Physical Therapist and Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach Zac Cupples has a passion for human anatomy and helping people meet their health and performance goals. He excels at providing individualized treatment through rehab, training, nutrition, sleep, stress management, and sports science.  What’s amazing to me is that he does online consultation, and helped me fix my chronic back pain by video conference!

On this podcast, Zac and I discuss his approach to working with clients and mentoring other practitioners. He talks about some of his assessment methods and strategies for helping people reduce pain while getting remarkable health and performance results. He shares simple breathing techniques that helped me tremendously and discusses some tried-and-true methods for improving client adherence with daily exercises.

Here’s the outline of this interview with Zac Cupples:

[00:00:06] Dr. Ben House; Podcast: Ben House, PhD on Strength Training: a Discussion at the Flō Retreat Center in Costa Rica.

[00:00:52] How Zac got into physical therapy.

[00:02:04] Book: Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks, by Ben Goldacre.

[00:03:19] Physical Therapist Bill Hartman.

[00:05:48] Shawn Baker; Podcast: Life at the Extremes: Fueling World-class Performance with a Carnivore Diet.

[00:06:25] Working with NBA basketball players.

[00:10:23] Dr. Bryan Walsh.

[00:11:36] Sleep as a keystone behaviour; Ashley Mason podcast: Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioral Strategies for Diabetes and Sleep Problems.

[00:13:43] The effect of sleep on performance; Zac’s post: He Sleeps He Scores: Playing Better Basketball by Conquering Sleep Deprivation.

[00:15:53] Fixing pain.

[00:21:01] Assessing movement.

[00:22:02] Variability in movement positively associated with health and performance. Study: Stergiou, Nicholas, and Leslie M. Decker. "Human movement variability, nonlinear dynamics, and pathology: is there a connection?." Human movement science 30.5 (2011): 869-888.

[00:22:16] Study of javelin throwers: Bartlett, Roger, Jon Wheat, and Matthew Robins. "Is movement variability important for sports biomechanists?." Sports biomechanics 6.2 (2007): 224-243.

[00:24:26] Doing assessments remotely/online.

[00:27:13] NBT Head of Strength and Conditioning, Zach Moore; Podcast: Overcoming Adversity and Strength Coaching.

[00:27:37] Pain vs. tissue damage.

[00:30:30] Book: Back Mechanic by Stuart McGill.

[00:30:46] Barbell Medicine videos on YouTube.

[00:31:06] Harvard Health article: Babying your back may delay healing.

[00:34:21] Consulting with Zac on my chronic lower back pain.

[00:39:29] Using the anal sphincter to tilt the pelvis.

[00:43:35] Breathing for 3D expansion of the body; Video: “Stacking” the Ribcage on top of the Pelvis.

[00:45:55] Influencing client behaviour to ensure follow-through.

[00:53:54] Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Work Week.

[00:55:11] Minimal effective dose.

[00:56:56] Lesley Paterson, Braveheart Coaching, Podcast: Off Road Triathlon World Champion Lesley Paterson on FMT and Solving Mental Conundrums.

[00:58:30] Altis; Dan Pfaff and Stuart McMillan.

[00:59:55] Comparing recovery postures; Study: Michaelson, Joana V., et al. "Effects of Two Different Recovery Postures during High-Intensity Interval Training." Translational Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine 4.4 (2019): 23-27.

[01:01:47] Zac’s website.

[01:02:08] Human Matrix Seminars.

[01:05:21] Find Zac on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube.

[01:05:40] Book: Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, by Cal Newport. Podcast: How to Live Well in a High Tech World, with Cal Newport.