Pro Athlete Rehab Secrets: How I Relieved Back Pain in Days, Not Weeks
By Shane Dowd , CES, CMP
How Professional Athletes Fix Low Back Pain (THE TSR METHOD)
11 years ago, I suffered a severe back injury lifting weights.
After my injury, I couldn’t put my socks & shoes on for a month, and my girlfriend had to help me.
But, fast forward to today, and I can squat, do the splits, deadlift, and do deep back bends with 0 pain.
How did I do it? How did I go from broken spine to bulletproof spine?
A simple 3-step process called the TSR method.
I learned this method by training side-by-side with professional & Olympic athletes and studying with world-class therapists and healers.
Over a 5-year period, I spent over $25,837 studying how these pro-athletes rehab from injuries.
In this video, I will show you how I used this approach to create a completely pain-free body even though I wasn't a high-level athlete and sometimes only had 15 minutes a day to rehab.
…and how you can use it to get ultra-fast pain relief – just like the 30,000+ students around the world already using this approach.
I studied pro athletes because I knew they had access to the best science & best therapists in the world.
Also, since they get paid a lot of money, if they get hurt, they need to rehab as fast as possible. And they need stay injury-free through extreme physical stress.
Rehabbing fast and staying injury-free were skills I wanted!
So I started studying…
The healing systems I researched and the mentors I learned from all had slightly different approaches.
But, they all followed three basic principles that allowed me to:
- Fix my back pain in a couple of days
- Keep it off for months (and now years)
- Bulletproof it by making it strong & flexible
I simplified these 3 principles and put them into an easy-to-follow system called the TSR method.
I'm going to break down the TSR method for you here, to teach you how to rehab like an athlete, even if you arent one.
In this video/article, you will learn the 3 secrets to fix back pain, including:
- The “magic pill” for quick pain relief
- Why stretching and yoga aren’t enough (but, by doing this one thing beforehand, they become incredible tools for long-term pain relief.)
- The ONE step that 90% of people don't know about. And how, if you skip this step, you are almost guaranteed to end up with back pain again.
Finally, I will teach you how I brought these 3 secrets together to create a mobility practice that optimized my body to its highest potential so I never have back pain again.
Plus, as a bonus, if you like what you learn in this video, we also have a full 45-day lower-back roadmap for you to follow.
This roadmap will help you create a personalized, daily, TSR practice that is specific to your body. You can use this roadmap to keep back pain off for the rest of your life.
But, for now, let me show you what the TSR method is.
TSR stands for tissue work, stretching, and re-education.
The TSR method is a type of mobility/flexibility work. But, it’s probably different from anything else that you may have seen or tried.
It is designed to systematically heal your muscles, strengthen them, lengthen them and then bullet-proof them in the long-term.
The reason it is different is – traditional mobility work (like stretching, yoga, or foam rolling) isn’t comprehensive enough.
These traditional practices don’t fully heal your muscle damage/scar tissue.
They don’t fix the root cause of your pain. Don’t get me wrong…stretching, yoga, or foam rolling help…but only a little bit. They provide short-term pain relief…but that’s about it.
The difference is…
The TSR approach is a hyper-targeted, step-by-step, holistic methodology. Stretching, yoga, and foam rolling are “one-size-fits-all” and “cookie-cutter”. Not only that but, they also include random exercises (which may or may not be good for your specific issues.)
Let me show you exactly what I am talking about…
Let's say you are a person who sits in a chair all day for work, as most of us do. During that time, your glutes are squashed underneath you, and your core muscles are shut off. This means they are not actively engaged in supporting your spine.
The quadratus lumborum (or QL) muscle (which is the muscle that runs down your spine) then has to work hard to stabilize the spine.
The QL, like all muscles, is made up of tiny fibers.
Think of these fibers like bamboo – sturdy and flexible (when they are healthy).
But when the fibers become overused, they spasm and contract, forming dense clumps.
We call these clumps “knots” or “trigger points.”
Knots, while they may seem like a small annoyance, can actually lead to big issues.
In fact, you may already be feeling these issues in the form of back pain and tightness.
The QL, as it tightens up, pulls the back of your pelvis upward. This moves bones in your hip and spine. Causing excessive anterior pelvic tilt (APT) and possible disk issues and hip pain.
Knots also create weak points within the muscle that make it very easy for your fibers to tear. AKA a muscle strain.
If you want to avoid all this, you have to be able to stop the muscle spasms!
But…stretching and yoga alone won’t stop that spasm. In a stretch, when the muscle elongates, you feel temporary relief. But after stretching, the spasms come back.
The TSR method is designed to stop spasms and heal tears first. Only after that can you effectively elongate the muscles to a natural resting state.
How do you stop spasms, release knots and heal tears?
Step 1 is: targeted tissue work
Targeted tissue work is a form of massage that releases muscle knots and heals strains by targeting them with pin-point accuracy.
In fact, 7-Time Super Bowl Champion, Tom Brady, whom many consider the greatest Quarterback of all time attributes his unusual longevity in a brutal sport like Football to one word:
Pliability.
...and what do you think makes muscles pliable?
Ding Ding Ding! You guessed it!
Targeted. Tissue. Work.
This is so much more than just generic foam rolling or generic, fluffy massage. Foam rolling doesn’t work so well because it’s too “surface-level.” To get a muscle to relax and release, you have to be able to hyper-target the area of the spasm.
This “targeted tissue work” or “precision massage” makes your muscles unclench easier. It also helps get blood flow to the injured area, which makes recovery 2-3x more rapid. This may sound like a new or “cutting-edge” approach…but the idea is actually quite old.
It goes back to a strategy you've probably heard before… RICE
Or Rest… Ice… Compression… Elevation
Tissue work is how you get pinpoint compression on the injured/knotted area. Compression reduces inflammation and swelling. Allowing for more blood flow. Getting more oxygen to the injured area.
In fact, a recent study from Harvard University used robots to massage injured mice over 14 days.
Their research showed that tissue work can flush inflammatory and white blood cells out of injured muscle tissue...
...resulting in an increased immune function in the muscles! That's why I call tissue work my magic pill for pain relief. If done correctly, nothing gets rid of pain faster or more effectively.
Coming back to the professional athletes I studied and trained with…
While watching their rehab and recovery methods, I saw that these athletes often had other people (trained therapists and PTs) do the tissue work on them.
The only problem was that I didn't have thousands of dollars to spend on these trained therapists.
So, I had to learn how to do tissue work on myself.
Fortunately, one of my mentors, a world-class chiropractor and bodyworker named Phil, taught me how to do a style of “trigger point self-massage.” This was a style of massage I had never found anywhere else.
These targeted tissue work exercises used a variety of strange tools to release muscle knots and heal strains by targeting them with pinpoint accuracy.
This was very different from the generic massages or “surface-level” foam rolling I had been exposed to.
These techniques radically decreased my dense scar tissue and promoted blood flow to the area of the fiber tears.
This instantly took away my pain and increased the speed of my recovery by 200%.
How do I know? Because I used to get back injuries ALL THE TIME.
My healing pattern was very predictable:
- 2 weeks to get out of pain
- 2 more weeks to start feeling “normal” again
- 2+ more weeks for the general stiffness to return to “acceptable levels” (levels that I thought were normal for a Weightlifter like myself.)
But, after Phil, I recovered in just days (instead of 1+ months).
Instant pain relief..
Recovery in ½ the time…
I knew I was on to something.
But my journey wasn’t complete.
This led me to Step 2 of the TSR Method…
Step 2 of the TSR method is strategic stretching.
Targeted tissue work is great for fast pain relief, BUT when you combine it with progressive stretching, you supercharge your pain relief and flexibility gains.
In fact, Navy Seal, ultra-endurance athlete, and Guinness World Record Holder (and all-around bad@ass mofo) David Goggins stretches 2 hours every day.
Not only David Goggins, but countless other professional and world-class athletes do the same.
OK, so we know the pros are stretching…
But why should we do tissue work BEFORE stretching?
What’s so important about the order?
Well…let me ask you a question…
What stretches better? Bubble gum, OR bubble gum AFTER you “chew it up” a bit?
Obviously, chewed bubble gum stretches better!
Same thing with your muscles!
Tissue work “chews up” muscles and puts them in the their natural resting state. Then, stretching becomes twice as effective! This combo creates flexible, knot-free, pain-free muscles.
The cool part is that using this 1-2 punch, you can release any knot or fix muscle strains in days rather than months.
As a bonus effect, long-term use of this pairing (the tissue work + the stretching) will significantly speed up your flexibility gains too!
For me, it completely revolutionized my body.
However, there is one little problem we haven’t talked about yet…
What caused YOUR back pain in the first place?
And, are you still doing that?
For me, even though I fixed my pain with tissue work and stretching, I still had bad form on my squats (because of an underlying hip impingement issue.)
So even though I got pain relief and quick recovery…I had to fix my technique AND my underlying hip tightness before my back pain went away for good.
Or, going back to our example of the QL…
If you sit at work with bad posture all day, you will continue to have underactive core muscles and an overactive QL. This is a perfect recipe for back pain. So, even with tissue work and stretching, you are still “fighting against the current.”
2 steps forward (tissue work + stretching) and…
1 step back (sitting all day + not strengthening the right muscles.)
This is the one thing that will hold you back from permanent pain-relief. But, if you learn the last critical step, as I did, you can keep back pain off forever.
That brings us to step 3… Re-education.
Re-education is the process of bullet-proofing your body by:
- Changing lifestyle habits (like sitting too much)
- Learning how to move properly (aka perfecting your technique in the gym)
- Increasing stability & motor control (via “re-educating” your body)
For example, to fix your QL, you need to learn to strengthen the muscles that support the QL (AKA your “core”).
But here, we aren’t talking about just doing more sit-ups and crunches.
"Core training” does NOT mean “abs.”
True core training is way more nuanced than that. In fact, my other mentor, Carl, who trained me by having me work out side-by-side with his Olympic Athletes, used to design very intricate, 9+ exercise “core circuits” before EVERY workout. At the time (in 2008) I was used to just doing a few planks or crunches at the end of my workout.
Carl changed all that…
He told me:
“Olympic athletes are like Ferraris.”
“If we don’t take care of the Ferrari’s engine (the spine)...the car ain’t gonna’ do cr@p!”
If you train your core like Carl trained me, you won’t be overusing and abusing your spine. And if you aren’t constantly overusing it, you won't be making new knots and trigger points. And once you aren’t creating new knots and trigger points and strains, your chronic pain and injuries can truly never come back.
You are no longer fighting an uphill battle.
This “re-education” (the core training, the technique training and the lifestyle changes) were the final “missing-piece-of-the-back-pain-puzzle” for me.
When I added Step 3, the Re-education to the previous tissue work and stretching…
I felt like Neo in “The Matrix”. Everything became so clear!
I knew why my back got injured…
How to fix it…
And how to keep it pain-free…forever.
With these 3 steps of the TSR method installed as part of my daily practice, I haven’t had back pain in years!
Not only that, I have even achieved feats of flexibility I would never have imagined using these TSR principles.
The bottom line is: the TSR method is the easiest, fastest, and most effective mobility method I’ve ever found.
But… it does have two issues…
First, if tissue work, stretching, or re-education are done incorrectly, they can lead to injury (as can any pain-relief practice.)
This isn’t a concern if you follow one of my programs because, in those programs, I personally guide you through every movement, step-by-step.
This is safer and more effective because…
I’m a corrective exercise specialist, strength & conditioning coach and mobility teacher with over 14+ years of experience, so – you’re in good hands!
But…I can’t vouch for what you may learn online on Google or YouTube (or in random yoga or fitness classes). Many of the exercises/movements aren’t the best.
…and what’s worse…
Bad movements or bad practices could actually increase the risk to your back. Or increase the number of muscle knots and strains you have.
Bad movements can even cause disk and spine problems if you aren’t careful.
How to avoid this and become pain-free, flexible, and strong for life?
Don’t do haphazard and inconsistent mobility work. Do what the pros do.
Find a great teacher.
Pick a plan.
Master the 3 steps of the TSR system.
Of course, this journey to mastery takes time.
For example, studies show that it takes roughly 10,000 hours (about 10 years) to become truly masterful at something.
Massage, stretching, and strengthening are no different.
If you want to spend your 10,000 hours patching together all that info, great!
There is a lot of good info on YouTube and the internet (if you know how to filter it all.)
For example, you can start with the free videos on our GotROM channel.
But, I also know some of you may want an easier “done-for-you” kind of solution…
This is why we created our lower back program called “The Athletes Back” which I mentioned earlier. You can grab it from the link in the description of this video.
It shows you step-by-step how to use the TSR system to target and heal your lower back.
That way, you don't end up on the ground in a few days thinking…
“Why did I try that random “back-pain” routine from YouTube?!”
“...or the random “mobility drills from the Crossfit warmup”?
“…or that random Yoga sequence?!”
Also, not to mention that, there are over 40 muscles in the back.
How do you decipher where your pain is coming from?
I studied Kinesiology, but I’m imagining you haven’t! Not to worry…
In our Athletes Back program we walk you step-by-step through all of this. In plain English…no fancy technical jargon.
The program includes over 20 tissue work exercises, 16 stretches, and 15 re-education movements. I will guide you through them and learn which ones work best for you. We will then go through a roadmap that shows you how to put together your daily practice.
When you follow it, you will have pain relief in a few days, and most importantly, you will have a TSR mobility practice that will keep it off for the rest of your life.
Remember, in 2011, I couldn't even put on my socks without help…
…now I’m lifting heavy weights, doing backbends AND doing the splits…with zero pain!
And it's not just me.
30,000+ students around the globe are doing the things they love without chronic pain.
And the good news?
SO CAN YOU! :-)
To get started with the program and fix your back pain NOW, click the link in the description, and I will see you on the inside. 😃
