 Ladies and gentlemen, Silent Mike again. You may know for I guess almost two years, my whole life, but for the last two years or so I've been dealing with some my neck, my back, my, you know, and my crack issues. Two years ago last summer, two, one and a half years ago in the summer I sprained my back in a contest prep. Don't know what was wrong with it, but it was the worst it's ever been. So I took four to eight weeks off, just did belt squat, loaded carries, an upper body and then I felt good enough and I competed in that deadlift only competition where I did pull 705. Felt pretty decent going into that last winter, again a year ago now. Training volume was decent in terms of deadlifts and squats. As I was losing body weight I dropped about 20 pounds over that time period and everything went okay. Coming back to this spring now, 2017, spraying the back a little bit again. A mixture of inconsistent travel which messes up my sleep and my hydration, my food, messes up my routine. Although I do consider myself fairly smart even when I do travel. I never lift that much above like 80%. If I go heavy it's like a heavy set of five at 80% or something because everyone's comments gonna be like, you do it for the YouTubes, you do it for the Instagrams. So retweaked it. I was also doing a lot of beltless training then which I experimented with about five years ago, beltless blocks and stuff and it didn't work out with me but I thought this time one out of convenience so I didn't have to travel with my belt and then two, I thought I'd give it another go. Come around, continue to learn and evolve and maybe I went too heavy at the time so I decided to go lighter with beltless training to see if it would have some kickoff into my belt training and obviously it didn't as I felt things tweak up. I had a lot of body work done, some ART stuff. You guys saw the video with the muscle doc. He did give me some awesome kind of prehab rehab exercises. Although he's a chiropractor and you guys had wonderful things to say about the profession. I like Jordan a lot as a human and I like him as a professional because he doesn't only just say, oh let me crack your back in on your way. One, he just totaled 1,900 pounds which is a big total. I think weighing about 230-240 so he's a strong dude. He knows what I do and then beyond that he looks at not only the spine which historically is all chiropractors look at but he's looking at the musculature, he's looking at how you move, he's looking at different factors. So basically let's say my pain level before I saw Jordan was maybe a six or a seven so I would be able to train but I was just squatting you know around 315 and I think I wasn't even deadlifting for a while. Then when I started to implement some of Jordan's exercises I'd say my pain decreased to maybe a five, maybe even a four on some days and I began to be able to load up the bar but it never got past that threshold from maybe a four or five to go away or even a three to one on the pain scale. So went down to LA again sleep off, food off, hydration off, everything off. I kept with my warm-ups pretty good that Jordan gave me. I didn't always do the recovery workouts which are kind of the off-day rehab stuff to allow me to train better than following day but I did do my warm-ups just as he said. Squatted 495 for a triple. I actually felt pretty good while I did it. I didn't feel a lot of pain but that evening afterwards my back had locked up worse than ever. Not to get too graphic but when I hurt my back about two years ago I probably feel like it was at seven or eight out of ten. And for those you know think oh token open lift through I tried to lift through and I just knew that I was you know digging a hole in cement that I was getting nowhere and it's not so much that I can't deal with the pain it's the fact that how frustrated I get that I can't advance that I can't lift more weight or train the volume I want to get to where I want to go. Although I'm not world record strong I am fairly advanced in my training that I've been doing it so long and so the amount of volume I need or frequency I need to progress to get into the 600 squat into the mid seven pole and into the mid four bench is very high and my body can't keep up with that I can't train the volume I want and that's very frustrating for me. So this time around I felt that it was worse because I couldn't even take a crap like flexing to take a crap I just literally couldn't my spine felt like it was going to explode and that's when I hit up Jordan I was like hey man like pain's gotten different and it's gotten worse and so we came up with the plan and the plan is right now to take a break off squats and deads which in the past helped me well I believe Mr. Untamed Strength Allen is getting a belt squat which will be a lifesaver because basically what that does is take the load off the upper body and I don't have to hinge and I can still work my quads in a very similar squat pattern so that's going to help me a lot hopefully you get that soon I'm going to smash on that maybe three four five days a week I'm going to try to bench three or four days a week and then hit all the upper body accessories so you guys right now I know that was a long sappy story being injured and we'll go into some depths on how to train while you're injured or figure things out in a second but right now we're announcing we got a hypertrophy block ladies and gentlemen it's winter time it's holiday time we're all eating pecan pie and apple pie with the ice cream and the turkey and the mashed potatoes and everything else delicious and it's time to make some gains so I'm still going to diet a little bit but we're going to turn up the hypertrophy we're going to be hitting sets of eight ten twelve even fives on all the movements try to get a little bit more muscles and give my lower body a break so I do have traveling coming up it's a lot easier to hit kind of a fluff and puff bodybuilding workout in a hotel or on the road than it is for me to really progress in the squat bench or dead benching obviously is a lot easier too because I don't really need any equipment warm-ups are a little bit easier for me my shoulders knock on cement and metal never really hurt so I'll be able to do that on the road plus the holidays plus the travel will be okay now how do you know if you're injured or if you're hurt I get these questions every single day in Instagram and if you honestly think you're injured I get DMs and and and don't flood me because I don't want to answer these hey Mike I have an injured right blah blah blah labrum left back left shoulder what should I do well you should go to a doctor if you think you're actually injured you need to go to a doctor going through an Instagram message to get an actual prescription or diagnosis of your injury just isn't very intelligent just think about it just think about how serious an injury could be and based off this much information that you're just going to ask somebody on the internet one I'm not a doctor yes I have plenty of experience with different pains and injuries and hurts just through the years of coaching people in the gym and in sport but I can't diagnose something one it's not my job two through limited information in a message so go seek professional help number two is don't give up you know today it was hard for me to get out of bed literally and metaphorically I was not excited to come to the gym I'm not excited to train right now my goal was to compete in January February and that goal is now broken because I can't get to where I want to get because of injury it's not fun it's not exciting it's not inspirational it's not motivational to be injured and if you guys want all this guru motivational horseshit you're on the wrong channel you can go follow those guys everywhere else on instagram and every other youtuber there is the fact is I'm not always up I'm not always happy and I'm not always excited to come and train I'm not I'm not superman I'm not stoked I have issues mentally and physically and being excited to train is one of them especially when I'm beat up the difference I think that between me and some of these other people or guru motivational people or otherwise is that at the end of the day when it's all said and done I do get up and I do accomplish what I need to accomplish for that day that workout that business meeting whatever it might be those emails that work that I have to get done I get it done but I'm not always stoked about it so if you want to feed into the bullshit that all these other people have that they're so excited about life and they're champions and they persevered through everything and kicked life's ass when they were down and they just crushed it and you can kill it too and we're all killing it together by all means head that way unsubscribe from here because I'm not your guy if you want some real shit you're here we're all here my back fucking hurts I was pissed to get up this morning I laid I've been sleeping on the ground for two months I laid on the ground for half an hour on my phone pissed thinking about hitting up Connor saying bro we're not going to the gym today I quit but instead I chugged a fucking energy drink crushed it on my head counted my millions of dollars hopped in my Ferrari and came to the freaking gym none of that actually happened besides the fact that I was saddening on the ground actually I hopped into my 1990 vmw which if you guys haven't checked out the video about buying my dream car because we're going to go film that right now but long story short I guess is that you have to figure out different ways and different routes you can work around your injury if it's a shoulder injury you can start to do things like a safety squat bar on the on the squat lunges machines is a great time to start to utilize different machines and hammer strength tools when you are feeling beat up or injured and that's why I'm excited for the belt squat I think that's one of the best out there I'm not endorsed by any belt squat companies unless you guys are interested but I do think it's a great tool to help my hip hinge because the hip hinge is kind of what's hurting me right now again I don't know you know whether it's a disc injury or something to do with the disc although I'm sure something's beat up there from all the years of squatting and playing basketball but I do just have some imbalances in this hip glute mead ql erector hip flexor tfl all these things are very angry and so what I plan to do is get this work done we got holidays got to spend it with my mums and then Connor and I are going to New York and then when we come back down here we're going to head over to the muscle doc and check out some ideas that he has for kind of the rehab to balance this thing back out but it'll probably be six to 12 weeks no deadlifts no squats besides some variations perhaps and then continue the reason I'm eliminating the deadlift and the squat I don't always think that's perfect I think if you can work around your injury or work through your injury while staying still maintaining some type of squat or deadlift variation whether it's blocks or a pause squat really light or something I do think that's optimal I think that's more beneficial in the long run to keep that motor pattern in some instance as long as you can for me personally mentally and physically I just cannot I squatted 315 for a bunch of weeks no no heavier than 315 for a bunch of weeks I felt okay and I pushed it mentally and physically I'm just not capable of keeping those movements in without pushing them without being frustrated and what people don't talk about these coaches and these gurus in the world is the mental aspect of the sport and compliance in the sport yes there's optimal frequency and volume and all these things but if you can't stick to it you're not having fun or you're mentally not in the game then all those things go out the door and so what I have to do for myself is step away be self-aware and understand that if I'm going to have the longevity of career and compete multiple times into my 40s I'm almost 30 that we're gonna have to pull back right now take some time to just strengthen my squads figure out the imbalances in my body not squat or dead because I know I can't control myself when I want to load up the bar I want to get hyped I want to have fun and I can't do that right now so I'm going to add in a little bit extra cardio probably some sprints on like an assault bike or a spin bike belt squat and then I'll see what Jordan has for me doc Jordan see if you know my idea is it's probably some loaded carries maybe some Bulgarian split squat some different things that he has in mind as well as upper body time so four days a week bench back arms shoulder let's get swole together I appreciate you guys hopefully you don't mind my mini rant just thoughts that pop into my freaking skull is that we all get fresher and we all get down I'm very fresh right now so I'm gonna not think about the gym I'm gonna go drive my car around City of Sacramento appreciate you give the video a thumbs up head down chin up we're out of here