What is capacity?

Your body is like a bucket. No, I am not making a rude comment about your appearance. Think about a bucket. It holds water or whatever else you put into it. Super useful, but it can only hold a certain amount inside it.

Think of your muscles, tendons & ligaments as that bucket. They also have a set amount that they can hold or carry. We call this the 'capacity' of that tissue.

The "water" in the bucket is your training volume. Think lifting, wods, running, any kind of activity. We run into problems like injury and pain when we put too much "water" into the "bucket." That is, when our activity level exceeds what are body is currently capable of handling.

 If you are consistently pouring more into your bucket than it can handle, you will find yourself constantly getting hurt or having a flare up of pain/swelling.

Well what do we do about this? There are 2 options;

1.  Stop pouring so much water in

   1. This means temporarily dialing back on the activities that are giving you problems

   2. This break gives your body a chance to catch up & heal

2. Make your bucket able to hold more water

   1. This means increasing your capacity

   2. You have to mprove your technique, strength, flexibility, stamina, control, etc.

   3. That way, your body can tolerate MORE before having painful symptoms

This process looks different based on your activity of choice, but these principles work 100% of the time.

Why aren't you getting better?

When you are injured, you are either in a state of irritation or in a state of healing. It can be challenging to get people out of that state of pain, inflammation and decreased activity. This has to happen in order for you to progress though.

Injury flare ups happen when you are out of balance. There are going to be certain things that are aggravating to your specific injury and there are going to be things that give some relief. Many people are either unwilling to take a step back from some of those irritating activities or they are unaware of what activities are causing the issues.

To get out of this pain state, you have to back off of the things that piss off your injury. This is a temporary change that will lead to your long term success. It’s crucial to do this in order for your body to catch up and actually get some solid healing done.

This is when you can actually start making some solid progress. When you’re hurting, it’s tough to work hard on the things you need to such as flexibility, strength and movement mechanics. However, taking the time to back up temporarily will allow you to actually make much more gains.

This is hard for people that are used to being active and working hard. You can’t have an ego when you are injured. It will only prolong your recovery and impede it. Take a step back so that you can take some massive steps forward.

Common Causes of Shoulder Injuries in Crossfit

Shoulder injuries are among the most frequent injuries in crossfit and other sports like gymnastics, weightlifting, bodybuilding, etc. There are multiple things that can contribute to these injuries, but in general it comes down to 4 key factors:

1. Flexibility

2. Strength

3. Volume

4. Technique

Flexibility

You have to have shoulders that can move. Movements like pressing over head, snatching, pullups, etc all require shoulders that can go through a full range of motion. This is because of how your body has to work around inflexibility to get the job done. You will have big changes in technique in order to compensate for lacking motion. This places a lot of stress on things like the shoulder joint itself, the rotator cuff, the bicep tendon, the labrum of the shoulder and even the joints of the elbow. The usual culprits are:

• Tightness in the lats and upper traps

• Stiffness of the thoracic spine

• Overdeveloped chest and anterior shoulder muscles

• Stiff ankles and hips can also be a factor for movements like the overhead squat and snatch

Strength

When we talk about strength, we aren’t talking about how much you can bench or lift overhead (at least not usually.) We are talking more about having shoulders that are balanced. We do a lot of overhead pressing, horizontal pressing and overhead pulling. What we don’t do a lot of is training the muscle groups on the back of the shoulder and upper back. This is the infamous rotator cuff that many people hear about. When we have strong muscles on the front of the shoulder and weak muscles on the back side, your shoulder is going to be pulled into bad positions and affect your technique, as well as put a lot of extra stress on the structures on the front of the shoulder. You need more training of muscle groups like:

• Lower traps

• External rotators

• Lats

• Strict gymnastics strength prior to kipping

Volume

You could have excellent flexibility and strength, but if you are doing way too much volume of shoulder training you may still find yourself in trouble. A good example is athletes that do a really intense shoulder workout like Murph, without much preparation in their training. Doing too much, too soon. It’s just like runners that start ramping up their mileage too quickly. We have to make sure that we are recovering from the work we are doing and progressing it slowly over time to avoid overloading the shoulder.

Technique

How you do something is just as important as how flexible or strong you are. Using bad form on movements like kipping pullups, toes to bar, muscle ups, bench, pushups, overhead lifts, etc. is one of the quickest ways to find yourself injured. Listen to your coach, check your ego, film yourself performing the movement and take the time to practice your form at lighter weights.

Do you know how to use your lifting belt?

Lifting belts are very common in gyms today. Many people wear them in hopes that it will keep their back safe, but this mindset can often lead people to do the exact opposite if they don’t know how to properly use the belt.

A belt does nothing for your spine if you don’t already know how to properly brace your core. It’s basically just a corset at that point.

Another common mistake that people make is that they will wear the belt at all times during certain exercises.

The muscles that surround your spine are the ones that are supposed to be keeping you safe and doing the work. When you wear a belt all the time, you aren’t going to train your “core” as much as you could be doing.

Save the belt only for lifts that are approaching max effort. If you only feel confident enough to lift with your belt on, you have a problem.

Practice your form, train your core, learn how to move correctly and then you can use the belt, but only at really high levels.

The key to the belt is using your breath and your core muscles. The belt is just there provide a little something to push against. Don’t suck in your belly. Take a deep breath in & push out against the belt!

This will allow you to create a lot of pressure in your abdomen & this creates stiffness for your spine.

Moral of the story, use your belt correctly, but don’t rely on it! Train your body & focus on good form!

6 Exercises for a Stronger, Healthier Back

Everyone wants a healthy back. Low back pain is responsible for millions if not billions of dollars worth of healthcare costs in the United States each year.

We do a lot of sitting in our society. Coming in and going through a general warm up and light exercise isn’t enough to overcome all the negative things our spine goes through. You need to give it some love in the form of some specific work.

The best way to make a strong, resilient spine is to load it up! Here are 6 exercises for the back that will make great additions to your workouts, warm ups and life in general.

Our recommendation, pick a couple of these that you like and just try adding them in two times per week!

What makes a good warm up?

Your warm ups should be more than just a 400 meter run and some passthroughs. Here’s a template that you can start applying TODAY to help you get the most out of your warm ups.

A good warm up should make your body feel amazing and ready to work! Taking 10-15 minutes to work on these 4 areas will be a game changer for anyone that starts doing them.

Medical Imaging: Overrated?

Don’t get us wrong, imaging is an amazing, life saving tool in the field of medicine. It without a doubt saves the lives of others on a daily basis.

What we’re talking about is when it’s used to determine what is causing someone’s musculoskeletal pain. Basically, the research is not in favor of imaging actually being useful in these cases. Pain is a complex issue. What we find on imaging does not always correlate to what is actually going on.

We’ve compiled some recent research done on this exact topic. Moral of the story, just because an image shows something, it doesn’t mean that is what’s causing the problem.

Text Neck: How it will kill your overhead performance

Forward head posture, aka text neck, is a huge problem in our society today. SO much so that it literally has it’s own diagnosis codes, along with being bitten by a parrot. What a time to be alive. This is something that develops over a long time. Here’s how…

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Causes of Forward Head Posture:

• Weak muscles on the front of the neck

  • These are your ‘deep neck flexors’ and they help to keep the head pulled back into a more neutral position

• Tight muscles on the front of the shoulder and chest

  • These are your pecs and deltoids. When they are tight or disproportionately strong, they will keep the shoulder girdle pulled forward and round the upper back.

• Tight and/or overworking upper traps

  • As the head moves forward and the shoulders are pulled forward, the upper traps are going to be put on tension. This draws your shoulders up even further.

  • This can also happen when your upper traps are just too strong for their own good. They try to take over the job of some of your postural muscles in the upper back. They don’t do a good job with this and it makes them mad.

• Weak muscles of the upper back and rotator cuff

  • These are the guys that keep our spine upright and our shoulderblades pulled into a strong & stable position.

  • When they aren’t doing their job, the other things we have already mentioned will run haywire.

  • These muscles have to be in balance with the muscles of the front and top of the shoulder. If not, they get overwhelmed and don’t do their job.

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When not addressed, this type of posture can lead to some chronic issues:

• Headaches

• Shoulder impingement

• Rotator cuff pathology

• Cervical spine / upper back pain

• Weakness and/or pain when lifting overhead

Not only that, but you are going to find that lifting a barbell overhead in a good position becomes pretty damn hard.

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Fortunately, we can fix this by doing the opposite of everything we have talked about:

• Strengthen up the deep neck flexors

• Strengthen up the rotator cuff and postural muscles of the upper back

• Stretch out the pecs, delts and upper traps

• Mobilize the joints of the upper back, neck and shoulders

Don’t buy into those posture harnesses and braces. They aren’t going to fix anything, just mask it. It takes a plan of action to get these chronic issues corrected and consistency with that plan. It is totally doable though!

Top 5 Exercises for Healthy Shoulders

I work with athletes all the time who are constantly using their shoulders to push, press, pull, hold and carry. Sports like CrossFit, powerlifting, olympic lifting and bodybuilding put the shoulders through a lot of work. Across the board, every shoulder pain client I see has one thing in common, they all have weak upper back and rotator cuff muscles.

We do a lot of the big, cool stuff. Snatch, clean and jerk, pressing, bench, handstands, kipping pullups, muscle ups, etc. Nobody does enough of the small stuff, training the smaller muscles on the back of shoulder. These guys are CRUCIAL for keeping your shoulders healthy and balanced over time.

If you neglect these muscles, the bigger ones on the front of the shoulder girdle will become much stronger and bigger in comparison. This is how impingement and tendon issues build up over time. We are supposed to be using the muscles of the upper back and rotator cuff when we go overhead. When you don’t, your injury risk goes up and the efficiency of your lifts goes down.

My Top 5 Shoulder Exercises:

There are literally thousands of possible exercises you could do. These are 5 of my favorite ones to add in on a weekly basis. Performing these as a warm up 2-3 x / week goes a long way and it will help to keep your shoulders strong and moving well.

I don’t own any of these videos. Give these channels some love if you like their content.

1) Band Face Pull + Shoulder External Rotation

• Trains infraspinatus, rhomboids, middle trap and teres minor

2) Lat Pulldown

• Trains the lats, rhomboids and lower trap
  

3) Prone PVC Lift

• Trains the lower trap and rhomboids

4) Prone Snow Angel

• Trains rhomboids, lower trap, mid trap, infraspinatus, teres minor/major and subscapularis

5) Reverse Shoulder Fly

• Trains posterior delt, middle trap, rhomboids and infraspinatus

Recovering from a Heavy Training Load

If you’re anything like me, you are pretty sore now that you did Murph. Everyone has no problem with training hard all the time, but most people slack when it comes to putting in effort towards their recovery. There’s a lot to consider when it comes to recovering, so let’s get into it!

Time Between Stimuli:

Research has shown that it can take up to 2 days to recover from a hard training stimulus. This was done by tracking differences in HRV or Heart Rate Variability. Your HRV goes down when your body is in a state of stress or fatigue. A heavy training bout, such as Murph, can cause your HRV to be much lower than normal. Its important to focus on recovery during this time, as a lower HRV has been correlated to increased injury risk. Take it easy on the volume and intensity for a day or 2 after these kinds of sessions. Whoop is one of the best tools out there to track this variable. The image below is provided on Whoop’s website and gives a good illustration.

Hydration and Nutrition:

Hydration is crucial after putting your body through the ringer. Exercise builds up a lot of “waste” and its important that you drink enough water to move that stuff out of the body and to replenish the fluids that we lose with our sweat. Active people are recommended to drink 10+ cups of water per day, but it can get much higher depending on how active you are and how much you sweat.

Nutrition can’t be forgotten either. We need to take in plenty of protein, fat and carbs to help replenish and repair our bodies. Carbohydrates are especially important in order to replenish the glycogen stores in our muscles.

Sleep:

Sleep is pretty self-explanatory, but a lot of people slack on their sleep. If you aren’t giving yourself 8-10 hours of sleep after a hard training session, you are shooting yourself in the foot. Sleep is extremely important in the regulation of many different hormones that are vital for performance and general health.

Body Work and Mobility:

There are many different opinions out there about what is actually necessary or beneficial when it comes to body work. In my experience, things like body work and stretching can be powerful for decreasing the perception of things such as soreness and stiffness. This leads to better participation in training in the following days after an event.

Massage, foam rolling and other soft tissue work, are great for bringing blood flow to our tissues and for moving waste products out of the area. This speeds up the recovery process and gets you back to feeling good before your next session. You should aim to spend at least 1 day per week on these things if you are someone who trains vigorously on weekly basis.