5 Simple Modifications for Lower Back Pain While Weightlifting

Clinicians, before we start, I want to draw your attention to the premium version of the podcast that we released back in January. This is where we do case presentations. We do what worked, what didn't work with specific types of scenarios, as well as orthopedic testing and so on. So this is all the stuff that you have been asking for. Many of you have been emailing me and asking, when can we do more case presentations? When can we get a little bit more specific into this and so on? So this podcast is for you. So please take advantage of it. It releases every Monday. It's 15 minutes. It's very, very detailed and stuff that you can actually use, or at least consider using when you go back in the clinic on Monday. So this is something you can always cancel if you need to, but I don't think you're going to want to. And everybody in there so far, I think has liked it. Nobody's complained yet. So I'll see you guys in the real podcast right here, right now. You're listening to the Restoring Human Movement podcast, where movement experts discuss the latest evidence-based practices to help you and your clients move with mastery.

And now your host, Dr. Sebastian Gonzales. Hey guys, it's Sebastian, your host with the Restoring Human Movement podcast. Thanks for joining the movement movement. This is your first time to show. Welcome. You've missed a lot. This has been about a 235-ish different episodes that we started to recently scale back into once every two weeks to give not only myself a break, but also give you guys a chance to go backwards and listen to literally almost 230 different hours of free content that hopefully you will love the ones that we do, which is single style, solo style, like we're doing today, where I can organize my thoughts and help you guys understand a little bit more about what's going on in your body, as well as how to get out of your problem or pain. But also there's interviews with some of the industry experts back there that you might not have heard about yet. And so I have learned a lot of the course of doing this podcast over the course of the last three years. And I'm hoping even any of the clinicians out there will follow me on this journey as I feel like I've really improved my clinical skills.

I feel like I've improved my treatment style and my coaching style with a lot of different people who've come in as well as a lot of their different cases. So lay public, this is going to be simple enough and not techie enough to where you're going to get a lot of bang for your buck as well. It's free. So there's a lot of bang for your buck. And yeah, you're going to love this podcast today. Okay. So this one is going to be, um, five simple modifications for lower back pain while weight lifting or going to the gym. Uh, I have met a lot of people over the years who have had pain associated with their workouts, but they noticed that when they don't really work out, they really don't have any major problem either, or at least it's less, um, less of a problem. This will also cover, we can talk about lower back pain, sciatica, which is down to the leg. We can also talk about a little bit of buttocks and hip flexor and so on. Um, but I'm going to keep this as simple as we possibly can. I'm not going to go all into symptoms as well as pathology nor diagnosis or any of that kind of stuff today, because we're going to talk mainly about five things that we can maybe modify just to improve life in the simplest way possible. Obviously this is not medical information because I've not worked with you guys. If you want to work with us, you can. We do have people who fly in from around the country and drive in, and I'm very grateful that they trust me with taking their vacation here down in Southern California. But if you want to work with us, you certainly can.

Um, we can see people virtually or in person. So link, uh, contact is below, but, um, come see us. We'd love to see you. So let's start with, uh, listing the things today of what can, um, what are the five simple modifications we can do when dealing with lower back pain while lifting? Now, number one is we can move, remove the white elephant exercises and provide a little bit of variety. I'll explain that as we go on. I'll explain each one of these in turn. Uh, number two is take more breaks. Number three is wear looser clothing. Uh, number four is focus on what you're doing, not everybody else. And number five is go on a different, uh, go at a different time of the day.

Now let's start with removing the white elephant exercises first. This is probably the easiest thing we can possibly do. Uh, and this is actually part of what a lot of times what we do when working with people, when they come into our facility is, is we try to bring to attention. There's a lot of different exercises they can do to accomplish the same task. Um, let's just say we're talking about the deadlift. Um, many people will have back pain with deadlifting. By the way, I should note that back pain does not mean you will have, or sorry, deadlifting will not mean you have back pain. And just cause you have back pain doesn't mean deadlifting is bad for you. It just means a lot of people who deadlift do end up talking about their back. Um, I think this is personally, I think this is something that goes either number one with, uh, it goes with their form with their tension or possibly it goes along with their volume. Okay. Uh, I guess I, before I jump away from that, I should probably explain it a little bit cause it probably helped you guys. Um, number one, I think form, everybody can probably understand that there's good and bad form of deadlifting. Um, that should be coached. Uh, it's not worth talking about even for further on this podcast because, uh, it needs to something that visually has to be done as well. It's something that has to be coached individualistic to the person.

All right. Um, the second thing we kind of said is that, um, tension people lose tension. They don't use their feet to push the floor. They don't use their hands to actually grip the bar. They do these, um, uh, over under grips, which don't always work for everybody. And sometimes they use the wristband or the wrist straps. I've met a lot of people who use wrist straps now. I hate it. Um, they get super slack in the hand, which gets them slack in the upper body, which gets them slack in the core or the torso, which ends up, I believe subjecting the lower back to a little bit more load than probably what it wants. And so, um, maybe working on tension and actually getting your hands to do some work is probably one of the most useful things you can do if you were to actually keep the deadlift in your exercises. Um, but the third thing we kind of said is that, uh, volume, um, I had this conversation with somebody recently where they said, uh, I don't get why my back still bothers me.

I'm training, I'm doing good form. Um, she does, um, she does Olympic lifting. It's just something she wants to do. Um, but she's not getting paid to Olympic lift. That makes any sense. And there's a lot of you out there who are not getting paid to Olympic lift, not getting paid to power lift or be a strong man. Um, and you're not getting, you're not getting paid for your exercise. So, um, it really comes down to the amount of workload that you're putting in. You might have, there's a risk reward factor there. Your reward is that you get better at your lifts and you might put up more weight. The risk is that you might carry some risk in associated with having the, your, the, some pain that goes along hand in hand with, with, with your sport. Um, I know that a lot of people who do lift have stiffness in their lower back. Um, it's not uncommon and I'm not saying it's necessarily a hundred percent thing that will happen to everybody, but it is common. If you drive a lot of, if you drive a lot of miles, you will end up having to change your oil more often. Um, you also have to change your tires. It doesn't mean your car's broken, but it means that you have to do, there's, there's some things that will happen. Um, I guess I should probably mention, I don't believe in the necessarily the idea that you will overuse or, um, that you kind of like beat your body up when you're younger. That means that you're destined to have this thing forever. I don't think that's the case, but circumstantially, um, you might have to change tires more often, at least while you're driving those mileage, but it doesn't mean your car is broken and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with your alignment either. But when you're doing more volume, you're asking your body to do a lot.

So some of the first, I guess the first simple things would be, um, address form. Number two is work on tension. Number three is reassess volume. If those don't work, we can go to the other, which is removing the white elephant exercise, which if you come in and say deadlifting hurts my back, I might just say, can you stop deadlifting for about a week or two? Instead, we'll do this other exercise, which does almost the same thing for you. Now, this is a different conversation when it comes to someone who is actually has a sport of weightlifting, because it means that let's just say we're talking about a baseball pitcher. They're like, well, I need you to not pitch overhand for like a week, but you can pitch underhand. Like this isn't going to fly, right? Because it's a special scenario.

But if I was playing baseball with my kid and tossing the ball back to him, then I can certainly go underhand for a week. It's not a big deal. Uh, so if the goal of the deadlift is to help out with posterior chain development, with glute strength, with hamstring strength, and so on, we can address this a few different ways. You know, we can change to a exercise, which is similar, but different, and it still gets the same, some of the same benefits. One might be, um, excuse me, um, a single, a single leg deadlift. Um, other one could be a bent of a row. Um, the other one could be pinpoles. We can do sumo deadlift. We can do, um, barbell hip thrusters. There's different ways where we can still address the same thing, keeping your body under load. So you still get some, um, adaptation that will occur while we're building back your deadlift. Now, if you have lower back pain associated with squatting, we can change this, we can change the squatting into something similar, but different.

Um, one example would be a split squat. Now, maybe you're this, you know, a strong man or power or a power lifter rather. And you're like, well, I have to back squat for my sport. Okay. When's your, when's your competition? Well, it's in six months. Great. Let's just scale this a little bit for the next week. Can we do that? So maybe we do a split squat. Maybe instead of having a barbell on your back, uh, we put it in the front. Maybe instead of having a barbell period, we can have, um, uh, low hanging weights on the sides, like suitcase. We can do, um, more of like a, I forget what we call it, grab a heavy bag and squat with the bag. You can do a goblet squat. Um, you can do a sissy squat. You can work on the hack press. You can work on the leg press, by the way, not all these ones are ones that I would pick for everybody, but I'm just giving you some examples. Um, shoot, you can even go straight back into bodybuilding style. If you, if you want to keep some load on the quads, maybe you just go into a leg extension machine. If you want to keep some load on the hamstrings, you go into a hamstring curl machine. Um, all of these are acceptable. If we're trying to provide some variety or provide some, um, similar, but different to that exercise that you're trying to simulate, because what we don't want, and I'm sure what a lot of people don't, what do you, what a lot of people don't want is they don't want to go to an office or a clinic or a gym or a trainer or a coach. He says, that's great. So it hurts to throw overhand.

Um, why don't you just not ever again, this isn't productive for most people. Um, in fact, a lot of people who have this experience with their, with the clinic, they go to the rehab center or the coach, whatever, it just kind of discredits the whole thing. Um, I'm no different in when I have a problem. Somebody had told me one time, they said, well, you got some, you got a meniscus thing in your knee. So maybe just don't squat. I said, well, so, uh, I'll tell you what, I'm probably not going to do that. So why don't you give me some better parameters and tell me what depth is unacceptable. And, uh, they said, just don't go to parallel. Um, you can stay above that. And if you feel any X, Y, and Z with it, then I want you to pull the plug on it. I said, great. Those are very good parameters. I think it's, um, for, for me as a, I guess the athlete at that time with a client and the patient at that time, uh, I fully understand what he's talking about. And I'm very grateful that they would give me actual parameters versus just don't do that. Um, saying don't do that or never squat again, never deadlift again. Um, or at least not telling them when to reincorporate it back in or what they can do it in substitution. It deconditions the person physically. It also creates some avoidance or fearfulness, um, mentally because there hasn't been variety put in. So one of the simplest things you can do, um, uh, for lower back pain with weightlifting is simply find something that has the same goal. You have to verbalize yourself. What is the goal of this exercise and how do I change it? What exercise will do a similar thing will still challenge my body and it will just make it. So I just don't have to do that one for a little bit of time. So provide some variety, remove the white elephant and just change a little bit. Number two is we can take some more breaks. Um, this is kind of along the premise that we I've noticed with rehab with people is that sometimes when we reintegrate back in some exercises, they can't handle a certain amount of sets at a certain weight. And so I might just tell them like a blanket, like, uh, just, just go until you feel challenged. Um, some of them will blow straight through pain and they'll stop at the very end. I say, how'd that feel? You look, you look like you felt pretty good. And they said, no, no, I heard after like third rep. I said, then do two and then take, put the weight down and do two and then put the weight down and do two. And so we started doing that and they're like, Oh, that feels a lot better. You know, you might not have the tolerance yet. Your body might not have the tolerance to do that full movement at that volume yet, which is okay. And so we can take more breaks. Um, it all comes down to the goal. Obviously again, if your goal is to get strong, which some people's goal is to get strong, you can take long breaks. You can walk around and drink up coffee and get a Frappuccino and come back and lift something heavy again and walk around and, you know, maybe get your hair done and come it, it's lifting something heavy. It doesn't, uh, the break is it's okay to have some break even with power development. It's okay to have some break. If we're looking at building endurance, then breaks got to be a little bit more controlled.

Um, if you're trying to get heart rate up and keep it up, then break has to be a little bit more controlled. But what I've noticed that some people will have a little bit more of a problem as we start to link up a preconceived notion of how many reps is needed to provide the effect. Uh, or sometimes when their heart rate gets up, they'll also have a lack of stability, whether in the low back within the hip and so on. Um, we actually provide cues to coach people on, I don't want to say some breathing, but more so like some bracing and giving ways to keep some stability in the mid mid mid section, the low back or the core area as they're going through repeated reps. Uh, and sometimes this is, you gotta look at this as a skill. This is a skill that needs to be developed. It might be developed over the course of a day. It might happen over the course of a week. It depends on the person.

Um, but something as simple as, and by the way, you guys can, you probably try this if you want to. Um, but we do this all the time in our office when we're doing exams with people is sometimes squatting hurts their lower back or their scianica. And we tell them to simply put, put the tongue on the roof of your mouth, close your mouth and breathe out of your nose. So basically we're just telling them to breathe out of their nose and put their tongue on the roof of her mouth. And I say, try it a couple of times they're breathing. And it said, just, just do that and go down and squat. And they say, well, that doesn't hurt anymore. I remember this one guy, he was having some, I think it was hip pain and back pain. And so we identified that it worked with his exam early on. And we did some rehab rehab exercise and every single time we told him to do that, his pain went away. And so it really opened up a lot of possibilities of how many reps we can do, uh, how many exercises we could do. And he actually was funny, like at the, at the very end, I don't think he was sold, which on the idea, which is funny because it seemed very convincing to me. It was almost like a magic trick, right?

And so, uh, he said, look, the only way I can really test is if I, if I put a weight on the, a plate on the ground and I move it with my foot. And so, uh, we put like, I think a 25 pound plate on the ground. And so he slid with his foot and he's like, yep, that hurts. Uh, you know, I don't know what to do. And, you know, it's kind of going down the ladder of, you know, feeling frustrated about it. And we said, hold on, just put the tongue on the roof of your mouth and just breathe through your nose and do it again. And he did it. And he's like, I, I, this is some sort of trick or something, right? Like, I don't know why this is working. And so sometimes creating that midline stability comes easier when you're fresher, which circling back into the take more breaks.

Sometimes you just need a little bit, you need to recharge it a little bit. I grew up in the era where NBA jam was a thing where we play in the arcade and you had something called the turbo button. And so you'd hold the turbo button down and you get like about five seconds worth of just moving faster than everybody else and doing cooler moves and stuff. And after you drain your turbo, you had to not hit your turbo button to build the turbo back up, which took like three times as long as using it. So it took 15 seconds to build it up, took about five seconds to use it. And then you could do all these cool things again. And so this is kind of like taking your breaks is like building your turbo button. So allow your turbo button to build and you'll be surprised at how much better you might feel strength wise and pain wise doing those same exercises that were the white elephant in the first place. So if it hurts to squat, consider that breathing. If it hurts to deadlift, consider the breathing. Burpees are something which is a little challenging. I know this is a little bit more out of the realm of weightlifting per se. This is kind of like your, I guess, hits circuit where your cross fits, but burpees is something where people lose their tension and pressure and stability quite often.

And so we've noticed that a lot of people end up having back pain associated with burpees and box jumps. These are both things where it's repeated ongoing. It seems like there's not a lot of breaks involved in their heart rate gets up pretty quickly, which is not a bad thing. That's, that's your benefit in the exercise, but your risk is you lose the stability. And for those of you who have the very low ability to, or that you haven't had a good experience with that skill set, like you still need to build that skill, then you might suffer a little more quickly than somebody else. I should probably note too, that since if you've been going in the gym, some of you might be in really good shape. Some of you might be in lackluster shape, or you still want to get in better shape or whatever.

I've noticed that physique doesn't really have a big relationship with back pain. You can have a six pack, an eight pack, 24 pack, a one pack. You can still have back pain. It doesn't really matter. And so I don't want you to think that actually the answer to resolving back pain is to get in better shape because it's not always sometimes doing less and taking a little bit of break from training and modifying training in some of these ways is just easier to settle the back pain. That way you can ramp it up again a little bit. I personally, and I'm, I guess, I don't, I don't, I don't want to say that I do the best stuff for physical activity. Cause I probably don't. I only lift about two days a week.

Uh, if I get, if I get lucky, um, there's spurts where I'll go on to three and, uh, it only takes about 45 minutes to an hour, maybe quite, uh, quite often. It's more, it was more common for me to actually get about 15, 20 minute sessions in multiple times a week. Uh, just because I get busy. Fortunately, I have weights around the office so I can just pick them up and just do some stuff between clients. Um, but it seems to work well for me. Like I haven't really had any major problems over the course of the last few years, other than some back pain about three years ago. And it's funny. That was when it was more of a structured program, uh, the less structured program and the more, uh, breaks I get with more repeated challenges. It seems like the better I do.

I'm not saying this is the best thing for you, but, uh, I want you to just give me an idea that although I might not be the most, uh, the best physique I've ever had, uh, I tend to feel better, uh, when, uh, or sorry, I, I feel good at multiple different physiques and I bet you will too. Um, let's go on to the third thing, which is wearing looser clothes. Uh, I won't spend a bunch of time on this one, but the reason I wanted to put it in there was because that, um, there are a lot of things that can go along with wearing tight clothes. Um, this can go for men or women. It's not gender specific, but if you wear tight clothes, sometimes there's number one is, um, uh, we've noticed this sometimes with dancers is that wearing tight clothes like yoga pants, sometimes it will actually make it so they lose stiffness in the core area and they tend to have more back pain with even corrective exercises, let alone actually doing some weights. Um, then if they actually just wore something a little looser, all right. Um, I, I know that triathletes wear tighter stuff. Um, a lot of women will wear tighter stuff and, um, the contact points of the clothing might be something, as I mentioned with dancers, we're kind of working off this theory that possibly yoga pants will actually increase back pain. Uh, don't go out and get a class action suit against, against your yoga pant company anytime soon. I'm sure there's, uh, people with yoga pants that don't have back pain too, but there are, there's a possibility that clothing or at least, uh, thinner clothing, in my opinion, will have, um, more chance of losing pressure, mainly because people hollow, they tend to want to look thin. Um, the, uh, I almost want to go back into the day where people were these really stringy tank tops. Like the guys were the big stringy tank tops that like, it's like the arm hole went all the way down to their, to their pocket. Um, because you don't have to worry about that stuff and sweatpants, you don't have to worry about that stuff. You know, um, I, I don't feel this way, but I know some people might, which is why I bring it up.

Don't try to impress anyone at the gym about how you look. You should be wearing, in my opinion, the frumpiest thing that you possibly can. Don't try to look cool. Don't try to look sexy. Just do your work and get out. Um, the more people that are looking at you or the more people you're engaging with while you're lifting the weights, probably the more your back might hurt because you're not doing things well, or you might not be doing things well. Um, a lot of times in rehabilitation, we'll, we'll try to take people to what we call a single focus, uh, which means that we don't want them to pay attention to other things while they're doing rehabilitation, because it'll rob them of the benefit of the exercise, um, tighter clothing. Uh, you might feel that the actual, uh, contact point might be robbing your attention. Number two is you might find that you're sucking in because you're trying to look thin because you are wearing, um, tighter clothes or number three is you're just getting attention from other people in the gym knowingly or unknowingly, and they're robbing you of that attention as well. So I think we just go back to looser clothes with that. I'll leave that one short and sweet and we'll get on to the fourth one, which is focus on you. Now focusing on you, uh, this will be similar to the last one. Uh, I'll bring you back to a story of, of when I hurt my neck while doing shrugs in high school. And, um, I was doing shrugs and so we got all the mirrors in the gym there. I was probably about 15 years old or so. And so you people are walking into that gym and you look and you see, and you're 15 and it's like looking at, Oh, there's a girl walking in. I wouldn't, she's Oh shit. My neck hurts right now. Um, I had some neck pain for about, I'd say about three, four days after that. And I still remember now about that because I still coach, um, some people with lifting. Uh, if they, if they tell me that they're doing things like shrugs or lateral raises or front raises and overhead pressing, I don't, I might not agree with all those exercises at this point in time, but if they're doing them and it doesn't hurt them by all means. And I say, I tell them the story and I say, look, um, if you're here for shoulder pain and you're doing lateral raises, when someone walks in the gym, please don't look at them. Look dead into the wall. I want you to be looking through the wall. And in fact, I don't want you to be doing any work in front of any mirrors at all. Just stare at a wall. You can bring a sticker there, stare through the sticker, but I want you to focus on, on what you're doing in the exercise or whatever cue I gave you right now. So focus on what you're doing. Don't worry about everybody else. Um, I've had multiple experiences at the gym where, uh, I've actually been prey of this as well is that I remember doing, uh, single arm rows, which can hurt some people's backs sometimes. So we call them three point poles or single arm dumbbell rows. And so, um, I remember doing one with, I think I was about, you know, 15th time again, I was doing probably about 50, 50 pounds or so per side. And, um, I look over and I see this, this lady doing about 50 pounds too. And I look over and I see this dude, he was, he was doing like 70 pounds. He was, he was a big dude. And I thought both of these people, like I, I can do a little bit more weight. I didn't hurt myself doing this. And I did go up in weight, which the motivation can be a good thing. You know, sometimes if you're trying to challenge your body, obviously. Um, but if I had back pain and I was told by someone to scale down that weight, cause my back was rotationally intolerant, like it didn't tolerate rotation. Well, it just flared it up. Adding more weight might supply more rotational force in this. And so I might be, uh, making myself worse because I'm not focused on what I'm doing. You know, focus on what you're doing. So you can also make, even make a little notebook too, to see where you're at. That way you got to write it down and keep yourself honest too, rather than, you know, 20 pounds this week, 20 pounds next week, 20 pounds next week, and 50 pounds. It doesn't make any sense. Oh, that was that day where I saw that dude lifting all that weight.

And I decided to jump some weight. Well, no, no wonder you have a little bit of an issue right now. It doesn't mean you're broken or anything, but, uh, it puts things a little bit more in perspective. Um, some people will see others in the gym doing fancy exercises that they, that they'd never tried before. So if you've never tried a back squat and you're like that person right there, they're about the same size right now. And so, um, I know my back has been a little sensitive. Why don't I just do, I'm going to do this back squat and Hey man, how much weight you got on there? Oh, I got one 35. Okay, cool. I can try that. That's just one plate. No big deal. You know?

So if it's something you haven't done in a while or you haven't done at all and you're having a sensitive back, why don't you just stick to the things that are working well for you? Okay. I'm not saying a back squat necessarily is a, is a bad thing for everybody's back, but the reason why this person picked up the back squat is probably a bad reason they're worrying about what someone else is doing. We're about what you're doing. Okay. Um, when I know this, I'm probably going to, um, beat a, beat a dead topic in this, but, um, there's a lot of different drivers and reasons why people will do what they do. Um, and I'm not here to judge, you know, I've done the same things, but if you want to really clean things up, just write down what you are supposed to do, what you've been told to do, what you believe you should be doing, and that's your program. Okay. Um, focus on the program, focus on what you are going to get from the program, uh, and what your goals are. Okay. Uh, I discussed this with someone, uh, as recently as well, as we talked about that, that, um, cost benefit ratio of doing something like Olympic lifting. And, uh, the same thing goes with your gym. And I guess this will be a tangent topic of, of this, but I think it's beneficial is, um, we discussed because she was frustrated why this thing kept coming back. And, uh, I said, well, what are you, what's your goal? You know, like you're, you're 40 years old. You started Olympic lifting, you know, a handful of years ago. You're, you're in good shape. You're strong. What's the point? What are you trying to do? Like what, like, it seems like this back issue, the sciatica keeps coming back. Um, what is your fitness providing you at this point? What is the goal? Why did you start? What were you looking to do?

Um, we didn't get to talk too much about this yet, but obviously, you know, you guys can, um, drum up your own reasons. Like, why did you get into fitness? Why did you start going to the gym? Was it to lose 10 pounds? Was it to feel more physically able? Was it to get a single muscle, like a tricep? If you've accomplished that goal and you're moving on to other things, like, cause it's easy to get focused on what other people are doing. Right. I feel like it's like the thing that happens in fitness. Sometimes it's like, you end up going, you started the gym to lose your 10 pounds because you believe that your 10 pounds will make a better life for you.

Well, if it does or doesn't is a whole different story. Uh, and all of a sudden, like you look back, you know, three years later, your back hurts and you were, you were doing, um, you know, um, you were pushing sleds or something, you know, and, uh, you ended up like you're pushing sleds five days a week. I'm not saying pushing sleds are bad, but now your back hurts. You're pushing sleds. The sled made you gain 10 more pounds when you let you, when you believe before that losing 10 more pounds is beneficial to you. What's the goal, you know? So maybe, maybe going down that rabbit hole a little bit and figuring out what that 10 losing 10 pounds might do for you. Um, maybe to help you, you know, run a marathon, if you ran the marathon, that was the goal, right? So whatever gets you to that goal of the marathon might be the best thing. Um, but a lot of people keep changing the goal. Uh, I don't, I don't mind that because sometimes it's, you clarify your goal, um, and what your goal will do for you, what that effect will do for you, how it'll make your life end up. Um, but sometimes people just change the goal to change the goal. And, uh, then I might not be the best thing. So in this situation, at least when I'm talking to her, I, I, I'm going to, I'm going to ask her a little bit more detailed about what she wants. Um, because I'm sure what nobody wants, I don't know, I've never met anybody who wants it is they don't want to go to the gym and feel like their back hurts. So if that's happening and that's the, that might not be the only way to get to your goal and get to the life that you wanted. And so let's figure out what life that you want and see if we can revamp this program. And maybe Olympic lifts is not your thing. Maybe it's what they do back in the eighties or seventies. They did a step aerobics. Maybe it's step aerobics. Maybe it's not going to the gym at all. I know mind blown, right? There's a lot of people who I feel like I've met a lot of people. I was out of town. I was in, I was in Italy at the time and this is nothing to just, I don't want to stereotype people in the country, but, um, I didn't see anyone who was just really jacked. Uh, I, I felt like I met a lot of people who were just, you know, more active walking around public transportation, you know, having friends over wine. They were just happy, you know, and walk, uh, like walking and playing with each other and so on. And so that's a pretty good life. At least I think, you know, and, uh, so they might benefit more from not doing gym work and just doing movement.

So, uh, maybe looking at your main goal as the only way to get there is, is the gym might not always be the right thing either. So, um, and I know this would go against the grain with what you might've heard with some, some of our podcasts about how, um, loading the body and lifting weights can provide, um, the, uh, recovery. Um, I guess I should reframe that and say that when we talk about our, I've talked about our five step recovery system a few times and I'll just line item it real quickly, just so I can reference this point. Number one is getting good diagnosis. Number two is finding a first aid that reduces your pain. Number three is a corrective exercise that helps kind of tackle things together as you kind of refining skills. I'm breathing tongue on tongue on the roof of mouth.

One was an example with this. Number four is some type of loaded activity or, you know, um, push, pull, carry, squat, and hinge like the Dan John type of model. And, uh, when I get to this, sometimes people think I'm talking about, Oh, you need to be able to deadlift like 200 pounds. No, you don't. Um, a deadlift is a movement. A squat is a movement. A pull is a movement. A push is a movement. A carries, I guess it's a movement. You carry groceries to and from the grocery store. You push to push yourself up off the ground after you've been playing with your dog. You bend over and deadlift up a, um, bag of dog food. Um, just some amount of load that you might explore is useful. You don't need to do a bunch and just has to be enough to simulate what your daily life is. If you never go on the floor because you, uh, I can't think of a good analogy here, but let's say you, um, um, never had to go on the floor and you'll, you'll never have to do it again. Then we might not have to do a press again. I mean, that's okay. The body will adapt to what you will throw at it later. And so even if I rehabbed you quote unquote to deadlifting 200 pounds, if you only lift a bag of dog food, um, as the heaviest thing, the rest of your life, which is 50, 60 pounds, your body is going to recycle all that energy. It took to the deadlift 200 pounds and it's going to render it useless and it's going to regress back into the, the top load is 60 pounds. The top competency is 60 pounds, which is okay. Okay. So when we're talking about this Olympic lifting type of model here, the weightlifting model, what is the point?

Are you going to be single arm bicep curling, you know, bags of dog food? No, you'll probably deadlift it off the floor. So is that bicep strength really even useful? Okay. I'll stop on that horse. I'll go into the last thing. Number five is go, go to a different time of day. Um, going into a different time of day, it might provide a couple of different things for you guys. Uh, number one is that you might find that, um, morning you feel better than in the afternoon. You can move more smoothly. Uh, as my interns like to say, you got salsa hips, you know, some people just got their salsa hips certain times of day. Um, when you have movement, uh, more available to you, you have less tendency of hurting things like your back and your hip and neck and shoulder and so on. And so, um, deadlifting maybe in the afternoon might be better for you or better in the morning. Uh, let's just say it's better in the morning because, or sorry, in the afternoon because your back hurts a lot in the morning. Uh, and you don't really have the potential to bend down, uh, to pick up a weight. Then maybe we do in the afternoon when your back feels like pretty much a hundred percent normal. And it's so weird that it only happens in the morning, right? So let's just do in the afternoon. You might find that actually changing something just like that is, uh, one of the easiest things you can do different time of day. Um, there was something that came out years ago, which was about, uh, it was a really small scale study. It was talking about, uh, rowing, like erg rowing, like concept twos and so on. And so it was talking about back injuries associated with rowing. And it said that more people who row in the morning have more back pain. And I would actually agree with that based upon what the rowing form that I've seen out of a lot of people, they just look like they're using their back a ton. And so in the morning time is a little bit more of a prime time for the disc to be hydrated, which sometimes people have more back pain from a disc in the morning. Not, not always. Um, but doing in the afternoon might be a little bit more of a time where the disc is kind of settled and squished down, which has less potential of, um, creating irritation and go, go different time of the day. You know, it's one of the simplest things you can do. Uh, I won't beat this one to death again, either, because I do think it's, it's extremely simple. If you feel good in the morning, go in the morning. If you feel good in the afternoon, go in the afternoon. If it feels bad in the morning, don't go in the morning.

Right. Uh, you might also find, um, you might find new friends too. Uh, I know that I worked out with a couple of buddies like every morning and I, I like good friends. Um, they, they left town. And so I could just went in the afternoon. They leave, they go in the afternoon. I'm going to be all new people. I'm going to have a good time drinking wine and, you know, hanging out and, you know, having a good life. So, uh, I hope this was helpful to everybody. And, uh, if you do want some help, like I mentioned before, we do have people who fly in. You've had a lot of great, uh, clients who have flying flown in, uh, ideally staying for, you know, a couple of sessions is helpful for us to, um, test out what things are best. Usually the first day we implement things.

The second day we see how did that go and how can we tinker with things? Um, so anyways, we are available. You can see us virtually or online, uh, or virtually or in person. It doesn't matter a ton, but there are a couple of things that are left off. Our, our contact is below. It is in the description to the podcast. Also, you can check out all of our free articles on p2sportscare.com. Uh, the YouTube channel is all free as well. There's probably 500 plus videos on there of things about low back pain, about hip, about piriformis, about sciatica, hip flexor, all those things that you wished you found a good video on. We got a bunch, a bunch of them. So go check it out. Just search, uh, performs place sports care on YouTube. And that's another good place to find the resources we have for everybody. But, um, you know, online programs, come see us in person. We would love to help you guys out if we can see you guys later. And thanks for subscribing to the podcast. Thanks for being part of the movement movement. See you later.