I'll get our tell him welcome to another instorm and the show. Tiff and Here and Cook has joined us graciously. Doctor Jeff has missed her for the last six, seven, eight nine episodes because she spoiled him on episode one and just got him a little bit addicted to her, you know, not not hard, and then she disappeared puff into the night, never to be seen again. Why are you back? Yeah, oh you're asking Tip.
I thought you were asking me aware, Doc, I don't know. I thought I really joined this, this you know community, this the U project community, because I felt like, you know, Craig is sort of the Howard Stern of you know podcasts down under It. You were his Robin Quivers and this was going to be this funny dialogue and he'd make you laugh and be embarrassed and and I would feel awkward, and then you were gone.
Do we Is Howard Stern still up and about? I mean, is he still on the air?
I think so. But his last over the years, his humor, and I think with did his any credibility that might have gone with him being an entertainer.
He seemed to get a bit grumpy there for a while. I think we didn't really grow up. I mean we kind of know. I know him a little bit more because I've taken an interest, but most dozzies have never really I could be do you know who he is?
Tiff?
I know the name, but I couldn't tell you anything about it.
Like a lot of people kind of know his name, but we didn't grow up, Like he didn't have a presence over here. But it's that was the that was the He was almost like, not the pioneer of podcasting, but he was kind of doing podcast style radio, which was just, you know, kind of wild, out of control where he got amazing ratings, but I think the stations were always pulling the hair out because they didn't know what the fuck was gonna happen. He was a wild child, yep.
I mean he did all kinds of shit on air, didn't he doc.
Yeah, you called it. He was one of the early we call them shock jokes.
Yeah yeah, and he I'll tell you off AIRTIF some of the shit that he used to do on air live, But we won't be doing any of that on the You Project because we're clearly we're a family show operating with the highest level of integrity. I mean, look at us. Have you ever seen three more different people than the doc?
And you and me? Like him over there with his giant brain in his beautiful office and he's like fucking magnificent Hollywood face, and me the redneck from more Well, and then you seventy thirty man who likes punching people self proclaimed. By the way, everybody, don't send me an email speak to me.
Which did I tell you that? Benny Fort? Did I tell you that? Have I seen you?
No?
Ben Ford, the broadcaster from Sydney? What about him?
No? No, not ben Ford, Benny Fort. Ben Fort's a blind guy that I did the sparring sessions with Doc to keep you up to speed. I had a couple of sparring sessions with a blind bloke to get him ready for a fight.
Can I tell you now?
Just hang on, hang on, let him digest all those variables. I'll just repeat that I did a couple of sparring sessions with a blind bloke to get him ready for a fight. What the fuck is that about?
This is the pilot episode for our sitcom soon to be found on major network.
Yeah, go on, what happened with the blind bloke? That's going to get in. There's no I can't see any problems with that.
By the way, So he fought last Saturday night, thrown into the ring six other blokes with blindfolds. Benny blind didn't need the blindfold. He won and broke your guy's ribs, just saying boom.
Could you be any prouder right now?
I'm so proud of him.
You taught someone to be violent and how to hurt.
Do you know how hard it is for novices to even throw a body shot, let alone landed. He broke your guy's ribs. That's brilliant.
And he couldn't even see who he was hitting. Yeah, so all these opponents did they put bells around their necks?
No, they just it was chaos. They just had all had blindfold on any or if you if you shuffled out of the pack, they had ashes there, just just shoving you back into the chaos.
How did the docs like? Can you get to me? You fucking idiots?
I don't like this.
I'm an important person.
You go ahead.
How do you reckon that? We'll come to you in a moment. How do you reckon the insurance went for that event? Tip?
Oh, I'd love to know some of the back you know, the back end dramas that they must have to go through to get that approved.
That's never getting approved in the States. Is it doc like blokes in a ring in blind fold, blindfolded punching each other, being assaulted by an actual blind bloke.
It's happening here. It's it's called reality TV. It's usually it usually starts the title starts the Real Housewives of and fill in.
The blind Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Do you we'll get onto the top. I actually have a real topic today, a surprising I know. Do you take any interest in or what do you think about let's just call the blanket term cage fighting. Mainly people think of the UFC, But do you hate it? Are you interested in it? What are your thoughts on it?
No, It's it's kind of like driving by, you know, a car wreck.
Uh.
You know you don't want to stop traffic and behind you or cause another accent, but you can't help but to look so. So, although I know that these guys are causing all kinds of head injuries and damage and things, I do I do have that sort of side of me that likes to watch, you know.
I'm the same. Yeah, I'm with you, like I love watching it, but I'm I just don't want all the brain damage. I'm like, if we could do everything except punch each other in the head and kick each other in the head, Oh my god.
Yep. And I'm here, you know, just a few miles from the UFC headquarters is my office. You know, we drive by it all the time. And and you know, the guys that Dina White and the owners of that they're they're here in town and and so so a lot of those fighters are around. We do see them periodically.
Mmm. Well, people want to do it, people want to watch it, people want to pay for it. And in the last ten years it's been the biggest growing sport in the world, so in terms of growth. So it's a multi billion dollar industry now. And some people hate it. It's probably there's no more divisive sport than cage fighting, I guess. But nonetheless, I don't think it's going away anytime soon. All Right, I wanted to talk to you today. And by the way, doctor Jeff never knows what I'm
going to ask him, so he's done no prep. But I wouldn't think he needs to because like.
A blindfolded Vader.
Really yeah, pretty much, pretty much. So you want to see this coming. I mean, we've never done an episode talking about back pain and back issues. I've had significant back issues over the years. Can we chat about backs today or have you got an.
I would love to. I would absolutely love to, because you know, my my origins are in spinecare. So for two and a half decades that was the number one thing I did. I trained for I wasn't trained by Tiff, but because I had heard of Guy's ribs. But I would love to. Let's let's break it down, Let's use you as the sacrificial lamb, guinea pig, whatever you want to, let's do that.
So, I mean, I think for me, I always want to talk to you about stuff that's going to be you know, interesting in all of that, but also stuff that's broadly relevant. And I don't know too many people who have never had back pain or you know, a problem on the scale somewhere between one and ten, and so I think you know lower back pain, like thoracic pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, all tied in, I guess, But
what is like where do you want to start? Like, what are some of the things that we do to create problems that we could probably quite easy easily address or you know, I would imagine sitting on our ass all day is not a great stuff.
I was about to say, all three of us are guilty right at this moment, So we should sit last. We should, you know, get those little treadmills at our desk and walk and stand up off and move around, stretch and and participate in some regular regimen that involves the core. But let me speak to the core. Because when I see a patient with back pain, and when
I say back pain, I'm really talking specifically low back pain. Yeah, when I see a patient with that, you know, and I say, hey, we should really, you know, build your core, and the thing that goes to their mind commonly is, oh, you mean my abs, right, my abdominals. And just set the record straight, the abs are only the front of the core. The core wraps all the way around you. The muscles in your in your lower back, in your in your flanks, in your sides, you know, in the
corners are also part of the core. And if you build and maintain that core, you've basically built yourself a muscular brace that protects the lower back slash lumbar spine and maintaining that. Building it and maintaining it is like wearing a brace and a brace. If you wore a fake brace, and if I gave you a a breast to put on to where and protect your lower back, you'd actually get weaker. Yeah, work against you in the long run.
Right.
We use them very sparingly for you know, fractures to heal and things. But so anyway, I think, you know, get up and move and build the entire core is the simple preventative and the simple solution if you have something minor enough.
And I think also, like you make a really good point because when you think about in the gym, and I've spent my whole life in gyms and owning gyms, the amount of people who would train you know, basically the front that simplified the front. They're training their you know, rector subdominance. They're generally not training their TVA transversus subdominance. They're not training internal or external obliques. They're not training the muscles at the back, their hip extenses, you know that.
And then what happens is sometimes uh, you know, so they'll build the the abs in inverted commas while not trying anything else, and then they actually create another problem because now they've got a muscular imbalance.
Correct and correct, okay, and it's very good. Now this is the advanced course, and you're absolutely right. So you overwork the rectus abdominance. It pulls your for it pulls you into a slight forward hunch position involving the lower back, and that actually puts an eccentric dorsal posterior meaning backwards force on the disc material and actually can make your discs worse, can actually make the problem worse. But you
touched on the transversus subdominance. And I have become a bigger and bigger believer in that being a big health muscle. And and you know, you can explain it perhaps better than I can. But it's the muscle behind the rectus that goes horizontal, and it's the one you suck your gut in real hard like. But see Tiff is going to wind up a big punch and hit you in the gut and you have a moment to guard yourself
and taitin up. Yeah, that's the muscle. If you could, if you could do those sort of Taitan exercises while you're sitting in your chair or plank exercises on the ground. You're doing yourself a fever.
Yeah. Yeah, I see in the gym we see a lot of kind of not particularly functional training. And even with the back itself, you see a lot of people who train the upper back. So they'll do you know, lap pool downs, they'll do one arm rows or seated rows, or they'll do a multitude of things that are training their lats and they're you know rhomboids and rear delts
and all of that stuff. And so they train their back twice a week, but they never train their lower back specifically and again, so then you got this upper back that looks like a fucking tortoiseshell and it's like nine out of ten strong and the lower back's two out of ten. So again, you predispose yourself to injury. Yeah.
We call that here in the States the frat boy workout. Yeah, and if you know what that, it refers to a college fraternity. These are guys who just want to have showy biceps and pecks so they can you know, look good at the beach and catch you as the lady walking by. But they're not really building themselves for health and balance and stability.
So what's what I mean, what's the most common kind of like one of the most common back injuries. Is it disc? Is it nerve stuff? Is a muscular stuff? Is it spine?
Yeah? Yeah, I mean the most common problem is disc based. The discs have some fragility. As they get older and drier, they can more likely tears as they suffer repetitive stress from a weak core and lifting and lifting improperly not
using your leg muscles. They're subject to stress. On top of that, then if you injure those, then the muscles have to tighten in sort of a reflexive response, and you get these spasms and people come in asay, my back went out, and they're sort of hunched forward or bent over, and that's that's the back saying I got to hold you this way. The muscles are reflexively doing that for an underlying structural problem, usually of the disc. Yes, you can have there are some joints in the spine
that can be injured. We see that usually in a whiplash style injury, but more common than that, I'd say disc disc dryness, tearing within the disc, and then if it tears the center material of the disc, called the nucleus, can actually slip out of place. You've heard this slip disc perhaps we use that phrase here. That's where a piece of that material, you know, gets through the outer layer of the disc, which is like the rubber, you know, winding of the golf ball if you ever cut into
one of those. So when that gets out, then it can it can in addition to the back pain and the loss of cushioning function, it can actually irritate and or oppress compress a nerve that's passing by and contributing to the sciatic nerve down your leg, which is why people use the word saiatica. Sometimes you guys use that word there too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, very common. Do you. I'm going to ask you, I don't know, like we might use different terms, and I don't know if I'm going to ask you questions that are not really in your wheelhouse, but because I'm kind of I think from an exercise science point of view, and obviously you come from a clinical medical point of view. But something like a deadlift, which I'm sure you know what it is, you know, where you're
picking up a barbell from the floor. Now I mean when people go to me, what do you think of deadlifts? I'm like, well, who's doing it? How are they doing it? Why are they doing it? What's their tech? You know, there are so many variables, like it can be good, it can be fucking catastrophic depending on what you doing. Yeah, yeah, what are your thoughts on for one of a better
term people picking stuff up off the floor. You know, whether or not it's a barbelle, a dumbbell, or but just that movement of being able to bend down and grab something and bring it back up to vertical is that something people should do actively and consciously or avoid.
I think outside of a of a gym setting, of a rehabilitative or exercise setting, you should we should be squatting to pick something up and keep whatever weight we are lifting as close to the center of gravity, the center of our body, of the core as we can. It weighs the least, there's the least torque on the spine if you come straight up, if you are bent over and you're not fully prepared and you know, trained to do it, that's that's a recipe for injury in
a gym setting. Under the guidance of someone like you or you know you. You build up to dead lifts, You start with slow, low weight, You build up the muscles that allow you to lift like that, and you do it. You do it protected, you do it. Your body knows what's happening. It can use other muscles to protect you, as opposed to you know, Oh, I've got to lift this gallon of milk off the off the ground. I'm sorry, you know, let me speak in your language.
It's two liters milk jug off, you know, and you know you're not prepared for it's you didn't you didn't you know, get into an athletic stance you didn't take, you know, get your other muscles ready. It's very it's a very different thing from a from a prepared standpoint.
Yeah, it's funny. I think people don't think about that that psychological slash cognitive component of how focused am I? How much am I paying attention to what I'm doing now? Because if if I'm consciously, you know, focused on lifting this thing and lifting it the right way, the outcome is going to be much better. I remember it. I don't know, I've probably clinically speaking, fucked my back. That's
the clinical term. Here in Australia, Doc, But what I would call about, you know, where I was in all sorts of trouble for a week or two, like lots of pain, probably about ten times in my adult life, and in going and having cortizone shots and all that. Right, But one of the times where I really stuffed my back, I was at my at my own gym, and I was in the staff room talking to some of my
staff and I felt a sneeze coming on. And what I was instead of turning away like completely just turning my body to face away, I left basically my hips facing forward and I turned my torso so now my back was twisted and I sneezed, and I that was it. I was like, I literally fucked my back sneezing. Yeah, And I was in trouble for like two weeks. And this is the same guy that that morning deadlifted with no problems.
Right, it's not uncommon if that's not funny, Tiff, Yeah, yeah, how did you do that?
How much were you lifting? I sneezed. You're pathetic your ship.
Well, I think the Craig, what you say is, if I were not so massively overdeveloped with muscle you know, a regular a guy like you or Sneeze can just really throw you out right. But average bloke, an average bloke, how do I use the bloke correctly?
There?
You know, he's he's.
Fine, Yeah yeah, yeah, oh well we'll see they'll try not to. But I learned my lesson. But back just quickly too, even with you know, so when doctor Jeff says center of gravity, everybody is just basically talking about you know that, like if you hold a weight. For example, let's say you get a five kilo weight, think of it like this, and let's say you literally hold that weight. Five kilos is eleven pounds. So you hold that literally against your stomach and it's five kilos, and it probably
feels like five kilos. Now, if you take that thirty centimeters away from your stomach or you know, a foot away from your stomach, and you hold that same weight, it doesn't feel like the same weight because it's in inverted commas heavier. It's, of course it's not heavier, but it feels heavier because it's away from your cog. And then you take that out to a straight arm and it's the furthest away from your center of gravity. That
you can hold it, and that's why. Yeah, when you quite often when people do things like lifting a suitcase out of a vehicle, out of the boot or you call it the trunk, right when you lift a suitcase out and you're leaning forward and the weight is way forward of your cog. Lots of people stuff they're back doing things like that.
Correct, that's exactly right.
It's really in a really really bad, you know, lifting position. Is it possible that or well I think the answer is yes. But tell me how it seems possible that some people have got what shows up under X ray or scan or whatever has pretty shitty backs, but they don't have pain, or they don't have hardly.
Any so the comments yes. The vice versus of the commentary here is imaging tests. MRI's X rays, catscans do not tell if you have pain or not, and pain doesn't determine what your imaging might look like. The art of medicine is correlating the two to see if you can match up something you see on the imaging to fit the pain and vice versa. So yet it's something like twenty percent of asymptomatic people have some type of
lumbar disc herniated herniation. There was a paper in the nineteen eighties medical article about that it's the minority, but it's still a real number, and then vice versa. The vast majority of aging people will have some type of degenerative anatomy. Bone spurs, thinning of the height of the disk, dryness of the disc, which, of course, like a dried gasket in your engine, is more likely to crumble and tear, or because it's not as resilient and squishy. Think about
your kitchen sponge. When it's wet, it's moist, you can change the shape and it springs back. When you leave for vacation, you'll come back a week later. The kitchen sponges capletely hard. You have to, you know, wet it to get it soft down. So just sort of like that in some ways.
Hey, Tiff, why don't you tell the doc? Why don't you tell the good doc while you've got one of the best doctors in the world on the show fuck It, let's get a free consult tell him about your dodgy neck and shoulder and and see if he can give you a little bit of advice.
Well, I had an MRI earlier this year, and when my doctor said, oh, you don't depends what you want to do with this. That don't really mean anything. And then when I went back for the results, he said, it's not good. It's not good news. All my neck had lost the curve and straightened and is impinging on all of it, so closing the holes for the nerves. Yet now most mornings I wake up with pins and needles in my hands. Sometimes I get them when I'm riding the motorbike. It's awesome.
Well, let's let's let's unpack that. As they say, I think I might be able to give you some advice and for listeners and viewers of this of this show, some insight into a couple different elements. First, let's start with MRI I. Greg Or Tiff, do you know how an MRI works?
I know what MRI stands for, but other than magnetic resonance imaging not particularly known.
All right, well, let's let's talk about it for a minute, because it's it's really cool. It's like of all the technology we have in the world this day and age, you know, artificial intelligence, you know, nuclear technology? Yeah, good or bad? MRI I is is right in there, and it kind of falls under the heading of nuclear physics
of sorts. So let's let's explain it and what it's really cool and what it is is you you you get inside this powerful magnet and the magnet is measured, the strength of the magnet is measured, and what's called tesla and not to be confused with the car company, but but with the you know, father of modern electromagnetic energy and the Nicola Tesla. So the higher the number the field of the magnet, the better the resolution of
the images. We call that signal to noise ratio and we get a lot more but different information than a CAT scan. A cat scan is a computed X ray and you can thank the Beatles for cat scans? Did you know that?
Do tell.
The U when when the math technology was coming out to figure out how to take a bunch of X rays, digitize the information mathematically converted into a two D image and different planes and have that data by what's called you know, forty a transform. The company I believe it was called Electronic Data, something I believe was in Canada, was actually funded by the Beatles. Their manager was investing their money very intelligently and they funded this company that
actually developed cat scan. I think it's EEDI or something like that. Wow, So they were behind that. So every time you have a cat scan, the Beatles probably get a royalty. But the back to Amri. So you get in this field, and a really good one these days is called a three tesla magnet. And I'm gonna throw a little math in here, but the strength of the magnet refers to the You have to square that number
to understand the relative strength of the pictures. So if you go into a three tesla versus a one point five tesla, that's not a The three isn't twice as good. It's it's three squared as nine compared to one point five, which is squared it's two point twenty five. So it's you know, three or four times better. And they even have seven tesla magnets in a couple plays Academic Center. So the pictures are amazing. It's like looking at the
real anatomy. But these these three tesla magnets. You get in there and it looks at your water in your body. So there's water in our cells, in our fat, in our tissues, and in our fluids. And the water has H two O and the H is hydrogen and hydrogen has you know, if you think about the atomic symbol, right, has a little proton circulating around there. So you get in this magnet and all of your your protons are spinning and it lines up all the spin but uh,
and then it turns off. And this happens very fast, right, and that's why it makes these loud sounds. Tiff, wasn't that loud, like bang bang bang bang bang?
Yeah, yeah, yep.
So it's turning on, turning off, turning on, turning off. So it turns on, it aligns all of your protons in your water, in your body, and then they they get energized and then they want to relax back to the way they were. Some of them are lazier than others and relax faster. As they relax from a high energy state to a lower energy state, they give off a little er radio signal, would you believe. And these rooms are heavily embedded with the walls have copper, so
there's no extraneous radio signal. And they have these very sensitive detectors in three D space that know in the xyz planes, depending on where you are in that machine, what radio signal was giving off by which group of tissues and that's basically translated mathematically into a vauxel, which is a three D XYZ picture of that little spot like a pixel on a TV. And then it can assign values like certain tissues have more water, relaxing, quicker,
et cetera. And they've assigned those and now we can look at anatomy based upon the relaxing of the protons of your water. So I just want to throw that out there because it is one of the coolest things we have going for us in medical imaging.
Wow, there's going to be a test at the end tip so there.
Will be Yeah, and we're just scratching the surface. We're only looking at protons and water. We could be looking at other things. And there are a couple other tests where they look at things. But and this is this is incredible stuff. But they get this MRI and and you have to think about this MRI. It's a snapshot in time. So so they looked at your neck and they told you. First thing they told you is you've lost the normal curve of your neck. So the spine
is built of curves. The neck also known as the cervical spine. You guys say cervical or cervical cervical, okay, because we had a South African professor who said cervical, but some.
But generally I say cervical.
So the cervical is is the top seven vertebrae from the skull down to your what we call the thoracic spine, some people call the dors spine. And that's tell you why, yep, yep, the t's so that And how do you know the t's because they got ribs. You got you know, twelve sets ribs, you got twelve te's. So but this upper seven are your neck. You know how many tiff You know how many vertebra a giraft's neck has. No, I didn't, Craig, do you know.
How many vertebrates a drafts neck has. I'm gonna go with that. I'm going to one hundred and twenty two.
Well you're almost close. It's seven, just like us even they're just really tall.
Wow. Ever, yeah, wow, I was?
Are we having so this?
Those seven have a gentle sea shaped curve, and the lumbar, the lower back has a gentle sea shaped curve, and the thoracic has a reverse sea shaped curve, such that when you add up all these curves the seven in the cervical, the alternating curve of the twelve and the thoracic, and then to the five in the lumbar. They cancel out so that the head always sits above the pelvis. So that's called sagital balance or neutral balance. Where our heads should be right, that center of gravity should be
straight up and down. The head should sit above your your tail. So these curves cancel out. If they don't, you could start to get thrown out of whack.
Yes, okay.
So as as the neck is becomes degenerated to the discs degenerator, they have injuries and things like that, it tends to lose its curve. We also see that in muscle spasm and injury, the neck loses its curve. Sometimes the body's tightening it up on purpose and that pulls it out of curve. We love the curve because it's the least stressful posture for the disks. So building up the back of the neck muscles to the exercise science guru Greig Harper of The Up Project, my favorite bloke.
So you you.
You can build those up. I like I like people to do, you know, push against Yeah, uh, you know you could. They have these gizmos too. You can hook your head up in a straddle and pull on a weight. But but building up the reverse muscles in the neck that go up and down the neck is probably the best thing to rebuild the structure of the muscles of the neck and regain that that healthy curve. But in your case, the loss of the curve is a symptom, not a disease. It's a clue your body's trying to
protect itself. And then Tiff said, the nerve pathways that transmit the nerves from your spinal cord out the spine to your shoulders, arms and hands, tingling in the hands, and that you mentioned it is a manifestation of the little little nerve windows and accumulation of disk degeneration, bone spurs, and sometimes you're just born with little narrow pathways can crowd that space where they travel, and that we call that stenosis. Those windows are called peramena peramena or Latin
plural so pheramenal stenosis is what you have. And it can bother the nerves down into the arm in different patterns all the way down to the hand. And that bothering is called ridiculopathy. It's ridiculous when you have it that it's ridiculopathy. And why is that the word? Because those nerves that come out your spine from the spinal cord are called the nerve roots because of the very the very first part of the creation of the nerve
that goes out. And if you remember from math class, if you take the root of a number, like the root of four, you're also taking the radical of four of the radical four of courses too. So the nerve problem with the nerve root is a root apathy or in Latin radical apathy ridiculous apathy. There you go, you're an expert.
I reckoned a couple of things, right, that was first thing. You need to start a podcast called ridiculopathy. You were You're welcome. You can have that. That's free. Right, that's free. Didn't do that. That was jumbo jumbo GPT. Remember we've spoken about training, the training and the neck extenses and how people are very strong through sterno clido mastoid like like the muscles that everybody.
Is through there. I had to I had to spend my first four weeks doing chin tucks to turn those and now I've progressed to doing weird strapping my head to a squat right standing against it.
Yeah, training those reird neck muscles. It's tricky though, because it's not it's I mean, it's of course it's possible. And I love that you said that because people say to me, or I often say to people when we're talking about neglected muscle groups, I talk about training the neck, and people like, train the neck. What for? I'm like, yeah, because every second person has a fucking sore neck and
people don't train it. And then so the people the front of the neck is relatively strong because they're in this kind of reflexion forward posture, you know, talk about their heads nowhere near their center of gravity, and especially because sitting predisposes us to well, not always, but if we're not thinking, most of us have our head forward for hours and hours and hours. And then when you
try to get your head in. I don't know what it's called, what you would call it anatomically, but I just call it like a neutral position where it's Yeah, when it's in a neutral position, that almost feels weird to people because they're so used to this forward head position. Yep.
One you could be a spine expert if you're not already, because that's exactly what we talk about. And I couldn't agree with you more.
All right, let's talk. Are you sick of talking about because I've got still got lots of questions?
Oh no, we could talk. We could talk spine and details. And you know.
What about the fact that, like a lot of people through the hip flexes, So the muscles at the front of your hips. Everyone hip flexes, So all the muscles that let's say you're standing straight and then you bend your hips you go to sit on a chair, that's called hip flexion, and then when you stand back up, that's called hip extensions or hip extension. Must hip extents or muscles are at the back, hip flex or muscles are at the front, right, because because we sit so
much where to sit down generation? I read somewhere recently that we we expend between six and eight hundred calories less per day than two generations ago because of I don't know how accurate that is, but I liked it, so I just milk it. But anyway, we sit down a lot, and one of the byproducts is that because we're so often in this hip flexion position, we have shorter, less flexible, tighter hip flexes, and weaker stretched kind of glutes and hamstrings. Is that a thing?
Oh yeah, we see a lot of problems that are that that cluster of issues happen. And you know a lot of we call tape posterior chains the buttocks down to the muscles down the back of the thigh and they're just we're not getting the range of motion use of well not just hips, but but you know, hips, your lumbo pelvic structures are just you know, ruined if you're sitting all day. And I'm guilty of it a lot at the time as well. But and you've got
to work them those out. You've got to do flexibility work, you've got to do strengthening, you've got to use those parts. Yeah.
Yeah, Can I step back from the specifics of the back still talking about pain, this is like this is a little pain. Measuring pain is like like you know, like I'm doing my doctorate in psychology, right. Psychology is a funny area of research because it's kind of it's interesting and fascinating and necessary, but it's kind of bullshit
because you can't really measure. There's a lot you can't measure because it's all these you know, subjective assessments, right, it's you know, and I think like with pain, even with my clients back in the day, I would say to them, you know, if they've got to saw something, I'd go, cool, what's like one to ten? Ten being agony that you can't deal with one?
Being?
Fuck all? What's the score? And everyone's you know, individual kind of self assessment. Like Tiff and I might be feeling the exact same thing, the exact same pain, and I call it a fucking nine because I'm a big baby, and she calls it a three because she's a warrior, right.
But it's actually the it is how much of pain as an experience or is it influenced by our psychology and mindset so that that not only do we label it as a higher or lower number, but can our thinking actually turn up the pain so to speak?
Yeah, you know, there is a major psychological involvement contributor in the in the perception of pain, physical physical pain we're talking about. But I think it makes sense here to talk about the the poor utility of a linear one to ten scale, and this this is called the vas the visual analog scale, and It is a one to ten scale. Ten is typically, you know, the highest pain you've ever experienced. In zero is no pain, and
it was designed Craig for surgical recovery rooms. So you have a major surgery, you know, someone replaces your hip, and then you go in the recovery room and you're in quite a bit of pain. But they don't know how much morphine to give you because everyone's different in how they respond to two milligrams or twelve milligrams or whatever. So so they ask you what's your on a one to ten scale, what's your pain? And they sometimes show this little picture and it has these little frownie faces
a ten and a little happy phase. At zero you get the I'm a seven, okay, And then they give you okay, we'll give you a starting those of two milligrams a morphine, and then they come back five minutes later to see how it hits you. Did your seven go down? Yes? How far down to? Oh? I'm a three? All right, I'll give you one more milligram. You know, that's what it's for. It was not designed for the
measurement of ongoing and chronic pain. The problem with this scale is people adjust their perception of paint over time. And the scale that people one to ten scale is biology is not linear, so the difference between a two and a three could be vastly different between the nine out of the ten and nine to ten. And then
there's a reference frame problem. Like you said, So you know, if if if Tiff, because she's the warrior, if she came over and punched your right shoulder as hard as you could, and you're like, ow, Tiff, that's a nine, and then she'll and then and she say, but Craig, you've haven't seen anything yet, and she goes to your other shoulder, punches it twice as hard, and it's even
twice as much pain on the other shoulder. You would say, wow, I guess that, well, first shoulder wasn't really a nine because I'm already off the scale on this other one. So let me revise that that nine down to a five, and I'll give you a ten on the new shoulder. Well, we have to help patience. We give them a frame. I tell them this when you come in the office, if you've got pain, I want you to I want
you to tell me ten. Is I got to take you to the hospital, right now I got to coll an ambulance get you to the hospital because there's no way I can manage a ten. Here in the office, I say, A four is where you got to take a narcotic pain pill. You know, I don't. I don't know what you have there in Australia, but we have things like Norco and Lord Tab and Vike it in. You probably have different brand names, but it's a little bit of a narcotic. And then and then I say
a seven means that pain pill isn't working. So I give them a frame because they come in on it's ten out of ten, like, here's my skill? Nowhere is it? Oh, it's really a three? You know.
It's it's funny. There's a very similar thing that we've spoken about too much here on the show, but I'll just run it out once more. But in exercise science, there's a skyale called the right of perceived exertion a PAE which you may or may not have heard of, but basically it makes how hard you think you'll work and the amount of times when somebody's making all kinds
of faces. I'm training someone an athlete or a non athlete, and they're grunting and fucking panting, and and I know that they're not working as hard as they look like they're or they're they're making out they're working. And I say, out of ten ten, being your absolute superhuman end of the scale, you couldn't do anymore, any harder, any heavier, like ten out of ten, what are you working out now?
Like?
What was that set? And people will often say, oh, that that was an eight or nine, And I'm like, because I'm literally I've literally been around tens of thousands of sessions and workouts, I'm going, it's a three. It's maybe a four. And so that person who just did an exercise on a certain weight, so a certain exercise at a certain weight, and they did twelve reps and
they thought that was almost their app max. And then I have this chat to them right now where I talk about the difference between what is hard and what we think is hard, and what we're capable of and where we think we're at, and I just talk about literally the perception of effort, and I go, I could be wrong, but I've never been wrong with this stuff before.
I reckon twelve for you as you working at three or four, And then I say, I want you without being silly, We're not going to kill you that I want you to do as many reps on this weight and let's just see what happens. Do not put it down, do not stop until you physically can't fucking move it. And then the person who did twelve then does forty, right, and they're like, and what is good about that?
Is not?
Oh, I can do sets of forty. Now now that's not the point. The point is, I go. Your limitation is not your physiology, it's your psychology. Your body is fucking amazed, but don't let your mind get in the way. And I feel like that's true for not just exercise, but many things.
If you could bottle what you just said and that applies to everything, it's yeah, you're you're spot on, and it I'm glad you said that. It makes me bring up a topic here that you can help with. I've
been akin recently to doing workouts more efficiently. My wife and I go every morning to the gym, and we instead of doing the old traditional three sets of ten or something like that, we are doing something I learned from John Janquish, which is if you know who this guy is, he he developed the osteo strong system for for bone density, and he's got he's got an exercise system based on heavy elastic bands. But but he.
He speaks to.
One set to fail Yeah, and so what this maximum exertion thing you're talking about is really what is failure? And how can you get more out of failure? Because at those last few reps is where the real work is done that stimulates muscle hypertrophy or for those of you at home, muscle growth, the size of your muscle. And and you know, we go to the gym, we try to do one set to failure. We try to
hit fifteen to forty reps. If we're hitting failure before fifteen too much weight, if we're hidden, if we can get to sixty reps before we fail too little weight, and we try to and this is not my method, we can get a workout in a much shorter amount of time. And I've noticed the gains and but I've noticed this failure is different on different days. If I'm energetic and I'm pumped and I'm in the right mood, I can do more than on days where I'm not
psychologically there, you know, to get it. And and notice that in her as well. So you're you're so right it. You can get so much more out of your physical workout if you if you psych up for the set, if you do the uh what what is the uh? The dance that the you know, the Tonguans and Samoans do before a battle.
Or before a gat the haka haka haka.
You almost have to do your own hakka, you know, and get your testosterone pumped. And for women too, you have to they have to stosterone. You've got to pump up and go, you know.
Right, Yeah, I mean, like I always say to people that that apart from going to the gym and having to hang out with your mates and talking and having a bit of socializing and getting a bit sweaty and producing a bit of dopamine and doing all those things which are good. Like really, the point of exercises to stretch your body to create an adaptive response. And so
you know, strength is an adaptive response. Improved flexibility, range of movement, power, speed, aerobic endurance, muscular endurance, all of these things are physiological responses to doing something to your body. Now, when some people like you say, oh, one exercise, one set to that, some people will go Oh, that's not enough. And that's because we've been programmed to think that, oh,
we need to do it a certain way. But the truth is what you're talking about, done the right way, one set is going to give more benefit than five sets done the wrong way. Right, And so trying to get your mind out of you know, this, this kind of oh, there's only one way to produce strength gains, there's only one way to drop fat. There's only one way.
And the thing is that not only does everybody respond differently, you know, to you know, different bodies and different minds respond differently to the same stimuli, but even the same person responds, as you said, differently to the same stimuli stimulus or stimuli depending on the day, right, And so it's not fuck, it's not a constant. It's dynamic, you know, it's fluid how your body will work, even how your body will work from am to pm in terms of
optimal you know, like training time, recovery time. You know, Tiff and I have spoken about this many times in terms of when even when my brain works better, Like I know, and people would laugh at this, but if you did an IQ test on me at eight am versus eight pm, I would be considerably dumber at night on a you know, And that's it's not because you're literally, broadly speaking dumber, bit because my brain works better at night,
my body works in the morning. My body. So it's trying to figure out with all of this stuff, how your particular you know, anatomy and physiology responds to these things. You know, Yes, so I'm glad you're doing that. But also the other thing I would say to you is like everything it works for a while and then it doesn't work. It needs to be variety and progression. And it's like, you know, that's cool, that's cool. But if I train a bodybuilder like a powerlifter, that motherfucker is
going to be sore for a week. If I train a powerlifter like a bodybuilder, he won't be able, you know. And it's like, and it's not that one is better or the other is better. It's like, well, you know, like some days I will go to the gym and everything will be sets of thirty. Some days it'll everything will be sets of six. It depends, and you get benefit both ways. But when you're constantly stressing your body the same way, same kind of sets and reps, and
volume and exercises and recovery time. Eventually you start to plateau. So so what you're talking about is great, and also adding as much variety as you can, you know, when appropriate. Yeah, that'll be dollars, that'll be ten dollars.
Well I thought we were bartering since I give the freeze spine consultation.
All right, all right, well you can have that for nothing. Hey Gil, great, we love you. How can people find you and follow you? Doc?
Well? First I got to put a plug in for my son is in your country. He he's going to be participating in the half iron Man triathlon in I'm gonna butcher this. But macquarie, Yeah.
Yeah, Porlt mcquarie. Yeah yeah, it's on the that's right, it's on the it's on the New South Wales coast. So we're in Victoria at the bottom New South Wales. Sydney slash is above us, and Port mcquarie is above Sydney. I think, yeah, so.
It's nowhere near you, But anyone who's listening from that area go go cheer on. Adam he's gonna he's gonna be there. And he went all the way across the Pacific two to join your your triathlon and then you can find me here on the You Project once a month until I get kicked off. And that is but I meant re celebrate our E C E L L E B R A T E. We focus on stem cells, regenerate medicine, peptides, biohacking, anti aging, non kool aid, consumed
sick care, junk. We do health and wellness and longevity.
Perfect, perfect, perfect. I loved that. That was a good chat. We'll say goodbye off air, but for the minute, Tiff, thank you. Happy birthday again. Tiff Doc said, well, yesterday, but she's still celebrating.
It goes on for the whole month, So thank you.
I mean for sixty four. You look fucking amazing. Yeah. See everyone,