How a powerlifter came back from a fractured sacrum and crushed L5

This is session number 63 of the Performance Place Sports Care podcast. Fish, bonnie, hip, hip-hop, hip-hop anonymous. Welcome to the Performance Place Sports Care podcast, where you can learn about sports injury theory, rehab, diagnosis, and how to understand the doctor lingo you didn't understand at your appointment. And now, your host, Dr. Sebastian Gonzales. Hey, it's Dr. Sebastian Gonzales again with the Performance Place Sports Care podcast. Thanks for joining me. That intro was from Big Daddy. Big Daddy the movie with Adam Sandler. Gosh, I love Adam Sandler. You keep doing your thing, man.

You keep doing your thing. I don't know about the, what was that, the Terrible Six? No, the Ridiculous Six. Actually, the other day, I was kind of watching. I saw there was the, what was it, the Awesome Seven, the Hateful Eight, and the Ridiculous Six. And I finally got the whole point of the title. I think that was it anyway. So, anyways, great podcast today. I have two guests. And this is the first time I've ever had two people at the same time. But I think it was well worth the effort to get Skype running. And we are going to have this on YouTube as well, as long as I can capture the video.

So, if you have sustained an injury, and we're going to be talking about a back injury today, if you've sustained an injury, if you have a disc injury, if you have a vaset injury, if you have numbness down your leg, if you have a quote-unquote weak back, or if you're a doctor or clinician who has a patient like this, I strongly suggest you share it with them. The people I'm going to have on is Dr. Stuart McGill, as well as Brian Carroll. They're the authors of The Gift of Injury. And it's a story about, and I won't, I won't, I guess I won't bust it for you, but for the most part, Brian gets better.

But Brian had a very substantial injury, very substantial. And so, he's a competitive power lifter, very decorated, lifted a ton of weight, and probably put more weight upon his spine throughout his entire lifetime, so far, and he's only 36, than any of us ever will. So, he's really put his spine through the test, and he resulted in some fractures, some, so he had a sacral fracture, he had some vertebral fractures, and he had such intense pain that he describes in the book. It's just, it's, it's inspiring to see that he came back. He came back from something like that. And I don't want to, I don't want to discredit all how decorated that Brian's career was, because he didn't send me a bio here.

But I think the, I think the takeaway from this, or all of you, that you should have is that if Brian can come away from that injury, this injury, and lift more weight than he ever has, then I think any of you can recover. And Dr. Stuart McGill was the right guy to go to, I think, for that. So, Brian actually went from Florida up to Canada to see Dr. McGill, and then he brought his homework back, and he continued to do this while everyone was wondering what the heck he was doing. So, a lot of this stuff is commonplace now, or you'll see it more often, but you'll hear from Dr. McGill that, the recommendations that he made, and it is, it's just, it's just enlightening, I think.

So, if you have a patient, or if you are a person with a back injury, don't give up. This is something that can get better. It can get better. A lot of times, I guess I can't really give that disclaimer, but majority of the time, it can get better. And heck, like I said, if Brian can come over this, then I think a lot of you have a lot of hope. And I'll link to the book in the show notes. So, without any further ado, let's welcome on Dr. Stuart McGill and Brian Carroll. All right, everyone, can you please welcome on Stuart McGill and Brian Carroll. Can you guys say hey? Hey, good to be here, bud.

Hi, everyone. Hi, Seb. Hey, how's it going? I'm going to take a trick that I got from you, Stu. Oh, sorry, Dr. McGill. Can I call you Stu? Absolutely. All right, I like that. And Brian, what would you like to be called? How about we, Carol? How about we stretch it out and just call it call me Brian? What would it be proper? Do you say call me Brian? No, no, no, not call me Brian. Call me Brian. Okay. Well, gosh, you're going to put a stretch on my memory here. Okay, so I wanted to have you guys on mainly after the email a little bit. I thought that your guys' story together would be such an inspiration to actually, not just powerlifters, but everybody who has back injuries.

And Brian, your injury was so catastrophic. I thought it'd be great to have you share at least that first chapter of the book where I was like, I thought, holy crap, like this is a big deal. Like, can you go back there and kind of share what you were thinking when you saw that surge in that time? Yeah, it was kind of a big deal. And in some ways, it was a bigger deal than I knew at the time. I experienced some back pain here and there over the years, and it progressively got worse. It all started in 2009 when I fell on an obstacle course, and I didn't know it, but I fractured my sacrum. And I continued to lift, get titles, win meets, hit records.

But over time, I started to notice myself slowing down quite a bit, having more flare-ups, having more time where my back would flat-out hurt and not just be uncomfortable. And finally, it came to the point where I was regressing my lift so much. And to give context, two months after I fell that time, I squatted my first 1,100-pound squat in competition and my first 800-pound deadlift in competition, which gave me the number one total in the world and in my weight class in America and in the world overall. So I was on top of the game for a long time, but over the next couple of years, I started to notice my lifts regress.

And finally, two years later, in 2011, I squatted the biggest squat ever by anyone under 300 pounds with an 1185 all-time world record squat. I could squat, and that marked the turning point for the worse of my back really starting to unravel on me. I felt my back go during the lift, even though I finished the lift. I competed. The rest of the meet still did well. Finished in the top three in the biggest meet in the world at the time. I actually out-totaled, or I beat a lot of good lifters, including Donnie Thompson at that meet. It was his last meet where he totaled 3,000 pounds, actually. So there's a lot of really good superstars lifting that meet.

But that was the turning point for the worse, where my back started to really hurt me, and I started limping around through meets. And finally, I started going to doctors to pursue a cure. You know, I had chiropractors. I had massage therapists that I would see. And after a while, I started to realize that it really wasn't just some muscular issues or some little imbalances or being a little beat up. I had some real stuff going on. So fast forward a couple of MRIs later, a couple of orthopedic surgeons, and then finally a neurosurgeon. They all told me either that I was done, that I would have a fusion no matter what, and that they wouldn't even work on with me unless I promised to quit lifting.

And as we all know here, as we're talking and discussing the back pain and back issues, we know that most patients that go to see a doctor are not getting proper care. They have 10 or 15 minutes where they get to talk, they look at a chart, they might look at your MRI, they might know what they're looking at, they might not. And in my case, they were just trying to tell me to quit lifting like that was some kind of long-term fix. And so I wasn't going to accept that. I wasn't going to accept that, okay, we're going to work on you. We don't have a cure for you, but we're going to do the only thing we know how to do, and that's do surgery on you.

By the way, you're still done lifting. So a friend referred me to Dr. McGill, and really the rest is history. I went up and saw him in 2013 in May, and we met, we hit it off, and McGill actually revealed quite a few things that I had no idea was going on with my back, and that was the fractured sacrum and the crushed L5 that all the doctors, all the radiologists missed during all these disappointments that I had. So, I mean, Stu can kind of elaborate a little bit from there as far as the way I got there and what was going on with my spine, but it was definitely more serious than even they portrayed to me.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I thought Stu. So, did you guys redo an MRI when you got there, or is it just, they just missed that? They flat out missed it. I brought Stu the same MRI that everyone else saw. Okay, and Stu, when he was getting there, I know you like to watch people get out of the car. What was he looking like? He came to the university clinic, so I did not see him get out of the car. But we had a meeting in my university office, and then we walked down to the laboratory slash clinic, and of course I'm watching him walk and navigate doors and getting a rough idea of what's going on. But I think what was more interesting was just the patterns of movement, so obviously corrupted by pain.

As you know, pain inhibits certain muscles and patterns, and it facilitates others. And here was, you know, I see these super athletes. Brian was another one, just corrupted and really so down and really disgusted with himself, not knowing how to get out of this pain. And we had a conversation. I did a, I didn't really need to do all that much provocative testing because the signs were so overt. But I think, I said, Brian, I hope I can get you out of pain, no guarantees, but here's what I think you need to do. And, but Brian said a very curious thing at that point. He says, yeah, okay, but I want the next world record.

And, uh, if you saw the state he was in at the time, you'd think that was rather, uh, uh, interesting. Uh, I, I said, uh, correct me if I'm wrong here, Brian, but it was something along the lines of, well, I'll tell you what, if you were my son, uh, I would say put all your effort into getting out of pain, but training to get out of pain is very different from training for performance. It's always a two stage effort. So, uh, we never mixed the two. I said, uh, when you, and if you get out of pain, I want you to fly back with your wife. We're going to go all go out to dinner with my wife and have a conversation about whether you really enjoy being pain-free now and are satisfied with that, or you really want to risk it all and, and go for the next record.

But you know what most, most super athletes say. I knew what the answer was going to be. So when you have those conversations with people and Brian included, are you, you're probably not surprised by, you're not surprised by them wanting to compete again, but I mean, what do you, what do you really want for them? Like, what did you want Brian to say? My attitude is, I never want anything. Uh, my attitude, uh, is always, can I give the person the very best scientific evidence, uh, and test them and tune that evidence to them, give them the best evidence and they have to make their own decision.

I'm, I'm not one to want something from an athlete. It's, it's, I will try and, and guide them, but ultimately they make the decision. Yeah. So you went through an educational process then it sounds like. I, I hope I gave you the scientific facts, Brian. And, uh, you know, it's interesting. Um, so many people, you know, they've been told, oh, it's in your head or, or you're going to have pain or all of this nonsense. And most people are mature enough. And they say, you know, thank you for not treating me like a five-year-old. That's the first time someone has given me the straight goods. They've given me a very precise diagnosis and description of the pain.

And now I am guided very precisely what I must not do to allow the pain to desensitize. Then I also know what I need to do to build a foundation that's going to allow me ultimately to, to move pain free. And, uh, it's, it, you know, pain isn't normal. It's, it's not, uh, non-specific. It's very specific. So, uh, it's a matter of, uh, yes, it is education and that education is different for everybody based very specifically on that precise discovery of their pain mechanism. Okay. I was curious cause, um, I think the great thing about the book that I felt was it was the back and forth and kind of learning from each other.

And I, I know that at least from a clinical perspective down here is that it's a challenge to get the same lingo as, as the patient or vice versa. So I guess my question is now is Brian, what was your experience with learning all of it? Stu knows how long did it take? Was it challenging and so on? Um, it, it was a lot of stuff that I knew already, but I've been corrupted by bad movement patterns over time. Um, the pain had kind of overtaken me in some ways where I just accepted that I was going to be in pain. So it really didn't matter how I moved. So, um, it wasn't so much the lingo or anything that I had to catch up on because I have a background with a pretty deep understanding of anatomy and physiology being a massage therapist for 10 years in the past.

So I got that, but a lot of the things were obvious that I was missing and that was moving well and not staying in a state or position that caused my pain. I was just stubbing my toe over and over and, uh, not changing my gate and expecting my toe to heal up. In other words. Yeah. I know that you guys, uh, in the book, you went through a little bit of cueing. Um, and I saw there's a section on lifters wedge. Can you guys, uh, actually, why don't we have, uh, Brian, once you go into lifters wedge first, as you understand it, then we'll take, get Stu's take. Um, so the lifters wedge is the foundation of pretty much every lift, especially the power lifts.

Um, I even teach it. And when I'm showing someone, uh, how to properly bend over row, it's locking the back end with the lats. It's keeping a neutral spine, nice and flat and stacked. And it's, um, if you're doing a lift that causes you to be upright, whether it's a squat or a deadlift, you're rooting into the floor, you're camming, you're locking in head to toe, and, uh, there's no room for micro movement. So if you're squatting, you're bending the bar white knuckles with your hands, you're pulling your lats down, you're keeping your chest up. Your chin is neutral. And the same thing in the, in the bottom position of the deadlift, when you're getting ready to drive your heels to the floor, it's that safe, strong starting position that everyone should be in and should take their time to dial in and perfect.

No matter if they're trying to lift a hundred pounds or a thousand pounds and you have to set your wedge, no matter how much weight you're lifting or how much of a percentage it is of your best lift. You have to treat every weight, the same and creating the wedge on every lift is key. Yeah. So, so now that you're, I mean, you're not, you're not competing as much now, right? I have not competed since the Arnold where I won that for the third time and two times post-injury. And of course, uh, going back to the, the lifters web, just the anti shrug and the rhomboid squeeze and all that stuff. But I wanted to give it to you and, and, and, and the quickest, easiest way possible.

Oh, no, no worries. I'm going to, I'm actually rounding back to it again. So you can get more chances. Congrats, by the way. That's, that's amazing. Your accomplishment. Yeah. Thank you. I have no plans as of right now to compete. Um, I've had my best years of competing post-injury actually. And, uh, all my best numbers since by over a hundred pounds, but I guess we can get to that a little bit later as the story kind of progresses of Stu and I putting this book together, but, uh, however you want to proceed. Yeah. Um, okay. So then we'll, let's go back to then. Cause I'm curious with the way that when I'm reading, when I was reading this book, I was, I was trying to actually slip into the, the, the patient or the athlete or the person that might not know this stuff quite as well.

Um, and now that you're not, uh, competing as much, I'm guessing you're training more with people and are you, are you queuing them differently? Are you like, how many people use the lifters wedges properly? How many people are moving well that you see? All my lifters utilize it. I won't coach them unless they do do the lifts a proper way. And that's not one size fits all, but there are ways to customize our cues and the way we teach the lifts to, to provide a safe and effective lifting style. Now, with that said, a lot of people do not utilize the lifters waves. They lift terribly. Um, they may get a little bit of a boost by, uh, rounding their back when they're deadlifting or ripping it off the floor.

But we know through the science and practical experience that that is not, that's not a, um, a long-term success, uh, path. We know that, um, you might be able to get away with it for a little while, but over time it will catch up with you. And, uh, that's why you don't see people like myself that have been around for 20 years. You see people pop up and do well for four or five years, which pretty much anyone can do, but legends are made, uh, with decades, not just a matter of a couple of years being successful. So you want to do it in a way that you can do it for a long period of time. And hell, if you can end up, um, not being crippled, that's a plus too.

And proper lifting form will help you lift more weight and keep you more resilient. So Stu, when, when he came in and I was reading that, that initial soap note and everything, and, and you're watching how he was moving weights around, uh, can you elaborate on that, on that day one? And you guys have videos on it, right? Actually, I think I saw them on YouTube. Yes. Well, uh, if you're, if you're going back to that previous question and the lifters wedge, uh, I, I played, uh, a few little tricks on Brian. I put a bare bar, uh, up on blocks and, uh, got him to pull it. And, uh, right away he revealed what, uh, he had lost.

Uh, um, he, he didn't respect the load at all. He, he, he just lifted it up. And, um, anyway, that was lesson number one, getting on and off the toilet had to be perfect. Getting in and out of the car had to be perfect. Uh, and I wanted him to set the wedge and create that muscle memory, that mindful connection with his body once again, to start building a pain-free, uh, training and movement capacity. Um, his strategic stiffness was, uh, lost. Uh, I wanted a maximum grip on that bar, even though it was a, you know, a bare, uh, uh, 45 pound, uh, uh, lifting bar. And when he put the weight down, he put the weight down by a strategy of relaxing his body rather than maintaining that strategic stiffness, allowing the weight to be lowered through his, uh, hips and knees.

And he took it all into his back. And, and these are patterns that you see in people again, who've been corrupted by injury. And it just shows how powerful those corruptions can be when we have such a super athlete like Brian, uh, but the pain had done this to him. So, you know, it wasn't a matter of me starting from scratch. Uh, obviously he's highly coachable and it was just a matter of mentioning to them. And, um, if I can say one other thing and, and when I think back over my career, uh, who surprised me in that they didn't recover and who surprised me in that they did recover because I thought they were, uh, almost, uh, beyond recovery.

It was the ones who had the professionalism to let their ego go. Um, the ones who held onto their ego. No, I've done it this way before. I'm going to keep doing it. Well, um, that's sort of what got them to the current state. So if I can use Brian's example, um, he, he listened, he thought about what I, uh, was suggesting, but very, uh, in a very considered way. Uh, and then he just built it all up, um, as a real world pro, um, even though it was rather simple stuff. So I don't know if that is, uh, the way you saw it, Brian, but, uh, I went into the session, um, you know, kind of broken mentally and physically, um, you know, it wasn't in a good spot at all.

So I went in there and I tried something totally different. I totally gave all, I gave the reins to Stu 100%. And like he said earlier, I absorbed everything that he told me. I went in there as a total beginner. And one thing I did not back off was, uh, off of was the fact that I still had some things that were undone in powerlifting that I wanted to do. Hits of negotiation in chapter in section one, where Stu says, well, if you were my son, I would urge you to retire. And here's what could possibly happen. If that sacrum doesn't heal this, this, and this can happen. And that's really, really bad.

Brian, you're 30 something years old. You got to think about your next 30 years. Do you want to live in this kind of pain and potentially, uh, some form of disabled? So I said, okay, you know, I understand the severity of this and I respect what you do. Um, you say you can get me out of pain. And then that's when he said, you know, you get out of pain, you can come back and we can discuss your next step. So I followed everything to the T leaving. Uh, no, I didn't skip out on anything. I didn't lie about anything. I was totally honest to the plan. And, uh, before I left the office that day, um, Stu said, get out of pain, you come back and who knows, maybe you're right.

Maybe you rebuild this athleticism and who knows, maybe end up writing a book about it. And here we are four and a half years later. Yeah. Right. Um, you just add a little bit to that. People need to see the book and his original MR. He'd split his sacrum front to back. L5 was heavily crushed top down and bottom up. The disc above and below were, uh, just not present. And it's a testament to how the body can heal. We, uh, performed a, uh, very experimental, uh, form of, uh, exercise progression called bone. Well, I called it bone callusing. And, uh, when you see the MR of Brian of just two years ago, was that a year ago, Brian, that bone all filled in and he gained his resilience back again.

So, um, it, it, it's a very impressive before and after. And I had a conversation with a medical colleague of mine last night and, you know, we, he specializes with super athletes as well. And, uh, we don't always take the pictures and keep them the very first time we see the athletes. So not too many of us are really good at documenting change, but anyway, we, we, we, we, we, I have quite a library of it, but, uh, Brian was a good one. And the book shows the before and after I'm guessing you saw his dedication. You thought I better keep this MR because it's, it's going to be relevant later. No, I didn't actually.

No, I, I, my, my brain just, it just gets locked in on, am I missing something? Are these the pain triggers? Let's desensitize them. What's the most clever program we can come up to do that. And then when it's time to build them all back up again, what does he need to win the worlds and write all that out and then go and pick the most logical exercise progression exercises are only tools to meet the goals. And then periodize it, put it on a schedule, put it in the, in, into proper rest because that's when the body adapts. And this was really a story of adaptation, adapting a broken back, literally broken back to bear, uh, that kind of load.

And so, you know, we considered mobility, stability, uh, and all the rest of it. And I, I must say, don't give me the credit for this. At this point, Brian had already done it. He'd been there before. He knew how to do it. And all I was really, I think was only a sounding board. Brian really took over at that point and used all of his, uh, years of expertise. Yeah, I'm, I'm actually, uh, the thing that I really liked about what Brian did was I feel like what a lot of people won't do is he just got up and went and found the person that was going to be the best and saw their opinion and did the work.

And I don't, I don't hear a lot of people doing that. I mean, granted, uh, maybe they, maybe they have different goals, but I mean, I really like that you went all the way to Canada to do this, you know, that's what needs to be done if you want to get the work done. Right. Yeah. You know, a lot of people talk about how bad they want something and they'll write nice little sweet unicorn quotes on their Instagram and Facebook and they'll, they'll wear the costume of being tough and resilient and, um, that they'll battle adversity and conquer it. But the proof's in the pudding. Most people won't even do the bare minimum to ensure that they're going to have a long lasting career or whatever their endeavor may be.

And they quit at the first sign of any kind of trouble. And instead of just talking about it, I just get stuff, stuff done. And no, this wasn't an easy path, but you know, the tough people and the people that are going to be around and get it done. The rest make excuses. So if it meant a thousand, you know, 1200 miles to go see Stu, then that's what I was going to do. If it meant him telling me, you know, no training for six months and you're going to, you know, do, do some, uh, some exercises that aren't that flattering compared to what you're doing before, then so be it. You tell me what to do.

It's done. And we'll go from there. I'll put the work in and I'll be back. I think it's amazing. And I heard on a podcast earlier about this, the same book, um, that you, you had a linear progression of improvement. It wasn't even undulating, right? Like you had no flare ups whatsoever. Yeah, that's, that's amazing. And so Stu, did you expect that type of progression or do you expect him to have some type of flare up here and there? Um, I, I, I don't know really how to, uh, answer that. Um, yeah, ideally I don't want to flare up. I have some patients who, from when they leave their time with me, they never have another flare up.

They have understood very precisely their pain triggers and those pain triggers didn't change. And they were able to become very savvy, very quickly manage them. And they never have another flare up. But sometimes, uh, the biology of the pain mechanism will change and evolve as the person evolves and they desensitize, another trigger will emerge. So it really is a personal thing. And, uh, you know, we have little flare ups and we deal with them. Um, sometimes we, we may have to reassess if a new one emerges, but, uh, that wasn't the case in Brian's example. Well, Brian, how long did it actually take you to start feeling like you can actually not live, but live?

Um, it was a matter of a couple hours and it sounds too good to be true, but I was loading myself into so much pain. It was like I was punishing myself that as soon as I was aware of this, we've talked about this before. It was like a, literally a weight had been lifting off my spine and that was my own loading being 285 pounds or whatever I was at the time approximately. And once I started to move well and not punish my body 24 seven within hours and then into the first week, I felt 50% better. If not more than that, just, just from moving better and moving like an athlete, um, the, my pain triggers started to become desensitized.

Okay. Let me give you an example. So if I asked you to hold a pound of water outstretched in your hand in front of you with your elbow at 90 degrees, your bicep would be screaming by tonight. Uh, if I asked you to put down the pound of butter within a few hours, you will be, uh, probably pain free. So as soon as you can start organizing a body to take those chronic crushers and stresses out, um, you know, people say, Oh, posture doesn't matter. Are you kidding? You know, I, I had an athlete last week who had extensor driven lifting pain. They were standing there with their knees locked back in extension.

And I said, just relax your knees. All of a sudden a slight tilt of the pelvis and their spine got out of that chronic default extension. And she's, Oh, my back pain's gone. And all I did was say, soften your knees a little bit, you know? So it's, Oh, I just, I think the biggest thing here is, is I'm curious why you picked a pound of butter. I've never even seen a pound of butter. You know what? I'm going to tell you something, Brian, I was down at Brian's place the last time and we were, uh, doing whatever we were doing during the day. And, uh, his, his wife, Ria, who's, who's just fabulous. She brought home, uh, apple pie from Costco, you know, those King size apple pies.

And Brian said, Oh, you want a slice of pie? And I said, well, you know, I'm just a skinny old man now. And I said, okay, I'll just have a sliver of pie. And he, he cut me a piece. And I said, no, no, no. A third of that. So I ate my little sliver. He ate the rest anyway. So I come down for breakfast the next morning. Remember, this is a King size Costco pie. And I said, Oh, I'll have a slice of pie. And he looks at me. He's got this great big Cheshire cat grin. He ate the whole damn thing. He ate the whole pie. So I think he went to, from. To 80, 90. Anyway, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to jump ahead on that nutritional part of the whole book, but it sounds like that we weren't in the cutting phase there.

No, I just finished the competition actually. And that was a little bit of a reward time, but that is a great recipe for heart disease. You got simple carbs and saturated fat, man. It's perfect, man. Actually, I've always thought this before. Like, so like to stop people from eating, like, let's just say like a tub of ice cream, right? At what point is a diminishing return? Like, could you just get the taste in your mouth and spit it out? I mean, is it in the, so I guess we should just do this rest of the podcast about how you maneuvered the entire pie. What went through your mind when you ate that entire pie?

It was good. And I just wanted more until it was gone. So at the end of the pie, did you think, ah, there's nothing less left in life? I thought that it was a big mistake. Okay, cool. I'm sorry, Brian. And that's, I didn't mean to put that out to the world, but we do have a good time. So I hope you get, no, I can say that's what, that's what you need. We had some, we had some great ribeyes. We had some corn on the cob. We had some Brussels sprouts with some coconut oil and cashews mixed together. It was awesome. And then of course we had some blue bell ice cream on top of the apple pie, but it was a good night.

Oh man. So I think Stu really deflected away. He pulled the red herring. He threw the pie on you, but he didn't answer that one pound of butter. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He should have said the one pound apple pie. Yeah. Right. I went out in the woods today and I picked some shaggy main mushrooms and I came home and I put a big whack of butter in the fry pan, some garlic, and I fried up those mushrooms and ate them on an onion loaf. Wait, are you an explorer scout? I don't think I ever asked this. Are you an Eagle scout or a ranger or something of that nature? Eating mushrooms sounds dangerous to me.

Oh, well, yeah. Well, I mean, we had a conference here this weekend and people flew in from all over the world to do a master assessment course and they had no idea where I lived. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a little out there. Are you, are you, you have, do you have a tree house? You probably have a tree house, don't you? I've got a few. Yeah. Okay. Well, so I'll, I'll bring us back to the story then. So, uh, I know that, uh, Brian did 10 months of, of rehab and actually we should, I guess we should focus on what was that rehab? Um, I guess we don't have to get the brass tacks of it, but what was the general concept?

Um, whoever wants it, uh, let's take, let's take Stu. Cause Brian's going to answer the, the Arnold question. So, well, uh, it began with, uh, really addressing the movement. So Brian showed up, he was heavily compression intolerant and heavy bending intolerant, but interestingly enough, he got his compression tolerance quite quickly when he stopped bending. So that was the, uh, movement phase of it all. But then we had some really damaged tissue to deal with. So, uh, we, we did what, what I, I admitted to him was, uh, an experiment and it was experimental bone callusing. I'd done this a couple of times before and, uh, I told him this is, this is what I know.

And, and here's the best way I know how to, uh, do it. If you fracture a long bone, uh, the, the, uh, at the fracture site, a callus forms over the fracture and it's actually stronger at the site of the callus and the break than the, the native bone. Well, um, bone is a piezoelectric crystal. So, uh, do you know, when you're a kid and you go outside, you find some quartz crystal at night and you rub it with another quartz, lightning flashes through the quartz crystal. So that's a property of piezoelectricity. When you stress the crystal, it creates an electronic charge. So bone, when you bend it, it creates an electric charge at the site of highest stress.

That charge sucks in charged ions like magnesium and calcium, which is the building. And so in Brian's case, we tried to build the electric charge on the bone and then you let it stay and gaffled for four or five days. And then you repeat the cycle. So you do that for a long time, building and laying down bone. Um, when, when, when, uh, uh, uh, uh, a grand old man or a grand old woman of power lifting goes and has some radiology work done. The radiologist will, will write in the report. Oh, this person has sclerotic end plates, sclerotic bones. And, uh, you know, it's comical because if they ever saw the person, they'd realize that you cannot be a successful strength athlete without laying down heavy sclerotic bone.

So the, the trick of what happens is there's a tipping point when you load bone, micro fracturing occurs and, um, the, the, the, the successful lifters allow time to lay down bony scaffolds over those tiny little micro fractures. And that's how you build sclerotic, heavy, dense, load bearing spines. Um, the, the greedy trainers and the nonsense that I see going on in gyms now, you know, with trainers taking a stay at home mom and inside a year, they've got her lifting her, her dead lifting her body weight or twice her body weight or not realizing that it takes a long time to build through the process of, of adaptation to micro fracturing that sclerotic bone.

But anyway, getting back to Brian's case, that was, uh, the, the, the, the short explanation of, of the next task, which was to rebuild his tissues to, uh, load bear. And then, uh, all the time perfecting, uh, the basic movement patterns. And, uh, I, I guess that's really it. Um, uh, uh, inside those patterns was supreme spine stability, uh, both, uh, three aspects of that, uh, actually, because the discs were, were flattened at L4 and L5, the joints had a lot of micro movements to them and they were triggering pain. So to teach him how to brace, uh, both a pec lat strategy and an abdominal strategy, uh, even in situations where he was just moving, um, now he wasn't bracing all the time.

This was the strategy of it though, to engineer out, stiffen out those micro movements and settle down that pain. Then we had to build a guy wire system around his core to support the spine, um, and allow it to bear more load, uh, and, uh, the, um, uh, other bit was to create proximal stiffness or a core of iron so that full power developed by his hips was moving a spine of iron rather than a spine that bent and losing the injury and really creating stress concentrations that would get him into trouble again, because I, I don't know if you've ever been to a serious world-class powerlifting meets, uh, but when you're under a thousand pounds, if you make a one millimeter mistake in that line of drive and your spine starts to bend a little bit, you're past the point of no return.

So realizing all of this to build that supreme spine stability. So we knew what we had to do. We knew the sport well enough and, and how to build strategically, but those were the three elements that were primary anyway, and in the rehab program. Okay. Um, so just to retract on a, on a couple of those, just, we, we glazed by, I think some good concepts there just to be clear with the bone callusine for people listening, there was nothing invasive. It was just a strategic loading. Correct. Okay. How long would it take then you give the example of say the lady deadlifting their own body weight, how long should that bone callusine be for that amount of say, say from couch to, uh, body weight deadlift responsibly?

Well, I, I, I don't know, but it takes a hell of a lot longer than, than the year or more insanely a few months as some trainers are doing it. Okay. I thought, um, and I think, I think it's all I got on that. Um, okay. So Brian, you went over to the Arnold eight months or 10 months later. Can you tell us about that? Yeah. So I, uh, I became pain free almost immediately in May of 2013. I moved really well the whole time. I didn't deviate. I got through stage one, which was stabilizing, getting rid of the pain, walking two to three times a day, every day with arms freely, uh, freely swinging phase two worked on fine tuning a few things as well as keeping everything from a stage one in core work every day, some goblet squats, some kettlebell work, um, a little bit of rack and block pulls.

So, uh, once I was pain free for a few months, we started slowly getting, getting into a, uh, a point where we were going to add in some more of the power lifting type movements. And that was around the time where I went up to see Stu again. And, uh, we went up there, he, he, we went over a couple of things. He saw how much I progressed and how good I looked physically and how stiff I was and how well I moved just doing everything from a heavy, heavily loaded bar to actually putting plates on the bar. He saw that I had truly changed. So we worked together a game plan and the Arnold was about six months from then.

Everything went according to plan going up into the meet, had no setbacks, uh, all the lifts had come back except for my deadlift wasn't quite a hundred percent. And, uh, I pretty much, I rushed the final little bit of the comeback and I didn't end up dead lifting, even though I had to meet pretty much one. I got a little bit of a flare up from some extension on the bench, which I'd never had. And, uh, so that made us kind of go back to the drawing board and I didn't re-hurt myself because that stopped right when I started feeling some sensitivity and, uh, that led to actually a lot more learning and a lot more insight on my part.

Yeah. And actually I was telling a friend about that incident that you had just the other day and just recapping on the fact that you had the awareness to stop knowing that you were going to win. I think we need more of that. And I don't know what point during your rehab did you like, what triggered to realize you're not just unleashing the beast and realizing there's life on the other side of power lifting. Uh, can you go into that mindset change at all? Or yeah, I learned so much in the 10 months prior that number one, I wasn't going to do anything stupid because I know how bad that my, my injury history was number two, a lot more people were watching me.

I wasn't just a power lifter anymore. I was a content source and I was a leader. So as I've been preaching all these things, what kind of person and leader am I, if I'm not practicing what I preach without talking about it, right? You, everyone talks about stuff. It's another thing to do it. So I made sure that I've, I've followed what I've been telling everyone else that they should be doing. And, you know, in my, in my time of learning over the last year and I shut it down and no questions asked and, uh, you know, I knew I made the right decision at the time, even though it was tough. It was a blow to my ego.

Of course you had people saying, well, I thought you were healed. I thought you're injury free. I thought you fixed it. I just harnessed all that into being more motivated and more focused to getting back to where I wanted to go. And it made me take a fine tooth, a fine tooth comb over some things that I'd overlooked. And then I came back with a plan with a stew and we hashed it out and we really made some progress over the next six months. Nice. Before we get into that part, you mentioned earlier, you said you went back and you, you noticed how much stiffness you had. And the reason I'm just highlighting that is because I'm sure that you had people over the past tell you to stretch your spine or foam roll or do all so that.

So are there certain things that were not part of your program that you, that people questioned maybe, or that makes sense for people wondering why I wasn't doing stretching and stuff from my lower back. Well, I guess she was probably laughing because I'm like, I'm leaving a question here, but I think you, I want to focus on, I want to focus on, so you're focusing on stiffness. I know we've said it throughout, but I want to make sure that everyone realizes that your main goal was stiffness of the torso, right? It wasn't looseness. Right. So we build stiffness and, and, and Stu's quote, and I don't want to get it wrong.

Proximal stiffness leads to distal mobility. So we wanted, we wanted my hips to move freely, but not my torso, not my spine. So we created the stiffness where it needed to be to get rid of the energy leakages and micro movements. And then when it was time, we fine tuned the hip mobility to make sure I did a deep squat with a perfectly neutral spine and I got into the lifter's wedge position and on the deadlift with a perfectly neutral spine. So the whole comeback process did not entail any lower back foam rolling or any kind of stretching or lower back mobility work whatsoever. The only mobility work that was performed was ball and socket when necessary.

Stu, can you elaborate on your thoughts on that? I know you love this topic. Well, uh, you know, in the assessment, he was highly triggered by joint micro movements. And, you know, I'll, I'll use an example of a knee. Say you tear knee ligaments, the joint becomes lax and painful. So the clinician performs a drawer test, which is a sheer movement across the joint. Now, a normal stable functioning knee doesn't have much sheer joint, sheer movement. Um, but, uh, unstable joints do. So it's exactly the same in a spine. When you let a little air out of your car tire, the tire bulges and now the car tire is sloppy on the road.

If you're going to win at Indy, you've got to have perfect tire pressure. So it's exactly the same, uh, analogy with the spine. When a disc has been very damaged and the joint is now loose, that pain immediately shuts down strength. So if you're going to load it and build strength, you've got to engineer out the micro movements. Otherwise you're just inhibited. You'll, you'll never, the motor cortex will just not blast that a hundred percent neural drive that's required. So you have to build supreme stability when you're getting into supreme load bearing. Uh, there, there's no question. So, uh, uh, we measured it and we knew he was, uh, that was one of his pain triggers.

And with every, it's just a one-to-one match. What are the pain triggers? All right. Now pull out the tool that best addresses it and mitigates it. And if you foam roll back pain that has a trigger from joint micro movements, you will stay in pain and stay load intolerant, but measure it and learn how to do it. Well, uh, document it. And now is that all back pain? No, but that's certainly the cat. One of the pain triggers that Brian had. Okay. Um, Brian, anything very common among, uh, power lifters to, to foam, to foam roll or micro movement. Oh, no, to, to, to damage a disc so that micro movements are created.

Um, you know, you know, I heard that brings up something I heard a couple months back. Uh, someone, someone that I know is trying to be a power lifter. And so we're lifting in his garage and his form wasn't, it wasn't perfect. And I said, look, we got a correct X, Y, and Z. And he's, he said, no, he's like in power lifting, you're supposed to have at least one good injury. You just get injuries. And I said, no. And he's like, yeah, look on Instagram, look at all these dudes that have these injuries and they come back and that's just what it is. They push their body. So I think, I think Brian wants to chime in on this one.

Is it necessary? Is that a badge of honor? No, it's not a badge of honor. It's, it's what retires people is what makes them old or hurt and, and round it over. That's not what you want. You know, we've talked about the gift of injury and how it's for, uh, you know, the, the injured street, the back injured strength athlete, but it's not just for the back injured strength athlete. What better way to go through your power lifting career by learning before you have to learn the hard way. The knowledge we are putting in this book will help you circumvent all the stuff that I went through. That is not a badge of honor.

Yes. A lot of hard won lessons came from this, but honestly, I would rather not have went through all I did because it takes a toll now. And now it's also selfish to say that being injured is cool because why it affects everyone around you, especially if you have a family, you have a wife, girlfriend, husband, boyfriend, when you're injured, you're not at a hundred percent mentally either. You're distracted. You're in pain, especially nerve pain from a back injury. Like Stu said, you don't just overpower that. Like you might have shoulder or tricep or even a knee, you don't just blast through it.

You get shut down and it causes you a lot of pain and everything snowballs good momentum, bad momentum. So, no, it's ridiculous to say that. And it's really uneducated and uninformed to say that, you know, you get injured, you just come back because tell that to Bo Jackson, you just get injured and come back. Everything's good. Yeah. Poor Bo. He did. I, I do like his commercial though, or all of it, all of his ads. Bo had some good ads. You should watch his 30 on 30. If you haven't watched it on ESPN, it's really good. I haven't yet. I actually, someone had just told me about it, so I was going to be looking.

So when you actually came back completely and then you decided to retire, can you, can you go in on that and tell me what Stu was wearing when he showed up at that meet? So, so what's your question again? You mentioned the meet and then retirement, which one do you want me to address? Let's, let's go with the meet first. Tell me about the meet, how you felt lifting. And then when Stu strolled in with, I, I've known it, I noticed your shorts in, in this book there, that camo I'm colorblind, but I think they're blue camel blue. Was he wearing camel blue shorts? I can't confirm if he was wearing shorts.

It was cold then. I don't think maybe he was, he is from up North. I'm not. So anyway, the, the meet was, had a lot of pressure on me. I just started really getting on the scene as far as content and not just being a power lifter. So not only were more people following me, they followed my 14 comeback where I didn't finish. So I worked hard for, you know, the whole year to perfect things. I built, I built more, more load tolerance. I built more resilience and I had more time to instill the confidence back into myself that I had prior to injury. And, uh, so I'd already won the arm once in 2012, 13, I was hurt 14, I had to pull out.

So it was redemption time. So I had a lot of pressure on me and, uh, Stu was, uh, in Ohio visiting his son, Cincinnati and Cincinnati that are going to see him in Cincinnati that weekend. So it worked out perfect. And he came and, uh, you know, it was just one of those things that I just knew I was going to execute. I was too prepared. I'd been through too much and nothing was going to stop me. Yeah. It, um, how long did you lift after that? Um, so that was the 2015 Arnold that we documented in the book and section three, but, um, I've won, uh, that made a couple of times since then. And a couple other major meets I've competed probably seven or eight times and improved each time since then.

Yeah. Did have you, I haven't been to a power power lifting meet. Did you get a chance to videotape those at all? Oh yeah. They're all over my YouTube, all over Instagram. I got, I got a bunch of videos, um, all my records and best totals and such. So, so with assessing that form on that, was your form better with that than it was prior to injury in your opinion? Much tighter, much more locked in. Everything was, uh, was from, from head to toe was, was focused on the lift, which before it wasn't quite there. I was a little casual, even with, you know, I'd squatted 1185 before my, you know, before my fall from grace, if you will.

And I, I'd squatted over a thousand pounds 53 times in my, in my lifting career, the most out of any lifter, regardless of their body weight or competition or anywhere in the world. Uh, so, you know, I would even take those weights casual at times and going forward. And since I've never taken a weight casual, whether it'd be 1150 that I've taken since or at 135 on the, uh, on the bar warming up. But let me say one last thing. You got to keep in mind when you see the before and after MRI, this wasn't someone that just sat on the couch, did core work and then walk the dog three times a week. This is someone that took 50 more squats between the gym and competition over a thousand pounds, ranging up to 1150 during this time when the back remodeled.

So it wasn't that I wasn't stressing it. I was putting, uh, as much load as ever on the spine and it still healed this much in four years. Yeah. So if you were going to give some inspiration to people who are even non lifters, like, like, do you believe the majority of people can get over their back injury or I don't want to say get over it sounds like a mental thing, but, um, do you think they can recover? Yes. Getting with the right person, you know, uh, having the insight like back mechanic, ultimate back fitness and performance and not gift of injury. You can learn how to fix your own back within reason.

There's many times and Stu, Stu will tell you till he's blue in the face that most of the time or a lot of the time people are causing their own pain or perpetuating their, their pain by picking the scab. But a lot of people just don't know better. They think I'm hurt. I got to get physical therapy, then shots, then back surgery. That's what happens when you hurt your back. And then eventually everyone has back pain and there's nothing you can do about it. So man, you can beat back pain. And I'm, I'm a great example of that. MRI isn't, isn't worth a thousand words. I don't know what it is. Yeah.

Oh, I guess I should ask if, if I'm going to do a video on this, can I, can I take a snapshot of those two MRI, two MRIs and put them on there? Is that, I don't, I don't have to, it's okay. Yeah. I'm going to say not, you can say they're in the book, but no, I, I personally, I'd rather not. Okay. It's, uh, I don't want to make this into a circus. Okay. Um, there will be links to the book by the way and everything like that. Um, I, I, I, I lost my train of thought now. Uh, Stu, what would you like to add to, uh, people in Brian's condition or not quite as bad about their ability to recover from a back injury?

Yeah. Well, whenever you talk about something like that, the answer is always, it depends, you know, to recover a gymnast's back, which has those very specific demands versus a, a, uh, power, uh, lifter versus a hammer thrower versus a, uh, I don't know, a top level MMA athlete. It all depends what the pain mechanism is. And, uh, some you can, uh, do surprisingly well with, and others are a little bit more tricky. So, uh, uh, that's how I'm going to answer it. They're all different. Um, and, uh, I, I certainly, uh, know the method and the approach that you need to maximize the, um, uh, success, but, um, uh, how you actually do that for every different category of, uh, back injury, uh, is different.

Okay. Um, so as we're closing here, I know that you guys were considering doing, uh, I heard you can do speaking engagements or I know Dr. McGill, you have courses. Um, do you, Brian, you want to elaborate on what you guys plan on do for doing further with this book or, well, right now we're doing a pretty good job at thinking of getting the word out about the book. You're probably seeing stuff all over social media, Instagram, Facebook, and it's just now starting to hit the, uh, you know, the addresses of people that have ordered it, maybe overseas or whatever. So the words just now starting to get out there about the book and concerning seminars.

I do my own 10, 20 live seminars, which is my screen training philosophy that we actually mesh together with Stu's methods and this narrative in this book. And it's what I adhered to when I was coming back. So I do those seminars now and I speak on, uh, you know, my experiences through powerlifting and injury, but anything that Stu wants to do together when we, uh, start putting things in writing, I'm down to do. And we've talked about it a little bit, but nothing official quite yet. Okay, cool. Stu, what would you like to, uh, when's your next course, by the way, this is going to air at the end of November?

Yeah, I just did one, uh, this past weekend and we have a, uh, McGill summit. Number one, first time ever of all three courses and all my instructors will be there helping. We're going to put this on mid November, but that'll be over then. Uh, oh, well, just go to backfitpro.com. All the courses are on there, but, uh, no, I think, uh, Brian said it, uh, well, when we get out from underneath the, uh, uh, initial flurry of activity with a gift of injury, um, we'll, uh, probably put on some, uh, collaborative courses. Nice. Yeah. You guys have a hell of a, a hell of a informant informational, uh, weekend for sure.

Yeah. Right. Um, well, cool. So when you guys actually get, get all that sorted out, just, uh, I don't know when you'll decide, but I'll link that in the show notes as well. Um, any closing statements for, I guess, thanks. Thank you so much for coming on, by the way. I was looking forward to this one. I'll say this, and it just occurred to me as I'm, uh, uh, watching both of you on Skype as we do this, uh, the, the, uh, turned out, and I don't think how Brian, uh, envisioned it either when we first sat down at his kitchen table, uh, that was that three or four years ago now, Brian, when we, when we started to throw some ideas around on this, and it was really the story of Brian's recovery and a little bit of the science that went into, uh, the programming, uh, et cetera.

And, and of course his very, very personal story, but Brian began the opening of the book. That's all his writing. And it is spectacular. I, it was far beyond, I mean, you must admit chapter one, it's a captivating read, isn't it? So when I, I, you know, I still read that and I can't put it down. It is, it pulls on the old heartstrings. So he did a fantastic writing job there. And then we just started to get into it. And then it turned into this manual for strength athletes and we couldn't stop. We just got so excited every time we were together and, uh, there goes section three. Oh, I think we need another section, section four and, uh, no section five.

And this manual evolved, uh, that was kicked off by his story. So that's the only thing that I, uh, I think I want to add. It's, it's a very dense book. Um, there's a lot of stuff packed into those, uh, 170 pages or whatever it turned out to be. Yeah. To be honest with you too, you're right about that first chapter. I thought, I thought more novel. And then I got into the other sections and I'm like, holy crap, this is a program or there's, or there's a theory in the programming and even the nutritional part of them. I'm like, geez, he just told me how to do a glycogen depletion. And yeah, there's a lot of stuff.

Look, he's, he's been there. That's the real world validity to, uh, to all of us. Brian, any, uh, closing statements? Yeah. So you got to think of this, uh, the, the, the book started off as the story of Stu talked about. It was going to be the story of me coming back, being successful. It organically grew so much that it, for lack of a better term, it turned into an encyclopedia of strength training and the best part of it. How many books out there that discuss strength training, give you the science and the rehab know-how for pretty much everyone out there that likely at one time or another, we'll tweak their back of their strength training.

Even if it's just a minor little tweak or a little, uh, something that, that, that has them, you know, in the bed for a week. I don't know too many people in powerlifting that has not, that has not tweaked their back at one time or another. So we put together this encyclopedia of so much information, how to warm up, how to prevent injury, how to lift properly, you know, how to program, how to cut waves, you know, how to beat a back injury. There's the mentality of it all with the narration of the story. We just give something that's just unique and for there's pieces of something that will apply to everybody in this book.

They'll be able to relate to it in some way. And, uh, we wanted to do, uh, get our information out there. We, we took our joint expertise and, and did this thing that again, it grew into be so much more than we expected. Awesome. You know, actually you brought up something as the encyclopedia. I saw a bunch of pictures. I know you have the correlated exam videos. Is there any, I know there's McGill big three exercise videos all over the place right now, but for all the other stuff, is there, is there a video library in anywhere where you guys are showing some things or no? Stu, do you have a video of the exercise demonstrations?

Uh, well I do, but then again, I, I always have a great problem doing those because, uh, I would never prescribe an exercise. I would prescribe a form of an exercise and then I'd work and tweak that exercise depending if we wanted more hip mobility or more stiffness, uh, in the, in the upper spine or what more foot turnout because I needed more, uh, lateral hamstring integration or whatever it happened to be. Um, actually that would be medial hamstring, but anyway, it doesn't matter. Uh, the point is I have a great difficulty, uh, doing that, but I do have a video on, uh, enhancing performance and some of the exercises and, and some top MMA, uh, athletes are in there, some top power lifters, basketball players, uh, et cetera.

So that's all I can say. It's not a matter of, there's this myth that, uh, Oh, well, well, give me some exercises for my back. And my answer is I haven't a clue what exercises will, will work for your back until I assess you, I assess where, uh, what, what the demands are, whether it's a sport demand or you just want to get through life without pain, but I need to know those demands. And then we choose exercises, which are simply tools to get the person from where they are to where they need to be and, and how we use those tools. We'll figure it out when we, um, I get that person. So you're, you're going through principles rather than give me a list of exercises.

Um, but the principles are, uh, I, I hope, um, you, you found them in, in algorithms in the book. Yes. I have a couple of videos, uh, one legged deadlift, stir the pot, um, some carries and stuff randomly on my Instagram and YouTube, Brian Carol 81. So there's a couple that I'm doing for reference, but, uh, they will have to be fine-tuned obviously for your needs, but to give you an idea of what they should look like, like the bird dog and the plank and the Miguel curler. Perfect. And yeah, um, I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to third on that. Everyone needs to be assessed first. Well, cool. Thank you so much for coming on guys.

It's a video. It's on YouTube about the McGill big three. And I look at them and I just cry. Yeah. You know, they have no concept and no idea. They've never been instructed by me that they don't know what they're doing. It's a tragedy. There was a, there was a funny one actually recently because of Halloween. Uh, some guy had a mustache and he put on a mustache, your trademark mustache. So I thought it was kind of funny, but yeah, yeah. He was doing, I think, uh, I think a side bridge at the time. Oh, awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on guys. It was a pleasure. Thank you. I enjoyed it, bud.

Yeah, man. Yeah, as I said last time, Seb, you're, you're, you're really clever with, uh, arranging your, your questions and, and how they progress. So I hope you keep doing this. You're really good at it. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. Talk to you guys soon. Okay. Take care. Bye-bye. Okay, everybody. That was Dr. Stuart McGill and Ryan Carroll. So you can access that on YouTube, by the way, if you want to see what our reactions are, especially to that, the treehouse. Stu was really thinking about that. So, um, but yeah, I want to thank them so much, so much for being on, cause it was really fun.

And I think, uh, I hope is inspiring for all you as well. So you should go pick up the book. I actually had a really good, I mean, I hate reading books. I hate reading books. And actually Stu was exactly right. It was, uh, the first chapter just captivating. There's so much meat and density into, um, programming in there as well. So it is a good encyclopedia. So go to backfitpro.com or you can go to powerrackstrength.com as well. Uh, Brian Carroll, his, uh, social media, at least on Instagram is at Brian Carroll. That's R-R-O-L-L, uh, 81. And you can find him there. Uh, Dr. Stuart McGill is on there as well.

It's a backfit pro, but I don't think he spends quite as much time on it. But either way, if you're looking for the show notes on this, p2sportscare.com slash podcast slash 63, I'm sorry, not slides, slash pound 63, because that is the episode it's going to be. So if you can go into iTunes and you're on it and you're listening on iTunes, just go to the bottom and review this for me, review it, share it, review it right now. Cause I really want to hear that's the best feedback I can possibly get. I want to hear who you else you want to hear from and, uh, what topics you want to hear about because that's the most important thing, education of the people.

Okay. So just as always be good to yourself, be good to others, golden rule. Okay. It's not what you take. It's what you leave. Peace out. Talk to you guys soon.