Yes, the first book for those who have followed before [inaudible 20:57] just called “The Squat Bible,” it was basically your go to step-by-step process basically squatting for dummies, if you want to think about it like that.
We talked about before, creating your own path of figuring out specific strains to improve upon your squat pattern so that you can then load it with great technique, 128 pages to the point, you can read it in a weekend.
The second book is a whole another beast, that’s called “Rebuilding Milo.” It’s the lifters guide to dealing with common aches and pains that we have, in the gym.
Like I mentioned, there’s not a single strength athlete who doesn’t have something aching, their back, their hip, their knee, shoulder, elbow, something’s always bugging them that’s keeping them away.
As strength athletes in today’s world, if you are not privileged enough to have an amazing physical therapist, Cairo athletic trainer that you’re working with constantly, you’re often left to your best bet of — let me search on YouTube. Let me talk to a doctor who probably doesn’t understand lifting, he’s just going to tell me to stop lifting so much and take these pain pills.
There’s not really great options. You’re forced to either push through pain, and eventually things get worse, or you just take a lot of time off. That doesn’t even solve it a lot of times because I’ve had so many issues with athletes before they take a month off, and then they come back and their back hurts again.
My goal is to say, I want to help empower the athlete, I want to give you the knowledge that I have amassed over all these years working with some of the best athletes in the world, helping them get out of pain. I want to give it to you and speak to you in a way that you can understand as well. It’s 480 pages, it’s a big book.
But it is the lifter’s guide that should be with them for the rest of their life, so that in two months when that elbow starts flaring up, they can pull the book off the shelf, turn to the elbow chapter, and this is what it’s going to do.
It’s going to say, “Hey, here’s some common reasons for developing elbow pain. Here’s some tests. Try these. Based on what you find, do these exercises. How did you feel pivot here, do this. Here’s how you rebuild your body to not having any pain and doing exactly what you want to do, which is lift some big ass weight.”
The book is basically the lifters guide to getting out of pain from a physical therapy movement perspective. Now a lot of people have questions. Who’s Milo? I would think that most people listen to this podcast know who he is.
For those of you who do not know, Milo is an ancient Greek Olympian, considered by many to be one of the best athletes in the world at his time. As the story goes, Milo lifted a small calf to his shoulders, walked around with it every single day. As the calf grew into a full-size bull, obviously, so did Milo’s strength.
I believe, as the story goes, if you look it up, think he walked it all the way around the Olympic Stadium, killed the bull and ate it, or something like that. Basically, the idea behind the story is where we got the idea of modern-day periodization, which is progressive overload.
Now, the entirety of that is to say that there’s a scientific code that our body goes through and adheres to, especially when it comes to strength training, in that your body, as far as the way in which it progresses, cannot exceed its adaptive capabilities. If you go in the gym and you just lift, lift, lift every single day and you’re not recovering adequately, your body starts breaking down.
It can do so also if you have the greatest training program, but you’re not moving optimally as well. You’ve got a small ankle mobility imbalance side to side, and you’re doing a lot of squats. Eventually, as you’re squatting down, things are starting to twist, and it’s the smallest little issues that eventually can lead to this micro trauma of the chain, and eventually, pain ensues.
The idea is that in our pursuit of trying to become our own version of Milo, we fall short because we break this code and don’t allow our bodies to adapt to the program, either by using poor-quality technique or inappropriate loading schemes.
Today, we’re forced to either succumb to medical advice that’s not right for weightlifters, that’s just, “Take this medication.” We’re not helping each other out in that pursuit.
We should have a better way. We should have the ability. I don’t believe that these common aches and pains that we develop as strength athletes are medical issues. They’re issues that we all should have the power to change.
If you have a light bulb that goes out in your house, you shouldn’t have to call an electrician. You should know how to change your light bulb.
If your knee’s a little achy after some squats, you should know how to take the first steps to fixing that. If you have a great physical therapist, that’s awesome, use them. I know not many people have that ability. Often, when they do go to some medical practitioners, they get the wrong advice.
This book is my ability, my giving back to the community of everything that I’ve talked about for the last couple years with Squat University, to try to give every strength athlete that gift that I wish I had when I was 18 years old and coming up and dealing with that knee pain and not getting the right advice.
It comes out January 19th, 2021. It’s available for pre-order right now all over the world.
I’m super psyched to have it come out and see what we can do in the strength community.