YouSaid · the spoken record

Dr. Stefi Cohen

lines on the record: 122
first: 2021-01-07
most recent: 2021-01-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So I would practice, I would practice going through different scenarios and when I arrived at one that I thought would be the best course of action, then that's what I stick to. And what's interesting is that the next time I compete was the same competition just the following year. And I got up there. I was more prepared than I had ever been. sports psychology for an entire year. I took time off after my injury. I was feeling strong. I was making a ton of progress, feeling confident. And I got up to a platform and I missed my first squad attempt, which is something that I could have done, that I had done in training for five reps. So it's relatively light. Like something that you can do for five reps is like you're 80, 85%. And I missed it on depth. So the judges from the side didn't think that my hip crease was below my knee. That's how they determine depth. And they gave me red lights.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, how I've responded in the past was Person who wrapped my knees, they don't know what they're doing. My left part of my knee was hurting me. I would have just assigned a blame to something external to someone else. And subsequently just have, you know, be upset or sad or angry or whatever it might be.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And instead of avoiding those thoughts, the thought of things going wrong was what was in my mind every single day after that. Well, what if that happens to me again? And then I ask myself the question, well, what if that happens to me again? Like, how am I going to respond? Like, I should probably have a plan of what I'm going to do if that ever happens again. I started visualizing, like I said, negative outcomes. So I go through the same beginning of the visual imagery starting from putting my single lid on, putting my shoes on. They call my name. The bar is loaded, go onto the platform. I say it's a squat. I squat and I miss. Okay, what am I going to do? And I just played with different scenarios of how I was going to react to a situation like that. And what's interesting is that...”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Platform pressure starts setting in, you have all these expectations by other people, by yourself. And it really terrified me to go back on the platform after that happened. I was embarrassed. I was really embarrassed.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think part of the way that we react to certain situations is related to how prepared we are for that situation. And when it comes to negative outcomes, you know, especially as athletes, we're told to always keep a positive attitude. We're always taught to think positively, to not think about anything going wrong. And I think that does a disservice because things are going to go wrong at one point or the other. It doesn't matter what your winning streak is, whether you're a boxer, an MMA fighter, a powerlifter. There's going to be a point where it's not going to go your way. And how you react to that is dependent on how prepared you were to deal with that situation. So I actually started working with a sports psychologist after I bombed out of that meat that we were talking about because you start doubting yourself. You start doubting your ability to make lifts on.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not because they're improving stability, not because you're unstable and now you're stable, not because it's magical, but because of these reasons. So same with those three movements that you were doing by Greg Cook.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People being extremely overprotective in their strategy. So what actually happens with these three exercises, the dead bug, the bird dog, and the side plank, is that the reason why they decrease pain symptoms is twofold. The first thing is you're essentially providing a positive movement experience, again, if you're having acute bout of back pain or if you've been in pain for a while, it's about finding opposition that doesn't increase your pain symptoms. And the other one is a very well documented phenomenon called exercise-induced analgesia, which is basically, you know, when you're contracting a muscle isometrically, there's muscle spindles and chemoreceptors within your muscle that send signals to the brain to down-regulate the pain signal. So it provides you with a temporary reduction in pain symptoms. So it's not that they're magical. It's just that they work based on these two mechanisms.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why? So when I first learned about those movements, I'm like, okay, I mean, these provide me with relief, but why is it? Because these are some magical movements or, you know, what is going on here. And I think the assumption that a lot of people make is that that improves core stability because they assume that that's the missing link. And that's, again, that's dangerous because it goes back to perpetuating that fear that people have about their spines and it leads to...”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So literally, I mean, how you would encounter a dead bug when they're on their back and they're like flailing their arms in the air. That's what doing the dead bug looks like.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But then that goes to show that no one, you know, that there's no magic exercise. I love talking about the McGuilk III. So for anyone who doesn't know Jordill is one of the most well-known authors when it comes to low back pain and research. And a lot of people kind of put this three exercises on a pedestal and view him as this guru because somehow the bird dog, the dead bug, and the side plank became the best way to cure all back pain.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your body more options for movement where it felt non threatened and it felt safe. So almost any movement has the capability to do that. And that's why I emphasize the importance of having a GPP, a general physical preparedness face to any program. And that's something that really gets lost in over specialized sports like powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting is that people think they have to be doing squat bench and deadlift all the time. don't find time or don't find or ignore the fact that they have to include other movements in order to maintain their longevity and in order to kind of boost their own tissue tolerance and their ability to remain injury free.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think part of the reason why you experienced a positive, what you had a positive experience with those movements by implementing them into your existing training has to do with movement variability. So what happens when we look at people who are hurt, one of the things that jumps out the most is the lack of movement options that they have, lack of movement variability. So the more hurt that you are, the less movement options you have. So essentially, you're expanding your movement vocabulary by incorporating movements that challenge you in different planes. You know, your ability to resist forces that are coming different ways, you know, by holding a kettlebell in the overhead position, the chop that's working on the transfers plane, you're working on your rotators, your spinal stabilizers. So I think the reason why that worked for you was essentially because you increased your movement vocabulary and you were giving.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are capable of strengthening and stabilizing any position as long as it's the position that we're training, if that makes sense.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot more robust than a willow tree when wind blows onto it versus stability is just the ability of a system to return to normal after a disturbance. So the notion that back pain or people who get hurt, deadlifting or doing anything lacks stability is unfounded because as biological beings, we have the capability to either up regulate or down-regulate the amount of tension that is in our muscles at any given time in proportion to the task that we are doing. So the amount of stability that you need to lay on your couch is different than the amount of stability that you need when you're lifting something up. Not to mention, it's difficult to measure. Like no one knows how much stability you need or anything like that so.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They've changed in the angles that they're in. They're already flexing. So there's nothing necessarily inherently wrong with that. There's no instability going on because essentially what is stability? That's funny. That is what got me into this whole topic. People talking about low back stability. You got to improve stability, stability, stability of the segments. That was something that was so hammered in our brains and physical therapy school that I had to go back and see what the fuzz was about when it came to that. But essentially we need to understand the differences and concepts between stability and robustness when it comes to back pain so that we can understand essentially what their recommendations would be. In terms of definitions, robustness, and I like to bring the analogy of comparing an oak tree to a willow tree. So in terms of robustness is your ability to cope with disturbances in your environment. So an oak tree will be”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, because we have this obsession with not rounding when we bend forward. Again, one of those beliefs that I've been perpetuated over the years coming from probably someone interpreting a research paper incorrectly, that is a very advanced deadlifting technique that he developed, he skillfully developed throughout the years in order to make that position his strongest position and the least likely position for him to get hurt. Now the obsession of like keeping your back straight when you deadlift is kind of silly because even when you can't observe that there's rounding in the lower back, your spinal segments are at about 60 to 70 percent inflection even When you're not seeing any flexion happening, when your back is in quote unquote neutral, your back is bent. Your spinal segments are already.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How they lift, like they have their backgrounded and they're picking up super heavy stuff and their form quote unquote looks bad because we have this idea of what good form is versus what bad form is totally arbitrary based on, I don't know what who said they say people love to say they say that's bad form. I don't know who they is. But essentially, you know, these people have trained those positions, those postures, those movements that way for their entire life. Therefore, those are the positions that they are the strongest in. So when it comes to modifying the way that you lift or the way that you pick up things or the way that you pick up your baby or the way you don't need to move like anyone else, you need to move like yourself. Whatever you've been doing for a long time that hasn't given you problems, then that's the way that you should continue moving.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they determined that those with the most back endurance were the most resilient to back injuries. And then it goes back to positions, postures, and movements that you practice. So a lot of people, for example, when people want to get into running, running is accessible to everyone, right? You just put a pair of sneakers on and you go out and run. The thing that happens with that is that you didn't appropriately expose yourself to the mileage that you were going to do or the terrain. And so making sure that there's an appropriate, again, an appropriate progression in what you're doing and you're practicing those specific movements. Those are going to be the movements that are safe for you. So there's also research studies done where you change the way that people lift things. So again, this was, I think it was construction workers again where have you”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, according to the literature, it's not so much strengthening. It's not either a stability thing. That's another hole that we can get into. But I mean, the best way, I guess, to prevent any injury, back injuries is endurance. So there's a bunch of studies done on construction workers and other form of labor workers. And they determined essentially that the ones with the most back endurance and they measured this via doing hold back extensions. So how long can you hold a back extension so it's not necessarily for strength, but more so how long can you hold a certain posture?”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Positive in terms of delivering a more positive response to pain. Because essentially you start forming these habits that are tied to your experience with pain. It's not more of a sensation anymore. It's about the perception we have and the experiences that we have that literally alter the way that we feel and think and sense threat from the environment.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is super interesting. I actually would love to read more about ketamine specifically for persistent pain, but it just goes to show just how powerful our brains are, right? Like if you're experiencing persistent pain, our bodies adapt to literally anything. So it would make no sense that you have something broken or something that needs fixing for two plus years, even for more than six months, it's already a stretch. So it just goes to show how, and in your case, with the ketamine infusion, but anything that breaks the pain cycle is.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you are a lifter, you have to figure out what your margin of error is when it comes to your injury. When do your symptoms start appearing? Is it at 50%? Is it at 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%? When do they start appearing? During the time where your symptoms seem to be heightened, then that's a good time for you to stay underneath that margin of error and stay underneath that pain threshold so you can essentially teach your body how to get out of pain.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then within direction, there's also compression versus shear, especially when it comes to the low back. So compression, you can do an easy test just by sitting on a chair and you put your hands underneath the chair and you push yourself, your buttocks towards the chair, creating compression. So are you intolerant to compression or is it more shear? So bending forward, say with a light object on your hands farther away from your body, does that increase your pain more? So just checking in with yourself to gain more understanding about the things that improve your pain or decrease your pain. Then what are some of the postures that increase the painful sensations? Is it sitting down? Is it standing up? Is it walking a lot? Is it not walking a lot? Is it running? Is it lifting? Is it, you know, what are you doing in the day to day that exacerbates your symptoms? And finally, figuring out what you're”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is more specific to low back pain, but it Directional reference that it would literally apply to any injury. Does it hurt when you bend your knee or when you extend your knee? Does it hurt when you rotate your neck to the right or when you rotate your neck to the left? So it's just kind of like you're checking in with yourself to see. Are the positions that increase your symptoms and what are the positions that decrease your symptoms? That's essentially all that it is.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Terms of this is something an assessment it's something that you can do on your own is instead of focusing on what needs fixing or what is the failing structure, you can focus on things that are a lot more actionable in your assessment or your therapist or whoever's doing it for you or yourself. And the things that I look at are first directional preference. So essentially what that means is are you flexion or extension intolerant? So does it hurt when you bend forward or does it hurt when you bend backwards? That's the first thing that you need to figure out. And you'll know.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, of course. And like I said, look, there's two views there's a mechanistic and then there's the pain science. So again, I fall somewhere in the middle. I would never say that there's no way that nothing's going on underneath your skin. I'm sure that there's some cases where there's an actual structure that's getting irritated that somehow got hurt. And that is the source of pain. But in 95% of cases, we really don't know what the source is. And I don't think that should be discouraging. I think that should be encouraging because now you can relate your pain experience to most cases. It's always good when you fall within the lines of the probability and not when you're outside. That's when you're in trouble because you're a special case. You don't want to be a special case.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of 20 year olds have asymptomatic degenerative distance and discreneations. Those numbers bump all the way up to 84 and 94% for people over 80 years old. So it's just that what you see on the inside is a better way to look at it is as just wrinkles on the inside. Things that happen naturally from aging and we need to stop to detach the emotions that we have with I guess those images because they don't really tell you much about what the person is experiencing”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Further away from the mechanistic views of the sources of back pain. So all this means is we come from a background where when it comes to the neurophysiology of pain, we used to tie the severity of a symptom to the amount of damage in our body. And with the evolution of pain science, especially now that it's kind of permeating more into the physical therapy realm and fitness and sports. Now we understand that pain isn't directly tied to tissue damage. So we essentially we are overly relying on diagnostic tests like the MRI or the x-rays because it's essentially, it gives you a really good picture of what's inside, but it completely takes out of the equation the subjectivity of pain. So we know just based on research that or based on studies that 36”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I would just say how can we decrease your symptoms or how can we decrease your discomfort? There's nothing to fix, especially when it comes to, like I said, 95% of those cases, you know, we're moving.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even when it comes to scientific research, there's actually studies, and I don't have the name of it here, but there's actually studies that prove that more often than not the results of a study are likely incorrect or non-generalizable.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess I practice on myself and on people that are around me. Most clinicians between patients and paperwork and all the things that they have to do in a day, they don't really have time to dive into the research like I did. You know, this book took two years to write and we pretty much go back 5,000 years to understand where our beliefs come from and how science has evolved and how pain science has impacted some of their recommendations and how it's changed over the years so that hopefully we can have a more unified approach when it comes to back rehab essentially.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Imagine that, right? Like I'm the patient in this case and I'm going to what I would consider kind of the most powerful figures of authority that I had access to, professors that I look up to, professors that are PhDs that are doing research, maybe some that were biomechanists, some that are spine specialists. And still I was not getting one, I wasn't getting any relief and two, I wasn't again, I wasn't getting any consistency in their answers. So that's when I started reading a ton about it and obsessing about it to the point where I thought I should write a book to help clear up some of the confusion that not only clinicians are experiencing, but obviously patients. And I think part of that problem lies, and I'm lucky in the sense that I practice physical therapy and the non-traditional sense because I don't see patients. I spend most of my time reading research, which again is one part of evidence-based practice.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly And that was my wake up call. That was the moment when I was like, okay, I actually have to do something. I have to do something to fix this or to get out of pain. And that's when my quest for figuring out low back injuries came in. I had obviously had access to a lot of seemingly great physical therapists given that I was in a top 10 nationwide program for physical therapy. And I was able to ask for different opinions from a lot of people. And what was surprising to me was that I was constantly getting different answers. They didn't seem to have really anything in common and it was just so evident to me that no one really knew what they were talking about. Really like I would just get a different diagnosis every time I would go to talk to a different person. I got no consistency in terms of their responses.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I called Ed when that happened and I called Mark Bell called both of them and I asked him what they would do and I asked him if they've competed injured and they both said yes so I was like man you know if if they can do it I can do it like there's I'm a week out of a competition yeah I got really hurt but whatever you know I'll just I'll suck it up and then I'll rest afterwards kind of thing So I did it. I competed. It was the worst competition of my life. I bummed out in an international stage. It was pretty embarrassing.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, just something really wrong. So I tossed the bar onto the pins, fell down onto the floor, and lay there for 45 minutes without being able to move, without being able to take my belt off, nothing. Just completely just paralyzed by pain. And obviously, you know, at that point was, I actually know you would think that I would take a step back then. I actually took, I think I took a week off and then went to San Diego to compete in the biggest powerlifting competition of the year. I actually called.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Morning just so stiff. Like, I looked like I was 120 years old. I could barely move. I needed to have assistance doing many things. And what's crazy is that I still thought that it was normal. I'm like, I'm a powerlifter. I'm expected to feel this way. And that just led to this one lift one time. I remember I unwrapped the bar. I was going for a three rep max personal best. And I unracked the bar. I felt kind of more wobbly than normal in my low back. I lowered the bar down and at the bottom of the lift I just felt kind of like a snap on my back or kind of”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we just tend to ignore the signals that our body is sending us. So that's exactly what I did. Even what's funny is that even, you know, I had a pretty solid understanding about the human body and injuries and how this all works. And even then, I was just so, it wasn't such denial of what I was experiencing that I just essentially kept increasing the amount of painkillers that I was taking and didn't change anything else, kept showing up to training, kept training as hard as I was before. Just started maybe tying my belt a little bit tighter, you wearing my belt a little bit sooner. And like I said, increasing the amount of painkillers I was taking. And it was a recipe for disaster. I spent several months training in excruciating pain to the point where it started affecting my activities of daily living. I was having a hard time putting my socks on or putting my shoes on. Remember waking up.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not as bad as it seems, and you just try to look for ways to continue training. You think it's part of the game. You know, you think that no pain, no gain. These are all things that are so deeply ingrained in our beliefs as athletes that we have a hard time.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I'll give you guys a little background on the type of injury I had, and then I'll get into some of the things that I did to get out of it essentially. I was in my first year of physical therapy school the first time that I had a seemingly career ending injury. For some reason, you know, we attach so much emotion to a low back injury. I'm assuming it's mostly cultural and societally based. It's just the fear surrounding back injuries that's been perpetuated by healthcare professionals and doctors based on many, many things that I actually talk about in my book. The first time I remember it was chronic in nature in the sense that it was just getting increasingly worse every training session. And I guess any high-level performer athlete would relate to this in the sense that you at the beginning, when you start experiencing aches and pains, you try to ignore them, try to convince yourself that”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then as far as increasing the tolerance, then again, that just goes, you got to reduce workload or modify workload so that your tissues can actually have time to repair from your previous training days and be able to continue repairing healing and then doing it all over again. That is the essence of injuries. And anyone that tells you anything more complex or that tries to tell you that your multifidous is irritated or is inflamed or that you're whatever. Like people just get so caught up on just these details that matter very little when it comes to creating a plan of care for a patient.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, your sacraliac joint is pretty much on your hip. So if you were to put your hands on your hip with your thumbs facing backwards, it's like essentially where your thumb ends up naturally when you put your hands on your waist. It's a common area that gets hurt when you're lifting weights. But anyway, so what I'm saying is sometimes when that happens is also a matter of, you know, where are those forces being dispersed within your body and why is that one area taking up most of that load? So a corrective exercise is essentially figuring out what exercises you can do that would spare the irritated tissue. That's what a corrective exercise is.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Their tolerance. So the way I visualize it, it's a two part equation where you have load on one side, you have tolerance on one side. So it becomes about managing external forces and building internal tolerance to those forces. So when I talk about load, it's everything I spoke about, how you organize your training, you know, whether you're going through the right phases and you're progressively increasing the amount of weight that you're lifting to allow your tissues to be able to withstand those forces. Then on the same topic of load, say that you start having an area or a tissue that's starting to get irritated. How, well, you have to think about how are these forces being dispersed within your body, you know, maybe the way that you're lifting, say, people have a side joint pain.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I always say this Sherlock Holmes of injuries can pinpoint the exact area of weakness that you have that will lead to an injury. And that type of thinking is overly simplistic and it's outdated. We like to think that we have the answers for everything. Maybe that happens because humans want to know the exact cause of things and then maybe healthcare practitioners feel pressured to have to give this very specific and concrete answers when in reality injuries are multifactorial and more often than not identifying the exact source of an injury or why it happened or what tissue is injured is very, very difficult. The best way that I can explain this is injuries, not most times always happen when the load that you're imparting on tissues exceeds”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm a little bit adverse to those terms because I think they're oftentimes Used out of context and for their wrong purposes, especially by medical professionals, physical therapists, chiropractors. But I think it's, look, rehab, rehab are essentially training. So it falls into periodization. It falls into how are you organizing your training to make sure you're actually going through the appropriate phases to set you up to be able to withstand so that your tissues essentially can tolerate the amount of load that you're placing on them. This is something that I actually love talking about is why do injuries happen? You know, most people think that they can prevent injuries through stretching or they can prevent injuries through doing rehab or corrective exercises. And that's nothing more than someone trying to position themselves in a way that makes them seem like they know something that you don't. Positioning themselves as if, you know, they're some sort of like.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm following that split, then I'll likely deadlift closer to my least intense squat day. So I'll likely deadlift within the beginning of the week if I'm going to split it that way so that I'm not so tired by the end of the week and can actually see what I'm capable of doing in the deadlift. And then bench, I usually keep it a lot higher volume, even during an anticipation phase. I think that especially for women, because we I don't know what the phenomenon is. I actually want to get into that because I don't have an answer, but something about the bench press and women, we just make progress a lot slower. And I think in terms of absolute strength, we rarely reach it. So we can get away with pretty much anything, with doing higher volume, lower volume, more sets, more reps, whatever it is. And it doesn't seem to like impact the way that we recover from these sessions.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Personally, I like squatting two or three times per week, deadlifting one time per week and benching three to four times per week. So in the intensification phase, you're basically staying within nothing more than five reps. So I tend to when I'm squatting five reps. So, okay, let's. And so the reps go down, but the intensity goes up as the week goes by.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, you decondition in every other area. Like you move like you're made out of tinfoil, like you're made out of metal. And seriously, it's awful. You were strong as so there's that.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and do nothing else other than that, maybe a little bit of core, a little bit of back just because you have to start focusing and hyper specializing more into those three things that you're going to be tested on. Then you go through a two-week deload period where you pretty much cut everything that you've been doing in half by 50%. And then you got your competition. And it's funny because when you get to your competition, it's like you're the strongest you've ever been, you know, after going through that process, but you're also the least human that you've ever been as well. Like going up a flight of stairs is excruciatingly tiring.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, in preparation for a competition, you essentially break down your training into four blocks. You have your general, your GPP, your general physical preparedness phase, where you're essentially just accumulating volume, improving just your aerobic capacity, your ability to do multiple reps. So this is a high volume phase. Then you move into a more specialized block where you start getting rid of all the fluff in your programs, you start decreasing the amount of cardio you do, the amount of exercise variability, and you start increasing the frequency of the main lifts. So you start squatting, benching, and deadlifting more because those are the three lifts that are tested in competition. Then you go into the intensification phase, which is where you start increasing the intensity. So you start getting into the 85, 90, 95, 100% of the three main loops.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the Bulgarian, Russian that goes all the way to the other extreme, which is if your goal is to get stronger, then you have to train in a way that's conducive to the adaptations that you're trying to elicit. Like if you're trying to get better at your one mile, you're trying to beat your one mile run, you're gonna run one mile often. So same principle here. If you're trying to get a better one Repmax squat, you got to be squatting to a, you know, daily max or a really high intensity often. And where my training philosophies fall is somewhere down the middle. And it's the same way with pretty much everything in my life. I try not to swing in one particular direction. I try to stay unbiased and I try to kind of learn a little bit from everyone from every camp and then apply it to myself and to the people that I coach. So as far as the way that I train and coach other people, it's a mix.”
2021-01-07 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #491: Dr. Stefi Cohen — 25 World Records, Power Training, Deadlifting 4.4x Bodyweight, Sports Psychology, Overcoming Pain, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT