Applications of ConjugateU for High School O-Linemen
My football players were being held back by strength deficits that are left underdeveloped in most high school programs—development of speed and maximal strength in the weight room. Here’s how I filled in the gaps.
Does Mobility or Stability Come First?
For those involved in the healthcare, fitness, and strength industries, this is a question that has been long debated and has much enthusiasm behind it, creating the ultimate chicken vs. the egg debate in the human body. So which is the answer? How do we know once and for all?
What’s Wrong with Today’s Multisport Athlete
Why is the multisport athlete of today more burnt out and fatigued as ever?
The Dos and Don’ts of 2020 Football
Here’s a don’t: If you are waiting until the summer to begin preparing for the fall, you’re already behind the eight ball…
Are Athletics Healthy for You?
Can you be an athlete performing at the highest level and also achieve optimal health, or are these two mutually exclusive? Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but those who are truly pushing their limits are either consciously or subconsciously giving up their health to do it.
Constraints: How to Use Them
I challenge you to think of this economic shutdown as a forced deload. Is it something that you want? No. Will it completely crush you? Probably not.
The Slipperiest Slope in Fitness
If you are a strength coach, personal trainer, or whatever other random fitness guru label and you’re diagnosing someone’s pain or prescribing rehab for an injury, you may want to watch your step – because you are on quite a slippery slope.
Learning From the Mamba Mentality
The point of this article is not for me to tell my personal story about how tragic the accident was, how Kobe affected me growing up, or how big of a fan I was, etc. Instead, I would like to focus on the takeaways from Kobe’s life that can teach all of us how to pursue our own passions better.
Three Questions You Should Ask Your Chiropractor
Finding a new healthcare provider can be tedious and frustrating, particularly if you don’t feel you’re being heard. Start a new visit off by asking the right questions to be sure you’re speaking to the right professional.
Evidence-Based Practice: Are You Really Ahead of the Curve?
With the same irony that Botox and liposuction clinics have absorbed the words “health” and “wellness,” the evidence-based approach has become a marketing buzzword to try to signal to the public that you are “cutting edge”. Are you all hype or really ahead of the curve?
Top 5 Recovery Tools From elitefts
Want to prevent injury by building a bulletproof back? Have achy elbows and knees? Suffering from a low-grade strain?
The Mind-Body Link: Posture Yourself Into a Winning Position
Posture makes a huge difference in every aspect of your life. It can be one of the reasons you were (or weren’t) mugged. It also can turn the tide mid-game from a loss to a victory. Try practicing your posture and see the difference for yourself.
Top-5 Exercises to Keep Your Spine Healthy
Here is a list of my top-5 exercises that I use to train lats, hamstrings, abs, and glutes. These exercises not only target the intended muscles but they also give the spine ways to recover and stay healthy. For some context, I have severe disc degeneration.
How to Communicate Clearly to Potential Clients
Ever heard the saying, “If you can’t explain something simply, you probably don’t understand it?” If you’re going to bring in clients, you need to make your pitch short, sweet, and simple.
The Characteristics of Mastery
It’s hard to think of a word that has been devalued in the strength and healthcare industry as much as the word “expert.” Luckily, “mastery” hasn’t taken the same hit. But what does it take to become a master? What defines mastery? Read on to find out.
Advice for High School Linemen
I’ve made a lot of mistakes when I was younger, and I believe it’s part of a coach’s job to pass on the knowledge and experiences I have gained from my own athletic career, such as never being average, striving for perfection, and detailing everything.
Are You Tough?
Toughness is something deeper than the scene in The Terminator when a biker puts out a cigar on an unflinching Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chest. So what does it really mean to be tough? Let’s find out.
Under the Baa-r: Lessons Learned in Herding, From Me to Ewe
In a week, my girlfriend and I went from the APF Women’s Pro-Am in Cincinnati to taking our dog an Intro to Herding Class in Nova, Ohio. I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I learned a lot about dogs, sports, and life in general.
Troubleshooting Strength Injuries: Dealing with Injury
For those of you who are currently dealing with a significant injury, this article, the fifth and final part of the Troubleshooting Strength Injuries series, will help serve as a road map to recovery.
Troubleshooting Strength Injuries: How to Autoregulate
Autoregulation is about being able to gather as much information as possible to assess the current situation and knowledge. Once you know that, you can apply this knowledge to autoregulate your training… but you’ll need to learn a couple of skills first.
Troubleshooting Strength Injuries: What is Autoregulation?
There’s a sweet spot where stressors are present as motivating and growth factors but not too much to where athletes become chronically sympathetic, causing a cascade of performance-altering events. This spot is called autoregulation.
Troubleshooting Strength Injuries: Warning Signs of Injury
Understanding the warning signs and red flags of injury are paramount to successfully pushing your body to the brink without derailing due to injury. So what signs did our example athlete miss in the previous article?
Troubleshooting Strength Injuries: Redefining Injury
Most strength athletes either take matters into their own hands or seek advice from other lifters to rehab and troubleshooting an injury. Read that again. If I’m describing you, this series is for you.
Why Big Air Is the Key to a Bigger Total
Imagine that you are on a team at work in which each individual had his or her own unique duties and tasks. What happens if someone doesn’t show up to work?
Should Kids Play Youth Football?
I will never tell a parent they are right or wrong for enrolling their child in a contact sport such as football. What I do recommend, however, is that parents ask themselves three important questions before putting their kid into a contact sport.
The Importance of Recovery for Youth Athletes
To all teenage high school athletes, you must learn to respect and take care of your body if you expect to have a long career in any sport. I cannot tell you how many talented individuals I’ve seen who were never able to live up to their potential due to injury.
It's Time to Recover
Time is the multiplier that turns a tiny crack on a newly paved road into a pothole or a single tree into a forest. Here are a few tips to reduce stress on the body and to better prepare yourself to have more in the tank for your training.
Reflexive Performance Reset: An Athlete-Based Model
The practitioner-based model is an overworked, overburdened system that leads to scarcity problems and a largely insufficient amount of time spent serving those in need of the services. RPR overcomes every downfall of this model.
Back to Recovery Basics: Supplementing Your Recovery Plan
In order to best manage the time available to devote to recovery, it is essential to devise supplemental recovery methods that best target each athlete’s personal needs.
Back to Recovery Basics: The Big Three
In part two of this series, the topic is the big three for recovery, which allows athletes to experience better performance, resistance to injury, and longevity in their sport.
Back to Recovery Basics: Fundamentals of Recovery
Understanding the role of recovery is the first step to improving your health, longevity, and performance as a strength athlete. Think of it like this: your training is the sledgehammer and your recovery is the raw materials and blueprints for improvement.
Learn From the Back to Lead From the Front
In sports performance, sometimes you need to shut up, take a seat in the back of the room, and learn before you are ready to lead from the front.
RPR: Wake Up Your True Performance Potential
The purpose of this tool is to identify problems and compensations in an individual’s movement patterns and to restore neurological balance to allow the body to perform the way it naturally should.