How To Reverse Permanent Sports Injuries

After having screws put into his left shoulder, among, other frustrating injuries, Tim Ferriss said his most painful and frustrating injuries were his joints and ligaments. Not his bones. “You can be ripped, and have tons of muscle, but if you’re joints are out of sync, if they don’t function well, all of that is null and void”, Tim explains.

Feathers, Crystals and Fuzzy Bunnies Tim went through some very expensive testing, as well as some Eastern philosophies, and some rather weird testing as well. After spending a lot of money, on some very expensive, but ineffective training, Tim came up with a few things that really worked. Having written the 4-Hour Workweek, he now had access to great trainers, and PhD’s that he could talk to. “If I’m getting ready for the Superbowl, and I tear my Achilles tendon, who is the guy that I get sent to?” Tim asked. Ordinary folks would not have access to this information until now. So, an example of what would work is something called ART.

ART 
Let’s say you have upper back pain. Upper back pain is a symptom. You may have had an injury in your mid-back, where the muscles and the bone are sticking together. Your muscles aren’t moving right. Active Release Technique is where someone stops your muscles from sticking together by sticking their hand between your muscles to break those adhesions.

What Is PRP? 
This is where someone injects sugar-water into an old injury; say it’s tennis elbow. It’s very hard to heal those types of injuries because of a lack of circulation. What the sugar water does is produce an inflammatory response, as if it was a new injury. It floods your body with new healing agents.

Affordable and Non-Surgical 
The basic gist of PRP and ART is that these methods are not drug related or hospital related. This is transformative. No one is going to care as much about your health as you will. You cannot expect doctors to sit down and talk to you for an hour about movement therapy. Treating your injuries does not have to be expensive. See your doctor and get your copy of the 4-Hour Body today.

Interview Transcript:

Mike Koenigs: All right, let’s talk about ones that’s near and dean to you because you’re an extreme guy obviously, you’re reaching the point now where you’re about ready for family. And in order to be a good daddy, you’ve got to able to move with your kids. So, let’s talk about permanent injury reversal. And you’ve done virtually everything extreme and that’s one of the byproducts of having the life you’ve had. You’ve been able to travel all over; you’ve done a lot of sports. Let’s talk about, first of all, the injuries you’ve had and then what you’ve done to actually reverse them. That’s one of my favorite topics in the book. Timothy Ferriss: I’ve had a very active sports career. I was an All-American wrestling in high school; I was national kickboxing champion and Sancho, which is Chinese kickboxing. On and on and on, judo, rugby, you name it. So I’ve had at least 30 fractures, at least. I mean, just my hands alone, I’ve broken these three fingers, and these three, that’s six. And then both collar bones,  probably twice. It’s another four, that’s ten right there and then it just goes on and on, ribs and so forth and so on.

I’ve had many dislocations; I’ve had complete shoulder reconstructive surgery. My arm was sticking
out in the center of my chest, and I had to have this completely rebuilt so I have titanium screws in
my left shoulder. The list goes on and on and on. So I’d had a lot of damage. And the most frustrating type of damage was not bone-related. It was either joints or tendons or ligaments in some fashion–which of course are usually going to be joint-related. Because I really feel that you are as old as your joints feel.

Mike Koenigs: Isn’t that the truth?

Timothy Ferriss: You can be ripped, get a low body fat, tons of muscle. If your joints are out of sync, if they don’t function well, all of that is null and void.

Mike Koenigs: Okay, so you went down the path with a lot of expensive trials.

Timothy Ferriss: I spent a lot of money.

Mike Koenigs: Okay. And you found some stuff that was expensive and ineffective right? And some of it was really out there, correct?

Timothy Ferriss: I’ve tried some stuff that’s really out there, yeah.

Mike Keonigs: You also had some Eastern applications, but you also had access PhD sports nutritionists and a lot of very high-end coaches.

Timothy Ferriss: Yeah, so the question that I asked myself was: “If I’m getting ready for the Super Bowl, I have eight weeks, and I tear my Achilles tendon, who’s the guy that I get sent to? That’s what I want to know.”

Mike Koenigs: Perfect. Which again comes down to access, because “ordinary” folks wouldn’t have access to these experts. That’s what I love about the 4-Hour Body…You’ve taken information that has been impossible to find, impossible to know about really, and you made it completely transparent.

Timothy Ferriss: Right. And now you can find them. So an example of that, just to give you one example would be something called ART. Well, I’ll give you two examples. There’s something called ART, which most people haven’t heard of. Then there’s something also called prolotheraphy or PRP, which most people haven’t heard of. So ART works like this: Let’s say you have a pain, let’s say you had upper back pain. The upper back pain is a symptom. You may have had an injury in your mid back, you may have some type of chronic adhesion elsewhere where muscles aren’t sliding properly, they’re rubbing against each other.

Mike Koenigs: Yeah, or they’re sticking to themselves or the bone, right?

Timothy Ferriss: Or the bone, right. And ART– Active Release Technique–it’s very similar to getting a massage but here’s where it’s different: They might come back and dig their fingers very deeply into the back of your shoulder, between two muscles and then have you go through specific movement to break those adhesions.

Mike Koenigs: And it’s different than Rolfing.
Timothy Ferriss: It is different from Rolfing. But to give you an example, I had again Charles Poliquins, who is very well versed in this and worked on me a little bit. I could only bring my arm down to about here prior to him working on me because of shoulder injuries. Now I can lower my arm really far down. That was after 15 minutes of him working on me. One session.

Mike Koenigs: It’s amazing.

Timothy Ferriss: Incredible. And then there’s PRP prolotheraphy–that is basically injecting sugar water into old injuries. That’s the very simple way to explain it. But the problem with old injuries, let’s say, a really old ACL tear that’s been repaired but the knee hasn’t been the same since. Or you have an old injury, could be tennis elbow of some type. The problem with those injuries is that they usually don’t receive much circulation. It’s very hard to heal them once that initial response has already passed.

You have a very short window after the injury to fix it properly. So when you inject the sugar water– that’s basically what it is–dextrose water, saline, maybe a few other things. What it does, is it produces an inflammatory response as if it were a new injury. And that is what then brings all the growth factors and healing factors to that area. It can be very effective. One of the surgeon generals, his name is escaping me–he was a huge fan of this.

Mike Koenigs: It was Coop, wasn’t it?

Timothy Ferriss: It was Coop, yes. And it’s very uncommon, the surgeon general comes out and says,
“You know what? Injecting sugar water really works”.

Mike Koenigs: This is one of the reasons why I think this is such a great chapter in the book I think about how many people are living with permanent damage and it turns out that what you found was very effective. Also, this is first of all– affordable and non-surgical in nature. And you’re able to get massive results in 15 or 20 minutes. I see this is being transformative on a couple of levels.

First of all, it’s a great way to bring people to the point of being pain-free and more productive Two, I think it’s an amazing opportunity for another business, another industry that’s not drug-related. It’s not hospital-related; it’s not going to be dependent upon government-controlled health care. It’s transformative work.

Timothy Ferriss: No one’s going to care as much about your health or your pain as you will. You can’t expect doctors who have 10 minutes per patient or who are only reimbursed for certain things to sit down and talk to you for an hour about movement therapy, ART, and prolotheraphy. They just don’t have the means to do it. And I wanted to fill that gap to the greatest extent possible, because it doesn’t have to be expensive. There are very common problems, lower back, etcetera, that can fixed just by changing your shoes! Mike Koenigs: And there’s another thing that’s in here that I want to at least mention, because I’ve known him for a while, and that’s Pete Agaskew. He was kind enough to publish and show off some of his best exercises in here. You showed us a series of exercises that can essentially eliminate, or at least drastically reduce, chronic pain.

Timothy Ferriss: Pete’s background is a long story, so I won’t go into that. But suffice to say, and this is borrowing from another friend of mine now, excellent PT named Kelly Staret. His advice to anyone is, that sitting is death. That’s all he says. He is like, “Sitting is death.” The more you sit, the more problems you’re going to have. That’s it. And I think a lot of what Pete delivers that is of high value to the highest number of people is, undoing the damage that you get when you sit hunched over for several hours a day.

And there are a handful of very simple exercises that you can do. One of them is lying on your back with your legs elevated up on your chair. Let’s just say at a 90-degree bend, with your arms out at your sides, roughly let’s just say 45 degrees out from your sides. And you touch your thumbs down to the ground. And just holding that position for five minutes, doing that twice a day, for most people, the before and after difference is almost unbelievable.

Mike Koenigs: My wife for example has always had little chromic back pain issues, and she has used this strategy, and she saw dramatic, dramatic changes So I think it’s the value of this information in the 4-Hour Body is fantastic. If you have chronic pain, look at those four pictures, do those exercises. It’s going to take less than ten minutes a day out of your life and will dramatically decrease the amount of pain you have in your body.

Timothy Ferriss: I think the cosmetic stuff is important, the appearance stuff. I think the performance stuff is a lot of fun and also very important for self-worth and so forth. But I think the information on reversing injuries and also the fertility tips are probably the biggest secrets I can give. For those that need it, these two elements will have the biggest benefit over all.