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...

Many athletes trying to push their squat weight up end up dealing with shoulder pain with squatting. While we don’t commonly associate the back squat with upper-body injuries, this is far more common than you might think. But breaking down your upper body mobility and addressing tightness can help alleviate this issue while you use other squat variations to continue...

I am frequently asked what the best blood flow restriction bands are. As with any trend in the fitness world, many manufacturers have designed blood flow restriction products recently to match the growing demands for BFR equipment. Like most fitness tools, the best set of BFR bands for occlusion training is highly related to your goals. Unfortunately, some devices on...

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...

The psoas march is one of the best exercises for strengthening the hip flexors and abdominal muscles. It’s effectiveness makes it a staple in many programs I write for addressing hip impingement, hip flexor tightness, diastasis recti, and low back pain. If you’re looking to improve any of those areas, then these psoas march (PM) variations will be sure to crush...

There isn’t a ton of information on the internet about how exactly to return to kipping pull-ups postpartum. There’s even less when we talk about other gymnastics movements such as toes to bar and handstand work. And of the information available, it is often put out by athletes that have had their first child and instantly consider themselves a postpartum...