In recent years, the fitness world has been slowly adopting the trend of measuring heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is a means of assessing an athlete’s readiness to train and overall recovery. But is it useful? And how do we measure HRV? Let’s discuss… Heart rate variability is a measurement of the variation that naturally occurs between individual heartbeats. When...

Before discussing hamstring flexibility, we need to talk about testing hamstring flexibility. Many athletes believe their hamstrings are tight. But, often they have all the hamstring flexibility they need to perform all of their sporting activities. If an athlete passes the following tests, they do NOT need to work on hamstring flexibility. Unless they participate in sports requiring extreme hamstring flexibility...

Note from Zach: Huge thanks to Kelvin King for writing this article. Kelvin has a ton of amazing exercise variations, like the dead bug exercises he shows below. Be sure to follow him! A little rant: I love dead bugs.  However, their relationship to specific sports performance has not been fully tapped into. The transferable skill of dead bug variations will...

Body tempering (BT), invented by power lifter Donnie Thompson, has gained lots of popularity in the fitness world in the last few years. So what is BT? Does it work? How does it work? Let’s discuss…. What Is Body Tempering? Body tempering is a form of soft tissue mobilization performed by rolling weighted cylinders across muscles and joints. Think of...

Want strong legs? A killer back? Improved sprint times and jumping height? Need to rehab lumbar spine pain? Then you need to be doing deadlifts! Want to do deadlifts for a long time? Then you need to avoid these common lifting mistakes and focus on dialing in proper deadlift form.   The Most Common Deadlift Mistakes #1: Squatting The Deadlift A...

I’m excited to have my friend Brian Bouchette join TheBarbellPhysio.com to share this great video discussing anthropometry and how it can impact squat performance. If you want to have an in-depth knowledge of squat performance then this is something you need to understand!   Dr. Brian Bouchette explains how body dimensions, or anthropometry, affect squat mechanics, focusing on the impact...

Hip impingement is a common complaint that we see in fitness athletes due to the demands of their sport that push the hip joint through full ranges of motion repeatedly. As the sports of CrossFit and weightlifting have become increasingly popular so has the number of athletes suffering from hip impingement.  This condition can be quite difficult to treat and...

Note from Zach: I’m excited to have Meghan Callaway and Sarah Duvall back on TheBarbellPhysio to share this incredible article on training the glutes. These two incredible ladies have teamed up with Kellie Hart Davis to create their “Glutes, Core, and Pelvic Floor Workout System“. This product is amazing and I highly recommend taking a look at it! The glutes, perhaps...

The bar muscle-up can be a difficult skill to master as it requires significant strength and coordination. Many athletes spend months working on learning the bar muscle-up with limited success or poor technique that rapidly falls apart mid-WOD. Gymnastics expert Pamela Gagnon has a number of tips for improving technique and exercises that will build your bar muscle-up specific strength and technique....