Rebuilding Milo: A Lifter's Guide to Fixing Common Injuries and Building a Strong Foundation for Enhancing Performance

Outstanding resource! Vital for serious strength athletes, and their trainers and care providers. Too many books on athletic injuries are focused strictly on rehabilitation of traumatic injuries. But most athletes are plagued by more chronic conditions. This book explains how to evaluate where the problems originate, and details exactly how to resolve the underlying issue.

I am a chiropractic physician with over 30 years in practice. I’m also a competitive powerlifter, with 3 National Championship titles, and multiple state titles. I have read so, so many books on sports injuries. This book is unique in its field. Thanks so much!

As a medical and fitness professional, I like to have a very holistic approach to the health and improvement of my patients and client. Dr. Horschig vision of fixing errors rather than treating symptoms should be commonplace in all faces of health promotion and fitness, but it is an understated outlier. By focusing on what is wrong rather than what ails, Dr. Horschig provides everyone, from the layman to the professional, a blueprint to identify the most common issues that occur with weightlifting and strength training, and gives you a step by step approach at how to overcome them and improve on your capabilities as an athlete. This book is a must along with his first book, The Squat University, for all fitness and wellness professionals.

Well written book with chapters dedicated to pain from different parts of the body (hip pain, knee pain, back pain, ankle pain, elbow pain, etc...) how to assess the problem the anatomy of the problem and their correct form and fixes to help you move pain free.

I purchased the book for to help understand how to improve my mobility and correct my movements in weight lifting such as butt winking (which is covered in this book) as well as tightness of the pec which leads to shoulder mobility limitations.

I follow Dr. Horschig on instagram and love all his videos because he goes in to great detail about movement problems from an anatomic perspective to assessment and shows exercises to correct the issue then reassess the patients and they show improvement in movement.

I will reference this book for future problems i may encounter in weight lifting to help avoid such issues and hopefully increase recovery time when i do see a physical therapist.

I wanted to like this book -- and if I'm ever seriously injured I'll probably revisit -- but for my chronic back pain it was honestly more harmful than helpful.

Now that I've diagnosed my actual cause of low back pain, I really dislike how the book is structured. The author starts off with the "back" chapter, and the assumption is very much that the cause of your back pain is spinal. Even in the hip chapter, there is significant lip service paid to making sure you don't have a spinal issue that is the "root" cause of the pain. Although the author gives screenings for these "injuries" to ensure you're addressing the root cause and not making things worse, his assumption that they are infallible is outrageous. For example, I failed the "rotational" spinal screening test because, it turns out, I have muscle imbalances that have caused pelvic torsion. I spent weeks listening to the advice in the first two chapters (back and hip) to address this issue, including giving up heavy lifting that involved the back and not focusing on stretching the hamstrings. This made my pain much worse and exacerbated my imbalances. From what I can tell after further research, this seems like a much more common source of pain than disc bulge or herniated disc, especially because the research doesn't support such spinal injuries are consistently sources of pain.

Even if you are dealing with pain from an acute injury, I would probably pass on this book, and just go to the Squat U youtube channel. All the content of this book is laid out there, and the exercises are given more detail such that you could actually build a rehab program. If you go into this book looking for a concrete rehab program you'll be disappointed -- the only one you'll find is the McGill Big 3, which is freely available online as well. Trying to piece together exactly what rehab program should start with in terms of exercises/stretches and sets/reps is a huge PITA. While the author gives information on "early rehab" programs, I specifically talking about the "program" before that -- namely what you should be doing to get to the "pain free" state he recommends before starting his "early rehab."

As I added another posted note to this book I realized just how much I’ve beat the book up. I bought it originally to help me with knee pain that became a downward spiral. But now it’s helped me through ankle mobility, thoracic spine issues and butt winks. I don’t think I have spent more hours reading a book. I have read multiple sections multiple times. Ive close to memorized certain sections. If I ever lost this book. I would buy another the same day.

Hard bound text book version of the content Dr. Horschig provides on Squat University on Instagram, facebook, and YouTube. The excellent content online that has fixed some of the pain I've had in my back and shoulders already, is now available in an easy to reference book format. In this format he can go into more depth as to the how and why that isn't always possible to do in the short IG /FB video format.

Only a few chapters in but already have found a few things to put into practice. I am familiar with Dr. Horschig's work from other sites and many useful video's. I have a few other books of the similar bent and enjoy seeing new information and different presentations for self correction as well as technique improvement. Looking forward to gleaning some new nuggets. Keep in mind, there is a list of a few things (lacrosse balls, hip circles, etc) that are recommended and some tools are needed to apply and test. The one statement I always hear from him is test, evaluate, correct, and THEN retest. Makes a ton of sense to me. Look up and down, along the kinetic chain for
disfunction. Verify what you are doing is eliciting change in the correct direction. The book it self is very nicely bound and large format for reading while stretching. Enjoy, I know that I will!

"Rebuilding Milo" is a book everyone, who loves human movement should have. If you ever follow, Squat University on instagram or Youtube, than you will understand that the information, Dr. Aaron puts out is informative and easy to understand. His videos and blogs, I believe, helps people want to move better and encourages people to stay active. This book is doing that as well .

A lot of the times when you read anatomy, biomechanical, or physical therapy textbook, it can be super overwhelming because the material can be so dense. I think his approach to teaching human anatomy and movement while referencing strength activities, helps others become more receptive and interested in learning about human movement and how to move optimally. In addition, I believe it allows others to embrace strength activities/ exercises such as the snatch and squats in Olympic Weightlifting or pistol squats or even dead bug exercises, which can be intimidating.

I would like to first start with thanking the authors of this book. This is a must have books for not even people who exercise, lift etc. regularly but people who just prefer to walk. I am a CrossFit trainer and mostly follow strength and conditioning program. I am suffering from lower back pain from past few weeks and thats how I thought of buying this book. I am not only just reading this book but seriously taking notes and doing the assessment also. I am so surprised and excited to learn about my body. This book is not only simple and but very clear and precise in terms of details. Thank you Dr. Aaron Horsching for all your efforts on making our life easy and pain free.

This book is an excellent purchase for any fitness coach out there . In addition to Dr. Horschig's Squat University IG page, this book has helped me become a better CrossFit coach. It has taught me what proper movement looks like and how to screen for deficiencies in athlete movement . I've been able to help athletes resolve minor pain issues and simply free up their ROMs to get into better positions (i.e squats).

The look of surprise, shock, and appreciation in my athletes makes coaching even more worth it as I help spread the gospel of proper movement .

I know I am no trained PT and rehab programs are way out of my purview. But the simple movement screens , mobility exercises, and the test retest method (and a thanks to Kelly Starret for that) are easy enough for me to teach my athletes so they are better equipped to see how to screen for and treat their minor aches and pains . This makes them better at movement and makes me a better coach.

Again, thank you Dr.Horschig