The Core Is a Tube, Not a Box — AllCore 360 with Dr. Scott Bertrand | EP62 The Josh Button Podcast
The Core Is a Tube,
Not a Box — The AllCore 360
The AllCore 360
30 Years. Two Spinal Injuries. One Device That Changed Everything.
Dr. Scott Bertrand is a US Army paratrooper, a retired chiropractor of 30 years, and the inventor of the AllCore 360 — a medical device that has been 30 years in development and is now being used in over 150 locations across six countries, from Olympic athletes and Heisman Trophy winners to children with hypotonia who couldn't hold their own head up.
His path started with a stamp. A physical therapist at an Army hospital pulled out his file and stamped it non-compliant. That offended him. The therapy was brutally painful, and something in the back of his mind kept telling him healing shouldn't hurt that bad. He was right. Then he broke his neck diving into a swimming pool, returned to the same therapy space years later, and found nothing had changed. That's when he committed to building something different.
This conversation covers the fundamental misconception at the core of all core training — that the core is four movements instead of 360 degrees — the two actual functions the core is designed to perform, why we've been training it isometrically for decades while using it isometrically every day, the survival mechanism that makes balance training produce results faster than anything else, the AllCore's documented impact from NFL linemen to stroke patients to children who couldn't stand, and why Europe is adopting it faster than the US.
You've got a 360-degree machine that we only train four degrees of, and we do it improperly, and we don't train it the way we actually use it. That's the deal. We've just been wrong. All of us.
— Dr. Scott BertrandWhat We Cover
What This Episode Covers
What to Walk Away With
- Everything most people know about core training is wrong. The gym version — crunches for the front, side bends for the obliques, deadlifts for the back — takes 45 minutes and produces a beautifully imbalanced core. You trained four degrees of a 360-degree structure. You did it with different weights and different exercises for each direction, so none of them are balanced against each other. You did it isotonically — movement-based — for a structure that functions isometrically in real life. Wrong on every level. Working hard at the wrong thing.
- The core has exactly two functions — and neither of them is a sit-up. First: maintain a perfectly balanced posture, because you get injured when you're out of balance. Second: act as a shield of armor protecting the critical organs inside. Both functions are isometric. The core holds, stabilizes, and absorbs. It does not bend, crunch, or flex in half. Nobody in the real world has ever needed to do a sit-up. The body never performs that movement outside of the gym.
- The body is designed to move itself through space against gravity — and bodyweight is the perfect resistance. This is the foundational principle of the AllCore. You were not designed to push 400 pounds off your chest. You were not designed to pick up 175 pounds from the floor. You were designed to move your own body weight through the world with maximum efficiency. That is what deserves to be trained. Your bodyweight for your body is perfect resistance.
- The survival mechanism is what makes balance training produce results nothing else can match. Humans are born with two inborn fears: falling and loud noises. When the head is not balanced over the pelvis — on the AllCore, on a slack line, on a Bosu ball — the brain activates survival mode. It does not wait for you to think. It recruits every available resource, fires faster, learns faster, and adapts faster than any stable-surface training can replicate. Dr. Bertrand calls this hyperneuroplasticity. You are not training muscles — you are training your body not to die. The results are exponentially faster.
- In 10 minutes on the AllCore, you stand up taller and feel lighter. This is one of the most striking features of the device — the rapid feedback. When your pelvis is balanced under your upper body properly, a spring returns to your step that most adults forgot they ever had. The compliance problem that kills all exercise programs — people quit before they feel results — doesn't apply here because you feel the results immediately every single time.
- Sport-specific training creates dangerous imbalances — and most athletes have no idea. A baseball pitcher takes his shirt off and one arm looks like the other arm belongs to a different person. A professional golfer rotates hard and fast in one direction for decades and ends up on the course with a broken back. NFL linemen have documented micro-fractures in their low backs from repetitive extension blocking — a pattern so common it's almost universal at college level. These are not random injuries. They are predictable consequences of training one part of a 360-degree structure while ignoring the other 356 degrees.
- Baby Lou changed Dr. Bertrand's understanding of what the AllCore could do. A child who couldn't hold his own head up, couldn't stand, had no functional core development. Within a month of using the device — which can accommodate the smallest hip that can fit in the seat — the child could stand and had dramatically improved core function. When the body is given what it genuinely needs, it turns itself on. Not over months. Rapidly. And that moment — watching a child stand for the first time — is the reason 30 years of development was worth it.
- Europe is adopting the AllCore faster than the US because their healthcare infrastructure rewards prevention. In the US, doctors fix broken and sick people. They don't have time to teach you how not to break or get sick. In Europe, prevention is built into the system. People spend $300-$400 a month on health spas — saunas, cold baths, massages, exercise — specifically to avoid waiting in the free healthcare line. That is an environment where a device that prevents spinal injuries and builds functional cores in 10 minutes fits naturally. In the US, the medical device regulatory process alone took the better part of 30 years.
- 75,000 people have strokes in the US every year — and most of them spiral down until they're lost. The AllCore is specifically validated for post-stroke rehabilitation. Research is ongoing. The device meets patients where they are — you don't need to move at all, the machine moves for you — which means it's accessible to people who have lost significant function. That population exists in every family in America. It doesn't require a high-performance goal. It just requires being able to get to the clinic and sit in the device.
- Health is the only thing money can actually buy that matters. You can buy a car. You can buy experiences. What you're really buying with your money is time and health. An $80,000 device sounds like a lot until you price it against a lifetime of injury, surgery, loss of function, and dependency. The membership model — a couple hundred dollars a month at a clinic — makes it accessible to people who aren't buying a unit for their home. And the people who have the resources to buy it outright have every reason in the world to do so.
What the Core Is Actually For
Dr. Bertrand's framing cuts through decades of misdirected training. The core has two functions and only two. Everything else — the six-pack, the aesthetic, the sport-specific movement — is a downstream result of doing these two things correctly.
The core functions isometrically. It holds. It stabilizes. It resists. We train it isotonically — with movement and flexion. That is not how it is used. We spend all day training the wrong function for the wrong structure with the wrong balance of resistance in only four of 360 possible directions. Then we wonder why people get hurt.
The Full Conversation
The Non-Compliant Stamp That Started Everything
Dr. Bertrand was in an Army hospital, three weeks into rehabilitation for a spinal injury. A physical therapist pulled his file and stamped it non-compliant. He had been working as hard as anyone. He was an athlete. He knew the difference between productive pain and damage. The therapy they were prescribing was in the second category — brutally painful in a way that signalled wrong, not hard. He pushed back, they called it non-compliance, and something clicked.
He realised the entire conceptual framework of what they were doing was wrong. Not the execution — the concept. Then he broke his neck diving into a swimming pool (he no longer dives). Years later, he returned to physical therapy for the second injury and found the exact same approach, unchanged. That confirmation was the final push. He spent the next 30 years building the AllCore 360.
The 45-Minute Path to a Perfect Imbalance
Dr. Bertrand walks through the standard gym core day in detail. Crunches for the abs — you pick a weight on the machine, you don't know what L means but you do 50 reps. Side bends for the obliques — you grab the 35-pound dumbbells for no particular reason and bend side to side. Deadlifts or hyperextensions for the low back — you stack 175 pounds and knock out 25. You walk out feeling accomplished.
The problem: you used three completely different exercises, three completely different loads, for three completely different planes of movement. There is no relationship between what you challenged your abs with versus your obliques versus your low back. You have no idea if you're balanced across those planes or if you've created a wildly asymmetric structure. And you've done four degrees of a 360-degree tube. You spent 45 minutes carefully engineering an imbalance.
The Survival Mechanism — Why the AllCore Works So Fast
This is the mechanism that ties the AllCore to Josh's slack line practice and explains why both produce results that stable-surface training cannot match. Humans are born with exactly two inborn fears: falling and loud noises. Falling is the deepest. When the body begins to fall — or even to sense the possibility of falling — it bypasses conscious thought entirely and activates what Dr. Bertrand calls survival mode. The response is faster, more comprehensive, and more neurologically complex than any voluntary movement.
When you do pushups on the floor, your brain produces a calibrated response. When you do pushups on the wing of a jet airplane doing 50mph down a runway, your awareness is total, your recruitment is survival-level, and the neurological adaptation is exponentially more intense. The AllCore keeps the head not balanced over the pelvis. The brain thinks it might fall. It turns on hyperneuroplasticity. You learn things you could not learn any other way, and you learn them fast.
Baby Lou — When the Body Gets What It Needs
A clinic in Georgia. A child with hypotonia — couldn't turn over, couldn't stand, couldn't hold his own head up. The child was small enough to fit in the AllCore seat — the smallest hip the device can accommodate. The team tried it. The results were immediate and overwhelming. Within a month, the child could stand. Had core development. People in the room were in tears.
Dr. Bertrand's observation from that moment: when the body is given what it genuinely needs, it turns itself on. Not gradually. Rapidly. The developmental stage matters — if you can catch someone before they have fully developed and give them the right input, you change the future. That moment — watching a child stand for the first time — is the one he carries with him. He doesn't say it can be bought with money. He says you get to carry it forever.
The Baseball Pitcher, the Golfer & the NFL Lineman
Three sport-specific cases that illustrate the same problem from different angles. A professional baseball pitcher comes in, takes his shirt off — one arm looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, the other arm looks like it belongs to a different person entirely. Dr. Bertrand gasped. The pitcher said: I make $10 million with this arm. You can cut the other one off. That's the trade. He knows what he's doing to his body and he's decided it's worth it.
Golfers rotate hard and fast in one direction for decades. Tiger Woods is the example — that's not bad luck. That's the predictable result of a single-direction rotational pattern applied to a human spine for years. Backs break on courses regularly for the same reason. And NFL linemen — the research at Oklahoma State found that almost every college lineman has micro-fractures in their low back from the extension position they adopt in blocking. Oklahoma State is now using the AllCore to prepare their linemen specifically to prevent that pattern from developing.
Seniors, Stroke Patients & the People Who Need It Most
75,000 people have strokes in the United States every year. Dr. Bertrand's read is that most of them spiral down until they're lost because the system never gets them what they genuinely need. The AllCore is validated for post-stroke rehabilitation — neuromuscular reeducation and therapeutic exercise. It meets patients wherever they are. You don't need to move at all. The machine moves. That means a person with no functional legs, bad hips, no ability to exercise conventionally — they can still benefit. The only requirement is being able to get to the clinic and sit in the device.
In senior facilities, two things happen simultaneously on the AllCore: the balance and fall-prevention work that the population desperately needs, and an unexpected cardiovascular benefit — because the core engagement elevates heart rate even without any joint movement. You can take a senior's heart rate wherever you need without making them jog. And the 10-minute format creates an organic social dynamic — people arrive at overlapping times, they know each other by name, they cheer each other on. The allcore has created functional community in senior facilities that had none.
US vs Europe — Two Different Healthcare Philosophies
Dr. Bertrand's read on why the AllCore is growing faster in Europe is clear: the healthcare philosophy is different. In the US, doctors fix broken and sick people. The system is reactive. There is no infrastructure or incentive for telling patients how not to break or how not to get sick. In Europe, prevention is built in. The public healthcare systems are backed up, so people pay $300-$400 a month to go to health spas — saunas, cold baths, massage, exercise — specifically to stay out of the line. A device that prevents injury and builds functional cores in 10 minutes fits that infrastructure naturally.
An additional factor: when the AllCore received medical device clearance in the US after 30 years of regulatory process, European markets accepted it immediately. If it's approved in America, it's approved in Europe by default. The openness of that system, combined with the prevention-oriented philosophy, made adoption significantly faster.
Mentioned in This Episode
- AllCore 360 — Website & Location Finder allcore360.com
- Gray Team Veterans Center — Boca Raton, FL (Josh's upcoming visit) AllCore 360 partner facility · Contact via allcore360.com
- DNS — Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization, Prague School of Rehabilitation rehabps.com
US Army paratrooper. Doctor of Chiropractic — 30 years in practice, now retired. Inventor of the AllCore 360, a medical device 30 years in development that trains the core isometrically through 360 degrees of movement using bodyweight and a survival-mode neurological response. The AllCore is in over 150 locations across six countries including the US, Canada, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland and Hungary. Cleared as a medical device in the US. Used by Olympic athletes, Heisman Trophy winners, heavyweight boxing champions, college football programs at UGA and Oklahoma State, stroke patients, seniors, and children with developmental conditions. Based outside Atlanta, Georgia.
Stay on the Mats. Stay Dangerous.
If this episode opened something up about how you train your body — core, balance, longevity, staying hard to kill — the free Midlife Grappler's Survival Guide was built for this exact conversation.
Get the Free Guide Or comment GUIDE on any @thatjiujiteiro post — we'll DM it instantly.Disclaimer — This episode is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing discussed here constitutes medical advice. The AllCore 360 is a medical device — consult a qualified healthcare professional before beginning any rehabilitation or core training program. Views expressed are those of the guests and host.
