hey folks welcome back to the stronger is better podcast brought to you by starting strength gyms today i am uh excited to bring to you a really interesting and cool story from my uh my friend alex potassic and mike kelly mike kelly is a member and trainee at starting strength chicago alex is the head coach at starting strength chicago and i'll let them give a little bit more of their training history and info and stuff like that in just a second but um i was i was presented this by uh by will morris and i think will has helped quite a bit probably. probably a whole bunch with this uh situation it's a it's pretty interesting rehab story, so uh yeah i won't say too much more we'll just get into it and then just just remember like one of the things that we try to focus on on this podcast is talking about principles and process, And hopefully you'll be able to see how the methods that these guys use in getting Mike back to where he needs to be are rooted in good principles. And then also we'll kind of outline the process for how things went. So welcome, gentlemen. Thank you for joining. Thanks for having us. Let's start with Alex. Alex, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself? You can say whatever you want, but let's talk about your coaching history and what you do, where you came from, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, so my name is Alex. I'm head coach at Starting Strength Chicago. I have been at that Chicago gym since we opened three years ago. You know, I graduated college in 2020 during the pandemic or whatever. Didn't have much going on at the time. And then really just decided to commit myself to this coaching thing. And now five or so years later, I'm doing this professionally full-time. I'm doing this full-time. Training people like Mike. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Wait a second. You didn't even think you were going to be a coach until after the pandemic? I had no idea what I was going to do with my degree. Wow, that's great. I have a degree in philosophy from the University of Illinois, prestigious institution. But I didn't know what I was going to do with that, and just committed to coaching, see if I could make it work, and here we are. Well, then, so how long did it take you to get from – I know now I'm interviewing you, but I didn't know this about you, but, like, how long did it take you from, like, saying, I want to do this to get to the certification? I passed in 2022. I apprenticed at Chicago Strength and Conditioning, which is the affiliate gym up in the north side, way far north side of Chicago, for a couple years. And then, you know, this gym was opening up, decided to sign on. You know, at the – At the time, we thought there was going to be another starting strength coach there so I could, you know, learn from them and get better, but it ended up kind of falling in my lap. So I passed credential, became head coach, and here we are. Did you – sorry, were you even – I just want to get my memory straight. Were you – when the gym opened up, were you credentialed or no? No. So the gym opened up in – Now I remember that. Gym opened up in February, and I got credentialed in April. So, I mean, I was good enough at the time. It was pretty short. And you had been to the seminar actually quite a few times up to that point. Yeah, yeah. I think I'd been three times at that point. Yeah, and then tested at least once before, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Alex has been around for a while, and you might not be able to tell because of his mature and handsome mustache, but the dude's pretty young. How old are you, Alex? I am 27 turning 28 this year. Okay, yeah. So it's still a baby. Wait, are you sure? If you can't remember. It's not like when you have to think about that, you may be 50 years old. You're not supposed to be doing that at age 27. You're like, how old are you? And there's a pause. And then you're like, I'm 23 or I'm 64. What the fuck was that? After you turn 21 and you can buy beer, you don't think about age anymore. I love hearing this. I stopped keeping track around 35, I think, because I got to do the math every time. Yeah, so Alex has been around for a while. I remember you coming to seminars, camps or whatever, and just been at it for a long time. So it's really cool to see you as the head coach, as a well-respected coach. People speak very highly of you and it's very cool stuff, man. Thanks, man. And then, Mike, how about you? Give us your training history. What brought you to Starting Strength Chicago and how have things gone for you outside of the injury and all that stuff? How have things gone for you training-wise in the past and then since joining the gym? I mean, I'm so coughed. I'm 50 years old. I'm way older than both of you, so my training history is probably, I think, I don't know where to start. This is like ancient history at this point. You know, I was actually a CrossFitter, and through getting sort of injured off and on and through that, I realized, and watching other people really, who seem to come in as CrossFitters, and the strong were always, the stronger people, the people who have the athletic background or just were strong, always seemed to, first of all, do way better at it. After like a month or two, they just caught up to everybody, and I also noticed that they were less injured, and I somehow equated strength with not being injured, which is sort of ironic given my history, but so through that, I got exposed to Rip actually through, again, back when he was sort of a CrossFit person, I did an LP maybe, geez, it's probably nine years ago. Um, got maybe into the low 300s in squat, you know, low 400s in dead. Um, I was a dedicated lifter. Then I had a job that was crazy. So I had to like basically not do anything for a long time, then reacquired it and started again and, you know, did probably two more LPs. Uh, and then right before the gym opened, I actually had, you know, an actual, another injury where I tore my, I tore my bicep tendon while I was benching on my own. Um, I actually tore, I actually had a muscle belly tear of the deltoid, tore the bicep. tendon slightly, didn't rupture it. And then probably tore the teres too. It was actually, uh, geez. And I know people listen to that and think, I don't know if I said I was benching, but they think I, you know, people don't think you tear your bicep while benching. It's sort of a long story. I did tear the bicep while benching. It was, um, Um, and looking back, it wasn't that big of an issue. It wasn't that big of an injury, but it was like, you know, a tissue fail where, you know, I lost control. I lost control of the weight while benching. It slammed off the pins. At the time, it, you know, scared the living hell out of me. But, you know, people hear this and they think, you know, that these injuries are a big deal or that you get injured while lifting a lot. That's not true. Even though there was that tissue fail, it was still just a minor injury. But I had a real tough time rehabbing it on my own. I didn't get imaging or anything like that. I was sort of far enough along where I knew what happened to me, and I knew I could rehab it with the Star Rehab. But I sort of got to the point where the injury was still bothering me, and the gym was going to open up. So this was August of 2021, and I, you know, I kept on thinking the gym was going to open up. John, John. He's great. And I just, in my head, I thought, I need coaching. I just didn't have the mental confidence to work through this injury where I was just, I was basically, shame on me doing maintenance of my dead, maintenance of my squat. I don't think from memory I was lifting in my upper body at all. And I was waiting for the gym to open up, and John just had trouble opening up the gym. So I kept on thinking, all right, the gym's going to open up next month. The gym's going to open up next month. So there was about a six-month period where I was basically training, and I was chomping at the bit to get going. It was like, I think, from August of 21 to February of 22, which is when the gym finally opened. So walking in the door, that's basically me. That's basically me when I walk in the door at starting strength. I mean, I was so eager. I think when John opened it up to members, I think I was the first member. I joined in like 10 minutes. That's cool. So that's me getting to the gym, if that makes any sense. It does, yeah. So when you were doing CrossFit, were you doing that on your own, or were you doing it in a class with coaching? Originally, I was doing it in my buddy's gym, his garage gym. And then eventually, once CrossFit gyms opened, I was doing it with coaching. Gotcha. I mean, that's got to be – I probably started doing it in – it seems crazy now, like 2008, 2009. Yeah, same, same. Yeah, I found Starting Strength and Rip It So through CrossFit, through the CrossFit Journal. And he was, at that time, 07, 08 into 09, he was the subject matter expert, which was a big thing for CrossFit at the time, is to have all these subject matter experts. It was Rip, and there was Rob Wolf, and there was Mike Bergner, and there was all these different guys. And that was kind of the golden age, right, for CrossFit, because you had all this fantastic information coming out from all these guys. And at the time, it was – It was sort of, at least to me, a sort of revolutionary. And I was doing like an exercise science program at the time, and I was learning way more from reading the CrossFit journal than the textbooks from the exercise science stuff and kind of reoriented my thinking on how things should go. And then Ripito comes along, and I just saw a – and by the way, looking back now at all the stuff in the CrossFit journal, some of it's great, some of it's gibberish, some of it's completely useless. But at least it gets you thinking – at least at the time, it got you thinking about things and exploring different subjects and different – I mean, as a 300-pound guy thinking about like gymnastics, like, oh, that's interesting. I never would have thought about that before. Anyway, the – and then Ripito comes along, and I watched this video of him during one of the CrossFit seminars talking about the squat and the hamstrings. And I was like, whoa, this guy – this guy – like no one's ever explained anything in the exercise world to that level. It was really impressive, and that kind of led me down that path, so to speak. So, yeah, so shout out to CrossFit for getting some of us exposed to RIP and getting a lot of people exposed to barbells, right? I don't know that starting strength would be what it is today. Not that it wouldn't have, but not maybe as quickly or without having to educate people if it wasn't for things like CrossFit, putting barbells in people's hands and making hard work the way to improve yourself, right? Yeah, it's an outlet for barbells and an outlet to do hard shit. Exactly. I remember picking up the blue book and thinking, all right, this is something I have to know, and it was like, bam, it was like immediately after I was, once I was through with the stuff on the squat, I knew I was going to pursue this. Exactly. I think it's strength. To me, I try and get people to read that book, and I've been trying since 2000 and whatever, 15, and I can't get anyone to read the damn thing. It's crazy. Yeah, I stopped being a zealot lots of years ago. Yeah. Because, yeah, if people aren't ready to – you're never going to change people's minds, right? So it's – whenever somebody shows interest, you give them as much information as you can, try to guide them. But any time – this is one of the things that I think comes with doing this for a long time is you realize that as soon as you start challenging people's beliefs, they get defensive, and then the message falls on deaf ears, right? Even though that's what we're going to try and do, essentially try and do for the next hour and a damn half to no avail. No, I'm not going to criticize anybody's beliefs. I'm pretty much going to scream and swear for about the next 70 minutes into this void of podcast life. For no reason. But let's see how it goes. It's not for no reason because you have an actual experience that people will be able to sort of like juxtapose against their own life and see like, okay, in some instances, some way this is me and then see the outcome, right? So it's super valuable, man. I agree. I'm kidding around. Yeah, yeah, I know. One last question for you, Mike, and then I have another question for Alex. So, Mike, before CrossFit, what did you do from an athletic or physical standpoint? Were you involved in any sports, bodybuilding, anything like that? I was sort of a failed, pretty much a failed adult athlete. I'm basically a high school band geek. I played rugby in college and then with a men's club afterwards, which is very – like I basically played bench. Okay. wasn't that good at it um it's not rugby is not elite at that time at least was not elite athletics in america it sort of is becoming that right um but it was uh very formative and very it is very hard and you get injuries you you accumulate injuries um and you do actually get exposed to some elite athletes who right who ended up in that sport um i did that for a long time until i just sort of couldn't do it anymore but i also i ran six marathons i even did p90x so. i was always um a frustrated adult athlete who um like i view it as part of being a modern human man that you have to do this stuff so it wasn't like it wasn't even like crossfit i mean it was just basically everything i did i just basically got so injured i couldn't do it anymore and then i had to do something else is really my progression to here yeah great that's, That's excellent context, because it kind of frames the whole thing, right? So you have, you know, you keep saying failed athlete, but you did it, you know, even if you, even if on game day, you're not, you're not in the first string, or you're not, you're not playing, but you're still practicing, you're practicing every day, you know, you're doing the thing. So it has value, and it had value. It could have been the CrossFit, it could have been the rugby, it could have been everything else that happened before then, and it just accumulates over time, right? So that's a really, really important context, I think. At that inflection point, it was also not having coaching, just doing this on my own. I look back and I think, if Alex had been there, or if Will had been there, they would never have let me do the crap I was doing. They just wouldn't. It's been like, no, we're going backwards 15 pounds. Even last night, I failed a close for a bench, and it's like, my old self would just be like, try what Will prescribed again. He's not going to do that. Right, exactly. He was being hard-headed. Yeah, exactly right. There's value in coaching, obviously, especially for guys like you, especially for guys who are hard-charging, maybe type A, really, really want to push. There's absolutely value in coaching there. Then there's also the bigger concept here. It's that injuries, especially severe injuries, especially severe injuries. Are going to usually be the result of, you know, outside of like a car accident or something that's like obviously the reason that this thing happened. An injury that comes on suddenly and with no specific, like you're doing something relatively normal, like a bench press or a deadlift or a squat. It's always multifactorial. There's always more than one thing happening. So I don't want people to leave this conversation. And I don't know. I actually don't know the specifics of your injury that we're going to talk about. But even from my own experience and from my experience dealing with lots and lots of clients over the years, you know, somebody tweaks their back catastrophically on a deadlift or a squat. It's not the squat that caused it. It's all of these factors, you know, past history, current history, recovery factors, loading, all of these things kind of coalesce into this into this sort of inflection. Point, which is your word, which is great sort of inflection point. And then. They force you to reevaluate, be more careful, pay attention, especially when guys in their 30s, 40s, 50s are continuing to try to train like they did in their 20s. And then not accounting for what... You just have to be smarter. As you're getting into your 40s, you can still train really hard and you should, but you have to be a little bit more intelligent about what you do, right? You can't go out and drink till 2 a.m. and then wake up at 7 a.m. to go train like I. used to do in my 20s. It's not going to work. It's not a good idea, right? So anyway, with all that said... I think, by the way, I think you guys are fucking crazy for having me on this podcast and if you want to dump the whole thing, I'm not kidding. I mean, this is supposed to be ultimately, of course, an honest discussion and people are learning and stuff, but it's also supposed to be sort of an advertisement for the business. And I don't know if I'm... I don't know if I'm the best advertisement for the business. Not only that, I'm just going to say to anyone... I'm going to pretend like I think a good policy is to pretend if something's on the Internet that everyone, like a million people are watching this. You know that's not true, but it's like, you know, it's a personal policy that's a good policy. Everyone's listening on the Internet. If anyone listening takes from this conversation that you should not lift, I know people who are like have real good computer technical expertise. I will jump through this podcast, come out the other side of your phone and beat the living hell out of you. I mean, I can and I know these people. I can bring a hammer. If you can, if you're like a friend who can kick my ass like you're just not allowed. I'm just super worried about that. If one person takes that from this, I'll just be really upset. No, man, I think I think we've said enough on that. If somebody still takes it that way, it's on them. Right. It's not on us. I think we've covered our bases and people. And when I when I it's weird, like when I another thing I just remember whenever I tell people about this, I always tell people Kobe Bryant didn't pop his Achilles. Walking. the free-throw line. Dan Marino didn't pop his Achilles walking off the field after he threw a pass, which is when it happened. It's just like, these things happen. Exactly right. Yep, exactly. One last thing for you, Alex, before we get into the kind of details here. What did you do from a training, physical, athletic standpoint before starting strength? Yeah, so in middle school, early high school, I was a baseball player. I loved doing that. Then at some point in high school, I just kind of fell off everything athletically. Just wanted to hang out with my friends and mess around and not do anything. physical, which was a big mistake for me at the time because I ended up leaving high school. I'm 6'1", 6'1 1⁄2". I ended up leaving high school weighing like 130 pounds or something. Jesus, wow. And then when I got to... college, you know, like new place or whatever. I'm like, I'm going to make a change. Um, and I started going to the gym and lifting heavy. And I was very lucky that like, after my, my cursory bit of research online, I found starting strength. I found the book, I found the program. Um, and. you know, did that on my own for a while. Um, eventually got coached. I've been coached by a bunch of different starting strength coaches over the, um, over my, I think I've been training for nine years now. Um, and you know, ended up loving it so much that I was like, I want to, I want to give this to other people. Cause it's just super valuable for me. Nice. Really changed my life. Very cool, man. Yeah. And for a young, a young coach, um, it's actually, uh, I don't want to. say actually, but it's, it's really impressive because I'm assuming, and if I'm remembering right, like you, uh, so, So, well, let's go through this. So you started, you came out of high school pretty light. When you started training, did you do, like, the standard starting strength thing where you got a bunch of strength, gained a bunch of weight? Did you go through all that, like, the go-mad and stuff? You know, looking back on it, I probably didn't need to do this. But, you know, so in my first year, I took my squat from, like, literally the empty bar. Like, the empty bar was a struggle for me, weighing 130 to 275 or something in a calendar year. And throughout that course of time, I gained 55 pounds. So I was 185 by that time. And I did the stupid gallon of milk a day. I did that for, like, almost three and a half years straight. Oh, geez. Did you get fat? Not really. Not super fat. Okay. Wait a minute. You did a gallon of milk a day for three and a half years? Yeah. Three and a half years straight? Yeah. We're being honest on this podcast. The heaviest I've ever been was 248, 6'1". I'm 225 now. I was carrying an extra 25 pounds by the end of it, but I didn't get super fat. Yeah, I mean, you are the proper demographic at that point for the go-mat, right? So yeah, that was fine. A lot of young guys, a lot of young coaches, and I've seen this, we've seen this happen multiple times over the years, get super into starting strength. It's the answer. It's the truth. It becomes a religion. It becomes a cult. And then they somehow, for a variety of reasons, start to… To question, which is normal, and then start looking at other methods and then start getting distracted and falling into kind of a lot of the silliness that's out, especially in the… So I think one of the cool things for a guy coming up in this in his early 20s, sticking with it, and then hopefully, I mean, I don't want to put words or thoughts in your head, but hopefully coming back to the conclusion that this stuff really is simple. It's really simple, really effective. And a lot of the sort of appealing things that have come out in the last five or six years in the strength training world, especially sort of like offshoots of starting strength, or not offshoots, but sort of like version, I don't know the right terms to use, but just sort of like people who get discontent with how things have gone for them because either a misapplication or a failure. Of the method, or a misunderstanding of what we're trying to get accomplished. And then, and then they, they just take a different path and kind of end up, end up just sort of like, doing nothing, in terms of, in terms. of having a guiding principle or a guiding way to look at things. And they just kind of blend into the world of fitness and personal training and sort of don't really have a direction anymore. So anyway, any thoughts on that personally for you? No, I think that going through school, so my degrees in philosophy, which you spend a lot of time reading old texts and stuff. And most of what I was doing was, you know, you get this text and then in a paper or whatever, you'd write out their premises and their conclusions, right? It's very simple. So they have these baseline principles. If this principle is true, if this principle is true, if this principle is true, then the conclusion follows from all those things. And I think that was super valuable and was one of the things that drew me to starting strength is because it's... You know, it's very logical. It's very principle-based. And... Um, it all, it all follows from, from, uh, the basics and, you know, keeping it simple. And had I not gone through that philosophy thing, who knows, I might've, I might've ended up somewhere else, but, um, I still consume a lot of, you know, strength training, bodybuilding, uh, you know, weightlifting material online. But, you know, when I check the info against what I know and, and, and what we talk about at these gyms, um, I always end up arriving back to, you know, this is the thing, this is, um, the best, the best method for doing these things correctly. Right, right. Yeah. I look at, I look at the starting strength method as sort of a guideline, um, a guide post, uh, for, for everything, uh, because it's rooted in, in, uh, first principles, thanks to, uh, the way Ripito's organized all the information in the book. Um, so it always serves as a really good, uh, gut check against, uh, against. Um, what it is that you're trying to accomplish and, you know, if you can. clearly define your goals. We'll clearly define the outcome that you're looking for and then apply first principles thinking to how that outcome is achieved. Um, then you should arrive at, uh, you know, if we're all being honest with ourselves, we should arrive at what we're trying to, trying to do through starting strength. So, and that, uh, you know, over and over again, for me, that, that always checks out, like you said. Um, so, so here we are, right? Uh, doing this thing. Yeah, man. Um, okay guys, let's get into, um, let's get into it. So again, I don't. have, I don't have much information. Uh, so you guys will have to educate me in the audience. So, so what, what happened? And then, uh, let's start with, uh, with what occurred and what, what the diagnosis was and then sort of that initial, initial stuff. Uh, I will definitely do that. Um, the first thing I want to say when I go through this is it's, it's hard to talk about this without sounding like, um, a bunch of stuff happened to me or that I have had bad luck or that, you know, Like I'm bitching about something. It's going to be real hard to do that. I mean this when I say it. The whole time I'm talking about this, I'm an incredibly lucky person. I'm not really a religious person. I would even say blessed, not just in life, but just even during this situation. So what I'm going to talk about is a lot of bad stuff, but that's just because I'm talking about it. And I might even get riled up and all that stuff, but I'm just the kind of person where I get riled up and then I forget about something four minutes later. It's not something that's affecting me in the here and now anymore necessarily. I guess we'll just get into it. I was squatting at the gym. It was probably, again, like the reason I told that story was it was so I joined the gym in late February and then this is April. So pretty quick after I got back into this, this happened. So I'm squatting. Uh, probably I think my. My top set that day was 335 for five, and then we had a drop set down to 305, and I was having trouble that day. I felt a little dehydrated, and so we got to the 305, and I think I got, for the first two reps, I think I generally have good form. I mean, Alex can talk about this. I'm not a person who misses form wildly. Apparently, my first two reps, I was having weird trouble, even at 305, a weight I can handle, where I felt like I got on my toes a little, but nothing to the point where this should have happened. And then I went down for the third set. I got a little bit on my toes. I felt my left quad basically roll off my knee. I bounced the bar off the front of the rack. Fell over. Fell to the floor. Was screaming in pain. I mean, I don't know. No, I mean, Alex probably actually has a better remembrance of this than me. I was very lucky. You know, I didn't I didn't break my ankle. I didn't I could have busted my tibia. I could have done a bunch of stuff here, but none of that stuff happened. They, you know, they came and scraped me off. We called the ambulance. Alex was very calm, which really, really helped me. I know this, you know, this early in his coaching career for him to have to deal with this was really hard. It was hard and I felt terrible and I felt terrible. I remember feeling terrible. He apologized to me like four times as they were putting him in the fucking ambulance. Well, I also remember feeling terrible that in front that, you know, you do this. Oh, right. Yeah. In front of people who are there, you know, they're trying to work out. Yeah. Whatever. I know it sounds strange, but it's like these were guys who like at this point, my lifting career was. But I was, you know, I was far ahead of these guys. These guys were, I sort of got to know them. They were all guys who I would say, you know, didn't have any type of lifting history. And they were sort of looking up to me. I know that sounds strange, but I remember being very motivating. Like, these guys see me. And for this to happen in front of somebody who's just getting into this, I felt terrible. Yeah, so, I mean, they straightened me up, took me to the hospital. Hospital sucked. I had to, trying to get into the machines was terrible. I sort of, at this point, knew what happened to me. I was sort of being hopeful that I had just, I had had minor quad muscle belly tears before. And I had rehabbed them. And I was just like, maybe this is just a really bad muscle tear. But it wasn't. They x-rayed me. There was a bone fragment. So, they already probably knew, we already knew it was probably evulsed. So, it evolved. From the knee, I didn't mention that. It didn't come off the hip. It came off the knee. Pulled off bone from the knee. So we knew that by the time I left the emergency room. Keith, who was a trainee at the time, and Alex were at the hospital with me. They sent me home with a brace. I mean, I couldn't go to my home because I live in an apartment that's a three-story walk-up. So I went to my brother's. If this is too detailed, let me know. No, no, you're good. For me, this is important. It is really important, all this stuff. I got to my brother's place, and he wasn't there. All of a sudden, it hits me. I have no idea how to sit down or to get into bed. I know this sounds strange, but it was tough. I had to call somebody, somebody who you can probably tell I'm a little severe, had gotten pretty sick. much sick of me and didn't want to talk to me anymore. I'm like, who is up at this time of night? That's funny to you, Alex? No, it's not funny at all. Anyway, so, this person came and actually, bought sleeping pills and brought them to me because I take sleeping pills. At this point, I was taking sleeping pills, and I can't describe this. I was, standing on my crutches, and I couldn't figure out how to sit down or how to get into bed. I was too proud to let. this person come in and help me, I just had them drop sleeping pills in front of the door, and I took purposely too many sleeping pills to the point where it gave me the courage to figure out how to get into a bed. I still don't remember how I did that. This was the first exposure to going, from being a functional person to being. completely disabled. It was really, uh, psychologically devastating. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Um, so then, you know, I, I went to. the same hospital that, uh, I went to after the incident. At first I got imaging, imaging showed that I had a complete avulsion off the knee. Um, they surgically repaired that about a week and a half later. Um, and, uh, my surgical staff were, you know, it was sort of weird. They were, they were actually lifters, the PA and the surgeon. Oh, good. Uh, maybe not. Um, so they, you know, when they first, I still remember when I first met with them, they're like, you'll be squatting again in eight months after this. And I was just sort of like thinking to myself, let's get my ass walking. You know? Um, they said this, they said you'd be squatting in eight months. Yeah. Okay. Um, they swapped themselves. You know, this hospital was, is a, uh, not a great hospital. It's, I just thought at the time that the surgery was a no brainer and that whatever, you know, I went to this hospital, here's where I'll get the surgery. Um, that this is sort of like, you know, going through a car wash or something, but it's, it's not, it's not necessarily, this is a, this is a hospital where a lot of, this is from talking to Will, uh, this place probably dealt with their majority of the stuff these guys dealt with was probably Medicaid patients, people who are old and decrepit, and they weren't probably used to dealing with me. Um, so they were like, we're going to hammer this thing tight as hell. And, you know, because of that, you're going to be, you know, you're going to have a better recovery and, and talking to Will that they, they probably didn't have. that much experience in this surgery for somebody who's strong. Now, that being said, I sort of don't know how to tell this story. So the bottom line is two or three days after the surgery, I had two events while getting out of bed. I was completely braced where I felt an extreme pain as I was getting out of bed, even though. my brace was completely locked. I mean, to the point where I almost vomited both times. And so what had happened is it had evolved again. Again, so and this wasn't determined till way later. Of the four quad muscles you have, three had come off again with only, I believe, what is called the medialis, the middle one, still intact. But it also caused an avulsion. I don't know. I don't know how this happens. So the bone ripped off again, even though only one of those stayed. Um, it was extremely painful to the point where, I mean, it was way worse than the original injury, but the pain completely passed. So I sort of just thought, oh, there was not, there wasn't a trauma to the knee. I just thought, all right, whatever. And I went in for my first follow up. I'm like, is there any way this re ruptured? And they were just like, well, no, you know, given how we're examining you, there's no way that happened. Um, so I started rehabbing. Um, so I'm now rehabbing with only one of my quad muscles. Oh, Jesus. So it evolves as a result of their, of how they, how they attempted to do the surgery or not attempted, how they did the surgery? Not necessarily. I want to make this clear on this. I'm not a medical professional, but this is just through talking to Will. Um, that's possible, but these surgeries also have, you know, a 15 to 20% what's called a spontaneous recovery. Okay, got it. surgery. So, in reality, I don't claim that anyone was negligent in my care. I know that sounds strange. I just think it's important to sort of talk about this. That might have mattered. That might have not. But Will has confirmed that if you're sort of a stronger person, that these types of things can go unnoticed when you're, when it re-ruptures, if that. makes any sense. Sure. Yeah, it does. So, at the time, I'm living at my brother's place, my poor brother. And it just was, looking back, the recovery was really, really, really tough, and I didn't really know it, because, that's the thing with these things. Most people only have a chronic injury once. You don't get any human learning of doing something over and over again. You don't know. I mean, there's things. that I've seen. I would have said, um, if I was, you know, to, to go back and change how I approached my, uh, my recovery. Um, I, I started, I was doing everything. I did everything they said. Um, but I started sort of getting behind. So they said, you know, why don't you, here's what we want you to do. In addition to the, um, the normal PT, we want you to, I mean, this is a, this is the PA. I had to, every day for two hours, I had to jam my leg into a wall, like facing a wall. I don't know how to describe this. I had to accumulate two hours in a chair, just jamming my leg into the wall and bending it. Um, which was very excruciating. It was, it was miserable. Like an isometric leg press type thing? Sort of. Okay. Um, like jamming it into the, where the, your foot into where the, the wall meets the floor. Oh, got it. Okay. Just face. It was just a really, I had real trouble getting in and out of a chair or in and out of a bed. Because, again, I don't know how to describe this. Anytime you did something like that, you felt like your leg was going to fall off. I don't know how to describe it. It was so bad. Like, Keith came and Keith came to my place and showed me how to get out of a chair. Like, I could not get out of a chair by myself for, I want to say, three weeks. I had to sleep. I could not get into bed. I had to sleep in a chair. Sleeping in a chair every night blows. Yep. Every day I thought to myself, tomorrow I'm going to be able to get across the threshold of the shower. In my brother's place, but I couldn't. And I was too prideful to have my brother or anyone else bathe me. Sure. It was just a lot of stuff. But what is weird is I was catching up in the metrics of recovery then. Like I sort of started off behind, but then I was catching up. By the time this four-month, three-and-a-half-month period ended, I think from memory, Alex, I was squatting in the low 200s maybe. And that's what Will said. Yeah, yeah. So Mike did some initial post-surgical rehab stuff. and then like pretty much came back. Do you remember what month you came back to the gym? July? It happened on April. It was whatever, six weeks after the surgery. Yeah, so he was back in the gym six weeks after. Squatting full range of motion? No. Okay. No. So post-surgery, they're working on most of Mike's PT stuff. You can correct me if I'm wrong. It's that knee flexion stuff, getting that range of motion back. We were doing stuff like squat into a box with no load, and then pin squats high, not to full depth. And eventually, yeah, Mike was squatting, I think it was 205 or something. He never got re-injured during the rehab process, but he was behind on the flexion on the knee. The range of motion wasn't improving as fast as we wanted. And then eventually, you go back to the doctor, get it looked at, and they discover, oh, it's been ruptured this whole time. And he's squatting like – he's in the gym squatting 205 on one of his quads attached. Jesus. Which is kind of unbelievable. Yeah, to be clear, for the six weeks coming out of these surgeries, no one besides, no one like Lil or anybody like that will really do any real rehab with you. But you still have to do the fake stuff they tell you. Like, it's not fake. I would argue that the first six weeks are not fake at all. It's fine. You know, do what they tell you. It's compared to what we do. Like, it would look, you know, it's stuff we say that is BSPT. It's not. It's, when you're in this state, when it's this acute of an injury, that stuff is incredibly important. I agree. And some people, a lot of people, this is just from being in these places. A lot of these people don't even do this, that stuff. Yeah. No, I agree with you. We didn't start, we started very, I would even say pedestrian, even, I mean, it affected It was unbelievably conservative, yeah. That's the thing that it is, is conservative, but in those first six weeks, maybe that's not a big deal, it's fine. No, it's not. As things are healing, it can be conservative, it'll give you some confidence, and ultimately it won't hurt anything, you know, it will not hurt anything, so it's 100% upside. Outside, once you get past like eight weeks, 12 weeks, they're talking about 16 weeks, now you're not, you know, it's going to be hard for me to believe that you're actually doing anything super effective, and that's kind of where a good coach will come in and, layer on top of that PT and actually drive some adaptation, right, because you're not actually driving any much adaptation after the, whatever, the three month, whatever you want to say, three month, four month mark, whatever, but no, 100%, you know, and this is like a thing that... That people ask me all the time, if they have a surgery or an injury. You know, and usually this is like in a surgical situation, it's no question. For an injury, I feel pretty confident that I can usually just handle it myself. With, you know, along with a consultation from Will, I can usually deal with it. With a surgery, my advice is always like just, you know, listen to post-surgical instructions from your doctor. Do the physical therapy they want you to do. When they clear you, which is usually at the six-week mark, we'll get back into it. And that's perfectly fine. That's a 100% reasonable thing to do. My point is to a layman, even that we'll get back, we will get back into it phase, for me, in this situation, is still like comparatively patty cakes up. Like this injury affected everything. Like you can't even, you can't bench. You can't press. You can't do any of it. I should point out at this time, we were training upper body super hard, you know, to give them something to do. But they're. We have to make modifications for the knee. So we were doing Larson presses, you know, seated presses, et cetera. Just basically just staying off that. Exactly. Yeah. So a couple things to talk about there. Number one, I think folks need to understand that it's just like you said, Mike, at the beginning. Most physical therapy practices are going to be geared towards sick old people. You know, and I think that's a safe assumption to make. So whenever they're presented with somebody who is strong, capable, and athletic, it usually falls outside of their experience. So not that there's no value there, but also I think that consultations and work from somebody with a lot of experience is more valuable and almost required, right? So for a lifter in a gym, you've got to talk to somebody like Will or John Patrizzo or Nick D'Agostino or Rory, somebody like that. Yeah. And at least get their opinion or perspective on what's going on. But it's sort of strange to talk about this. Like, I don't know. If you're a lifter, yes. But we also, I think maybe this is a goal that's too high here in this discussion. But it's like, we're talking to those people. But I also would love it if people who are not necessarily lifters going into these injuries did this stuff too. Sure, 100%. 100%. Yeah. I will also say this. You can't, like I said, some of the hardest parts during this process for me were when I was doing the stuff that Will had or the stuff that Rory had me do combined with the physical therapy. Where I'm like, I mean, literally in those periods, the like period 8 to period 12, maybe even the period like 8 to 13 weeks, I was on a seven-day split. And it was like, you'd look at me and go, this stuff is all nothing. And it was hard to do it in front of people in the gym, to be frank. To do all this weird stuff. I felt like a real special case, but it's, you know, right. You're doing, I mean, it almost killed me, man. This was, that was the, that was some of the, during these, and there's more surgeries coming. So, um, well, yeah, but it's plural. So it's, uh, the thing to understand is that, is that, uh, uh, most people are not willing to work that hard. Right. So that, so on the, on the, to give, to give the benefit of the doubt to the therapist, they are working with a population that is not going to be willing to put in that, that level of effort. And then there's all the other, there's all the other pressures and all the other, uh, uh, motivators and incentives aligned with insurance and all these other things. Right. So, so yeah, it's a, it's a, my, my point, my larger point is that for somebody who is outside of that system, outside of that, uh, outside of those incentives and motivations, meaning like you want to get back to, to function, you want to get back to doing the things that. you want to do. You want to be out of pain and you're willing to put in the work to do it. You've got to find people who can help you do that. Not people who are used to operating in a completely different paradigm. And I think that's, you know, I mean, we could talk all day about about what ifs and how things could be better. But ultimately, for the person who's who who has dealt with or is dealing with a situation like this or will deal with a situation like this, I think the lessons are find somebody who can give you good advice and then also be ready to put in a ton of work. And then also realize that your body wants to fix itself and you have to provide the environment to do that, you know, through through proper rehab and stress and all that kind of stuff. So real quick, Alex, you're you're a new head coach three months in. I mean, you had you trained people before, but now you're kind of responsible about this. So I want to I want I want you to talk a little bit about what was what was that like? And I think Mike touched on it. You guys said a little bit about it. But, yeah, run me through your thinking. So I don't really remember much from, like, I vividly remember up to injury and then between there and me ending up at the hospital with Mike, I don't really remember much. I was just kind of, you know, like, my adrenaline was up. I was, you know, focused on Mike, make sure he's safe. And, you know, you guys just are the starting strength gyms or the other, the starting strength podcast this week is about safety in the gym. Yep. And, you know, thank God Mike had his safety set, right? Because who knows, you know, what could have happened had he not been there, even though it's a back offset. You know, Mike had squatted, I think, 355 for five before coming to the gym, like, the year before. And we were only, we were, I had, you know, advanced his programming so that the fatigue wasn't so bad. We were doing much lighter stuff than I would normally have people do, you know, two months into the LP because he's trained before. So that. happened, made sure he was okay. You know, got him to the ambulance, um, went to the hospital. We were probably there until two or three in the morning. He was the last class at night. Um, and I just remember, you know, I'm 25. I just got a bunch of responsibility at this gym and I was sitting there like pondering my life and my career. Like what's going to happen to me? Did I just ruin this guy's entire life? Um, and I, I didn't sleep. I didn't sleep that night. I like stayed up all night. Couldn't fall asleep. Cause I was, I was freaked out. I mean, nothing compared to Mike, of course. Um, and then, you know, eventually like I, I was just mulling it over, mulling it over. What could I have done different? What could I have done different? Um, which is ultimately a fruitless endeavor. And I, I just, I, I came to the conclusion pretty fast that like, well, I'm, I'm going to treat this as my responsibility and I'm going to do, you know, the best job I can possibly do to get this guy back to being normal, being healthy and, you know, training again, ultimately. Um, and that's, that's how I got connected with Will. Um, that's how, you know, it, you know, this, this thing is a bad thing, but, you know, I think both Mike and I would agree. Had, um, this happening, you know, we, we both kind of came out on the other side, um, better at the, at the end of it all, despite, you know, all the trauma and whatnot. Um, I learned an incredible amount about, about rehab, about, you know, just dealing with people and like dealing with, you know, this sort of, uh, trauma, you know, I think me and Mike both handled it. about as well as we could have given the given the circumstances. Yeah, no question. When you first talked to Will, what did he have to say? I mean, this I think would be good for people to hear. I yeah, I owe a lot to Will in terms of rehabbing my personal situation and a lot more. But his his perspective is super valuable because, well, for a lot of reasons. But, you know, one of the things that I believe he brings to the table is is lots of experience dealing with pretty serious situations that that. allow us to put our situations in some sort of perspective. Right. So, you know, I mean, just imagine you got guys that have blown parts of their bodies off and they're trying to restore function and live as pain free as they can. It's it's a whole different level. Right. So, yeah, run us through just as quick as you can kind of the conversations with Will. So. So, Will. He's going to hate that I'm going to say this, but he I owe a lot of my of my ability and in my my knowledge to him. He's like unbelievably valuable resource in this community. We're really lucky to have him, you know, looking back on it like the rehab wasn't super complicated. Like there were there were, you know, it's it's pretty obvious what you're supposed to do. We can get into the specifics or the or the principles. But, you know, I think I think what will brought us both is, you know, that level of experience in that, you know, having dealt with stuff like this is like a level of confidence and reassuredness, you know, going into this process that, you know, there's no reason to think that that we can't get back to where Mike was. Exactly. Yeah. And having him there, like, you know, made me more sure of of the things we were doing in the gym, because like, you know, when he's coming back to squatting. When and. There's something heavy on the bar, like even if it's back to 225, back to 250, you know, there's a level of fear there, right? Absolutely. You know, maybe this thing happens again. Absolutely. And if like if I had a heart rate monitor on during the time, you could tell when Mike was about to start a set because, you know, I'm nervous. But at the end of it all, we're just kind of trusting the process and the things we're doing that have been working. And, yeah, one one thing that Will said to me was that, you know, I think it's 10 percent of athletes post quad tendon rupture return to their sport. So about 90 percent of people who go through that first initial quad quadriceps tendon rupture or avulsion don't go back to what they were doing. Sure. And Mike had to. Yeah. And currently, Mike squatted 380, which is an all-time PR, and he deadlifted 465 just last week, which is also an all-time PR. Fantastic. Fantastic. There you go. When this happens, I don't know if Mike is ever going to come back to normal, but me and Will are going through the process assuming that he's going to be back to normal. and assuming that he can go past what he was before. Sure. Sure. Yep. Yep. Yeah. But to be clear to anyone listening, I mean, right away, and I still got more to talk about here, but this is going well, but I knew in my brain, like, I know, and this is what else would be true in life, but I knew I was going to have to do the thing that scared the shit out of me the most in order to get back. If I had, if I wanted any chance. of getting back to where I was, and really it's not about, the stuff about lifting weights, I'm as vain as the next guy, but it was, I've never really thought, hey, I want to get back to my, I have a little, but it's more like I don't want to be 70 and be, you know, a waste of space, I mean, that's more of what it is, the titrations, I mean, there have been times where I have been scared, but I will also say this, the titrations have been. very small, to the point where, I mean, this is another perspective, this now happened, this is now three years ago, when this initial thing happened, you know, so going to 380, there were no big jumps, it's been very, very slow, and it should be. Should be, that's right, that's right, but here's, dude, Will's going to hate so much that we're talking so much about him. I know, I know. But, you know, who cares? He told me not to. He'll have to get over it. One of the things that I've picked up from Will too is how many – just the thinking, and this is pretty obvious when you think about it, but how many people start to identify with their injuries, right? So it's like how many people will go through something like this, and Mike, you've gone through it twice, and that's now their identity. They get a back injury. Now they're a back patient and then never go back to what they're doing. And now they've just got a bum knee for the rest of their life. And at the age of 40, 50, that's unacceptable. It doesn't ever get any better, and it's just going to become the thing for the rest of your life. So no matter how long it takes, you've got to – if you're not continuing to push and you're not continuing to adapt, even if you – it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect that you never even got back to a 305, 335 squat. That wouldn't be unreasonable at all. And I think we would all mark that as a success. Even if you squatted like 275. You know, I think that would be a successful rehab. You're squatting more than most men walking the earth. So the fact that you've gone beyond that and the fact that you've not only recovered function, but you've exceeded where you were before speaks to the method, speaks to your grit. And then also just the possibility that, you know, most people having anybody else who would have gone to something like this would have been done. I don't know. You know, we all like to think that I would have got back under the bar in that situation. I don't fucking know, man. I don't know that I would have I would have squatted heavy ever again. I would have found all kinds of excuses not to. So anyway, all that's true. But again, Will's going to get pissed, but I don't give a shit. Like without Will, there's no there's the perspective or somebody like Will. And I don't know if there is anyone like Will. There's no path forward here for me. There's no. I agree with what you're saying. But. Without the path forward and some other things that happened for me that are. I want to make sure I say here, most people wouldn't do what I did. I'm not extraordinary, but I think most people are less than extraordinary. But without the path forward, without me knowing the next move I make is not going to disable me after all this trauma and all this scariness, there's no way I do this. There's just no way. I mean, another point to make here is, so they found this by accident. It was my last, again, I'm super lucky. It was my last follow-up, and they had everyone in the room, and they're like, you've made a ton of progress, great job, do this, do this, walk here. And they're like, the last question they asked me, oh, by the way, extend. And I couldn't extend all the way. And they're like, no, extend. And I'm like, that's it. They're like, no. I mean, it was just like, and I could feel the room. Just like the air just went out of the room. Oh, they knew what was going on. Yeah, they knew what was going on. If they didn't ask me that, that was a throwaway question. Right. If they don't ask me that question, I walk around with that thing with only one quad on, and it surely tears again, and then I am fucked with a capital lock. Yep. I'm screwed. Yep. So it's important to... What were you squatting at that point during that last follow-up? Remember, Will said on another podcast that it was 225. I don't think that's true. I want to say... I mean, I was doing... 225, maybe like... It was above 200. Yeah, it was like 205, 210. Okay. Yeah. And this was, what was it, 16 weeks after surgery? Yeah, right around there. 13, 14, right around there. Okay. Got it. Okay. All right. So then what happened next? Again, more detail, but I don't know. I think it's important. They're like, all right... At that point, I think at that point, he knew I had ruptured it, but he was like, well, let's not go there. Let's get an MRI. There was a bunch of crap with the MRI. This is an important memory for me. I'm sitting there sweating bullets during this time, and insurance doesn't approve the MRI. I call them, and I'm like, can we get insurance to approve this MRI? The woman who answers the phone basically says, well, maybe we should schedule your surgery first. At this point, I don't know it's ruptured, but clearly they did. I know this is a procedure, but I remember that came out of nowhere and hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, you know, I end up getting the MRI, and then, of course, it's ruptured. At this point, what's ironic is I'm not throwing wool under the bus. Because Will thought this was bullshit at this point. Will was like, you're doing so well. There's no, this doctor's off. There's no way. You're going to come through this, and it's not going to be, you know, you have an extensor mechanism, you're squatting. So, I mean, another vivid memory is at this time, once they approved that surgery, for some reason, I forget why, because I didn't have any problems in the first one. They wanted me to get my blood pressure checked. And what else would they want? Is it an electrocardiogram? What would they want for surgery? I forget what it is. But so I went to a clinic, and I failed both of those. Of course. Nine colors. It was just so, because I was so irritated, and I wasn't sleeping. I was so miserable. And so now I've, you know, now I've failed this. I can't even get the damn surgery. I remember being, I mean, this is like a super low moment in this process. But it sort of worked out for the rest of my life. the best because, you know, in talking with my sister and some other people and Will, you know, he was like, you really shouldn't get this surgery at this place. You should get it at, I don't know if we're going to mention names of places or anything. I don't think that's advised in a podcast, but at this other, you know, prominent place in Chicago that is known for orthopedic surgery, you should wait a little bit to get in there. Even though you're, you know, you're currently living with only one quad muscle, you should really go get surgery at a good place. And to my sister's credit, you know, instead of staying at my poor brother's, which was suboptimal, we should try and get you into an actual care facility. And we were lucky enough. I mean, I can jump a little bit forward there, but after this, I ended up in a care facility. Okay. So, yeah. So then I have the surgery and what was insane about the surgery was I'm not. kidding coming out of the surgery like the moment i came out of the surgery i felt better again this is right after a surgery than i had since the injury happened which at that point you should be, in real you know the moment after a surgery i'm talking about the moment after yeah so again during this time in this facility i i sort of sandbagged because i knew i need care. i could have walked without crutches after this after the correct surgery um, so i was in that i'm in this facility um i'm recovering and then and i'm doing quite well and then about a week and a half in um i start having really bad issues with the leg where i'm getting severe bruising and severe pain i was on like coming out of the first surgery i was on whatever they wanted me on but i was after about a week i went to tylenol. And this time I went right to, I was like, I don't need, I don't need any painkillers. I'll just do Tylenol. I'll just drip through the pain. I don't, I don't want to be on that stuff. But I sort of had to start taking what they wanted me to take. When you're in these facilities, I mean, it's basically a glorified old folks home. But what you do get is you get monitored. So I had, I had a wound care person come in every day and she started sort of seeing my leg getting bigger. She's like, are you feeling pain? I'm like, yeah. Um, and she's like, I don't like the way this is looking. I think this might be cellulitis or something. Let's give it a weekend and see if it goes down. Um, but when I come in here on Monday, you know, we might have to, we might have to do something. And so during this weekend period, I got severely worse to the point where the pain was insanely, debilitating. I mean, and this, you know, I've had compartment syndrome. This is what I was comparing this to. Um, my leg expanded to the point where it was a free. It was freakish. I mean, it probably wasn't double the size, but it sure looked like it. So she came in, and the first thing she says, like, we just got to send you to the emergency room. With the fear that I had cellulitis, that I had, you know, a massive infection. Right. It turns out I didn't. It turns out, I mean, they had to gurney me out of my bed in a very embarrassing moment. They took me to the ER. You know, the ER was associated with this facility, so they said, well, you know, you're going to cruise there because, you know, if you're coming from our ambulance, they'll send you right through. They didn't. He gave me enough Norco to sort of survive a little bit, but then I was there for eight hours. I was trembling in pain. It was because I ran out of Norco. My brother literally had to go find someone, basically find Norco on the street to get me through. It was miserable. I got into the ER, and, you know, right when they looked at me, they took me to the ER. which sort of disturbed me. They were like, we have to do a ton of tests. They gave me a CT scan, x-ray, all that stuff. And this is the kind of place, this is an ER in sort of the rough part of Chicago, they see everything, so I was really scared. The on-staff ortho guy sort of started looking at me and he's like, I think you're actually, as they're doing these tests, I think you're actually okay. What had happened was the tourniquet, they probably tourniqueted me in the same place twice really hard. and I got basically a bruise that's so severe that it starts, it's a crushing bruise. And it was a straight line across my entire leg, like there was a straight line in form where there's bruising and no bruising. But he was like, I actually think you're going to be fine, but you're going to be in for your, going to be in for it really bad for the next four to five days, and your recovery, is going to basically have to start over again. Everything came out clear in those tests, but I was confined to the bed. I mean, for two or three days, I was, and when people say I was bedridden, this was bedridden. This was, I didn't get out of the bed to do anything. I was in the worst pain of this process. And the reason I say this is, again, it's not whether, it's not about the pain, but it's like I had to start over yet again. So I was at square one yet again. Then after that, so I start recovering again. I get about a month and a half of recovery in, but probably from that, I start getting a massive blood occlusion on my knee. It was a lump that was probably the size of a coffee cup, and it just kept on growing and growing. It just kept on growing. and growing, and my surgeon just basically said, you're going to have to go under the knife again. So, I mean, this was, looking back, this all seems like minor stuff, and it's only, there's. short periods here. It's like a couple weeks, a month and a half, but I knew that I needed to get on recovery because I sat there for three and a half months with one quarter of a quad muscle. Sure. The quad muscles were just sitting there doing nothing. Right. So, it was completely devastating to me to have to keep on restarting. It was just, it was really rough. Again, I know I seem like I'm complaining, but it was just tough. Does that make any sense? No, absolutely. It makes perfect sense. Yeah, any one of these things is a big deal. deal uh so yeah i think you're you're actually minimizing it quite a bit and during this process um i was while i was in this facility and i agree with this treatment but it was really tough on me because i was in a uh passive resistance machine and an ice machine so i would wake up and i had to be in these machines while awake for 10 hours total a day yeah so i was basically chained to the. bed right for 10 damn hours a day awake um and i i'm just not um i'm just not a person that can deal with that really well yeah i mean i was having like two or three panic attacks a day um it was just it was extremely rough on me um like i would i mean i would lay there i mean i had crazy thoughts going through my head like i would i for some reason i thought about jeffrey all the time like i'm fast i'm fascinated with that guy um i'm not kidding like. but, I would think about him all the time because like, so that guy, I'm not hyper familiar with his, uh, like incarceration protocols, but I bet he could get out of bed every day. That's what I kept on thinking. I didn't, I didn't do a damn thing. Right, right, right. And I'm chained to this damn bed. I mean, it's, uh, again, it's impossible to not sound like I'm complaining, but, um, like whenever I get ready to squat, I, I, and, and still to this day, I just think about that. And I'm like, I'm not, I count my blessings because I'm not there. You know, for sure, for sure. What's the, what's the overall timeline? So between, um, so the, between the, the initial injury all the way to, so was this the last thing then this, uh, you had a surgery to remove the blood, the blood, uh, occlusion or the blood clot. Um, it, was there anything else after that? Or no, that was it. I mean, so it happened on April 29th. Uh, that last surgery was on September 30th. Okay. So. around six months of this uh of this half a year dealing with all this stuff yeah and then i left. the i left the facility in the middle of november oh wow okay okay so you stayed in the facility for another couple of months um doing rehab and then did you go back to training um after november or sometime in between um it was once you were out yeah um yeah it was definitely once i was out so whatever the yeah it was a part like pretty much released me it was like a perfect. like six weeks after that final event yep yep um so i wasn't um i was just doing the rehab in the place um which i attacked as hard as i could i mean it's amazing the people the amount of people who don't attack that rehab right i remember coming out of the third surgery a guy came, A PT came into my room to do my normal PT and he's like, thanks for doing this. The last eight people I've dealt with turned down therapy because they wanted to watch the Bears game. The Bears stink. What year was this? 22? Especially when somebody has gone through an injury, a surgery, something that is a very big deal to them, you have every excuse in the world available to you. It's an easy thing to just live in the moment and and try to not hurt right now and then not think about the longer term outcomes of all this. Right. So, OK, I talked about this with Will and I think ultimately I ended up dealing with including Will and Rory. And just after a while, you just start accumulating physical therapists that you've dealt with. That's right. Like 16 of them all told like I kept on like what percentage of the people do you do you even think do the normal physical therapy and just do it and show up and do it? Yeah. And they put that at like five to 10 percent. Yep. So I feel like I have like like. But however, even let's say it's one percent that would do what I do. That's still a ton of people. And it's worthwhile for people to hear this message. Sure. Like if people had a path forward. forward, that's a lot of people. And I think it's a message worth hearing. Yep. So getting back into training, so obviously you're coming back six weeks after the last surgery. I'm assuming same kind of approach, just slow, gradual. Has there been any hiccups, any issues since then as far as with the- But not actually. I mean, now we're into the normal hiccups of life, like the normal injuries. I've had minor bicep tears of both tendons. These are sort of undiagnosed, like sort of the same stuff that happened before, not as severe. I fractured the tibial condyle on my other knee. So I fractured that joint. That's probably just from pounding the hell out of it while- while compensating for my other leg. Just some other stuff. I have an infected cyst right now that's on my back that's, you know, affecting our ability to squat. But having Will and Alex to go, like, if I didn't have this coaching, if I did not have them, all these, again, inflection points, I would have probably stopped or had no idea what to do or whatever. So, yeah, there's been other stuff. But stuff that is not that bad. Yeah, your baseline is pretty interesting compared to other people. You know, I mean, you're dealing with a lot of stuff. And who knows what the reason is for that. I'm sure people can give you a theory or hypothesis for what's going on with your tendons or something like that. Nothing, I don't think. I think if you just ask, it's been three years. Yeah. You know, if you ask anyone who does stuff, really anyone, Anyone who's alive, what's your injury history for the last three years? They have stuff. Everyone has stuff. That's true. Yeah. Alex, are you going to say something? So the initial rehab was kind of the same thing we did the first time. But one thing that Mike – Mike said a couple things to me that were very important. He's like, you know, I need to come to the gym and do my heavy-ish squats on this day. I need someone there to watch me do it. And, you know, that was really important to me because he probably could have gone through this alone. But, like, you know, having those extra resources and having us there to watch him and, you know, add some confidence to him when mostly what's going through his head at the time is, like, not positive. It's all anxiety and stress and worry and fear and just having Will online and having me in there to talk to or just watch. A lot of it, there wasn't a super large amount of coaching involved. He knows how to squat. He's got good technique. We have to clean up a few things related to the knee, but just having someone to be there with him was super important to him. Hang on. Like a brain genius, my phone is running out of batteries. I'm an 80-year-old guy. The one thing I forgot to do before doing this, so just keep on going. I'll be back. Sorry. One thing that Mike said to me, another thing that Mike said to me during this time was, I want to run. like, what are you talking about, man? Like you want to run another marathon or whatever? And he's like, no, I need the physical ability to be able to run, um, in case I need to run for some reason. Um, and that kind of like really reframed this, this whole thing to me in my brain, like we're doing something that's more important than just the weight on the bar. It's like about being, able to function normally, despite, you know, all these circumstances and whatnot. And Mike's going. to come in for seven days a week at one point, and then eventually down to three days a week to continue training and get stronger. Um, for that reason did, uh, let's wait for Mike to get ready. Okay. So about this, um, well, so here's an interesting, uh, point. I think, um, I think that's a valid thing to want to be able to do. Um, so, you know, and I think some people, in the audience might be like, well, why, why would you want to run? Um, well it's, uh, it's, it's kind of a normal thing that we should be able to do. Right. So, um, and I think if you're, if you're able to squat 380 pounds, uh, you should probably be able to run. And when I say run, I mean, does it mean sprint? Does it mean jog, whatever, like just actually do the movement of running. And for somebody who has, who has gone through an experience like that, um, it's not unreasonable to believe that you haven't even attempted or that you would be scared to do that. Right. So, um, or that you can't. So, so, so what, what happened with that? Did you, did you guys, uh, did you guys attempt it? Are you working on that? Or is it, uh, what's going on? Are you still running? No. Um, so just to clarify, I mean, to illuminate Alex's point, it's, it's strange when you go from, um, I would say I'm hyper physically able to all of a sudden something is sort of taken away from you. You don't even realize it. Like when you say you don't like Nick, you'd be like a guy. who's like, I don't run. But you do. You run to catch an elevator. You run to, like, you don't think about it. And when that's taken away. from you, that's what's annoying. Like, I don't want, like, in Chicago, when I'm trying to cross the street, I want to be able to run and be able to know I can run reliably when somebody's going 80 miles an hour like a jerk down the street. Not that. It's big stuff for your mentality. Sure, yeah. But also, to have, you know, distance running, is always accessible. It's always something that you could, you know, who knows? If I get another job where I can't do this, I could always run. I could always do that. And it's just important, I think, to have it in your back pocket. With these tendon injuries, the tendon injuries are just hard. They're hard to get certain things back as opposed to other, really more severe trauma. Um, we did, again, I'm nervous about being on here sometimes if we're going to talk about this stuff. Will did start a running protocol with me and I got really good on the treadmill. I was probably accumulating about a mile and a half, uh, per session. And then that's when that tibial condyle thing showed up during that, during that process. So after that, we suspended that. Um, I mean, the tibial condyle thing, I did actually, and this is another, when people are interacting with the medical system. So I went back to my, the tibial condyle thing. I knew something went really wrong. It was very painful. Um, and to the point where we suspended almost everything. And this is about, so this is about a year ago. This is two years in. And I go back, I get imaging. I go back to my surgeon. I go in the PA. Like really hyper goes over the, the imaging with me, like takes me through, like they. can like do stuff with angles and stuff. And she's like, your joint is fractured. You have a fractured joint. This is a severe problem. You have some other, you have some other bone fragments in there that are floating around. We're worried about that. But what I'm really worried about is this tibial condyle. The surgeon comes in. Again, I trust this guy. This is my second surgeon. And he comes in and all he does is talk about the bone fragments. He's like, you need to have surgery. We need to cut you open. We need to get those bone fragments out of there. And I'm just like, okay, you think I know better at this point. You think I'd have, I'm an active patient. So then I go out of there. I schedule the surgery, which again is a minor surgery, but I end up being put under all this. And I'm sort of probably starting back again. I'm probably going backwards again. But then I show Will the imaging and he's like, your problem here is this tibial condyle. I'm like, that's exactly what the PA, that's exactly what the PA said. Yep. And I hope I'm not throwing Will under the bus here. Because he's going against what a surgeon says. He's like, listen, can you get a doctor to put you on Movic? One of these people, I have a doctor in my back pocket. I've been on Movic, which is an anti-inflammatory ever since, and it went away. So it's just valuable to have these people, to have access to people like Will and to have that kind of stuff. Since then, to answer your question, which I did not answer, I sort of answered. But to let myself know I can run outside, the one time I went against Will's recommendations, I didn't tell him this. This is the first time he's going to hear this. So about six months ago, I decided I want to know that I can run. So I got up to about, I believe, this sounds like nothing, but I got up to three-quarters of a mile with actually really good form. I probably was hitting, I believe, a 930 mile, which isn't that great. But I'm 50 years old. I'm almost. messed up, and sort of the tibial pain came back, so I stopped immediately, but in my mind, it was very valuable because I know if I probably suspend weightlifting, it's probably the combination of running and doing the intense stuff I do. In my mind, at some point, if I just wanted to run with some help from Will and with a brace that he's recommended, I bet I could do it, if that makes any sense. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, guys, as some final things to talk about here, the reason episodes like this and the reason talking to guys like you, Mike, and Alex as his coach, the reason it's important is, again, it's for perspective. I think I can safely say that going through this is probably one of the worst, if not the worst, experiences of your life. At least it took six months out of your life. And then some, right? Because we're not even counting all of the coming back and all that stuff. So a significant portion of your life. And just to give people the perspective, because everybody deals with something like this, just in varying degrees. And one person may experience what the three of us may consider a relatively minor injury or a minor surgery or minor situation, but they may experience it almost at the same level as what you're going through, right? So anyway, with that said, any words of advice or any kind of final thoughts for the audience, guys? Yeah, I don't know. You have to attack is what I would say. My experience actually with general, I know in the starting strength community, we sort of dog on physical therapists and on traditional medicine, and for good reason. But what I found is if you let those people know you want to work hard and if you're – the system is the problem. The people in it really are, for the most part, great. I mean, if you let them know you want to work hard and if you're not somebody who's going to complain all the time and make their life miserable, it's amazing how much they will sort of alter what they do and help you. I received – eventually, as I was going through this, the people, the traditional PT people sort of found out what else I was doing. And you would think they would have a negative view of that. Not at all. And I talked to Will about this. I may be a bit unique, but for the most part, they were actually very encouraging. They sort of know – they know that most of the people they deal with don't do the stuff and they know that – To get better, you have to do way more. It's sort of weird that that's embedded in everyone's thinking, but because of the system, people can't do more. You just have to attack your therapy, and you have to let people know that you want to attack. I remember when I was first working with Rory, I was on a PT table, and I had to write my programming down. It was like squats, deadlifts, stuff like that, on a piece of paper. It fell out of my pocket. The PT picked it up and goes, I hadn't said I was doing anything. I'm like, what is this? I'm like, I'm doing this, and this. They were like, that's great. We're all for it. Again, you do get resistance, but that's job number one. You just have to let people know that you'll work hard. you'll work with them. I would also tell people your ceiling and your floor is higher than what you think. A hundred percent. Yep. If you can, the one thing I regret before getting on here is that I didn't ask, well, if there's any other resources I can mention besides him, I sort of don't know what to tell people other than to go see will. But this is a far bigger problem than that. Like there has to be a million wills and I don't think there, I don't think there ever will be because there's, there's so many negative incentives in this. A hundred percent. There's negative incentives all over the medical system, but then there's a negative incentive because people can't, I don't want to sound arrogant. They can't, won't, or, or don't think they can do the work. They can't push through pain. They just haven't been used to that. So there's that negative feedback loop too, where, you know, the people just don't do the work. Therefore the PTs. Don't encourage them to do the work. They're overworked. Am I making any sense here? You are. Yeah, maybe one day it would be cool to have a directory of physicians, physical therapists, orthopedic surgeons who are – and I don't know how to say this without sounding self-aggrandizing, but who are aligned or understand training, right? And it doesn't even have to be starting strength. They understand training, and these are resources. These are people who understand how to work with and rehab people who train hard, whether that's lifting, bodybuilding, powerlifting, any kind of athletics. In other words, people who are comfortable and have experience working with folks who train hard, right? So that would be a cool thing. But look, today we do have that in the small group of physical therapists who are starting strength coaches as well. Yeah. So if you go to the coach director. On startingstrength.com, find the physical therapist in there. You are going to be. good hands with any of them. You know, we, the three of us have direct experience with Will. It's been fantastic, but they're. all good, right? And they all have very good experiences. We haven't actually mentioned, Will's not a witch doctor. We haven't, I don't think we've said this. Will is a PT, so just so everyone knows. Yeah, he's a physical therapist. But he lives in this world also. So, yeah, he's been, without those, and there's other things that have just, there's other things that have helped my training that have just been like luck. If I did not find my way to that facility, I don't. know what would have happened to me. I also, my friend Brendan, he lets me use his gym, 20, he has a massive CrossFit gym that I can just go to 24-7 during this whole process. And now actually, two of my three lifting days are there. So, I mean, I think I'm up to like 600 and 678 last time. I counted sessions since this happened. I've missed one. But that would not, if I did not have Brendan and his gym, that would not, there's no way. I would probably miss anywhere from 10% to 20%. And given my situation, I would not be where I am. So to sort of act like, I mean, there's a bunch of people that have helped me through this. My mom, my brother, to sort of, I mean, I've worked hard. Don't get me wrong. But without the stuff lining up, like there's no way, and I don't really think about the lift. That's what's so strange. It's like the PRs are great, the lifts are great, but I'm just so much better than I, emotionally, physically. All your existences are tied to your physical existence. That's right. Without that, none of that other stuff happens. That's exactly right. This sort of like, you know, I think about the PRs, you know, we're all meatheads. We're all. We're all closet underwear models. There's vanity and all that stuff. I don't want to make it like... There's nothing wrong with it, man. Right. Those are sort of weird, good, you know, that pride and vanity. Those are sort of good, weird motivators, too. But I'm just super lucky to have all that stuff fall into place for me to get here. Yeah, I think anybody who tells you that your mental and emotional state is not closely tied to your physical, to your capability, is lying to them. That's not true. And, you know, you will find the best people in circles of folks who train hard and do really hard things physically. And you find the shittiest people in circles of, you know, highly intellectual, just ignoring the physical side of things. So, I mean, that's who we are. That's who we are as humans. It's closely tied to our physical and emotional health. And, you know, for most people, most of the time, I've said this before, Ripito said it. said it before, of course, but for most people, most of the time, barbell training is the safest way to push yourself to the point that you will benefit from, you know, just holistically from physical training. Alex. I'm not stupid. I would not have, I, there's all that vanity and stuff like that, but I would not have redone this. That's not enough of a motivator. Like if people. are thinking that that's reckless to do that, it's just not true. It's sure. I would be in a without the squatting and deadlifting and all the other stuff, I would be in a way worse, state in all phases of my life. Um, and that's just a fact. Yep. Yeah. Alex, anything from you, man? No, not really. Um, I'm just super grateful to have been a part of this and being able to help where I could. Um, that's all I got. Yeah. Yeah. And, and thanks to you, Mike, for trusting the process, man. I don't, you know, it's a, a, Like, I don't know. It's a fairly rare situation that a guy goes through something like this in a gym and then just continues to come back to that gym. You know, no matter what, you know, there's there's always going to be fear and emotion tied to something like this, obviously. And sometimes that that fear and emotion gets directed towards the towards the situation you were in at the moment that that occurred. So, again, kudos to you, man. So this is yes. Yes. I know this sounds strange, but I'm the type of person where I hear I hear people where they're like, I wouldn't trade this bad experience. Yeah, I wouldn't. I'm formative. I mean, what I would trade is the trauma is called it ended up causing to other people in my life. Sure. Or to Alex that if I could get rid of that, I would. But for me, it sounds goofy, but I'm you know, there's people have gone through worse people in my life. If even in this interim, you know, died, dealt with cancer. This is not that big of a deal. Exactly right. It was a big deal for me, but in the realm of training, it's an interesting story because my training ceiling and my well-being is beyond what is normal. But I'm extremely lucky, and I'm better off, believe it or not, I'm better off for it happening. I know that it's bonkers, but it's true. No, no, that's correct. Again, it goes back to the perspective because I have friends and family who have been blown up and lost body parts, and I have friends and family who have died of cancer and gone through way worse things. It isn't that. This is not that. I hope it's not that stuff. This is way easier than what a lot of people have had to deal with. Yep, so lots of positivity coming out of this. And as a coach, having gone through stuff like this, these are the situations that make you a better coach. If anything, I'm sure Alex… Agrees with that as well, so… Yeah. Had I not… gone through this, I wouldn't be anywhere close to the coach that I am today. I learned so much. from Mike and from Will throughout this whole thing. And I'm just lucky to have been able to have helped as much as I did. Awesome. All right, guys. Well, Mike, thank you very much for passing along your story with us, man. And thanks for the time, guys. Alex, thanks again. Thanks for everything, Alex. I've never really felt like I've said that to you. It's not a problem. I do it all over again. I've said thanks to you a million times, but never for like the entirety of it. No, you know I love you, man. We're friends forever. It's fantastic, guys. All right. So folks, thanks again for joining us. If you have any questions or have any topic ideas, send them to podcast at ssgyms.com. You can find Alex at Starting Strength Chicago. He's on social media if you can find him. He's got a great social media presence. And then, you know, Yeah, Mike, anything you want to put out there? Are you pretty private or do you have social media or anything like that? Yeah, I'm not. Okay. All right. Yeah, if you want to – TikTok a gram type person. Okay, good for you, man. All right. Okay, thanks again, guys. And, folks, I'll see you next time. Thank you.