With my work I found myself sitting for long hours, and by my mid-thirties my back gave up on me… No amount of Ironman training or marathon races or yoga or CrossFit or standing desks or expensive equipment or physical therapy or chiropractic adjustments or acupuncture or core work provided me with long-term relief.

I saw over 10 different physical therapists, chiropractors, spine doctors, acupuncturists, massage therapists… You name it and I tried it over the course of 5 years, spending tens of thousands of dollars on various solutions and equipment.

They were all helpful, I often found short-term relief, but I never got out of chronic pain. Then I started losing my mind trying to keep tabs on everything: breathe deep, don’t bend over too far, sit or stand but not too long, squeeze your glutes and activate your core — doh! don’t forget to not round your back! My back continued to give out once every several months, leading me on a vicious downward spiral — pain —> stress —> tightness —> less movement —> weakness —> more pain... It was a vicious cycle. My doctor eventually told me I needed surgery for my herniated disc, but I didn’t want to go down that path as I knew I still didn’t fully understand the cause and I’d seen to many people go through too many unsuccessful surgeries.

I gave myself one last shot — I wanted to try and figure this out for myself based on everything I had learned over the course of 5 years. I needed to be my own quarterback across this team of experts I had assembled because no one else could feel the signals my brain was sending and receiving related to my pain. I had learned all the other puzzle pieces I needed to do such as breath work, fascial release, muscle activation, proper movement technique, etc and I was juggling those like crazy but nothing worked.

It wasn’t until I really started listening to the signals my body was sending to my brain and searching online to try and understand the problem that I found a solution that worked, and I felt my body improve instantly. It started with learning about Zink’s findings on common compensation patterns which I found through Bill Hartman and Zac Cupples, where he noticed common irregular movement patterns across 20% of his patient sample size that was correlated to their levels of health. The descriptions he shared helped me visualize everything going on in my body, high hip, dominant right leg, the list goes on. I realized that was me. I then discovered Thomas Myer’s research on myofascial meridians which explained everything. All that time people had been telling me to squeeze my glutes and core and I began questioning whether I was even doing that right — understanding these power chains through my body allowed me to realize there were certain areas in my body that were just not activating — I started to pay attention and focus my attention on these areas. One of my chains had been completely overactive, while others were dormant in various parts of my body. I began searching for activation through various movements to find relief in my joint pain during certain movements. Over time I felt my body pull back into place in certain areas, and I continue to make gains. I had corrected my faulty pattern that was running throughout my body and forcing me to overly rely on weak muscles that were not intended for certain movements — such as sitting. It’s not the sitting itself that causes the pain, it’s that you’ve forgotten how to activate the simple chains in your body that hold you up because your brain has been out in space (ie in your computer or tv for example). For example, when sitting you may not be activating anything in your chest cavity, and potentially only relying on one chain which causes imbalances when you stand up — ie one chain is tighter than others.

When you lift your arm, you can recruit muscles throughout your body in different permutations for one motion: you can lift it and feel your lat engage, or you can lift it and feel your pec engage. This is what was happening in my back and hips, where I was only relying on one of these chains rather than leveraging all which are necessary to pick up an entire body. Once you light these chains, you can connect those chains all the way down to the floor for maximum power if you choose to, recruiting every muscle in your body. Those are the chains I was able to recognize based on Myer’s visuals, and I was able to create my own understanding of what held my body up. These chains are complicated and they run all the way down your body, with your frontal chain running through your inner core to your big toe and your lat running down your posterior to your little toe. Your brain is the puppet master contracting these chains and marching you around like a puppet, you just need to learn how to reconnect those signals which become dormant in today’s society where our energy is directed out of our bodies into the television, for example. I had only been activating my inner chain up and down my body which is why I had so much tension in my inner thigh and lower core. Once I realized I could light up both these chains throughout my entire body, I could distribute force to all my muscles.

Myer’s and others postured that there is EQ and IQ but there needs to be a KQ — kinesthetic intelligence — the skills and awareness you need to fully utilize your body, no different than an Olympian or Professional Athlete who has mastered the ability to leverage and torque their entire body for the greatest force. I was able to easily fix all my problems with only a few movements to reactivate both chains, and it was immediately obvious what I needed to do to walk or run or squat. I had a really low KQ, I’m not entirely sure why yet, but I had drastically increased my KQ within minutes which fixed all my problems. I didn’t need someone watching my form to make sure my butt was back, it didn’t matter once I fired all chains because I immediately felt confident in what I was doing and could leverage muscles throughout my body. Health and fitness experts shouldn’t think about strengthening and mobility of specific muscles, but of these entire chains. Those folks doing calisthenics and gymnastics and extraordinary feats to defy gravity with their bodies have enormous KQ’s and high levels of strength, which they developed and then didn’t burn away those neural connections with their body by sitting in front of computers and televisions all day where their neural capacity is connected to the television rather than their bodies.

Today, I’m back to lugging around my kids, running and biking, lifting weights, and sitting at my desk comfortably without any pain. I still put in work every day on maintenance, but I know the areas in my body that are still relatively inactive compared to other parts of my body. I feel confident when I need to bend over and get dishes out of the dishwasher. I’m well aware when things get really out of balance, and I have a toolset that I can use to bring things back into alignment for relief — or I just rest if I need to. Just like I floss my teeth a couple times a day for maintenance of my teeth, I’m now regularly working on my body for short periods several times a day to keep them activated — hence the name “Daily Back Floss”.

I hope my approach will help you recreate that mind body connection throughout your body, and then teach you to strengthen and repair your body holistically. You can use my services as a supplement to any other programs you are doing today.

If what I’m saying resonates for you and you want to learn more, I would recommend subscribing to my video content which will walk you through my holistic approach. If you’re a provider or academic and interested to learn more of the details around what I’m working on — feel free to contact me. If you serve clients in health and fitness and would like to partner with me, I’m willing to share 50% of my subscription proceeds for any referrals that you pass my way — please contact me.