Spondylolisthesis required surgery after fifteen years of resistance
“It starts with something called a pars defect, which I was born with. It is a tiny fissure, a little fracture on the bony backside of my l five vertebrae. And because I've been so hard on my body for so many years, literally hundreds of thousands of flip turns and God knows how many miles of running, This fracture, obviously got aggravated and exacerbated, which led to an instability of that vertebrae in my spine. My l five slid forward and down until it was sitting upon the nerve roots that emanate in between l five and s one. And essentially, what he told me is this is an engineering problem. Like, there's no amount of glute activation that is gonna move that vertebrae back into place.”
“First, I wanna be as fit as possible by the time I turn 60. I turn 60 on October 20. So I have this window of time between, now, which is 2026 and October 20 2026, to see what's possible in the gym. And the second goal is really a celebration of the first, which is to participate in the New York City Marathon in November, which I think is in early November this year, very shortly after my sixtieth birthday. Not to set a PR, not to even necessarily run the whole thing, but just to be able to participate, to be able to cover the distance as a runner or a walker among many other thousands of of runners and walkers to just celebrate movement, a return to movement.”
“It reminds me of how I got sober and the way that the universe knocks when you're living out of integrity. So for example, when I started drinking, first it was fun, then it was fun with problems, and then it was just problems. And along the way, the universe started to knock. Hey, you're kind of out of control. It's the universe's way of saying, you might wanna look at this behavior and course correct, and those knocks start gently. But if you don't heed them or pay attention to them, they start to go get a little bit louder. And if you continue to ignore them, basically, you're headed for total life dismantlement.”
“So I started with a few very simple rules. The first of which was no bread, nothing with gluten in it, no refined grains. I added into that nothing with added sugar in it. And of course, no ultra processed foods, just focusing on whole foods. Because I found that it's actually easier to lose weight when you're not doing vigorous exercise or in some kind of intense training cycle, because you don't have to contend with the heightened, appetite and cravings that come with that. But just by making those subtle tweaks and being patient, not in a hurry, is how I have been able to lose over 35 pounds in about a hundred days, very gradually.”
Tobey Maguire recommended a back pain book to Rich
“And he said to me, have you read the John Sarno book, Healing Back Pain? Now, anybody who has a lower back issue might be able to relate to the annoyance and the irritation of being recommended this book. It comes up all the time. And the premise of this book is that your lower back pain is essentially an emotional issue that you have stored in your body, an unresolved emotional wound that is requiring redress. But the ripple in this story is that the guy who was telling me this tale was none other than Tobey Maguire, Spider Man. And he had suffered a back injury as a result of being in all these Spider Man movies and that kind of rigorous stunts that he had to perform. And I thought, well, maybe this is a message from the universe or from God. Like God has delivered Spider Man to me to tell me this story.”
“When I began, I couldn't hold a plank for more than ten seconds. I think I could only do like two push ups. I was so atrophied from having not moved my body in such a long time, which is such a precipitous decline from being this guy who is, at one point, named one of the 25 fittest men in the world. Like, just, you know, an incredibly ego deflating, you know, kind of humbling experience.”
“When you do that, you create momentum. Momentum is sacred. You wanna protect it. When you have it, go out of your way to basically make sure that it is perpetuated. Because once it's interfered with, it's very difficult to get back. So treat it as sacred. And then, like NBA legend Chris Paul said to me on the podcast a couple years ago, just keep stacking days. That's it. Don't over complicate it.”
“In conclusion, train where you're at. Not where you used to be. Where you think you should be. Where you feel like you deserve to be. Or where you wanna be. Because you can't solve a problem until you're in full acceptance of it. That's absolutely essential. And whether it's diet, nutrition, training, fitness, or some other kind of healthy habit that you're trying to master, try to approach it from a place of joy with a learning mindset, and try to let go of the hardness, like you're punishing yourself.”
