Dr. Andrew Lock
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[00:00:00] Andrew Locke is coming from Melbourne, Australia. He's a strength professional. And what I like about what Andrew has done is that he's, he makes you think in the area as far as it's not your designation. He's got trained in physiotherapy, but he basically has called himself a strength professional because that's what he focuses in on.
So let me bring, uh, Andrew on. Andrew, thank you so much for, uh, coming on. Very grateful, and I know everyone else is, to, uh, hear your words of wisdom. Superb. Super candy. Great to see you again. It's been a long time. 2018 until now. Way too long. I agree. I agree. Can you give us an idea of your journey as far as what you've gone through to what you've, how you got to this place right now?
Because you're one of the top strength professionals. In Australia and, um, more and more [00:01:00] people are starting to find out here in North America and in Europe about some of your work. Can you talk a little bit about your journey? My journey is a really good one. Um, I actually, I actually was going to be a professional baseball player.
That was where I started. Um, I represented Australia as an, in the Junior, the first actual Junior World Series in the States. Yes. So here was me thinking that was my career. I played baseball for many years and I thought I'd leave high school and go play baseball. And along that journey, I saw a magazine with Arnold Schwarzenegger on the cover and that was it.
That was my baseball career. I just fell in love with weight training. Well, I figured out at that point, I was still really, I started really getting into the weight training and I got pretty big. And I started to think about a career as a professional wrestler. So I thought, you know, this would be great.
It does, you know, about 140 kilos, long blonde hair down in my butt. [00:02:00] And I thought I should get a career in case something goes wrong. So I went to university and became a physiotherapist. Now along that journey, of course, thinking about becoming a professional wrestler. Uh, I got injured and so it was a little bit of, um, perhaps a bit of foresight and I continue with my physiotherapy career.
Now, the interesting thing is when I graduated. And I went into probably the best sports, um, medicine clinic for shoulders in the world at that time, back in the late eighties, uh, maybe early nineties, it was very much focused around the fact that I played baseball and I knew how to throw. So my throwing expertise was combined with physiotherapy, but I'd really lost the love for that sport and I'd taken up weight training a lot more and I suddenly realized that we were seeing shoulder injuries that related to bench press.
And there wasn't a professional, a doctor, a therapist, who at that time in the country could be known for weight training. There was nobody who really seemed to know what a bench press was, let alone [00:03:00] a squat or a deadlift. Right. Right. Now, this is a big change in the industry. And I was lecturing at the University of Melbourne about two or three weeks ago.
And I realized I said to all of them, the difference now is that many of you started your weight training in high school, wanting to do Olympic lifting, wanting to do a powerlifting, you're actually graduating in a different, a whole lot of world, which now has professionals who have already started what we didn't do 30 years ago.
And I said, you've got a huge advantage now because you've really, you've started in a weight running journey before you joined your profession. As a result, you've kept your eyes open. Now you're becoming strength professionals. I have to basically evolve the strength professional concept over through the early years here.
There was very few people throughout the country who you would say would be a physiotherapist, a chiropractor, um, an osteopath who was known for that. And now I look at it and I go, we have a huge opportunity for an [00:04:00] incredible community. Because we are all bound together by strength. And this is where I come back as a strength professional now.
People say, you're a physiotherapist. And I prefer to say to students, the first thing you should do upon graduating is lose your religion. Stop being a physiotherapist. Stop being a chiropractor. Stop being an osteopath. Become a professional. A health professional. A strength professional. The best thing I ever did was to work with a chiropractor after I finished with a sports medicine clinic.
I learned a lot of things about how he perceived and assessed. Um, I've got osteopaths I work with, I've worked with Chinese doctors. And I prefer to think of ourselves as not separated by professions, but actually bound together through our love of weight training. We're strength professionals. I don't care about the other people in my profession who do other things.
I care about the people I see. And I see some great professionals in all areas who are superb lifters. This will come into how we can make better [00:05:00] referrals for individuals. This is how we can get a better future for our, our world. Things have changed. Things have changed. Actually, in some respects, let's find the positive and there's a lot to it.
So if you can. Oh, I agree. And I really like, you know, what you said as far as lose your religion and the sense of. You know, in our own profession, you become a chiropractor. I always like to think of chiropractic as a modality as opposed to an identity because there's so many other things that, you know, I would utilize, whether it be active release, acupuncture, laser, physiotherapy, concepts, you know, strength, training, power, lifting, bodybuilding, nutrition, you know, which really isn't part of.
You know, chiropractic, you know, we weren't really trained that much in it. So I love what you, you know, put that together as far as a strength coach or a strength professional, even better. That's us strength professionals worldwide. That's really, and that's what I think Swiss does for our community. You bring together.[00:06:00]
The strength professionals of the world, and we're all common to that. And we all discuss things in the same language. That's one of the concerns. I actually looked back to where I was at the university of Melbourne recently was realizing that where you and I would have been educated on someone like the history of James Syriac as the grandfather of orthopedic medicine.
Right. Um, we, we knew our physiology from Lord Sherrington and his publication from even 1906. On the integrated nervous system, these things I learned in the university, but the blank faces I realized that are out there because people are not being given and taught the bricks and mortar upon which we are now stand.
And that's one of the things I try and bring now to my lectures as well is that you need to know your history. And as we started in Egypt, you know, BC, the first guy to actually measure a planet was back in ancient Egypt. And [00:07:00] as we measured, measured the earth, Eratosthenes. We have an incredible history of intelligent human beings, and yet all we're being taught is what the latest research is.
How do you know what the research is unless you know your history? There's a famous thing I always say is, if the history conflicts with your latest research, I'm going to suggest that the latest research is in error. And that's why you need to know your basics. From there, that's where we start to move forward.
And I really recommend that to all my new grads. That is fantastic. Now, you know, for yourself, being a strength professional on both worlds, you understand the mechanism of injury. You also understand strength training because you're also a competitive power lifter. How do you refer to a personal trainer or a strengths coach?
What are your standards when you say you're working with someone and they're moving to say Sydney, Australia, and you go, you know what? I got it. I got a guy, I got a girl for you. Um, they're going to take good care of you. What are your [00:08:00] standards? What are you looking for in an individual that you could refer over to?
Well, to some respect, I have to personally know them. And that's the thing that's very easy now with social media. You can actually get to know a person pretty well. And that'll also come a bit later into a discussion about how you get referrals, especially even closer to you, is that you really get to know people through social media now.
And this is also the change in practice that we now see. We are not really bricks and mortar clinics anymore. I think that's super important to look at. Although we have, we grew up on models of bricks and mortar clinics, we now have a worldwide waiting room. And I get most of my clients realistically online and in every country in the world.
They wouldn't, I've even treated people from Antarctica. And it's actually not that hard because our intellectual, uh, property, the way we've [00:09:00] learned to think as health and strength professionals, we can, this is one of the things I really think is important is subjectively listening to a client. If you want to get a referral, by the way, for me, You need to listen to me because you'll need to know who I am to get that referral.
Now, if I've got a patient in front of me, I've got to listen to that patient to be successful. It's the same sort of relationships. It's active listening. Hearing is a passive activity. We can hear things, phones going off. We can hear, you know, crickets in the background, but listening is an active activity.
And so if you want to get a referral from me, you need to actually listen to my voice and you need to learn a little bit of what I say. Now, if we combine congruently as professionals. I'm probably going to start to get a relationship with you. So that's why I even went through university. I always knew who my lecturers were.
I knew who my examiners were. Hell, I probably even knew what they ate for breakfast because I wanted to know everything I could about any situation I'm in. And that comes into how I look at patients as well. [00:10:00] So we've moved away from essentially a bricks and mortar world. I think in a lot of ways that there's a lot of online coaches available, but there's not a lot of great online coaches available.
A lot of people have crossed the medium. Now you're going to combine the two things together, your expertise and your reputation now actually expand your waiting room. I think it's a huge opportunity that the world has now opened up for us is to now be forced to embrace that change. So with, I agree, you know, because I think with this, uh, pandemic, you know, right now here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, we've have been the most locked down, um, city.
In the world, um, Melbourne is in second place right now, but I hear that, you know, that may soon change cause you know, we are in a competition, obviously you gotta love politicians. Um, but I, but I think the biggest thing is that technology [00:11:00] is starting to catch up where we can do these different, you know, types of meetings, whether it be through zoom or.
And I think we're going to see a hybrid model where it'll be partially live as far as in person, and then also partially, you know, uh, online, and there's so many different technologies that we can utilize to assess people and that they can actually even get information, whether it be education to learn about it because they can review it again, or even in real time, virtual, assessments and virtual, you know, understanding as far as how to reverse that.
Is that what you're starting to see more and more? Like, are you still practicing as far as in a clinic? Also, you see people live. I do still see people live. Uh, it's, it's a good waiting list. It's about six to eight weeks to get in if you're lucky. And realistically my online waiting list would be about the same.
And once you [00:12:00] come to there is exactly what we are. Yes, we're strength and health professionals. We're also. Movement specialists. You can look at a video. I can look at a video. Ed Cohen can look at a video. Aaron Horshey can look at a video. We can watch a squat, and I reckon we'll all go to the same thing that we are seeing that's wrong.
And we all probably have a very similar approach to improving and strengthening and changing that intervention. Now, we didn't actually have to be in the room with that person at that time. And that's exactly what we're transitioning to. We actually should embrace, and this is where I think physiotherapists Broken down a lot as being taught at universities.
Now is the understanding of movement is most poor and the students actually really relate that to me is that they feel that they've been undereducated in movement analysis. Actually, could you imagine that a university actually would teach how to deadlift, how to squat, how to bench press? Oh my God.
[00:13:00] Awesome. So what can they learn? What would you recommend? What are the different, uh, resources that you would utilize? You know, I just interviewed Dr. Stu McGill, you know, yesterday, and I just found out that he has his own online. Do you also have your online education? Um, I do a lot more in person workshops at the moment, and that's really where we're dominating, but there will be a lot of online educational resources coming up.
I've just spent the whole month rewriting a two day lumbar spine basics course. But this is where we can look at, um, who should a person learn from, learn from somebody who actually has success, not just talks loud. Learn from, well, to me, one of the best things a professional can do is buy the Swiss library.
You are going to see the best, you're going to see the best people in the world and not all of them are going to agree, but that's important when you look [00:14:00] over the years. You're going to see beautiful, wonderful presentations that may come from, come to the same problem from a different direction. And that's super important is now we must become educated in movement analysis.
Well, if you're going to learn, you're going to learn from people who are successful. For example, Ed Cohen, there you go, Stu McGill. people who have spent their life in the trenches and actually know what they're talking about. Not somebody who just has a big Instagram following and whose marketing is mostly based around how to annoy people who have success and try and attract some followers off that.
And there's those people. You've got to be very aware of what's their background, like, what have they really achieved? And this is it. Do you want to know about bench press? Sure. There's quite a few of us who can tell you about deadlift? Look at people who actually have successfully coached. More than one.
Right, right. Yeah. And I think, uh, West side, Louis Simmons has done a great job at that too. And they have a number [00:15:00] of different resources. I have his entire library. I have virtually most of his videos and, you know, and again, they have their own styles, you know, training what I've realized over the decades, you have the science as far as, you know, the kinesiology and everything.
The art is fitting the right system to you to find out whether or not it will work. And, uh, it was really apparent in 2001, I brought out Dorian Yates to present at Swiss. Heavyweight, you know, low reps, low sets, six time Mr. Olympia. The year after, 2002, I had Lee Haney present, eight time Mr. Olympia. Exact opposite of Dorian Yates and the amazing things that, you know, when you're, you've been at Swiss, you, you get to chat with these guys and everything else.
And I asked Dorian, did you try high rep? He said, yeah, it didn't work. And I asked Lee Haney, did you try lower style? You know, Dorian presented last year. He says, absolutely didn't work for me. Always got [00:16:00] injured. And so you have two polar opposites, you know, as far as training schemes, but they found out what worked for them, not necessarily just, you know, fit into, uh, an idea that, you know, everyone should be doing this.
And I think that's the art of treatment, of training, of nutrition, you know, any of those different aspects. Have you seen the same thing? Basically, you're training the individual as opposed to the system. Spectacularly well, I learned my lesson many years ago when I spent probably two years investigating the deadlift for basically standardizing it for research.
What do you need to do? Because in research, if you read the word Deadlift applied to how do you know that the researcher knows what a deadlift is still? Don't worry. That's still out there. No one does. There's no standardization. of exercise for research squat [00:17:00] applied as an exercise. Yeah. High bar, low bar.
What sort of body does that person have? Right. And so of course I spent a couple of years figuring out what really should be the basics of a deadlift for research. And I wrote it up and the day after I finished writing it up, a patient came in and he broke every damn rule I just figured out because he had a body type I'd never seen before.
Wow. And so I had to suddenly realize. What I had seen didn't apply to everybody and he happened to walk in the next day. Great. He just had anthropometrics, which were different. I had to adapt to him. He doesn't adapt to me, right? And that's that's what we really see is everyone is an individual. And as you say, if you look at you with over 20, 000 clients on your list, you've seen more than that over your career too.
So your eyes tend to see things before your brain even knows you've seen them. Well, that comes with experience. And I think that's important. I tell a lot of my clients is do the [00:18:00] tests that I teach you or do the professionals. I say, do the tests such as a hip scour, look at a squat, analyze all your patients who come in, even sometimes with things you don't think are necessary for them because you need to see movement more often and you can't not benefit from seeing people move.
It's so important. And I think over the years, we're going to get more and more, uh, focused on, on that art in the sense of pattern recognition. You know, yesterday, Stu McGill, he says, after, after a certain period of time, everything goes down to pattern recognition. What are the patterns that you see? And then the individual, and then from there, you can create any type of protocol.
And then you test your hypothesis. You want to see whether or not it actually works. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. And that's the art. You keep changing it. Keep changing it. You know, in chiropractic, you know, a lot of times we, we keep adjusting, you know, doing the same thing as kind of like, it's not working.
You may want [00:19:00] to try something else. Well, that actually comes, that came down to one of the most important moments in my career was as I was doing my master's degree study, I was working at one of the hospitals because that's what we have to do on our, our rotations. And about after the first week of being at one of the hospitals, the head of the department pulled me into the hospital and said, pulled me into their office and said to me, stop fixing people.
You're not learning anything. They said, you're only, you're only doing what you know how to do. You are here to learn what you don't know. And he said, I want you to stop doing everything that you do know works. And I want you to test the things that you've thrown away, the things that you don't believe in.
He said, these are public hospital patients that are here for you to practice with. Now that in its own way, yeah, it's in its own way a little bit cruel, but it was the right thing. I had to get out of my comfort zone. I had to stop doing what I knew worked or else I'd never progress as a professional.[00:20:00]
Now I'll do that even with pretty much every patient every day. I will test something that I don't expect should change after I've done the intervention. Because what happens is something does occasionally change and that opens up a whole new world for you. So you always got to look to the thing, even though you're going to test what you know you want to change, test what you don't think was going to change.
And if it did, you're going to have to figure out how the hell it did change and what the relationship was. And that'll just help you progress brilliantly. Don't just test what you do know. Test what you don't know. Wow. That's prophetic. Now you're how much treatment hands on treatment you do versus rehabilitation.
And do you see a differentiation between the two between treatment and rehab? Since this is the rehab summit, I'm trying to get, you know, an understanding as far as. Is that linear or is it basically [00:21:00] morphing together? What, what, what is your style? Well, I had the very good fortune of, um, getting arthritis in both of my thumbs and being, um, basically my professional insurance covered me to retire.
So there was me who's, uh, had a master's degree in manipulative therapy and I could no longer use my hands. Wow. So I, I actually don't use my hands essentially on a patient. I will grab their knee and test a hip socket. But, and I'll passively test a few structures occasionally, but I don't actually do a single treatment intervention now with my hands.
Everything is movement patterning. Why? So you do something wrong. We're out in the gym and it's time to fix it. And we start with whatever I think necessary. Yeah. I actually don't realistically accept the patient can't do a plank off their knees or off their toes very often. Okay. So it's very rare, but you know, [00:22:00] following from the McGill big three concept, you know, I don't need hands on if I know somebody has anti rotational problems.
I don't need to put my hands on somebody if I know they have a poor movement pattern in deflection. So, realistically, about 100 percent of my intervention is purely rehab, and it's very interesting. An osteopath who's Danny, Dr. Danny Antonellis, who works with me, she was a hands on osteopath. Within a year, she's pretty much transitioned onto I don't see any patient for hands on work whatsoever.
She's booked out totally doing movement work with a lot of online clients and in the gym with clients. So it wasn't a hard transition for her to suddenly say, It's all I've ever loved is weight training. I didn't really enjoy the hands on work because it was pretty much what we'd always been doing as professionals.
But the real thing is the people who see us in our community don't expect hands on they may have in the past, but they're starting to see us [00:23:00] as people who fix their movement problems. That's where our professionals, our professionals are starting to move. People are starting to see us and this is our strength community.
Our strength community has an expectation that we have the knowledge to fix up their squat, their deadlift and their bench. They don't need us to crack their neck to do that. It can be part of the practice. I will refer if I think someone needs manual therapy. I don't do any. So that's where my referrals are.
I fix out the movement patterns. So how do you refer to say a chiropractor, a physical therapist, a massage therapist, say someone who's not in your vicinity and say, maybe some of the movement rehabilitation is not working as well. You know, again, you know, everything, everything works until it doesn't. And so, you know, what are your standards?
What are you looking for in a health professional? It used to be that I used to especially need somebody who had postgraduate experience. Not just an undergraduate life. So I need somebody [00:24:00] who had gone a little bit deeper because I would look for certain skills that you only achieve through postgraduate education and undergraduate education, it's can be enough, but you're going to have to do a hell of a lot of work by yourself to get good.
The postgraduate education allows you to explore certain areas a little bit deeper. And that's really where I think I tended to look for my referrals tend to be. Okay. Who has their graduate diploma or master's degree in a certain area? But now what I look for, hmm, who's a strength professional, Cairo that I might know in Sydney.
And I do know a few. And if I think this person needs some chiropractic approach, I'll look for a professional who does weight training, who may especially even compete. And that's who I will refer to. So, uh, any state in the country, I've got people who I know weight train and who I may have through social media interacted with them.[00:25:00]
Actually, it's worldwide. I would prefer, for example, Brian Carroll down there in Florida. I preferred patients to him from people in Florida. He's very good. He's very good. He's very good and he, I know what he's thinking because he's done his work with Stu McGill and I get that client I know you need the McGill approach.
Who do I know in that town? I know Brian. Great. Absolutely. So that's a lot of it. Now when, when, when you were here in Swiss 2018 you sat down in a restaurant after Swiss and you were kind enough to show me some of the different MRIs. About the disc herniation. And I was blown away in the sense of, you know, a lot of people believe that once they get a disc herniation, it's there for life.
You can't pick anything up, you're done. You, you, you know, it's a, you, you, you shouldn't lift weights, God forbid, squat or deadlift. Can you explain what, with those [00:26:00] MRIs, uh, showed as far as I think it was one or two years pre and post. Actually, there you go. It was three months. Three months. That was it.
Three month post. Yes. We often did MRIs pre and post three month intervals. Wow. So it's interesting with a lot of scans of discs in the early stages, what you'll see is what is there that day. But it's like having a bruise on your arm. If you take a photo of it that day, you're going to see the lump, you're going to see the bruise.
Yeah. Yeah. But the body is now going into a healing process, and the mechanism by which it heals is pretty well established. So the first stage you'll see a lot of, for example, what is often called a disc material isn't disc material, it's just a bleed. It's blood. But it's got a similar water density to what maybe the nucleus looks like.
So the radiologist may just call it a disc material. Extrusion. And, yes, the person's symptoms may marry up with that. [00:27:00] But as long as we're assessing them, we know where they're at and they're safe, we can often look at a three month conservative window and expect it to change because the body's going to essentially send little pac men in, macrophages as they're called and things like that, which will eat up.
The material that is shown on the MRI, and that's one of the things, um, Stu McGill, I was lucky enough to chat with him as well, is the posterior longitudinal ligament on the disc. If it's broken, it stimulates a better immune response. Sometimes, if you get a bulge that's below the ligament, the body hasn't been stimulated to heal it.
It hasn't been given that, oh, it's an emergency. Ah, but there were any extrusions, perhaps a little bit bigger. Sometimes they're the ones that heal the best. So we're not defined by the scan, we're defined pretty much by, can these things heal over three months? Is it a good improvement? If there is, then I think we're going to have total [00:28:00] resolution.
If after three months I haven't seen a significant change at that point, I'll say, well, you may have to wait a couple of years or you go see the surgeon for a micro discectomy and you're back with me. As it's happened the next day, I've had that happen with a patient. Saw him on Friday and said, you need to go to the hospital.
I know which hospital the neurosurgeon was on call. I said, if you're not better by tomorrow, Monday morning, I got back to the clinic. We went to open the door and he was staying there. Hey John, how was your weekend? Great. I had my surgery on Saturday. I've come to see you now. Wow. Things have changed. Yeah.
Wow. Incredible. That's very positive. Now with it, this excrusion, as far as the inflammatory and the blood and everything else, is that the pain generator? Not necessarily something pressing on the nerve. Like, I mean, there's, you know, some of the, uh, uh, constituents of, of the nucleus pulposum when it basically gets extruded out.
That is very acidic from what I understand. Yes, it is. [00:29:00] Irritating, but so are all the other products. Yeah, that's, um, it's from the proteoglycans. I think these are the things that aggravate the nerve quite nastily. Well, if it's not dangerous, it just hurts as long as you've got function, as long as you've got, you know, hold you, as long as you're basically not pissing yourself and shitting yourself uncontrollably and your muscles are still working, you may be in pain.
The pain is something we may have to work through that may be assisted with medication. So sometimes the biggest ones are usually the most successful cases. It's sometimes as you might even have related with some of Stu McGill's work, they may be small problems, but they're creating a bigger impact, right?
So there was a lot to it. And one of the things which I've worked on a lot over the last year was. We went down a very poor path many years ago in research and application of looking at motor control, cognitive control of movement underneath is a [00:30:00] reflex control of movement, which is about 90 percent of what we really do and chiropractic would certainly understand that.
Now, what we missed was the, we missed the, the rehabilitation of your proprioception of your reflex patterns. And that goes way back to Lord Sherrington, 1906. There we go. So suddenly you need to know your basics to understand. We actually have a system there that's well studied, and this is where I've actually worked over the last couple of years.
move back into saying, Oh, we missed a lot of the reflex. That's why I do some strange off centered walks with bands and kettlebells and dumbbells to restore the things that you can't cognitively and motor program control because it's too fast. So the little muscles there, your interspinales and your.
Into transversaries, for example, they don't have a big cross sectional area. They're full of muscle spindles. They're there to help us move. So I look at the reeducation of those things before I even have to look into a deadlift pattern for some, and some of the bigger extrusions love that work. Now they walk them.[00:31:00]
Now you, you teach a lot of this. Can you explain some of the different live seminars that you do? Um, because I, I've seen it sometimes, uh, you, you post it. So what are some of the different seminars that you do? So people understand that they can come and see you? Well, professionals who, who I was, um, so they attend the three day, three lift course that I do with Sebastian Oreb.
Now, Sebastian Oreb is the guy who coached, um, Hafthor Bjornsson to the world's strongest man. Oh, he coached, he coached Hafthor to the 501 kilo deadlift. Uh, he's probably coached more 200 kilogram plus bench presses than anyone else in the country. Wow. Sebastian is an outstanding coach. And, um, it's actually presented with him.
I think it was in the past as well. And he's, he learned a lot from it as well. Now I do three over three days. We do three lists. We do squat one day bench, the second day, they lift the third day. We spend the whole day on each lift [00:32:00] on the technique and the rehab. Now, professionals who, who are wanting to get a referral from me, for example, in each of those states where we go.
They will have attended those courses. So if you're in Australia and you want to get a referral from me and people ask, can I come in? Can you mentor me? Can I come and shadow you for a day? I said, yep. But only after you've done the three day workshop, I don't want you asking dumb, don't want you asking dumb questions that you should have already answered.
Right. You can ask me the better questions. Now, we will, of course, those things are online as well, which will, they'll be coming up soon enough. And the work I do with Danny Antonellis, who's an osteopath with what we do, a glute workshop. Well, we actually put people on our website, United Health Education, who have done our courses.
So people can know who have done the things that we do. So I look for people who have learned from us to start with. That really helps a lot for me to refer somebody to. Absolutely. Now you also have, uh, talked to you before the largest Vince [00:33:00] Garanda collection, probably in the world. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Cause I think it's so important that we keep pieces of history. You know, it's really, cause I mean, that's where we learned as far as where did this all come from? And, you know, can you talk about your collection of Vince Vince's stuff? I've got a real obsession with history and that's what probably helps me as a professional is because.
As we say, we stand on the shoulders of giants. And that's really, it's like a Stuart McGill. I get to stand on his shoulder some days and as a result, I get to see a little bit further. Now with Vince, Vince was a great trainer back in Hollywood. He trained many of the. earliest champions in bodybuilding.
Vince was also a movement scientist. He was one of the first people who said, stop doing sit ups for your abs. He was one of the first people to really identify. Yeah, he was very much. He goes, he says a soulless activity as a bodybuilding coach. I can, he was [00:34:00] And so as a result, yes, I've got all the Vince's dumbbells and barbells that were, I've had them shipped over to Australia.
They're all in their racks. And most of the photos off his walls that were there signed by people like Franco Colombo and Mohammed Makaway. So it is, for me, it's, it's touching the real roots of our, our strength community where it started. And that's helpful for me every day to see those things and to go back and see what somebody wrote about something.
Now they weren't always right, but that doesn't matter except. Yeah. But I think it was, again, it's the art, you know, you really want to see you, you, you experiment and like, I mean, Vince was big on eight sets of eight repetitions and you know, his nutrition, he was one of the big proponents of. Protein powder, you know, uh, at that time.
Oh, steak and eggs. Yep. That was it. Yep. And we didn't know that, you know, Creighton was actually in steak, so. Who knew , who knew about it, was there, wasn't it? [00:35:00] So yes, the history is so important for me and I, I do that as far as my profession goes. You know, I'm a bit shocked when I talk to students at universities and I realize they don't dunno.
For example, who Jeff Maitland is in Australia. Well, he was the best manual therapist that we ever had. Yeah. Uh, he taught at the University of Adelaide. They don't even mention his name over there, I believe at the university anymore. Oh. Such a shame. So losing his losing history loses the roots of who we are as strength professionals.
So for people who are coming in and they want to become developed health professionals, it's time to go back to history. Look, don't quote research to me. Quote science. Talk to me about physiology. Talk to me about biomechanics. I'll listen to you. Talk to me about the latest piece of crap research done out of Brazil with TheraBand.
I'm not interested because I'll tell you what the failures of those pieces of research are. So I want health professionals to get away from looking at so called evidence based research. And to really move towards looking back at your science, get solid on your physiology, get solid on your [00:36:00] anatomy, get solid on your biomechanics.
Ah, now we gotta talk. Yeah, now I don't know if you've seen these, uh, this is from, uh, Bill Pearl. Legends of the iron game. What a great book. That one is absolutely volume one, volume two, volume three. Great. Well, you know, all three of them, but it actually goes through the history and bill spent a lot of time, you know, trying to develop, you know, the, the actual history, because he, he also knew like he has the largest Eugene Sandow collection.
In the world, you know, so yeah, especially since his wife basically burnt a lot of it, you know, she got upset with them. Oh, well, uh, but, uh, yeah, you know, we, we definitely need to. You know, keep, keep the history. Now what's an action step that, you [00:37:00] know, a strength coach or a personal trainer, you know, our, both of our cities are really, really struggling.
What, what would it take? You know, what would you recommend, you know, to, to build that professional referral relationship with another strength coach or personal trainer or a health professional? What would your recommendation be? They do on Monday morning. Well, I'd say to the person, it begins with you.
Now, the very best piece of advice I got was on the first day that I graduated. So I went to work at a clinic that was a very well known clinic and first day in there, the boss, she pulled me aside into the office and said to me, your job being here is to become the best at the, in the world at something.
And she looked at me and said, and I'm the best in the world at shoulders. So you have to choose something else. So an actual statement from that is, and of course we've taken that on board is now, what do you really, really want to know about? What is [00:38:00] your passion in life? What is the thing that drives you to be a health professional?
Identify it. Now, Monday, perhaps what you should do if you love powerlifting, find a lift, a squat, a deadlift or bench press. Now, start learning about that lift, and your aim is to become the best in the world at that lift. Now, that might be a big ask, but that's what I expect of people to, who I meet, and is that they are passionate about something.
Now, if I have a person, for example, who has a problem with their deadlift in Sydney, I know who to send them to because I've got somebody I communicate whose passion is there. If I've got somebody in Adelaide, who's got a problem with their Olympic lifting, I know somebody who does that. So don't be a generalist now becomes the best in the world of something on Monday.
It's a long journey and it's the rest of your career because it never stops. Because every day is something will come to you [00:39:00] marry that in with testing everything that you don't know, and you're going to continue to improve. I'm like a new graduate mentally. I'm coming out going, what am I going to learn today?
And that's pretty much my day. What am I going to learn today? That's what you're going to do tomorrow on Monday. You're going to learn something. Wow. You know what? That's so true. You know, what are you going to learn today? Cause every single person is going to teach you something that, you know, you maybe not have thought of, and then, you know, try something different, you know, and, and just remain open.
I think that's the biggest thing. You know, when I bring different presenters to Swiss, you know, everyone thinks that there's a conflicting, you know, you'll have two presenters, you know, presenting at the same time in different rooms, and they're saying opposite things. And what is unique is that people are sort of like, well, who's right?
Guess what? They both are. Dorian Yates, Lee Haney. Which one is right? Six time Mr. Olympia, eight time Mr. Olympia. They're [00:40:00] both right. But you have to find the art, the understanding, but even back it up even more, you have to have the education, you have to have the experience and the time, you know, to build that wisdom.
And over time, you get to learn pattern recognition. One of the coaches I've done a lot of work with, his name's Gus Cook. Gus came to Swiss in 2018. He loved it. Gus introduced me to the concept that a lot of, you've got to understand, is the neurochemistry of your client. And Sebastian, who I work with, he talks about client morale.
Because people are either dopamine driven, perhaps, or serotonin driven. You'll notice you're dopamine driven, love low reps. You'll notice you're serotonin driven, Love high reps. Don't go programming. Low rep work for the person who loves high rep work. And that could be part of the neurochemistry of Dorian Yates and Absolutely.
They loved what they did and that took them down that path. There's a [00:41:00] reason we do what we do. Absolutely. It's a bit, it's a fun thing is when you're talking about it, um, what we do, what we love is I enjoy the patient who comes in with an armful of MRI scans that fail with everyone else and I see it as a last chance.
I usually grasp them by the hand. I say, I'm so glad you came in. It's been so boring fixing everyone so easily. I've been looking for someone like you all day. Oh, finally you've come in fantastic. Now tell me about your story. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. That is, that is awesome. I, well, it's lovely. Uh, Andrew, it has been an absolute pleasure talking with you.
You know, when I met you at a Swiss 2018, we had some. Great chats and chuckles. And, you know, you taught me all about this new drink. That's a very, very nice, very powerful, but, um, I just love the authenticity that you have your openness and your, your love for the [00:42:00] profession, the strength profession, where you take it to the next level.
And you, you're open enough that it's like, let's try some different things and see where we're going to be going and go counter against what is popular. Because a lot of times people are trying to be popular instead of what is actually needed. But you, you, you're really taking it on and I, I really applaud you for that.
You're, you're doing an amazing job and thank you for saving all of Vince's stuff. That's just so, that just makes my heart warm. Oh, this is a lovely thing to have here. And look. Ken, we got to say thanks to you because you brought the strength community together worldwide and we are a community. We are worldwide and we are not our professions.
We're a strength community, as I heard Chris Duffin say, better living through strength. And that's us. Absolutely. That's what I tell my clients. Weakness is not tolerated. No. That's great, Ken. I wonder, what are we going to learn today, huh? What are we going to learn today? I like [00:43:00] that one. I'm going to use that one.
Thank you, my friend. Total pleasure, Ken. It's been great to catch up again and see you. I hope all things go well for you.
