Dan B.

THANK YOU x 1,000,000. I have my life back.

Started the program the beginning of January and today I’m pain free. These last few weeks have been nothing short of a gift. I’d like to give you guys everything I’ve found useful and impeded progress.

First things first…be persistent, be consistent. I came into this program with the mindset this was either going to work or nothing was. All in or nothing. Everyday, woke up 45 mins early to do my “problem areas”. Glutes, Hams and the illio psoas. Did the deep tissue and stretches only in those areas in the morning.

As I said, I’m up and down ladders all day so I did what I could without making it worse. After work, I’d do everything from start to finish. I did that 5 to 7 days a week all the way up till mid april. At that point I just felt human again. Could stand straight up comfortably, There was no more clicking and popping going up stairs. Just wonderful. At that point, I cut out the morning routine and would do 1/2 the exercises, tissue, and stretches one day, and do the remainder the following day. Today, I feel great and just rotate through different things on and off as need be. and at least 2x a week I try to cycle through everything and really take my time with each stretch; really take my time.

So what has helped?

PROPER POSTURE
Without a doubt this has been the numero uno thing to keep conscious of every second of the day. One thing I highly recommend would be for people to get a full body mirror. Something they can stand in front of and observe their entire posture. From the front, left side, right side. See how ankles, knees, hips and shoulders all line up. I was shocked when I saw how out of line everything was.Then I literally shifted everything into alignment while I stood in front of the mirror. Tried my best to emulate that posture throughout the day. No more slouching. Sit up straight.

In the beginning I’d constantly catch myself slouching or leaned way back into the couch. So everyday I forced my self to sit up. In the car while driving, eating at the table, sitting on the couch. everything. Once I incorporated popper posture, the whole fai fix routine became much easier and the pain was drastically less every day. I’ll be honest when I say in the beginning, good posture felt crooked to me, I felt different muscles and tendons in my leg on my “problem side…. That was just proof to me I was seriously out balance. Day by day good posture just became the norm. I’ve had a few people tell me that I look more confident….crazy what standing up straight will do to someone.

HYDRATION
Hydration IS huge while trying to stretch, relax, etc.  I’ll admit that I was someone who didn’t drink enough water. As I said, I’d come home from work and try to do the routine before I relaxed and muscles would stiffen up. When I’m dehydrated, I found my muscles did not want to stretch, would stay tight and tense, and would not want to relax while in the stretch. One day, had a nice big glass of water before hand and the results were undeniable. My toughest stretch is without a doubt, the glute one where you put a foot up on the wall, cross over the other leg and lower into the stretch. Sometimes I’d just have to keep backing away from the wall until I could lower down enough, and work my way back in. So drink water. It’s common knowledge so I won’t get into details about the importance of hydration, just that being hydrated will help this process.

KNOW YOUR MUSCLES
I took your advice and researched the locations, functions, and attachment points of everything I was working on. Once I knew what and where muscles were, I’d literally picture what I was working on, the direction of the muscle fibers, and working areas differently. Sounds silly but I never really considered muscles pulling from both attachment points and many of those attach at the spine! Was very profound learning back pain can be rooted back to something so simple a child could understand.

CALM MUSIC
I concentrate very carefully on the area I’m working on. Again, picturing the muscles. The more I focused on that specific area, often the faster and easier the tissue work would go. So I clearly found my self distracted by TV or rock music. However, I found Pink Floyd and the softer side of Buckeheads music very calming. Often certain stretches or tissue work would be tough. Having something soothing to listen to really helped redirect my attention from it hurting or burning and allowed the focus to return back to the muscle relaxing. But that’s just from my experience. I also didn’t like to be bothered. I’d find a nice quiet space in the house where there’s no TV or lawn mowers outside going on. No distractions, this is business.

I like to do my research so upon this journey I did supplement other things into this whole experience. First thing is, for my birthday, my girlfriend bought me an inversion table so I could hang upside down. We did find it helped both of us really get our core muscles stretched out. Also feels great taking the weight off my hips, shoulders and placing it in the opposite direction. Not something I say go run out and get now but hey, I don’t have anything bad to say about it.

NUTRITION
Given I work out of town, I’d often eat out for lunch. Fast food. I  found to hinder my progress. Soda, sweets, fried food…all of it. Maybe it was a mental thing but when I had my weeks of eating good, routine went good. If I had an off week and ate out, I literally found myself not motivated to stretch, sluggish, whole 9 yards. I did supplement myself with a phenomenal multivitamin,  powerful anti inflammatory product, and great probiotic. In the beginning, my muscles weren’t working with me. Could barely do any of the routine without some pain or even successfully with good posture. So without a doubt, good nutrition and hydration have been a good cornerstone to my story. Muscles need fuel and you can’t feed them garbage.

Thanks for everything!