Hey! Do you want a bigger front and overhead squat? How about pressing more weight overhead? How about healthier shoulders with the ability to press things without hurting? Maybe you just want your overhead press to look a little less like your grandma reaching into the cabinet to grab some porridge in the morning.
I wake up in a heaping pile of sweat every morning having dreamt of pressing 400 pounds over my head (while riding a magic carpet and throwing fireballs.) Continue reading
Here’s one of my favorite stretches. I really like this stretch because it hits a lot of things at once and it focuses on areas that usually need it. I basically combined a stretch created by Gray Cook and Brett Jones with some ingenuity from Kelly Starrett and Mike Boyle. I’ll call it the Super Bretzel.
The bretzel was created by Gray Cook and Brett Jones. Check out their video: Continue reading
Posted in Exercise Demonstration, Stretching, Uncategorized, videos, Warm-up
Tagged bretzel
Alright so we’ve all heard of the benefits of improving ankle mobility:
Posted in Achilles Tendon, ankle, Exercise Demonstration, foot, Stretching, Uncategorized, videos
Tagged ankle
I really like Coach Burgener.
If you haven’t heard of Coach Mike Burgener, he’s the Senior International Weightlifting Coach for the U.S. Somewhere along the way he got involved with the crossfit community. As you are all well aware of, crossfit loves the olympic lifts and uses them quite a bit in their programming. It’s great that he’s lending his expertise for all of us to be better athletes because these lifts are complex and take time and effort to master.
He has an excellent warm-up he teaches that all crossfit athletes use before each session. I was first introduced to the warm-up from Steve Liberati over at crossfit Tribe. The main point is to improve technique in order to increase performance but I really believe we can get a lot more from the warm-up. Continue reading
As we all know, the first time trying an overhead squat can be quite the experience. It feels super awkward, its hard to put all of the pieces together and often times your body just does not feel like it can get into the right position.
Like all other exercises, mastering the overhead squat and snatch is going to require intense technical practice, probably more so then most other exercises. The movements requires a ton of flexibility, stability and coordination to perform safely and efficiently.
One of the major limiting factors of someone’s ability to properly overhead squat is flexibility. I decided to compile a video list and demonstration of my favorite stretches and mobility drills to increase flexibility for these lifts. Continue reading
Posted in Injury Prevention, Shoulder, snatch, squat, Stretching, Technique, Uncategorized, Warm-up
If you read my training journal at all you know I throw around the words “prehab”, “static stretching” and “dynamic warmup” quite frequently. A lot of people have asked me what the hell that means and really its tough to describe the exercises I use. Here’s my best effort of an explanation:
This part of your training session is pivotal to the health of your joints and your performance. If you’re anything like me you want to get stronger and leave the gym with two shoulder joints that don’t feel like they’ve been ravaged by gorillas after doing an upper body training session. Continue reading
Posted in Injury Prevention, Shoulder, Stretching, Technique, Uncategorized, Warm-up
Tagged band hug, band pull-apart, band w, crossfit, dan pope, dynamic warm-up, Lats, mobility, Pecs, Prehab, Prevention, ring recline row, rotator cuff, serratus anterior, Shoulder, shoulder external rotators, Shoulder flexibility, shoulder injury, shoulder retractors, Strongman, Thoracic spine mobilization, Warm-up
We’ve all heard this argument, should we stretch or not before training? I’ve heard all the rumors:
Alright, I made the last one up, but the other ones are pretty common. A new article just came out in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports. Continue reading
Posted in Injury Prevention, Stretching, Uncategorized, Warm-up
Tagged Stretching, Warm-up
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