I've never really enjoyed strength training for my entire life cardio has simply been my thing so maybe it's hiking running biking it honestly doesn't matter I love doing it but my back Health has been in steady decline and cardio has become increasingly difficult and painful for me and it's forced me to essentially pull back from doing cardio almost entirely and as a consequence my body composition is not where I'm used to having it and definitely not where I want it to be so I actually decided to start strength training but since that's not my thing I also decided to enlist the help of a personal trainer and Coach to help keep me on track and achieve my goals in today's video I'm going to take you along for that process let's do this today's video is sponsored by copilot now they reached out to us directly to see if we'd be interested in trying out their program and admittedly I was hesitant to do so I've tried strength training many times in the past and I've always stopped because I just simply prefer to go on a brutal hike or a really long run or something like that and that's even with me knowing just how beneficial strength training is for the body I'm just I'm a creature of habit and I just fell into the Trap of comfort but the thing is my back just won't allow me to do my normal cardio routine anymore and the lack of physical activity in my life I mean I have literally never been this inactive in my entire life it's just been super strange and depressing so I figured it was worth a shot you know and plus with co-pilot I'd have a coach that could help keep me accountable as well as determine the accuracy of the workout so I said yes the first thing you do is have an onboarding call with your personal trainer and coach and for me that's Mike now this first call was pretty much you know mainly my background in Fitness as well as discussing my goals with Fitness moving forward and I was super upfront with Mike from the beginning in that I just don't really enjoy strength training but what took me by surprise was his honest response that he's never really enjoyed cardio so there was kind of like this bonding in the sense that we both understood these things are really good for us but we just simply don't have that enjoyment factor with them but his approach was simple you know you can continue doing cardio you just need to add manageable yet challenging strength training workouts to help you reach your fitness goals so Mike then crafted a weekly routine for me based on my current level of Fitness as well as the equipment I had around my house you know that's the cool thing about copilot is that they're willing to work with whatever you have at your disposal I bought a set of dumbbells years ago but um they've essentially just been collecting dust so it was nice that I could finally put them to you use but even if I didn't have these dumbbells Mike would still be able to find a way for me to get a great workout but the thing that excited me most about that call was that I could still do cardio you know I don't know exactly what I was anticipating but I didn't see cardio being part of the equation the thing is that the intensity of that cardio had to be reduced dramatically due to my back injury I have what's known as a bilateral pars fracture now that is a bone break in an area of the vertebrae known as the pars inter-articularis now to demonstrate where that's at let's go ahead and look at the posterior aspect of Jeffrey's low back so you can see the spinous processes of L1 through L5 you can see the upper portion of the sacrum as well as the adjacent iliums now the pars interarticularis is actually a chunk of bone that connects the articular facet so if you'll notice there's a gap here this Gap or these gaps I should say are facet joints so this chunk of bone is the inferior articular facet of L4 while this chunk of bone is the superior articular facet of L5 and they connect here so this goes all the way up the spine now in a pars fracture it's suspected that occurs in individuals that have a pars defect which is a congenital condition where that aspect of the bone is abnormally thin again this is suspected because we still don't actually understand the actual mechanism but if that's thin and let's say you then undergo impact training maybe you're running you're jumping say like gymnastics wrestling fill in the blank that can break and that's exactly what happened with me now I don't know exactly when that happened because it's possible for this to break and you to be relatively asymptomatic for an extended period of time now I assume it happened during my time in the Marine Corps because being in the military is a huge indicator for pars fracture but this typically also happens in adolescence so it's possible this happened when I was a teenager and just didn't notice or maybe it did happen when I was in the Marine Corps or maybe it happened when I was an adult all I know is that I started feeling symptoms around 2015 2016. and the reason why this is actually so dangerous let me kind of show you this if this breaks so again for me it's broken on both sides and what that means is the entire upper portion of my vertebral column is not really properly attached to L5 and that makes me susceptible to something known as spondylolisthesis and that is a forward translation of the vertebrae in relation to the ones underneath it so you can picture like L4 and then the rest of my entire vertebral column could slide anteriorly in relation to L5 now that's bad because of the spinal cord now I actually have a thoracic vertebra here and you can see this hole right here this is called the vertebral foramen and this is where the spinal cord will go through well if the vertebra translates forward picture the spinal cord in there it moves it can hit the spinal cord this can be extraordinarily painful and debilitating and I have good days and I have bad days you know sometimes I feel normal like today right now I feel relatively normal you know I can't bend over all that well but I'm not in a lot of pain other days I take five steps and I'm basically just wanting to collapse and scream out in pain so you could probably understand why cardio is just not my thing anymore and and why I just I mean like if I continue doing cardio the way I had been doing it's only a matter of time before I have a much more serious problem on my hand so the cardio that Mike is going to have me do is more like a glorified walk which while that's definitely not what I want to be doing trust me I was extremely excited to hear that so I dusted off the old dumbbells and decided to start working out now I've been doing this for about two months now and I can honestly say that it's fantastic you see the app connects directly to my Apple watch sending information such as heart rate and movement so for instance like let's say I was doing a dumbbell curl is I'm going through the curl it'll actually analyze the motion and movement and the app can then tell me like you need to go higher or you need to go lower and it can then send that information to Mike so then he can provide suggestions based on what I'm doing now you don't need to have a smart watch but having one is definitely going to help there were times that I actually missed workouts but Mike would then just quickly check in and even send me additional workout routines that I could do in order to stay consistent because at the end of the day consistency is what you're really striving for I live in Salt Lake City Utah and right now we are having one of the snowiest Winters on record so it's actually been almost impossible some days for me to get out and do my cardio so instead I stay inside and I just do another simple maybe it's a stretching routine or something again it just really is primarily there to help keep me in the proper physical and mental headspace over 75 percent of co-pilot clients continue to work out after 100 days which makes copilot clients nine times more successful at sticking to their goals which is extremely impressive and something I Now understand firsthand I can genuinely say for the first time in my life that I am enjoying strength training I mean I don't enjoy it every time I have to do it I'm still human but I my body is really starting to understand the value you know I'm definitely starting to get stronger and mentally I'm sharp as attack lately which honestly that alone makes it worth it to me like I'll be honest with you I was skeptical that this was going to work not because I had doubts around the efficacy of strength training there's mountains of data around the benefits of strength training for both your physical and mental health instead I wasn't convinced the co-pilot could help me overcome my own stubbornness when it comes to my desire to just do things my own way regardless of whatever information may be out there and I am very comfortable in saying that I was wrong on this one copilot is the best way to reach your fitness goals it keeps you accountable without being judgmental and one of the biggest things for me is that it's not about Transformations instead it's about taking control and maintaining control over your health go ahead and click the link in the description below and get a free trial with your own expert fitness and health coach now if you'll excuse me I gotta go do my workout for the day so as always be sure to like comment subscribe if you feel so inclined and I'll see you in the next video foreign [Music]