In this episode, I’m speaking with Dr. Sean Drake, a highly accomplished chiropractor with a fascinating career and life. His work now focuses on helping athletes, but don’t stop reading just because you’re not a high-level athlete. The beauty of Dr. Drake’s strategies is that they apply to everyone. I actually love what he says in the interview…”Everybody’s an athlete. If you have a body, you’re an athlete.”
At the core of his approach is that modulating the nervous system holds the key to unlocking extraordinary performance and healing.
Table of Contents
In this podcast, Dr. Drake and I discuss:
- The surprising reason he believes most athletes—and people—aren’t able to perform at their highest level
- The connection between injury and fear and how Dr. Drake addresses this in his patients
- Dr. Drake’s favorite healing technologies and modalities, and the common thread that links these seemingly different tools
- Why he believes the nervous system is crucial for optimal health and the number one technique he uses to treat it
- The unexpected way Dr. Drake uses thermography to assist his patients—this is a unique take I’ve never heard before!
- His beliefs on functional testing—blood work, saliva tests, etc.—and why these aren’t the main focus of his practice
- The one training he believes every clinician should get and how it changed his work forever
- Dr. Drake’s primary healing philosophy and why it’s crucial for everyone to hear and embody
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Transcript
Ari Whitten: Dr. Drake, welcome to the show.
Dr. Drake: Ari, it’s a pleasure to be here. I’ve heard so many amazing things in your podcast. I’ve already listened to you multiple times, so honored to be here with you today. Thank you.
Ari: Yes. The feeling is mutual and in that one of my good friends, our mutual friends, Mark Asaroff was raving to me about you and he said, “I played tennis with him last week,” and he said, “You got to connect with Dr. Drake. He’s just amazing. He’s got magic hands. It’s unbelievable what he did for me in his clinic in three days.” He insisted that we needed to connect and obviously I’ve heard lots of wonderful things about you. I’m excited to dig into that with you. Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about you, your background and how you got into doing the work you’re now doing?
Dr. Drake: A little bit about me is I grew up as a military kid, I had a dad who was Special Forces and a mom who was supply. I had this dichotomy of, my mom being very logistical, focused, everything had to be to the T, i’s dotted and my dad who was this very like, “The world is chaos. How do you build resilience around it?” I have adaptation over here and I have resilience over here.
After moving 13 times, before I was out of high school and going to Florida state, and then we’ll talk a little bit about that as we go, I had to learn how to become a different person in each base, but at the same point, learning different parts about me. It’s really helped me into where I’m at now in the chiropractic realm.
Beyond even that is the high performance and teaching people how to manage their nervous system for resilience, but also to be able to adapt under stress and be calm at the same time so that they can be hyper-focused, go after what they want and release what doesn’t serve them so they can literally be the best at whatever they’re going to do and know that life is limitless and that anything’s possible.
Ari: Beautiful. That was succinct. What is exactly the work that you do now? Can you describe what it is that you do and who you work with?
Dr. Drake: Absolutely. My practice has evolved. I never thought I’d be back in practice. Before 2020, I was at Titleist Performance Institute in Oceanside with Dr. Greg Rose, and we started OnBaseU, which is a baseball company based on education and teaching coaches, players, and fitness professionals how to break out the baseball athlete and make them the most efficient, and then same with Racquetfit, which is the tennis side, which is how I met Mark.
Then 2020 happened, and all of a sudden the world shuts down and you go from traveling 40 weeks a year, traveling, consulting, teaching to now having time. I ended up having an opportunity to come to Scottsdale to learn how to skydive. While I was here, during COVID, I would go back to San Diego, and we do online training for OnBaseU, Racquetfit, TPI, and then I’d come back here and I’d jump out of airplanes. Then when I’d land, I’d get on the Internet. At that time, we’ve gone through USA Softball. We were going through their data, getting ready for Tokyo.
Then all the players found out that I was living in Phoenix and they were like, “Hey, can you see us?” I was like, “No, I’m actually really happy. I don’t want to get back into practice.” That’s when Dr. Rose just pulled me aside and he’s like, “Look, man, I love you. You’ve got a gift. You need to you need to go back into practice.” Ultimately, I opened up my practice in 2020. We had one table that I had from chiropractic college, a corneal laser, and I had a baseball bat, a pitching mound and a base. That’s how we started our company.
All of a sudden it was this prohibition clinic where at that time, a lot of the guys, technically, weren’t allowed to see people outside of these facilities. The word got out like, “Hey, there’s this guy in town that really understands pitching and hitting and baseball.” Next thing I knew, I had this slew of athletes. It was interesting because I had, all of a sudden, big league guys or guys that run the big league spring training that made it. Then that year, they split up between the big leagues and the minor leagues. All the big league guys told the minor league guys, “Hey, you got to go see this guy,” and within six months, we outgrew our space and then bought a second table, then a hyperbaric, then a PEMF.
It’s evolved now four years later into what I consider a soul center. It’s not just about pain. It’s not just about an injury. It’s, how are you efficient in your movement and your physical side? How efficient are you within managing your stress, your momentum and who you are? Then where are you at psychologically? Through those three things, a lot of our guys and our players have now found themselves in better positions for opportunities to move into, if you’re in single A, to double A or double A to triple A, triple A to big leagues. Our NFL guys staying healthier longer throughout the whole season. My CEOs that fly in for three to five days, more productivity, their wives call me and they’re like, “What did you do to my husband?” or vice versa, “What’d you do to my wife?” It’s really getting people to understand that-
Ari: Hopefully not in an angry way. “What’d you do to my wife?”
Dr. Drake: No, for sure. They’re always like, “Holy crap, there’s something different about them. They have light, they’re energetic, they’re excited.” Now that we have our new center open and we’re constantly evolving, if I find technologies that work or I find better ways to manipulate the nervous system to make you better, I’m constantly doing that.
Ari: What do you think are some of the biggest areas of blocks or limitations or obstacles that get in the way of athletes performing at the highest level? I don’t know if you want to speak to– I know you specialize in athletes, but just people in general.
Dr. Drake: I think number one is the misconception of that they’re injured. Often, people get stuck to a diagnosis or, “Hey, I have shoulder pain,” or, “I’ve got back pain,” or, “I’ve got neck pain.” In reality, I tell people all the time, I’m like, “I don’t go to the source of your pain. I look at your entire body.” Let’s take a pitcher, for example. There’s a million ways to pitch, but there’s one efficient way for that pitcher to pitch based on what they can physically do, mentally do, and from a soul level, do.
A lot of times, if they’ve got a shoulder problem, a lot of guys go straight to the shoulder. In OnBaseU, one of our biggest philosophies is that. I break the athlete down from the feet all the way up to the head. I look at where they’re at from a nervous system standpoint, from an HRV, SpO2, looking at their oxygen saturation, and then I also look at where they are mentally and physically. Who are they? Where are they at? What are they stressed about? If they got injured in the shoulder, let’s go back to that injury and talk about it.
I’m dealing with one athlete right now in the big leagues that we’ve been in off-season, now we’re moving into spring training. He’s moving phenomenal, shoulder pain’s gone, but his velo is not up yet. We’re building him back.
Ari: His what’s not up?
Dr. Drake: Velocity or the velo. That’s a big thing a lot of guys chase.
Ari: If I didn’t know what that was, I guarantee 99% of listeners didn’t do. Maybe baseball players knew that.
Dr. Drake: Speed. How fast [inaudible 00:07:27]
Ari: I was thinking the abbreviation, VLO, in my head as you say. I thought it was some specific metric that you were measuring.
Dr. Drake: The thing is a lot of guys, they’ll get injured and there’s that emotional connection as well. They’re scared to let loose again because they’re afraid that they’re going to re-injure. We’ve got to take them into that environment, get them to go back through that and then reorganize it so that they don’t have that fear. Now, that’s also making sure they have the ability to do it. Once they have the ability, now we take that mental physical block out and we turn them back into monsters.
Ari: Beautiful. What are some of the unique modalities that you’re using in your clinic that maybe are different from how other– Let’s see, you’re a chiropractor by training. I’m trying to think of the right word to call you here, but you’re obviously specializing in performance optimization with athletes. What would you call yourself here? I guess the main question I’m trying to ask you is what are some of the unique modalities and methods that you’re using compared to other people who are working in a similar field?
Dr. Drake: I think a lot of times, a lot of people have these modalities. You can buy any PEMF unit, you can buy a hyperbaric chamber, you can buy a cold plunge, you can buy a sauna, but do you know how to use it with the persons in front of you? Often, I see people, they get all the tools, but they don’t know how to use them in the right order, or they don’t know when to use them, or what they’re using them for.
For me, when I look at our modalities in our clinic, number one is pulse electromagnetic field therapy, high gauss. The reason that I love PEMF is that I can literally manipulate your nervous systems to either bring you down or ramp you up. I can get deep into the body from a cellular level, because I think that we heal on the cellular level, and we’ll talk more on that within the breathwork, mindfulness, and things that we do in here. While they’re on there, I’m literally having them go through their visualization of their pace, pitching, their hitting, their company, what they want to see, because now their body is getting energy while they’re doing that, and we’re creating this epigenetic environment. If you want to quote Bruce Lipton, is that now we’re actually getting their body to feel that.
Then what we do is say, “Okay, we’ve got energy in the body, we’ve got them into homeostasis, or we’ve got them ready,” then we’ll take them and actually work on their body. What’s the physical limitation going on? Is it a joint problem? Is it a tissue problem? Is it a brain issue? Is it a motor control? Is it just the fact that their brain just forgot how to use it?
I’ll use techniques such as shockwave, class 4 laser like the RegenPod. The reason that I really love these two types of tools, yes, I needle, I do instrument-assisted soft tissue, but from a cellular structure using technology, and yes, it’s more expensive, but you get a better result quicker.
After that, then I’m like, “Well, we need to ingrain the new movement to that range of motion that we gave you.” We’ll put them into certain movement patterns, depending on what they need, and then I’ll put them onto a nervous system reset tool, like a Shiftwave or a RoXiva, which is a light that actually stimulates the brain. We can actually get it into a trauma release or get them into gratitude, get them into joy.
We’ll put them into a sound share, which is called a Solodome, which I love, because I think sound frequency is the next part of where we’re going on as a society. We’ll talk more about that. Then once they’ve done that, we’ll either do some type of vibrational therapy to get them to actually set everything in, get lymphatic drainage, and then they’ll go. Other things that we’ll use in here is hyperbaric. I use OxyHealth in here in our basic 1.5 ATA. I use Flowpresso for lymphatic. Then we use EQ Pulse, which is a PEMF device that we can use on the body to open up tissue, open up energy areas, and actually help the body heal quicker.
When you look at our system that I’m creating for the modern athlete, it’s not just saying, “I’m treating an issue.” You’re really working the whole nervous system the entire time. When you can actually get that athlete or that patient– By the way, everybody’s an athlete. If you have a body, you’re an athlete. Bill Barham has said it, I believe it. Often we forget how we were when we were kids. We forget how to play. We get so stuck in this world of, “Go, go, go, I got to go work.” What we do in here is we get you back into playing and getting you into feel. It’s pretty amazing and fun.
Ari: I’ve heard you make reference to the nervous system a number of times here. How would you conceptualize what the nervous system is and what it’s doing? Why are you putting such an emphasis on the nervous system in the work that you’re doing?
Dr. Drake: Because I think at the end of the day, that’s your motherboard. If you look at like a piano, so often we get used to playing certain emotions, whether it’s anger or frustration, or maybe it’s ecstatic joy, but we forget about the little ones in between. If we can get that athlete or that patient to slow down, now we have access to new opportunities and new emotions and new areas to be able to do the work.
If you’re completely ramped up and you get treated, a lot of times that’s considered more trauma to the body, so the body goes into guarding more. On the other side is if you’re too low and you do it, now all of a sudden it’s like, “Whoa, I don’t want this.” When I’m looking at my patients, I’m always asking them when they come in, number one, “I’m a genie, how do I get to help you? You get three wishes.” I always like to know that.
It stumps a lot of people because usually they’re coming in for some type of issue, but then they’re like, “What do I really want?” At the end of the day, that’s my goal for you. It’s like, “What do you really want right now in your life?” That could be, “I want to throw a hundred miles an hour.” That could be, “I want to have enough energy to take my company to the next level.” That could be, “I just want to play with my kids. I don’t want to have brain fog. I want to wake up in the morning. I want to work out. I want to sleep well.”
Once I have those things together, now I can say, “Where do I start you?” I had a client come in yesterday, a big CEO client, and he came in to me for a certain– he wanted more flexibility. He’s like, “I need to be more flexible. I need to golf better.”
When I got down to it, I realized, dude, this guy’s been through a crap load of trauma over the last two years. He’s so wound up, I’m like, “I’m going to call an audible. We’re not even going to work on your body today. All we’re going to do is literally take you through breath work. We’re going to put you into a couple different modalities.” Once we did that, he’s like, “I can move.” I’m like, “Yes, because tightness isn’t always what we think is a physical problem. It’s the fact that you’re so wound up, you forgot what it’s like to be calm. You forgot what it’s like to be in this state of just bliss.”
Ari: Fascinating. You mentioned PEMF and you mentioned a number of other technologies, the RoXiva, the Shiftwave chair. When you’re dealing with a client or a patient like the one that you just described, who’s so wound up, who’s got a lot of stress, anxiety, a lot of tension in their nervous system, what are some of the technologies that you found to be most impressive in helping people break free of that?
Dr. Drake: I say this all the time, I’m like, “We are the modality.” I truly believe that. All these are cool and it’s great to have external things, but we are the modality. The first thing I do is I teach breath work to all of my patients. I think that if you can get anything in life, breath work’s number one. You can literally use breath work to calm yourself, you can use breath work to excite yourself, you can use breath work to take you into a full-on journey, you can take breath work to literally break through trauma, you can take breath work to break into performance.
One of my pro pitchers, Tarik Skubal, he just won the Cy Young last year with the Tigers, triple crown as well. Him and I always talk breath work. What I find amazing is a lot of these guys, they’ll get their heart rate up to 145, 155 or even higher when they’re on the mound, and then we teach them breath work. When they get back into the dugout, they get into it and they drop their heart rate back down to 55, 60. Through your breath, you can pretty much control all of it. Now, all these extra tools are great because now you get to enhance or manipulate that breath, that power that you already have inside of you.
Ari: Are there specific breath work techniques that you are using? Do they come out of any particular school of thought around breath work? Is it more tools, pieces that you’ve picked up from many different teachers, many different schools of thought within breath work?
Dr. Drake: I have become a psycho studying breath work over the last five years. I’ve trained a lot of amazing people who have taught me a lot. Everything from conscious connected breathing to Kundalini to, holotropic, to Wim Hof, all these different types, but what I’ve found is not all breath work is great for everybody in that moment. Some simple ones that I really love is six seconds in the nose, six seconds out the nose, really just focusing in on that calm setting.
That’s your meditation piece, in the nose out the mouth is really where you’re going to get that quantum field performance side. You’re going to get to hypoxia. You’re going to be able to push yourself a little longer. You’re not going to go into major hyperventilation. Then for my guys, when I need to take them into a really intense situation, I’ll go in the mouth, out the mouth as fast as we can, as long as we can, and we’ll use breath holds. Within those minimal three things, we can get a lot of work done.
Then from there, it’s also looking at Eastern medicine, talking about chakras. I used to not believe in a lot of this stuff. As I’ve started to really study it, I can’t unsee it. It’s like, we have energy systems throughout our entire body. If we’re blocked in a certain area and we can’t open that energy space up, we can’t transfer force, we can’t improve. we’re going to be blocked at a certain limitation and maybe that’s why you’re not healing.
Ari: Given something like that, by most of the scientific community, is considered pretty woo-woo and unscientific, do you try to bring a thread of science to it? Do you have tools that are intended to measure those types of things? What are the modalities that you would use to try to work on something like that?
Dr. Drake: Obviously, I’m still building this brand and this company, but I think thermography is phenomenal for showcasing these stuck energies. We’re getting a thermography camera for in here that we’re going to literally look at the imaging of our guys and our players before we work on them and after we work on them, because it’ll show where your energy systems are blocked or where you’re holding different things.
Ari: You think the physical tissue temperature of different areas of the body is a proxy for the energy-
Dr. Drake: I do. I really do, because when you start to look at just thermogenesis of the body, the body’s going to send more things to areas that are disruptive. If it’s not in a clear, concise or formulated system, you’re going to have areas that are going to get more than others. I would expect, let’s take a pitcher, for instance, if I thermography them before they pitch and afterwards, we’re going to have a higher area of concentration, probably in the shoulder, elbow, probably the landing leg, because of the forces that are coming through it.
Now, if we can balance that out quicker, they’re going to recover faster. Same thing with, if I’ve got one of my high endurance athletes and they’ve been out on a hundred-mile bike ride, there’s going to be certain areas that are going to be more apt to have taken that force during that training. We can hyper focus in on that to move that through. I think that’s one of the best ways to do it.
There’s a lot of different modalities out there right now, like EMG, looking at muscle stimulation, looking at actually how everything’s firing. Then if I had my dream, looking at DEXA scans is one of the top ways to look at the human physiology of how healthy you really are. How’s your bone density? Where’s your visceral fat? How’s your overall fat? Where’s your muscle tissue? Once you have that, instead of guessing over a 30, 60, 90-day period, you can showcase, yes, you are improving, your bone density is improving. That’s where some of these microcurrent vibrational devices are so important.
Juvent, I’m going to be buying one here soon because high vibration can actually because some disruption in the system. What’s cool about Juvent is that it uses microcurrent. You barely even feel it, but it stimulates the bone to create a stronger response. When you have stronger bones, you’re going to have better blood flow, you’re going to have better bone marrow, you’re going to have better opportunity for the immune system. This is just different things in the dream world, as we start to continue to build for objective data that I’m going to want to have for our players and our patients that come in for our three-day or five-day programs.
Ari: I just was looking up Juvent as you mentioned that. It’s saying that it’s a micro impact platform. How does this differ from a typical vibration platform?
Dr. Drake: Again, I’m new into this technology, but I was so blown away by it. Think of it like this. When you get high vibration– I actually didn’t believe it until I got on this thing for 30 minutes. For five days I was sore, because what it’s doing is it’s using microcurrent to stimulate instead of the high vibrational. It’s allowing the bone to actually take less force, but actually improve strength.
Again, I’m a novice at this part of it. I’m just telling you what I experienced and why I’m going to bring it into my own practice. I’ll tell you more once I get it with clinical data. Over the next 30, 60, 90 days, I start to use it with my guys. I’m buying one for my mom because when you look at osteoporosis and you look at the aging population, it doesn’t cause a lot of harm on the patient or there’s no chance to get injured. It’s an opportunity to have low force over a period of time that can basically increase strength and stability. If you have those two things, you have a less chance of a fall rate. If you have a less chance of fall rate, you have an increased mortality rate.
Ari: Since you mentioned subtle energy and chakras and that sort of thing, are you a fan of some of the traditional approaches from the East as far as moving these energies, Qigong-
Dr. Drake: Like Reiki?
Ari: -or Reiki, or some of the more original conceptions of Hatha yoga and things like that?
Dr. Drake: Yes, I love Qigong. Absolutely. I grew up with, like I told you, a dad in special forces, but he was also a huge into martial arts, and Tai Chi. I have goosebumps even talking about it. I miss my dad so much. He always said to me, and actually I said this to one of my pitchers today, he’s got on my nerves, I’m like, “Dude, slow down. You’ve got to slow down to speed up.”
With Qigong, it’s a practice, same with Tai Chi and Wing Chun that I use. These are arts that have been around for millions and millions of years. I might get in trouble for saying this, but I’m going to say it. I don’t always like evidence-based because it takes five to six years to get research done. I like things that work. If you can show me something and it works and there’s not a ton of science behind it, but it’s working, I’m probably going to use it. When you look at the history of a lot of these Eastern arts, they work. There’s a reason why they have less cancer rates. There’s a reason why they can sit in a squat and most Americans can’t. There’s a reason why they have less disease.
When I look at that and I look at yogis, I love the fact that these people have an art, that they have a lifestyle. I think if you pick something and you really go into it from a lifestyle standpoint, you’re going to get a bigger opportunity for longevity in life and you’re going to have a happier life because you’re consistent. I think consistency is a big part of all those practices. If you talk to the top masters in any of them, it’s a daily practice like if you just drink water every day instead of pop, if you are able to eat whole foods every day, but we don’t. I think a lot of that comes down to lifestyle as well.
Ari: This is a broader question, but just listening to how you approach improving the health and performance of your athletes and the people you work with, what I haven’t heard you say is something along the lines of certainly how a conventional doctor would approach assessing the health of someone and even how most functional medicine doctors approach the health of someone, which generally revolves around blood testing and functional medicine, much more comprehensive blood testing, plus maybe other types of testing, microbiome testing, different hormone panels, saliva testing, urinary testing of various kinds, food intolerance testing, et cetera.
By the way, when I ask this question, I’m not, in any way, implying that that is the superior or the best way of doing things. I’d like you to just maybe speak to that. I don’t know if you do use those types of tests in your practice as well. What do you see as the role of that and how would you contrast your approach with the typical type of testing-based approaches in both conventional and functional medicine?
Dr. Drake: In conventional medicine, I think a lot of times it’s looking at one symptom or one problem. They’re looking for what they consider a norm. If we look at the history of norms, we’ve changed the numbers to fit an area of propaganda or where we want to move.
Ari: Explain that, but also keep your train of thought.
Dr. Drake: I got you. Let’s look at blood pressure. They’ve changed the numbers every single 10 years to make it a little bit lower or higher to maybe say, “Well, you need this drug,” or, “You need this situation to manage that”.
On the other hand, it’s like, just because you do blood tests on one day doesn’t mean that that’s your blood test every day. I’m very pro, at least, looking at data. I’m not an expert in blood work, so I can’t talk as an expert in functional medicine or an expert in looking at blood panels or saliva or gut testing. Are there certain players that I’ve sent out to friends of mine who I think are very good at looking at that stuff to say, “Hey, are we missing something maybe?” or if my athletes have traveled out of the country and they’ve maybe caught some type of pyloric situation or some bacteria, looking at that? Yes, then maybe we look at that.
For me, my job is to say, “I’m looking at your nervous system and how you move and how you function. If you’re not getting better, now we got to look at your diet, now we got to look at some other situations.” I collaborate with some people that also don’t always just say, “This is the only thing.” We’re looking at it as a whole and as a team.
I think sometimes in the functional medicine world or looking at some of these other areas, we get so caught up on supplementation or we get so caught up on external sources, when in reality, if we could balance the internal energy, the internal mindset, the internal efficiency, I think you could actually limit a lot of that stuff. I don’t think that we always need extra. We’re not always limited. Why are you limited? Let’s talk about that first. How’s your lifestyle? What are you doing? Are you doing the basics? If you’re not doing that and you’re trying to correct it with this, I don’t know if you’re going to be the best you ever could be.
Ari: It sounds to me like your methodology is moving away from a pathology-centric approach. You mentioned earlier, if somebody comes in and they’re complaining of shoulder pain or back pain or elbow pain or whatever, you don’t necessarily immediately go to that area, you’re trying to look at the broader person. It sounds to me like you’re moving in the direction away from a hyper-focus on a particular symptom or condition or problem towards, “How can we improve the overall functioning of this person?” Is that accurate? How would you speak to that?
Dr. Drake: I would say this, let’s say you’re coming at me with an elbow problem and you just fell on the ice or you slipped and fell. I’m going to look at your elbow first. That’s an acute injury. Then I’m going to be like, “Okay, cool. This is an acute injury. We probably need to go to imaging to make sure that something’s not broken, torn, et cetera.” If you’re coming to me with a chronic pain, there’s probably something else that caused that issue, an inefficiency in the system, in your body that’s holding on to that, which is why you’re in pain.
I had one of my players come in from spring training. He didn’t do his off season with us, but he’s out here for spring training recently. He’s having a flexor issue and he’s a left-handed hitter. His agent calls me and he’s like, “Hey, I’m going to send this guy in. I need you to check his flexor.” I’m like, “Just so you know I’m not going to look at his elbow until the very end.” He’s like, “That’s why I’m sending him to you, figure out why this elbow issue is happening.”
Once we got through him, well, number one, he’s a lefty, his right ankle wasn’t moving, so he couldn’t get into the ground force. He had no internal rotation on the front side and he couldn’t rotate through his thorax. What’s he going to do? He’s going to fall off. He’s going to bring his elbow in, and all he has is that elbow to do the work. He has no ability to transfer from the ground to the upper body.
Ari: In other words, for people listening, the basic idea is that deficiencies or deficits of movement, mobility, or strength in other areas of the body now cause excessive amounts of stress on this problem area. The problem from this frame isn’t necessarily localized to the area where pain is, but is actually originating in other parts of the body.
Dr. Drake: 100%. I’ve seen him six times over the last three weeks. He took 200 swings yesterday, zero pain. He’s like, “Dude, you’ve only done PEMF on my elbow, but you’ve worked everything else. I’m sleeping better. I’m happy. I’m waking up without the alarm clock. I show up into the training room and I’m stoked.” When in fact, earlier, he was in such a mindset of like, “Crap, am I going to make it this season? I have fear, I’m scared.” I said, “Dude, just trust me. If you will give me three weeks with you, if you still have this flexor issue and there’s still major pain, let’s get imaging, because you’ve had this for a while.”
Now we’ve got his body moving, we’ve got him functioning. Now that force isn’t going through there. His back plane’s better. Is the tissue probably still healing? Absolutely. The rest of the body is now performing. That’s not my ultimate goal. I will always focus on your “symptom area”, because I think that you got to always listen to the patient, you got to build rapport. You got to make sure that you’re hearing what they’re saying.
In my very first initial with them, I say, “Look, don’t think of this necessarily as a chiropractic clinic. Look at this as an efficiency center. You’re a car. The coach that’s coaching you is your driver. I’m your pit crew. I’m going to find the best damn pit crew to take care of you. If I can’t do something, I’m going to find somebody that can help you. I will do my damnedest to make sure that you have the best of everything so that way you have everything in life.
I tell my players all the time, I’m like, “I love you, I love that you’re an athlete, and I love that you want to make the pros, but what I care about is your wife, your kids, that when you get out of the game, that you have longevity, that you can show them, and your kids watch you,” so that the next generation doesn’t have to deal with what they’ve had to deal with. My Trojan horse is my athletes to their kids, just a ton of kids and a lot of pregnant wives in here. It’s because I believe that if I can get to the kid, we can change the world.
Ari: That’s beautiful. What kinds of things do you do with your body, with your hands in how you work with people? Are you doing a lot of manipulation with people? Are you doing a lot of soft tissue work? How does that figure into the work that you do?
Dr. Drake: That’s a great question. It’s all the above. If there could be one certification that every medical practitioner should take that is a physical medicine practitioner, whether it’s a chiro, acu, PT, is the Selective Functional Movement Assessment by FMS. Dr. Rose and Gray Cook absolutely blew my mind when I figured out that it’s not always about an adjustment or it’s not always about the soft tissue. It’s, is it really soft tissue that you need to work on? Is it really joint, or is it a motor control problem where they don’t have the range, but then you actually check and they have the range and now you just got to train the brain back?
That evolved me into so many other things like Stecco and fascial manipulation. I think as a practitioner, fascia is the number one thing I look at now. If you look at tensegrity, your fascia wraps everything in the body. Now I’m looking into organ manipulation, because we’re asymmetrical inside. A lot of players, especially if you’re a one-sided swing, you’ve probably got fascial manipulation in here. If you can’t get a full breath hold, your diaphragm can’t work, your intestines can’t work because you’ve got a restriction somewhere, now your body’s working harder while you’re trying to perform.
When I’m working on a player, I check them every time I work on them. I don’t have a cookie-cutter approach where I’m like, “Oh, I’m suggesting this, this, and this.” I literally go ground-up every time I touch my players. I have some players that they hold really well, I’m like, “You don’t need anything today,” and they’re like, “Thanks, doc, I trust you.” They’re out. I have some players I’m like, “Look, you’re going to be in here probably an hour and a half. Is that cool?” “Yes, no problem.” We’ll do extra things, whether it’s needling, soft tissue, fascial manipulation. It’s not one size fits all.
The thing is that just like the blood work, your body changes every day, so I have to check you every day. I have to have some type of assessment to show me where we’re going in each visit.
Ari: That’s certainly the case for me. I’m definitely an athlete, a lifelong athlete, but now in my 40s, I’m still surfing and weight training, playing tennis and rock climbing, and sometimes beating up my body a little too much. It’s definitely the case for me that things vary quite a bit from day to day.
Dr. Drake: I can’t wait to get you out here for three days with me. I’m so jealous. One of the things I miss most about living in San Diego, I’m working at TPI and OnbaseU is that I would go teach at a conference, I’d fly back. I had a girl that helped keep my house clean. She’d pack a bag for warm, cold, and in-betweens. I never knew where I was going the next week. I would land. I got a sailboat down in Mission Bay. I would stay on my sailboat for the night, and then I’d take my car, my Jeep, I’d drive up to my condo up in Oceanside. I’d surf and then I’d fly back out. The ocean is my serenity. I’m in a desert now and it’s like, I’m a dried-out fish. I’m jealous that you get to surf a lot.
Ari: Hopefully you can take some surf trips every now and then.
Dr. Drake: Oh, we will.
Ari: Tell listeners a bit about your personal story, what inspires you and why you’re doing this work.
Dr. Drake: My dream was to be an astronaut. Growing up with a dad in Special Forces and a mom in the Air Force as well, I thought I was going to the military. That was it. Then 9/11 happened, I was supposed to go to the academy, in the Air Force Academy, and broke my ankle. Prep school filled up. I didn’t apply to any other colleges. I somehow called the coach at Florida State and I was like, “Hey, is there a way that I can get into Florida State?” They were like, “Well, you’re a student body president. There’s this program called Emerging Leaders. We’ll get you into that.”
I got into Florida State and I had this interesting career. I got in a really bad car accident my freshman year. Fell asleep on about 95 miles an hour. Went right into the back of a gas tanker, survived that. Ended up developing ulcerative colitis from all the stress. The next two years, while I was trying to walk on the Florida State’s track team, I was dealing with UC, taking Asacol, Prednisone. Then I got depressed, got on Zoloft, Xanax.
Then my junior year, right when I was walking on the team, I got hit by a semi truck on the same interstate, driving home. My grandfather had cancer, so I was driving home that day. My car flipped three times, hit a tree. That’s when my life turned upside down. I didn’t have the opportunity to commission. I didn’t have the opportunity to finish out my track and I got really depressed. I was on a ton of oxycodone. I had a script for 50 pills a month. It was crazy, if you look at it nowadays, writing that big of a script. Chewing on oxycodones, taking Zoloft, Xanax. I don’t know how I got through my senior year. I really don’t remember much of it.
Got out of Florida State and then I went to work into politics. I started to work for the Republican Party of Florida. Got into lobbying. I love politics and so did really well there. Ended up working at the Charlie Crist Inauguration and Jeff Kottkamp, and I realized that’s not what I wanted. I moved to Tampa. I was going to go to law school at Stetson, that was my goal, and then I met a chiropractor that absolutely changed my life.
I went to him and I’m like, “Look, man, I can’t do this anymore. They want to take half my colon out.” I researched. I went to a chiropractor. All he did was put stem on me, all he did was put hot packs. adjusted me. He didn’t even help me. He ends up adjusting me two times. I had basically frozen shoulder. Within three adjustments, I had full range. Within three and a half weeks, I had a stool for the first time in a year and a half that wasn’t blood and mucus. I hadn’t taken any oxycodones. I went cold turkey off all my medications. I don’t recommend that to everybody. I went cold turkey and I went to him and I’m like, “I think I want to be a chiropractor.” He’s like, “Well, if you want to be a chiropractor, you got to do a few things. Number one, you need to go shadow five chiros, five PTs, see if you can get five MDs and a couple of nurse practitioners and tell me what you think after that.”
I spent the next three weeks at work. I’d go find a doctor that would let me come shadow. I’ll never forget, I’m with Dr. Burns in Tampa. He’s a well-known guy, worked with a ton of athletes. You had the big show [unintelligible 00:40:34] from WWE. As a kid, I loved wrestling. Emma Smith came in that day and then this pregnant woman came in, and then a baby came in and I’m like, “How do you go from that to that?” I was just blown away.
He explained to me the science behind the body healing itself and what actually happened to me through working with this other doc, and I was like, “All right, I’m going to chiropractic school.” While I was in chiropractic college, I got involved in a lot of different things. I’ve always been fascinated through engineering. That was my passion. I’m still an engineer by mindset and brain. I’m always looking at how to make things better, efficient, the physics side of it. I did a master’s in sport injury management and human performance.
While I was in there, I started to research space again because, and I’m claiming this, I’m going to space. I’ll be the first medical practitioner in performance for space. That’s my dream, to take all these ideas into space to keep us healthy long-term. I found a paper on PEMF and bone density in astronauts during my research looking at ACL injuries and how we can improve them. That’s when I found PEMF. I was like, “Okay, there’s a whole new side of this modality world.”
I started researching energy and I started looking at red light. I started looking at hyperbaric. I started looking at all these different things and then I ended up moving out to LA and then San Francisco and started the Sports Performance Institute. While I was in San Francisco is when Dave Asprey started launching Bulletproof. I got involved with Vasper, which is a blood flow restriction and cryotherapy training device, which I fricking love because– and I’ll talk about that another day. I got involved with them for the concussion side because I was working with rugby. They had a lot of research on vets and PTSD and brain injury from IEDs and things.
I went down to Palo Alto and I met with Sebastian and his dad. I said, “Hey, explain to me this technology.” I ended up getting on their scientific advisory board. One of my pro skaters, Beaver Fleming, who’s on Nitro Circus, became like a little brother. He tore his ACL on tour and he’s freaking out. I’m like, “I got you.” We ended up taking up the Bulletproof and that’s when I really started to see how energy works in different modalities.
I started jumping on the bandwagon of like, “What else is possible?” That’s when I took the job with Titleist. Dave Phillips, he’s the co-founder, is a huge fan of technology. Him and I just geeked out on finding the best tools for our athletes to improve them, and then COVID hit it and here we are. I’ve made a lot of really amazing connections and mentorships. I speak on a lot of the circuits, and so I get to meet new people, new technologies, new ideas, and new philosophies.
Sometimes I see something, I’m like, “Oh, I was wrong, that’s better.” I take that on, and then it’s like, “Oh, well, that’s actually really cool. That’ll actually enhance and make it more efficient. Let’s take that on.” I’m going to be a lifelong learner on how we optimize the body. I always want my patients to know that I’m never going to stop. If I find something that’s going to work better, even if it’s more expensive for me, I’m going to give you the better result. That’s our ultimate goal here.
Ari: Last two questions I have for you. One is related to what you were just speaking about. I’m curious, what are some of the most impressive technologies that you’ve found currently and that you’re using in your clinic and that give the biggest wow experience to people, people use these technologies and they feel immediately different, they feel wowed by the experience?
Dr. Drake: One that I just included in the practice in the last month is Solodome. It’s a sound chair device. What’s cool about this, I met these guys at Rafi Lounge in Malibu. I was there with the fires and with Shiftwave, and I’ll talk about that in a second. I met these guys and they built this chair. These guys are geniuses, Joshua and Chris. They’re like, “We want to build furniture with the best sound to watch movies and play games and do all this stuff.”
One day they had one of their friends who has Parkinson’s get in their chair and they took all the healing frequencies that are out there in research. By the way, I love when people are like, “Oh, this is woo-woo.” I’m like, “No, Stanford’s done research, Harvard’s done research, Oxford’s done research on sound therapy.” One of their guys got into the chair and his tremors went away. I get goosebumps even thinking about how this story got started. They’re like, “Well, what if we started using this not just for gaming, but for healing?”
There’s a pediatrician down in South Florida that was like, “Hey, I want a chair, I’ll try it.” What they’re noticing is kids with autism and ADHD and the sound frequencies, the 40 hertz and all these different other levels of frequency, is that these kids are mellowing out, they’re becoming verbal. I’m like, “Okay.” I sat in it, I was blown away, I got it.
My thing is, “How do I bring healing into your daily life?” Most of my players, when they get done playing the way they come down as they get on a video game, and they all play till late at night. What I do is I’ll actually put their favorite song on that they’re getting ready to walk out to and I’ll have them visualize, but in the background of the chair, I can now put the healing frequencies through. They’ll get off and they’ll be like, “Holy shit, dude, I just–” Sorry, I cussed. They’ll be like, “Man, that was amazing. What the flip.” I got three being delivered next week, because it’s just such a tie in all my sessions now with sound frequency healing.
Ari: Did you say you have three more being delivered next week?
Dr. Drake: I ordered three, because it’s that big of a wow factor of finishing the treatment. It just puts them into joy. Now if they’re playing a game or watching a movie, they can get recovery with it. That’s one. Number two, I think cold exposure is a big one. I don’t care what plunge you get or what you can afford. I have a Morozko in my clinic. The reason that I have in my clinic is I can get it down to 32 degrees.
Ari: Which one? Morozko?
Dr. Drake: Morozko, yes.
Ari: Okay.
Dr. Drake: The reason that I love theirs is it can get down to 32.
Ari: That’s too cold for me.
Dr. Drake: You think that until you can spend a couple of days with me. What that does is that, with my players and my high end CEOs, even my moms, at that level, you only have one choice, is to calm yourself under that stress. Through that and through intention, it’s literally an ability to release and conquer. You already have power when you get out of it. I think cold exposure is a big one for me.
The RoXiva has been a game changer on just mentality and overall just efficiency in the brain. I’ve already talked about PEMF, but hyperbaric, I think if you can afford it, everybody should be doing hyperbaric. Oxygen is the number one thing we need for our body, whether it’s from a metabolic standpoint to a healing standpoint. It’s also one of your coolest ways to just shut off and be in zen. If you’re claustrophobic, there’s bigger chambers and things like that. Those are some of the big ones that I have in my clinic that I love right now.
Ari: Have you found the RoXiva really induces a profound state shift?
Dr. Drake: Oh, my gosh. I had a US Olympian in here last week. I’ll just say it. If she gets mad at me, I’m okay with it, she’ll be okay with it. Ali Carter, she’s a pitcher for USA Softball. This girl is such a rock star. I got to go through her in 2020 before they left for Tokyo. Kelly from UCLA is the head coach of UCLA. She played there. I’ve consulted with UCLA. I love those girls, just amazing athletes and just human beings. You just look at who these women are and what they go through from a mental standpoint, physical.
She called me about a certain situation. I said, “Well, if you come out here, I’m not focusing on that.” She’s like, “What do you mean?” I said, “If you’re going to commit, you need to give me three full days with me. At the end of the three days, if you don’t think it was worth it, I’ll give you your money back.” I said, “We’ll focus on the main issue that you’re concerned about. If you trust me, I’m going to take you into a different field.”
I put her on the RoXiva. It was just a whole entire shift of her subconscious of what she thought and where she was. To see her power at the end of the three days, I can’t wait– We’re going to do an Instagram live about her three days here. It’s amazing to me how a white light going as fast as it can with your eyes closed takes you into places that you couldn’t even imagine, and being able to come out of it, just bliss and joy, or in tears because you’re finally feeling again. The cool thing is you don’t have to take anything in your mouth. It wasn’t external. It was all internal, but it was just a stimulus to help your eye movement, to help your brain, to get to a place that you need to be, to be your best.
Ari: Did you mention the Shiftwave device as well?
Dr. Drake: Yes. I’ve fallen in love with Shiftwave. One of the things is, Evan, he’s on their DOD side, so military, and he’s a current active Green Beret. When the fires happened, we were the first civilians that got in there. It was our whole group. It was four of us at first. We drove in, we talked our way through the blockades, and we got all the way down in the command center. We were able to help about 500 firefighters rebalance their nervous systems within 10 minutes on the Shiftwave. My players now, I’m manipulating the different types of frequency that we’re using on the Shiftwave with the other tools that we have.
I was going through some stuff a couple of weeks ago, just mentally. I was doing a cold plunge, Shiftwave, RoXiva, cold plunge, Shiftwave, RoXiva, cold plunge, Shiftwave, RoXiva, because I was using those to help me train and stimulate out of that guttural response of anger, fear, frustration. It’s amazing when how to use these tools, how quickly you can enhance your life.
Ari: Very cool. Last question I have for you is, you’re obviously a clinician, you work directly with people with your hands on them in your clinic. For most people listening, obviously they’re not necessarily in a position to work directly with you though, I suspect some people might want to travel out there to see you in your clinic in Scottsdale. What are some of the key messages or key principles, key ideas that you want to leave listeners with, to take away from this conversation?
Dr. Drake: One thing that popped in my head, I completely didn’t even think about sauna. Sauna is a big part of what we do too, just from a holistic approach, cellular detox. I also use the sauna. You’ve been in [unintelligible 00:52:18] Sport Lodge?
Ari: Yes.
Dr. Drake: Okay. Everything we do in here is a ceremony. When you’re in the heat, if you want to get out, why do you want to get out? I just wanted to mention that real quick. For listeners that– you are the practitioner. That’s what I want to tell the listeners. You are your own practitioner and you’ve got to find tools that help you. I think that basic things that you can start with is getting into some type of meditation and breath work, getting into sauna, cold plunge, being mindful about when you do it, why you do it.
Healing is so affordable now, from a technology standpoint. A lot of stuff is expensive, but there’s a lot of stuff on the market that’s not so expensive that if you just started to use daily, you could really get a benefit. I’m going to be launching my own program and I’m already doing it behind the scenes where I consult on building performance centers or healing things inside the home. There’s different levels. There’ll be a bronze level, a silver level, and a gold level, depending on what your budget is.
I’ll be able to advise you on like, “Hey, this is what I recommend. Here’s the protocol and plan,” because I think a lot of times when people buy technologies, they put themselves into harsh reactions or they don’t know how to use it, so they overuse it or they underuse it. Being able to be guided by somebody who can say, “Hey, here’s the basics. Start with a low gauss PEMF system with– look at basic red light, look at just your home. Start cutting the crap out.”
You don’t always have to come out here to heal. You can heal no matter where you are. Just start to look at your environment. Start to look at who you’re around. If you’re around somebody and you’re anxious or you got frustration, ask yourself, “Do I need to set a boundary and just not have this person around?” There’s a lot of things that I’m personally going through right now where I’m like, “No, you’re messing with my energetic field. I don’t need you in my life.”
Ari: Dr. Drake. this was a fascinating conversation. I think the work that you do is really, really interesting. I suspect a lot of listeners will also feel that way and may be interested in traveling out to Scottsdale to work with you. Do you want to let people know the name of your facility and how they can get in touch with you?
Dr. Drake: Absolutely. We’ve rebranded. It was Athlete Chiropractic when I opened and then I went to Athlete Empowered because all my players are like, “When I explain what you do, it’s not just a chiropractor.” Then now we’re completely rebranding to Moderne Athlete. The reason that I went with Moderne Athlete and we added E to the end of “modern” is for the electricity inside you, managing your nervous system for where you want to go. it’s great. I get to work with my fiancé, soon to be my wife. Her name’s Kiki. You’ve had her work on you already. She’s a master killer in her own setting.
Ari: That was crazy by the way. I’ve never experienced anything like that. The device she’s using and the currents traveling through her body into yours, it’s pretty mind blowing.
Dr. Drake: Now we’ve got this new device called EQ, which does that, but with being able to use handheld cups, train with it with Pilates, our strength side of what we do, we use NeuFit to actually enhance the nervous system as well from the strength conditioning. I think if you want to reach out to us on Instagram, my Instagram is Dr. Sean Drake, hers is Kiki_Cordero. I think it’s underscore.
Moderne Athlete, we’re launching our new Instagram here soon, but you can follow Athletic Chiropractic for the time being. If you want to reach out, you can reach out to our office, 602-810-6664. I’ll just say this, our office isn’t for everybody. If you’re trying to come out here to just fix a piece or a part, probably not your place. If you want to change your life and you want to have a shift in your soul and you really want to change humanity, that’s who we want in this clinic. If that’s what you want and that’s who you want to be, and you really want to find out how far and how deep you can go to be your best, then give us a call.
Ari: Dr. Drake, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really, really interesting conversation. Thank you for the work that you’re doing.
Dr. Drake: Thank you, sir.
Show Notes
00:00 – Intro
00:17 – Guest intro
04:56 – Dr. Drake’s work
08:33 – The biggest obstacles that get in the way of athletes performing at the highest level
10:54 – Dr. Drake’s approach to optimizing performance
14:50 – The nervous system
17:15 – The most powerful tools to break stress and tension
20:56 – Thermography
25:37 – Traditional approaches from the East
27:56 – The conventional medicine approach
31:45 – How Dr. Drake treats his patients
39:56 – Dr. Drake’s personal story
46:41 – The most impressive technologies in Dr. Drake’s clinic
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