Reddit reviews Gift of Injury

Your story hurts man. Really hurts.

Your all banged up and you definitely need to take a full month or 2 to recover to the best of your ability. Since your not moving around very much, head over to Amazon and grab this book:

The gift if injury your gonna love it.

I have stopped doing the big 3, I'm 42. They are not worth the risk unless you are training for powerlifting.

I fucked up my ankle at the end of last summer. It was swollen for months, took a full 6 to recover. I had to completely change my leg training and the leg development I got this year from it was amazing.

This could be a gift and you just can't see it yet. It's the experience you needed to wake the fuck up and be more mindful of your training.

I want you to recover and lift again so bad my dick gets hard typing this sentence. Dont give up, and stay optimistic, and tell your doctor to eat a bag of dicks. Find another doctor.

Sure, I am going to throw a ton at you...

Focused Flexibility by GMB includes a starting assessment. All good training protocols should include an assessment. It’s like establishing your 1RMs for strength training protocols or benchmark workouts for CrossFit. Since you mentioned strength training, I’ll touch on the area. Personally when I strength train athletes, I am looking at their max power output (1RMs, 3/5/10 RMs at times, too) as well as ratios between their lifts. Ie how does the squat compare to deadlift or how does bench compare to shoulder press? Is there a big imbalance? Then I look deeper I.e. back squat to front squat to overhead squat or shoulder press to push press. This shows me areas of weakness to address first. Is it a movement pattern issue? Is it a strength defiency, if so where is the deficiency? Was back squat strong but front squat collapsed because they don’t have adequate core strength or perhaps mobility (both very common issues that powerlifters experience when they try to transition to sports like CrossFit or Olympic Weightlifting).

Travis Mash has a book called No Weaknesses that uses a similar concept. He gets much more technical with his math than I have here or that I ever really found necessary in my coaching practice. If you’re not sure who he is, he’s a top 10 best powerlifter of all time. He was also a champion weightlifter which is very uncommon to see that overlap between powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting as they’re significantly different and most notably he did it well before CrossFit made it cool to train in multiple disciplines.
https://www.mashelite.com/noweaknesses

Alternatively here's another book specifically on recovering from weight lifting related back pain by the top back pain expert in the world, Dr Stuart McGill.
The Gift of Injury by Dr Stu McGill and Top 10 all time great powerlifter Brian Carroll https://www.amazon.com/dp/0973501863/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_7..-BbZE74ZWS

So your second step is to buy No Weaknesses or The Gift of Injury, read it, and complete it’s assessments. If you're a superstar and highly motivated, get both. The Gift of Injury explains WHY your back hurts and how to fix it. No Weaknesses points out your imbalances.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to use the GMB program, I would recommend a back pain specific program written by physical therapist Dr Theresa Larson (she runs her own clinic MovementRx and has a best selling book) and strength coach Anders Varner (former gym owner and Multiple CrossFit regional level competitor - aka he kicks 99% of the general populations ass in athletics). They created a program specifically for back pain called The Low Back Fix (they now also have another program called the Shoulder Fix). Their program starts with a ... you guessed it... assessment. That assessment determines if your weakness is primarily flexibility or strength driven. From there you are assigned a track to follow. Each track includes diaphragmatic breathing (since it’s basically the fix for everything including back pain) and soft tissue mobilization (because we are all tight in one area or another from living a modern lifestyle).

What you don’t assess, you can’t test. It all starts with figuring out where you are strong and where you are weak so that the appropriate next step can be determined. This is where basically every template program and online fitness researcher tends to fail. Normally thorough assessments are skipped and the appropriate movement or lifestyle- sleep, nutrition, mindset- coaching are not provided. It’s assumed the movements are being performed correctly when in my experience it should be assumed that they are not.

Remember after you have initial assessed/tested, you should implement your training system that is intended to fix these areas and then after some time maybe 4 weeks, maybe 12 weeks, it is CRITICAL that you retest/assess to see if the changes you made are driving the adaptations that you want.

Both GMB and LowBackFix have online communities where you can post questions and form checks to get coached on.

I can’t tell you how many people think they move well but truly have little understanding of movement. This is true for every yoga studio, boxing or MMA gym, CrossFit, powerlifting, weightlifting, and conventional gym that I have been in over the last two decades. People just don’t know how to move well - not in a mean way - but in they don’t understand basic principles way. Where should their hips, spine, ribcage, shoulders and head be in the movement? I am even talking high end athletes and instructors. I’ve saved many a shoulder or back by teaching athletes where their body is in space vs where it should be. Often they are completely surprised that their body is not in the position they thought it to be or they simply did not know the right position. I make my athletes record their movement so they can see it for themselves. It teaches them the skills they need for a lifetime of healthy movement and also helps to develop them into coaches themselves.

MoveU on Instagram (Movement University) has a great program that teaches people basic principles of how to move their body and breath. This is another program that is written by high end physical therapists and chiros. They are athletes that have gotten themselves and many people out of pain. They have the expertise and demonstratable knowledge needed to fix most all pains and niggles.

Complete side note. I recommend buying these programs. You are supporting the people that created the content. It supports them so they can focus on doing this for a living. You get the benefit of joining their online communities. Their coaching is literally priceless. If I made nearly as much money in movement coaching that I do in my professional career, I would have never sold my gym and stopped. There’s value in buying the stuff and not just getting free advice or downloads online.

Hope that helps.

You might find "Back Mechanic" and "Gift of Injury" helpful if you're a reader.

Go get evaluated by Stuart McGill

or one of the people he trained

https://www.backfitpro.com/backpain/master-clinician/


He’s helped people with major disc injuries go back to powerlifting. (Don’t know if you’re still interested in lifting at this point.)

https://www.amazon.ca/Back-Mechanic-Stuart-McGill-2015-09-30/dp/B01FKSGJY


https://www.amazon.ca/Injury-Stuart-McGill-Brian-Carroll/dp/0973501863

Commiserations, that sucks. First of all, I'll second the other comments that you should focus on recovery before throwing yourself back into training. Otherwise you risk making the problem far worse. Also, definitely read `Back Mechanics' by Stuart McGill. His advice is based on years of scientific research.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. There are plenty of cases of high-level athletes coming back from serious back injuries. Stuart McGill wrote a book with a powerlifter who had a really devastating injury, and came back from it. Closer to your case, famous BJJ coach Rener Gracie talks about his recovery from a herniated disc in this video.

Best of luck. Hope you manage to make a good recovery.

I bought this book recently and it helped me through one of the two worst back experiences I've ever had. I would agree that it's Big Three focused. It doesn't have like full workouts in there, but it does talk about how to adapt common exercises to not be in pain (e.g. deadlifts, squats, etc.). So it's more of "this is how you correctly exercise" instead of "do these five exercises three times, then these four, then these two, and you'll be healed!".

​

I've heard this book might have more workouts (also McGill). I actually had this book briefly, but it's too technical for my taste.


Another McGill book that might help is this one. Sorry, haven't read it, but I wishlisted it awhile ago and some of the review seem to indicate there are workouts in it. Maybe peruse the reviews for both?

Hope this helps!

Great advice in this thread. Totally agree with everyone else here.

I don't think there's a question if you'll be able to exercise- I think you HAVE TO exercise. In a nutshell, avoid bending and twisting your spine. Focus on strengthening your core before anything else. I've posted this vid a few times, but I just really like it. He shows how challenging these exercises can be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UjXEdoSzIE&t=3s

And I didn't see it mentioned here already, but he's doing the McGill Big 3. There's a lot on McGill in this forum tho. You should get his Back Mechanic book. If you're into lifting, you might like this one he did with a powerlifter that he worked to heal. I haven't read it, dunno if it's informative or just inspirational. Not that that's a bad thing. There are a lot of youtube videos from McGill and Carroll as well, cool stuff. For sure, think of any exercise as perfecting the movement, not about going big. Take baby steps, make it perfect.

https://www.amazon.com/Injury-Stuart-McGill-Brian-Carroll/dp/0973501863/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1JCYLHZ22P6T0&keywords=stuart+mcgill&qid=1570677989&s=books&sprefix=stuart+mc%2Caps%2C204&sr=1-3

Mosh pit, oh man. Honestly... you might have to mourn that one and move on. I'd really avoid any twisting. Or random big guys crashing into you when you're not ready. And you're all pumped up on the music, and pushing yourself too far... sounds like a recipe for a re-herniation. Sorry. At the very least, give yourself more time and get your core totally ripped, haha.

Stuart McGill & Brian Carroll’s ‘Gift of Injury’ sounds brilliant

https://www.amazon.com/Injury-Stuart-McGill-Brian-Carroll/dp/0973501863