Friday Thoughts 24
Welcome to this week’s edition of Friday Thoughts. Usually this list is just clips I came across during the week, but after seeing this first clip a few weeks ago, I’ve been stewing on it a lot. Pun intended… All the other posts today are also related to back pain.
Stuart McGill is well known in the fitness industry. If you’ve done a bird dog or heard someone tell you sit ups are bad, their information probably came from Stu (guilty). I saw him speak in 2010. I left terrified to snap my spine. I thought too many repetitions of something and it would break like a credit card, his famous line. That led to never rounding, arching or twisting my back for a long time, along with giving up all squats and deadlifts. I got weaker and my back didn’t get better till years later, when I started squatting and deadlifting and exposing my spine to normal human movements.
For me, gradual exposure to different ranges of motion, learning to breathe and brace better along with improving my technique and range of motion helped me get rid of my back pain. Avoiding anything risky didn’t make me better. It made me fragile and scared to break.
When I first saw this post I felt like it was written about me. Seriously. In college, after seeing McGill speak I was hip hinging at the water fountains and always tweaking my back when I did deadlift heavy. The quote at the end is what we should all strive for, “thoughtless, fearless movement.” I remember the first time I had thoughtless, fearless movement. For a brief time we had a ping pong table in the gym, probably 2015 or 16. I was playing with a friend and went dashing across the gym after a ball. There was a barbell in the rack about shoulder height and a ducked underneath while reaching for the ball. This quick, sudden drop would have injured me a couple years before, something would have spasmed, but nothing happened, and I remember thinking, I’ve made it.
While all this was happening in college and immediately post-college it was hard for me to sleep. Ten or twelve years ago Kelly came out with a video that explained what he does here - how firm mattresses became the recommendation for back pain and a couple strategies to help get comfortable. For me, pillow under the knees was a complete game changer, and one of the first ways I started to intentionally getting a little spinal flexion in my life - despite being so conflicted about what I was hearing McGill say.
Seemed fitting.
Funny thing is, if you’ve bought a toilet recently, and I’ve bought 3 within the past 4 years, you’ll find that standard height toilets are rare, and most these days are “chair height,” 19in. Instead of fixing the squatting problem, we’re raising the height.
Until next time!
Justin Miner
@justinminergain