The Show Up Fitness Podcast

Back Pain? Learn how to assess and become PAIN FREE

• Chris Hitchko, CEO Show Up Fitness • Season 3 • Episode 284

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A burning leg at night, a “herniated disc” on the MRI, and years of mixed messages—sound familiar? We unpack a real client story and show how to trade fear for a plan using assessment-first coaching, language that calms the system, and progressions that actually work.

We start by debunking outdated ortho beliefs that frame backs as fragile and people as broken. Then we map a simple screening process to pinpoint intolerances—flexion, extension, rotation, lateral flexion, or compression—and use those findings to build a zero-discomfort movement menu. You’ll hear why stretching into nerve symptoms often flares sciatica-like pain, when sciatic nerve glides help, and how to reframe “pain” as “discomfort” to reduce threat and increase buy-in.

From there we get practical. Learn how to coach precise planks, side planks, and bridges; when to choose TRX rows over bent-over rows; how to modify pressing with landmine variations; and why bilateral pulling beats asymmetrical loading early on. We cover bracing and drawing-in cues, pacing volume to track responses, decompression options for compression-sensitive clients, and small lifestyle levers like sleep setup, hydration, and nutrition quality. We also explain imaging context, disc reabsorption, and the power of daily low back routines that rebuild trust. Finally, we share networking tactics to team up with pro-movement physios and chiros so your client always has a path forward.

If you coach people with back issues—or you’re working through them yourself—you’ll leave with a step-by-step framework: listen, screen, find zero-discomfort ranges, progress deliberately, and keep the wins going for life. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review with your top takeaway so we can cover it next.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Show Up Fitness Podcast, where great personal trainers are made. We are changing the fitness industry one qualified trainer at a time with our in-person and online personal training certification. If you want to become an elite personal trainer, head on over to showofffitness.com. Also make sure to check out my book, How to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Have a great day and keep showing up. Howdy, y'all. Welcome back to the Show of Fitness Podcast. Today we're going to help clients who have low back pain. 30 days of podcasting, nine days in, we had someone reach out with an inquiry, and she has an assessment with her client on Thursday. Let's see what it says. I have a herniated disc. I've had it for almost three years. I've gone to the chiropractor and done physical therapy, and none of it worked. My neurologist put me on two painkillers three years ago, and it helped when I had flare-ups, quote unquote, sciatica, about once a year. I was able to stop taking the drugs about eight months ago. And at the time, I had to stop running, which was recommended by my neurologist and started walking. I also did weights in my house. I've gained weight in the last couple of years. In September, I had a sciatica issue and I started both medications again, but have not had any relief. It has been miserable at night because my leg burns with pain. When I'm standing, there's no pain. I have an appointment this Thursday with a pain clinic to discuss injections for the pain. I'll let you know about it afterwards when we schedule our appointment. Now I want to read to you a post from a credible physical therapist, Dr. Hewan, and I had him on our podcast a few times. And he has a post in March, and it says outdated ortho beliefs. Number one, rotator cuff tears equal surgery and only one option. Number two, disc herniations equal back pain for life. Three, osteoarthritis, bone to bone. Four, tendon pain equals rest and ice. Five, knee pain equals strength in the VMO. And number six, osteoporosis, which means avoid all impact exercise and heavy resistance training. That's really important to have a physio on your team. And I sent that post to the trainer so they could show that to the client. It begins with the assessment process. We just had our seminar at OC this last weekend, and it was focused on lower body addressing the knee and also low back. We take you through a protocol that's going to set your clients up for success, but it begins with the assessment process. You need to be open and listen and very empathetic, but provide hope. When you greet them, you shake their hand, you smile, you're on time. Those are all things that go into pain. You may not realize it. They could have gone to the doc, they were delayed, they were late, and the whole experience can be very negative. I had a disc protrusion. So the hierarchy goes disc herniation, which she's experiencing, protrusion, extrusion, and then you die. If you go into one of these clinics, they're gonna have all the worst case scenarios on the wall. And for the most part, it's not an enjoyable process. Imagine you're gonna go get your first dog and you go to the pound, and all you hear is this loud, obnoxious barking, dogs biting at each other, they're not well mannered. That's gonna go into your belief structure on what it's going to be like, versus you go get a puppy and they're playing around with a bunch of kids. You're setting yourself up for success because of that experience. That's a form of exposure therapy. In the medical system right now in the US, you go to the doc, they take an x-ray, they give you a diagnosis, you have degeneration, steniosis, you have this and that. They scare you from the get-go. They don't give you immediate relief. They tell you not to do things, just like they did in this case. You come back, you get an injection, come back again, you get an MRI, and the MRI is trying to find stuff. And they're gonna say, Oh, you have a herniation. But what they don't tell you is herniations reabsorb themselves. The disc annulus over time is going to go back in and it's gonna be fine. I would highly suggest getting some great books out there, like Back Mechanic from Dr. McGill. Now, Doc McGill has a lot of credibility, but also there's some pushback because a lot of the studies that he did were within pig spines and they were dead. And so he will discuss the back being like a credit card. And that is not the most optimal way to think about this. But his book is really great because he's interviewed and worked with power lifters who were lifting thousands of pounds, like thousand fifty-three and so forth, and they shattered their back and they went to doc and he helped revive them. Pain medication is a lot of times what you're gonna get put on, and that's not the best route, but we can't tell people to go off or go on. Obviously, we're not doctors, but this gives you more motivation to link up with the right practitioner who's pro-movement and not anti-movement like our society is today when it comes to the medical system. So the first thing that you can do is just provide hope. When you meet her, shake your hand, smile. Thank you for your inquiry. We're gonna spend the next 15 to 30 minutes talking about your history, what's been going on, and then we're gonna get into an assessment protocol. And I'm very confident, hell, I guarantee we're gonna get you out of pain. Because worst case scenario, if I can't, I surround myself with the best physios and kairos that are out there. It is a gradual process, but your situation is very normal. So tell me more about what's going on. Your voice is important. If she comes in and oh, let me give you a hug, your back, oh, you're broken, you're dysfunctional, you have lower cross syndrome, your psoas is tight, your glutes are underactive. That stuff scares people. And I know firsthand because I had this happen to me. I was bench pressing 315, arched my back too much, heard a little pop. Arching your back doesn't hurt your back. Bench pressing doesn't hurt your back. It was just a bad situation. And I went through that process where I went to a doctor on an MRI, and that is a scary process. This machine, claustrophobic as hell. Oh, yeah, here's a little clicker that if you get claustrophobic, click on it, you're like, holy shit, I don't want to get claustrophobic, but I'm getting claustrophobic. It sucks. And you're freaking out. The whole experience is negative. And then they give you a diagnosis without hope. So you need to be very optimistic. Let them talk and go through everything. I wouldn't suggest getting any type of injections. Give me 30 days to see what we can do. I'm gonna give you a lot of great prehab and rehab exercises. We work with the prehab guys, their exercise library is amazing. Use the discount code show up. We don't get any kickback. I just think that trainers should use this because it levels you up. And you send this to your clients and like, wow, this is really helpful. The Cairo didn't do that. The other therapist gave me stick figures. This is really professional. And you can show them the exercises that you're highlighting. So we need to listen to them first. That's part of the biopsychosocial model of pain. Their experience, that's the psychology, but also how their biology responded to the experience. And then their environment. What is causing discomfort? For her, it's standing up, but she's also confusing the term sciatica with her herniation. So that's why the screen is important. What she's talking about is low back discomfort with referred pain down the leg. And that burning isn't fun, but it's within our scope to show them some exercises they can do. Stretching isn't gonna do much when it comes to sciatica. We're gonna want to do more nerve glides. You can find those in the exercise library. Just type in sciatic nerve glides prehab guys, and you'll have a lot of exercises that pop up. Try them yourself so you feel what's going on, so you can talk them through that. You're gonna get a nice stretch and relief from that. Stretching, for the most part, when it comes to irritated nerves, makes it even worse. And people have been stretching for months and it's not getting better. Remember the definition of insanity. If it's not getting better within an acute period, maybe three to seven sessions, then we need to try different things, refer out to other professionals. Your team is what makes you a great trainer because you are. Provide that hope to your client. Make them laugh, get them to smile. If you do not have a story, this is when I say lie to your clients. This is the one time it is 100% okay to lie to them because it makes them feel better and it gives them hope. If you haven't had low back pain, you could use my story and say I've worked with people who've had low back pain, very similar to your situation. And with this process, they were able to get out of it because you're giving them hope. If you don't like the word lie, fabricate the truth, as I say. So when a client comes to me, I know for a fact I'm gonna get you out of back pain 100%. Because worst case, I refer out and you have, you know, a tumor or bladder cancer, something that's out of my scope, but I am checking and prescribing in the sense that you're doing these exercises. If it's not getting better, I will refer you out to get that second opinion. So after you've had them talk and you listen, we need to screen is it flexion intolerant, which is touching your toes? Is it extension intolerant, which is bending back, hyperextension? Is it lateral flexion? Is it compression? Is it rotation? What irritates you? Standing is fine, but when you wake up in the morning, it's worse. That's very common. So, how do you get out of bed? And here's the kicker. When you were taking those drugs, you were numb to everything that was going on. So you were pushing through it, and your brain is like, oh crap, this is normally gonna hurt, but we have this medication in us, so we don't feel it. So then when you go off of it, you don't know what is right or wrong movement. And everything is gonna be guarded, and that's that central amplification. I'm looking up right now at our gym in Santa Monica, and we have these fluorescent lights. When I turn them on, some flitter and flash quicker than others, some turn on, some don't turn on. Think of it like that. You have some lights that are brighter. So we want to calm down the nervous system to show it. Movement is medicine. You're gonna get through this. It's not gonna just be one session. All of a sudden, Chris cured you. It happens a lot of the times. I just did a post today with that John Hammond. Maybe it's uh I should be a singer, but I'm talking about anatomy and I'm going through in a scenario. And your clients will say this stuff to you. Did you go to PT school? Are you a physical therapist? It's empowering because we understand anatomy. So when we were talking about this in the weekend seminar, most of the time it's going to be lateral, posterior herniations. But that's why we do the screens. You really need to watch the client and how they move. Because what's going to happen with flexion intolerance? So you try to touch your toes, and maybe their hands go a little below their knee and they start going slower, slower, slower, and then they stop. And you can see there's discomfort. You really need to watch their facial expressions. And then when they come up, how did that feel? Uh, it was okay. No, it wasn't okay. Because my test is this does your left ear hurt? And they look at me like I'm a fucking psycho and they go, No. That's the response I want when it comes to pain. So if I ask you if that hurt, and you go, now it's okay. You're lying to me. You just registered pain and now you're trying to be tough. That's exactly what we don't want, especially in her case, because she's had this guard up and she's been pushing through it. So maybe she was at a five or six discomfort level for a very long period and she just numbed herself. And so it came down to a constant quote unquote normal of three or four. So when she's going down and she gets that three or four, that is now normal to her. But we want it to get down to zero and we will. So then when we test lateral flexion, a lot of times left side is going to be slow, right side is fine. If it's extension intolerant, we want to do things that are flexion-based. If it's flexion intolerant, we want to go right before the discomfort happens and then focus more on extension. So for example, we can't get down to touch our toes. I want her to tell me and show me where there's zero discomfort. And it could be like three inches down. Awesome. I want you to do 25 reps to that point where there's zero discomfort because you're teaching the nervous system that it is okay to move. And then when you get down in the ground, you do like a plank variation, the spine is nice and stable, and you press up for the thinks exercise. Extension typically won't cause discomfort. So we want to do a lot of extension-based things that cause zero discomfort. I will show her a loaded Jefferson. I'm going to grab a 45. We have a 97-pound kettlebell here. I'm going to pick that up with a rounded back. And I'm going to show her that this is something that we're going to work up to. Because I was once in that same situation. I would get up and sometimes it would take me 10 minutes to walk to the bathroom. It sucked waking up. So I feel for those people that get hooked on opiates because your life sucks. And then you get depressed, you can't shit, your system's all backed up. Life is not good. So then people go to extremes because they're trying to find a solution. So when you're pro-movement and you find a couple exercises that are appropriate, let them know it's very common to have a flare-up the next day. But throughout time and being consistent, we're going to get you to an everyday life of zero. I guarantee it. So my suggestion is listen to what your doc says. Yes, I would love to reach out to them. I would love to go to that pain clinic with you. So then that gives you an ability to network with other professionals, let them know that you're a qualified coach. Most trainers are just going to say, oh, actually, it's your psoas is overactive and we need to stretch it. Your glutes are underactive and we just need to do this. When you have a system, you're not guessing, you're giving a much more specific prescription for their success. So if compression irritates them, we're going to want to stay away from back squats and gobbit squats, overhead pressing for the time being. Because of that guard that she has for three years, it's going to take some time. I'm going to avoid loaded exercises that are going to irritate her. Push-ups are probably going to be a great solution. Rows, but I want to do them bilaterally because if I do a cable row with one arm, right arm pulling to my chest, my left side has to stabilize. That can irritate that area. So we really need to distinguish: is it really sciatica or is she experiencing sciatica because of, et cetera? That's the beauty of the assessment process. It could be both. You could give her some nerve glides where she lies on her back and she's going to point her toes straight up, and your hands are behind your thigh on your hamstrings. And then you're going to go up and down. You're flexing and extending your knee. And that movement is going to be stretching that nerve in a positive way. And you're just going to do reps of that, maybe eight to 12 reps, two to three times. Don't give a ton of volume. Because the last thing you want to do is have her do seven, 10, 12 exercises, 10, 15 reps. And the next day it's significantly worse because now we don't know what made it worse. We screen and then we implement exercises, typically not much, if any, load. And then we're going to progress over time. I love doing planks. McGill has his McGill three, which are going to be side planks with a staggered stance, which is going to be more QL specific. When they're stacked, it's going to be more gluten mead, a bridge, and then curl ups. I like to do a plank, teach them how to get down into a plank because that's a big one as well. Again, especially because of the meds that she's been taking, we're just going to be moving very sloppy into positioning. And I want there to be control. So make sure we're not dipping our hips back and forth. We show them first to get down in that plank position. Worst case scenario, you feel something. Go to your knees. Nothing can happen. Teach them how to get back out of the plank and then get back into it. If she holds a plank for 15 seconds and she says, yeah, I started to feel it around 13, 14 seconds. Awesome. That's really great data. I want to do three sets of eight seconds. I don't want to go to the point of discomfort. I want to go right before it. So now you're giving hope and a prescription that the load and volume isn't too intense. We have to start at the beginning. You're teaching someone who's failed math. You're not going to give them a hundred of the most difficult equations and say, this is what you need to master. Start with the basics. One plus one is two. Great. There you go. That's Tori Ju, Tori. Five plus five is 10. Three times three is nine. You start progressing into more difficult problems as they become competent with the material. It's the same thing with movement. Once they own that movement, you progress. You will be able to get into dynamic movements, which would be like a plank and then putting your arm behind your back and rotating. We had a fella at the seminar and he's been dealing with some back pain. He just does planks for a minute. And I said, that's great, but we need to progress and make that more challenging for you in this specific case. Can we put an arm behind the back and rotate? So that dynamic plank variation, which they refer to as like DNS, it's a style of training like PRI. There's a lot of different camps. DNS has some merit, but it's also kind of looked upon as kind of like NASAM is just a system that is not very scientifically backed, but there's some things that you can take from it. So those rotations helped this guy. But for her, we're not there yet. We need to start with the spine being stable, anterior plank, side plank, some bridges. I like to stay away from payloads in the beginning because that's an anti-rotation. It's transverse. It's just a lot more stress on the spine for that individual. So start with three or four exercises. Keep the volume pretty low, what they can tolerate, and then do some pushing and pulling like a TRX row would be great. You can still do the movement patterns. We're not going to be doing box jumps and crazy transitional things, loaded carries, because that can irritate the spine. But what we can do, TRX rows, we can do push-ups that are modified, bar push-ups, bodyweight squats, step ups, lunges if they're appropriate. I'm not going to load those up until we have control eccentrically. Get that feedback from her. Rest periods are going to be longer. Probably going to do some sort of CA or C C. You make that decision. If it's a compression issue, you could try hanging from a pull-up bar. You can modify it so it's not all the way up there super high, but hold your hands above your head and just decompress. And if she finds some relief from that, you may want to look into some type of decompression table. And this is what we were talking about over the weekend is that professionalism going above and beyond. But the service, if that client pays me$3,000 for the next 12 sessions that they're going to get, whatever your pricing is, I'm going to take some of that money and I'm going to invest back into them.$200,$300 for an inverted table. Because if that helps them feel better, it's a win-win. You are helping your client and doing more than I guarantee you what the chiropractor is doing for them or the therapist are just giving them low-hanging fruit exercises, which can be fine, but we want them to progress to the point where there's no pain forever. And we can do that. So by doing those little things, you are separating yourself from what the industry quote unquote standard is. It's like really looking at that person more as a widget and getting them through the system versus truly listening and being empathetic to what is going on and what their goal is. So you can provide a solution. Instead of doing overhead pressing, I'm going to modify that to maybe a landmine bilateral press or a split stance press when it comes to rowing, as I said, TRX row. I'm not going to do bent over rows because that's going to put a lot of stress on her low back. And she doesn't have that foundation. I'll probably begin with a modified split stance row because you're taking that discomfort off the back. It's not even necessarily discomfort, probably a wrong word. It would just be Stress. Stress is an amazing thing, but we have to find the tolerance. So if you have her doing goblet squats and you're having her doing loaded lunges, overhead pressing, single arm rows, that's a lot on her low back that doesn't have that capacity. Again, go back to the analogy of someone trying to learn or improve their mathematics. Giving them thousands of questions and problems in the beginning is overwhelming. You can't do it. If you're trying to learn español, giving someone 5,000 new vocab words and say, remember this by tomorrow, you're not going to be able to. Here are five words that I want you to learn. Battle! I cannot roll my damn R's. Work on that word and get better just at that word. Once you conquer these five, I'm going to give you a new five. You're giving them hope. And how you present yourself is super, super important. And when it comes to that MRI, I let them know like, yeah, it's unfortunate, but a lot of the MRI findings are looking for problems. And they've done studies looking at people on the street. Let's take 100 people, 50 of them have disc herniations, but half of them don't even have pain. The other half do. So is the herniation causing pain? Well, how is that the case if these people have a herniation, but they don't have pain? Pain is multifactorial. You have to look at the individual. The biopsychosocial model of pain is looking at the individual, not the biomedical approach, which is we're trying to find an issue and then get them under the knife. That's not our goal. One of the best pieces of advice I ever had from a physical therapist, never go under the knife when it comes to the spine, unless it's some type of tumor, cancer, something along those lines, really, really nasty, obviously. But there is hope for movement. Use that as the very, very last resource. But have you been to the best therapist? Here in Santa Monica, we work with the prehab guys, Dr. Waterbury, LA Sport and Spine with Dr. LaBenson. He's a chiropractor and he is the absolute best. He's a rock star. If I had someone who I couldn't help and the prehab guys couldn't help, I would then resource out to him. There are solutions, but you have to keep on trying and being consistent. So when you set those clear expectations that this is normal, you are normal, but it's a process. Let's find what you're capable of doing, progress it. I'll give you some suggestions for sleeping. Let's put a pillow or something under your knees so we don't have an anterior tilt. Nothing wrong with an anterior tilt. But if it's irritating that nerve and that area, we got to avoid that for the time being. Some people will suggest sleeping on the ground. I've had a little back pain for five years and I slept on the ground because it was hard and it fixed it right up. Maybe we need to look at your mattress, your pillows. Those are things that we can observe. I like to look at the feet. I'm not a weirdo. I don't have a foot fetish. But if you take your sock off and I tell you to move your big toe and you can't do that, that's interesting data for me. Because your brain is talking to your feet and it's not synergistic. And the example I did last week in the seminar for our little body, put your hands out. And you can do this right now, unless you're driving, don't get in a car wreck. And I want you just to move your thumb. Was that hard? No. Imagine if I said, move your thumb and you pulled your hand and you smacked your head. I'll be like, what the hell was that? As you can hear, I just did that. Like, that's not normal. Why'd you do that? So when you tell people to move their big toe and all of their toes come up, that's a miscommunication neurologically. So let's focus on that motor control. Keep your four toes down and just lift your big toe. And if you can't do that, put your thumb on your big toe. I'm not touching your nasty ass feet. You do this. And then move those four toes and then move up your big toe by when you're keeping the other four down. And then we can work like a piano where you're going pinky, ring finger, third finger, middle finger, index finger, thumb, and you're just going back and forth. When we optimize that neurological control and that motor patterning, a lot of times the discomfort's going to come down with it. Because maybe that flare, that red flag is up, that sensory output, because we don't have that optimal movement. And so when we fine-tune it, the discomfort or the central amplification. It's also referred to as central sensitation, but I always screw that up and I screw up my S's just like my pedo. I couldn't do the R's. Central amplification is a lot easier to use. You can type that in. Lots of great studies looking at central amplification, which is chronic discomfort. And notice how I use the word discomfort and not pain, because it has a negative connotation, as does sciatica. Ask 10 people when you hear the word sciatica, do you think good or bad? When you hear the word pain, do you think good or bad? The psychology that goes into having a bunch of negative inputs and self-talk is not good. So when you say sciatica, you're confirming something is wrong with your body. Something is broken. You're not broken. We're going to get through this. I guarantee it. Let me help you up. Let me get you some water. You're giving suggestions. Let's look at your hydration. Let's look at your sleep and your stress because that all goes into it. Maybe you have low back discomfort because you don't drink any water. What does our fruits and vegetables look like? You don't eat any. It's only fast food. Or are the nutrients that are going into your body? Your soil sucks. We got to give yourself better soil. And when you come to me, I'm providing that hope. I'm tilling up your farm, making it the best for the seeds that you plant. And I'm planting those seeds with the proper exercise. And it's funny because I get excited about pain, because there's nothing that's more fulfilling individually for yourself. If you've experienced these nasty pain scenarios, when you get out of pain, you're like, wow, this is what I'm talking about. But when you help others who've been moving in pain for years and they don't have it, it's really empowering. So when that person comes in, I smile, I let them talk, but I say, I've got to be 100% honest with you. I'm really excited because it's going to be one hell of a feeling when you have zero pain. Don't you agree? Get them to say that. Oh my God, that would be amazing. Focus on what you just said right there. And I want you to say that every single day. The first thing you're going to do now from here on out when you wake up, you're going to say, Thanks for being alive. I'm going to do some awesome stuff today, but I'm going to get out of back pain. There is hope. I'm going to do this. Those affirmations are going to help with the process as well. Because I guarantee you they wake up and they go, Oh, shit, not again. My leg is burning. My back hurts. They get on the scale. Oh, it's gone up. Negative, negative, negative. We need to be positive, positive, positive. There is hope for this client. And I guarantee you that she's going to be in great hands with you because you're going to take her along a right path. Someone asked about Jefferson's, because that's a loaded flexion exercise variation. And when would you want to incorporate those? When there's competency without load. So when they can touch their toes now in a greater range of motion, start with the extremely low weight. I guarantee you they probably pick something up that was 10, 15 pounds, a dog or a bag of groceries, which is loaded flexion. They just look at weight and they see it as scary. I can't do that. If I bend my back, I'm going to get hurt. I can't run. My neurologist said I can't do that. Those bracing and drawing in techniques can be really beneficial. So bracing is like your pooping muscles. You hear that in the gym where people are bracing their core. They're creating intominal pressure, which is essentially just stabilizing your spine. Drawing in is pulling in your rectus abdominis, which is your ab muscles. You're pulling it away from your shirt, trying to touch your spine. So you're sucking in, sucking in, sucking in, or vacuuming, as Arnold would say, with working on your waist getting smaller. These techniques are going to help provide hope. And these are things that they can do on a daily basis. If you're sitting down all day, we don't do any movement. So let's incorporate some of these exercises. And most importantly, this is what you need to do, Susan, is you need to give her a low back routine. I always ask people, what is your current low back routine look like? And they look at me like I don't have one. Awesome. Because I'm going to give you one that's just for you. And we need to start doing this daily. And it's absolutely going to help. So now they have something. They wake up and go, I need to do my low back routine. This is going to help me get better. That positive mindset is setting them up for success versus what do they do now? They wake up, there's pain, they take pills, it's negative, negative, negative. So choose three to four exercises, have them do it at home. If you want to incorporate some stretches, that's fine. Just make sure it doesn't irritate her sciatic nerve. That's a really big plexus that comes out, I think it's like L3 down to S5, and it shoots through the hip. Some people call it paraformis syndrome because your paraformis sits right on there and it can also compress it and you get that irritation. But low back deferred pain is probably the right way we should be referring to it as. And I don't like pain, I'll say discomfort. So for that discomfort that you're experiencing that's radiating, let's do these glides. I had Coach Q on here a while ago. He's an awesome strength coach as well as physical therapist, coach underline score thingy, Q underline thingy, physio. He has 103,000 followers, doctor, physical therapy, and strength coach. He has some really awesome exercises for progressions. So after we've been doing this for a couple weeks and months and they feel better, we need to progress them to continue on with it. Because with low back pain, it's not about just getting out of pain for the time being. It's about getting out of pain forever. So this is going to be part of your new daily lifetime experience. And this is fun because it's not fun when you have a flare-up. Talk to me more about what that flare-up is like. I know it's really frustrating when you go to the bathroom and it hurts to sit down or to bend over to spit out the water when you brush your teeth. I was there. But we need to progress and have optimism around what's going to happen next because you're going to get out of pain, but we can't stop. It's like if you have bronchitis or a nasty lung issue and they give you five pills to take, and after three, it's gone. You don't stop taking the medication. You have to continue on with it. So it's the same thing with exercise. This is what you need to be doing for the rest of your life. Look at the two options we have here. Do you want to be in pain or do you want to be out of pain? If the answer is the latter, then you need to do these exercises regularly. And we're going to get you to pick up that 97-pound kettlebell. We're going to do loaded pigeon stretches with a hinge. And we're going to get into squatting and deadlifting and running again. I guarantee it. We're going to look back on today and be like, wow, this journey has been amazing. But I'm so glad that I hired you because you're a qualified coach and that's exactly who you are right now because you're listening to this. Throw this into your story if you know anyone who has low back discomfort. If you don't have a physical therapist on your team, reach out to us. Part of the level two, we can help you reach out properly. Don't send out just these fucking annoying templates that AI uses. I say this with disgust because I get them daily. Hey, Chris, we listened to your last podcast. It was great. Here's a person we should get on their podcast, and they tell me all about their accolades. I don't give a flying shit about them. I don't personalize the reach out. If you want to be on my podcast, if you want to get into our community, you need to do your research. That's professionalism. So when you reach out to a therapist, hello, Doc, that last post you did on this was amazing. I really like this about you. Oh, you live in Austin right now, Doc Q. That's so cool. I go out there all the time. I had a question about some rehab prehab. Would it be all right if we hopped on a quick call? I'll be more than happy to pay you your hourly rate. Go in with that give mentality. Find a therapist, schedule an appointment, pay them their hourly rate, refer them a patient/slash client as quickly as you can. If you don't have anyone, send a friend or a family member. Give it for a Christmas present. Because now that therapist says, wow, I've never had a trainer send me business. This is going to be an awesome relationship. And guess what happens? They start sending you really hot leads. And if that therapist is 150, 200 bucks, you may be thinking, that's expensive. But those patients that are coming to you are going to be lifelong clients and they're paying you 150 to 200 per hour. That's how you network, that's how you build a successful business. And it's all about showing up. Throw this into your story. Appreciate you all. And remember, strong back muscles are better than weak ones, and keep showing up.