As fans of the NFL, we simply must come to terms with how, as fans, we’re part of creating an environment where, for our entertainment, this type of injury is common.
Thanks to a smart mouthguard, we were able to understand, for the first time, exactly what happens in the brain of a player who takes the kind of brain-rattling hit that happens every team, every game, almost on every play.
I still watch NFL but it’s becoming more and more ethically difficult to justify my continued viewing when the league is doing such a poor job in dealing with this problem. Setting aside the bigger philosophical issues and focusing on what’s realistically possible, when a helmet-to-helmet hit happens, the offending player should be thrown out of the game and possibly suspended. We have plenty of evidence that simply penalizing his team 15 yards is not enough to change behavior.
I couldn’t get the link/permalink to work so you’re going to have to copy and paste the permalink into your browser.
In case you have any doubt about why movement teachers who want to teach safely – isn’t that ALL of us? – simply must eliminate loaded spinal movement, please, for the sake of your own competency and for the sake of your clients, watch this recently published 1 hour 4 minute video podcast of Dr. McGill being interviewed by Travis Mash.
Travis Mash is an elite strength trainer specializing in barbell, and 100% of every single thing discussed applies to the teaching of movement including Pilates, Yoga, Cross Fit or Barre.
I have incorporated into my work the safety-in-training aspects of 100% of every single thing discussed – it’s perfectly possible to still teach classical Pilates without teaching unsafely! – and if you’d like to conform 100% of your teaching to the logical and simple realities of spine safety, I can help.
I have the model Dr. McGill uses to demonstrate and here’s what DynamicDiscDesigns, the model manufacturer, had to say about this piece: “After explaining delamination using the models, a bit of a mic drop.”I don’t know what more evidence you want”. Thank you Dr. McGill!”
I have the spine and disc model Dr. McGill uses, if you want to borrow it, let me know and I’ll mail it to you so you can learn from it, then teach your clients from it.
Here’s a link to Dr. McGill’s website: http://www.backfitpro.com/
Travis Mash has spent decades studying the barbell. He is one of the few people – if not the only one – to bridge the worlds of powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, and athletic strength and conditioning.
Travis was a World Champion in powerlifting. He competed in a world-class level in Olympic weightlifting. He has coached professional Olympic weightlifters alongside Don McCauley and Glenn Pendlay at Team MDUSA and now coaches the most successful weightlifting team in America.
He has coached 8-year-olds, high school athletes landing D-1 scholarships, NFL players, elite powerlifters, average Joes wanting to get in shape, Olympic hopefuls, and even middle-aged mothers who struggled to do a weightless squat.
No one else understands all aspects of the barbell better than Travis Mash. And now he is eager to share his insight with you.
I love studying the philosophy, technique and progress of anybody, from any walk of life, who manages to make impressive positive change. I study the leaders of the world’s most progressive, problem-solving, innovative companies, I study the managers and coaches who assemble, lead and motivate the world’s most winning teams, and I study psychology as it pertains to the architecture of change. I use in my own work absolutely everything I learn from studying the methods of the world’s most successful, accomplishes and productive professionals.
As an example, here’s a great piece from Western Michigan Head Football Coach P.J. Fleck’s from the Players’ Tribune, an online publication that I spend a whole bunch of time reading, and learning from.
Here’s my favorite quote from the P.J. Fleck piece:
“You have to look inward and challenge yourself to change your best — to truly go beyond the limits of what you think you’re capable of — every day, and not just when it comes to football, but also academics, your social life and your spiritual life.”
Read the pice and you’ll see that he’s talking about perpetually achieving excellence in life, and this exact strategy – changing your best – is what I teach conceptually in my Gap Filler course, and what I teach thoroughly and through implementation in my REVAMP | Professional Ascent Mentorship course.
Most people find “Changing Your Best” tremendously uncomfortable – that’s why it’s so lonely at the tippy top of any discipline or industry. Those who can occasionally “change their best” often have trouble sustaining the willingness – which I promise eventually becomes actual eagerness – that it takes to put everything on the line, every interaction, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year.
Like with any relationship, it’s the relentlessness that’ll buckle everyone but the most seriously and wisely committed, and in the context of “Changing Your Best” the relentlessness is between you and what you’re trying to accomplish, versus the entirely of the rest of the world.
The relentlessness hides in plain sight in the form of your responsibility that everything you do – every conversation you have, every interaction you are part of, every work product you produce, every fucking thing you do – demonstrates exactly the type of relationship you have with success, how you handle accountability, and the bounds of your self esteem and personal integrity. Regardless of the domaine, that’s what you’re really showing others by how you work, how you talk, how you move, how you behave, how you operate.
That’s why true excellence is so rare.
That’s why most people don’t follow through.
That’s why the world is full of mediocrity, get-along-go-along, good enough type results.
If you’d like to learn how to Change Your Best, bring unbridled ambition, a spirit too high to be concerned by the craziness of the world around you, and a desire to push yourself beyond any limits you currently recognize, and I’ll take care of the rest. I promise.
Across all domains, excellence is excellence is excellence.
Across all domains, greatness fears no consequence.
Across all domains, the demands of greatness never rest.
Nor do the needs of the world, and the billions of people in it who are disadvantaged simply by the circumstances of their birth.
One of the most powerful ways I hold myself accountable to get smarter, be more effective and to work in greater service to others is that every single day I scavenge wisdom and enlightenment, from simple realization to full on revelation, from everything I see, hear, read or experience.
No matter how mundane, no matter how routine, no matter how insignificant, each moment of each day holds an embarrassment of riches when it comes to learning potential if you know what to look for.
Studying people at the top of their game is a cheater way to learn what to look for and fast track your own enrichment.
For over 25 years, I’ve studied Bill Gates. Together with Melinda and through their Foundation, they’ve materially changed the world for so much the better.
What do we have to learn from Bill Gates? Watch this.
In this speech Mr. Gates lays out for us a blueprint to follow for tackling the world’s most complex problems. To turn caring into action, we must overcome complexity and, here, one of history’s most effective problem solvers teaches us how we can solve our own problems, at our own scale, in our own lives, and within our own work. I’ve been lecturing on this speech since Mr. Gates gave it. Because I continue to follow their accomplishments and process in achieving them, I can honestly say that I owe a large part of my own success, and my unbridled happiness in achieving it, to Bill and Melinda Gates.
I’m not yet certain why, but Melinda Gates sent me a Facebook friend request and it was with a whispered prayer of gratitude, I hit “accept.”
That’s one example of who I study and why.
Here’s another.
I study human performance, and I study it for 2 reasons.
First is because I’m an old jock – I predate Title 9 and in elementary school I played on boys teams because I was good enough to – but I also study human performance because athletes have to peak perform, then quickly move on to do it again, and again, and again.
There isn’t an elite athlete who isn’t masterful, whether studied or innate, at emotional separation and benign neglect of the past, and at moving on with a high spirit, and complete peace of mind that perfected preparation will deliver, at the moment of critical need, the performance of a lifetime. Over and over and over again. Day after day after day in training, and in peak performance competition after competition after competition.
I’ve learned tremendous lessons from this guy, Richard Sherman.
“So if I had to pinpoint the most difficult part of my job, I would say that it’s not any one thing I do on any given play.
It’s doing all of it, every play.”
“You may not see it on your TV screen at home because the camera always follows the ball, but if the play is away from me, and I’ve got a fresh backup receiver across from me whose job is to take off down the field and run me away from the play, I have to respect his route. I have to run with him, full speed, like he’s the No. 1 receiver and he’s getting the ball — because there’s always a chance he might. And if I get three different fresh guys off the bench running me off on consecutive plays, and I come back up to the line against their true No. 1 in a crucial situation where I know they like to hit him on a fade, I can’t stop the game and say, “Hold up, I gotta catch my breath.…”
Nope.
I have to match up — and man up — against their best receiver and do my damn job.
No excuses.”
“You probably remember the 2013 NFC championship game when we beat the 49ers — you know, the game where I batted the ball away at the last second to set up the game-sealing interception and send the Seahawks to the Super Bowl.
I made that play because I saw it coming. Because I was prepared. And I had been banged up — run off on the plays before that one and used up on the the drives earlier in the game. When you get to the fourth quarter, nobody is 100%. That’s when ballers ball. That’s when stars shine. So no matter what had happened previously, the reality was that it was first-and-10, fourth quarter, inside two minutes, and it was me vs. the 49ers’ wide receiver, and one of us had to make a play.
My job was to make sure it was me.
And that’s what I did.”
And with that, Richard could easily be talking about a professional, problem solving Pilates teacher who has to put aside all other matters – all stress, all distraction, all everything – and give their absolute best, to every single client, every single session, every single exercises, every single time.
In life, as in sports, what’s done is done, and all that matters now is your ability to do your best, to create amazing, to give it all, again. And again. And again.
THAT’S what separates the absolute great from everybody else.
Endurance, discipline, being unstoppable, relentless, smart and capable are all implied, assumed, expected, demanded.
Of you.
By the world.
Simply because you’re here, and simply because the circumstances of your birth were so very favorable.
When I lead teachers to this realization and they get, often for the first time, that enormously powerful, mind blowing, intellectually and sensually seductive satisfaction that comes from creating a session that truly flows the teacher’s and client’s body, mind and spirit together as the single power source we were designed to live and work from and through, they almost always stare at me in disbelief – that this level of engagement was underneath all previous “sleepwalking sessions” they’ve taught – and ask, “how often do I have to do this?” and my answer, both fortunately and unfortunately, is always the same:
You have to be your exquisite best every fucking time.
Being inconsistently magnificent is far worse than being consistently mediocre.
The choice really is ours – choose to be great! – and that choice is informed, sustained and evolved by one thing, and one thing only; our level of tolerance for or, in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Gates, of Richard Sherman, and of, oh hell yes, Rebecca Elizabeth Leone, our level of embrace of all that’s implied in holding ourselves accountable for the demonstration of our greatness, every fucking time.
Make the most of your privileged birthright and be every bit as impactful as Bill and Melinda, and as Richard, but in your own exquisitely unique and exquisitely powerful way.
Tomorrow night in Game 2 of the World Series, Trevor Bauer is pitching for the Cleveland Indians. I first read about Trevor in Sports Illustrated back in 2011. He developed his pitches by exploiting the brain science of batting.
It’s within that “20 feet of flight” that batters have to decide if they’re going to swing and Trevor, exploiting the brain science of his opponents, has designed all of his many pitches to travel that same 20 foot wheelhouse strike tunnel.
What’s that got to do with being a problem solving movement teacher?
Exploiting brain science is available to everyone, not just professional athletes like Trevor.
If you’ve Gap Filled with me, you already know about athletes like Trevor, and you already know why my work is so startlingly effective.
Exploiting brain science is exactly how I developed my pain-relieving/alignment/engagement protocols. My protocols have been called a lot of things over the years – like many of Joe’s exercises, clients have named them – and for now, they’re most often referred to as “Doming, Elevator, Pelvic Ring & Cross Draw,” or sometimes “Leone Align & Solve.”
Here’s proof of the effectiveness of my protocols within a single session.
Here’s what those types of alignment changes look like on the inside.
My work is based 100% on the exploitation of brain science, my work is full of the work of Mihaly Cssikszentmihaly, and if you want to take the most direct, powerful and effective approach to achieving change, lasting results, and solving any problem you or your clients are faced with, your work will be full of the exploitation of brain science, too.
Working any other way – especially the “monkey see, monkey do” way of movement/choreography-based demonstration and/or description – is woefully ineffective and, in the end, a waste of time. I mean, how many clients do you have who still, no matter how many times you show them or explain it, can’t do what you’re trying to teach them to do? Years of expensive and time consuming effort on the part of all involved are spent trying to learn something that, through the exploitation of brain science, can be accomplished in a few minutes time.
That’s precisely how I can teach clients to solve long standing pain and performance problems quickly, effectively and permanently. Many videos of me doing just that are up on my video site. Many who’ve observed me teaching my problem solving sessions have said it seems like “magic.” It’s not magic, it’s brain science, and seeing the power of the unconscious brain come out of the recesses where it usually lurks and take over in the conscious world is a totally cool thing to witness.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if you already knew what you were going to do, each session you teach, each problem you face? Think how empowering, relaxing and down right fun that would be. That’s exactly how I feel about my work, every session I teach, every problem I face. I already know what I’m going to do. I’m going to exploit the unconscious brain’s superior wisdom to solve it, to solve anything, to solve everything. And with that, I’m free, I’m completely liberated from the rote, from the formulaic, from the circumstances and details of any given situation. When you use the full resources of your unconscious brain’s super wisdom, nothing surprises you, nothing destabilizes you, nothing breaks you.
Nothing.
We’re infinitely more powerful than we realize.
Learning about brain science is imperative for all problem solving teachers.
Be like Trevor and exploit every possible advantage so you can be your best, and bring your best, to every client, every friend, every interaction, every single day.
