Double Edge Fitness

12/15/2026 Monday Update | Community, Back Health & Holiday Schedule 🎄

• Derek and Jacob Wellock

Share episode

Back pain doesn’t have to bench your training. We open up about the rough L4 L5 S1 years, the nerve pain that hijacked daily life, and the turning points that brought heavy training and even running back without the dread of tomorrow’s flare-up. The big shift wasn’t another ab circuit—it was redefining “core” to include adductors, glutes, obliques, and spinal erectors, then pairing that with slow, deliberate positions that the spine can trust under intensity.

We dig into the hip-first approach that changed everything: weekly Cossack squats, adductor deadlifts, and glute bridges that build stable range instead of floppy flexibility. From there, we translate it to barbell and gymnastics. Learn how to spot and manage pelvic tilt in squats, pick a stance that matches your anatomy, and use tempo to protect the lumbar at the bottom. On the rig, we tighten the kip so the core and lats lead while the low back stays quiet. For strength without the risk, we lean hard on split squats and lunges—big leg stimulus with near-zero chance of butt wink.

We also get real about when training helps and when it doesn’t. Imaging and history matter. If nerves are losing function, surgery might be the right step; if progress is steady, smart rehab can carry you far. Inside the gym, our programming adds joint health blocks for hips and shoulders, with repeatable drills and progressive overload so improvements stick. You’ll hear community updates, SugarWOD notes and videos we’re building, Coach Chase’s farewell hangout, and holiday schedule changes so you can plan your sessions.

If you’ve ever been told “just strengthen your core” and still woke up stiff, this conversation gives you a clearer map: build hips, control positions, respect your structure, and train hard within guardrails. Subscribe, share with a training partner who needs it, and drop a comment with the movement you want us to break down on video next.

Follow us on Instagram here! https://www.instagram.com/doubleedgefitness/

SPEAKER_00:

Happy Monday, everybody. Here with another lovely weekly update. And try not to bore the hell out of you. Know what I'm saying? So, Christmas party was awesome. A lot of people showed up. One of our biggest turnouts in many years, which is super rad, super cool. And the photos are uploaded. The link in the newsletter for those photos. So, um, so yeah, photos of Santa Claus, all the other photos my brother was walking around taking pictures of and whatnot. I think they're all in that link. I've not looked at them yet, but he sent me the link. They're uploaded. So cool. Hope everybody had a great time and enjoyed themselves. It's cool to get everybody together out for a night. It's cool to see all the kids running around playing, having a good time. Really enjoyed that. And uh looking to evolve it a little bit next year. Got some ideas. All right. Next, what are we gonna learn today? All right. I like to bring in a little education into these videos and podcasts. And the topic that I randomly chose today, I want to talk about back health, spine. Now, I'm really planning on making a movement-oriented video out in the gym where I got like the little mic on and maybe a model, and I go through some movements. And the movements that I want to talk about is position movements of common things we do in the gym a lot. Things to be aware of outside the gym when it relates to our spine, all right. As somebody who has a pretty rough low back, L5, L4, S1 area of my back is pretty beat up. I got some disc bulges and some junk going on there, and it's been for years, right? Many of you guys don't probably remember this, but there was a time like 2016, 2017, in there that my back was in a pretty bad place. And it came down to irresponsible movement and not listening to my body, and just years of wear and tear all um came to a head. To the point uh my wife had to help me out to the car and get me to the hospital because I was in a very bad place. Like I couldn't, my leg was all jacked up, and it took about a year before the pain really got under control in a kind of meaningful way. And um went to a surgeon and they said it's I mean, it's it's operable, but it's it he suggested not because I was showing progress. All right, it was getting better, and the nerve pain was improving, and my leg function was improving. So I focused on more rehab back then, and I've learned a tremendous amount since then and evolving my own back health, getting back to the quality of life that I enjoy, the way I love to train. I mean, I had a big coming to Jesus moment back then of like, what am I doing? Like my kids were little, changing diapers. Shit, there's sometimes bending over, like leaning against the counter, brushing my teeth. Uh, it was just wrenched up. And it's like, what is what am I doing here? This isn't how I want to live. I'm health and fitness coach. I love the way I train. I want to get back to the way I enjoy training, which is CrossFit style training. And it was a good few years of shit pain, often. And I never relied heavy on pain meds. When it happened acutely, I did have some pain meds and helped me get through that initial um inflammatory period of where that disc bulge was really pissed off and impinging the nerve. But we got past that and I was able to overcome it. Now I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that my back's 100% perfect, but I am gonna tell you I am back to a very high quality of life, pretty pain-free. And there are specifics in the gym that I'm very mindful of and things that I do proactively to stay in this uh condition, if you will, this pretty much pain-free condition, and back to training the way I love to train consistently. So if that resonates with some of you guys, I really want to put out one, I want to eradicate it from the gym. Period. There's I've talked to too many people who have like back fatigue issues during workouts, and like there's just some things that some movement stuff and things that we can correct and improve upon with our hip health, our low back um strength and capacity. What does it mean to have a strong core? That comment makes me want to vomit. Like, oh, you need to strengthen your core to make your back feel motherfucker. My core is strong, but I digress. One thing I learned about my core is my core wasn't strong enough for the demands that I was putting on it. All right, just because you can hold a three-minute plank doesn't mean your core is strong enough to cycle 225 squat cleans. Huh? Think about that. So there is a bunch of core work I've done. I also take core work as being both abdominal work, transverse abdominal work, oblique work, and yes, low back work, QLs, strengthening the back straps, but also the hips. Right? The biggest improvement that I made in my low back was when I really started working on my hip health, working on my adductors, so caustic squats, adductor deadlifts, more things, um, glute bridges, more things around my hip health and hip function, and my back pain, like that morning stiffness when you just roll out of bed, was it was being eradicated tremendously when I started taking ownership of those things. And as my knowledge has evolved in this, and looking around the gym over the last couple years, I'm trying to bring that stuff to class. Is it perfect? It's hard to be perfect. This is stuff I work on a couple times a week, but I'm trying to introduce elements on a consistent basis of what I've done for my hips and my back into class as part of either warmups or Thursday strength stuff. We call it joint health in the notes. And I'm trying to combine that with shoulder stuff too. Um, because that's another thing I want to eradicate shoulder pain. I've dealt with that for years. I've finally come to a place where I have zero shoulder pain, been able to do everything that I love other than squat snatching. So, um longer video if you guys are really interested in that shit. But what I'm getting at here is making a conscious effort into influencing all of us in the gym with some of this stuff. And what I'm getting at here is you might find it boring and repetitive. I'm going to tell you yes, CrossFit, constantly varied functional movement executed at high intensity. Great stuff, phenomenal stuff. Should I really believe in? But when it comes to some of this other stuff, consistent, repetitive, progressive overloading is the key. You know, I do Cossack squats every single week for like the last two years in some way. Some days it might be assisted, some days it might be as heavy as I can. Um different versions of it. And that's been a huge help with my hips. Sorry, guys. Over the last two years now. And what I'm also finding interesting, prior to all this hip health shit, I used to try to run a lot. I don't know if you would need guys when I did 75 Hard, if you followed me back in 2019 or whatever, but I was running 45 minutes every single morning. It wrecked my back. Wrecked it. It was um, it sucked. And it took me months to get back after I did that challenge and beat the hell out of myself for like a hundred days. It took me months to get back to where I felt like okay again. And I started recently running significantly more for high rocks, and I've been very, very uh n nervous about that because every time I ramp up running, that seems to be a trigger for my back. And um, I've been really focusing on this hip health stuff as I'm building up the running, and I can say, so far, knock on wood, it's been feeling awesome. You know, the little tightness, a little stiffness here and there. Yeah, sure. I'm also 41 years old. And you're not gonna feel phenomenal in every moment of every day. Things are getting tight, stiff, whatever. So I'm really trying to introduce this stuff in the class. And some things that in the this video that I plan on making that's very movement oriented of us out in the gym, is improving our adductor hip health and also being conscious of how we're moving with some of our lifts. You know, pelvic tilt, understanding, do you have it, understanding your own personal hip structure? Okay. Every single human has a different hip structure, right? Their femur comes up into their pelvis at a different angle. Different people have different hips. So telling everybody to squat with X foot stance is not a universal thing. Finding your foot stance for your pelvis and your back is vital. Understanding if you have pelvic tilt or not at the bottom of a squat. I have to be extremely mindful of that. If I'm catching, so back squats is something I definitely don't load as heavy as I could. I don't push the weight on back squats anymore. The compressive loads at the bottom of the squat is something that kind of pisses me off, but I still truly believe in back squats. It's just an element that I do not push the heavy, heavy loads anymore and trying to grow PRs and grow that in a massive way. But when I do back squat or front squat or squat clean or wall ball or even air squat, I have to be extremely mindful of my pelvis because even high volume body weight squats, all the way up to you know, some heavy squat cleans, back squats, front squats. If I'm having any pelvic tilt at all, it pisses off that L5 S1 area of my back, and I feel it the next day. Now I know this, and I'm just super conscientious of that. So you never ever really see me drop down into a squat fast. It's always very controlled now and feeling my body and everything work. And as long as I do that intelligently, I'm fine. I'm typically fine the next day. So I'm gonna make this video about all this stuff and show you the movements and what to look out for. Now, all the coaches in the gym they understand what pelvic tilt is or butt wink is, and this isn't, if you have it, it doesn't necessarily always mean that you have back problems. But if you have back problems and you have it, this could very much be something that's pissing it off. So kips, kipping, where you get a loose guts and your lumbar starts moving wack-a-doodle, going into super extension or whatever on your kips, trying to flail your feet up there. That's why our kip drills right now are very tight, controlled, and we're starting to feel the core and lats moving versus just flailing feet around. As we build in this joint health hip stuff, um, more unilateral things, I find that split squats and lunges are great for developing my legs personally. And the possibility of pelvic tilting those goes down to near zero for almost everybody. So it is a great tool for developing leg strength in a very controlled manner. That for those of us that do have a little low back junky junk going on, it's very safe. Like we can I can load that up for myself and be just fine. Outside of that, one time I tried to lunge a ton of shit and like kind of tore my adductor, you know. Sometimes we do stupid shit. I'm guilty as all hell of it. So be mindful of those things, all right? But we'll get into details on this. I just want to throw a little feeder out that that's what's happening in the programming. We're trying to keep it consistent and build upon it so that I see everybody out there moving with ninja status, right? We see in those adductors open up. Obviously, a lot of the women are having more flexibility in these ranges than the men. But on the when you're flexible, doesn't mean you're stable. And when you're stable, doesn't mean your joint's functioning healthy. So you need mobility and stability of the joint to function properly, and then you need the right sequence of muscles to fire at the right times in these lifts. For instance, if the first muscles to fire on a deadlift is your upper back because you're yanking the bar off the ground, everything downstream from that is secondary and can possibly be going to shit. We don't want that. But we'll get into all this later and more details out in the gym. But I want to throw it out there because it's part of the programming and that's what we're trying to do there. All right, you guys. Again, if you got something going on with your back, your shoulders, knees, whatever. I have a lot of experience in these areas. Been at this a long time. Um, most of my personal training over the years was around helping people post-physical therapy with getting back to the things they love to do. And I'm pretty confident that if I don't know the answer, I'm going to help you find where to get the answer when it comes to backs. I'm very particular. Um, depending on the history there, I do like to know if you've consulted a doctor on your back, if you've had imaging done, um, instances of what's gone on in the past. This all plays into the picture of what I feel I'm comfortable with helping and working through and so forth. So again, these are one-by-one uh deals that I help people with. And yeah, we have to know our limitations, right? Sometimes back is surgical, no choice. If you're losing, if you're getting atrophy in the leg, losing function, like if there's some shit going on, it's you know, it's oh, we can train through it and get it stronger. I mean, if the nerve's getting cut off, the amount of time it takes to regenerate that is a long effing time. So there are incidents to have a couple members who needed back surgery. It had to happen. They had to relieve that pressure from the nerve. All right. So it's not always done in the gym. In my situation, because the nerve pain was getting better and I was gaining function consistently on a consistent basis, is why I opted not to go in there and have a, I think it's a disectomy, where they go and cut out the chunk of disc that's pinching on the nerve. So I opted not to and kept going with rehab and just modifying and understanding my training limitations going forward. And I can say now, age 41, feeling pretty great, doing 99% of the shit I love to do in the gym and the way that I love to train. And so far, like I said, knock on wood, even running is coming back into my life, uh, relatively uh confident in my spine health as this is evolving again. So take it for what it is, but I am here to help. I am a resource now that we're all under one roof. I've had a couple people already reach out to me. We're booking appointments um to go through some things. And um, again, your coach, they probably have the knowledge, some knowledge in these areas too, for damn sure. Unfortunately, a lot of us have you're not gonna be active without getting injured from time to time. Shit happens, and we're all pretty active, so we've learned through our own journey. All right, so here to help. Hit me up. Don't be scared, don't be scared. All right, happy to do it. Rolling next, off that sugar wad updates, been putting a lot of effort into sugar wad lately. Notes and some video content and some information and whatnot. If you guys are getting a little bit of value out of that, make sure you let me, my brother, any of the coaches know because it takes a good chunk of time. We'll get more efficient at it. So we'll as we learn um what to do there and what you guys like and enjoy. But we're really trying to use the full capacity of Sugar Wad since it is a software that we pay for to create more value for you guys. And if it's something, you know, I don't expect everybody to be on there and you know, listen to everything and look at everything. But if there's a block of you guys getting good value out of that, let me know. If there's different things you would like us to dive into in relationship to training, programming, the week coming up or whatever, happy to do that. Again, my goal is always to try to keep short, but we never keep them short. One thing I have learned the more detail that I put into these videos, the better the notes that are generated from it. Full transparency. I take the transcript from these videos, I plug it into AI and have it clean it up because I can't spend all day typing shit out. I don't have the time. So trying to keep the content consistent and valuable, but it does come from the backbone of these videos, and that's just how I have to do it. So the videos, as much as I try to keep them short and to the point, the more detail I put into these, the better the notes are. Which I my understanding so far is more people read the notes than watch the whole video. So take it for what it is. I'm trying, you guys. And if you're super annoyed by me and my voice and my face and whatever, sorry. Sorry. Just know I love you. Just know that I love you. Right. I'm here for you trying to make you better, help you out. A couple quick things to wrap this up for this Monday update. Uh, Coach Chase is his last week. So, those of you guys that go to his classes in the afternoon, and this is his last week of coaching. And as a full-time coach, he'll still be around. I mean, not while he's in the academy, but he'll be one that's floating around into the future. He plans on helping sub coaching on his days off and this and that, blah, blah, blah. So he's not going away, but this is his last week of full-time coaching this week. So Friday night after the last class, 530 is the last class on Friday. We're gonna have a little hangout and whatnot. Give him a little pat on the back. I'm gonna slap him around a little bit because I'm still a little sideways about him quitting. A little upset about this, still a little tender. I'm proud of him. Right? I think he's gonna make a great law enforcement officer. People like him are who we need in our community. So I'm all for that. But I'm a little bit sideways still. It is what it is. All right. Just want to throw this in this one since the time's coming up. We got Christmas and New Year's rolling up. So quick reminder on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, the last class will only have 3:30 p.m. in the afternoon. Last year, only 12 people came to that class, the year before 11. Same with New Year's. You know, everybody's got families coming in town, New Year's Eve dinners, Christmas Eve dinners, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Uh, I'm not going to keep the coaches here late, get to their families. So 3:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve is the last class. Same with New Year's Eve. 3:30 p.m. is the last class. All right. We are closed for Christmas Day and the day after Christmas. So December 25th, December 26th, we are closed. I have not gotten any requests from coaches to throw together a workout. If something comes up and a coach wants to get after it and bring people in. Like always on holiday workouts, I don't make coaches work on the holidays, but if they want to throw together a workout and we'll get down. All right. And I'll let you guys know. But as of right now, not happening. And then New Year's Day closed. And that's it. And then we roll into 2026. All right. 2026 is going to be a great year. Right? It's going to be a great year. Looking forward to another awesome year with everybody. This year's proven to be fantastic. Lots of things happened this year. And it's just really set a nice tone going into next year. And we're going to kick ass and take names. I think that's it. That's all I got for us today, guys. Peace. I love you. Stay in the gym.