Transcription
What's up guys? Crit here. I've been super, super thrilled to finally put this video together on telling you guys my system and telling you guys my story on how I got myself out of back pain and how I actually get my clients right now out of back pain.
I've been doing the sports rehab thing on Instagram for around six months now, and other people have seen a lot of success. I saw a lot of success devising my own system. I think it'll be interesting for people to hear how I actually did it myself because naturally, it's not like a little lower back fairy comes to you at night and just waves a little wand and magically cures you of your disc injury. It takes a lot of effort. It takes grit. It takes time. But most importantly, it takes structure and it takes a system. So hopefully, I can enlighten you guys on how I actually do this thing.
So first up, if you don't know who I am, if you randomly just clicked on my Instagram page and are now clicking on this video, my name is Christian. I've had a herniated L5S1 for three years now. Hurt my back in my garage front squatting my senior year of high school going into my freshman year of college. Was dealing with debilitating pain for those three years. I tried going to chiropractors. I tried going to doctors. I tried going to countless physical therapists. None of them were able to actually help me.
So, with my back against the wall, desperate to get back to lifting heavy weights, which is what I love the most in this world, I was forced to devise a system myself to cure my own lower back pain. Thank God it worked. Thank God I'm spreading the wealth to other people online who also are dealing with the same issue because trust me, I know how much this [ __ ] sucks.
So, I'm actually currently a senior in college. This is me right here with my sister. It's me with some buddies. This is me finally deadlifting now that I'm actually able to get back to doing what I love. And the three years I spent in pain, I really was just kind of obsessed and just tirelessly trying to find a way to fix my back. Unfortunately, I'm sure some of you can relate. When you look up ways to fix your lower back pain, you only really get the rudimentary foundational stuff and maybe a little article online telling you to do like bird dogs and planks. And there's not really a lot of information online to actually find a way out from your chronic pain. Because if it doesn't tell you to do these exercises, it usually tells you to go to a doctor, go to a physical therapist, and then you end up doing that, and then they can't really help you either.
So, I was kind of at a standstill in my life because I love lifting weights. I wanted to get back to it so desperately. I wanted to get back to just living a pain-free existence because it really does tear at the fabric of you. I mean, it really, really does. If you're in chronic pain right now and you're sitting here watching this video, you understand. You [ __ ] get it. It's a pretty rough existence, and I'm thankful to be sitting here right now without any back pain at all. I literally just went to the gym, did some power cleans, front-squatted. I'm here right now fine. A year ago, I could not say the same.
So, let's get into how I actually did this. This is the whiteboard that I show all of my clients before we start getting into their programming. And the best way I can explain this is by pointing at this little bar right here that says tissue tolerance. Okay, tissue tolerance directly corresponds with your flare-ups. Now, obviously, a lot of you know what flare-ups are. If you don't, it's when you tweak your back or do something that your lower back is not really prepared for. Your nervous system gets a little pissed off, and it sends you pain signals. What this means is it's essentially your nervous system telling you to put the brakes on whatever you're doing. Your nervous system doesn't think that your lower back is prepared for whatever you're doing. It will send you pain, and it will send you tightness. And that's why your lower back is constantly seized up and constantly tight. It's not because when you piss off your injury, you're physically structurally damaging it more. It's because your nervous system is saying, "Yo, chill out. Slow down a bit." And the way it tells you to chill out is by sending you pain. Pain in your lower back, pain in your glutes, pain in your hips, sciatic symptoms, whatever it may be. Right?
So, when our tissue tolerance increases, and what tissue tolerance is, is essentially your lower back's capabilities to fire correctly under load, when that tolerance raises up, your flare-ups tend to go down. There's a correlational relationship between your lower back's tissue tolerance and your nervous system's willingness to send you pain signals. Right?
So, the best example I can give for this is right here. It's cut off a bit, but this says 60 lb RDL versus in bold 60 lb RDL. Just an anecdotal example to really drive this point home. One year ago, I was able to do 60 lb RDL's. I had the strength in my hamstrings. I had the strength in my glutes to actually do a 60 lb dumbbell RDL. But my lower back's tissue tolerance was not yet ready to do a 60 pound RDL, if you're catching my drift. So even though I was able to get the weights up with proper form, my back was straight, my glutes and my hammies were firing correctly, because my nervous system did not trust my lower back to handle that weight. It sent me pain signals and it also tightened up my lower back muscles. Nowadays, when I do a 60 lb RDL, because I've managed to raise my tissue tolerance to an adequate level to handle 60 lbs, I don't get a flare-up anymore while doing that same weight because my lower back is now prepared for that movement. So, you can see how there can be a discrepancy between your actual strength levels and your lower back's tissue tolerance.
So, how do we increase our lower back's tissue tolerance? Right here, I've listed a couple of movements that actually increase your lower back's capabilities and directly calm your nervous system by giving it feedback that your lower back is safe to fire under load. We've got back extensions, we've got kettlebell RDLs, we've got seated good mornings, we've got reverse hypers. All of these not only strengthen your lower back tissue, but directly communicate with your nervous system and tell it because your lower back tissue tolerance is increasing, your nervous system does not have to send you flare-ups anymore. So you can see how as one goes up, one goes down.
And I also address this right here on the right-hand side. I have this little graph, right? So you see this arrow going up. All those little dots right there are deposits. If you go into the gym and you do a back extension on one day, you are putting in a deposit, right? You go in a second day and do a back extension, and maybe you add another rep or maybe you add five lbs. You're adding another deposit, and you have a trend of increasing your lower back's tissue tolerance in an upward fashion. Now, you can see up here on the y-axis, I have F. That stands for flare-up. So when you put in all these deposits, your tendency to have your lower back flare up actually decreases because, as I said, your nervous system learns to trust your lower back more and more as you continue to give it feedback and give it evidence that your lower back is safe to fire. We do this by directly strengthening the lower back.
So in the bottom right too, I also kind of address this by giving you a little timeline, little timetable to kind of show you how this works in real time, right? So, let's say you haven't started rehabbing at all, and you try to do 135 pound RDL on a barbell, right? And your lower back does not like that. So, it puts you in the state of a flare-up for 48 hours. Meaning, it tightens up your lower back muscles and it makes your lower back feel pain for 48 hours. And then, let's say you come back and do the exercises that we have here on the left-hand side for like maybe a week, right? And you get your tissue tolerance to what we call level two right here. And I denote this with a 30 lb RDL. So, let's say you're able to actually do a 30 lb RDL beginning of your rehab, and you can do that pain-free, and you've begun to stir some adaptation in your lower back. Now, your tissue tolerance is at quote unquote level two. And now, when you go back and do the 135 pound RDL again, you're only in a flare-up for 24 hours now. So, you're still in pain, but you can see how that's still progress. If you go back and do the same weight that used to flare you up for a week, and that would only flare you up for, let's say, 24 hours, and then you can lower that to 18 hours, and so forth. That is progress, and that's also data because you know that your tissue tolerance is increasing in real time. And you can see how as the list goes down, you do a 95 lb RDL, a 3x6, that only puts you in a flare-up for 12 hours. Okay, well, that's still a lot better than being in a flare-up for 48 hours, right? And then finally, once you've done even more rehab, you go to level four tissue, and now when you try that 135 lb RDL again, you're only in a flare-up for 4 hours, in contrary to the 48 that you had before. That is progress in real time. That is your tissue tolerance rising up in real time because you've put in actual deposits. You've put in work, and you've calmed your nervous system enough to the point that it now trusts your lower back to do that movement. Level five tissue tolerance. Naturally, you do the 135 lb RDL. You have zero pain at all because you've put in enough deposits to the point that your nervous system is completely calm, and it has no reason to send your lower back pain signals because you have built it to the point that it has trusted you because it trusts your spinal erectors. It trusts your multifidus. It trusts all of the lower back musculature that surrounds your spine.
Because chronic pain is a nervous system issue. It is entirely a nervous system issue. Your nervous system regulates all of this stuff. Which is why our main goal, and a lot of people get this wrong by superficially thinking that, "Oh, I just need to strengthen my lower back muscles and that'll get me out of pain." No, that is a means to an end. The end goal is to calm your nervous system because that is what regulates how you respond. How your lower back responds to what you do, and if it will give you pain or if it won't. That is the actual system of how you heal yourself.
This is also the same system I've been using with all of my clients so far, and all of them have seen great results, as I once did. I would not be on Instagram coaching if I did not have full faith in the system that I devised from the ground up myself because I was forced to learn all of this by myself. No doctor told me this. No physical therapist told me this. No chiropractor told me this. I genuinely had to find a way to fix my own lower back pain by my own means because I was put against the wall and no one else could help me.
So we have Chase here in the top left corner. Chase came to me with debilitating side symptoms due to a disc herniation. His pain would keep him up at night. He was terrified of playing basketball, playing tennis, playing sports with his friends, which I understand completely. I was able to get Chase back to playing basketball completely pain-free. As of right now, he does not worry about his lower back at all. Put that in comparison to two months ago when I first started working with the guy. Night and day difference. Same thing with my other client named Matt. He came to me scared to sit down, scared to do his job, scared to lift weights the way he wanted to. I got Matt from feeling stiff and feeling scared and feeling broken to feeling fantastic and feeling confident in his lower back because, as I said, it's a nervous system issue. You need to have a mental narrative that you are capable, that your lower back is strong. That is really important, and that's also what I cover in my coaching is actually restructuring the neurons in your brain. And it sounds like woo-woo [ __ ] but I'm telling you right now, it's not. To actually construct a new narrative of yourself because if you wake up every day terrified of your back pain and thinking that, "Oh, my lower back is [ __ ] I can't do X, Y, or Z. I'm scared to sit. I'm scared to stand. I'm scared to walk." That is a narrative that your nervous system is projecting. And it will also be reflected in your lower back pain. When you get to the point where you feel confident and sturdy, you have evidence of going to the gym and being able to actually fire heavy weights again. You construct a new narrative in your brain of, "Wow, wait, my lower back is actually really strong now. I'm able to do all of this." And subsequently, it's the same thing, right? It's like a yin and a yang. Your nervous system makes that the new narrative that you are back, that you are strong, that your lower back can do all this stuff that it once could not do. That is very important.
This is why my system works and also why it's like nothing you've ever tried. I have a lot of people coming to me telling me, "Hey, listen, you know, I've tried the epidural steroid shots. I've tried chiropractic. I've tried yoga. I've tried the core work." These are all band-aid solutions. We are not looking for short-term solutions when it comes to lower back pain. I have been to chiropractors. I have gotten steroid shots. I have spammed Advil until my liver was barking back because I was in so much pain. It is putting a band-aid on your spine, and once it wears off, you're right back to square zero. You've made zero progress. That's why I always advocate for long-term deposits. As I noted previously, putting in deposits every day, doing actual strengthening work to increase your lower back's tissue tolerance, that is a long-term solution. So, you could take the easy way of looking up a YouTube video on how to pop your back and you can feel you can feel good for two hours, or you could spend that time, frankly, even a fraction of it, doing a back extension and putting in a deposit. Even though you won't feel the relief immediately, you will feel the relief down the line. With the short-term path, you will never feel the long-term relief because these are only band-aid solutions.
And I just want to throw out a disclaimer. I am not knocking these professions, but this is the realistic nature of the game is that, one, chiropractors, they do adjustments for your back. This is a band-aid solution. You feel good for a day, and then you come back next week, right? Chiropractors do not help you rebuild capacity in your lower back tissue, which is what we are in the market for if we really want to have a long-term solution. Orthopedics are the same way. Orthopedics can either refer you to a physical therapist or they can refer you to a surgeon. Surgery is absolutely last ditch effort. There have been so many athletes who have come back from lower back pain. Take Brian Carroll for instance, who worked with McGill, who literally had three crushed vertebrae. If you look up his MRI after watching this video, you will see firsthand how catastrophic his spinal injury was. He was able to rehab it without surgery. Surgery is a last stitch effort, and it is very unfortunate that the medical system makes you think that you need surgery before trying a system like mine.
It's the same thing with physical therapists. And listen, there are great physical therapists out there. I've worked with some pretty good ones. They were not able to actually get me back 100%. They have give me some tidbits that led me in the right direction. But unfortunately, the grand majority of them, especially the ones that are in network and insurance-based, stick you with unlimited core routines and stick you with random stretches that maybe get your pain manageable and maybe get your lower back tissue capacity to like 20% of what it could be. But then they never actually advance the rehab and they never give you more challenging exercises for your lower back. So you plateau, and you stay at that 20% number, and you never progress past it. And that's why people go to physical therapy and they feel better for a bit, and then they get back into the gym, and the pain comes right back. Why? Because they put you at 20%. If you want to come back to the gym and start lifting heavy pain-free, you got to be at 100%. It's very important that you advance your rehab. That's what I emphasize in my coaching is actually making sure that we progress you gradually. We give you graded exposure to make sure that your lower back goes from 25% capacity to 35%, 45%, 50%, 75%, and then finally, you're pain-free. Right?
Just to really sum up this whole entire point. Chronic back pain is a long-term problem. Long-term problems require long-term solutions. I cannot emphasize this enough. That's why I'm against all these band-aid solutions. Which is why if you come to me, I find what it is that you want to get back to. And for a lot of people, that's usually sports, lifting, and living a pain-free life and not having to be distracted by lower back pain on a 24/7 basis. That's the trifecta right there. It was the same thing for me.
So, what I do is I assess where you are in your back pain journey because it's different for a lot of people, right? Lower back pain is very nuanced. It could be crippling in some, and it can be a bit more tame in others. Regardless, I pinpoint what your current lower back tissue tolerance is because meeting you head-on is very, very important. That's the name of the game right here. And then I make a plan tailored to you. And I ensure that with your rehab, I progress it in a manner that exposes you to subtle adaptations so that you do not have any pain because that's where a lot of people get this wrong. Healing lower back pain requires adaptation over time, right? If you do too much, you're going to piss off your nervous system, and you're going to spark pain in your lower back. If you do too little, like going to a physical therapist who only gives you bird dogs and clamshells, you're not giving yourself enough adaptation over time to actually heal you and get you back to what you want to do. That's why I find a middle ground for you and I progress it slowly and gradually so that you're not doing too much and you're not doing too little because that really is the nuance that people miss here. It takes intelligent structure. It takes intelligent programming to actually get you back.
Rehabbing my old back took a lot of trial and error. I didn't have a coach. I had to be my own coach when I didn't even really know what I was doing at the time. I had to learn as I went, which made it take a bit more time than it would take a client of mine right now because I devised the system for myself as I went. And I didn't have someone in my corner to tell me, "Hey, listen. This weight might flare you up. Let's maybe pull back a bit." Or, "Hey, listen. You've been doing this weight for 3 weeks. Let's push forward a little bit. I know you might be a little scared. I know your nervous system might be a bit fearful of this movement, of this new thing that we're going to try. But I'm telling you right now that it will give you proper adaptation to your tissue tolerance. And if it doesn't, that's still data." Remember what I said about flare-ups, right? Even if you do piss off your back during rehab, that is still data regarding something that you maybe shouldn't be doing at this time, that maybe you should save for later. Maybe the weight is too much. We need to find the proper dose of adaptation for you at this current moment. I didn't have that personally. I didn't have a guy in my corner to tell me all that. And it definitely helps when you do, right? It definitely helps when you have a coach who's been through this himself, who's trained other people in this regard. That's pretty important. But I digress. My programming gets you back to where you want to be. And it doesn't take as much time as it took me myself because of what I just said.
So, here's a sample rehab day just to give you guys an example of what this looks like, right? As you can see here, I don't have any endless planks, no endless core work, no [ __ ] stretches that make you feel good for like 2 minutes. This is no [ __ ] lower back training that bulletproofs you. This is just an example of a day. And as you can see, I address all aspects of the spine here. We've got rotation, we've got spinal flexion, we've got spinal extension, we've got core stability, we've got decompression. Lower back rehab takes a "throw the kitchen sink at it" type mentality. A lot of people think that there's only one thing that they need. They find their new kind of mcguffin of the day like, "Oh, maybe it's my piriformis. Oh, wait, no. Maybe my hips are too tight." No, we address all of that. We don't leave you guessing. We make you leave the gym feeling confident that what you're doing is helping, and you will notice in real time how your lower back stiffness slowly and gradually subsides because your tissue tolerance is increasing. And this is genuinely the way out is making sure that you are crossing your tees and dotting your eyes and making sure that every single part of the lower back musculature, every single movement that the spine is capable of is actually addressed and progressed. That's why I improve your tissue tolerance in every single area you can think of relating to your lower back. That's why I have tempo front squats here, as you can see right there. Because core stability under load while moving your hips in a flexion, as you would in the squat, is actually really important in making your lower back feel confident. That's why we have Jefferson curls. Because spinal flexion, contrary to what you've been told, is a healthy movement if progressed carefully and slowly and gradually, and is also in a lot of people the key to actually feeling better. But we don't stop just at spinal flexion because we also make sure we give you some rotation. I make sure I give you some extension as well. I make sure that all the bases are covered. This is in contrast to doing 3x10 dead bugs, 3x10 planks, doing some stretches, and leaving the physical therapy clinic.
When you're done rehabbing your back, the view on the other side is honestly the most liberating feeling I have ever personally experienced in my entire life. I don't [ __ ] people on here. I cried tears of joy in my garage at my house when I pulled my first 335 lb deadlift pain-free. The emotional catharsis after being in chronic back pain for 3 years and having those nights where you just kind of recycle and repeat in your head, "Maybe I do have to deal with this for the rest of my life," was genuinely the most freeing thing I have ever felt in my life. And that's why I'm on here helping other people is because I know what this is like. I've been through it myself. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. You don't know how amazing it is to finally feel ownership of your back again because honestly, and a lot of people don't say this because it is kind of vulnerable, as I said, I don't [ __ ] people. Lower back pain really just cripples your identity and it honestly emasculates you. It makes you feel like less of a person. It makes you feel less capable. It [ __ ] sucks when your friends hit you up, "Hey, you want to go hoop? You want to go play some volleyball?" and you're in a flare-up at the time, and you're like thinking to yourself, "Shit, I really want to, but I know that if I go play that sport, I'll be in pain for a whole entire week." That's how I was with golf. I love playing golf. My friends would hit me up. My dad would ask me to play during the day. I wanted so bad to say yes, and sometimes I would push past my pride and say yes, and I would feel the consequences for days after. Living like that is a unique kind of hell.
My ultimate goal in life is to help as many people as I can so that they don't have to feel that anymore because I know firsthand how much it sucks. And when you're finally able to end that cycle, when you're finally able to get back to the things that you love, the things that you want to do, for me, it was sports and heavy lifting. I didn't realize how much chronic pain had sucked for me until I finally got back to where I was before 3 years ago, and I genuinely felt new life rush into me. I know it sounds kind of dramatic, but it genuinely is true. You don't realize how much it can take away from your identity. It sucks from you slowly. And being able to come back is genuinely just one of the best feelings that I have ever felt. And I want everybody to understand that feeling who is also going through the same thing. And really the best part about it, and this is what I emphasize, is that once you know the way out of chronic pain, it is your duty and your job to spread the knowledge to other people because there are red herrings wherever we look. I spent three years seeing all these red herrings online telling me to get surgery, telling me it was my SI joint, telling me it was my piriformis. I didn't know what to do. And that's why I had to spend so much time researching and just obsessively understanding my pain and my injury and my own body because I needed a way out, and I found it. And now I know for a fact that it is my job to spread this to as many people as possible.
Right here I have a video of me front squatting 300 lb. That was my first front squat PR after I was able to front squat 275 3 years prior. And during that PR, I felt no pain on the way down in the squat. I felt no pain at the bottom. I felt no pain coming up. I felt no pain for the whole entire day after. And this was still pretty fresh into me recovering. This is 2 months after I was finally able to get back to being pain-free. The amount of joy that just flooded my brain and my body knowing that I was actually finally back and I could progress in the gym again was amazing, and I want other people to experience that.
So, I hope you guys learned a lot from this video. It definitely contained a lot of information. I know it might be a bit difficult to digest. I would definitely recommend maybe going back to that section where I talk about tissue tolerance and flare-ups and that relationship if you do need to understand my system a bit better. I know it can be a bit confusing. Hopefully, I articulated it well enough for people to understand. But that is the system that I use for myself and that I use for my clients that got me and other people out of chronic lower back pain, and I want to make sure I spread that wealth to other people.
I will emphasize the dangers of going at it yourself though. As I mentioned, it's really important to have a coach in your corner who can tell you when to push, when to pull back, what exercises you should actually be giving yourself, how many days a week you should be lifting, someone to text on a 24/7 basis if you're having a flare-up, if you're having a question, if you want a form check. You don't realize how much having a coach can expedite the process. Took me six months to fully rehab my back. It would have taken me two if I had a coach. So, if you're ever interested in coaching, shoot me a DM, say the word "revival," and I will be so happy to discuss with you and talk about maybe if you'd be a good fit for lower back rehab coaching. Either way, this video was hopefully just a golden nugget for the lower back pain population. And I really hope that you guys take away some really, really important, valuable information from this. Stay safe, stay happy, and if you ever need any help, shoot me a DM. I'm right here.