Strength Sensei BookShelf
Rebuilding Milo
Insight into a practical resource in dealing with common sports injuries
Dr. Arron Horschig’s first book, The Squat Bible, is a practical resource for strength coaches, personal trainers, and the general population who don’t know squat about performing the squat. In this 2021 follow-up book, Rebuilding Milo, Horschig and co-author Dr. Kevin Sonthana offer a comprehensive look at common injuries that affect your workouts and what to do about them.
By extensive, consider that while The Squat Biblewas a compact book that could be read in about an hour, Rebuilding Milois a 585-page monster that will be a challenge to get through. But you don’t have to.
The book is divided into seven chapters, with the first six addressing injuries to basic bodyparts. If knee pain affects your ability to truly appreciate leg day, turn to Chapter 3 on page 260 and learn Horschig’s approach to get you back in the squat rack. This chapter breaks down into three sections, each written for a general audience with numerous photos and illustrations:
- Knee Injury Anatomy 101
- How to Screen Your Knee Pain
- The Rebuilding Process
An analogy to this approach is Charles Poliquin’s Structural Balance system. Structural Balance involves finding the cause of what is affecting performance or causing pain and then addressing the issue with the appropriate corrective exercises (or medical treatment, especially soft tissue treatment such as Active Release Techniques Treatment ®). And if you’re on a budget, consider that most of Horschig’s equipment needs to deal with injuries are relatively inexpensive, such as a lacrosse ball, a PVC pipe, and resistance bands.
Here is the breakdown of the chapters:
Chapter 1: Back Pain
Chapter 2: Hip Pain
Chapter 3: Knee Pain
Chapter 4: Shoulder Pain
Chapter 5: Elbow Pain
Chapter 6: Ankle Pain
Chapter 7: Don’t Ice, Walk It Off!
Although the first six chapters provide extensive advice on determining the cause of injury and what to do about them, Chapter 7 explores the controversial topic of using ice to treat injury and the use of ice baths to enhance recovery from hard workouts.
Injury 101 will tell you that the basic approach to treating most acute sports injuries is RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation), a term introduced in 1978 by Harvard physician Gabe Mirkin. In 2013, Gary Reinl challenged the value of ice treatment in his controversial book Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option. Interestingly, the second edition of this book had a foreword by Dr. Mirkin where he said that RICE should not be considered the preferred treatment of acute injuries to athletes.
Rebuilding Milo is an extensive resource on practical methods to help you resolve injuries that can affect your training. It’s a pricey investment at $64.95 hardcover, but the knowledge you will gain from studying it is priceless!
[You can purchase Dr. Aaron Horschig’s Rebuilding Milo at Amazon.com.]
