What Does It Feel Like To Squat 1000lbs? - Brian Carroll - #094

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hi, friends, welcome back to Modern Wisdom. My guest today is powerlifter and all-around fascinating human, Brian Carroll. You may remember Brian from the episode I did with Dr. Stu McGill as the guy who split his sacrum front to back and obliterated two of his discs. This left him unable to walk or live without pain. And over the course of a number of years, he tried numerous different approaches to fix it, eventually settling on Dr. McGill himself and now, after a long time rehabilitating his back, has come back to not only squat over a thousand pounds again, but has his sights set on a 1200 pound squat at 275 pound bodyweight, which will be the first man on the planet to ever lift it. So all of the heavyweights and stuff aside, today's conversation discusses the genesis of powerlifting, Brian's advice for strength lifters and other athletes out there, his thoughts on spine health, raw versus equipped powerlifting, advice for injured athletes, advice for people who are looking to begin powerlifting or their journey into strength sports and everything else. Not only that, but you invited me out to Florida. So you may be seeing me getting wholly bitched by Brian Carroll within the next 12 months or so. It was an absolute pleasure having him on. Gentle giant indeed. Thank you very much, Mr. Brian Carroll.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I am joined by, without a doubt, the strongest man that I've ever had on this podcast, Mr. Brian Carroll. Welcome to the show.

**Brian Carroll** (1:47)
Thank you for having me, Chris. I appreciate it. I'm looking forward to having a chat with you.

**Chris Williamson** (1:51)
Yeah, me too. Recently had mutual friend of ours, Dr. Stuart McGill on the show, and he was singing your praises, and we also briefly discussed the work that you two did together. So I'm excited to hear the other side of that story as we get through today.

**Brian Carroll** (2:06)
Yes. It's been a very interesting journey the last six years that I've known Dr. McGill. And I met him in May of 2013 where I went to see him for a very complicated back injury that I had. The actual injury was basically had no disc at L4, L5, L5S1. It was flattened just the same at L4, L5, L5S1. Both the discs were gone and it had a couple of end plate fractures working down to the sacrum where it was almost split in half. So I was in a bad spot where surgeons were wanting to do a spinal fusion on me. They were talking all this crazy stuff about how I'd never be out of pain. And Stu right away said that I can get you out of pain but your lifting is done. You have absolutely no athleticism left in your back. And I'm telling you this as if you were my son, I would urge you to retire and never consider lifting heavy again. And I said, well, you just said that you could help get me out of pain. So I looked at him and I looked at my wife and I very calmly said, I'm going to lift again, so let's get me out of pain. And he said, well, you know my thoughts on this. First things first, let's get you out of pain. And then we'll proceed. You come back in six months. We'll see where you are. And then who knows, maybe you're right. Maybe we end up writing a book about it. And that was the first meeting that we had. May of 2013 And we wrote the book in 2017 And I held his feet to the fire when he said this about the book. And it's, have you ever heard the phrase, fact is stranger than fiction?
It's super true, man. Some stories that I could tell you, you'd be like, how does that even happen? How does a guy from, how do two men from totally different worlds, one in the lab clinic training center, one from in the hole in the wall powerlifting gym, how do they merge and write a book that helps people all over the world? So it's a pretty awesome story.

**Chris Williamson** (4:01)
I'm looking forward to get into it today. And I'm sure that a lot of the listeners will be as well. So can you give us a little bit of a background to your powerlifting career, where you got yourself to in the buildup to this and some of your achievements?

**Brian Carroll** (4:15)
Yeah, so I started, I did my first bench competition in 1999 when I was a senior in high school. We just actually had a 20 year reunion for high school this past weekend. So I'm feeling kind of old. I just turned 38 last week, but I started when I was 17 and I actually got really serious about lifting when I was 16 when I was legally able to join the local gym. So from there, I just fell in love with lifting. I didn't party in high school. All I did was lift, eat well, and run, and I played baseball. So that was my prerequisite to take it to the next level once I graduated. I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do.