Low Back Pain Testimonial With Rob H || WBWL Ep 100

I'm thrilled to announce the latest episode of our podcast featuring an inspiring conversation with my client, Rob H. For over a decade, Rob battled debilitating low back pain that limited his life and left him searching for solutions. After trying traditional physical therapy with limited success, Rob found a breakthrough approach—understanding the psychology of pain and incorporating strength training.

Now, Rob is not only pain-free but also stronger, more confident, and thriving in ways he once thought impossible.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:

• 🔑 How to Develop a Resilient Mindset
  Gain the confidence to face movement and exercise without fear.
• 💬 The Power of Words in Recovery
  How the language you use impacts your path to pain-free living.
• 🚀 Steps to Building Autonomy and Self-Efficacy
  Learn actionable strategies to take charge of your recovery and pave a way forward.

This episode is perfect for anyone struggling with chronic back pain—or for those looking to help a loved one take back control of their health and well-being.

Please help share word if you care for someone that might need hope, and a path to pain-free living.

Transcript

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All right, welcome to the Won Body Won Life Podcast. Hi, I'm your host, Dr. Jason Won, lifestyle physical therapist. What I love to do is I help a lot of busy professionals, even parents discover a path to sustainable freedom from pain. And I do that in a very holistic way, whether it's strength training, mobility, also treating the mindset, treating the psychology, because chronic pain Can be very debilitating. It can weigh into a lot of other psychosocial measures that are oftentimes overlooked. So I do have actually a really special guest and, one of my friends, one of my clients that I've gotten to work with really closely. His name is Rob and I'm Rob's from the Bay area. And he is somebody that I think has been a Testament, a true Testament to, you know, where hard work, perseverance, asking the right questions changing your mindset. I think that he's a true Testament to anybody that has had. Any sort of chronic low back pain has had chronic injuries that have Left them in a place where they feel like, it's going to, they feel like a lot of times it's going to be hard for them to recover from, or they feel like they're going to live in pain the rest of their life. This is somebody that I think you can definitely listen to. So Rob, thank you so much for blessing us with your time. And hopefully you've been doing well. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, dr. J happy to be here. Perfect. Why don't you just, share maybe some like really brief background questions, so like just who who you are, what you do and what's been your general experience with. exercise and things like prior to, low back pain. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So like you mentioned, my name is Rob. I'm here in the San Francisco Bay area. This is where I was born and raised. I'm a software engineer, which means I'm like pretty desk bound most of the day. But in terms of like my history with like exercise especially like prior to lower back pain, I've been physically active most of my life. I started weight lifting, I think in 2009. And still weight lift today. And, in between that time and today I've done also like a lot of other physical activities hiking, rock climbing, did Muay Thai for a couple of years all sorts of things. And yeah, physical activity is really important to me in my overall happiness and my physical health is extremely important as well. But yeah, as you mentioned, chronic lower back pain is quite detrimental. So yeah. That's just how I came across working with you. Absolutely. So I guess we're, what, to start off what kind of intrigued you initially before we even. Started talking and developing a relationship together. And we'll dive into those specifics because I think that's the meat and potatoes of what people want to hear is like, how did, how were you able to overcome these chronic pain issues, but what kind of stuck out to you or intrigued you about the practice and some of the things that I was doing. Yeah. Regarding your practice in particular prior to, to actually working with you or even discovering your practice, I. Was already having lower back pain for quite a while. I had a I have a few herniated discs, which when aggravated cause a lot of numbness pain. And I'm basically like, out of commission for weeks. I tried treating that with regular physical therapy at a very standard clinic. And that definitely helps, but I found that a lot of those clinics really helps me from the moment where I have pain to like. healing and recovering from it, but not really getting me to the point where, you know, I no longer felt pain or I felt stronger. It was really just from negative 100 to 0, 0 being just like no pain, but I want to feel strong and I wanted to also reduce the rate in which I get hurt. And I felt like regular P. T. Didn't really do that for me. So when I found you, I saw that, you were someone who also had suffered from chronic issues you're an athlete yourself, I'm sure if you look at your Instagram or any of your pages you're a fit guy, so I can trust that not only do you know what you're talking about because of your education, but I also knew you, you went through what I went through, you can be empathetic, but you can also help me get to the strength levels in which I aspire to have, right? So that's why I reached out. And then, you and I had such a good conversation initially, and I And yeah, I was like, I got to take a stab at doing this because I don't want to be someone who suffers from chronic lower back pain for the rest of my life. Yeah, for sure. So can you take us, can you take us back to some of those moments of chronic back pain? Because I know that some people they develop chronic back pain over time. A lot of times it's just more because there's a lot of avenues that people can get chronic back pain. Some people they go through traumatic episodes, even like family trauma, even. A lot of other chronic diseases whether it's COVID and a lot of people could get COVID, they get something called long COVID. So with you. So yours was more like a series of, I believe, injuries that kind of set you back multiple times. And a lot of times that weighs on you mentally. So can you date us back to the first time that you injured yourself, how you try to overcome it? And then, there, there was a series of episodes that happened after that as well. Yeah. Yeah. Like I mentioned, I started weightlifting in 2009. I think I first like really felt. The pain of a herniated disc somewhere around like 2011, 2012, maybe, and, I was really young. I was starting to get to weightlifting when you're in college. And, you're like 20 years old. You feel indestructible, right? You're like, I would never get hurt. And so you push yourself beyond your limits. You don't always have the best form. And so I think that was like the start of it. Now, given that I was that young, it was very easy for me to bounce back for sure. But as I've gotten older, as I've continued to push myself, not only through weightlifting, but other physical activities, I kept finding that certain exercises would cause issues. So then I would stop doing those exercises. And then, like with climbing, I had an incident where I was doing something I've done so many times, but for whatever reason that caused issues. Which then put fear in me, and then I was unable to climb with confidence after that, and it just felt like over time, as the cadence of those injuries increased, the rate in which I would do these activities that I enjoyed would just decrease yeah, I think before I saw you, I got to the point where I was like, mildly weightlifting, I stopped running, I stopped biking, I stopped hiking, climbing. And yeah, I found that I didn't have a lot of joy in physical activities anymore. But that's where I was at before I started working with you. Yeah. We can definitely talk about that, which is one of the more important things I wanted to hit on today was a lot of, we talk about the psychosocial aspects of what chronic pain can do to us. It's not just physical, right? You don't separate physical from mental. Because mentally speaking, if you have a lot of if you're feeling helpless in certain situations, or if you have a fear of moving or fear of lifting or fear of doing something, that in itself can be more debilitating than the actual sensation of feeling the pain because we're limiting ourselves. We're limiting our quality of life, we're limiting our social aspects. If somebody asks us to hike and we're like, I don't know if my back can tolerate it, I'm going to say no. These are all the psychosocial aspects. So in what ways do you feel like the series of back pains, how did it impact you the most from a mental perspective or even a psychosocial perspective? Yeah. I think that was probably the hardest part. Mentally I really struggled, I think, because I lost so much of the joy that came with being physically active. I loved, especially even on the social side, I loved hiking, I loved biking and running and climbing with friends. These can be very social activities and to basically say no to these things constantly. It's such a bummer, right? But on the kind of more anxiety fear driven side of things Yeah, it was really hard. I would struggle with lifting weights. I would be so extra cautious, I'm like, my back was basically constantly bracing everything that I did, not even just weightlifting, right? I'm like, brushing my teeth and bending over to spit out. Everything in my mouth and I'm like hinging as if I'm doing a deadlift like, it's like it shouldn't be necessary. And then also created so much inflexibility in my lower back as well. I think you saw that on the first day when you tested how well I could round my back. It was not very round at all. And yeah, I, I think that was really difficult for me, but I think the other thing that was that made me fearful as well is, I, at the time when I started working with you, I think I was maybe 32 or so, right? I'm 33 now. But I was fearful. I was like, What if in eight years time when I'm 40, I like can't do anything. What if I'm even worse off than I was back then? And then what if I have kids and I can't even just run around with them? I think there was also like fear of the future and how that my condition at the time would impact my future. That really weighed on me. And so then I was extra careful, but the more careful I was and the less I was doing, the worse my condition got. Yeah, I would say it took a huge toll on me. And that's something that is very hard for me. What's really hard for me to learn on my own, like how to overcome either through traditional physical therapy or just like online. And I think that's something that, your program really helped me out with. Yeah. And degrees, the degrees of movement, because when you are 20 years of age, you can essentially bounce back. You perceive, you have a perception that your body is limitless. It's, it has the, it has limitless capacity to do what it wants to do. So even if you hurt yourself. Your brain like bounces back really quickly. So your body bounces back quickly from a physiological standpoint, or you're like, you hurt something, but you tweak it, but you're 20. So your body does bounce back relatively quickly, your metabolism faster. You can just eat a time and sleep and then all of a sudden you're back to what you want to do. And also from a mental perspective, just the fact that you are 20 you're just like, Hey, this is my first time. No problem. I'm just going to get back to it. But people fail to realize that yeah, you get knocked over, over and over and over again. Physiologically, you're like, I'm older, but also you're starting to feel older because of the repeat injuries. And that is where people do develop a sense of. kinesiophobia of your movements. And then you saw it. It's like the degrees of movements, your windows of movement started to decrease. You, your body has found a way of protecting itself where when we see you bend forward a lot of people are just born inflexible and that's a different topic, but then over time you start to realize okay, he can, he has good hip mobility. But his back is completely straight, like it doesn't round whatsoever. And you're, the rotation aspects you're, because a lot of people have that fear. Actually, doctors tell you there's still old school doctors out there to say, don't bend and twist, don't bend. And that narrative, even the narrative itself plays into the psychosocial aspects. You're like, I got to just. Brace hard every time I got to keep my back straight with literally everything from picking up a pencil off the floor to something as simple as brushing your teeth. So maybe we can dive into that to what, I guess you can consider what I do like non traditional, but what was, what was, how did we, how did you feel? We, we got together when we started developing this together, we built out an, obviously an exercise program, that's a huge part of it, but how were we able to. Overcome some of those fears. Some of those helplessness. How are we able to overcome some of that negative inducing thoughts that you felt, 10 years forward? I'll always be living this thing because these are the exact issues that I had to. How were you able to overcome those aspects? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think there were like multiple things that really go into working with you in particular that kind of helped me overcome a lot of these. Yeah. Mental hurdles 1 of which was just even listening to your story. The 1st time we met in person and train together and you did assessment over my own kind of like mobility. Yeah, just sharing your own story and your own concerns right about having chronic pain. And so that was helpful to understand that somebody else who went through. The same level of difficulty with their pain was able to overcome it themselves, which tells me that, I definitely have a path moving forward. After that, right? I think it was also just helping me understand and correct some of the ideas or the preconceived notion of what I thought I should be doing. For example, you said, some of these old school doctors basically tell you always brace your back never around it. And. Yeah. I don't think it was like I, it's not that I wanted to always do that, but it was more like I just felt like I had to, but I think it was you who really helped educate me and help me understand actually, I really should be trying not to do that and trying to bend and or and, getting acclimated to that and not be so fearful and really increasing the degree in which I can bend. And giving me a unit of measurements that way, like when we would reassess it later on, I can see how I've progressed. And so having those things and seeing how I've progressed and how I've been feeling as I've been progressing shows me that, as I'm running my back more and getting more comfortable, I, at the same time, feel stronger. I don't feel as like in pain. And so it reinforces the idea that, yes, this is actually the right thing to do. So that was like a big one. The other thing that I think really helped was when I would have, like a setback, we've worked together for six or seven months or so. And yeah a key part of working with you is like giving me an exercise program that kind of works with me and helps address my issues. But I think that's something that like, I can look up online or, a PT could generally help me out with, but I think the thing that was really helpful is that if I got injured due to a certain exercise, you would help me not spiral, right? You would help me take a step back realize that this is okay. This is part of the process and help me debug, like, why that particular exercise might have resulted in an injury, right? And then the next time around whether it's like, Introducing extra warm ups or what have you like, I did find the rate of injury would decrease. And so it's about also educating myself through those injuries. Surprisingly it's coming out better because of it because I'm working with you at the same time. Yep. I think there was 1 last point, which I was thinking of as I was telling you everything else. So I'm trying to remember what it was. Oh, I think the last thing is when I would get injured in the past. Let's say, for example, with my herniated disc was aggravated and I basically felt like I was bedridden. I couldn't get up. I couldn't move. My natural inclination was to not move at all, right? To basically reduce any movement that would result in pain, which I learned through you would actually just expedite, not expedite, sorry, extend the duration in which I was injured. You shared with me that actually it really helps if I move through it. If I get blood into that area, if I don't let those muscles atrophy during that time and you gave me some exercises I could do. And I remember the first time I got injured, I did what you told me I think like once every hour for at least like 8 to 10 hours that day. And I would do that for the following week. And historically, it would take me like three, four weeks, maybe, and I would just be really bummed for those three, four weeks when I was injured. And when I was doing what you encouraged me to do, I can feel myself getting better every single day. I was way more mobile, even on day one, than I was in the past. And then by day seven, in particular, like maybe I had some lingering pain, but I was, 80 percent there. And then I was able to work out like the following week, which I think just decrease that, period in which I can be so upset at myself for getting hurt. And then get back into the swing of things and not feel like I took 10 steps backwards. It feels like I took a half step backwards and now I'm going to get at it again. And I think that really helps. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to summarize what you just said because it's I want this to really help a lot of people and I appreciate you sharing your story because This is something that, nine out of 10 people in the world have some sort of back pain in their life, 50 to 60 percent of them will turn chronic because of either repeat injuries, or they don't know the proper recovery aspects, or how to integrate something more holistically like you did. To summarize one, the very last thing was really critical. I was going to mention it regardless, but loading into pain or like actually getting your body moving versus most people think they think absolute rest. They think. Avoid the pain. They think stretch the pain away. And we've consistently always, I've always consistently told you is no, we need to get the body moving. That's one. But sometimes it's actually really important that when there's a pain area, you need to load that area up because then you're getting more blood flow and you're getting the muscles to actually get stronger around the area. So it makes you feel more stable, even if there is an injury present frequency is, I think, okay. Something that I practice the most because I've been through situations like you were really bad, low back pain, or I'll feel like a pop in my neck. And I'm just like, dude, I can't move it. So most people they'll pop a pill or they'll rest it up and they'll try to go to sleep. They'll take, and they'll take him weeks to recover or months to recover the same thing, like you said, but my craziness is let me test things. So I was like, let's try something. If for every hour you do some exercise, 8 to 10 times, if it's getting you worse. Let's try a different direction, but it's getting you better. You keep going and you do it more frequently. And I think that's something that you learned when you texted me, you're like. My back has C7 and I was like let's try this. So let's try this like once every one to two hours and you have, and I think I told you something that was really important is if you rested up, the pain will still be there the next day. If you do some sort of movement. And whether it gets rid of the pain or not, you're still going to be in the same situation. So you haven't lost ground. Like it's worth experimenting something different than what your natural tendencies are. So you tested it. And thankfully enough, the next day I was like, how are you doing? You're like, the pain is like 70, 80 percent better the very next day. And I was very excited for that because frequency is really critical. Traditional PT, they're like, do three sets of 10, do it once a day. I'm like, no, let's spread this baby out. Let's spread this out throughout your work shift because you're even your work shift. We didn't talk about that, but your work could be a trigger because you're sitting still. So we need to get enough exercise and mobility in. To outweigh any sort of sitting that you're going to do. But I appreciate all that. And I guess that does the fact that I use exercise as my drug, as my go to thing to help, and it does play into the psychosocial aspect. So maybe can we talk about how exercise. And even the assurance of me, like telling you these things, how does exercise play into those cycles? So aspects, social aspects, how does that made you more confident? And I guess less like less than this, like fear bubble, if you will, yeah, I guess when you're asking about exercise, do you mean like, how does like the work that I did with you and the exercise as like the solution, how has, yeah, how has exercise translated into one of the. Primary tools that have helped you overcome a lot of the other psychosocial aspects associated with a low back pain. Oh, yeah. Very similar to what I said before. It's like the exercise that really strengthens and heals. I've tried a lot of different things. I've tried, steroid injections. I've done PT. I've even used like tens machine where they do the electric signals, to your body. I've done like normal PT. But I feel like actually developing strength, doing something a little bit more holistic. And working through the pain, I think you said loading through the pain or loading the pain to heal has helped me tremendously. And because of it, I am not so bummed. I think when I get hurt, I realized that, it happens. Maybe I was being a bit careless. Maybe I wasn't sleeping as well. And so I'm a bit more aware that there's other things I could probably correct in order to reduce or prevent this from happening again. But, with the exercise, especially having worked with you, I feel so much stronger now that I'm not, it hasn't, it doesn't negatively impact my mental health quite as much anymore, I'm bummed for a few hours and then I'm like, okay, it's fine. What's the right thing to do now? And then within the week again I'm back on it and. It's like it never happened. Whereas, historically, I would just be bummed for quite a while. And then it would just happen months later. And, basically, I'd look back at the year and I'm like, I was injured for a third of it. And that's not my favorite. Yeah. So nobody goes into a situation, especially work with me, I'll be very candid about this. Nobody comes. Through my program successfully, and I can promise them the rest of our life that they're going to be pain free. And that is just not realistic. I don't control your sleep habits. I don't control your life situations. If you have kids and you stop working out. I don't control how you move a barbell up and down. I don't control whether there's a twig on the road and you injure your ankle. But I think what I try to empower a lot of my clients through is that movement is indeed medicine. But at the same time, if you can learn that when you have pain in your life and it is going to happen in your life, Rob more times than none, because we have another 50 60 70 years of life to live is you are empowered, you know exactly what to do. And that's assuring the fact that tools now, and you have a different mindset about things where you're like, I, I'm not going to get super emotional or bummed about this. I'm going to control my emotions. And I'm going to work through it. And when you work through it. It's like you can severely expedite that process, within days versus, suffering with it within for weeks and months. That is something that I wanted to hit on, which is language. And you're like, what is language? Language was something that we hit on to negative language, negative self talk. Making it all about like poor me. I recall one time where I was like, there, you gotta watch what you say to yourself, Rob, you gotta watch how you say I'm dealing with this versus I'm suffering with this. If I'm dealing with it, it's, it seems more mellow if I'm suffering with it. It's this pain is consuming me versus you should be in the one in control. There there's worry, right? There's I'm worried that, when I have this pain, I'm going to, now I'm out of commission for weeks. And I was like, watch what you say, watch what you say. It's you don't worry, try to separate the emotion from pain. If you do recall, is that anything that you I don't know if you've had any pain episodes since us, ending our stuff, but have you thought still about some of the language and some of the self talk and how that kind of plays into your overall health fitness? Yeah, it's been maybe like 8 months now since I've worked with you. And I've only had maybe 1 setback. In that time, and that's actually just three weeks ago, and I recovered in a week. Yeah I find that doesn't happen quite as often anymore. I think 1 thing that you told me from the get go really is to not consider myself as someone who like. Suffers from chronic lower back pain but rather somebody who like has lower back pain, but I'm going to address it, it's, yeah, it's along the lines of the idea of watch how you not only what's not only what you say, but even how you identify yourself, right? I think for so long, I was identifying myself as basically someone who always had lower back pain. And so it was like, so commonplace when I would, say no to things would be like, oh, sorry my lower back or oh, sorry, it's acting up today or oh, maybe tomorrow. But no I totally agree with you. I think it's really important to be very mindful of the words that you use to describe your pain and how you're addressing them. I think it's like indicative of also like how you think about your pain. And so if you can at least use words that are maybe a little bit more mellow, as you said, it'll help change your own psyche about what kind of condition you're in. But yeah I, at the start, I think I was using language that wasn't great. And then over time, and especially now I don't feel like I really use that kind of language anymore to describe like the suffering that I. Suffering the pain that I go through from time to time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That cause you hit on identity. And I was going to say that we, it takes a long, it can take a long time. There's a lot of books about neuro, there's a lot of books on the psychosocial aspects of pain and pain neuroscience. And it's a real thing, right? That if you ever look up a subject around like neuroplasticity is that like certain people with. Abuse or trauma in their life. The research shows that person is more likely to be one in an abusive relationship or two. They end up having their own physiological diseases like irritable bowel or peptic ulcers or chronic back pain, or they're more likely to seek out drugs for relief. And it's a real thing. And so if identifying as someone different is really critical, switching Yourself from a chronic pain sufferer where it feels like you are the small person and you're in this house of chronic pain where it's consuming and you can't escape the house, versus you are, you're the bigger person. It's like I this quote that I've always used is like you don't live with chronic pain. Chronic pain lives with you. So who's the bigger per who's the bigger thing here? You are the bigger thing. You are the person that is in control of this pain. And so if you switch it up and you feel like this pain is always consuming. That's how you're going to feel. That is going to be your identity. But I've always even said it to you. It's you identify as somebody that, that, that is a strong athlete. You're an athlete, you're a badass, but you're a person that simply just has this pain. That's. That's limiting you to an extent, but we can overcome this relatively quickly. So language about yourself and also language that the practitioner uses, right? Because you, if you seek out the wrong practitioner too, and I, and that's strong language, but if you seek out the wrong practitioner, that will say, Avoid lifting, avoid brace with everything that you do keep your spine neutral with everything that you do stop doing running stop doing this because it's going to damage your back more. I will say that you are seeking out the wrong practitioner. You're seeking out somebody that may disempower you, strip the power away from you, create less autonomy, create less self efficacy. And we'll not instill the belief that getting rid of this chronic pain fully is actually possible. Instead, you'll always be somebody that simply just manages your chronic pain, right? And simply suffers with it. In some ways, Rob, like, how, in what ways do you feel like, in the future, now that you are somebody that, has overcome it, you're a success, you've had a lot of success. I guess when you do have Let's say it's back pain or let's say it's like shoulder pain or knee pain. How do you feel like you respond nowadays? So let's say hypothetically, if you have a low back pain episode, if you have a neck pain episode, can you speak from like more of a critical sense of like step by step? Like, where do you tend to go now? Do you like to evaluate? Do you just move more frequently? What is like a step by step process that you use now? Yeah. And you're asking like, what would happen if I did have some kind of pain, right? What I would do to overcome it. What is your detailed process? Yeah. Yeah. I think for me, I would probably start by evaluating it, seeing like where exactly the pain is. So let's say for example, it's something in my neck. I would try to move my neck in various directions to try to understand like, oh is it to my left? Is it to my right? Okay, it's over here. And then I would probably try to figure out, okay what can I do to start loading that a little bit, right? Sometimes that's going online. Sometimes that means texting you and just getting a little bit of advice, which has always been really helpful. And then what I do is I just try to load it as often as I can, or at least the first week or so. And even if I'm at work, I'll like, we have these kind of like wellness rooms, which gives us a little bit of privacy. So then I just go in there every hour or two. And I try to load up however I can, right? I try not to get too immobile, and I try not to stay too stagnant, so I'll even set alarms or whatever I can do to help, because I know that just being mindful and putting in the work will really expedite the recovery. And then I would, yeah, just try to be conscious okay, like, how can I preventive this in the future? And then just be more mindful when I do whatever I'm doing. Again, yeah the mindfulness aspects of being aware and how you can fix that in the future. Prioritizing movement, prioritizing, potentially loading into the pain, setting alarm. So that, that's a part of habits, right? It's that sometimes we get caught up in work. So if we sit still, maybe the neck gets stiffer, but you setting an alarm to remind yourself as like an auditory trigger to get yourself moving, I think are all like huge pieces. That's a huge part of like my program too, is like preaching more of the habits and lifestyle. So like when the pain's gone, can you continue to do the things that you were doing to get rid of this pain? Because if you stop, then you're allowing stiffness and pain to settle back in. How do you feel like your, do you feel like your habits have changed at all in terms of like your movement, mobility exercise? Oh yeah, for sure. My habits have changed quite a lot. I think I'm much more active throughout the day. Something I think you inspired me to do was basically find avenues throughout the day where I can just do something, right? It isn't, yeah, especially with me, I have a desk job, so I'm sitting there quite a bit. Every 20 minutes or so, I like, get up, stop looking at my desk or rather my monitor and just at least look around, just move a little bit. I'll, switch from going seated to standing a lot. Make sure I move around every hour or so. And then especially if I'm feeling like tight that day I'll actually do stretches, and there's some stretches that you shared with me that could be done at my desk. There's some that maybe would look a bit odd in the workplace. So then I just go into the wellness room I talked about and maybe I do some stretches there. Sure. I've also made like walking a huge habit. So everywhere I go, I try to walk as much as possible. I'm hitting and what I used to walk maybe four or 5, 000 sets a day. And I thought that was a lot. Now I hit 10, 000 every day without fail. I think I did 15 yesterday and I was working a full life, nine hours. So if I could do that, like surely other folks can too. Yeah. And yeah, all of these small things really add up. Oh, I think my favorite was you mentioned like when you would brush your teeth, like you would even just do squats, or something like that. Yeah. And yeah like just, it's not like you're trying to build muscle in that way, but you build mobility. You grease the groove a little bit and just all of those small things really add up. And I feel like making me feel way more functional and healthy. Yeah. Curious on considering that 80 percent of people are sitting at a desk nowadays. And as I'm filming this podcast, I'm standing on my treadmill. I'm just not walking right now because trying to not let that get into the audio. How Oh, Okay. How are you going about fitting in and I guess the word is that's a bad word to say because I don't like to say fitting in because fitting in means like you're prioritizing all the other stuff and then you're just trying to fit in exercise. How are you, incorporating that amount of steps? Because it seems like impossible for some people that make the excuses of I have a sitting job and I'm super tired. How are you going about doing that? The 10 to 15 case steps, even with a full time job. Yeah, I think there's a couple ways that I do this. So I personally wear an Apple Watch. And I, I make tracking my steps a priority. So it's on my Apple Watch screen. I can always see how many steps I've done that day. Every morning I try to get out and walk at least for 10 minutes or so. I think this maybe is like really the crux of it all is that I don't do it all in one go. I do it in like small bursts throughout the day. So I do it in the morning for about 10 minutes. Post lunch when I'm, already feeling a bit heavy because I just ate all this food. I try to go on like a 10 to 15 minute walk. And then even after work, especially so after work, because you maybe have been sitting like all day. I'll walk for a little bit more. I tried to take the stairs whenever I can, unless it's 6 flights of stairs and, this is not something other people have to do, but I actually do walk up 7 flights of stairs twice a day at work after lunch in particular. And then, in the evening if I want to watch TV or something or at least just be stimulated by some kind of media, I'll instead try to listen to a podcast, even if it's like a true crime one. So that way it's maybe a little bit more fun. I would say if that's your cup of tea and I'll just want a short walk as well. I think you can incorporate all these things which has been really helpful one other way, which I haven't done really recently, but I want to get back into is that I enjoy watching like TV and movies and playing video games. And so walking treadmills are actually excellent for that, right? It's you don't have to move that fast. You can still play games. You can still watch TV and just like walk for 15 minutes out of the hour that you watch TV. And again, like the culmination of all of these small things really add up. I'm standing on my walking treadmill right now. And, I incorporate my kids. My kids are, one kid is 20 some pounds. I was like, that's a 20 pound dumbbell right there. The other kid is he's getting heavier. He's 32 pounds. That's a 32 pound dumbbell right there. So I even use my kids to my advantage and put them on my back, do pushups. And yeah, during times that are another strategy I use is whenever there is idle time times where I know this is a relatively sedentary activity. Yeah. I try to be like, how can I make this less sedentary? So Bulgarian split squats while watching trauma shows with my wife. It's I can be that person. And sometimes, like you said, there's certain things where I guess from a cultural or if people are watching, there's times where you enter a wellness room and I can get stuff done there, but there are times where you're just like, Hey, I know I'm doing my body a service. And it doesn't really matter as much like what people are thinking. They know what you're doing, but yeah, just anybody that is listening to Rob right now, especially if you do have a mixture of chronic low back pain and you have a desk job, walking is quite frankly, one of the absolute best things you can do for. Low back pain or prevention from the amount of pelvic and lumbar rotation to the fact that when we usually are mechanisms of when we have bad back pain is sit still, rest it up, lie down, take some medication. Hopefully it goes away walking. I've there has been so many times where I felt a tweak in my lower back and the best thing you can do if you don't even know what to do. Everybody from the age of three to four years old, everybody knows how to walk. You might not know the exact loading mechanisms and stuff that Rob does that are might, that actually might reduce the pain faster. But everyone knows how to walk. And so I think walking, if you've only had one episode in, eight, some months, I did not walking amongst the many things you're doing has dramatically changed the amount of episodes that you've had to along with, again, the psychosocial aspects. With that being said, like habits and lifestyle is something that I've preached is something that I will continue to preach in the way I practice. I don't like. I don't like my typical generic 3 sets of 10 protocols. I don't like to just get people from negative to 0. I like to transcend that. So 1 of the things that I've really pushed for time and time again is habits and lifestyle. So how can you speak to, your experience, working with me? How has that kind of. Translated to what you do today. Habits and lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah, working with you and developing better habits. Yeah, I can speak to how it's been helpful, but maybe I can also describe like how I was able to learn some of these things. Like working with you was helpful because unlike a regular PT or rather, a PT at a standard clinic you definitely have a more holistic approach. Even at the end of our working session where we're weightlifting and you're teaching me new exercises and stuff. You're asking about my habits. You're asking about my sleep. You're asking about my diet, right? And then giving me tips. And yeah, I've incorporated a lot of habits around being just like, more mobile to the day. So very similar to what you're saying about analyzing the activity that I'm doing and figuring out, like, how can I make this less sedentary? So I do that a lot. So if I'm, watching TV at night and I'm like, Oh, I haven't stretched in a little while. Let me do some mobility and stretching. And I can still watch TV. And it's totally fine, but now I'm doing something productive. And I do that pretty much every night now, the same thing with kind of like moving a little bit more when I'm doing things like brushing my teeth. Like I, I will walk around the house, as opposed to just standing there or saying, they're looking at my phone or watching a video or something. And I'll do squats or I do lunges. And so all of these things have been really helpful and it's really in the habits that changes your lifestyle rather than exercising, three, four times a week and doing strength training. I think it's really the habits that make the difference in addition to the strength training, of course. Because then it goes, that helps you shift from this more sedentary lifestyle to a much more kind of active and functional one. So that's been very helpful. There's also a bunch of stuff related to like diets and how it can be better at that, that I won't get too deep into, but yeah, I think everybody understands, especially if they find me through like Google or Yelp, that strength training is a huge part of what I do. And some people are like, okay I might be inclined to not work, with Dr. J because. Lifting too much weight, right? It's I don't want to do that. I don't want to bulk up. I don't want to look like that. And I'm not saying that everyone has to. But the fact is like what other people do get is changing their mindset and perspective around how important movement is, there's a mixture of mobility and maybe there's some stretching. Obviously, a big portion of that is strength training. You don't need to lift heavy in order to get results like you, you were interested in barbell training. So I was like, I'm going to meet you exactly where you are and let's put a barbell in your hand as fast as possible and empower you to fix it. But I still think that everybody needs to understand how potent of medicine strength training is. It empowers you, it gets you beyond your typical, just getting rid of pain and going back to zero strength training bolsters that aspect. It dramatically reduces the chances of you injuring yourself time and time again. So you need to learn some sort of system on how to progressively increase. Volume or intensity or make exercise more intense, and you should have the mindset of growth like that being 1 percent better daily and making your exercises harder, more complex, because if you're just going to be stagnant, you will be potentially somebody they may not find their path to getting out of chronic pain. So having a predictable system. And the last thing I'll say is that even if, let's say, there's times where you might, there's definitely times where you probably didn't train consistently in a week. Those happen all the time, but what can you still rely on is the habits. So you're still getting in the squats. You're still getting in 10 K step today. You're still stretching on the floor. When you're watching TV, you're still probably doing some sort of like core hip strengthening stuff, almost on autopilot. So even if you're not in the gym, strength training is not like your body is like becoming moist or it's getting atrophied, you can rely on the habits and lifestyle stuff outside of the strength training, but I'm just saying that like you're doing all of it, which is great. And that's what's really bolstering the resilience that you've developed mentally and physically. I guess in some ways, I don't really have much else to say. I think that this was just a really good insightful talk about somebody that has had Really debilitating chronic pain. And it wasn't just pain. It was like when I met you, you weren't like nine at a 10 pain, but again, the mental and the psychosocial aspects was probably the more limiting factor. Is there, to ask one more question, is there anything else that you might want to share with the audience? Maybe somebody that. Seemingly they quote unquote they're suffering with chronic back pain. They feel disabled. They feel like a shell of themselves. They do worry about their future like you did. And that's how I felt when you said that, that got me emotional. Cause when I had chronic back issues too, I did say to myself what I even want kids, what I even want to be at a place where like my kid jumps on my back and I have to worry about them jumping on my back. So that hit a, definitely struck a chord, but for somebody that maybe is in a very similar situation, even a worse your situation. Is there anything that you would say within a minute span that is, because you worked with me for six months, but is there anything you can say within a minute that would say that I'm like, yeah, there, there is life out there. There is hope. Is there anything that you would leave them with? Yeah, that's a great question. I would say that, unless you have extreme pain and there's and exercise doesn't help. Definitely. Consider, whether or not you're yeah, definitely consider taking to heart this idea that exercises medicine especially in this day and age where I would say we rely a lot on like medication to solve our problems. I think it's about being. Proactive, right? Rather than waiting until we have issues and then trying to address them and not really trying to keep them from coming back. But yeah, if you're suffering from the same kind of pain that I am, whether it's, lower back pain or whatever, but if you feel like it's chronic, it doesn't have to be right. I felt the same way. I've been through it. Dr. J has been through it. And there is a path moving forward. So whether you work with Dr. J or someone else, right? I think the most important thing to do is to basically not view yourself as a chronic sufferer right? And to do the work in order to really heal. I think that's really important. But yeah there's a path moving forward for sure. Yeah. So just to strike the court again, it's take action, use exercise as medicine, use movement as medicine, stop identifying as somebody that suffers with chronic pain and that realized that there is a path moving forward. I think that was a great way to end things. It's just to assure people that there is a path and that's everything that I've stood for too, when I first met you is. Is even if I didn't have the experience, but a good practitioner will give absolute 100 percent assurance that you're in the right place. This is the right time for you to start taking action. And there's no doubt in my head that it's not a matter of if you get results just when. So I think that's. Hopefully the mindset is still into you and I'm really thankful for you just being on this podcast, but to just being a light a beacon of light for anybody for giving hope for anybody that is suffering, or I'm going to stop using the word but struggling or dealing with chronic pain. Is that your attestment to that? And I'm glad that if you never step into my office again, that is a win for me. If I hear occasional questions here and there, I definitely will always be here to support you. So yeah, myself and I'm very thankful again, Rob. So anyways that's what I got for today, guys. Hopefully if you found that super insightful, just to hear about somebody's, experience with chronic pain definitely I'd love for you to give a follow or share it with a friend. No, share it with somebody that you feel would benefit from, this interview with Rob and if you have any questions, definitely drop me a line. You have my email, my cell phone is across many different platforms. So definitely email me, give us feedback. jason@flexwithdoctorjay.Com. And yeah, if you. If you do have any questions for, me specifically look here for a path moving forward. And I guess I'll leave you with this quote that I always leave everyone with is we only have one body, one life, make every action you take me one that makes you a better version of you. So take care. And Rob, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Cool. Thanks Dr. Jay.