Phreak Klass
Advances in science, medicine, technology and information-sharing continue to happen at an accelerated pace. Join elite athlete, Phaidra Knight as she chronicles her personal health, wellness and peak-performance journey with personal accounts and interviews with leading doctors, scientists, entreprenuers and wellness professionals. Each episode contains powerful information to help you live your best life.
Phreak Klass
What if everything you know about fitness recovery is wrong?
Host Phaidra Knight explores a brave new world of fitness, working out and recovery with Dr. Chuck Morris Doctor, who holds a Ph.D. in Exercise Science and is the principal of Midtown Biohack in New York City. He is a Sports Scientist and Expert in Human Performance with clientele that spans multiple generations, professions, and personal lifestyles, including several Super Bowl champions, Olympic Gold Medalists, C-Suite executives, ultra-high net worth individuals, single and stay-at-home parents, collegiate and high school athletes.
Please "Like" and "Subscribe"
This is Freak Class and I'm your host.
Speaker 1:Phaedra PK Knight Now whether you're in your house, at the gym, in your car, at a Starbucks, wherever you are. I want to sincerely thank you for being a listener. My guest today has been described as equal parts scientist, speaker and strategist. If you ask me, that description leaves out the most important parts. The Dr Chuck, I know, is funny, inspirational and a visionary. He's relentless in the pursuit of ways to help his clients operate as close to peak performance as possible while keeping their minds sharp. He keeps focused on the goal to help all of us work to recover faster from training and competition. He is the originator of the term concierge wellness, which describes perfectly the bespoke programs he puts together, tailored to the needs of each individual. To present to some and to introduce to others one of the most important parts of my team, my friend and founder of Midtown Biohack, Dr Chuck Morris. Dr Chuck, welcome to my podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you, thank you, the original PK. Listen as soon as you get done with the fighting, I want you to just come follow me around and do my introduction everywhere I go. I got you.
Speaker 1:Workshops, whatever I love it, I got you, I got you.
Speaker 1:Larry. You know my PR person and good friend is. I got to get credit. He has been a really large part of helping me create these intros and so you got it. I got you, larry, and I got you. So there you go. Yeah, awesome Listen. I almost don't know where to start with you, right. Like you do a lot, I thought I did a lot. You do a lot, and just reading your bio would take more time than we've allotted for this show. But why don't you take a few minutes to give our listeners a snapshot? Tell us how you got your initial training that has led you to working as a high performance coach with thousands of elite athletes, including league MVPs, super Bowl champions, olympic gold medalist and, of course, phaedra knight, the originator the story of me is a twisty, windy turn that I would definitely say at the heart of every intersection and every small moment that mushrooms into something beyond I could think of ever happening.
Speaker 2:The consistent theme was, every time it came on the other side of me simply attempting to help somebody be better. Every single time it was on the other side of someone saying, would you? And me saying yes, and believing quite transparently that that's part of why God blew breath in me. So I couldn't have mapped this if I wanted to. And it really started leaving high school, turning down scholarships for computer programming, being locked in a lab all day, going to the army all whore love it, receiving a semi-demonstrating injury that told me that my young jump out of windows and airplanes with no parachute, life was coming to a close and that injury sparked inside of myself. These are the options that I was given. That that can't be right. There had to be more options. It couldn't be. You just have to get your knees replaced and you have to get your knees replaced and there's nothing we can do about it. I just I couldn't believe that was the answer and that drove me down the rabbit hole of consuming every book, every course, building on top of my formal education through the Army, and it mushroomed into something that's beyond my imagination.
Speaker 2:I became a health and fitness coach in the entire city of Philadelphia cancer patients pro my first pro athlete literally was from someone telling me I have a buddy that's hurt and he might lose his job. I said, well, that's not going to work. When he showed up at my facility he was an NFL player, but I didn't know that at the time. I just sang well, come help. So it's been a wild ride, but the ride has been consistently trying to help people and the bio seems unreal to me when I read it. That's why I don't like to read it. But I'll tell you that that's been a consistent theme. We've traveled around the world helping people be better, trying to figure out how to help people be better and use science and technology to do that.
Speaker 1:I want to hear everything you have to say, but I want to hear about that injury that you got to talk a little bit more about the thing the delta, the thing that changed your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the injury was something semi-unique. In actuality, I split both of my patellas in an accident in the Army and at the time, based on the wonderful technology in 1996-97, they told me that I would have to get a knee replacement and then repeat that surgery every 12 to 15 years. I was 19 years old and I just felt like there had to be a better answer. Um, and the surgeon said well, hey, listen, if you can handle the pain, you don't have to get the surgery, but it's going to diminish your quality of life. I said so, I won't hurt anything. I said no, you're, it's just gonna be pain. And that was the only answer they had. So I said, okay, well, what is pain? Wow, what is pain and how does that work?
Speaker 1:Well, did you feel pain when you cracked both of your patellas or you didn't feel it?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, okay, they were just telling me that in order to correct it, because the way that the split was, I could continue my life that way if I could put up with the discomfort and the pain and I could never put so much load on my joints on my knees again. And I literally spent four and a half months on kind of teaching myself how to walk again and I never got surgery. Wow.
Speaker 1:And the surgery would have been a knee replacement, double knee replacement.
Speaker 2:It would have been a double knee replacement.
Speaker 1:Oh, god, okay, Wow so you work through it, you work through it. The knees, the patella is healed, because that's what the body does. And obviously I mean I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna create a spoiler for my listeners, but, um, you know, it all worked out for you it, did it, did it all worked out better better than I could have ever imagined.
Speaker 2:Um, and the, I began to find out that what was being taught commonly in the us was a lot of antiquated information. When it came to human performance, it was a lot of half science that kind of people ran off the rails with, and there seemed to be an overwhelming theme of there's nothing you can do Once you get injured. There's nothing you can do Once you age, there's nothing you can do. There seemed to be this constant theme that said that aging and decaying are synonymous with each other and there's nothing you can do about it. Yeah, which just isn't true. Yeah, so, uh, that's what kind of started this whole mad, mad max thing we got going on here.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I I alluded to it in the intro and then you know, talking just in my first question to you, you, you've, you've trained and you know what people want to hear a little bit. You've got to give people a little bit of candy. Right, the listeners have got to give them a little candy. You've trained these MVPs, these Super Bowl champions, these Olympic gold medalists. Who are some of these people? Can you name drop just a couple, a handful, some of them that you've worked with?
Speaker 2:We can. We can name drop some of the ones that aren't currently playing anymore because, as you know, with sports any indication of you less than 100% messes with your paycheck. That's right. Let's see Carly Lloyd, the legendary female soccer player. Carly Lloyd, interesting enough, when I was brought into her career was this last run that she made, when they said she was too old to be any good anymore. And she trained with me and I did my part. She is who she is and I did my part and she performed amazingly at the French Open and at the Olympics Hat trick and everything which was amazing. They said it was over for it and it wasn't. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Trey Thomas, because I'm a Philly boy, so Philadelphia Eagles legendary. He had a back injury that they said most people thought was going to end his career, which it didn't. Not only did it not end his career, but after 15 weeks we had him in better condition than he was when he left college. Wow, wow. And they came and did an interview and he's 315 pounds, 6'9", doing pull-ups, trying to figure out what was going on. That's crazy. So Marion Barber, dallas Cowboys. Hank Otee was a champ with the New England Dallas Cowboys Yep, hank Cote, hank Cote was a champ. The New England amazing cornerback, maxine Gillis, another great eagle. So we'll name all of those people that are long past their contracts so that no one gets in trouble.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right. Okay, that's excellent. I mean that's a pretty star-studded roster and I'm sure I mean I know you're working with some others, obviously that you can't mention, but I think that's quite impressive. And you know, the one person that I could probably know about has the most notoriety is obviously Carly Lloyd, and she had quite an impressive career. But to be able to step out on the pitch after she'd been written off and have such a performance speaks volumes. It speaks volumes about everything that you stand for and that you're about, so that's pretty incredible.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. She's a wonderful, wonderful woman and an amazing, amazing athlete. And quite transparently, even in our first interaction, after I took her through our first assessment, I said I call her C. I said C, now, listen, this is going to be weird, but just go with me. She said okay, doc. And when we got done she says I've been doing what I do my entire life and we've had people from all over. They bring everybody in and I've never had experience like this before and PK transparently handed God. That was just the assessment. Yeah, we hadn't even started training yet. That was just for us to figure out where she was, to identify how we could help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, I know this because I've gone through this. So I agree with Carly, I agree with C 1000%. It was crazy. It was crazy. It was such a different experience. So that makes a lot of sense, because we can't be random.
Speaker 2:We we are in an amazing point in human history where we finally have enough science technology to do the science and historical data and population, that we we don't have to be reactive anymore. No, like we're living in an age of Aquarius right now. This is the moment we're in in terms of the human capacity, of what we can do. So why are we guessing? Why are we pulling things out of the air? Why are we not hyper-personalized? Why is the human being not the center of the program, not the practitioners Gone with this model that all the practitioners we're God and our athletes or our executives or our clients are these things that need to bow to us and just do whatever we tell them to do? That's dead. It's insane anyway, but in this moment that we're in, my hope is that that just can't survive.
Speaker 1:I try to push that out of the industry every chance I get it's almost like we're entering the we're at the beginning of the golden age of of wellness and health. Yeah, you know, I know we're not in the quote-unquote golden age, right, we're in in other parts of our of it's like what is happening, but this is certainly it feels like we are entering that golden era and I agree with you a thousand percent, like it's just such a good time and opportunity. You know, and I think if you applied honestly, that you looked into that lens, into everything, you could actually see the gold lining I won't even call it the silver lining. You could see that gold lining, the opportunity, right, I think. So it's all about being able, because that's what's important. Well, listen, in every description that I've read describing you, there's always that word scientist. Description that I've read describing you, there's always that word scientist. How does that play into what you do and where does the biohacking actually come in?
Speaker 2:Great question. I like to take science to the basic, true definition of science, which is really observation. At the basic level, all science is observation and hypotheses and theories based on that observation. Right, yeah, so how does it support? Science is before people knew? That was a thing. I love it. That is the thing now that people I mean people think it's new. It isn't. It isn't new. Um, but the science really comes in.
Speaker 2:Uh at, if we take a human being and their experiences and don't treat them like they're some kind of compartmentalized robot, but the totality of the human experience. I call it the five expressions of the human experience. If I, if I slow down and I look at that and I try to observe that, I try to identify as fast as I possibly can who is this person, who, who is this human being and what challenges do they have High level, low level and I sit that on a table and then I bring to the table, I go on the table and I pull out a new box and this box has all these wonderful resources and information that we know about how the body works, how the earth works, how light works, how sun works, how neurologically, how we function. So now we have some more great data there. Well, the science combination of how do we take all these cool things that we know and apply it to the person and for the best result possible, and what that ends up looking like is a way to save people time so they get their time back their lives, which we don't get back easily. How do we make that more efficient? So let's use science to observe what's the most effective way to accomplish the goal the the theory of no pain, no gain. Is that gain? Is that really true? Is that really accurate? I say injury, is that really accurate? Is that really best? That's where the science comes in.
Speaker 2:For me, the science comes in. How do we figure out what's best for the human being that we're dealing with? And that led into this other concept of once you know the science, you can really master it and apply it. Well, then you get to be on the edge of it a little bit and say wait a minute. The whole reality of hacking something is moving around it or being more efficient, or finding a faster, cleaner, sharper way, and the bio is exactly what it sounds like it's a human being. So, okay, now we have all this cool science and we no longer have to wait five years for a result.
Speaker 2:Because of some technology advancements, we can biohack it. So how do we get? How do we get pk stronger, faster, how do we get our yield faster? How do we, how do we do it faster? And then how do we measure it? It has to be quantifiable, because if we can't measure it, we can't monitor it and we can't make adjustments, because in order for it to still be science, we have to have again that observation and hypotheses that we weigh against to see if we're accomplishing the goal. I know that's a fire hose, but uh, but no, no, you asked me the question.
Speaker 1:I get it right and I get it most recently and we'll talk more about us later, but I want to talk about because I think it's relevant to what you just said. Like I legitimately injured my neck, or could have potentially really injured my neck, three weeks ago. Neck, three weeks ago I got basically I fell on the corner of my head and, you know, neck folded in a way that it just it was very unnatural and and the reason why I probably didn't break my neck has to do with probably the fact that I have years of, you know, training and playing rugby and you know taking a lot of like impact.
Speaker 1:So the body was a little bit better at handling that. But I think some of it is also attributable to the workouts we've been doing and the strength that I've gained, the muscle, the resilience Got to give credit, you know, to like Glenn Diaso and working on the little muscles and stabilizers, but, and Eric Eric Quintero, but but I you know it was. It was what happened that day was I got injured and I knew that I needed to be ready for our fight which is coming up soon. And the first place I went was okay, I'm going to go to Midtown, I'm sorry, I'm going to gonna. I went to motion because I knew that and I knew I was coming to you next.
Speaker 1:But I went to motion and I got some of their pmf done, um, which helped right, which helped, like, address the muscular issues, and then I and then I hopped on my little best spa and I rode up to midtown biohack because I knew number one I needed to get in the hyperbaric right. But I also knew that you had a solution for the nervous uh, the nerve part, the nerves nervous system, and that was honestly like that. That was a big part of it right. And you put on the probes, you did your magic and I was literally 40% to 50% better by the end of the day. I got some acupuncture done later but I can attest to the fact that, yeah, you hacked Everyone on that day. They biohacked that. That might meet right.
Speaker 1:And I was an injury that would would have actually taken me out of this fight. All right, because it wasn't. It was a soft tissue and I didn't injure my spine, but the, the, the soft tissue, the nature of it and the impact and the trauma of it was so great. I wouldn't have been able to fight next week had not I come and seen you and seen josh, and then, and our emotion, it wouldn't have happened, it just wouldn't have happened. And so you literally shaved off four weeks of of recovery, uh, in in a matter of a few days, a handful of days. That's crazy, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and part of my. Of course, I'll speak to you. Thank you, I appreciate the fact that you admitted. There was a long period of time where I was being kept in a back room where people would not say what happened or where they went and athletes wouldn't tell anybody. Athlete parents, like younger non-pros, didn't want to tell other parents and I didn't get it. I couldn't understand it. And one day somebody said to me this is, it's about it's because you're looking at it the wrong way. I said what do you mean? They said what's your, what's your rule? Tell me what your rule is. I said what do you mean? What's your rule If somebody walks into the space again, what's the rule?
Speaker 2:I said oh, the rule is no one walks into the space. That lets me know that I, that I normally find out that they're in some type of pain or discomfort and I don't attempt to help them. And it's not about money. It won't cost them a thing. That's just how I honor God with the gift that he gave me. He said yeah, see that right there. I was like, yeah. He said that's not what they're thinking. What they're thinking is they don't want anyone else to be as good as they are, that's right, and they don't want anybody to get ahead of them, that's right. But it's their teammate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with a different contract. Yeah, that was about 16 years ago, pk. That really, it really set me back. It hurt my soul a little bit, to tell the truth, cause I was so far in my own rabbit hole of how, but we can help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, I had to.
Speaker 2:I had to become more sober-minded about that reality. Yeah, and that, yeah, that that was so. That's what I'm saying. Thank you for the fact that you say it, that you tell people about what we're doing, yeah, um, because you don't have fear, you don't have this, this mentality of lack. It's this, this crazy mentality of if anybody else is doing good, then there's going to be less good available for you?
Speaker 1:yeah, and that's insane. It is insane, it is insane and it's a very and unfortunately it's. It's, it's the mindset of most highly competitive, particularly highly competitive people, highly competitive athletes, and it was, honestly, I can't sit here and pretend that I haven't had shared in that mindset. I can't even pretend that I'm entirely immune from that. But when it comes to health and wellness, I think that's almost an entitlement for everyone that everyone has. Everyone should feel entitled to health, span and wellness and being pain-free. I really believe that and I think that is. And so if everyone stepped into the octagon with that unequal footing, then it becomes about skills, right, it becomes about skills and evolution and systems. And you know, like that's what real competition is, like having these other, like you know, plaguing injuries, I mean like who wants to battle a wounded animal?
Speaker 2:Like that's not fair, that's not fair.
Speaker 1:Right. So you know, maybe this is a lesson to everyone Like I want to be listen, I make no secrets about it I want to be at the top. That's my goal At the top of the, you know, at the top of the greatest promotion in the world. But does that mean that I want to get there? But I want to earn it. I want to earn it honestly.
Speaker 1:I want to earn it and I want to get there because I belong there, not because I'm making my way through a bunch of opposition that's injured and not at their best. I want people to be at their best.
Speaker 2:Right. I love it. And for me, the way that I shifted my my viewpoint and the people that I focus on. This is how. It's very interesting to hear you say this, because this is how I framed it for myself about I guess, 12 years ago now.
Speaker 2:I said okay, so if you're a pro athlete and what you do is sports, it is your job to find, to always be attempting to get better. And if that, if that search bumps you into me one day, so be it, okay. And if you never tell anybody else about it, so be it. Maybe they weren't searching as hard and I let that go for every pro athlete that I deal with. And I said I can handle that in my mind. And then, with that being said, I said now I'm, we're always going to get a pro athletes, because the whispers of what we do always is always in some room somewhere.
Speaker 2:With that said, I said, okay, now let me focus on the general population, let me focus on the other people that don't have quite transparently the me. Focus on the other people that don't have quite transparently the benefits that put someone like PK Rich is Not benefits that someone gave something to her, the hard and wiring, all that it took, whatever price you paid to be where you are, which nobody knows the whole price. There's a whole slew of people that just walking to the corner and not breathing hard is a challenge, right? So I began to say, okay, well, let's focus on the industrial athletes, the industrial corporate athletes, and let's see how do we help these people.
Speaker 2:And what I found out was what it takes to make an Olympian or pro athlete like yourself and others to get you guys from, to improve you by 3% is like moving a mountain. That's right. That's it the amount of what it takes to move somebody. That's not in that space. We can change them 20%. It'll take us a third of the amount of effort and it will change their life. They will think they're a whole new person. So the leverage point becomes amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is spot on right. And there's so many people out there. Professional athletes are like the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 2:Right it's generally speaking, you're a titan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a small population, but you have a whole population of people out there that are potential clients and potential benefactors of your service. Benefactors of your service, and so you know, yeah, you can obviously work with pro athletes, but you, your ability and your offering could touch and impact so many more people, so many more people. Well, listen, I need you to describe Midtown Biohack and what you do there and why you feel it's so different from what everyone else is doing. Now, I know, but I think it's best for you to talk about it, because this is your baby.
Speaker 2:It is my baby. It is my baby. So, midtown Biohack. We are a concierge wellness company. We coined that term and it birthed out of us concierge wellness, and the essence of that is the fact that it's hyper-personalized and it pulls together from a lot of different places, a lot of different things to accomplish one goal, which is to improve the experience of the individual. So it's concierge wellness. Goal, which is to improve the experience of the individual, so it's concierge wellness.
Speaker 2:And what we do is we focus on primarily recovery and then optimization of human beings, and our recovery is based on advanced neurological recovery first. So how do we recover the nervous system? How do we get a person's nervous system out of inflammation and chronic stress? How do we get a human being's cells out of inflammation? Because once we do those things, every other aspect of their life gets better Strength, gut health, everything. So we first how do we do that?
Speaker 2:And we designed a system called gray matter performance. It's the gray matter in your brain, your nervous system, and everything that we do is based on getting the mind, the brain and nervous system to work really, really well. That then informs the body. So we use a lot of science, technology to leverage the ability to do those things and by doing it that way we help recovery happen in a third of the time on average. And that recovery, I mean the range, is beautiful, it's from.
Speaker 2:We have three MS patients that are in wheelchairs, that come all the way from Jersey with drivers once a month for treatment, to a person with a hamstring tear, to the person that has chronic stress, to the person that has migraines.
Speaker 2:So we cover the whole spectrum and we do it all with wonderful technology that helps repair the nervous system first, and then we lay on top of that that same system to improve muscular tone, to improve health, to improve bone density, and we do all of that in a fraction of the time. Now for the fitness component, we do a third of the time as well, the robots, we call them the robots that we use here. One session that will range anywhere from eight to 20 minutes is the entire prescription, minimum effective dose. Minimum effective dose for your strength program for the week. So you give us one 30 minute total session, 30 minutes total, all in any, any way, how many, no matter how many breaks we give you, and you'll be done all of the fitness, of strength that you have to do for seven days and you spend the rest of the week doing recovery and mobility work.
Speaker 1:Well, I agree, I can, I can, I can say amen to that that is a truth, that's a truth. People, that is an absolute truth.
Speaker 2:It's not. It sounds like it sounds like magic, um, but it's not we. We. We combine all of that with a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. The amount of benefits of hyperbaric oxygen? Uh, it helps improve every cell in the body, every cell, from skin and aesthetics to gut health, to injury, to actually improving performance. So, again, we want to do the most effective thing possible. So here at Midtown Biohack that's what we do.
Speaker 2:We guarantee people's results, we give them better results than they can possibly get on their own or in a gym or any traditional model in a third of the time and we make the wellness full spectrum improve heart, lung, brain, metabolism, the whole kit and caboodle. And we do it in a really, really cool way. You know it starts off with a two and a half hour assessment where we are measuring everything about the period the person it's a brain assessment, the cognitive, muscle, skeletal assessment, neurological I mean neuromuscular assessment, strength assessment it's a whole thing Metabolism, vo2, we're measuring everything. And then we put together a playbook. So we take all of that data and then the real life person of what their goals are, what their wellness journey is, what their health journey has been. We put together a playbook and all they have to do is run the play. And what does that look like? They show up, that's it. And we do that same measurement every three and a half to four months to see how we're doing. That's what we do.
Speaker 1:Well, it's definitely bleeding edge and I have to say I will say that when I first met you, it was actually you had been in the space with Dr, with Shear Medical, for several months and I had walked by your space at the time numerous times not even knowing what was going on behind those tinted doors, and one day he just, you know, I was in to see Dr Shear and he was like, oh, you need to, you know, you need to go check this guy out. He claims you can get a 30 minute workout for the week and I'm like man, please, I'm all kinds of skeptical about that Because, you know, I've pretty much been a gym rat for a long time, you know, and I was so dedicated to putting in the work. But I have to admit, as I reached sort of the perimenopause and menopause and you know era of my life, it was difficult, you know, doing four to five days a week in the gym and doing the traditional stuff started to really kind of wear and tear on me. You know, it was stressing my joints, I would get, you know, and over the years, like I've gotten injured in the gym, like I've lifted over, you know, my lifespan, a lot of weight. I have pushed a lot of load, you know. I've deadlifted a lot of weight. I've power cleaned a lot of weight. I've squatted a lot of weight, I've bench pressed a lot of weight and over time my body was just like uh-uh, it's just, it's tired.
Speaker 1:So I have to say, you know, dr Shear, you know teeing me up and telling me to go in that day, and I actually, when I walked in the door, I'm like it was something that overcame me. It was just you know what. I'm going to trust this dude, cause I feel like, you know, you gave that trusting vibe and we started. We let you, you know, you let me do I think we did the the initial assessment where you had me push um on your what's your call it Precious? Is that our name? Yeah, no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so these two particular people, they are private training clients of one of my mentees over the years and they have been slowly degrading in their mobility over the past year and they both two different people were told that the nerves are starting to die. There's somewhat still awake but they're just kind of losing control. And they were, but they still have some minimal control and he and he's the trainer's managing the manipulation and things and making the blood pressure and stuff like that. So when they came in, they come in for a two-and-a-half-hour session. So it was a pretty intense two-and-a-half-hour session of nerve, what we call nerve re-education programming, which is, by the time it's over, I'm pretty tired as well. Uh, with that being said, the entire objective is to bring down inflammation in the nervous system and then also clean up what I call the white noise in the nervous to help create a cleaner, stronger signal throughout the neurological pathway.
Speaker 2:Okay, now how is it measured? It's measured in twofold Experience, like history, experiential of how they feel. So they tell us what their interpretations are, and then their trainer, who monitors their progress and has been monitoring their progress. He gives me his vantage point of what he's seen, what changes, if any, and both have giving. I literally just got a phone call about two hours ago. It says Doc, we're sending you a video. The one gentleman, when he left his session, he his eyes. He got emotional because he could feel himself sitting up in the chair. In his chair where he was slouched over before, he felt like he didn't have any control and as he pushed his leg, as this trainer was making him push his hand with his leg, he had more strength in his leg than he can remember in probably six months.
Speaker 1:And that was from how many just going one session a month with you.
Speaker 2:That was his first session. That was his first session. That was the end of his first session, wow. And the young lady that came just last week had a very, very similar experience. One of the things that she noticed was that day when she woke up, her left shoulder and neck was extremely painful and swollen. And she's in her wheelchair. And they're in there, they call them. I got a text message from the driver who was driving them that the and they're in there, they call them. They got.
Speaker 2:I got a text message from the um what the driver was driving them, that the pain in her entire left side was gone, the swelling had went down more than half and she could literally turn her head all the way from left to right, which she couldn't do for about five days. And that was just what. The instant thing was Right. So, um, yeah, it's, yeah, it's. It's things like that, and we tell people we don't make any claims to say, hey, listen, we just do recovery. Yeah, and it may help, it may not, but, but I say every bit of recovery helps, it's worth a try.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right, that's amazing. Now you know. Of all these things you do, I must admit and you've alluded to this some already I'm most fascinated by the work Midtown Biohack has done to deal with the pain. I've witnessed so many miraculous, actually stories of people that come to you with chronic pain. They've been told, in most instances like these two people, that they will just have to learn to live with it and ultimately die with it.
Speaker 2:right, yeah, how is it that you are able to find the root causes and get so many people past the pain? Tk, I don't know that I've ever seen anything. See, this is because it's you. You're doing this to me. I feel it coming up. Your podcast listeners are about to get some information. I don't know that we've ever really done quite this.
Speaker 1:I don't know if we actually have to tell the whole story in public. Are you able to talk about it? Is this, is this, what? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, yeah, this is this is me. Okay, this is me Okay. I was sick for two years. I had my weight had went all the way down to I was 158 pounds. I'm 173 right now PK, so I was down to 153.
Speaker 1:I was going to try to size you up, see if I can get you in the octagon, get you for a fight, but I'm away for now.
Speaker 2:No, because I will see, because I will bite you in the cheekbones. I don't have a problem with that. Well, that's a street fight. Yo, yeah, I know how to get out. Listen, I know how to get out of my eye, I ain't messing with you but I was so sick I was, my body was ravished with pain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a blood disease throughout my body that should have killed me. It was literally eating away at my organs, eating away at my brain, and I lived in bone-bending, excruciating pain and, through God's grace and knowledge, and he healed me and gave me something to do and I recovered, right, yeah. So why is that relevant? I know what it feels like to be in excruciating pain and because you're not bleeding out of a major organ, nobody can see it. I know what it feels like.
Speaker 2:Some of the worst things to say to somebody that's in chronic pain is why don't you? Just because, if you don't, if you don't know what it feels like to sit up, it's like somebody's stabbing you through your, through your spine, just because you're trying to take a deep breath, stabbing you through your spine just because you're trying to take a deep breath. You don't understand what living in pain, and it steals your life, it steals your energy, it steals your hope, it steals your personality. You become somebody else and I personally believe that there's so much that we've learned about our body. So something as simple as better understanding the miraculous design of our nervous system says it may not cure everything. With that said, because so many of the problems start there and I think it has to stay in a reason that some of the stuff can get fixed there too. Some of the stuff can get fixed there too, some of the stuff. So people are having these amazing experiences, not because I'm doing PK. Every machine in here that we have, ma'am. I did not design or build not one of these machines. All of this technology is not new in existence of time. You know they've been improved over the years. I just curated a way to make them work together, based on attempting to respect the person who's saying that they're in pain.
Speaker 2:When you told me you're not, everything else stops. And I'm not going to tell you that you're not in pain. I'm not going to tell you that you're not well, I know you feel it in your neck, but it's really in your back. You don't want to hear that. I want you to tell me everything that you feel and your interpretation of it. It is my job to observe that, make hypotheses and try to apply what we can to that. And eight times out of 10, you're not in pain. If we can get the body out of fight mode. If we can get the inflammation down, if we can get your system out of attack and defend itself mode, people improve in their recovery. That's the best thing I can say. That's the best way I can answer the why.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, there are so many people out there that are in pain. They don't even understand what it feels like to not be in pain. I know that. You know my listeners know that I always take time with the guests who are also a part of my team to talk about what we've done together, and so this is a very good, great segue to that talking about pain and how it fits into my journey to contribute, to achieve in sports and operate at a high level, even past the time when most professional athletes have really hung up their cleats, so to speak. So we started working together because, you know, part of it was that I was in a little bit of pain. You know I was going through these things. I was challenged with the pain when I got under weights. I couldn't put a. I hated putting a squat bar on my back. I hated it.
Speaker 1:I loved lifting in the 20s. I loved that stuff. But when I came into your place I was just, I was like I don't know, like Lord. Thank Dr Shear for saying it.
Speaker 2:Say again, because I was in pain right and I wasn't in the pain that a lot of people are in.
Speaker 1:But I look at how I feel now and I look at where I am now versus where I was a year ago even, Not to mention two or three years ago. It's quite different, right? Yeah, it's quite different. And so this transformation, you know we've done it. You've done those assessments on me. We've been lifting and you remember, even when I started I had a torn labrum. Remember that, I do torn labrum, Remember that. And you remember those, oh those frustrating times when I was lifting and doing chest and struggling through it and you said you're going to get through this. You know you're going to reprogram all the stuff that's going on in that shoulder Right, and lo and behold, it happened, you know, and it was.
Speaker 1:I was in an environment where I wasn't going to get hurt and that's why I guess one of the things I want to talk about with that that equipment that you use, you don't get hurt on it. I have never experienced something that I could put one thousand percent effort into. I mean, you know, you always tell me, ok, you can't be yelling. There's people in the in the building trying to conduct business, but I'm I'm yelling from a like cause. I'm at full exertion and with every rep I'm doing both concentrically and eccentrically. Oh my God, doing the lead press eccentrically. It makes me feel like somebody's taking the soul out of my body. You're so vulnerable. You feel like someone is just doing something really legal to you in that moment, but it's also. You can't step away from it. I fight through that challenge in every moment of that workout. That eight to 30-minute workout. That 30-minute workout. For me it's broken up into two workouts. It's challenging the me. It's broken up into two workouts.
Speaker 2:It's challenging the only time it's not challenging is that little three second break y'all call you. Give me right, you call it a break. That's a joke, but yeah right.
Speaker 1:That's basically what it is. But Lord have mercy, it is my, it's, it's, it's's my like reprieve, but it's true, so I'm gonna let you, I'm gonna let you take that I. I just wanted to comment on that because it's just uh, you're right, it's, it's, it's a, it's a great experience, and I think everyone needs to to have this experience.
Speaker 2:So okay, I'm so grateful that you brought that up, because that is such a powerful reality, so powerful. And, if you allow me, let me give you some more in-depth insight to what you said and what you expressed. Being transparent, talking about your own personal experience, I'm going to give you some added information that innately you kind of knew something, but you may not have known, specifically this fact Our brain does a lot of stuff, I like to say it has basically two primary goals at the highest level To keep us alive and to balance all of our systems in our body. At the highest level, as far as I'm concerned, that's the heads and tails of the brain's responsibility. Now watch this If you are laying, if you have, if you're under a rack for the squat and that bar is on your back, your brain, your conscious mind, has seen brain, your conscious mind has seen enough, your intellect knows enough, and then all your sensory data input has heard enough in any gym to know that that bar is dangerous and at a certain weight you can get hurt.
Speaker 2:At a certain weight you might even snap your back. If you're laying on that bench press and that bar is across your chest in the air while you're laying on your back. Your brain knows that this is dangerous and that 10 pounds can snap your neck. Your brain knows this, so guess what it does. Yeah, can snap your neck. Your brain knows this, so guess what it does. It prevents you from fully accessing all of your potential to help keep you alive. It literally is not allowing you to access everything. When you're in here with the precious PK you just said it that doesn't happen. You are literally opening up more layers of muscle and more capacity because your mind is free, because you're not worrying about danger. That's so true. How much more does that give a person? Yeah, god, I don't know, but it's something, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a lot, it's something, it's a lot. It's a lot, it gives a lot, and I'm not where I'm going to be, but I have to say the amount of improvement I've made in terms of strength over the last 12 months or plus has been pretty enormous. It's been pretty enormous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and that's everything you just said is the perfect reason why my brain doesn't have to worry about me getting hurt. I don't want to get hurt. That's the worst thing. Well, how'd you get hurt? I was at the gym, like what.
Speaker 2:Yep, wait, I thought you went to the gym to be healthy. That's right. Yeah, I got hurt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought she wanted to be healthy. That's right. Yeah, I got hurt. Yeah, I got hurt, and that's a lot of people's story, especially when they try to push it. But I want to mention this because we haven't talked a lot about it. The biggest thing is this myth that you've got to go and work out and lift weights four to five days a week. Weight, the four to five days a week and that's just a myth, because you need the time to recover from that one hard, all-out day on that strength and the strength portion of your, of your protocol. You need the time to recover, as you say, what is it? Four to five days for most people yeah, easy, easy, okay.
Speaker 2:I just I'm at four, I can train every four days. You know how many years it took me to be to get to four days, yeah, and still gain results. And then I got out of sequence about two months ago. It took me another, it took me probably a month to get back to five days. Okay, cause I had got out of sync and I, okay, so rewind, my out of sync became I was barely, I wasn't, I was not recovering well, yeah, I was not getting enough sleep. Yeah, my, my new, my nutrition went down and um, my, um, my routines, all of my like psychological stress management routines, everything got all cattywampus for about three and a half weeks and my stuff tanks and I try to come back at it every four days of training. And this computer laughed at me like cause.
Speaker 2:That's what it does Like oh, you're so cute. No, no, no, Go take some more days.
Speaker 1:You're not ready, right? That's so true. Yeah, that's so true. Wow, well, dr Chuck, listen. Thank you so much for joining us today. Do you have any final thoughts you'd like to leave with us before we depart?
Speaker 2:Well, first let me say thank you so much for the opportunity. I greatly appreciate it. I don't take it for granted and it's an honor. And I'll say my final thought is our goal is real clear. We want to help people live pain-free, have limitless energy and a clear, sharp mind. So your listeners are going to be, and are, all over the country, all over the world, so I'll give you all this. Remember that aging and decaying are not the same thing. So don't accept that they're not the same thing. Aging and decay are not the same thing. Don't accept it. Don't accept that they're not the same thing. Aging and decay are not the same thing. Don't accept it. Don't think oh okay, that's just because I'm getting old. No, spike that, spike that thought back and figure out how do I achieve better, how do I feel better. That's right. That's right.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that. How can people get in touch with you, Doc?
Speaker 2:It is too easy in all this social world. We have two clean options. Our website is Midtown Biohack M-I-D-T-O-W-N-B-I-O-H-A-C-K, midtownbiohackcom. Or, as the kids keep telling me, you just go to my IG and the IG is D-R-Chuck P-H-D or MidtownBiohack. See, you got two IG's D-R-Chuck P-H-D or MidtownBiohack.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. You heard it here first, people. Well, you didn't hear it here first, but you heard it this way first. So there you go, that's right, that's right, awesome. Well, thank you, dr. Chuck, appreciate you PK. Have a great day you too. I'm Phaedra Knight, and this has been Freak Class. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and let your friends know about it. Freak Class is available on Apple, google and Spotify Podcast or wherever you get your podcast.