The Best Single Leg Deadlift Variations  A lot of athletes program single leg dead lifts as a way to strength their hamstrings, their glutes, and their low back, but they often find that the balance requirements of your standard single leg deadlift tend to be the biggest limitation of their ability to progress that more so than the load...

A common expression among various fitness circles is “there’s no such thing as overtraining, just under-recovering”. Regardless of your stance on the topic of overtraining it warrants further discussion. For instance, an individual may experience all the symptoms of overtraining but simply not be getting sufficient sleep to support their recovery. Once sleep is corrected, their performance will return to...

One of the least discussed components to an athlete’s workout programming is the workout warm up. This piece of your workout will get your body prepared for optimal performance and should not be ignored. In this article, I’ll outline how athletes should structure their workout warm up and then share several examples of warming up for specific movement patterns. Workout...

In this video, we talk about shoulder pain with kipping pull-ups and muscle-ups and four of the most common things we see leading to people getting irritated shoulders during those movements. We also recently discussed this topic on the Performance Plus podcast! Shoulder Pain with Kipping Pull-Ups Issue # 1 – The Stiff Shoulder The first thing’s going to be,...

The deadlift can be one of the best exercises for building total body strength and improving the health of your spine. But many athletes get recurring low back pain after deadlifts. If that is you, then we will share the most common causes of this to help you get past deadlifts being an aggravating activity. Low Back Pain After Deadlifts...

When discussing the thoracic spine (upper back), we often focus on the importance of mobility in this area. Limitations in upper back range of motion can have a huge impact on your overhead mobility, neck pain, and lower back health. But weakness of the thoracic spine is not commonly discussed. But if you are doing front squats, cleans, and deadlifts,...

We often think of nutrition, hydration, and mobility work in our preparation for sports. But how often have you considered your internal core temperature or ways to regulate that to improve your performance? Probably not very often. But, simple tactics like palm cooling have been shown to have dramatic effects in athletics. Let’s discuss how. Thermoregulation and Performance In the...

Developing a strong skillset as an orthopedic physical therapist requires a broad range of skills. We must be able to create buy-in with our patients, analyze movement, and formulate a plan to attack areas of weakness. The following are the best physical therapy books I’ve read to address all three of these areas. I hope they help you in the...

The hip thrust, popularized by Bret Contreras, is one of the most widely used exercises for targeting glute strength and hypertrophy. This movement takes the standard glute bridge and increases the difficulty by elevating the shoulders for a greater range of motion. A variety of different variations will allow us to increase the intensity of the hip thrust for more...