TMGP Ep 22 with Injury Coach, Chiropractor and Powerlifter Dr J’aime Goguen-Locke

o another white boy with a podcast pronouns Jim bro another white boy with a podcast you want to see the video it went viral hi gains gurus and welcome to tmgp the muscle growth podcast episode 22 I am your host Rosco and today we're welcoming Dr Jem onto the show Dr Jem is a dedicated chiropractor and injury coach with over 18 years of experience helping individuals Rec recover from muscular skeletal injuries she earned her doctor of Chiropractic degree from Parker University and takes a holistic approach to treatment incorporating techniques such as deep tissue myofascial release active Rehabilitation and nutritional guidance to support her patient recovery as an injury coach specializing in powerlifting injury management and prevention Dr Jam emphasizes preven ative care and works collaboratively with other Health Care Professionals to provide comprehensive tailored care for her patients she is committed to patient education and empowerment setting her apart as a leader in the field of Chiropractic Care in addition to her work as a chiropractor Dr Jem is an accomplished powerlifter Dr Jam's dedication to the sport of powerlifting and her work as the head clinician with Kodiak Bell demonstrates her passion for fitness health and helping others achieve their goals join Dr Jem in this episode of tmgp as she shares insights into her practice discusses common misconceptions about healthc care and offers valuable tips for maintaining a healthy and strong lifestyle her unique perspective as a chiropractor injury consultant and an elite powerlifter will provide valuable insights for anyone looking to optimize their health and performance today's episode we can look forward to insights from Dr Jam related to injury Consulting rehabilitation health Care Systems injury prevention the body being a master of compensation squat technique her thoughts on squat University including thoughts about one's back ability the infamous dead pig study having a fixed stance for squat atg weird exercises and so forth of training oneself when filming the psychon neuromuscular Theory pain through exercise not rest obliques training and full extension situps and more hey gains gurus before we dive into today's episode we have a special shout out to our sponsor heart and mind ESS if you're looking for a delicious way to boost your workouts their creating gummies can be found on take a lot and are the perfect fit they're not just effective but also a tasty treat you can look forward to every day so maybe it's time to be like me and fuel your gains with heart and mind essay if you're injured or in recovery check out the injury consultant.com and consider getting a free consultation to see whether I can help you heal restore and Thrive lastly don't forget to follow us on all major social media platforms including Instagram YouTube Tik Tok and X find us at the muscle growth podcast and myself at reps with rosar welcome Dr jeim to the muscle growth podcast where we explore subjects related to muscle science and hypertrophy I'm thrilled to have you join us for today's conversation let's Jump Right In and dig into some exciting topics together can you briefly introduce yourself so my background Kinesiology major um I actually did my doctorate in Chiropractic in Canada which is quite distinguishable from the American curriculum a lot more rehab based and then uh when I married my husband he owned a powerlifting company on Kodiak Bargo and we realized that there was literally nobody out there formally educated to help people in the shm community because requires a very very different way of approaching recovery that you know you can't just have them sit at home for six weeks it's just not reasonable so I joined codf barbell and now I exclusively work with strength athlete in rehabilitation um and injury Management program management all that kind of stuff and what did you do before uh before the that kind of thing so I was originally when I met my husband I was working in private prce so I worked with a very broad scope of things and in the Canadian curriculum even in Chiropractic it's very um first two years essentially are done with new University of Toronto's um medical curriculum so you learn the fundamentals of diagnosis because there are chiropractors that work in remote areas so we learn diagnosis of lung conditions heart conditions throat nose ears all the basics of diagnosis and uh so we do see a very wide scope of things and we are kind of people who triage patients to who they should go um but I was just working in private practice I was just helping you know pretty much anyone from newborns to elderly and everything in between and I mean I myself was a gymnast since I was three years old so I've always been in the strength Community but not as much from a professional capacity so did you graduate from the University of Toronto no so I did my undergraduate at queens and then our University for chiropractic school there's actually only one in the whole country so it's very different than America where there's like four in every state um there's one English one in the entire country um that one you can do collaborations with University of Toronto um but I graduated from cmcc and then I did a um acupuncture certification in medical acupuncture from uh McMaster University okay and um who do you find easier to work with the newborns or the elderly the elderly they don't cry as much don't they when you get a newborn crying you're like oh yeah this is an additional layer of stress wh what are the newborns coming in for I assume they don't bring themselves to the practice well it really depends if you know parents obviously have different um political standpoints on how they want to approach Health right right like very very strongly away from especially with recent things uh vaccination is a very hot topic um and what you do with your newborn child in Western medicine is now being criticized pretty strongly so some hers usually patients of mine will bring their children and they're like I just want to ensure they're hitting Milestones so we do neurological exams on infants that essentially there's different Milestones of their development where they're supposed to lose certain neurological signs so you can track these over time to ensure that their neurology is effective you know maturing the way that it should be um I personally have beliefs regarding treatment of newborns and young children I personally do not do that I will assess them and I will teach their parents how to treat them because I think that is a very delicate uh world to work in and what what exactly are you assessing them for you mentioned neurological aspects is it that as well as um like walking and or crawling those kinds of things physical yeah so of course parents get concerned about their children anything that seems off of the normal track typically will concern a parent so sometimes just getting the piece of Mind of being like yeah they might be an outlier for these specific metrics however there's nothing that we can you know see concretely is wrong with them sometimes they're just our outliers because you just work off statistics and averages but there are things that you can look for like for example some kids don't start crawling or walking at the right stages they may have things like hip dysplasia which should be assessed at Earth sometimes just depending on where people have access to healthcare especially in Canada not very easy to always get good care um if you live remotely you may not even get a primary care practitioner my family didn't um especially during Co because we had a shortage of doctors and that was all very messy so they rely on whoever they can because you know parents just if you're concerned something's wrong with your child you will do anything you can to figure out what's going on right of course um and with regards to living in Canada not being easy to get Top Care is that and you mentioned the remote areas is that would you say one of the biggest barriers or do you think it's a system failure as as a whole I could talk about this all day well we have socialized medicine it is it's interesting because I've lived in the US for two years now and Americans all the time come up to me and they go in the US oh you guys have yeah they're like got that free healthare I'm like free healthare our tax bracket we pay like 50% to the government at the end of the year so you're paying for it you just don't get to use it because they fired pretty much every doctor and nurse that would not get the vaccine and I lived in the last place I lived in Canada I lived there for 4 years and I never once got allocated to a family physician sure so what for your own health or or for you give advice yeah for for my own health so you apply when you move like hi I need a doctor yeah you would in four years probably and they're like okay cool we'll we'll send you a message when one opens up but they all quit because I mean obviously you'll call it conspiracy but they I know myself being somebody who went through um you know a professional healthc care system if I didn't reiterate a very particular script about vaccination Not only would I not graduate but I could also lose my license and I know that because I went through it and I know there are other doctors that were encouraged to speak a certain way and a lot of them did not feel comfortable pushing the covid vaccine and a lot of them were fired for not taking the covid vaccine and we lost a ton of healthc Care Professionals they had to close down emergency rooms emergency departments and hospitals because they were under staff um people couldn't get family doctors my sisterin-law was pregnant in 2021 never got a primary care practitioner for herself or her child they had to go to emergency department every time that she needed a follow up that sounds broken it's really really scary and that's in a like first world country I come from South Africa so it's um still developing I guess but uh we can at least find a doctor sometimes I guess yeah I mean they've done um tell Health in Canada sure is they've been able to you know you could use tell Health but there's the thing is like you basically call tele health and say hi I want this drug and they go okay here it is but reason why you're supposed to have a primary care provider is so that they understand your history yeah and actually understand the the risks associated with things um but yeah that that doesn't in Canada you might not get that and if your primary care provider has retired a lot of people just are left with no care it happened to a ton of my patients Jeepers that's not good to hear y well um very scary hopefully hopefully you'll have some nicer topics to talk about that is that is that is very scary well let's talk about what what you're doing and what you're contributing to the Healthcare Community in terms of uh injury Consulting how like you mentioned that you started doing more of that I think when you went to your husband's gym is that correct yeah so he owns an online company um and he has employees so we have a lot of powerlifting clients as a company and what we noticed when we started dating was he would have a client get hurt doing that some type of training in the powerlifting world and you'd be like okay go see a clinician go figure out what your diagnosis is what we should be doing for it and all his clients would come back saying oh actually they didn't tell me what was wrong but they told me to to stop training and to quit training for the next couple months right yeah and so he would tell me he's like jeem is this accurate like why would he need to do that and I'm like no he doesn't that practitioner is just not educated on how to manage people in the strength Community because there is no formal education on that you don't go to Physio school or pyo school and they say okay for the powerlifting population here is the curriculum that we're going to follow these are all the chapters it doesn't exist you know you learn the basics and then you have to apply them and you learn in your own um you know clinical experience how to do this kind of stuff absolutely and I've uh done quite a lot of research on the I guess they would prescribe the rice protocol is that is that more or less what people were doing the rest ice and the compression elevation is that still being prescribed I mean when I was in school mind you that was like 2015 um that was when they started veering away from it so I mean the interesting thing with Healthcare is that the year that you graduated says a lot about what you learned your growth oh yeah because this stuff is not this isn't math this you know science is always changing always developing um so especially in the world of rehab and nutrition oh my gosh like that that stuff changes almost daily you just can't it doesn't matter what your opinion is it's going to be wrong tomorrow no I completely agree so in terms of moving away from rice what what are the kind of Alternatives or the more uh correct approach now I know that the person who invented rice is actually come in and said listen I'm sorry rice is um outdated and and you know he publicly apologized and he said that people shouldn't do Rice given the the latest data and now instead of wrestling and I think you're also quite a big proponent of moving to not only recover but to prevent injury as well and getting strength back is very important for for a recovery Journey instead of like you said no diagnosis and then being told not to train and just rest which is it doesn't make sense you're never going to get strong if you're just resting in fact you're going to a trophy so badly that you're barely going to be recognizable yeah so what's interesting about that topic is so as practitioners we work off of something called clinical practice guidelines right these are guidelines that we utilize um they're typically monetarily driven which is why I never really trust them 100% because a lot of it's just based on oh Insurance should cover this amount that's dangerous but it suggests what a normal recovery timeline should be and what the best clinical outcomes could be based on Research right so they know for inversion anle sprains right for the first week and then certain types of rehab and certain types of modalities will give you a typical prognosis of heric week time so there was a point in time where the clinical practice guidelines suggested complete rest right there was a day where if you got into a car accident you'd be given a cervical collar even though you didn't break anything and you'd be sent home for a few weeks and then I believe it was in the late 90s they started doing re search on bed rest for people who were going to be going into space because they wondered what are the actual effects on the body if you do not fight gravity just that alone and I believe it was 4 days your cardiovascular system will start to deplete in many ways and I believe that after that 4- week time period you lose about 1% of your V2 Max a day right and that's huge for athletes your ability to obsorb and utilize oxygen is very important for athletes and then beyond that around the six week Mark we start to look at bone mineral density loss you will literally get osteoporosis in your hips and your lumbar spine which are the highest fracture risks for the elderly that actually lead to mortality from bed it's seems like a really dangerous recommendation but we didn't know this until we started thinking okay well if we're going to protect our astronauts why should we be thinking about what what should we be doing for them what kind of Health Factor should we be looking at so that's kind of interesting because they're totally unrelated Fields but that research drove a lot of um additional Research into these recommendations for rest for muscular sceletal injuries so that's super interesting that it was thanks to the astronauts that we now have um better uh methods than goodness for them so yeah how what what is the alternative or what is the subsequent research what is it saying what should we do instead of bed rest you do everything you can everything and anything that you can do and a lot of what I do with clients is actually assess based on on their condition and based on their sport based on their goals of whether or not they're competing there's of factors that go into it but what can they continue to do that will not worsen their prognosis and you just kind of flirt with that that line of if you go over this then it might make things worse but you stay just below that so they can do everything they possibly can with what whatever condition that are in I like that I like that approach so it's multifactorial it's person dependent and it's micro adjusting depending on the person's conditions depending on their sport depending on their attitude their mental well-being all the rest of it and trying to get them to do the most that they can without making it worse basically is what I'm understanding exactly yeah what for the astronauts that uh had to go through that uh horrific uh study did they did they get back um their like bone density afterwards with resistance training or were they stuck you can I mean that's actually it's funny because a lot of people there's also research that says that you can't yeah um but I mean osteoporosis they call it I mean mind you this is dated 245 when I graduated this is what they said they said osteoporosis is a pediatric disease with very after consequences meaning that you have a very particular time in your life to build bone mineral density you have a particular time in your life to maintain it so it's very difficult once you've reached that depletion stage but then there's also additional factors right sarcopenia which is a natural age related decline in muscle mass you can certainly combat that with resistance training I recommend literally I mean I recommend anyone in the world to do resist trading it doesn't matter what age but another additional reason is that it's very hard to load your bones and maintain bone density when you don't have muscles to support them absolutely more muscle Less Problems yeah exactly I mean that's what we tell ourselves but I think I think it's it's pretty true um I actually had U Jenny mcco on the show and she's the oldest Ninja Warrior and um she yeah she's super cool she's in her 70s now her um her daughter's also like the world leading Ninja Warrior and she got her into the ninja and um he reversed her osteoporosis uh the one before that I'm not sure it's not full-blown um osteoporosis but the one before that um osteopenia I believe and she reversed that through doing ninja through doing Gym training and that kind of thing and her bone density came back much denser I guess and much better than it was before all those things so that's really cool and that was in a late 60s that that happened so like you said everyone needs to be training not just young people yeah she'd be a great case study because I still got clients that are in their SES that are like oh I had osteopenia they prescrib me medication they told me I I just I can only maintain what little I have left and I'm like that's such a horrible way to look at things just be like good luck it's like maybe if they understood more about what we do exactly they would make better recommendations but I mean even when I did my internship as a Cairo I was working in a hospital with medical doctors um because they're working on more collaborative approaches and mine was very unique there was six of us in my group out of the whole school and we did a placement in um a Clinical Psychology department so we exclusively saw patients with psychological I who also had injuries cuz that really really Alters prognosis that really really makes things different but in my time there I realized that General Practitioners Family Physicians it's not that they don't want to tell somebody to do exercise it's that they were not properly and formally educated on what they should be recommending specifically and I don't blame them for for that because I don't think you can be a master of all trades I think if you're going to know drugs know your drugs well because our lives depend on it and if you're going to know rehab know rehab well but expecting a physician family doctor to know all of the details something that took me 10 years to accumulate in school and understand I can't expect them to learn everything that they learned and then also the 10 years that I I learned as well right so I think it's to divide and conquer because there's a lot of stuff absolutely I I totally agree with you um so it sounds like the education system is flawed and that it's not being updated as quickly as it should and that it's not the doctor's fault especially the ones that graduated years back um like they weren't taught nutrition they weren't taught physical training those kinds of things that hopefully now are going to start T since there's a lot more literature coming out in the scientific Community about it um I'm hopeful uh but I'm sure the top universities will start implementing those strategies because they're so easy to implement like you said like people need to know about the drugs and those are very difficult to study and learn about where exercise is maybe the best drug drug um but it's also so accessible and you don't have to pay money to go for a walk go for a hike go for a run do a pullup up um and that's I think I think it's something that's a bit lacked in the modern the modern schooling system I'd say it's getting better I mean the ooid epidemic certainly um put a lot of fear in practitioners because the accusation that they are getting people addicted to harmful drug is very heavy to bear and so I know a lot of doctors who are incredibly um adverse to certain type of prescriptions because that allegation is heavy you know people lost their lives because of you know opiates opiates were supposed to be the next best thing and they killed a lot of people for sure and so because of addiction I assume yeah yeah because of addiction and it it affected a lot of people my grandfather actually that's how he died um so it's like you know I I was one of those kids where everybody told me to always be a medical doctor because I don't think if you're smart then everyone just tells you to do that and um in my experience I I lived in Australia for a year and I just took some time to really think about what I wanted and I realize that I did not align with the medical community at all I don't align with any of the sentiment um I think there is a very important place for them I think that they there's a lot of value in that but it's interesting to me how even nowadays somebody will go see their medical doctor and they come back and they go they just prescribed me medicine like you saw a medical doctor though that like that's their specialization is medicine if you wanted natural stuff you could go to an osteopathic doctor and if you wanted manual stuff you could go to a you know a doctor of physical therapy you know there's there's other types of doctors now that are starting to become more mainstream so it's I think you know it's also kind of like patient understanding of what these professionals do and I don't think it's reasonable to expect every professional to know the world of every other professional because it's a significant amount of school to just learn one of those you know specializations I mean I don't I don't want to learn about medicine I've Liv in school for 10 years I'm exhausted like I'm good no I completely agree with you and I'm sorry to hear about your grandfather but I'm very glad to hear that you picked your own path and that you didn't listen to your years and that um it sounds like it was the right path for you yeah I mean anything that allows you freedom to push for the things that you believe is right is incredible because you know people ask me you know what if you could do anything in the world what would you do I would do my job I would do what I'm doing now like there's really nothing else you know I've identified a cohort of people that needed a lot of support and I get to be able to help people for a living it's like you know I have nothing negative to say about it it sounds like you uh found what the Japanese term um icky guy which is basic are you familiar with it yes so yes I actually just learned that like two weeks ago oh in no ways well it sounds like you found yours which is the um the kind of intersection between what you love what you're good at what can help society and what can earn you money and there might be one or two other threads to that that I might be forgetting but something like that yeah and that that's special and you must hold on to that I hope that that can Inspire some some other people to go chase their icky guys go research what that is to the listeners it's very it's very cool it's a beautiful philosophy I guess yeah in terms in terms of that case study that you mentioned um Jin MLL episode six I believe if you anyone wants to go listen she's super inspiring she only started at age 63 that was when she started and like uh she was a danc and things before so she was always fit um but uh she only did her first pullup I believe at 68 or 69 and then and then her first salmon ladder you know salmon ladder like one of those hectic pullup things where you go up and up to the next round like a year or two later at almost 70 which is it's incredible I yeah I really want to find a s ladder to see if I can even do one but she's right I'm like uh oh do you know a salmon ladder yeah I have one in the gy that I work out of oh can you do it I I have not tried but I will let you know please do please do that that that's exciting don't hurt yourself though but you'll know how fix yourself if you do if you do get hurt which is at least something okay um I saw you had a I'm going to go through a few of your Instagram post that I really uh really enjoyed um you mentioned something about uh your body being a master of compensation like for example if you uh you probably have patients saying I can still squat doesn't that mean uh it doesn't mean you aren't injured basically was the was what you were trying to say can you elaborate a bit on on that so a lot of these posts that I make they're typically inspired by client right I'll have a conversation with a client and I'll be like if I'm having that conversation with you there's probably a lot of other people out there who should be having that conversation for sure and I think with powerlifting especially you know working with the world of guys who are totaling around 2K it is honestly amazing what they can still do while missing muscles or you know like the extent of the injuries that they've had and I think sometimes they fall into this trap of well I can still squat it's like that's sick I want you to keep being able to squat does that mean that you didn't tear your quad off the bone no but you can still squat so when people use the metric of whether they can do the big three again which is the goal of rehab it doesn't always mean that it's done right cuz I am working with one client in particular right now had an injury similar to my husband's um which my husband had a complete quad pendant rupture he did not have a complete rupture had parshall and he's oh another white boy with a podcast pronouns Jim bro another white boy with a podcast you want to see the video it went viral we realize he has like no hip stability at all cannot do a single leg STS he cannot do a reverse lunge with his Zurcher he like all these like relatively beginning rehab stuff very challenging for him to do but he can spat 700 PS does that mean he's healed right so I kind of look at these I always call them pral symptoms if there is something that is lacking and you're doing these compound movements your body's going to start nagging you in little ways you're going to get little heads up that you know something may be a little bit off and when you tear a muscle or something like this happens that's a good indication that you should be going back to check your Basics you know these guys I'm sure started with those basic movements 20 years ago now so it seemed you know nobody wants to do that I get it but when you go back to the basics you get to do the basics they realize that they cannot do the basics anymore that when they realize light bul moment they're not they're not okay they're not 100% better and you know what we do is we just we find a rehab that matches them where they're at and we find out the safest way that they can continue to train and to progress there has to be they have to be able to implement some level of progressive overload so that's looking at program variations how to get relative intensity very high without absolute load being very high how to use variations um that actually address their issues right we don't want to just pull a variation out of our hat we want to say if they're really really weak in certain positions whether it's their back whether it's whatever you're using a variation that emphasizes everything that they're bad at and that's like rehab is the exact same thing rehab is just a list of exercises that you are terrible at God i' have a long list then myself I think we all do for sure so the the Takeo message for for that is um to listen to your body and then to go back to basics I guess yeah Going Back to Basics and and assessing those things will give you a good metric of what's really going on cuz I even find with people especially who are incredibly strong the stronger that they get their body is brilliant at masking symptoms brilliant absolutely and I think uh anyone squatting 700 or 800 PBS is is really really really strong especially if they're chasing a 2,000 pound total is that is that what you said by the 2K yeah that's I mean that's what most larger men that's usually the goal for that population how how big are these guys how much did they weigh I think the guy that I was referring to that actually sparked that particular post I think he's around 38 oh he's big he's a unit yeah he's that they not wow but you know like my husband for example he was you know going for the 2K total before Poli exploded he competed at 275 I believe um so yeah they're usually 242 plus I would say usually I mean there's also freaks out there that are amazing but yeah those are those are those are huge men though those are really big big guys sure um I don't know if here because I guess that's what I'm used to working with powerlifters like we're not Dy people we're not that that doesn't help powerlifters for sure but I guess like with the categories and everything I know quite a lot of smaller especially in the females side like smaller girls um that are lifting really heavy but weighing like 50 60 kg and um they just have those I mean I compete at 132 132 pound oh wow okay sure yeah and what's your total so the last time I competed I dislocated my shoulder five weeks out of the meet um I was a gymnast right so my body is very my my my issue with powerlifting is that I have a very difficult time generating tension okay because I learned how to move with flexibility my entire life like I can fold my body in half so powerlifting is the complete opposite it's being as stiff as possible and if I do a low bar squat my my shoulders will pop out at death not fun and I'm still to this day working on this shoulder that was dislocated before he left me sure sorry to hear about that yeah I mean that part of the game and um I generally don't have a lot of pain which I mean the pain is what annoys me um my bench is still fine because I'm very L dominant but I cannot our Squad anymore so you just High boss squatting now okay yeah it's not yeah that's okay you just get jacked in a different way it's fine exactly exactly um one of the tips that I saw that you mentioned was for Squat and that was stacking your pelvis under under the rib cage do you mind just elaborating a little bit on that point yeah so this I would say again usually inspired by clients um this is typically more applicable to actually I see this a lot in very large men and I see this a lot in very small women so like the extreme agent r es of that for beginner lifters you've probably seen it the first time somebody goes to squat they just stick their butt out they Arch into extension and they're like that's how you Squat and that's fine until you start to get strong and the weight gets heavier if you cannot maintain a very strong cylinder brace with tension you will reach a limit for your strength very quickly right cuz when I think about the squad it's just transfer force from the feet into your upper back anything in between that moves when it should not move for a technical competition squat to occur is lost energy and if we're arching our back and we're flaring our ribs and we're not engaging our low F we're leaking energy all over the freaking place and I see this a lot of beginners when they're learning how to brace properly and they haven't developed that skill yet and then I also see it in large men who have lost a lot of hip internal rotation because they have difficulty achieving depth in the squat once you get to like 270 plus hitting depth when you're really really big you just run into yourself so they can compensate for that by arching their low back and getting a little bit more depth and a lot of them don't have a ton of hip IR because a lot of them have been trading for maybe a decade plus they've been loading those hips they have a ton of muscle mass and maybe that was just a a particular type of Mobility that they were not focusing on before it's just not a normal range that people think about um which is actually interesting because in my education they taught us that the first range of motion you lose when you're developing um you know degeneration or osteoarthritis is hip internal rotation and it's usually the first range that a lot of lifters will lose because of the compressive compressive nature of power lifting sure and is that maybe one of the reasons and you can correct me if I'm wrong but I see a lot of the big guys having very wide squat stances is that so they don't go into themselves basically yeah I mean for a lot of people don't forget a lot of powerlifting um is still kind of inspired by Westside which was equipped lifters having a relas specific style everybody does it the same that's the right way that's the only right way that was the mentality and then now we have you know small females like myself lifting I'm not going to lift the same way that somebody who is 300 FS at West Side is going to squat is just not the same at all um and a lot of a lot of what lift should look like for that particular athlete depends on the in chrometry of that athlete you know what how long is their fever how is their Mobility how tall are they you know all of these things all of variable um but yeah I mean some people just squat wide because they feel strong wide some people squat wide because they don't have range otherwise some people squat way because they have a stomach um all sorts of things that people all you know we we use our particular form to get around whatever we suck at is the truth and that that makes perfect sense but I think that actually leads quite quite nicely into the next question what are your uh thoughts on squat University oh you saw that huh I did I did I I and U I haven't told you anything about my thoughts but I've also got quite strong thoughts on them so please do go for it um you know they they have their pluses as a platform I think they were one of the first few platforms that were trying to provide education for people um to help a community of strength athletes that have been under service by traditional Physical Therapy world so I respect them for that they put out a lot of great information do I agree with everything that they put out no I don't think anyone's everever going to agree with everything somebody says because it's going to be peppered by your own experience because this isn't math it's just there's black and white and every single shade in between and all your experiences are going to lead you to look at things through a certain lens but I will say I have made a lot of money off of squat University teaching people about the triod triod foot um yeah that has messed up a lot of athletes in the strength community and it has given me a ton of f did you say the tripod the tripod for so squat you taught people that they should have three points of contact in their foot and that's how they're supposed to squat maintaining a high arch which based on anatomy and my understanding of anatomy and my education on Anatomy makes zero sense I don't think a hierarch is a force producing foot I don't say that low surface area is a force producing foot um and I've had a lot of people get hurt or be limited in their progress because squat University caught the tripod foot enters gem so thank you squat University um however yes I think pronation is incredibly important for Force production in the deadlift and in the squat and I think if you're not able to properly pronate your feet that will be a limiting Regent in your ability to maintain midfoot pressure and also to you know production curious sorry please um excuse my ignorance but it's pronation in or out so pration is essentially flattening out your arch oh flattening okay mhm okay yeah I I also um I I I go through stages where I I used to like squat University because of exact the same reason as you and that they were a big platform and they put out really good content yeah um but at the same time I spoke to my fysio and a bunch of other um professionals about it and like they all agree that they do put out some fantastic content M but at the same time they're very um dogmatic about it and they they are very sure of themselves to the point where they do also get quite a bit wrong like the triod foot for example um one of the uh posts that ruined me a little bit was they said and I think they've retracted this now but basically they gave a very generic squat stance and they said this is how like you should Squat and they kind of did the did the whole thing and they said feet kind of shoulder width apart 15 degrees toes and then you you Squat and I always try to to mimic that because I'm like I'm following the steps given to me squat University I'm going to make it that guy yeah meanwhile it's like every single person has a different anatomy and that might work for a lot of people like maybe that works for most people it definitely didn't work for me and they also made a lot of comments about going atg and my body doesn't do that especially at that particular um stance and uh I I really I screwed up my back really badly trying to force like a atg astr grass um in in that particular form and and I I don't blame squat University but it was because of their content that I literally uh was bedridden for several weeks uh wow not able to move my back or or anything because of that should have called me I know I should have I should have what we're gonna do the gym this week ex I mean I it couldn't get out of bed it was it was really like it was really bad I was on insane anti-inflammatories and insane painkillers um it was really a bad bad time in my life but all good now and we started squatting again actually this year for the first first time in several so getting getting back to it um but also I don't know if you saw their stuff about the dead pigs yeah probably I mean I don't think I follow them anymore because I was just like getting annoyed um so so basically I I I actually see that you do um full range of motion setups where you extend your spine basically their whole thing was a study done by Dr Stuart McGill who's one of their big big wigs there and they still teach this in school by the way they will still I'm sure they do he's a top professor and researcher and basically what he did was he did the study with dead pigs he took their spines and he um basically put them in and out of uh their colle he bented them basically yeah and he did that like 20,000 times and all of them snapped yeah and because because of that it was concluded that humans should not be moving their spines and that there might be a number of times that we can move our spines before they snap to just like a pigs what thought from that I was taught in school that if you did Russian T you would die you would die you would die I mean that's dramatic but I think for dramatic effect I get you the pig died so why wouldn't we die um and then also I think the pig was dead but I get you it died again died harder um again and the Superman position was also yes yeah that's that part of the St my girl big three yeah so I mean I'm really sad to say that when I was a new grad I perpetuated that idea yeah I didn't know any better and then I I was a gymn I used to do gymnastic and then talking to my gymnastics coach he's like if your spine is supposed to move that way why would you strike it that way and I was like holy [ __ ] my whole world is just fractured like are't you and then I realized that your only strength in positions you're only strong you've built yeah resilience too and if we're you know just removing a certain range then yes you will be vulnerable in that range and that will continue to perpetuate that perception that they that they've had um but you know what I'm kind of half of a as someone who is a content creator maybe squat University also posts this [ __ ] because they're like this is going to ruffle a lot of feathers and it's going to get so much traction for sure it's quite possible they also post my last little bash on them and again I've I've stated that I they do have good content they do have top professionals they have top athletes so they know what they're doing for the most part but they they they also maybe don't C they cater for a general population and they don't uh they don't say this might work for you they kind of say this will work for you do it this way or die as you as you said for emphasis that's social media marketing and it works because we're talking right now right for sure exactly exactly and they are one of the biggest um platforms for powerlifting and weightlifting and things so they they've done really well so congrats to them yeah but the last um little bash for me is uh they often recommend these exercises to warm up for like bench for example that are completely weird and I've spoken to um again like some top professionals about it and they all say like warming up has got to be specific for for you what you're going to be doing and doing these completely random exercises is not as good as just like a progressive warmup for example a pyramid up on the bench for example but they as squ University want you to have like a funny rubber band here funny uh kettle bell and uh hold it upside down and it's like for stabilizer muscles which are also I've spoken to Ben end about this not not not really uh not really that useful for warming up for bench for example what are your thoughts on that oh hard know if I see one more of my C rub like literally doing this external oration with a rubber band I will cut that fing band hey yeah it is yeah I know I I know Ben has also suggested that like yes nonp specific warmups do not make sense and maybe it's just better take the bar and my only issue with that perception is that you know there's kind of two categories of people there's athletes who are training who have literally never been injured they're just trying to get strong okay sure if they have pain in that lift it's probably because they don't know that lift but there's also another category of people who have had substantial injuries and substantial histories that will certainly benefit from doing prescribed exercises before they trade and you know some people have neurological issues and they can't connect to a certain muscle group and they need to do things to Prime their brain to get into that motor pattern and that can be incredibly effective at reducing injury risk so there's kind of like two two sides of that um I don't agree with the banded like little tiny like stop doing banded rotator cuff work just freaking stop everybody stop it's ridiculous your rotator cuff gets impinged because your shoulder BL doesn't move so it's not going to do anything anyway you're just going to get really jacked Rotator CU muscles and it'll probably make your symptoms even worse I see really strong guys at the gym doing it and I'm like I can't tell them what to do cuz they they're really strong and they left ing way more than me so it's like hey but but it works for them and even if it's a psychological thing at least I guess it's giving them giving them that I mean some people routine is something that um super important I mean in my study in sports psychology that is really big for athletes having that routine feeling that Groove so if that's what they got to do that's what they got to do but is that making them stronger at the lift or more prepared or reducing injury risk that's questionable very questionable not I totally totally agree um another one of your posts was on of uh when is someone ready to film themselves let's talk about that oh yeah that was interesting so this is it's super important for me with what I do now because now I'm one of these digital people who live nowhere and work from nowhere um it it made me realize why traditional phys therapy has failed because it's very easy to give your patient a list of exercise and then go home and do this when you're not with me and then when they don't get better you're like I gave them all the right exercises it must be something wrong with them but if you do not have eyes on the person if you are not watching their rehab with very strong intent chances are they're not going to do it right because again rehab is a list of all things you're bad at if you're making someone move in a range of motion that they're not able to move in their body will do everything it can to compensate around that so with my clients I get them to send me the rehab every single rehab exercise they send me at your video until they are doing it perfectly and they have very high standards for how those are performed because they have to retrain motor patterns that is not easy to do if it was easy to do none of us would have problems so a lot of my clients and I get this I was the same way when I started powerlifting it's like I don't want to be one of those people that like filmed myself in the gym because I don't think I'm hot [ __ ] you know so getting over this perception that you know it's Zain or self-indulgence to film yourself from a you know a health and rehab and a athlete perspective video playback is one of the most effective ways to train your body to do something rewatching it it literally does the same thing neurologically in your brain as doing it absolutely and I think that um pertains to the neuros psychological um theory that you mentioned is that is that the correct Theory yeah neuros pycho motor okay yeah can you can you explain that theory is that the one you just explained yeah essentially rewatching videos gives the similar neurological adaptations as actually going through exercise yourself and the thing is that when you're training especially when you're pushing the needle in a strength you know in this standpoint your brain is going to tell you [ __ ] that is not true all the time right you're going to go for your first 500 squat your brain is going to say I almost died right it's going to say that and then you'll watch the video and you're like that was like an RP eight why did it feel like it was a 10 but it's because we can't always trust what our brain is us our brain also is 10,000 years old and is going to work off of primitive data that is going to try and help you survive and I don't know if people know this but powerlifting is kind of a dangerous sport sometimes you could end up in a wheelchair like my husband right like it there are serious consequences putting 750 pounds on your back your brain is going to try to make you not do that so rewatching the video and getting an accurate appraisal of did you even do it right did you do what you felt like you thought you did and was it as hard as you thought it would absolutely and like you said it's a good way to monitor your progress and like you said to to learn it's great and to send your coachs like you do yeah it's it's it's the best teaching tool and so when I'm working with someone and I'm trying to explain where their deficits are then they do a rehab exercise and it's very clear I'm like watch this again see what you did like you know and then you can correct yourself and then also just you know from a fear perspective powerlifting is very psycholog lustral how do you feel going into that your confidence where your mental head space is that if you are you know went through something like what Stu did and you want to start squatting again your brain is going to tell you everything it can to make you not do it so I get my clients to rewatch their videos their most successful attempt at whatever injured them rewatch those regain those confident in what they've done because maybe you've deadlifted like 10,000 times in your life and one time youself is it accurate to think every time you step up to a barbelly of going to hurt yourself no no so we have to untrain our brain from trying to protect us absolutely and that takes a lot of mental fortitude I'm sure um on that on that note I I completely agree that powerlifting is a very dangerous sport but I don't feel like it's any more dangerous than any of the other Impact Sports there's a lot there's danger getting out of bed in the morning you could slip fall crack your head and the same in the shower like same going drive going for a drive in your car like there is inherent risk in even just sitting down on your sofa watching TV like you you you are mortal and you can die I'm not saying that that's that's a promotion for powerlifting at all but um like you got to you got to weigh the risk and the balance like the balancing risk is super important especially in powerlifting um on that note just don't do anything stupid um but you will get injured like I don't think there's any professional powerlifter or any athlete in the world who at the top level that hasn't suffered some kind of injury in their life I find it very hard to believe that any professional sport maybe chess I don't know but you probably have like a little bit of brain brain uh problems or something if you if you that kind of injury or maybe you had a cramp I don't know but I don't know if we if we chess as a no they probably get sciatica because or something it's probably something that they that they've had but I mean most you for like a physical a physical sport everyone gets injured and it's more about how you deal with it and hiring a coach or a consultant like yourself a doctor is probably a good and like you mentioned going back full circle now um a specialist maybe not a medical doctor maybe a medical doctor I'm not saying there aren't some medical doctors that do know about those kind of stuff but also maybe looking to find a more Niche specialist like you mentioned a phys a doctor of um physio or Cairo or something more specific I guess is also a good option yeah 100% so last kind of a question before before we wrap up can you just explain the importance of oblique training oblique training you are hting me on this H I thought you said you Wen going to do that sorry so actually this goes hand inand with what we were chatting about earlier which is the stocking of the rib cage over the pelvis the obliques are a very very strong muscle that can help you achieve that so when I give people rehab it's not always just okay you have this injury you're weak here we're going to do exercises there a lot of it also what is going to make them safer in that lift and then also what is going to make them better at that lift so people are having issues with flaring their ribs or arching their low back during a squad I give people a lot of lower ab work to do and they give people a lot of oblique work to do because if they can make that mind muscle connection really strong when they get under the bar and we're trying to implement the cues that I've given them it's a lot easier because they've just blasted that muscle for 50 breaths and uh I think it's an often neglected uh muscle to train um but yeah Power lifters we don't like doing hard stuff we like doing core we don't like doing cardio I don't think anyone likes doing core oh my actually I think that's just normal but yeah but especially with the powerls yeah with with prep movements it's definitely a very very helpful one if you I mean the thing is you can always give cues and cues are probably one of the most effective ways to help somebody however not a lot of people respond well to auditory stimuli right I'm one of those people I have to feel and touch everything everything I have to feel it so when someone says Okay um you know make sure you're doing midfoot pressure or pack your chin harder or I'm like I have to physically go through that first to be like what's that supposed to feel like and then I can Cod it in my brain so it's it's another way that you can double down on a form change that isn't just verbal it's it's a tactile way to do that absolutely so you're saying when your husband's there shouting up up up it's not helping no sometimes it goes down I know that's not good actually when people scream at me I perform a lot better oh I think power left things the sport for you then absolutely people like people love to scream which is good it's high I love it the energy in the room when you have that last deadlifter of the day at a competition there's nothing like it I'm sure I'm sure so finishing off who are your favorite icons or role models in the powerlifting industry or the health industry that you look up to so I have a political view on this which I don't believe in icon because I my allegion is with God so I don't like idolizing people um there are people who put out information that are great you know my husband obviously he's coached me for years I think he's one of the most brilliant powerlifting coaches I've ever known um and then he also works for prescript and there's a ton of you know Jordan shallow uh the muscle do and uh all of those guys that prescript they put out a ton of really really great stuff um so you know there's a lot of people I I respect in the in the community for sure I don't know if I idolize them though absolutely so in terms of Who You'd recommend reaching out to to have on this podcast it would obviously be um your husband I you'd be in for a ride you got to strap in that he'll say things I'm excited I'm excited I I will I will reach out to him I have quite a quite a roster lined up at the moment but I will definitely be reaching out to him um is it Stu yeah yeah okay okay well you must give him ample warning and tell him to get his best uh um I guess as you said his best answers and his I'm hinged Behavior yeah that's that's what I was trying to look for without knowing the exact uh PG words to you funny because we do very similar styles of work and like I was formerly educated for a decade and he worked in person personally training people from the ground up built this company and so we came to very similar conclusions that like were very different in uh in our demeanor it's very interesting that you were able to cross paths with such different um kind of initial directions do you know how we met didn't you say I can't remember but you did mention something right at the beginning about um finding him at at the gym or something or was it different yeah we at a powerlifting gym there we go he did you see him putting up mad numbers you're like that's impressive I can I get your number oh he terrified me uh oh did he yeah cuz I'm I'm pretty quiet I'm softer spoken than him for sure and he like the hype in the room when he had to do something was like he would pace around he would like growl like I was like like fful be mode yeah and so I known him for a couple years and then he eventually um approached me I think how he got me was he showed me an injury that he had he's like I know this is g to get her gonna make her talk to me oh did shame was it a was it a really terrible injury yeah he fractured his shoulder blade in two pieces and T his that's yeah that that is quite awful yeah so I was like oh this is sick I'm into this you're like that's hardcore that's hardcore yeah no for sure all right closing thoughts what advice or parting words of wisdom do you have for our listeners who are looking to embark on their own journey of muscle growth strength and health I would say just talk to as many people as you can and I like that people have conflicting opinions in this world there is nothing said in stone in this world and that's a really good thing because it makes people talk and the more that we talk about things the more that we can ultimately help other people so talk to as many people as you can you know really embed yourself in that Community because there are a lot of people there that can help you and that have amazing ideas and a ton of experience experience so yeah I think that's that's what I would hey I completely agree with that and um on that note of talking to as many people as possible completely agree like I said and another way you can do that if you don't like talking to people is just listen to this podcast because we'll have a new Cur on every second week so that that that's fantastic and thank you so much for your time I really appreciate it and uh that's yeah thank you so much for having me my pleasure thank you for tuning in to the the muscle growth podcast if you found value in today's episode we'd really appreciate it if you could leave us a five-star rating and a quick review it helps us grow and reach more people just like you don't forget to follow us on all major social media platforms including Instagram YouTube Tik Tok and X find us at the muscle growth podcast and at reps with Rosco for more insights exclusive content and full episodes visit the musclegrowth podcast.com your support truly makes a difference so please like share comment and follow we're grateful for every bit of it until next time keep pushing your limits and staying focused on getting bigger stronger and better