How I Solved My Lower Back Pain And Started Personal Training

We are in a back pain epidemic. Studies show that 80% of people at some time during their lives will experience chronic lower back pain. I was part of this 80%, and now it’s better. Here’s my story of becoming a massage therapist, becoming my own back pain experiment, and integrating corrective exercise and personal training with my business.

Becoming A Massage Therapist And Treating Lower Back Pain.

I became a massage therapist in 2015 because I wanted to help people find real solutions to their aches and pains. I had so much success using soft tissue work on myself and my distance running teammates in high school and college, I thought I could solve just about anything with massage therapy. I studied hard in massage school, and then went on to take the best soft tissue workshops dominated by chiropractors and physical therapists.

Then I got in the clinic, and I started working with clients who had worse pain than I had ever seen. The results I got for these clients where…mixed. Many people got way better, fast, and stayed better. Some people felt way better for 2-6 weeks, and then the pain returned to some extent. And then some unlucky others, albeit a smaller number, didn’t seem to get better no matter what I did.

I wanted to get my clients better results, but wasn’t sure what to do. I was already using all the best soft tissue techniques on the market.

Getting Lower Back Pain For The First Time

Not once in my life had I ever had lower back pain prior to becoming a massage therapist. Alas, despite my efforts to be careful with my own back, 3 years into becoming a massage therapist the reality was that I had constant lower back discomfort. At the end of each work day after treating 5 or 6 people, all I wanted to do was lie down in bed because my back felt so uncomfortable. I wondered if I would be able to keep doing massage therapy, and if my back would always feel like this.

Then, one day, my back got worse. I had previously started to have problems bending forward (flexion intolerance), but on this day I couldn’t bend forward a foot without excruciating pain in my lower back and outside my right lower leg (nerve pain as a part of the sciatic nerve). It sucked, and I knew something needed to change.

So I did what I knew – I went to all my colleagues, some of the best chiropractors and massage therapists in San Francisco, for treatment. The truth was that the treatments helped some, but I still felt vulnerable, and I still had pain. I needed a better solutions.

Experimenting With Exercise For Lower Back Pain

If chiropractic and massage therapy weren’t going to be the final solutions I needed, I figured my next best bet would be exercise. Fortunately, I colleague of mine, Bob Gazso, had turned me on to two people, Dr. Stuart McGill, and Dr. Evan Osar. Dr. McGill is a world famous back pain expert out of Canada who has authored over 240 peer reviewed studies on back pain. Dr. Osar is a physical therapist and educator with a YouTube channel.

First, I started reading all of Dr. McGills textbooks on back pain. In massage school, I had learned about some potentially problematic muscles that might be involved in back pain, but when I read Dr. McGill’s textbooks, it was the first time I ever got a clear idea of how the body works and what causes back pain. In essence, back pain isn’t causes by a “lack of stretching,” or even strength, it’s caused by, in essence the inability to stabilize the spine and create power/movement through the hips. To learn more about Dr. McGill’s work, check out Back Mechanic, Ultimate Back Fitness And Performance, or Low Back Disorders.

For as much as I got from Dr McGill, the one thing I didn’t like about his books was that they didn’t provide enough concrete examples of exercises I could use to make my back better. That’s when I started watching Dr. Evan Osar, and that’s when everything starting changing faster.

One day I was watching a video in which Dr. Evan Osar was describing how to do a staggered hip hinge using a single kettlebell. He explained that hip hinging was super important for back health, and that if we didn’t know how to hip hinge properly, the lower back pays the price.

So I tried the exercise, and in just 5 minutes I went from not being able to bend forward more than 1 foot without excruciating pain, to being able to put my hands flat on the floor pain free (!!!) . I was stunned. I clearly had movement problems that were contributing to my lower back pain.

Finding Ultimate Sandbag And Dynamic Variable Resistance Training (DVRT)

So at this point I knew that movement had to play a roll in solving my lower back pain problems, and I also knew it had to play a roll in helping my clients who clearly needed more than massage therapy. What I still didn’t have was a system of exercise that would allow me to take a client with pain, teach them the fundamentals of movement, and then progress them as they became stronger. No, instead what I had was a bunch of potentially helpful exercises that I’d throw at clients (or myself) and hope they worked. I was clearly heading in the right direction, but I needed much more guidance.

One day I was scrolling through Instagram, and somehow I became aware of a tool called the “Ultimate Sandbag.” I thought sandbag training sounded interesting as a concept, and having a sandbag seemed potentially advantageous. At first I was slightly turned off my how expensive their sandbags seemed, but then I took a closer look at their Instagram, and what I saw there was NOT normal workout “bro science.” Instead, here’s an example of what I found:

Each post was a carefully crafted explanation of how the body works, and how the sandbag could be used to enhance the systems that result in efficient, pain free movement. My mind was racing, every post made so much sense, yet nobody had ever explained how the body worked so clearly, or provided so many concrete examples of useful exercises. I bought a bag instantly, and after a week of using the bag, I was hooked on its unique benefits. Life would never be the same again.

How My Back Got Better And My Life, And Business, Changed

My back didn’t go from uncomfortable to perfect over night. Progress isn’t always perfectly linear, and while we might get instant results on a given day, those results might not be there a week later. The important mindset with back pain and training is that we’re constantly making our bodies smarter, and becoming more and more resistant to back pain, so we have many more great or good days and many less bad days. Today, after years of training, I can do massage therapy all day, and I *almost* never have lower back discomfort or pain. I finish my day and I never have to lie down because my back is uncomfortable. That’s results.

You can probably get results as good as me too. And that’s why after many years of just doing massage therapy, I started integrating more corrective exercise and full on personal training with my clients. Now, when I can’t “fix” something with massage therapy, I know there’s almost certainly a movement problem that needs correcting. Most importantly, I now have a SYSTEM that can use to help people with anything from a shoulder to an ankle, and everything in between.

Physical Therapy Didn't Work? Try Me.

I’m not trying to put down Physical Therapist here. There are many great physical therapists out there, including Jessica Bento who is the co-creator of the Ultimate Sandbag with her husband, Josh. At the same time, I do want to be honest about what I see in the Physical Therapy industry. And that is that many (maybe even most) physical therapists are recommending exercises that are outdated, and are highly unlikely to solve your pain problems. Why is this? Well, contrary to public perception, physical therapists don’t go to school and learn the “newest and greatest” in exercise rehabilitation. Often times they get stuck learning methods that someone thought was a great idea 30 years ago, and often times those ideas don’t hold up against what we now know about the body. I’ve helped many clients with shoulder, back, and knee pain who didn’t get great results in Physical Therapy, and there’s a really good chance I can help you too. Don’t give up on exercise because it didn’t work before. The RIGHT exercises with the BEST design will make a world of difference.