotions and sentiment towards the place that you grew up that gave you everything. I felt like I was giving up on my country and felt bad.
And for a little bit, but then the country just continued to Trend downwards into what it is today, which is absolutely awful and 20 times worse than what it was when I left 10 years
ago. Hmm. Where did you land? When you first moved to the US
I landed in Miami. It's actually a funny story. I was so upset that my mom convinced me to move and we were in the shuttle at the airport at the Miami International Airport, and I was just crying hysterically like if you didn't know what was happening.
I mean you could have sworn that my mom was kidnapping me or something. I was so mad. Maybe not mad at my mom but mad at the situation mad that I was forced to leave my country mad that I had it all I was a really good soccer player. I was the team captain of the national team. I had a name for myself there and I just felt like I was forced out of my country and forced to start over and it wasn't my decision. It wasn't the route that I really wanted to take. Like I wanted to stay there with my friends with my family with my
my soccer team come down a line of Miami and then I went to San Diego that's where I wanted to our initially. I got into school
San Diego beautiful place. Let's Flash Forward just to not continue sequentially. So we're going to bounce back and forth. Can you please describe for people some of your records and at what body weights those records were
achieved. So I guess I'll speak of the most Monumental ones or the most historic ones.
So I was the first woman to deadlift, I guess four times my body weight first at a powerlifting competition and that was I weigh 220 pounds and I DET lifted I guess over or 500 then I beat that record Wing again a hundred and twenty or a hundred and twenty-three that lifted five hundred and forty five pounds. You don't really know what your body is capable of until you actually do it. And there's a lot of kind of limitations that are placed upon yourself based on what other people are doing.
And and so I remember the first time I did the fit 400 pounds when I said I was going to deadlift 500 pounds everyone thought I was crazy that it was impossible that there's no way I could do it at that body weight and then look magical things happen and and I trained really hard obviously trained intelligently and was able to achieve Things That No Other Woman had ever been capable of doing and what's interesting to me and I don't know if maybe there's a name for this phenomenon or something. But after I did that there were several.
Girls that were able to achieve that 500 pound deadlift Mark as soon as people see that there's something that is humanly possible. It's almost like it gives them the strength or the it allows them to be able to chase those same
goals. Yeah. It's like Roger Bannister in the four-minute mile same night same exactly
same story. Exactly. And yeah outside of that. I've broken I guess 25 World Records in powerlifting and three different weight classes. I've cut down all the way from a hundred and thirty.
Five pounds all the way down to 114 broken squat deadlift and total World Records their Rogan a few world records and the 123 class and then some in the 132 class. I have also that the highest deadlift him that class as well.
What are your other lifts? What are some of your other personal bests personal records PRS and say bench squat or any other lift that you want to
mention. My best Squad is 510 pounds. I had a hundred and twenty pounds of body weight.
And bench stew 40 to 120 as well.
Sorry Tula. Sorry to love is just like I've been having this year as so I may turn this into like a pro bono Consulting session. I've been 43. I've been having this year. We're like all of these injuries are cropping up and feeling like I'm feeling like an older version of Leonardo DiCaprio in the Revenant like dragging one leg behind me like some broken horse.
And I have listening to these numbers. I'm like, you know, I'm sitting in a pretty tall building. I should just throw myself off and throw myself off the deck right now. These are just insane numbers. Now, let me tilt the the microscope a bit because I want to ask you and this might be a way of exploring some of these lifts and explaining what they mean to people. We know quite a few people in common one of them you're probably closer to him than I am, but he was in my last book Trevor mentors, Edco.
So Ed con could you describe for people who Ed cone is and what what is most impressive about him to you? I think this will be a way of then coming back to some of your achievements and approaches
man Ed is known as the greatest power lifter of all time. He he has that he's earned that title. He's been given the title by pretty much everyone within the powerlifting community and I think what separates him from everyone else is
Just how consistently he was able to show up and perform at his best throughout the years. I don't know how many years he competed maybe 20 years, which is crazy. Anyone who's ever attempted to get stronger anyone of any person who's listening to this just try training for more than two years when progress start slowing down when you start coming into the gym and feeling like crap and not able to perform your best you start accumulating injuries, and you know, it takes years for you to see even a
five-pound increments in any of the lifts just the amount of mental fortitude mental strength that you have to have in order to just keep showing up and hoping that what you're doing is taking you closer to your goals or pushing you in the right direction is is unbelievable, you know, I've spoken to Ed extensively about his mindset and about what some of his training theories were in in his training methods, and he pretty much just said that he I asked him if he ever stopped making
Grace and he said no, he said any time my progress would slow down I would go in and and really take a look at what areas of weaknesses I had and I would tackle them with the same intensity that I tackle my aunt season or like the seasons where you're preparing for a power lifting me and he would repeat that over and over and over again obviously look at is not from this world man like that guy.
That is that is that is like he the pot calling the kettle black.
A bit I should also just say real quickly. No relation. You are Cohen Co H e-- n-- he is Ed cone see oan. But yes, he is an alien for
sure. Their resiliency has body has and his ability to just tolerate beating his body down with weights as remarkable. It really is. So he's a specimen
I would call a few of the things. He said to me when we were chatting and one was that he would he would play
Now his entire I want to say season or a year in advance knowing with absolute certainty that he would be able to make every attempt and I thought that was really thought-provoking considering that the way a lot of people train is they may not even take notes at all. But they go into the gym and decide what they're going to do. Maybe they have some rough outline, but they don't have that type of programming. Yeah. It happened out in advance. He had
a top down approach to training.
He kind of like reverse engineered his program so he would say, okay. So if I want a dead lift 700 pounds, so that means that I have to be able to deadlift 7 or 6 54 3, which means that I have to do 625 4 5 and then he would reverse engineer from there, which I think is really
interesting. So you you and he seemed to be how should I put this designed for obsessed with specialists in the deadlift? I mean Ed is known.
For I can't remember what the lift was 902 it to 200 or 190 or something something insane and you have these ant like multiples on your on your lifting. You're just a human little little human female Venezuelan aunt and now there are many people who we should also take a moment just to explain the deadlift for people. So could you explain the deadlift what that actually means?
And then the competition deadlift, let's just say and then next could you tell me what are some of the things that distinguish a person who trains and I'm just going to leave way classes out of this for a minute because it'll make it a little bit little complex, but people who say train up to a deadlift of four or five hundred pounds versus those people who get we could look at it as a multiple of body weight, but like someone who gets up to 2x body weight versus someone who gets to three or four times body weight, like what are the differences and how they approach the
deadlift?
Deadlift, there's not much to it. There's a bar on the floor. And the goal is to pick it up until your legs your knees and hips are locked out all the way. I think it's one of the most impressive Feats of Strength and I think universally speaking like a people consider that the ultimate test of strength. That's why it's so celebrated. There's two methods of deadlifting. You can either have a conventional style of deadlift, which is with your hands outside of your feet.
And then there's the opposite which is a Sumo deadlift where your hands are inside or within your feet. And that's it. As far as what the deadlift is.
Yeah. So for a visual for people if you imagine like you said there is a loaded bar resting on the ground. So it has plates on either end you walk up to it. If it's conventional stance, then you're going to again this is oversimplified, but have your feet just say roughly hip distance apart and you're going to almost squat down again.
Is very simplified and grab the bar with your your arms on the outsides of your knees in the Sumo stance your feet are going to be turned out slightly. They'll be much further apart and you almost look like you're doing a really wide plie from ballet when you go down to grab the bar between your legs and hands under your shoulders roughly in both cases. Okay, so then we have all these folks doing God knows what and eventually they muscle their way to maybe maybe maybe
Maybe a 2X deadlift, right? But perhaps they're not preaching in a very organized way. And then you have people who are able to do significantly more two and a half three times and then you get into the rarified air of doing what you do. How do people make that leap crossing the chasm to those higher weights? What are the things that are
different? I think the main thing has to do with its physics with leverage, you know, if you see people some people are really gifted when it comes to proportions. I think I'm one of them I
That really makes a difference when it comes to being able to break that two three four. Five times body weight Marcus is your leverages your proportions. There is a guy I believe it's in the USA PL who man he has a really odd in terms of proportions looking body. He has a very short extremely short torso and he has super long arms and when he locks out the deadlift, it just seems like the barbell moves just a few inches of off.
The ground, you know, I'm pretty sure that guy's done five times body weight. I'm pretty sure you would have to fact check me on that. Some people it's genetics right? Some people can train so hard if some people can train the exact same way as Edco and maybe have him as a coach and and never achieve half of what what he achieved or never never lift a quarter of how much Ed lifted and I think a big part of it is is your proportions your Leverage is and then when we get into genetics as well muscle fiber type composition your ability to
New skills Etc
just to kind of draw a circle around the genetic certainly you have genetics is huge component like you mentioned. I mean you see a lot of Championship bench pressers at least in the men's category with who have a lot of girth, right and the distance the bar travels is a real Factor, right? So if you can put in a huge Arch and also have gigantic belly on you than it can be very very helpful and a lift like the bench press or you have someone like Ed Cohn who is 5 foot.
Six, but I've seen photographs of him putting his hand against the hands of NBA players and they have roughly the same size hands, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So his ability to hold a standard sized bar relative to his body weight is just going to give him incredible advantages. Yeah, but yeah, I was just going to say well, but I want you to continue because I've had too much caffeine, but I'd love to I'd love to draw a circle around the genetics and recognize those for being as important as they are.
Then to talk about let the attributes which people can't mimic like they have not going to get a muscle fiber transplant, but the some of the Technologies and approaches and programming and the methodologies that say you've used I'd love to talk about but what were you going to say?
Yeah, I think that the more specialized you know how people what's that saying hard work beats Talent when talent doesn't work hard. Okay. Yeah, that's saying I'm really bad at memorizing things and quotes, but you know what? I mean, I do when it comes to power lifting you
You can want it all you want you can work as hard as you want. But because it's such a specialized sport. I having the right attributes for the sport is even more important. So for example, so you want to be a I don't know a football player. There's many positions within football that might be in line with what your current skills and abilities are and you might actually be able to out work your way into a protein by gaining more speed by being Stronger by
Being able to cut sharper by I don't know, you know, you can gain an advantage in so many different areas or categories within the skills that you need to succeed in football where as in powerlifting. There's really not much, you know, you either have the capability to get stronger or you don't and you either have their proportions to be able to move the bar in the most efficient way or you
don't true fact is Kelly Starrett would say but let's all right. Let me make this even more
So a few years ago, I did a a triples for 75 or so on a trap bar as so hex bar depending on what term people want to apply that at the time at least training over say a six month or year long period doing mostly just pulls to the knees based on a program popularized by a Sprint coach named Barry Ross. That was basically my ceiling and I probably weighed.
180 at the time so I'm not winning any any multiple Awards but I have very very small hands. My proportions are not really built. I wouldn't say terribly well for the deadlift, but I also didn't have a coach. I didn't have any real I to the detail of training for the deadlift. So if I came to you I show up with like a hobo stick and a little Satchel with my lunchbox at your gym and I'm just like please save me make me a better dead lifter. How would you start
I would start by
We got your form looking at your Technique and seeing if there's anything there that I can improve, you know, things like bringing your feet within maybe changing your hand position improving the angle of your torso may be looking at your starting position. I would start there and obviously like programming is the biggest factor to look at as well. Just how whether or not you're implementing Progressive overload into your training. How hard are you training? Are you going to failure? There's many many.
tables that we can look at
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If you want I can get into the training methodologies portion of the of the question that you asked a little bit ago.
Yeah, let's let's get into it. Let's just start with one Factory throughout their do you train to failure do you train to failure or you trying to fill your often you
do? Yes, so I come from an Olympic weightlifting background. I trained most of my I guess I did Olympic weightlifting for about four years and it was mainly Bulgarian style lifting. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but that just involves.
Daily Maxis is what you call Daily Max is so obviously the amount you can lift and every session is going to vary based on just your nervous system Readiness how tired you are how well you recovered from the previous sessions But ultimately what you're trying to do is lift as much as you can in any one particular
session was this started in Venezuela or in the
u.s. It was here. So my Olympic weightlifting coach is Cuban and their training philosophies come from Eastern Europe as well. Those are Camillo coming.
Gloria Camilo Garcia Garcia that was kind of my initial introduction into strength training. I kind of like picked up certain things from that and also learn why they might not be the best essentially people in the Bulgaria Russia the system to find the best athletes is a little bit different than it is here. Basically, you know, they're they're putting a lot of people through extremely rigorous training and the people that you see succeed are very few.
I'm talking about 0.0001% of all the kids that they put through these training programs make it through. So it's like you either Thrive under those conditions or you break but, you
know hell week for buds training maybe
seals. Yes, so it works but it's not it's not the best way and I don't think that I don't think that a lot of people are built to withstand that amount of beating the way that I kind of modified that combine my experience with I guess my academic training
Which is I have a background in exercise physiology and I have my doctorate in physical therapy. I've been able to implement a little bit from you know practical with what the science says. So in terms of training to failure, there's a lot of controversy when it comes to what the minimal effective dose of training is there's pretty much two separate camps one that is all about accumulating volume. Just doing very low not very but low load
High-volume style training in hopes of sparing your body your tissues and decreasing your injury risk. And then there's the other one. That's the Bulgarian Russian that goes all the way to the Other Extreme which is if your goal is to get stronger than you have to train in a way that's going to do stuff to the adaptations that you're trying to elicit like if you're trying to get better at your one mile. You're trying to beat your 1-mile run. You're gonna run one mile often. So same thing.
In simple here, if you're trying to get a better one rep max quad, you got to be squatting to a you know, daily Max or a really high intensity often and where my training philosophies fall is somewhere down the middle and it's the same way with pretty much everything in my life. I try not to swing in one particular direction. I try to stay unbiased and I try to kind of learn a little bit from everyone from Every from every camp and then apply it to myself and to the people that I coach so as far as their
And I train and Coach other people its a mix.
Can you give us an example of a competition training split for you? And then we can just walk through some of the what some of the workouts look like.
So in preparation for a competition you essentially break down your training into four blocks. You have your general your GP your general physical preparedness phase where you're essentially just accumulating volume improving just your aerobic capacity or ability to
To do multiple reps of this is a high-volume face. Then you move into more specialized blog where you start getting rid of all the fluff in your programs, you start decreasing the amount of cardio, you do the amount of exercise variability and you start increasing the frequency of the main lift. So you start squatting benching and deadlifting more because those are the three lifts that are tested in competition. Then you go into the intensification face, which is where you start.
Increasing the intensity. So you start getting into the 85 90 95 a hundred percent of the three main lifts and do nothing else. Other than that, maybe a little bit of core a little bit of back just because you have to start focusing and Hyper specializing more into those three things that you're going to be tested on then you go through a two-week deload period where you pretty much cut everything that you've been doing and half by 50% and then you got your competition and it's funny because when you get
I hear competition. It's like you're the strongest you've ever been, you know after going through that process, but you're also the least human that you've ever been as well like going up a flight of stairs is excruciating Lee tiring,
you know you because you're so specialized at that.
Wow. Yeah, you deep condition in every other area like you move like a like you're made of tin foil like you're made out of metal and furiously awful.
Are you sure my shit? So
There's that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, my friend Mark Bell, you may have met before he's hilarious talking about that, you know going through his fat and skinny phases and to him when he's big I'm having trouble tying his shoes and it's really a high degree of specialization. And then if you look at let's just take you could pick any of those phases but let's just say maybe the intensification phase what is a week of training look like how are things spread
out?
Only I like squatting two or three times per week deadlifting one time per week and benching three to four times per week. So indentification face, you're basically staying within nothing more than five reps. So I tend to when I'm squatting five reps, so okay. Let's make it easier. So say Monday Wednesday Friday. I'm squatting. I'm doing five reps and three reps than two reps on those days. And so that reps go down, but the intensity goes up as the week goes by
If I'm following that split then I'll likely deadlift closer to my lease intense squat day. So I likely that lifts with in the beginning of the week if I'm going to let it that way so that I'm I'm not so tired by the end of the week and can actually see what I'm capable of doing in the deadlift and then bench. I usually keep it a lot higher volume even during an intensification face. I think that especially for women because we I don't know what the phenomenon is. I actually want to get into that because I don't have an answer but
Something about the bench press and woman. We just make progress a lot slower and I think in terms of absolute strength, we we rarely reach it so we can get away with pretty much anything. We're doing higher volume lower volume more sets more reps, whatever it is and it doesn't seem to like impact the way that we recover from these
sessions if we're looking at the whole picture you've mentioned longevity in sport in the context of Ed cone competing for some ungodly number of years 20 years and
And how you contend with plateaus or very slow progress injuries, and certainly he's no stranger to injuries. And when you have a leg Buckle under 900 pounds or thousand pounds, I mean things don't always, you know, always just jog away from one of those how has rehab or prehab been included or thought of as a component of your training and your rights was athletic life in
general? I'm a
It adverse to those terms because I think they're they're often times used out of context and for their wrong purposes, especially by medical professionals physical therapist chiropractor, but I think it's look rehab rehab are essentially training. So it falls into periodization and falls into how are you organizing your training to make sure you're actually going through the appropriate faces to set you up to be able to withstand so that your
tissues essentially can tolerate the amount of load that you're placing on them. This is something that I actually love talking about is why do injuries happen, you know, most people think that they can prevent injuries through stretching or they can prevent injuries through doing rehab or corrective exercises. And that's nothing more than someone trying to position themselves in a way that makes them seem like they know something that you don't positioning themselves as if
There some sort of like I always say this this Sherlock Holmes of injuries, like they can pinpoint the exact area of weakness that you have that will lead to an injury and that type of thinking is overly simplistic and it's outdated. You know, we like to think that we have the answers for everything and maybe that happens because humans want to know the exact cause of things and then maybe Healthcare practitioners feel pressured to have to give this very
specific and concrete answers when in reality injuries are multifactorial and more often than not identifying the exact source of an injury or why it happened or what tissue is injured is very very difficult the best way that I can explain this as injuries not most times always happen when the load that you're imparting on tissues exceed their tolerance. So it's a the way I visualize it.
Said to part equation. We have load in one side you have tolerance on one side. So it becomes about managing external forces and building internal tolerance to those forces. So when I talk about load, it's everything I spoke about how you organize your training, you know, whether you're going through the right faces and your progressively increasing the amount of weight that you're lifting to allow your tissues to be able to withstand those forces then on the same topic of load say
That you start having an area or a tissue. That's that's starting to get irritated how well you have to think about? How are these forces being dispersed within your body, you know, maybe the way that you're lifting save up people have SI joint
pain SI joint. You just that's sacroiliac joint, right? So it could you just tell people where that is if they were into located on their own
bodies. So your sacroiliac joint is pretty much on your hip. So if you were to put your hands on your hip with your thumbs facing
It's like essentially where your thumb ends up naturally when you put your hands on your waist. It's a common area that gets hurt when you're lifting weights. But anyway, so what I'm saying is sometimes when that happens is also a matter of you know, where are those forces being dispersed within your body and why is that one area taking up most of that load. So a corrective exercise is essentially figuring out what exercises you can do that would spare the irritated tissue. That's what I corrective exercises.
And then as far as increasing the tolerance then again that just goes you got to reduce workload or modify workload. So that your tissue skin actually have time to repair from your previous training days and be able to continue repairing healing and then doing it all over again. That is the essence of injuries. And anyone that tells you anything more complex or the tries to tell you that your multifidus is irritated or inflamed or
Your whatever like people just gets so so caught up on just these details that matter very little when it comes to creating a plan of care for a
patient. Let's use a let's use a real or hypothetical example, but have you battled with say low back injury or other injuries that we can use as a case
study? Yeah. Oh my God. That is that that's the that was my inspiration for writing my
book. If you could talk to what you have done following an
Injury and how it differs from what might be common approaches. I think that would be very helpful for people.
So I'll give you guys a little background on the type of injury I had and then I'll get into some of the things that I did to get out of it. Essentially. I was in my first year of physical therapy school. The first time that I had a seemingly career-ending injury for some reason, you know, we attach so much emotion to a low back injuries.
I'm assuming it's mostly cultural and societal debased is just the fear surrounding back injuries that's been perpetuated by Health Care Professionals and doctors based on many many things that I actually talked about in my book. The first time I remember it was chronic in nature in the sense that it was just getting increasingly worse every training session and I guess any high-level performer athlete would relate to this in the sense that you at the beginning when you start experiencing aches and
Things you try to ignore them try to convince yourself that it's not as bad as it seems and you just try to look for ways to continue training. You think it's part of the game. You know, you're think that no pain. No gain. These are all things that are so deeply ingrained in our beliefs as athletes that we have a hard time taking a step back because we are afraid of exposing our weaknesses or we're afraid of quitting or we afraid of of our coach thinking that we don't want it enough and so we just tend
Ignore the signals that our body is sending us so that's exactly what I did even in what's funny is that even you know, I had a pretty solid understanding about the human body and injuries and how this all works and even then I was just so it wasn't such denial of what I was experiencing that I just essentially kept increasing the amount of painkillers that I was taking and didn't change anything else kept showing up to training camp training as hard as I was before just started Maybe.
Tying my belt a little bit tighter you wearing my belt a little bit sooner and like I said increasing the amount of painkillers I was taking and it was a recipe for disaster. They spent several months training in excruciating pain to the point where it started affecting my activities of daily living, you know, I was having a hard time putting my socks on or putting my shoes on remember waking up in the morning just so stiff. Like I looked like I was a hundred and twenty years old I could barely move II
I needed to have assistants doing many things. And what's crazy is that I still thought that it was normal. I'm like, I'm a power lifter. Imix. I'm expected to feel this way. And that just led to this one lift one time. I remember I unwrapped the bar. I was going for a 3 rep max personal best and I unwrapped the bar. I felt kind of more wobbly than normal in my low back. I lowered the bar.
Down and at the bottom of the lift. I just felt kind of like a like a snap on my back or kind of yeah, just something really wrong. So I toss the bar onto the pins fell down onto the floor and laid there for 45 minutes without being able to move without being able to take my belt off. Nothing just completely just Paralyzed by pain and obviously, you know at that point was I actually know you would think that I would take a step back then I actually took I think I took a
Cough and then one to San Diego to compete in the biggest powerlifting competition of the year.
I got actually called stubborn. I know
I called Ed when that happened and I called Mark Bell called both of them and I asked him what they would do and I asked him if they've competed injured and they both said yes, so I was like man, you know, if they can do it I can do it. Like there's I'm a week out of a competition. Yeah, I got really heard but whatever, you know, I'll just
I'll suck it up and then I'll and I'll rest afterwards kind of thing. So I did it I compete it was the worst competition of my life. I bummed out in an international stage was pretty embarrassing
bombed-out means you did. You didn't make your attempts
exactly. Hmm. And that was that was my wake-up call that that was the moment when I was like, okay, like I actually have to do something I have to do something to to fix this or to get out of pain and that's when my quest for figuring out low back injuries.
And I had obviously had access to a lot of seemingly great physical therapist given that I was in a top-ten a nationwide program of for physical therapy and I was able to ask for different opinions from a lot of people and what was surprising to me was that I was constantly getting different answers. They didn't seem to have really anything in common and it was just so evident to me that no one really knew what they were talking about really like
Yeah, we just get a different diagnosis every time I would go to talk to a different person. I got no consistency in terms of their responses. So imagine that right like I'm the patient in this case and I'm going to what I would consider kind of the most powerful figures of authority that I had access to professors that I look up to professors that are phds that are doing research maybe some that were biomechanism that our spine specialist and still I was not getting
One I wasn't getting any relief and to I wasn't again it wasn't getting any consistency in their answers. So that's when I started reading a ton about and obsessing about it to the point where I thought I should write a book to help clear up some of the confusion that not only clinicians are experiencing but obviously patients and I think part of that problem lies in I'm lucky in the sense that I practice physical therapy and then non traditional sense because I don't see potions. I spend most of my time.
I time reading research which again is one part of evidence-based practice. I guess I practice on myself and on people that are around me most clinicians between patients and and paperwork and all the things that they have to do in a day. They don't really have time to dive into the research. Like I did, you know, this book took two years to ride and we pretty much go back 5,000 years to understand where our beliefs come from.
And how science has evolved and how pain science has impacted some of the recommendations and how it's changed over the years so that hopefully we can have a more unified approach when it comes to back rehab essentially.
Well, I have a million questions and I want to make sure we offer some specifics to folks who may want to get some some tactical advice realizing that you don't see patients, but I want to
Take this in a few different directions. So the first is your experience with this injury paralytic on the ground in pain, you compete bomb out. Certainly I would say didn't do yourself any favors with the back like by doing that what were some of the things insights or training approaches that ended up really making a difference for you, especially with the lack of diagnosis?
I think a lot of people listening or lack of consensus in diagnosis, right? So I'm looking at some notes from your book, which I don't think are verbatim but they're really important. I think just to underscore for folks. So there's there's one paragraph that really jumped out at me and I'm just going to read this here medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability in other words, you know, the ostler maxim 3000 years into an effort to unlock the mystery of pain continues to produce more noise and Signal there's still no discernible cause for back pain and 95 to 99% of cases had a continues to be
The leading cause of disability worldwide. So this is a very depressing paragraph for a lot of people but I want to break it into two pieces. Number one is that when people say science proves or studies show, you should always look at the source material because science or I should say more accurately really good research and studies really just indicate the probability of something being true. And so you have to really understand that you cannot say definitively
Or you should be very cautious of saying definitively this proves this you have a an inflamed Sartorius muscle and that's referring to your left shoulder which is causing your right testicle to swell, which is causing your right eye to hurt right but you hear that kind of shit all the time and it's like wow. Okay, I had no idea that that that Cascade was so powerful and there are good Pete. He's in very good doctors out there, but you should be aware of complicating to profit right or if a medical
A professional is aware that you are shopping for a certain diagnosis. Eventually, you will find someone who is willing to give you the diagnosis that you think you have so you have to be very cautious but breaking it into this. So that's just overview comment on the limitations of what people consider science,
even when it comes to scientific research. There's actually studies and I don't have the name of it here, but there's actually studies that prove that more often than not the results of a study are likely incorrect or non
generalizable.
So yeah, it's the replication crisis. It's the ability to replicate studies in the outcomes of studies is abysmal e
difficult. Exactly.
Exactly. That's a whole separate thing. Like it's such a bummer. We need more money in funding replication studies, but there's so little career and Status incentive for academics to focus their own personal resources on replication that we end up in this really gnarly situation, but let's jump to the second part, which is more personalized for a lot of people.
Snake that is there's no discernible cause for back pain and 95 to 99% of cases. So a lot of people listening to what you said and hearing that will say well fuck if you can't figure out what's causing it. How can you possibly fix it? Yes. So then let's use that as a leaping point to what did you do that helped? What are the things that you ended up finding really had a valuable bang for the buck.
So let's go back just briefly on our terminology the words that were using.
So when you say let's do it what get what can we do to fix it, I don't like when people even when people say that because that implies that something's broken
yeah no whip my ass into shape. I want you to tell me better words to use because like the words, you know, the limits of our words of the limits of our world, right?
So like strike that from the record. Yeah, I would just say how can we decrease your symptoms or how can we decrease your discomfort? There's nothing to fix especially when it comes to like I said 95%
Of those cases, you know, we're moving further away from the mechanistic views of the sources of back pain. So all this means is we come from a background where when it comes to the neurophysiology of pain. We used to tie the severity of a symptom to the amount of damage in our body and with the evolution of pain science, especially now that it's that it's kind of permeating more into the physical therapy or element.
Then and fitness and sports now, we understand that pain isn't directly tied to tissue damage. So we essentially we are overly relying on diagnostic tests like the MRI or the x-rays because it's essentially it gives you a really good picture of what's inside but it completely takes out of the equation the subjectivity of pain so we know just based on Research that are based on studies that 37% of
Year olds have asymptomatic degenerative disc disease and disc herniation those numbers bump all the way up to 84 and 94% for people over 80 years old. So it's just that what you see on the inside is a better way to look at it is just wrinkles on the inside.thanks that happen naturally from aging and we need to stop to detach the emotions that we have with I guess those images because they don't really tell you much about what
The person is experiencing
that was another line from the notes on your book that I highlighted which is pain isn't a reliable sign of damage exactly. I was just very counterintuitive right because you cut your finger when you're cutting carrots with a knife and you're like cut her pain cause effect and a story right but it's just not that
simple, you know, of course and like I said, look, there's there's two views there's a mechanistic and then there's the pain science. So again, I fall somewhere in the middle.
I would never say that there's no way that that nothing's going on underneath your skin. You know, I'm sure that there's there's some cases where there's an actual structure that's getting irritated that somehow got hurt and that is the source of pain but in 95% of cases, we really don't know what the source is and I don't think that should be discouraging. I think that should be encouraging because you know, now you can relate your pain experience to most cases. I it's always good when you fall within the lines of the
Ability and not when you're outside. That's when you're in trouble because you're a special case. You don't want to be a special
case. Well, you're right. You said you're in the middle, you're like the Goldilocks of powerlifting and pan science. You're always in the middle. So let's get into some specifics. I think this is this is super fast. And so we're not going to use fix. We're going to talk about decreasing symptoms of pain, right? I think what you also said, is that like hey with if you're within one standard deviation of the middle, that's actually really good news. If it's if you're in the group that is
92 99 percent of cases having no discernible cause that's actually not necessarily a bad thing. If you're like 3 5 Sigma out and you're missing 10 vertebra. Then you really have a major issue going on exactly. Let's talk about some of the actions you took or things. You stopped that made a real difference
for you in terms of this is something an assessment. It's something that you can do on your own is instead of focusing on
What needs fixing or what is the failing structure? You can focus on things that are a lot more actionable in your assessment or your therapist or whoever's doing it for yourself in the things that I look at our first directional preference. So essentially what that means is are you flexion or extension intolerant? So does it hurt when you bend forward or does it hurt when you bend backwards? That's the first thing that you need to figure out and you'll
know and this is for overall back pain.
Lower back pain. What type of pain are we talking about? Like how does it
present? This is more specific to low back pain, but it'll be okay directional reference that it would literally apply to any injury. Does it hurt anything bend your knee or when you extend your knee? Does it hurt when you rotate your neck to the right or when you rotate your neck to the left? So it's just kind of like you're checking in with yourself to see what are the positions that increase your symptoms and where the positions that decrease your symptoms. That's essentially all that it is hmm then with indirection there's also
Compression versus Shear, especially when it comes to the low back so compression you can do an easy test just by sitting on a chair and you put your hands underneath the chair and you push yourself your buttocks towards the chair creating compression. So are you intolerant to compression or is it more sheer? So bending forward say with a with a light object on your hands farther away from your body. Does that increase your pain more? So just checking in with yourself to gain more understanding about the things that improve your pain or
Decrease your pain then what are some of the postures that increase the painful Sensations? Is it sitting down? Is it standing up? Is it walking a lot? Is it not walking a lot? Is it running? Is it lifting is it you know, what? What are you doing in the day-to-day that exacerbates your symptoms and finally figuring out what your current low tolerance is, especially if you're a lifter, I guess this doesn't apply for your not lift or but if you are a lifter you have to figure out what your margin of error is when it comes to your injury.
You know when our when do your symptoms start appearing is it at 50% Is it at 60% 70% 80% 90% When do they start appearing and during the time where your symptoms seem to be heightened? Then that's a good time for you to stay underneath that margin of error and stay underneath that pain threshold. So you can essentially teach your body how to get out of pain. Do you have
an opinion of as another point of reference healing back pain the mind-body connection?
Action by John Sarno. Do you have any opinion of that book comes up a lot in conversations about back pain. Do you have any commentary? I actually have
integrated. I'll have to get back to you on
that. Okay? No problem. So the TBD I just want to add sort of a small bit of commentary about pain because I like a lot of people was very mechanistic for the majority my life something hurts. Something must be broken or torn or strained. Let me find that.
Elam and fix that problem and pain will disappear and I had chronic chronic severe pain in my left mid back for many years and I think it was initially caused by, you know, an acute incident specifically a closet fell off a moving truck and I caught the closet which was like, I don't know a hundred plus pounds really large and it twisted my torso to one side. It was a bad bad injury, but
That pain then record for many many years and I did an experiment with and I'm not advising this to people listening. But so that I could speak to the experience intelligently from firsthand experience did a series of five ketamine infusions intravenously that one point and the intention was not at all to look at chronic pain, but it is used for in some cases chronic pain that didn't mean anything to me at the time because I hadn't done the reading.
And I came away from my experience past that week overall not feeling like I could recommend ketamine therapy outside of someone with acute suicidal ideation where I think it does have real applications, but about a week later. I realized that my mid-back pain had completely vanished and it did not come back. This is like a year and a half now and Counting and it just there are theories around ketamine's effects on nmda receptors and so on.
That account for this but it's thought to almost provide a like a hard reset for some of these pain Pathways. And again, I'm using terminology that I perhaps I shouldn't but like that you can in some way paste over these ruts that have been created in terms of repetitive circuits that cause these experiences subjectively of pain, but the idea that I could have an infusion a couple of days and then walk away and have this pain just vanish, even though it is in the short term and anesthetic was so mind-blowing to me.
That there would be durability to that effect. So it's caused me to think about pain completely differently.
Yeah, that is super interesting. I've actually would love to read more about ketamine specifically for persistent pain, but it just goes to show just how powerful our brains are. Right, like if you're experiencing persistent pain our bodies adapt to literally anything so it would make no sense that you have something broken or something that needs fixing for for two plus years even for more than
Once it's already a stretch.
So it just goes to show how and you know, and your case was the ketamine infusion. But anything that breaks the pain cycle is positive in terms of delivering a more positive response to pain because essentially you start forming these habits that are tied to your experience with pain. It's not more of us in seishin anymore is about the perception we have in the experiences that we have that literally alter the way that we feel and think and sense.
Threat from the environment.
So we're talking about your assessment and the general parameters for doing an assessment. And you know, I'm sitting here with a couple of injuries right now thinking about this like my wrists and my left hip and all all this, you know, sort of like, you know ate an orange and went to bed and woke up with like a neck injury kind of thing. I don't know what the hell's going on. But the point is we're talking about an assessment after an injury for people who are thinking to themselves, you know, I would like to make
Make an investment in making my body more resilient so that the likelihood of having a back injury is lower. Are there any recommendations that you would have for those people any often neglected types of strengthening or anything? Really that that come to mind?
I mean according to the literature it's not so much strengthening. It's not either a stability thing. That's another hole that we can get into but I mean the best way I guess.
Even any injury back injuries is endurance. So there's a bunch of studies done on construction workers and another form form of Labor workers and they determined essentially that the ones with the most back endurance and they measured this via doing hold back extensions. So how long can you hold a back extension? So it's not necessarily for strength but more so how long can you hold us a certain posture and they generation is for duration. Yeah, so they determined that those with the most back endurance where
the most were the most resilient to back injuries and then it goes back to positions postures and movements that you practice. So a lot of people for example when people want to get into running running is accessible to everyone read you just put a pair of sneakers on and you go out and run the thing that happens with that is that you didn't appropriately expose yourself to the mileage that you were going to do or the terrain and so making
Sure that there's an appropriate again an appropriate progression in what you're doing and you're practicing those specific movements. Those are going to be the movements that are safe for you. So there's also research studies done where you change the way that people lift things. So again, this was think it was construction workers again, where have you seen how they lift like, they have like their back rounded and they're picking up super heavy stuff and their form quote-unquote looks bad because we have this idea of what good for me.
Is versus what bad form is that is totally arbitrary based on I don't know what who said they say people love to say they say that's bad form. I don't know who they is. But essentially, you know, these people have trained those positions those postures those movements that way for their entire life there for those are the positions that they are the strongest in so when it comes to modifying the way that you lift or the way that you pick up things or the way they're you pick up your baby or the way you
Need to move like anyone else. You need to move like yourself. Whatever you've been doing for a long time. That hasn't given you problems. Then that's the way that you should continue moving.
Yeah, just a quick side note on the form and you know, the they the Illuminati of the internet who are like that's bad for I remember and again I'm talking out my ass because I'm such a junior varsity tourist when it comes to any type of strength training, but I'm a fan.
Of strength training. I try not to have too strong an opinion about anything. So I'm not qualified. But I remember the first time I saw Anna may be pronouncing his name incorrectly but Constantine's konstantinov say yes deadlifting raw with a rounded back set up how create and write and he has a rounded back set up for anybody. Everybody should look this guy up. He's fucking I mean, he's a superhero. It's no belt no belt. No.
Belts and he's just complete beast. And I don't know how much you can deadlift. It's just like 420 + kilos. I mean he's which is wrong with that belt but he sets up and he rounds his back and so you see that and you see him clearly as this like master technician of the deadlift and they're all these millions of variations that he also uses in training and you're like, okay who's going to tell this guy that he's lifting and correctly?
Yeah.
Because it look we have this this obsession with not rounding. When we Bend forward again, one of those beliefs that have been perpetuated over the years coming from probably someone interpreting a research paper incorrectly that is a very Advanced dead lifting technique that he developed. He skillfully developed throughout the years in order to make that position his strongest position and the least likely position for him to get hurt. Now the obsession of like keeping your back straight when you deadlift is
Silly because even when you can't observe that there is rounding in the lower back your spinal segments are at about 60 to 70 percent inflection, even when you're not seeing any flexion happening when your back is in quote unquote neutral your back is bent your spinal segments are already they've changed in the the angles that they're in there. They're already flexing. So there's nothing necessarily inherently wrong with that. There's no instability.
We going on you because essentially what is stability that was that's funny. That is what got me into this whole topic people talking about low back stability. You got improve stability stability stability of the segments. That was something that was so hammered in our brains and physical therapy school that I had to go back and see what the whole what the fuss was about when it came to that. But essentially we need to understand the differences in Concepts between stability and robustness when it comes to back pain so that we can understand essentially what their recommendations would be.
In terms of definitions robustness, and and I like to bring the analogy of comparing an oak tree to a willow tree. So in terms of robustness is your ability to cope with disturbances in your environment. So an oak tree will be a lot more robust than a willow tree when wind blows on to it versus stability is just the ability of a system to return to normal after a disturbance. So
the notion that back pain or people who get hurt that lifting or doing anything like stability is is unfounded because as biological beings, we have the capability to either up regulate or down regulate the amount of tension that is in our muscles at any given time in proportion to the tasks that we are doing. So the amount of stability that you need to lay on your couch is
A friend than the amount of stability that you need when you're lifting something up not to mention. It's difficult to measure like no one knows how much stability you need or anything like that. So we are capable of strengthening and stabilizing any position. As long as is the position that were training if that makes
sense. Yeah makes sense. Let me ask a question. I think you're going to hate if you don't mind you're gonna be like this this fucking guy. All right, so
I recall this must've been around 2008 2009. I was probably for the sake of Simplicity say the fittest and the certainly the strongest that I've been in the last 10 years or so and I felt very resilient very robust in terms of injury prevention. I just did not get injured a lot despite doing a lot of training at the time and it's so difficult maybe impossible to say or identify single cause
Is an effects but nonetheless I had at the time I had quite a bit interaction with gray cook who has the functional movement screen and so on and I was using Turkish getup single leg deadlift and chop and lift quite a bit. And so he uses the Turkish getup as a diagnostic tool. You also uses it as a corrective tool. Maybe that's the right way to phrase it, but I found that I found these exercises to be extremely helpful for kind of checking a lot of boxes at
Once and in terms of like time invested and benefits are there any exercises or types of training that you would put in that bucket for
yourself? I think part of the reason why you experienced a positive what you had a positive experience with those movements by implementing them into your existing training has to do with movement variability. So what happens when we look at people who are hurt one of the things that jumped
Out the most is the lack of movement very options that they have lack of movement variability. So the more hurt that you are the less movement options you have so essentially you're expanding your movement vocabulary by incorporating movements that challenge you in different planes, you know, your ability to resist forces that are coming different ways, you know by holding a kettlebell in the overhead position. They chop this working on the transfers playing you're working on your rotators your
spinal stabilizers. So I think the reason why that work for you is essentially because you increase your movement vocabulary and you were giving your body more options for movement where it felt non threatened and it felt safe. So almost any movement has the capability to do that and that's why I emphasized the importance of having a GP a general physical preparedness face to any program and that's something that really gets lost in over specialized sports like powers.
Day and Olympic weightlifting is that people think they have to be doing squat bench and deadlift all the time and don't find time or don't find or ignore the fact that they have to include other movements in order to maintain their longevity. And in order to kind of boost their own tissue tolerance and their ability to remain injury-free.
It's true outside of powerlifting to write if you take someone who has any type of repetitive movement could be tennis if you're just a
recreational tennis player and sort of amateur which almost everyone is going to be and you're like hitting and a very comfortable plane of motion with your forehand and backhand and then you're limiting your exercise to that and then one day of this heated scrimmage with a friend and you get thrown out of that normal plane of motion. If you're not supplementing that with additional colors on the palette right in the form of some type of General physical preparedness, then there's a decent
Chance you're going to get injured beautiful. Right exactly and I say that with confidence because that's I think what just happened to me, but
then that goes to show that that no one you know that there's no magic exercise. You know, I love talking about the McGill big three. So for anyone who doesn't know George McGill is one of the most well-known authors when it comes to low back pain and research and a lot of people kind of put this three exercises on a
Stalin and view him as this Guru because somehow the bird dog the dead bug and the side plank became the best way to cure all back pain, but in
another thing we hold on one second. So the bird dog, I know people can look it up. We're not going to get into it side plank. I know what is the what is the dead bug? That sounds like something I'd be really good
at so so really, I mean how how you would encounter a dead bug?
They're on their back and they're like flailing their arms in the air. That's what doing dead bug looks like
you just like stick your arms and legs straight up in the air while you're on your
back. Yeah. So you alternate you know, right arm back left leg out and then alternate back and forth.
Okay. Okay. Yeah, and that's the thing,
right? I like I always like to understand why so when I first learned about those movements, I'm like, okay, I mean
These provide me with relief but why is it because these are some magical movements or know what is going on here? And the I think the assumption that a lot of people make is that that improves core stability because they assume that that's the missing link and that's again that's dangerous because it goes back to perpetuating that fear that people have about their spines and it leads to people being extremely overprotective in their strategy. So what actually
Happens with these three exercises a dead bug the bird dog. And the side plank is that the reason why they decrease pain symptoms is to fold. The first thing is you're essentially providing a positive movement experience again, if you're having a cute bow out of back pain, or if or if you've been in pain for a while, it's about finding a position that doesn't increase your pain symptoms. And the other one is a very well-documented phenomenon called exercise-induced analgesia it which is basically, you know,
When you're Contracting a muscle, isometrically, there's muscle spindles and chemoreceptors in within your muscle that send signals to the brain to down-regulate the pain signal. So it provides you with a temporary reduction in pain symptoms. So it's not that they're magical is just that they work based on these two mechanisms not because they're improving stability not because you're unstable and now you're stable not because it's magical but because of these reasons so same thing.
And with those three movements that you are doing by great cook.
Yeah. Well any any really good doctor I respect in the large group of doctors. I've met most of which I think are way over their skis in terms of confidence the the best doctors and the best scientists also will say something along the lines of fifty percent of what we know is wrong. We just don't know which 50% and that's especially true when trying to
Identify mechanisms, right most of the things including many Pharmaceuticals work not because we understand how they work but despite the fact that we don't really know how they work. That's also true with a lot of these exercises in terms of the effects that they seem to impart. Absolutely. Let me let me let me ask you totally different question and this is about visualization or motor imagery. Okay, so I read in a muscle and fitness.
Peace your description of visualization. A lot of people will have heard this term before right but let me just read this paragraph because I want to zoom in on the second part of this and feel free to fact check this if it isn't accurate but here's what it says. I'm this pretty sure this is attributed to you visualization or what's called motor imagery is crucial. So when you're under the bar, you know exactly what to do the more detail you go into the better walking or driving to the gym putting your shoes on the sounds put in chalk on your hands grabbing the bar the smell of the iron the feeling in your hands and the success.
It'll execution of lift and detail now this will sound familiar to a lot of folks, right if they've ever watched the aerial skiers the acrobats in the Winter Olympics preparing before a run or divers or really any high-level athlete they will recognize visualization of that type and so on some level then we continue to the second part of the quote from you, which is the second part which I believe to be even more important is visualizing a negative outcome. We don't want to plan for it, but we need to prepare for it. So you know how to
Act can you keep it together and try again or will you crumble under pressure? I've never read anything like this before. Could you please elaborate and give an example of that second part? Yeah, sure lysing a negative outcome and how you use
that? Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I think part of the way that we react to certain situations is related to how prepared we are for that situation and when it comes to negative outcomes, you know, especially as athletes we're told to always keep a positive.
Native attitude. We're always taught to think positively to not think about anything going wrong. And I think that does a disservice because things are gonna go wrong at one point or the other. It doesn't matter what your winning streak is. We you're a boxer and MMA fighter a powerlifter. There's going to be a point where it's not going to go your way and how you react to that is dependent on how prepared you were to deal with that situation. So,
I actually started working with a sports psychologist after I bombed out of that meat that we were talking about because you start doubting yourself you start doubting your ability to make lifts on a platform pressure starts setting in you you have this all this Expectations by other people by yourself and it really terrified me to go back on the platform after that happened. I was embarrassed. I was really embarrassed. Yeah and instead of avoiding those thoughts. You know that the thought of things going wrong was it was what was in my mind?
And every single day after that, well, what if that happens to me again? And then I ask myself the question. Well, what if that happens to me again? Like how am I going to respond? Like I should probably have a plan of you know, what I'm gonna do if that ever happens again, so I started visualizing like I said negative outcome. So I go I go through the same beginning of the visual imagery starting from putting my singlet on putting my shoes on They Call My Name the bar is loaded go.
To the platform. I say it's a squat I squat and I miss okay. What am I going to do? And I just played with different scenarios of how I was going to react to a situation like that. And what's interesting
is that would be a some examples of how you might respond that you would visualize.
So how I've responded in the past was I've cried hysterically terrified that I wasn't going to make my next attempt. I've been really angry assign the blame to someone else. Oh, it's my coach's fault for picking the wrong.
Wait, or it's the judges fault. It was actually a good lift. It's their fault for not seeing it. They don't like me for the person who rapped my knees. They don't know what they're doing a my left part of my knee was hurting me. I would have just assigned a blame to something external to someone else and subsequently just have you know, be upset or sad or angry or whatever it might be.
And so when you're visualizing these negative outcomes, are you visualizing those responses are different responses,
so I would practice I would practice
Going through different scenarios. And and when I arrived at one that I thought would be the best course of action and that's why I stick to and what's interesting is that the next time I competed was the same competition just the following year and I got up there. I was more prepared than I had ever been. I had been doing sports psychology for an entire year. I took time off after my injury. I was feeling strong. I was making a ton of progress feeling confident and I got up to a platform and I missed my first
At attempt, which is something that I could have done that I had done in training for 5 reps. So it's relatively light like a something that you can do for 5 reps. It's like you're 80 85 percent and I missed it on depth. So the judges from the side didn't think that my hip crease was below my knee. That's how they determine depth and they gave me red lights, you know previously I would have reacted to that very upset. I would have, you know blame them for not seeing the right thing or whatever.
And I mean, I just totally brushed it off. Like I was I felt like I had been there a million times and you know, and my my fiance was there, he's like all worried about how I'm going to react because in previous situations, I would have been very upset and it would have thrown me completely off my game and instead. I just kind of laughed it off and it was like I've been here before I know exactly what to do. Don't worry.
What had you rehearsed for that situation that you landed on as as your choice.
Exactly that that I know what to do that. I trusted my capabilities that I was prepared that I had trained really well that I was feeling strong. I just kept repeating that to myself. There was just a fluke. You know that I'm going to go back in there back up there and and I'm going to crush the second attempt was funny as I went up for the second attempt and got red light it again.
So that time I mean, I was pretty much reliving my experience from the previous year that US Open
and you get three shots. Is that right? Three
shots. Yeah, but same thing I was totally calm collected. I just didn't again I didn't my perception of that failure was completely different. I just thought of it as part of the game as something that happens. That doesn't mean anything about my strength levels. It doesn't mean anything about
Out my abilities as an athlete but what does determine what my abilities as an athlete are how can I respond to unfortunate situations during training how fast can I pivot right how fast can I adapt to the competition standards, you know because judges are different every time bodies are different platforms are different. So the better athlete is the one that can adjust to those changes in competition standards the fastest and so that's what I did.
She left us with a cliffhanger. So you got red lights for to temps. What happened for your third attempt on the squat and what happened for the lift or excuse me for the
meat. Yeah, so I actually ended up going up in weight, even though I had missed my first two attempts just because I was that sure that I have that I could do it. Like I just I knew it I'd been there before in my mind. So I went up and wait and I ended up making it
were there any other particular tools or benefits?
Maybe tools that you brought with you after doing a year or roughly working a year with sports
psychologist. We worked a lot on especially being someone that's so open on social media. I felt like a lot of the pressure that I was feeling was imparted on me by just externally it but it's made up in my mind right? It's like I felt like everyone was expecting something from me. So I guess it was just circling back at what my why is why am I doing what I'm doing? What am
Trying to prove is it for myself? Is it for other people and just always trying to Circle back and remember why I started this journey and what does it mean to me? Yeah, and another thing I guess was working on staying positive when you encounter bad training days because you know, a lot of people see your Instagram or your YouTube videos or training and they think that you never have bad days that you have some superhuman will power and motivation the
Ality is that it's we all experience the same things, you know, we all go through days or weeks or months or years where we are completely unmotivated and we don't want to do a certain thing. So working on how to stay positive when things don't go your way when training sucks when you don't make progress when you fail reps every session when you feel like absolute crap when 50% feels like a hundred and ten percent. How do you stay positive? And how do you how are you able to show up to the gym?
The next day without you know, without bringing that baggage from the previous session on to your to next session and a story that really resonated with me was an effort got where I read this what book it was but it was about professional golfer that he would literally not admit to himself or the media or anyone that he had lost a game he would just totally erase that fact from his memory and just continue on as if nothing happened.
And I started doing that and honestly my my training started going so much better. Once I was able to let go of my disappointment on a particular session and once I stopped generalizing a bad outcome in a session to you know, my entire block or I stop thinking overly thinking about what that meant in terms of who I am as an athlete or as a person
you mentioned books. So I'm going to grab that are there any particular?
Books that you've gifted the most to other people or recommended
the obstacle is the way by Ryan holiday.
Yeah. He's my neighbor. He's about 40 minutes from where I'm sitting 30 minutes from where I'm sitting right now.
That's a pile of that book so much man.
Yeah. It's excellent any others that come to mine.
Yeah, then I have with winning in mind. I've pretty much gifted that one to any high-level athlete that I've been able to befriend. So I think it's just such a powerful lesson. I read it a long time ago, but
it's a really amazing read and then extreme ownership by Choco
Choco willing can extreme ownership. If we go back to the second one just because I didn't recognize it. What was the second title again
with winning in Mind by Carol dweck, I believe or no. No, it's not curled work. Don't quote me. I like I said, I don't memorize things.
So with winning with winning in mind the mental management system Lani Basham, Danny Basham sense. Yes. Yeah.
What do you like about that book?
Carl Black is the one from mindset? Yeah, it's - the premise of the whole story is is about how you manage your mind within your training within your journey to
Stay positive and to continue doing what you love doing despite obstacles. That's the premise of the book. I wouldn't be able to tell you details, but it really changed the way that I approach my training in the way I perceived object and downs
cool. Yeah, I'm looking at it here. It's shorts about a hundred sixty two pages and I'll give a brief description for folks in the Olympic sport that is most dependent upon effective and precise mental Management in parentheses rifle shooting Olympic gold. Medalist Lanny.
Ask him be assh am proved. He was the master and then it goes on and on that sounds like one to pick up
and it short so you're so most people will read it.
Now. You said you don't memorize stuff and yet you have a doctorate in physical therapy. And now that which you know one hand I think is you believe to have been a great investment of time, but my understanding is that you did not take the licensing exam you didn't do.
What was expected of you afterwards? So why did you do it? Why did you go through it? And how did you do it without memorizing? You must have memorized a hell of a
lot and I forgot it immediately after I started my to my brain is wired a little bit different man. It really is. I'm a lot better at like critical thinking I'm a lot better at just like understanding a concept as a whole and then giving it my own twist and applying it to like real life situations. So when it comes to like hardcore memorization like for example, ma'am.
Raising accept ranges of motion of each joint or developmental stages and children. I'm not good at that. Like I couldn't tell you a single thing about any of that makes me
think of this. This could be an apocryphal story about Henry Ford. I think it was and someone asked him if he knew the vice president of blah blah blah or something like that and he couldn't name the person and this this this other guests who had made fun of him was getting up on his high horse and Ford was like, that's why I have a library. I don't know.
To clutter my head with this is details. We have the internet. Yeah, so why did why did you why did you pursue your
DPT? So initially, you know, I come from a family that values high-level education a lot, you know family of like lawyers and doctors and I think that from a very early age, I guess I started associating the word success with a with a high degree like a high level of Education.
Either going to medical school or at least at the very least getting a doctorate or a Masters or something like that. So part of it I think was just pressure from my family initially and I guess personally it's something that I also value like The Prestige of being able to say that your graduate from a top school and that you were able to complete a program that only you know, one percent or less of the population gets into that to me. What
What is all sounded amazing and I love a challenge. So that was part of the reason the next part was anything that I get into I want to make sure that I'm giving it, you know, my best effort. So if being in Fitness is being in strength and conditioning was my goal. If I wanted to be a trainer or whatever. It was the highest kind of degree or highest level of learning that I could do was was a doctorate level degree Physical Therapy seemed like it would give me the tools to be the best trainer the best.
Which the best athlete that I could be so that was part of the reason now when I was in my first year of grad school, I started my own business, but hold on before I go there. So first year of grad school. I had already gone through one of my clinical rotations and honestly, like I just was having such a I had a not a great experience in grad school mainly because of how mainly because of the system right like I felt like,
Or not I felt I knew because I was able to prove that that most of the information that was being thrown at us was extremely outdated and pretty much the purpose of all of it was one to test to test your commitment to the profession like to test how bad you wanted it. You know, you're taking I don't know something ridiculous like six to eight classes a semester and there's just so much information that I didn't find applicable at all and was just so outdated and
There's were so resistant to challenges. You know, I'd be that person sitting in the back row raising my hand and challenging, you know, something that the professor's said factually or with a lot of confidence and they wouldn't like that. They don't like when they're being questioned. They don't like when there's a student that doesn't believe what they're saying and and asks things that they don't know how to answer. So there was a lot of a lot of resistance there like within school with my
hers and then when it came to practice when I went onto my first clinical rotation and was an experienced a little bit of what the general field of physical therapy is, like it just wasn't what I thought it was going to be. You know, when you're in big Clinic you're expected to see at least two patients at a time. I didn't feel like patients were receiving the best service or the best care at all because you're so all over the place having to do your notes and all of this and I remember this one experience I had with my first
Elevation that I ever did I was in the room my patient and I do everything by the book, right? So you have this steps ABCDE steps that you have to do when you're taking a history and you're taking doing your exam you're doing your evaluation, you're doing your follow-up questions. Then you do it you're doing your special tests and then your give a diagnosis. So I went through all of it perfectly did my special test and got something that made no sense, you know, like I got all positive tests or like three positive one negative that didn't make sense with
Any diagnosis that I had studied in my book and I excuse myself for a second for the patient I said, hey, I'll be right back. Go outside. I talked to my instructor my supervisor and I say hey man, you know, I did all these special test. Nothing makes sense. I don't know what's wrong with this person's shoulder and he just says well make something up just give him a diagnosis any
And I was just so shocked. I was so shocked because I used to look up to him. Right as he who was a mentor. He was a supervisor who was an instructor and the fact that that was his answer and coupled with just the experience. I had with my back pain and the lack of consistency and responses just made it. So evident that that school wasn't doing what I was supposed to do for people that we were going into a practical field with no practical knowledge essentially where we have a
a bunch of knowledge that is only useful for one thing and that's to pass the licensure tests. So that's why I didn't go that route who are
some of the people out there if any come to mind who have doctorate in physical therapy whose insights or work you track or admire who you think do good practical
work Greg Lehman is the first one that comes to mind. How do you spell that Greg and Lehman L? Eh
Maaaaan
here. Why do you say that? So
he's a yeah, he's I think the first degree he got was in Chiropractic. So he went through school study get his car back degree. Then he went on to studying getting a doctorate in biomechanics and then he went back to physical therapy school. So he's done in terms of breadth of experience and knowledge and different camps of thought he has it. All right. He has the perspective as a Cairo he has a
Spective as a scientist conducts research and biomechanics and understands the physics of the body and then Physical Therapy which is more of a science of movement. So I mean his lectures are absolutely amazing. He's able to incorporate a little bit of everything into the way that he treats and has a really interesting perspective. I've actually had a few sessions with him. They're old they're all done over Zoom. I think he very rarely practices in person very rarely puts his hands on anyone.
Because he's been his whole thing is how can you deliver or how can you place the power on the patient instead of positioning yourself as a guru as like someone that
people savior the Savior
PT? All right, so it's about giving the power to the patient and and be should be about patient self-reliance about them building a sense of autonomy and self efficacy as early as possible instead of having them be overly reliant on you as
A therapist so most of my sessions, you know were an hour an hour and a half long and they were long discussions about a lot of things because there's a lot of things that affect your perception of pain like we're saying so stress my environment my coping strategies perceptions on movements and all of these things like a great example is for example, if you have a paper cut on your finger like how much importance are you going to place on that you personally, but you probably put a bandaid.
On and move on and not think about it until it heals and then the Band-Aid falls off and then you're fine. But yep, a violin player gets a paper cut on the finger that they use to press on those strings and their response to pain and their association with that injury is going to be completely different to yours because within the context and within his profession that means a lot more to that person. So it's important going back to Greg you please a lot of importance on those conversations, like what does an injury mean to you and
The context of your life and keep it smart. Yeah, and it's just it's super super interesting the way that he
treats what have you changed your mind on in the last handful of years anything stand
out? Yeah. I love telling the story when I was in college and I stopped playing soccer. I was kind of like on this quest to rediscovering myself and finding what the next thing was going to be same same as far as well.
Profession I wanted to get into you know, you're thrown in college and you're expected to know what you want to study. That's crazy. I think there's only a handful of people that know with absolute certainty what they want to be when they grow up, you know, it's like your plastic surgeons like those kids were playing with surgical kits when they were three and just know that that's what they love and that's what they're passionate about or have been conditioned to think that that's what they want. Either way that was in my case. I had a very vague idea of where I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to be you know a
Figure I knew I wanted to lecture I want I know I wanted to write a book. I knew I wanted to be a professional athlete but I wasn't necessarily attached to anyone route or anyone path. So for the longest time, I spent a long time in this discovery period or sampling period where I would get into something I would try it for sometimes for a long time sometimes for a short time and then I would quit and move on to the next thing but it was strategic quitting just I didn't know it at the time and the person I was dating at the time I my
Friend, he one time he's I remember I got a specialized bike because I wanted to get into triathlons and he criticized that a lot. He said Steph. Why are you investing so much money into a bike when everything you try you quit almost immediately your quitter and that was that was shocking to me especially coming from someone, you know, so close to me that he was calling me a quitter and I just didn't I didn't identify myself as a quitter. I would feel like it was a complete opposite. I know I'm resilient. I'm persistent. I'm consistent.
Now, I'm not a quitter, but I was right like within the classical definition of quitting. Yeah, it was I was trying a bunch of different things and quitting a bunch of things. But like I said, it was more strategic than anything. I was just trying to trying to discover myself and what I'm good at and the way I think about it is there's kind of like in my head how I separate it is there's three kind of components to finding something that you're good at. You have your skills your talents and your passions and what you're essentially
Going to do is find the best balance of the three. You shouldn't hope to put again you all of your eggs in one basket. It's not only about what you're passionate about, which is this part of the worst advice that people can can give you is do what you love. I couldn't disagree with that more because it's about finding that balance between your skills. So it's your skills are something that you can work at that you can you see progress when you practice it your
Ernst is an inherent ability. So something that you're born with like, for example, I was born we like physiologically to have the capability to get stronger. So that's the talent I have that's something that you can't really teach and then a passion is something that you're interested in. The funny thing is that when your skills and talents matchup, you can start developing a passion for that because everyone likes to be successful so you can start developing a passion or a love for something that you didn't know your passion about just because you are yours.
You're standing out from the crowd. So for me that's sampling period was so important because I was able to find stuff that I was really really good at sports that I was really really good at in a profession that I was really really good at because I was curious because the way that I think about things with scientific and I was able to excel in those things because because I sampled so the notion that Winners never quit is just so flawed is such a
Fallacy and it does such a disservice to people because it discourages people from trying new things because they're afraid that they're they're not going to like it or they're going to be bad at it or they're afraid to fail. And the reality is that it's a good thing. It's a good thing especially when you quit for the right reasons, so what are the right reasons to quitting is when you identify that there's like an upper limit for where you can get, you know, you're at you identify Maybe
The something within yourself that you that you won't be able to overcome that you just won't be able to be better than your competition versus quitting for the wrong reasons, which is quitting when you first encounter resistance, you know, that's cowardly because things are going to get tough at some point. You just gotta know you just got to be very strategic again. Like I said of when you're quitting and not being afraid to quit for those reasons, and I think I read this on I
If it's at the dip by Seth Godin this sunk cost fallacy. So it's basically when you've invested some time or money into something it kind of tricks you into not wanting to leave it because perceptually you're like, oh every spent all this time. It's what happened to me PT school. I think well, that's one of the reasons why I didn't quit was because I had already invested a year of my life and a year of tuition into that and I was like, you know, I might as well stay obviously there were other reasons for me to stay and it end up.
Ended up being really positive for me, but that's what keeps people in jobs. They hate that's what keeps people from not taking a risk and starting their own business or not switching sports or careers or friendships or Partners.
So winners never quit and quitters never win false Us in the life experience of Steffi Cohen. And by the way, yeah, she's broken 25 world record. So most of you most of y'all can just shut the fuck up. So the
yeah, although it does take a certain sensitivity and degree of refined perception and self-awareness to identify what you are good at and not trick yourself into thinking that you are just sampling when in fact you are stopping due to pain or discomfort or setbacks or plateaus, right? So it does require certain amount of reflection to go through that sampling period and then
Double down and triple down on a few areas or one area where you truly have an advantage that you can learn to love? Yeah, it does. It does take some
awareness. Absolutely and you'll make you'll make that poor decision sometimes for example, I think I made the wrong decision when it came to soccer. Look at the reason why I stopped playing soccer. I think wasn't the right one. If there's one thing I could change about my past would have been to try harder.
In some soccer. Yeah,
let's talk about something that popped up when I was texting with a few people who know you Addie cashew prompted me to ask about time management whether it was all time well investor or not. You completed your doctorate while training to break 25 world records and simultaneously creating a successful business, which I think we haven't spent a whole lot of time on but you have you have built and scaled business very successfully. So you're doing
All
of those things simultaneously at least at one point in time. How do you think about time management or what are some of the key components to doing that much simultaneously? Yeah, what's sacrifices are made or how would you encourage people to think about it? Because that does seem to be unusual. Yeah the capacity to do
that. I actually I love this question because I have a very non-traditional answer think a lot of quote unquote.
High Achievers or high performers have this seemingly very well constructed and organized weekly monthly yearly schedules where there where everything's planned. They have like, you know times where they do certain things and times where they don't times where they whatever like they're very easy seem to be very organized and for a long time. I tried to be that way, you know, read things like the seven habits of highly effective people and the 4-Hour workweek and I was
always yeah burn.
Second was terrible advice
and I just felt so frustrated because I didn't feel like I was like everyone else so to a certain extent I felt like I was an imposter. I'm a lazy successful person. That's that's how I would feel I'm pretending that I have all the habits of all these successful people when in reality. I'm not like them. I do things very differently. You know, I don't do well with in flexible schedules. I don't have an agenda. That's all.
Coded and highlighted. I don't have morning ritual. I really don't I'm more of like a free spirit. I'm a procrastinator. I am or no organized. My mind is all over the
place. Hold on. I mean that having been said it's not like you're just eating Cheetos and watching reruns of Seinfeld and you know smoke smoking out of a bong all day no to when you're getting a DPT and the training and the successful business down at the same time. So as a free spirit how the hell does that?
How does that how does that get done?
Right so I mean just for the longest time I try to be like other people and I just found that it's just not it wasn't going to work for me. So the way I do things is I focus on the task at hand. So what do I need to do right now to either finish a project or to move in the right direction and I do that and eyesight. I used to cycle it based on prioritizing. So for example when while I was in physical therapy
Poppy school. I knew that there would come weeks of increased workload when I was doing practicals or when I was doing or there was a thesis or there were midterms or final exams. I knew those times were high stress and I knew that whether I liked it or not. I was going to have to spend extra time inside studying which is why I actually build a home gym in my living room when I was in PT school in a second-floor apartment. It's probably not the smartest thing to do.
Your neighbors downstairs. Love you hate it. He thought I was playing
but yeah, you know, that's that's what I had to do. So when those times would come in pressure was on was time to study. I would just come to terms with except that training was going to take the back seat and hybrid my business. We're going to take the back seat for those two weeks while I focus on this one very important thing which is staying in school, which was more difficult than it sounds because they had a very strict
It policy where if you got anything less than a 75% on any test, you would get kicked out which I did.
So we're gonna cut we're going to have to come back to that. So okay continue.
So so yeah, I just focused on the task at hand if there were tests coming up. I would focus all my energy on that and I would train as much as I could whether it was a 10 minute workout or a 20-minute workout. It didn't matter and I didn't feel pressure to spend any more time at the gym because I knew that once you know, once the
Midterms or finals were done. I was going to have more time and then when that was done, I would double down on my training and on my business I would skip class I would spend four or five hours at the gym. I would do double sessions when I had the time. So I just basically played it by ear. I did what I had to do when I had to do it and somehow everything got done.
It sounds like a me correct me if I'm wrong, but you're very good at single-tasking, right? You're not multitasking. You're not doing 17 different things at a given day you are.
Defying for the next two or four weeks or two months or four months. Whatever might be what the most important thing is to move forward and then you just basically drop everything else and maybe not drop but you you focus almost all of your energy on that one thing exactly. Do you get kicked out of school? This is forgetting less than 75 on a test.
That was a horrific experience. Let me tell you so I've never I've never failed a test in my life, even though you know in college. I wasn't that applied in high school. I was like
Wasn't that applied? I somehow always passed my test, you know, I'm like a b-plus student and somehow I failed this test of the silliest class ever, you know, that class that you think to yourself as a such an easy test. I don't even have to study that was that was that type of class.
Yeah, and I took my test I disconnected completely. I went to Canada for Christmas with with Hayden with my fiance didn't think about school at all. Then all the sudden I get back home, you know two or three weeks later and there's a pile A pile of letters from the head of the school. It had administrator of the school and I'm like, oh my God, it's not good. I open them up. And basically it was the first one that said hi. You have seven days to submit an appeal you
Failed, I think it was evaluation treatments and evaluation class with a 74 you have to submit an appeal in seven days. Otherwise, you're going to be dismissed from the program and then there was letters like every day after that day saying, you know, we haven't heard from you were taking you out of the roster. We taking you out of the class. We're kicking you out of the program because we didn't hear from you essentially and that was one of the most terrifying moment of my life. I just felt like such a loser. I felt like I was, you know getting kicked out of school. That's big.
Anyway, you know, I made an appointment to speak with the head of Admissions and to speak with the entire Committee of academic review and they ended up giving me an appointment giving me an opportunity to appeal given the circumstances. I didn't really know that they were trying to contact me. I just kind of disconnected. I didn't expect to fail a test I guess and I sat down in a room with with a guess or 15 or 20 professors. It was a Roundtable huge round table and I'm in the middle and pretty much you know.
I'm just being asked why do I deserve a second chance why they should let me back in. Why do I think I failed? What am I going to do different? But the question or the statement, I guess that stood out to me the most was this one Professor is name's dr. Fighbird which by the way, I love him now and I think I love him more because he challenged me. I guess that's how I that's how I perform my best when there's a challenge when people don't believe in me, so he stared at me right in the eye and he goes Steph. I just think the problem here is that
you're not a strong as a student as you think you are and I think you're going to have to make the decision between becoming a professional athlete or becoming a professional student, but I don't think you're capable of doing both and I just looked at him in the eyes and I said Professor Firebird, you know with all due respect. I appreciate your your criticism, but I just I have to disagree with that statement. I think what happened was a fluke. I think I'm more than capable as a student. I think I'm more than capable to do both things. I just wasn't focused on the right thing. I
Something happened with that test. I didn't focus enough didn't study enough, but I think I'm capable of doing it and they ended up granting me a second chance. But from there on that was my first second semester of grad school. And from there on I just my professors were all up in my ass basically for the info until until I graduated because they just thought I was there's a rebel I would I would get to school more often than not late probably from training with a barbell in my hand because I would train at noon as well.
Also, I would take their lunch break the train
he carried your barbell with you my bar bill. That's don't call me a meathead. I'm just carrying my barbell around the class. Okay, there's nothing to see here. Yeah, and
Meanwhile my spine Professor would be like you're gonna break your back doing all those dead lifts, you know people thought I was crazy. But yeah, I made it. I didn't fail a single more test for the entire three years was the most
Honestly the most stressful three years of my life just because I felt like getting kicked out was so imminent. You know, I just felt like I was one slip away from being
big dogs waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But I made but you made it you made it and and much more. So let's let's do a few more questions and then we can we can bring round round one to a close. I know we didn't get a chance to talk about diet. You are exceptionally expert in diets. We haven't had a chance to discuss that we have an IHS talk about boxing. There's a lot that there's a lot we could explore We're not gonna have a chance to explore today, but let me ask you to
Things aside from school and the failing of that test it. Do you have any favorite failures that you learned a lot from or that set you up for in some way later success could be also a dark period but just any anything particularly challenging that comes to mind that in some way ended up helping you.
Yes. Oh actually my favorite quote and this is the only quota have memories is each fresh Christ.
This is an opportunity in Disguise and I can remember where I first read it but it resonated with me so much because honestly every single time I've failed at something it's been the best worst thing that has ever happened to me. It's opened so many doors and so many new opportunities when you look for them they're there. So I think every single time I've experienced any sort of failure. I've been able to get out of it better than ever. I guess one of the most
Biggest ones was getting up kicked out of school and just having to like reframe how I thought about school and how I studied and my habits and how I organized my study my training but aside from that. I mean, there's many moving to the US on my own, you know starting with like a 2.5 GPA not knowing if I was going to be able to stay in school not understanding the language having to take multiple steps back and several classes retake classes that led me to discover other passions.
Well, you're bombing out in that.
Competition probably that's one
way yeah failed relationships infidelity issues with partners that let me to kind of ReDiscover myself and change my perceptions on relationships and what kind of things I can do better to be a better partner friendship sending failed friendships failed relationships with my family with my dad.
That all ended up teaching me a ton. You know, I think that Society glorifies happiness Society glorifies, you know being in a good mood and being happy and being positive and fails to acknowledge the important lessons that happen when you're going through dark periods of time when you're going through tough times, and so I mean, those are so important look at the beginning of this year when the pandemic first started. I did my last powerlifting competition of this year in February and my back pain got accepted.
Debated a lot. I did a massive weight cut. I cut like 20 pounds and a period of like two weeks. I broke some world records and then my back was flared up worse than ever and It's upsetting it's frustrating especially after you know, I wrote a book about back pain and I'm having a hard time managing it. So I fell into this really deep depression because I felt like my identity was being stripped out in me my identity as an athlete my identity as a high-level top performer my identity as
I know thority in Academia when it comes to back pain when it comes to injuries when it comes to strength training. I felt like I didn't know what I was talking about anymore because I couldn't even figure it out for myself and you know that couple that with with a pandemic everything closing off. I felt like my life was just kind of spiraling downwards out of control. I spent a couple weeks like that just being feeling pity for myself feeling really bad about the situation about the cards that I was dealt about my back about potentially not being able to lift again. I didn't
About the livelihood of my business. How is how is the pandemic going to impact my income and all of these other things that just, you know created at an unsurmountable amount of anxiety for me and I think when that passes I think it's like just it's part of the process to go through those a couple of weeks or a month did I do believe it's important to give yourself out time cap for how long you're going to feel bad for yourself because otherwise you just end up stuck in that face for way too long. So I remember just making the
conscious decision to stop feeling bad about myself and about my situation and trying to to see the positive and the opportunities that lied within that so when it came to sports I bought a heavy bag and I put it in my garage and that led to Kareem my new coach reaching out to me and wanting to make me a pro fighter that opened, you know, the possibility for me to get into a new sport and then depend emic close the door for networking. For example, that was a big part of how I gained exposure I traveled for
Guess I lectured I appeared on YouTube videos that was a big competitions were canceled. So I initially was really worried about how that was going to impact my my ability to continue growing my business and growing my my social platform and I guess my personal brand so I doubled down on other things like we created a whole series of master classes that were starting to offer. We created like five courses. We finished our coaches certification for hybrid where we're writing a man.
You scrape a full text book. We invested in our team. We found new software developers. We you know, we did so many good things for the business that I guess we wouldn't have done. If everything stayed the same and it ended up being everything was okay, you know, and I think it's that change of mindset that change of trying to find the opportunities within what seems like the worst thing that could have ever happened to you and they're always there. It's just a matter of changing your attitude.
Perception of what failure is and finding ways to see the beauty in that failure. And what kind of opportunities present on the other side?
Each fresh crisis is an opportunity in Disguise good advice good Maxim for life in general and fingers crossed for 2021. But no matter what transpires. Yeah, always always looking for the opportunity hidden in the crisis. Excellent.
Vice Steph this has been so much fun. People can find you all over the place hybrid performance. Method.com Instagram at Steffi Cohen Ste. F IC o---- hean on YouTube. You have your podcast hybrid unlimited. Is there anything else you would like to say or ask if the audience any closing comments anything at all that you'd like to share before we bring this first conversation to a close.
I think the only thing that I wasn't able to
Address because we kept getting sidetracked on on-site stories was the summary of recommendations that you were asking me like, what do you do when you have an injury like step-by-step, let me tell ya that like quickly. Yeah, I'll do just one two, three, four five six like the bullet points lightning right? Yes. So when you're hurt, these are the six things that you should be doing any injury this applies to any injury. The first thing is stop doing what hurts. It seems like Common Sense ago, but at the same time as something that a lot of
People trick themselves into thinking they don't need that's definitely always this the first step. So take a sit back and don't be afraid of taking some time off. You know, you take one step back to step forward kind of thing won't underestimate isometric exercises or seemingly simple exercises because it's all about delivering positive movement experiences when you're in pain, so it's about finding movements that feel good to you and that don't exacerbate your pain increasing the amount of aerobic activity that you do so well.
More moving more in general there's a saying in PT that's think overstated. But motion is lotion. And that is true. You know, the more that you move more blood flow goes into your joints the better it is and the more you avoid that deconditioning Loop because what a lot of people tend to do when they're in pain is they stop moving all together because they think that that's what they need but bed rest and immobilization is all outdated you want to move as much as as you can essentially using pain to optimize your movement. So knowing so the way that
At I think about it is kind of like a stoplight CO2 3 out of 10 of pain means go 326 means warning and over six means definitely don't do that. So use pain to inform your trading decisions and the movements that you do once you've done all of that, you got to turn off the pain alarm. So for a period of time it's okay to avoid certain movements, but then you know, you shouldn't be avoiding movements forever. So starting to expose yourself to tolerable ranges of motion and tolerable movements that don't make your pain worse so that you can get back.
The moments that you used to do that bring joy to your life and then understanding the final one is understanding that tissue adaptation takes time. So sometimes were married to this very rigid healing times that we see on the internet. We're like, okay, how long does it take for an elbow injury to heal? Okay two to four weeks and then four weeks go by and you're still in pain and you think something's wrong with you but oftentimes nothing's wrong with you just have different sensitivities to pain and different ways that we deal with it and different healing times. And so
so just don't rush the process and understand that everyone experiences pain and injuries at a different speed. That's
it. That's it. The new book is back in motion like an ocean. I've been very impressed with a lot of the writing and can't wait to see what you do next, especially with boxing looking forward to seeing the infighting and I would not want to get punched by you. So I will remain on the sidelines clapping like
And Fanboy we've mentioned a couple of different options for people to find you. Are there any other places or resources you'd like to mention?
That's all cover them all.
All right. Well Steph thank you so much for taking the time today to be on the show and to everyone listening. We will have links to all the topics all the people all the books all the exercises and so on that came up today, you'll be able to find those as usual. I teamed up log forward slash podcast and until next time.
I'm each fresh crisis is an opportunity in Disguise. Keep it in mind. Enjoy variability pay attention to your GP and thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one. This is five. Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email for me? And what do you enjoy getting a short email for me? Every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend and five bullet bride.
Very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week that could include favorite new albums that have discovered it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends for instance and it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off.
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