Dr. Cobb: Hi everybody, Dr. Cobb from Z-Health here.
I have the great pleasure today of being joined by Nathan Baxter of Perth, Australia. Thanks for coming.
Nathan Baxter: Thank you.
Dr. Cobb: Nathan is a Z practitioner, he’s in our master trainer program, and,
most importantly, he is one of the best powerlifters in the world. We had the great pleasure of doing a seminar with him yesterday. It was really remarkable because the whole Z-Health curriculum – the whole Z-Health ideology looking at brain fitness – is that small things matter.
We give people things like eye drills, eye circles, and what we call pencil pushups. We give them breathing drills, all different kinds things, and sometimes they seem too small to possibly change pain or performance. Yet they do day in and day out.
We found the same thing about powerlifting. We actually had a couple of people in the course yesterday that found new personal bests just from a couple of small drills he was teaching us. Nathan, where are you sitting in the world right now?
Nathan Baxter: Sort of top five in the bench press.
Dr. Cobb: Stronger and much bigger than me, you can tell. Top five in the world.
Being that good, having that level of mastery, as I said is all about the details.
We actually had a cool experience just a few weeks ago. As he was preparing for a competition, Nathan was getting some knee pain, and we had this Internet Skype session. He was in Australia, where he’s from, and I’ll let him tell you a little bit about what happened.
Nathan Baxter: Yes, a couple weeks out from the Arnold Classic, I had some weird knee
pain develop. I went through the stuff that I thought should be working, did some toe pulls, did some nerve glides, and the pain persisted. I got on the computer with Dr. Cobb and said “Help!”
Dr. Cobb: 911.
Nathan Baxter: We went through some stuff, and interestingly Doc had us do some drills that had to do with my throat. Twenty seconds later I was squatting pain-free, which is kind of cool because two weeks before a competition you don’t want those kinds of complications. You want something that is easy to do and will get you back on track really quickly.
Dr. Cobb: And you know what was interesting, too, is he not only got rid of the pain with the drill but he went to the gym and had some new records or…
Nathan Baxter: Yes. I got back to the things that I needed to be doing that I hadn’t been doing for quite some time because of pain.
Dr. Cobb: Yes. There you go, just another example. We see this all the time in our office. Every athlete we work with. Small details. Now if you’re training at home or seeing a Z-Health trainer, and they’re giving you these weird drills – foot or ankle or wrist or mid-back drills and breathing things – and you say, “You know, sometimes it’s hard to know, does it really matter?” Well, it does.
So much of what we know about how your brain processes information is about all the small movements: How your eyes work, how your inner ear works, etc.
So what we’re going to do in the next video series, starting with the blog next week, is give you some small things to work on.
A couple of eye drills, a couple of things to do with your breathing, and the goal here is for you to start doing them and notice a difference. Because, as I’ve said, the details really are the path to pain-free performance.
Those exercises are where you’re going to find the small differences.
Thanks for joining us this week.
Nathan, thanks for being here, man.
Nathan Baxter: Thank you.
Dr. Cobb: Thanks for making everybody stronger. Appreciate it.
Nathan Baxter: No problem, anytime.
Dr. Cobb: You guys have a great week.
