Autoregulation After a Big Injury
Autoregulation based on back pain is KEY to lifting heavy again. Part 2 of the series is here.
A Four-Step Plan for Your Comeback
Follow this four-step plan to reignite your passion and achieve MORE goals in strength sports.
6 Recovery Methods for Stress Management
You can troubleshoot stress, improve muscle recovery, and achieve sustainable strength gains through these effective strategies!
Returning to Competition After a Big Injury
Injured and feel like your powerlifting journey is over? Look to Naomi for inspiration! She shares: It’s NOT over.
How To Save Your Lower Back and Knees Into Your 40s and 50s
Skip Hill provides strategies for maintaining lower back and knee health while training legs intensely in your 40s and 50s.
The Holy Trinity of Recovery
The road of recovery includes three stops: sleep, nutrition, and conditioning. Find out how Hunter incorporates the Holy Trinity of Recovery for his athletic performance.
The Time I Wrecked My Nervous System
If you have ever experienced a huge setback during your training, you can relate to Nathan Robertson as he shares his road to recovery in order to squat 1000 pounds.
The Mentality of Overcoming Injury
Injury will happen in some capacity as you progress through the sport. How will you overcome the setback—mentally and physically?
The One Armed Guillotine Training Split
Training through injury, the following splits pushed me through elbow surgery and a lat tear.
High-Performance Solutions to Common Injuries
Overuse injuries build up over time due to incomplete rest. Take a look at the cycle to prevent your next injury.
Protect Yourself From Stress: Keys to Performance, Recovery, and Quality...
Understanding all the mechanisms of stress can help you become aware of your response to stressors. Believe me, you can do better.
Correct Application and Execution of The McGill Big 3
The McGill Big 3 has been used for over three decades to help people recover from back pain. However, with the surge in online gurus and overnight trainers, the Big 3 has often been butchered and changed from its original intent.
The Need for Addressing Basic Pelvic Deficiencies in Baseball Programs
The pelvis and hip cannot be neglected in baseball pitcher’s athletic training programs. Don’t miss out on these key performance indicator’s for your pitching athletes.
How to Make Your Rehab Suck
If getting under the bar is the end goal post-injury, here’s what NOT to do. By knowing the wrong approach, it’s easier to grasp what’s right.
No More Shitty Pecs
This is a fun one where I relate viscoelasticity to training stimuli in a way you’ll understand to fix your shitty pecs…
Better Ankles Equals Better Conventional Deadlifts
If you can’t go into more dorsiflexion, your calves and quads won’t be in an advantageous position to deadlift.
How to Progress Anti-Tin Man RDLs
One way to progress the Anti-Tin Man RDL is by taking that same pattern into a more dynamic and less stable environment through Walking RDLs.
Bulletproof the Effectiveness of Your Injection or Surgery
Here are some CRUCIAL POINTS to consider to benefit from your treatment. Otherwise, you may never experience long-term relief.
The Squat Bar Isn't Bad For You
I know it might FEEL bad, and you might feel banged up from squatting with it, but that does not mean you should be avoiding the straight bar.
Revisiting the Cross-Body Cable Extension
The Cross-Body Cable Extension has enormous potential to address a myriad of shoulder and upper back issues, but you’re doing it wrong.
Intensity Techniques to Use in a Rehab Block
Ditch the boring “three sets of eight to ten reps of rehab movement,” to break the mold and bridge the gap between training and rehab.
Mobility Training is Not What You Think
Everything you do in the gym is mobility training, but not everything you do in the gym gives you better mobility.
4 Hacks to Prevent Back and Hip Overuse Injuries
You’ll want to include some single-limb work, train in multiple planes of motion, provide alternation and stability, plus soft tissue work!
Pain and How We Can Better Manage It
In the moment you say, “Ow, this hurts,” what do you do? Do you push through the pain or go home? Here’s what to know about pain.
The Back-Friendly Approach to Leg Training
How can we create the damage and nastiness required for a productive leg workout while sparing our backs?
The 3-Part Warm-Up You Can Do in 10 Minutes
You likely warm-up extensively or do nothing at all. Instead, try this 10-minute, 3-part warm-up to systematically prime yourself for your next workout!
Can Training Be Protective Against Injury?
Train balls to the wall and stuff is bound to break, right? Back things off and recovery capabilities won’t be as taxed, right? Well, kind of.
3 Steps to an Effective Deload
Before you take a break from lifting heavy (and for those of you that are on the fence wondering if deloads are even necessary), consider three backed-by-science steps.
I Am Dani LaMartina
Who’s Dani? Where is she from? What are her passions? What is she accomplishing in her practice and lifting career? She tells you here.
Technique's Role in Injury Risk
Can we adapt, get stronger, and build tolerance within what could be considered bad technique. Here’s how injuries occur and don’t.
What is Pain Telling Us?
Pain is your brain going, “Hey, let’s stop this before (more) damage occurs.” Do you push through the pain or do you stop? Then what?
Set Your Mind Free
Getting over the mental hurdles post injury can be just as painful as the actual injury, but you can come out of it stronger if you choose to.
What is GPP and Who's It For?
Incorporate General Physical Preparedness into your regimen and watch as you meet or exceed your overall training goals.
Poor Recovery is Holding You Back!
Training hard but still not seeing gains in strength and size? Try taking a harder look at your recovery. It’s science.
Train and Rehab with Crossbody Extensions
Crossbody extensions address tissue tolerance and scapular awareness—something to use for direct upper body training AND physical therapy.
A Well-Rounded Approach to Injury Prevention
No exercise or series of exercises can guarantee injury prevention. It takes a holistic approach with a heaping amount of common sense.
Blending Training and Rehab for the Powerbuilder
There’s no reason to be sidelined into rehab purgatory when dealing with a combination labral tear with bicep tendinopathy. Read how this case study is applicable to you.
The Beauty of Quiet Technique
If you’re looking to be strong, improve durability, and look better, quiet technique will get you there with less wear and tear. Here are implications and executions of this technique using a variety of exercises.
Hormone Panels 101
I instruct all of my clients to get a full hormone panel at least once a year. Here’s how to prepare for these labs and what a comprehensive hormone panel looks like.
The Anti- Tin Man Romanian Deadlift
Implementation is the easiest part of this exercise because you are using only your available range and not approaching this with a “must have the mobility of a 12-year-old gymnast” mentality. Here’s your chance to access planes and ranges of motion that most of us forget even exist.
It's Better to Wear Out Than to Rust Out
In my fifties, I started to experience knee pain during and after Olympic lifts, squats, and deadlifts. After a career full of lifting and contact sports, my options were anti-inflammatory medication and gels, surgery, braces, ABI, and PRP. Here’s what helped me.
How to Come Back From Multiple Injuries
A personal account of my two-year journey from a broken radius, broken ulna, and a torn ACL (all on the same day) to coming back stronger than ever. Tons of people have broken bones and torn muscles and ligaments before, in and out of competition, and this is just one of those stories.
Aging and Keeping Pace
Why is another article in the realm of injury prevention and performance improvement while aging relevant? For two reasons: the audience is growing, and every author has a different writing style. If you remember at least one of my points, remember, “Get the drugs!”
How to Relieve Lower Back Pain
I had my fair share of lower back issues to the point I needed to be fed by my wife. There are only so many times you can go through this before it clicks what the problem is and how to fix it. Here’s what I’ve figured out.
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?
My Left Glute is Not Activating
Anyone who’s actually said this and FELT this lack of power knows how frustrating it can be: Despite the EBP nerds saying, “Well, the hip is extending, so the glute must be firing.” If you have felt the empty feeling, you know that you’re not firing on all cylinders.
The 8 Pillars of Longevity for Athletes
The primary drivers of aging can be narrowly reduced to inflammation, oxidative stress, and mitochondrial function. Here’s how to manage them.
What’s Wrong with Today’s Multisport Athlete
Why is the multisport athlete of today more burnt out and fatigued as ever?
Tendinopathy Edition: Programming Variables to Consider When Returning t...
When it comes to returning an intermediate-advanced lifter to a heavy compound, there are often more factors at play than we initially think. Perfect mechanics probably aren’t enough to get you back to where you need to be.
The Most Underrated Exercise You’re Not Doing for Shoulder Health
Do your shoulders hurt at the bottom of the bench? If so, what are you doing to fix it? This exercise may help.
Understanding How To Utilize PRI With Youth Athletes
The Postural Restoration Institute® (PRI) course I took helped me understand body position optimization so much. I immediately saw how I could use this to help benefit my athletes and clients (and hopefully, I can help you help your clients and athletes).
Shoulder Saver Bench Warm-up
Since starting this recovery routine, that I do on both of my upper body days per week, I have had far less pain and nagging injuries. Save your shoulders!
Thyroid Health Update
The intricacies of the thyroid are complicated, so I wanted to triangulate my advice versus just taking one opinion and rolling with it. When I did so, I found that they all had very similar conclusions. Here’s my treatment plan.
Serious Training Considerations for COVID-19
So here is the decision you need to consider: should you adapt your training in favor of less dangerous styles of exercise and workload, or continue as planned on your strength journey?
Epidemic Survival Strategies for Fitness Enthusiasts and Professionals
For starters, if you have access to equipment during this time, it is recommended that restraint be employed pertaining to exercise intensity and volume as both have been implicated in temporarily suppressing immune system function.
What To Do When Your Thyroid Fails You
Slowly each week, I was getting bigger and bigger — and not the good kind. I exploded from a 130-pound fitness chick to a 200-pound walrus. After a solid three years of impeccable blood lab results, it’s time to dabble in my sob story and ultimately share the phases I undertook to regain my health and life.
My Sh*tty-@ss Thyroid
Why is it important to get thyroid testing done? What thyroid markers should be tested? What causes thyroid dysfunction? As I dive into thyroid health and function, these are the questions I’m discovering. I’m still trying to get a better understanding of it all, but here’s what I know so far.
War Within a Breath: Balance and Symmetry
Today, we’re going to go over the functional implications that our sympathetic dominance has on our musculoskeletal system. P.S. I’m really enjoying writing this series!
Top 6 Mistakes Powerlifters Make Health-Wise
I see the same mistakes made over and over, and these mistakes are absolutely huge when it comes to being able to keep training progressively.