Injuries, Fundamentally injuries occur when the stress applied to the the tissue exceeds the tissues capabilities (tolerance). Adapted from The Biomechanics of Low Back injury: Implications on Current Practice in Industry and the Clinic Injuries fall into two categories: Chronic: the type that are persistent, either flaring up frequently and resolving only to soon flare up again, or they just kind of linger always there at some level of pain and/ or discomfort. Acute: these injuries occur and resolve. While they may occur again, it's usually separate, distinct, events. In truth these types of injuries are often interconnected. Acute Injuries Often … [Read more...]
HIIT Pt 2: The Good, Bad and Ugly
February 28, 2019 by
So we're going to assume you're a masochist and you actually perform your HIIT intervals at 80%+ of your max. HIIT can be a really time efficient to achieve fairly substantial health and fitness gains. Or it can kill the gains you've made and make you weaker and smaller. It just depends. HIIT: The Good When compared to MOD (moderate intensity continuous exercise) High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) appears to be the bees knees. It's been shown time and again to Time Commitment? You can get a lot of fitness done in not a lot of time, "As little as 3 HIIT sessions per week, involving≤10 min of intense exercise within a time commitment of ≤30 min per … [Read more...]
Virtues Of The Sled.
November 23, 2017 by
CrossFit didn't invent the sled. But they sure as hell made it popular. I first heard about sled dragging from reading ancient T-Nation and Westside articles. Like most things "strength" today, Louie and the guys at Westside were dragging sleds LONG before just about anyone else. It seemed like any problem you had: Fat Out of Shape Weak You'd get the "shakes" when you would get under a squat bar All of these things were,cured by copious amounts of sled dragging, according to this mad man: https://youtu.be/U_qkB5905FU This is NSFW I still don't know how the hell dragging a sled, no matter how much weight is on it, can stop you from shaking … [Read more...]
Yeah, I Still Foam Roll.
September 22, 2017 by
The Fitness Pendulum Always Swings to the Extremes: Short Term, Everyone Overreacts. Long Term, Everyone Underreacts..... Rarely does the industry look at anything critically, simply on its merits and faults, weigh them and apply that tool as necessary. Case in point: Foam Rolling Lets take our way back machine to circa 2005. The foam roller took the fitness world by storm <----I know I'm being dramatic here, but it kinda is true. Everyone was using it, for everything.. Core Stretching To "break up scar tissue" <----I used to say that too. No, its not true. Hell, places were doing complete "classes" on foam rolling. Then the last 5 … [Read more...]
If You Can’t Recover, You Can’t Improve
September 13, 2017 by
"At Some Point in the Training Process it is Necessary for Recovery to Become a Training Modality"- Buddy Morris Recovery, what is it? According to Google: "a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength." Google, Recovery or for the nerds: "One definition of recovery is as follows: “Mostly, recovery is defined as the compensation of deficit states of an organism (e.g., failure or decrease in performance and, according to the homeostatic principle, a reestablishment of the initial state.” - William Sands Recovery = a "return to normal" , a "reestablishment of the initial state" But wait, what? Isn't the point of this whole training thing to improve? To … [Read more...]
Daily Preventative Maintenance
July 10, 2013 by
If You Only Had 10 Minutes a Day To Feel Better, What Would You Do? Let's get one things straight: the body ADAPTS to the loads applied. Stolen from http://acommondilemma.wordpress.com Do something---->Signal is Sent out----> Body Receives Signal and Reacts (Adapts) Sh@ just doesn't "happen"... Your tight spots, lack of range, sore spots etc have occurred, in large part, as a response to the signals YOU'VE sent out. True, genetics play a role, some people are naturally tighter. looser, have deep vs shallow hips sockets and all that. True, you could have had a traumatic/ culminating event....ie a car crash or fall etc, that caused change … [Read more...]
Tissue Tolerance: Why You’re Injured and How Not to Be.
July 2, 2013 by
Injuries happen,but they Don't have to. Stole this pic from www.vessports.com Fact is, eventually, you will get injured. If you're training hard, it's easy for something "freak" to happen, but the fact is these "freak" accidents usually are not all that "freak" and have a root cause. What this means is: YOU Could Have Prevented Your Injury. This isn't always the case. http://youtu.be/oR3N21Snnpg Not much you can do there, except not play the game. And that's usually the case with HARD TISSUE injuries. Most soft tissue injuries muscle, ligament, tendon, however, are preventable. This is especially true in the gym where we have control over the … [Read more...]
Book Review: Why Zebras Don’t get Ulcers
December 11, 2012 by
This book has little to do with training..... and.. EVERYTHING to do with training. Virtually every very successful person in my field (training, exercise, paid for push-ups) lists this as one of the best/ most influential books to read. Now i know why. Why Zebras Don't get Ulcers is about the stress response and how it affects our bodies. Most of the book deals with chronic disease and how stress opens the door for disease to take hold. The take home point of the book is that: "the things we all find stressful- traffic jams, money, worries, overwork, the anxieties of relationships. Few of them are "real" in the sense that the zebra or lion would … [Read more...]
