What does your deadlift look like when it gets heavy? More than likely, your hips shoot up, your chest collapses forward, and you lose the maximal force you are trying to apply. When the hips rise ... Continue Reading
Injury Prevention and Resilience Through Improper Training
“You will always regret not training the position you got injured.” - Dr. Andreo Spina Some injuries are just unavoidable. I do believe a lot of wear-and-tear injuries or under-recovered injuries ... Continue Reading
Aging Is B.S. – The Myth Of Missed Opportunities
Never tell me you're too old. Never tell me it's because you're aging that you're fat, sore, achy, can't recover, not as strong, not as fit, or... The list of excuses laid at the feet of aging is maddening ... Continue Reading
Define Your Habits by Playing the Long Game
At the beginning of each year, you begin to think about what you want to change. You know fitness is important. You read all of the information about how to improve happiness, longevity, and overall health ... Continue Reading
The Cold, Hard Truth About Weight Loss
It's time for the article that should hopefully shape the rest of your weight loss journey for the better. Let's first start out with a fact: your metabolism, or your body's ability to burn calories, has a ... Continue Reading
Get Tough: A Beginner’s Guide to Impact Training
I’ve taken elbow shots, been punched, kicked and tackled. And this was just in the work-place environment. Some serious roughhousing was normal at some of the factories I worked at years ago. And the hits ... Continue Reading
The Saboteurs of Health in America
Your health is your most valuable resource. Unfortunately, society provides precious little guidance to improve it, and in fact creates tremendous pressure toward physical incapacity, disease, and mental ... Continue Reading
What a Cleaner World Championship Means for Weightlifting
The 2017 Weightlifting World Championships in Los Angeles are now history, and they provided a unique opportunity to ponder the future of the weightlifting sport. Typically, the first Worlds after an ... Continue Reading
The First Pull in Weightlifting Is the Great Teacher
Olympic-style weightlifting exercises have long been considered as the most successful sport-specific form of resistance training. Despite their complexity, derivates of the main movements have been ... Continue Reading
CrossFit Open Prep and Your Gym Family
Every year as the CrossFit Open approaches, I end up Googling last year’s schedule, because I’m convinced it’s earlier this year than last. And every year, I’m reassured that the Open starts the same week ... Continue Reading
No Pain, No Gain Needs to Make a Comeback
Just as I was about to prepare my first meal of the day, I get a call from a frantic client. “Hello?” “Dude! I just fell and completely screwed up my wrist! It’s so bad.” “Jeez. What were you ... Continue Reading
Picking a Gym: Do They Respect You?
Right now there are millions of people making their ways to their first gym session in over a year. The last time they got this excited about working out was around the same time after the last holiday ... Continue Reading
Slay Your Own Giants
“A classic,” said Mark Twain, “is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” Such is the case with arguably the greatest novel in Spanish literature, The Ingenious Nobleman Sir ... Continue Reading
Make Your Shoulder Hum Not Squeak
Raising our arms above our heads seems to be a limiting a factor for a lot of people. We can bend in the middle, move our legs wide apart, and do a number of different upper body movements. But, when it ... Continue Reading
Time to Bring Back the Seesaws
This time of year, fitness media is awash in platitudes and memes, exhorting everyone to get in the gym and get after it. But in a few months, another crop of resolutioners will have fallen off the wagon, ... Continue Reading
Looking Back on 2017 and Planning for 2018
The first instance of January 1 being celebrated as the first day of a new year goes back to the time of Julius Caesar, in 45 BC. Prior to that time, the Romans had used a lunar calendar. The first day of ... Continue Reading
The Catch: Weightlifting’s Most Complicated Movement
Should athletes in sports learn how to catch if they want to learn how to move faster? Strength is important, definitely. For that they have weighted pulls and more traditional heavy strength training ... Continue Reading
Why Linear Periodization Sucks for Hypertrophy
We have all heard the clichés and truisms along the lines of “failing to plan is planning to fail,” or “a goal without a plan is just a wish.” These phrases have become popular because they are true. ... Continue Reading
It’s Time to Stop Being Ashamed of Fat
My 47 year old body has changed. My 47 year old body has gained some fat. Menopause can be a very confusing time for a woman. This might be down to a lack of awareness about what is happening, but ... Continue Reading
Conscious Breathing Strategies in Strength Training and Recovery
It's shocking to think that we may not have a grasp of the most functions of our body. Something like breathing may seem automatic but a number of factors conspire to create bad habits. Therefore, it's ... Continue Reading
Always Earned, Never Given with Carleen Mathews
It’s easy to look through a screen at our favorite athletes and be filled with awe and envy. We tend to tell ourselves that if only we had their genes, or their athletic upbringing, or their sponsors and ... Continue Reading
Quit Overeating by Defining Your Happiness
I often get asked, “Alex, how do you stay away from bad food choices even when they’re put right in front of you?” I often get asked, “Alex, how do you stay away from bad food choices even ... Continue Reading
You Don’t Need Motivation, You Need Discipline
Motivation is a tricky subject. People are motivated by different things—money, good grades, material objects, and adoration from peers. Motivational images, videos, and quotes are put on social media ... Continue Reading
Go Back to School on the Basics
Source: Bev Childress Source: Bev Childress As we gain more experience within our fitness practice, we often are drawn to complexity. We begin to believe training can’t be effective unless ... Continue Reading
