Strengthen & Pain-Proof Your Back: The McGill Method

00:00:00.000 | Okay, so this video is designed to go with the Huberman Lab Podcast solo episode where I talk

00:00:04.640 | about how to strengthen and pain-proof your back. I'm going to show you the so-called McGill's Big

00:00:09.840 | Threes, so-called because they were developed by Dr. Stuart McGill, an expert in spine physiology.

00:00:15.680 | I'm also going to show you a psoas stretch, and I'm also going to show you a what sort of looks

00:00:20.560 | like a cobra pose in yoga. It's a certain kind of up-dog push-up where it's not a real push-up,

00:00:27.040 | but that too can be used to both pain-proof and strengthen the back, especially if you're

00:00:31.680 | experiencing some bulging, that is some herniation of the discs. One thing to keep in mind is that

00:00:36.640 | every body, everybody, is different in the sense that some people can do these movements with a

00:00:43.440 | little more arch in their neck or a little more holding of the neck in neutral position than

00:00:49.200 | others can without pain and with stability. So you'll see examples of these exercises

00:00:54.800 | multiple places online, and everyone does them slightly differently. What you're about to see

00:00:58.880 | are the core elements of the Big Three, the psoas stretch, and the up-dogs or cobra push-up for

00:01:07.120 | relieving some stress on impinged nerves as a consequence of bulging or herniation of the discs.

00:01:13.280 | Again, everyone does these slightly differently. Work within the range that is challenging for

00:01:18.480 | you, but that doesn't cause or exacerbate any pain for you. All that said, the exercises I'm

00:01:23.520 | about to show you require minimal time investment, no equipment, can be done by most everyone

00:01:29.120 | pain-free, and have been shown to be very beneficial for strengthening and pain-proofing

00:01:33.680 | your back. Okay, so the first exercise in McGill's Big Three is the curl-up. The curl-up is essentially

00:01:39.440 | where you lie down like so with, at first, legs extended. This is where you're going to start.

00:01:46.800 | You're going to take your hands and, with palms down, and you're going to put them in the small

00:01:53.360 | of your back, so in the arch of your back, and you actually want to maintain that arch in your back.

00:01:57.840 | Probably want to make your spine nice and long. Put one knee up with the leg flat, the other leg

00:02:05.360 | is extended, and then you're going to, again, keep the spine long, meaning you're not going to move

00:02:11.520 | the chin towards the chest too much. You're just going to keep it in a neutral position as if you

00:02:15.200 | were looking straight forward, or in this case, straight up at the ceiling, and then you're

00:02:21.440 | essentially going to, you could keep the elbows down, or you can float the elbows, which is a

00:02:25.760 | little bit more difficult. I'll float the elbows, and then you lift your upper torso just a bit,

00:02:31.680 | and of course, the head goes with it, but you're not going to lead with the head, you're going to

00:02:35.680 | lead with the chest. Okay, like so, and as you do that, I'm trying to talk while I'm doing this,

00:02:41.040 | you'll feel a nice hard contraction in the abdominals, okay? You're going to hold for

00:02:47.280 | about 10 seconds, and as you do that, you're not going to want to talk like I am now. You're going

00:02:51.600 | to want to put the tongue on the roof of your mouth, breathe through your nose, and exhale,

00:02:55.120 | and then you're going to relax down to the floor again, set the head down.

00:03:04.560 | You might want to rest somewhere between 10 and 30 seconds, depending on

00:03:09.520 | your particular needs, and then you're going to raise up your torso,

00:03:13.120 | leading with the chest, letting the head follow,

00:03:15.760 | holding for about 10 seconds. You can really get a nice hard contraction of the abdominals there,

00:03:30.880 | which is going to help to build stability. The reason, as I describe in the episode,

00:03:34.560 | for doing these 10-second holds as opposed to a 30-second set or a minute-long set is that

00:03:40.880 | repeated 10-second holds help you to build the neural pathways that allow you to contract those

00:03:44.560 | muscles very hard, which is the goal here. So, after repeating that, say, three to five times

00:03:50.160 | per set, okay? So, one set would be, say, three to five 10-second holds with 10 to 30, maybe 60

00:03:58.800 | seconds between each hold. It'll be one set with the knee up. You could perform multiple sets with

00:04:04.560 | this knee up and then switch to the other side. I talk about this in the episode. I recommend

00:04:08.400 | starting with just one set per side and then progressing to about three sets per side. You're

00:04:12.240 | going to switch to the other side in this case. So, here, again, it's a nice long spine,

00:04:18.640 | this leg extended, this foot planted with a bend in the knee. Use the tops of your hands,

00:04:27.600 | so palms down, to find the small of your back. Put your tongue on the roof of your mouth.

00:04:31.600 | Float the elbows if you can. Otherwise, you can keep the elbows down if you're not able to do that,

00:04:36.480 | and then just lift the upper torso and hold for 10 seconds.

00:04:40.240 | And down. And then you would repeat several times or more for this side, and then you could go back

00:04:55.920 | to the other leg, or simply do all the sets for one leg extended, then all the sets for the other

00:05:02.160 | leg extended. I talk about sets and reps, et cetera, in the episode on how to strengthen and

00:05:06.800 | pain-proof your back. This is a great exercise because it actually takes advantage of the

00:05:12.160 | ability to contract the abdominals much harder in this position and more efficiently than crunches

00:05:17.760 | done the conventional way. And I also talk about in the episode how crunches done the conventional

00:05:22.480 | way can often exacerbate disc herniation and bulging, whereas this should not. Although,

00:05:27.280 | again, if you experience pain or exacerbation of pain from doing this, you should cease to do it.

00:05:31.680 | So that's the curl-up. Okay, so the next exercise in Stu McGill's Big Three is the side plank.

00:05:37.440 | And the side plank can be done through a number of different progressions, which many people find

00:05:41.840 | they have to start with the easiest one and work their way up to the more difficult forms of the

00:05:46.320 | side plank. So the side plank, as the name suggests, is where you get on your side. The easiest way to

00:05:52.880 | start this, meaning to begin this exercise if you haven't done it before, is to do a kind of right

00:05:59.520 | angle bend in the arm that's in contact with the ground. You make a fist on that side. The knees

00:06:05.760 | are bent, okay, and the feet are stacked. And then you're going to both lift the hips off the ground,

00:06:12.960 | but also push down hard with the arm and the fist that's in contact with the floor. That's important.

00:06:19.200 | And it essentially looks like this, okay. So the idea is to not let the hips sag like so,

00:06:24.480 | to try and generate as much of a hard contraction in the abdominal muscles and the muscles of the

00:06:30.320 | core that are on the side here, okay. So that's the first progression you would hold for 10 seconds or

00:06:36.560 | so. I'm not counting exactly. Tongue on the roof of your mouth, and then let down, okay. Maybe rest

00:06:44.480 | 10, 30, maybe 60 seconds if you need to, and then repeat. Focusing hard on pushing the ground away.

00:06:57.600 | The next progression after doing this with the legs and feet stacked with the arm at 90 degrees

00:07:04.480 | would be to do it with the arm straight. You can do this with a fist if you're really strong. I'm

00:07:09.440 | still working up to that. Or you can do it with hand planted like so. So I'd probably suggest

00:07:14.880 | starting with the foot here. You can really feel a strong contraction there. Then moving to it with

00:07:20.640 | feet stacked. And this is really fatiguing me. You can see some quaking in that arm.

00:07:24.720 | Clearly I have some progression to work through. And relax. Okay, so that's the side plank. And of

00:07:32.480 | course you would do it on the other side as well, like so. Really emphasizing pushing the floor away.

00:07:42.960 | And there are a bunch of variations on these as well. There's some rotational stuff you can do.

00:07:47.040 | Some people like to do arms ahead or the foot floating. Those are harder progressions. You

00:07:52.640 | can find all of these online very easily, as you can tell because I'm breathing hard now.

00:07:57.600 | I've worked up to the point where I can do the feet stacked one for the sets,

00:08:01.360 | but I'm still working through the progressions of the side plank. Okay, the third exercise in

00:08:05.600 | McGill's Big Three is the bird dog. Love that name because I love birds and I love dogs.

00:08:11.440 | And basically what you do is you're going to get down on all fours like so.

00:08:14.480 | You're going to at first plant your hands, plant your knees. Then what you're going to do is you're

00:08:22.800 | going to actively push the ground away with one hand. That's important. You're going to raise up

00:08:28.640 | the other one and into a fist. That's important. I explain why in the episode on how to strengthen

00:08:35.120 | and pain-proof your back. And then you're going to extend the opposite leg to the one where the

00:08:41.360 | arm is extended. Okay, so opposite side. And I explain the logic behind this in the episode.

00:08:47.680 | Okay, some common mistakes are that people arch the back too much and raise this leg too much.

00:08:52.320 | You don't need to do that. You just want to raise it up. Some people will point the toe,

00:08:58.240 | it's fine to point the toe or to just keep heel to the ceiling. You're going to actively reach

00:09:02.480 | with this fist out in front. Okay, and you're going to actively push down. You'll really feel

00:09:06.560 | that contraction in the core. It takes some concentration to make sure that you're activating

00:09:10.320 | your core, tongue on the roof of your mouth, neck in a slightly arched position. Neutral

00:09:15.440 | is okay too, looking forward. And then if you want to make this a little bit tougher,

00:09:21.760 | you can do some circles or squares with the extended leg and hand in both directions.

00:09:28.960 | If you want to make it even harder, you can gently, while maintaining

00:09:34.160 | contraction of the core, touch your hand to your knee and back out. Definitely don't just,

00:09:41.600 | you know, swing the hand in and touch your knee. Go back and move it nice and slow so you can feel

00:09:45.520 | the contraction in your core. Go for at least a 10-second hold with the repeats as described in

00:09:55.120 | the episode before you start doing some of these kind of square movements and touches, etc.

00:10:01.760 | And then down. Okay, and then you need to repeat for the other side. So actively pressing down,

00:10:07.120 | that's a key feature here. You know, fist out in front and reaching, tongue on the roof of your

00:10:12.080 | mouth, opposite leg extended. Don't go too high. You're not trying to get a steep arch in the

00:10:20.400 | lower back, just get that core contraction. Take some concentration and then hold for at least 10

00:10:27.440 | seconds. Helps to exhale. And if you want, you can do some of these movements. You can do the nice

00:10:36.160 | slow touching of the fist to the knee, keeping that contraction in the core. And out. Keeping

00:10:45.360 | contraction in the core. And out. Building spine and core and upper back stability.

00:10:55.120 | That's the bird dog. Okay, so the next exercise is a psoas stretch. The psoas, as described in

00:11:04.320 | the episode, is a muscle that attaches the spine to the pelvis. Does some other things too. It's

00:11:10.320 | involved with the diaphragm, which of course is involved in your breathing. And guess what? Your

00:11:13.920 | diaphragm is also involved in your heart rate, regulating your heart rate by virtue of how much

00:11:18.480 | space there is in the thoracic cavity. So a lot of interesting stuff about the psoas. You can read up,

00:11:22.880 | you can learn more about it in the episode. But stretching your psoas is wonderful. It both can

00:11:27.440 | provide some relief for tightness in the hips, challenges in breathing, especially after sitting,

00:11:33.680 | for relieving pressure on certain nerve roots. And there are a bunch of other benefits as well.

00:11:37.680 | It's very easy to do. It more or less looks like a warrior two pose in yoga. And forgive me,

00:11:42.880 | I'm not a trained yogi. I've taken a few yoga classes in my day, however. And what you're

00:11:48.000 | essentially going to do is get into a lunge where the front knee is a little bit bent. This is going

00:11:52.560 | to depend a little bit on your degree of flexibility. Again, every body is different.

00:11:56.800 | But what you're essentially going to do here is you're going to go into a lunge, which this,

00:12:00.880 | for me, I can start to feel a stretch on my hip here. And then you're going to raise the arm on

00:12:05.760 | the side for which the leg is behind you. And you're going to put the palm of your hand to

00:12:11.280 | the ceiling. And then you're going to turn your pinky towards your head and really reach and then

00:12:17.520 | move into the lunge a little bit deeper. So now I'm getting a deeper stretch in the hip

00:12:22.800 | flexor. Really feeling it all the way from the hip flexor up through the psoas, through the arm,

00:12:30.480 | and you can really reach, reach, reach, reach, reach. Exhale, again, tongue on the roof of your

00:12:35.840 | mouth. Eyes can be forward or eyes can be up. And relax. You would repeat that three or five times

00:12:43.280 | per side and call that one set. And then you would do it for the other side. So like so.

00:12:47.920 | Again, and by the way, the heel of my back foot is off the ground. Some people prefer

00:12:56.240 | and/or can do it with their heel in contact. If of course I tighten my stance, I can do it

00:13:01.360 | with the heel in contact. I prefer to do it this way with my back heel up, front foot completely

00:13:07.040 | planted. And then it's lunge forward until I start to feel a stretch in the hip flexor here.

00:13:14.880 | And arm goes up. My eyes are up, in my case, palm parallel to the floor,

00:13:23.600 | parallel to the ceiling, and then turning the pinky toward my head,

00:13:29.120 | exhaling through my nose, tongue on the roof of the mouth.

00:13:34.800 | Again, I can feel the stretch the whole way down and back to the toes. We talk about some of the

00:13:43.520 | fascial, that is the fascia aspects of this, the neural aspects and the neuromuscular aspects in

00:13:50.560 | the episode on how to strengthen and pain-proof your back. You might do that for one to five

00:13:56.960 | sets, depending on how much time you have, how much work you're trying to put into strengthening

00:14:01.120 | and pain-proofing your back. As you can see, you can do this in work clothes. These are not my

00:14:05.040 | workout clothes. These are my work clothes. And generally you can do it without working up a

00:14:08.560 | sweat. I've got a little bit of perspiration here because I'm putting a lot of effort into it and

00:14:12.080 | I'm talking at the same time, but you can essentially do these anywhere. Now, this last

00:14:15.760 | exercise was one that was taught to me by a guy named Grant Elliott, who has a terrific Instagram

00:14:20.160 | channel called Rehab Fix. It's a back exercise designed to relieve pain when you're getting

00:14:25.120 | some bulging, that is herniation of the disc that's impinging on the nerves. For me, that was

00:14:29.440 | about an L3, L4 impingement. It was so bad that I could barely walk. I was like doubled over like

00:14:35.760 | this. I could barely walk. I didn't know what to do. I thought maybe I needed surgery or I need

00:14:40.880 | pain meds. Some people, yes, do need surgery and or pain meds for lower back injuries and pain.

00:14:46.560 | But in my case, what Grant Elliott instructed me to do, which helped immediately and resolve the

00:14:51.920 | whole thing within just a couple of days, was to do a sort of cobra pose pushup. So, what I do,

00:14:58.160 | so I'll get down on the floor like so. I put my hands more or less at clavicle level,

00:15:03.520 | a little bit behind, maybe in line with my chest. My feet are together and pointed back.

00:15:08.400 | My elbows are back and then I push up off the ground. Again, tongue on the roof of the mouth.

00:15:14.320 | Sometimes I'll go up higher like so, but usually it's just to about here and then release

00:15:22.320 | and relax. And then I'll repeat doing about anywhere from three to five second holds.

00:15:33.280 | I'll do that for maybe five to 10 repetitions.

00:15:37.120 | I'm going to do fewer now for sake of time. And then on the last repetition, I'll hold,

00:15:42.560 | trying to go long with the spine, for anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds,

00:15:51.680 | and then relax. And I'll do that several times throughout the day. It helped tremendously and

00:15:59.520 | immediately to relieve my back pain, which was, again, excruciating, was also causing pain in the

00:16:05.440 | hip and down the leg. If you listen to the episode on how to strengthen and pain-proof your back,

00:16:10.320 | at least for the back pain that I had, where there was a disc impingement on a nerve root

00:16:15.600 | and the direction of the herniation of the disc was that away towards my back,

00:16:21.600 | it made perfect sense. It does make perfect sense why that would help relieve it because

00:16:26.720 | it's essentially taking that disc and encouraging it to move back under those vertebrae, so to speak.

00:16:31.120 | I realize that's not the technical term. For other types of back pain, you might need to

00:16:35.040 | do a slightly different variation or avoid that variation. For instance, if the impingement is

00:16:39.920 | in the front, that exercise would actually exacerbate it. However, what I was doing prior

00:16:46.400 | to that exercise, such as crunches, was actually making the disc herniation worse. So that exercise

00:16:52.560 | I just showed you was the way that I relieve my back pain and many others that I know have used

00:16:56.800 | it to relieve their back pain because it was caused by the same disc herniation pattern.

00:17:02.480 | Okay, so that's the cobra push-up, sort of up-dog type cobra push-up. I don't have a better name

00:17:07.600 | for it. Maybe you can come up with a better name for it. Put that in the comment section below.

00:17:11.680 | I'll take a tally and we'll go with the top one from here.

00:17:14.000 | Okay, so that's McGill's Big Three, meaning that's the curl-up, the side plank, and the bird dog.

00:17:19.760 | I also showed you this in a warrior two pose with the palm towards the ceiling, which is designed to

00:17:25.600 | stretch the psoas and involves some fascial stretching as well and some activation of the

00:17:30.160 | entire pathway from hand to hip and provides a really terrific stretch. Obviously, you want to

00:17:34.560 | do those both sides. And this cobra push-up/up-dog thing that can, in many cases, provide relief for

00:17:41.520 | the nerve roots that are being impinged upon by a bulging or herniated disc. At least that's what

00:17:46.480 | it did for me. Hope you found those useful. Again, lots of variations on these. You can find them on

00:17:50.800 | the internet. You can find them in Stu McGill's book and other resources. We provided links to

00:17:54.800 | the various people as well as the book resources and a few other videos that are going to be useful

00:17:59.760 | for you as you try to navigate back pain and strengthen your back and pain-proof your back.

00:18:05.120 | And of course, please check out the full-length episode of the Huberman Lab podcast that I did

00:18:08.560 | all about how to strengthen and pain-proof your back. It gets into all the logic, the science,

00:18:12.560 | the details, and of course, protocols. And last but certainly not least,

00:18:16.960 | thank you for ignoring the color of the carpet and thank you for your interest in science.

00:18:20.880 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Strengthen & Pain-Proof Your Back: The McGill Method | Dr. Andrew Huberman

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