You folded it up and threw it in your bag.
You walked out feeling better.
Pain was down. Movement felt easier. You thought, okay, maybe this time it actually worked.
So you folded up that sheet of exercises, threw it in your bag, and went back to the gym.
And for a little while, things felt fine.
But then you loaded the bar. And something flared. Or felt off. Or just wrong in a way you couldn't explain but immediately recognized.
And that quiet voice came back: How is this getting me back to training?
Here's the thing. That voice isn't weakness. It's not you being dramatic. It's your body telling you something the sheet never addressed.
Because the sheet was built to get you functional. To get you walking upstairs without wincing. To get you through a normal Tuesday without pain.
It was never built to get you back under a loaded bar. That was never the goal of the plan, even if it was the whole point for you.
So you did what anybody else who loves training does. You took matters into your own hands. Went back to training. Tried to push through it.
And then it happened again.
Something flared. Something felt off. You were right back where you started, except now you had spent the money, done the work, and still had no real answer.
Let's be honest about what that does to you. It's not just frustrating. It erodes something. Every cycle of this chips away at the belief that your body can actually handle what you're asking of it.
That's not a pain problem. That's a trust problem.
And the reason it keeps happening isn't bad luck. It isn't a broken body. It's that the plan stopped before the hardest part, getting you back to training, not just back to functioning.
Pain-free doesn't mean ready. That gap is where most people stay. Not because they gave up. Because nobody showed them what was actually causing it.
Gabe
PS: If you want to see the exact roadmap I walk every client through, reply "ROADMAP" and I'll send it over. It breaks down all three phases, Reveal, Reset, and Rebuild, and what has to happen in each one before we move forward.
Cheap rehab isn't cheap
You’ve already spent the money.
PT. Chiro. Massages.
Stuff that helped for a few days… then it came right back.
People telling you to stop squatting.
Use bands. Or take time off.
You did it.
You were patient.
You followed what they said.
And it still came back.
So you try something else.
Different person. Different answer.
“It’s your SI joint.”
“No, it’s your hip flexors.”
“Your glutes are weak.”
More time. More money.
Same spot.
Now you’re in the gym…
and you’re holding back.
Not because the weight’s heavy…
but because you don’t trust what’s gonna happen if you push it.
So you stay at 70%.
Skip the sets you actually want to hit.
Second guess reps.
And after a while…
that just becomes how you train.
You’re not building anything back.
You’re just managing it.
And every time you try to push again…
it comes right back.
If that’s where you’re at right now…
watch this.
It’ll make a lot of this click.
Gabe
I was wrong about mobility
Hey,
You've done the ankle mobility work. The hip circles. The couch stretch. The 20-minute warm-up that somehow never actually transfers to the bar.
And still, the second you get under a barbell, your squat stops short. Hips won't drop. Torso pitches forward. You grind to a halt at parallel and wonder what you're missing.
Get on a leg press or a hack squat machine and suddenly you're hitting depth you didn't know you had. Full range. No restriction. No grinding.
Same body. Completely different result.
That's not a coincidence. And it's not proof you need more flexibility.
It's a position problem.
I spent years thinking I needed more mobility. Stretched harder. Rolled longer. Added warm-ups. None of it transferred. The second I touched a bar I was right back where I started.
What actually changed it: the setup, not the stretch.
Here's why. Machines place your body behind your foot. That keeps your center of mass back. And when your center of mass is back, your hips can drop without your torso fighting the load.
The barbell does the opposite. It sits on your back, pulls your weight forward, and if your body can't accommodate that shift, the squat stops early.
You're not tight. You're just in the wrong starting position for the depth you're chasing.
So instead of spending another six weeks stretching something that doesn't need to be stretched, you change the setup.
A Zercher squat. Bar held in the crooks of your elbows, in front of your body. Center of mass shifts back. Same principle as the machine. Your hips can now descend lower because your torso isn't fighting the load.
You don't stop squatting. You don't overhaul your mobility routine. You just load yourself from a position your body can actually work with.
That's the shift most people miss. They keep trying to fix the body when the problem was the setup the whole time.
Your body isn't the limitation.
The position you're loading it from is.
Gabe
PS. Most people who reach out tell me the same thing. They don't have a roadmap. Just a pile of exercises that don't add up.
So I built one. Reveal. Reset. Rebuild. The exact one I use with clients.
https://rebuild-roadmap.netlify.app/
Tell me which phase you're stuck in. I'll tell you what's keeping you there.
Your left knee called. It blamed your right hip.
I used to hear this a lot.
"My knee has always been like this." "My shoulder just acts up sometimes." "This is just how my body is now."
And I get it. When something hurts long enough, you stop expecting it to change. You start working around it. You skip the movement. You modify the exercise. You find a way to keep going without dealing with the actual thing.
That workaround creates its own problems.
Your body is smart. When one area can't do its job, something else picks up the slack. The hip tightens. The lower back overloads. The shoulder compensates for what the thoracic spine stopped doing two years ago. Each compensation is a solution. And each solution eventually becomes the next injury.
So you end up in a loop. Hurt something. Avoid it. Compensate. Hurt something else. Repeat.
You're putting in the work. You're showing up. But the work is aimed at where it hurts, not at why it keeps hurting. Those are different targets.
Amy was in that loop.
She'd been managing her knee for years. Training around it, not through it. When we started working together, the question wasn't "how do we fix the knee." It was "why does the knee keep breaking down in the first place."
Six weeks later she sent me a video of her swinging heavy kettlebells.
No knee strap. Just hard training.
That's what happens when the work finally gets pointed at the right thing.
I put together a short video that walks through what this actually looks like. How I find the pattern underneath the injury. What rebuilding requires once you stop chasing symptoms.
— Gabe
P.S. If you've got something that keeps coming back no matter what you do, watch the video first. That's exactly who it's for.
Missed any of my other posts? Read them here
I lied to everyone at the gym
I couldn't squat heavy.
I couldn't deadlift. Couldn't bench without pain radiating down my leg the second I loaded the bar.
And I told nobody.
Because I was supposed to be the guy who knew this stuff. I was studying kinesiology. I understood movement. I understood the body. And here I was, completely stuck, quietly falling apart every time I walked into the gym.
So instead of getting help, I did what most of us do.
I opened YouTube. I opened Instagram. I found every video, every post, every 60-second fix from someone who looked confident behind a camera. I tried them all. Some helped for a week. Most didn't. And every time something didn't work, I told myself the same thing.
Maybe I'm just too broken.
Years went by like that.
Not months. Years.
And the whole time I was wasting them on approaches built for other people's backs. Not mine. I kept treating symptoms. Stretching the hip flexors that didn't need stretching. Strengthening the glutes that weren't the problem. Doing all the right things for the wrong body.
YouTube rehab isn't bad advice. It's just advice built for someone else. Most people stuck in that loop aren't broken. They just haven't had anyone actually look at them yet.
Eventually I got tired of going nowhere more than I was afraid of the answer. I booked an assessment, and for the first time someone looked at what was actually happening. Not just where it hurt. Why it kept happening.
We started training around what my body could handle right then, not what I thought it should handle.
A couple months later I pulled 405 pain free.
Not modified. Not a carefully-filmed single at 60%. Actually training again.
So if you're doing what I did. Scrolling at 2am, clicking on another video, telling yourself you're almost there. I get it. I was you for three years.
The only thing I'd go back and change is how long I waited.
— Gabe
She couldn’t walk her dogs four months ago
Amy messaged me yesterday.
“I’m back. Got 2 rounds of 15 in. Could’ve gone heavier if they had heavier kettles.”
And I just kind of sat there for a second reading that.
She could not walk long distances with her dogs, which is her favorite thing to do.
Every time she tried, the pain would flare up. So she stopped.
She also had to completely stop training because it was just too much.
Like most people in her position, everything was being treated at the site of pain.
In her case, her back.
And to be fair, that can help sometimes.
But that was not the real issue.
Her body was not absorbing force properly from the ground up.
Every step and every rep kept feeding stress into the same area.
So nothing actually changed.
She felt stuck. No clear answers. No real plan. Just trying things and hoping something would work.
That is where we shifted things.
We ran a Ground Up Assessment™ where we found where things were breaking down.
And rebuilt how she moved step by step.
Fast forward to now.
She sent me this.
Two rounds of fifteen kettlebell swings.
And she is saying the weight was not heavy enough 😂
Four months ago she could not walk her dogs.
Now she is limited by the equipment in her gym.
This is exactly how I approach this.
We do not chase symptoms. We fix how your body actually functions, starting from the ground up.
If you are dealing with something similar and want to see what this would look like for you,
just reply "REBUILD" and I will walk you through it.
I only take 10 acute cases at a time. I have two spots left for 1:1 coaching.
Once those are filled, they are filled.
If that is not an option for you right now, you can start with my $12 back pain program here.
It uses some of the exact same exercises I gave her.
You can start training today by clicking here
Gabe
The exact movements I give every new client
Before your next session, I want to send you something.
This is the movement cheat sheet I use with every client when we start working together.
It's not a generic mobility routine.
It's not stretch your hip flexors and foam roll your IT band.
These are the specific movements I use to reset how your body handles load, before we touch a barbell.
👉 Grab it here
Why it matters:
Most pain doesn't show up because you did one thing wrong. It shows up because your body has been compensating for a long time, borrowing movement from places that weren't built for it, until one day it can't anymore.
These movements address that.
They restore rotation between your ribcage and pelvis.
They give your hips more room to move.
They clean up the stuff upstream that's been quietly creating the problem downstream.
How to use it:
Find the section that matches where you're stuck.
Back and hips, shoulder, or knee and foot.
Run through the moves before your next session.
You're not replacing your training. You're preparing for it.
Most people feel a difference within the first two sessions.
Link to the sheet
Now go train!
Gabe
Don’t strengthen your hips until you know this
You would not believe how many people I see doing the wrong exercises for their goals especially when it comes to hip pain.
Let me give you a common example.
You feel pain in your hip.
You head to the clinic.
You’re told it’s hip bursitis (of course 🙄).
And you’re handed the usual rehab plan:
→ Band around the knees
→ Clamshells
→ Banded squats
→ Strengthen the glute med
You’ve probably done some version of this, right?
Here’s the issue:
These movements are often closing down a space that actually needs to be opened up.
And the kicker?
It might not even be your hip that’s the problem.
So what’s really happening?
You’re reinforcing the same dysfunctional strategy your body is already stuck in…
Digging the hole deeper, not climbing out of it.
Before you strengthen anything, there’s a sequence that matters:
👉 First, create enough space to move.
👉 Then, if needed, add strength on top of that.
Because strengthening a poor strategy just makes it stronger.
If you’re stuck in the rehab spiral or not seeing progress, I want you to remember this:
Strength is not always the missing piece.
If you’re unsure how to start creating space, here’s a mobility drill I use with clients that works fast:
👉 Show me how to create space!
Save it. Try it. Let me know what changes.
Gabe
P.S Missed any of my other posts? Read them here
I herniated my disc
It's 9am on a Tuesday.
I'm standing outside the gym, hand on the door, running the same calculation I'd been running for months.
How's the leg today? Is the nerve thing bad enough that I should skip? What if I load the bar and it goes again?
I had a herniated disc. Nerve symptoms shooting down my leg. And every single person I talked to doctors, PTs, well-meaning training partners gave me some version of the same advice:
Stop lifting. Rest. Let it heal. I couldn't do that.
Not because I was being stubborn. Not because I thought I knew better than everyone.
But because training wasn't just something I did. It was how I stayed sane. It was my anchor. The one place where everything else went quiet.
Taking it away didn't feel like recovery.
It felt like losing myself.
So I made a plan.
I was going to rest for six weeks, come back fresh, ease back in, and everything would be fine.
That was the plan.
But six weeks passed and the nerve symptoms were still there. But when I tried to ease back in, the same movements that used to feel automatic now felt like a threat. But the confidence I thought would come back on its own didn't.
I'd done everything right. And I was still standing outside that door, running the same calculation.
That's when something shifted.
I stopped trying to get back to the training I was doing before.
And I started asking a different question entirely.
Not when can I train the way I used to?
But what version of training can my body actually tolerate right now?
I started on the floor. Literally. Basic movements. One side at a time. Learning how to distribute load through the whole system instead of dumping everything into the one place that was already screaming.
And slowly, I mean slowly, no dramatic montage here I worked my way back to the barbell.
Not by ignoring what was happening. Not by pushing through and hoping for the best.
By building a foundation that could actually support what I was asking of it.
The weight came back.
The confidence came back.
The nerve symptoms?
Gone.
Here's what I want you to take from this.
Pain is not a stop sign. It's information. It's your body telling you the current strategy isn't working not that training itself is the problem.
Most people treat those two things as the same. They're not.
You can train through a herniated disc. You can train through nerve pain. You just can't train the same way you were training when it happened. That approach already showed you what it produces.
The goal isn't to push through. The goal isn't to stop either.
The goal is to find the version of training your body can tolerate right now and build from there.
That's not a compromise. That's the whole process.
If you're dealing with something similar, pain that keeps coming back, conflicting advice, the feeling that your body is working against you, reply to this and tell me what's going on.
I read every reply. And sometimes the most useful thing is just having someone who actually understands lifting look at your situation.
Gabe
P.S Missed any of my other posts? Read them here
You don’t have a bad back.
You don’t have a bad back.
You just can’t handle load yet.
That’s good news.
Because it means this isn’t permanent.
It just hasn’t been approached the right way.
Right now, this is probably what your training looks like:
You warm up
You start loading
You get a few reps in
Then that same feeling shows up
So you pull back
You adjust
You tell yourself next week
You’ve been saying that for a while.
This is not an effort problem.
It is not discipline.
It is not your back.
Nothing you’ve followed was built for lifting with pain.
So every session turns into guesswork.
More rehab doesn’t fix it.
More rest doesn’t fix it.
Because neither of those build what you actually need.
Capacity under load.
Pain going down doesn’t mean you’re ready.
It just means you haven’t tested it yet.
Étienne dealt with back pain for 11 years.
PT.
Rest cycles.
Band work.
Same loop every time.
Feel better. Load. Flare up.
We changed one thing.
Built capacity under load.
12 weeks later, he said he hit the smoothest squat of his life.
That’s what this is built for.
Rebuild Foundation: Back™
A 4 week program for people who want to keep training.
You open the app.
You train.
You leave knowing it was right.
By week one, most people notice something simple.
They train without thinking about their back the whole time.
Not perfect.
Just normal again.
It’s $22.
If you’re training this week anyway:
Gabe
P.S. You’ve probably spent more than $22 on something that gave you a week of relief.
This is 4 weeks built to actually hold. → Get Access Now
It wasn’t that rep
It's a normal training day.
Weight on the bar feels right. Nothing crazy. You've hit this a hundred times.
You set up, take a breath, start the descent
And something goes wrong.
Not a dramatic snap. Not a movie moment. Just... wrong. And you know it immediately.
You rack the bar. Stand there. And the first thought that hits you isn't about the pain.
It's: what did I do wrong?
Here's the thing you didn't do anything wrong that day.
That day was Chapter 10. The story started way back in Chapter 1.
Your body doesn't just randomly break down. It compensates. Quietly, intelligently, for months sometimes longer. One thing stops tolerating load, something else takes over. Then something else. Then something else after that.
The skipped warmups. The way you've been favoring your left side without really noticing. The tight reps you pushed through because the weight felt good and you were in a groove.
None of it hurt yet. So none of it registered.
That was the problem.
Your body was writing a story the whole time. Pain is just the final chapter the moment your nervous system runs out of workarounds and finally slams on the brakes.
Think of it like a tire. It didn't blow out randomly on the highway. You drove on it worn down for months. The flat was just the last mile.
Your injury is the same story.
So when someone comes to me and says "my back started hurting two weeks ago"
I'm not treating two weeks ago.
I'm reverse-engineering the months before that. The compensation patterns. The load spikes. The movement options your body quietly lost before pain ever showed up.
Because if you only treat Chapter 10, you'll be back in Chapter 10 again in three months. Different location, same story.
That's the difference between chasing symptoms and fixing the actual problem.
Pain is just where your body ran out of options.
The work is giving it more.
If you've been stuck in the cycle pain fades, you go back, it comes back reply to this and tell me what's going on.
I read every reply.
— Gabe
PS: If you want to learn how I actually put this in action watch this
Missed any of my other posts? Read them here
The gap nobody tells you about
You got cleared.
Pain was down. You did the work. You were patient. And finally someone told you you were good to go.
So you went back to the gym.
You loaded the bar. Maybe lighter than before, just to be safe. You got through the set. Nothing blew up. You thought: okay, maybe this is it. Maybe I'm actually back.
Two weeks late same spot. Same pain. Same confusion.
And the first thing your brain does is turn on you.
What did I do wrong? Did I go too heavy too fast? Is this just how it's going to be now?
You didn't do anything wrong.
You just walked into a gap that nobody warned you existed.
Traditional rehab has one goal: get you out of pain. That's it. And honestly, it does that reasonably well. Pain goes down. Function comes back. You can walk upstairs, get out of your car, do the things a normal person does.
But you're not trying to be a normal person.
You're trying to squat heavy. Pull heavy. Press heavy. High volume. High intensity. Without bracing for the rep that finally breaks you.
Those are two completely different destinations.
And the bridge between them, the thing that actually gets you from pain-free to training is load. Volume. Intensity.
Reintroduced in a structured way your body can actually tolerate.
Without that bridge, you're not returning to training.
You're just hoping nothing goes wrong.
How much weight do I add this week?
How much volume is too much?
When do I push, and when do I back off?
If you don't have real answers to those questions, every session is a guess.
And guessing under a loaded bar, when your body already has a history of breaking down, that's not training.
That's waiting for the next flare-up.
Gabe
PS: Whenever you are ready, just reply "REBUILD" here.
I'll ask a few questions to see if were a good fit to get you back to training hard pain-free again.
P.P.S Missed any of my other posts? Read them here
Lift Letter: The squat didn't hurt you. Your hips did.
Squatting deep didn't hurt your back. Squatting deeper than your hips can actually go did.
Those aren't the same thing.
Most people blame the squat.
Something flares up at the bottom, and the conclusion feels obvious.
"The squat is the problem."
"Stop going so low."
"Maybe just stop squatting altogether."
I get it. I thought the same thing for a long time. Then I stopped squatting and lost a ton of strength.
Took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure out that wasn't the answer.
The squat didn't hurt you. Your lack of hip range of motion likely did.
More specifically, your hips ran out of range before your squat ran out of depth.
And when that happens, your lower back picks up the slack.
Tissues that are already sensitized just keep getting more stress on top of them.
That's not a squat problem. That's a hip flexion problem.
Hip flexion
The reason the distinction matters is because the fix is completely different.
If you understand what's really going on, that your hips don't have the range to support the depth you're asking for, now you have something to work with.
You don't stop squatting. You sequence it properly.
Two things that actually helped me and that I use with clients all the time:
Barbell box squat
You squat to the box, pause, come up.
The box controls your depth so you stay inside the range your hips can actually support.
You're still squatting. You're still loading.
You're just not forcing your lower back to compensate for what your hips can't do yet.
Front foot elevated split squat.
This one isn't just a workaround. It's actively rebuilding your hip's ability to get into flexion under load.
Foot on a step, drop straight down, knee drives forward.
You're training the range you actually need, without piling compressive load onto tissues that aren't ready for it.
Neither of these is permanent. They're a bridge back to full depth squatting, where your hips are actually there to support you when you get to the bottom.
The goal was never to squat less. It was to build the hips that let you squat more.
Hope you're moving well and brewing better ☕️
Gabe
I'm not here to fix you
Something flared up last week.
Maybe it was the squat session. Maybe you slept weird.
Maybe it just showed up out of nowhere, the way it sometimes does.
And the first thing you did was reach for your phone to book an appointment.
No judgment. That's what you've been taught to do.
My thoughts on this:
Every time you hand that moment off to someone else, you get a little less capable of handling it yourself.
You stop trusting your own body. You stop knowing what to do when things flare up.
You start feeling like you can't train, can't push, can't make a single decision without someone else signing off first.
That's not healing. That's just getting managed until the next flare-up.
Real rehab isn't passive. It's not something that gets done to you on a table.
The goal should be to give you the tools and understanding to stay out of pain, not just get you out of it for now.
There's a big difference between relief and actual results. One keeps you coming back.
The other makes you more resilient.
Talk soon,
Gabe
P.S. Good rehab should eventually make itself unnecessary. If your current approach doesn't have an exit strategy for you, that tells you everything.
P.P.S Missed any of my other posts? Read them here
The question your physio couldn’t answer
Hey,
So this reminded me of a guy I spoke to not long ago.
He’d just come out of rehab for a back injury. Pain was down, he was feeling good again, confidence starting to come back.
And he asked his physio something super simple.
“How much weight should I add next week?”
And the answer was basically…
“Ease into it.”
“Listen to your body.”
“See how it feels.”
And look, on the surface, that sounds fine. I get it.
That’s exactly what he thought too.
So he goes back to the gym, starts light, adds a bit here and there. Nothing crazy. He’s trying to be smart about it.
But there’s no structure. No numbers. No clear progression. He’s just kind of feeling it out as he goes.
And within a few weeks…
Same lift.
Same pain.
Same exact spot.
Again.
And quite frankly, this is where most people get stuck.
Not because they skipped rehab.
But because no one actually prepared them for load.
They just got comfortable without it.
And that’s a big difference.
Because real rehab does not end when the pain goes down. That’s just the starting point.
What actually matters is this:
Can your body handle more next week than it did this week?
And I mean that in a very clear, measurable way.
Load.
Volume.
Progression.
Regression.
Tempo.
If those things are not mapped out, you are not following a plan.
You my friend, are guessing.
And hoping it holds up.
And hope is a terrible strategy when it comes to injury.
So next time you speak to your physio, just ask this.
“How much?”
And if they cannot give you a clear answer, that tells you everything you need to know.
Talk soon,
Gabe
P.S Missed any of my other posts? Read them here
Why all that strengthening still isn't fixing your pain
You've done the work.
The rotator cuff exercises. The hip strengthening. The core drills.
Maybe you've been through multiple PTs, multiple programs and for a stretch, things get better.
But then the pain comes back.
And that's the part nobody really talks about. Not the injury. The loop.
The doing-everything-right-and-still-ending-up-here feeling. That's what actually wears people down over time.
What I keep coming back to:
The exercises aren't wrong. The problem is that isolated strengthening doesn't address how your body moves as a system.
Think about it this way. You can have the strongest individual players on a team, but if they're not playing together, the team still loses.
When you're squatting, benching, or deadlifting, your body isn't recruiting one isolated muscle.
It's coordinating an entire chain at once.
So if that chain isn't moving well as a system, no amount of clamshells or band pull-aparts is going to change what happens under the bar.
❌ Old approach: Strengthen the painful area. Hope the pain stops.
✅ What actually works: Restore how the whole system moves first. Then build strength on top of that foundation.
That's the difference between treating the symptom and addressing what's actually going on underneath.
Same work ethic. Different approach. Completely different result.
Talk soon,
Gabe
PS: I currently have 2 spots open for a Ground Up Diagnostic Assessment™ . It's a one-time movement review, no long-term commitment required. It's the exact process I use with my private clients.
You send me a few short clips, I analyze how your system moves both with and without load.
You get a clear video breakdown of what I'm actually seeing.
If you want clarity on what's going on before committing to anything, this is the place to start.
→ Details here
P.P.S Missed any of my other posts? Read them here
This is the last warmup you will ever need. Period.
What's up.
Just dropped a new video.
This is the last gym warmup you will ever need. Period.
If you have been dealing with any kind of stiffness, nagging pain, or just feel tight going into your workouts...
This is exactly what i made this for.
Most people try to fix one joint at a time. back pain, shoulder pain, whatever.
The problem is your body does not work like that. It works as a system.
So this warmup hits everything.
We go through three phases.
Quick soft tissue work, then opening up range, then actually getting your body ready to move.
Takes about 15 to 20 minutes max.
Run it before your next session and see how you feel after.
Let me know how it feels after you try it in the comments.
Enjoy!
Gabe
P.S Missed any of my other posts? Read them here
Pain free is dangerous.
You do the exercises.
You follow the plan.
The pain disappears.
So you go right back to training the way you were before. Because why wouldn’t you. You feel fine.
And then two weeks later it’s back. Same spot. Same pain. Same confusion.
This isn’t bad luck. This is predictable.
Because being pain free and being ready for load are not the same thing.
Most people treat them like they are. That’s where this goes sideways.
The phase that’s missing is what I call Capacity Layering.
Load. You reintroduce weight gradually.
Volume. You build tissue tolerance before pushing intensity.
Intensity. Then you earn your way back to real training.
If you skip that sequence, you’re not actually recovering. You’re just restarting the same cycle.
Follow it, and rehab actually starts to feel like progress.
Marie Claude said it best after we worked through this together.
“Never thought I’d have so much fun in rehab.”
That’s what this phase looks like when it’s done right.
Talk soon,
Gabe
PS: I put together a short video that walks through the full system. From pain free all the way back to training hard.
→ Watch it here
P.P.S Missed any of my other posts? Read them here
Why you got hurt again
Picture this.
You spend weeks in rehab. You show up even when it hurts. You do the boring work nobody sees. Then you get cleared.
“You’re good to go.”
You walk back into the gym thinking you earned your way back. The weight feels familiar. Things feel normal again.
Three weeks later, you’re hurt again.
Same spot. Same frustration. Same question sitting in the back of your mind.
Why does this keep happening?
Nobody told you this when you get discharged.
Being pain free is not the finish line. It is the starting line.
Rehab gets you out of the hole. That is it. Getting out of the hole is not the same as being ready to handle real load again.
Those are two different problems, and most people only solve the first one.
Your body has not been under real stress for weeks, sometimes months. Strength is down. Tissue capacity is down.
Movement breaks down under pressure.
None of that magically comes back just because pain is gone.
So you go back to training the way you used to.
And your body fails again.
Not because you messed up. Because you skipped the part that actually prepares you to return.
Most people follow the same loop.
They finish rehab. They go back to training. They get hurt again. Then they start over.
What actually works looks different.
You finish rehab. You reintroduce load on purpose. You rebuild capacity step by step. Then you return to training the way you actually want to train, and it sticks.
There are multiple steps between pain free and performing again. Most people skip all of them and wonder why nothing changes.
The comeback that lasts is not the fastest one. It is the one that respects the full process.
Talk soon,
Gabe
P.S. If you are in that spot right now and you are not sure how to rebuild without ending up back at square one, just reply "REBUILD" to this email. We can talk through where you are at and see if it makes sense to work together.
P.P.S Missed any of my other posts? Read them here
Lift Letter: Why your bench press keeps hurting
Most people feel that pinch in their shoulder when they bench and immediately assume it is a shoulder problem.
In my experience, it usually is not.
So what happens.
You stretch your shoulders, add band work, throw in some rotator cuff stuff.
It feels a bit better (for like a week), then the pinch comes right back.
Here's why.
Your rib cage is likely sitting in a compressed, flared position.
When that happens, your shoulder blades get pinned down against your ribs.
Now when you press, your shoulder literally has nowhere to go.
Upper back is compressed
So the pinch is your body saying you are out of space.
Instead of avoiding pressing, we just change how you load it.
First, switch to alternating dumbbell presses. We still want strength gains. So let's modify.
You are still building strength here, but now one side can open while the other presses.
That alone usually gives your shoulder enough room to move (green side is opening up)
Second, add sidelying arm bars.
This helps open up your upper back, rib cage, and shoulder blade. You are basically creating space where things were stuck before. More space, less pinch.
Third, elbows on knees with a breath. Gently push your hands apart and take a slow breath in. You should feel space open up between your shoulder blades. That is what actually lets your shoulder move the way it is supposed to.
Run this for a couple sessions and see what happens.
If the pinch improves, good. But you are not done.
The goal is to build back to barbell bench and feel strong doing it.
Stop working around the pain.
Start working through what is actually causing it.
Hope you're moving well and brewing better☕️
Gabe
P.S Here is the video explaining this concept
P.P.S. Missed any of my other posts? Read them here