An athlete getting their first unassisted pull-up is a significant accomplishment. For many, it takes months or years of training to build the strength to get their chin over the bar finally. For others, they spin their wheels, never making enough progress. The three steps have worked time and time again to help HUNDREDS of athletes we’ve worked with accomplish...

If you’ve had an episode of intense low back pain, you know how scary dealing with that can be. Quite often, athletes are given poor advice when it comes to rehabbing their back. This leads to them feeling fragile and scared to return to the activities they love. The most frequent exercise I’m messaged about is the deadlift after low...

Bench Press Mistakes to Avoid to Hit Your Next PR! There are a lot of factors in the bench press that can make or break your success in the movement. If you want to increase your bench press you need to be aware of the things that can go wrong. These might sacrifice your strength potential, or worse, increase your chance...

The kipping pull-up is often a polarizing debate in the fitness community. I’ve written about this many times, and my viewpoint is that when done properly, the kipping pull-up is a good upper body pulling plus conditioning exercise (read this article for more). The shoulder strength & control that is developed from a technically sound kipping pull-up is great, BUT...

One of my favorite diagnoses to treat in CrossFit athletes is SLAP tears. Quite frequently, athletes have been told their only option is surgery. But, many athletes with SLAP tears in their shoulders can successfully rehab back to full shoulder health and performance without needing to go under the knife. Skipping an often unnecessary surgery saves athletes from months of...

One of the most common problems I treat with CrossFit athletes is shoulder pain with kipping pull-ups. This injury can happen for several different reasons, as I discuss with my Performance Plus Programming partner, Pamela Gagnon. For athletes struggling with Kipping mechanics, join thousands of athletes that have improved their strength and form on our Lats to Fly program! Common...

One of the first questions that CrossFit, power lift, or Olympic weightlifting athletes ask me after a shoulder surgery such as a rotator cuff or labrum repair is “when can I squat after shoulder surgery?” With many shoulder surgeries, the shoulder position required to get set up in a back squat position can be challenging. The shoulder must move into...

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...