For two hours between 7:00pm and 9:00pm on Tuesday August 19, 2014, the stars aligned to cause an event that itself caused ripple effects across time and space: the new fitness league, GRID, premiered at ... Continue Reading
Finding Your Ideal Weight: How Getting Leaner Kills Performance
As a kid I grew up reading muscle magazines. There was no Internet and getting your hands on solid training advice was difficult unless you were somehow connected to an elite program of some sort. So my ... Continue Reading
CrossFit Should Not Be Based on a Dare
Let’s say I want to become a concert violinist (stay with me on this). At my lesson on Monday, my violin teacher gives me my homework. Practice these progressions, scales, fingerings, and ... Continue Reading
Why Your CrossFit Gym Needs an On-Ramp Program
I know many owners of CrossFit gyms have already programmed and enacted an on-ramp program that all new clients must participate in before actually working out in classes. If you have not started an on ... Continue Reading
7 Reasons Your Injury Is Not Getting Any Better
Let’s face it. Injuries suck. They get in the way of your training, your competitions, and quite frankly your day-to-day life. They can be physically and mentally frustrating, and usually take longer to ... Continue Reading
First Week of Prep for World Championships (Athlete Journal 37)
I started preps for World Championships on August 3, 2014. I have a few concerns, the major one being I am working on fixing my left wrist. If that doesn’t come around it is going to be a hard two ... Continue Reading
Could Spinning Be the Best Cross-Training for Runners?
Out on a run recently with the women’s trail running group I belong to, I jumped in with a couple of girls I usually run with - as well a girl I had never met before. I had heard a few things about the new ... Continue Reading
Unilateral Leg Training, Part 2: Challenging the Overreaction
In part one Historical Perspectives I shared a historical review of single leg training. In this second installment, I will focus on what I call the overreactions to the single-leg training trend that I ... Continue Reading
Giving Back: 12 Ways to Pay It Forward in Fitness
In previous articles I’ve talked about not comparing ourselves to others, not beating ourselves up when we don’t like what we see on the scale, and the importance of surrounding ourselves with a good ... Continue Reading
My Secret Technique for Getting Results and Breaking Records
What is the most difficult part of working out for most people? Finding the motivation to do it. It’s probably not a big issue for many people reading here. We love to work out. We enjoy it. But that’s not ... Continue Reading
Survivor’s Bias: How We Miss the Mark With Our Athletes
Today I’m going to discuss something you’ve never been introduced to on this site or probably any other fitness site, for that matter. This concept has typically been observed in the financial sector, but ... Continue Reading
An Unlimited Number of Strength Training Workouts
There are endless ways to strength train whether you are a rookie, a seasoned veteran, or a competitive lifter. I love it. Think about the possibilities based on these common variables: ... Continue Reading
6 Potential Missing Links in Your Training
Are you making mistakes in your training and coaching that you're not even aware of? Are there missing elements that are blocking your progress? Not after you read this article! My bet is that if you take ... Continue Reading
Earning My Stripes (Athlete Journal 46)
I hurt my elbow and had to deal with a cold for two days, but I can’t say it was a bad week because of that. I was still able to get a lot of good training, and we even had Phil Migliarese as a guest ... Continue Reading
3 Steps to Improving Your Performance (Athlete Journal 103)
Think about your training goals (and more specifically, the process you’re using to attain them) as a system composed of several interrelated components. I’ll use myself as an example, as I believe ... Continue Reading
5 Tips for Practicing Yoga Outside
One of my favorite places to practice yoga is on the warm sand of a California beach. I always feel primal practicing yoga outside the studio, with the dirt sticking to my sweat and the noises of every day ... Continue Reading
What Do Inflammation Markers After Intense Exercise Tell Us?
In a recent study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, researchers used a match of team handball to determine how much recovery high-intensity activity requires. The results of the study ... Continue Reading
How Tonnage Calculations Can Make You a Better Lifter
Read any book about training and you will be advised to keep track of your progress via a workout log. This can be useful, as you can see your progress made over time. But what many of these books do not ... Continue Reading
Greasing the Groove: How to Make It Work for You
The phrase greasing the groove has been used in many articles. The basic premise in greasing the groove is to do the same exercise frequently, with every set performed without going to muscular fatigue. ... Continue Reading
A Programming Plan for Injury Free CrossFit
Whenever the subject of injuries in CrossFit comes up, the most common response is, “all sports cause injuries.” This is true. The caveat is that of all athletic endeavors only CrossFit seems to ... Continue Reading
Changing Up My Training (Athlete Journal 32)
I’m thankful for how well my training has been going lately. In the beginning of 2014 I was getting so frustrated due to poor performances in competitions, dealing with injuries, and not being able train ... Continue Reading
Don’t Stink and Wash Often: Hygiene for BJJ Gyms and Athletes
I have a secret to tell you. It happened many years ago, so I’m hoping the people involved will find it funny looking back at it. I had been training Brazilian jiu jitsu for about a year and during ... Continue Reading
The Violence Conundrum: 11 Lessons Learned Through Fighting
"When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf.” – Cormac McCarthy, "Blood Meridian" I recently read an article about one of my favorite ... Continue Reading
The Mistake That’s Costing You Pounds in Your Cleans
There is a phenomenon in CrossFit that is remarkably consistent across all time zones, borders, and accents. It appears to be something that we, as budding athletes, either see and mimic, or it’s some ... Continue Reading
