Articles and Education

Part two is going to start laying down a theoretical framework for why anything is effective at all when helping someone come back from an injury. If you are at all involved in the world of training and/or rehabilitation, you are well aware there are a million ways to spend your money on some kind of device or tool. You will also notice there are a million more ways to work on how you move and even more people you can make an appointment with to work you over and tell you all sorts of things about your current situation (only some of which is likely to be true).

I recently saw an exchange on Twitter between two professionals in the rehabilitation world. The original tweet mentioned a patient who had started deadlifting because they had a herniated lumbar disc. The first response was from a different professional questioning this course of action. He said something along the lines of, “Hmmmm, was this when he was symptomatic or asymptomatic?” To put this in more context, the person who posted the original tweet is not the person who started the deadlift program. The original person thought it was great this patient had decided to take action into his own hands instead of falling victim to the system. The second person was questioning whether a person with a herniated disc should be deadlifting. I hope you are not confused, because we are going to dive deep into the rabbit hole.

Strength is a science. Rehabilitation from Low Back Injury is a Science. Yet when it comes to low back rehabilitation the health professions (Physical Therapy, Chiropractic and others) seem to turn to anti-science principles and embrace faith based systems.

After eleven years as a competitive powerlifter (24 World and 25 American titles), my shoulder joints have been reduced to bone on bone. Osteoarthritis is defined as the wearing away of the cartilage which cushions the joint. Most people over 60 years of age with this condition are subjected to shoulder replacement surgery, which is an invasive procedure involving the removal of the head of the humerus and the installation of a titanium rod with a titanium ball on top, into the bone marrow of the humerus itself. I was told a number of years ago by my orthopedic surgeon that I would not be able to lift heavy ever again if I undertook such an operation. Therefore, I continued to train with severe pain rather than end my career. My training partner, John Hare, has literally had to shove me under the bar for the last four years in order to get into position to squat-a very painful movement.