Back pain is incredibly common in sport, including all combative sports like jiu-jitsu, MMA, boxing and judo. That is why I was thrilled to talk to Dr Stuart McGill, one of the world's leading experts on back pain. Dr McGill spent 30 years researching and teaching spinal mechanics at the University of Waterloo in Canada.  He has published more than 300 scientific papers, written 3 textbooks, and has worked to improve sports performance with countless athletes from almost every sport.   His book, "Back Mechanic: The Step-by-Step McGill Method to Fix Back Pain" has become a classic manual for living a painfree life and "Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance" is a guide for many coaches to bring their athletes up to the next level of performance while avoiding a debilitating back injury. Here is just a little of what we covered today... 00:42 - How to become a world class expert in spinal mechanics and back pain 08:16 - Studying spines in the lab and what that tells you about spines in athletes 14:08 - Disc herniations and back pain 19:42 - Dr McGill's work with Olympians and elite athletes 24:00 - The athleticism of MMA fighter George St. Pierre 29:55 - Principles for avoiding back pain injury 34:40 - The power of the neutral spine 45:24 - The advantages and dangers of developing power through spinal rotation 51:04 - How elite strikers hit so hard 54:28 - Posture and spinal position in jiu-jitsu 1:01:07 - Hip morphology and leg flexibility of great jiu-jitsu fighters 1:06:07 - Books and other resources by Dr McGill Injury is the enemy, and avoiding injury is the key to a long and successful athletic career, so I hope you enjoy this episode! Cheers, Stephan Kesting P.S. If you get the chance a rating or a review of this podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your audio would be HUGELY appreciated.