So if you haven’t noticed I haven’t had my fitness pain free programming available for a little over 6 months.  This doesn’t mean that I haven’t been working like a madman on it.  There has been a boatload of new content built into the programming including:

• 6-day per week done for you programming perfect for a solo home gym owner or box/affiliate owner looking for programming to implement directly into their gym.
• Done for you warm-ups, strength/skill, metabolic conditioning and post workout joint and tissue health programming
• Specific programming for success around the open competition (With options for both the average Joes and Janes as well as the more competitive athlete)
• Self Assessment and Correctives (Find your specific limitations, no more guessing)
• Mobility built directly into the programming (Take the guess work out)
• Specific periodization focused on maximizing gains while minimize risk of overuse injury (That varies along the entire year)
• Specific programming to work olympic lifting technique and strength
• Specific gymnastics skill programming to hone those handstand pushups, handstands and muscle-ups
• Metabolic conditioning focused around working the specific energy systems that will need work throughout the course of the year
• Monthly explainer videos with monthly goals for the month as well as the current phase of training
• Boatloads of videos explaining how all of the exercises are performed

Meanwhile, I’ve still had several clients utilizing the programming over the past several months and years with great results.  One story I wanted to share is from a client of mine named Caleb.  Here are a few gems from some recent emails with Caleb.

“I’ve honestly never gotten better results in my life since I started following your programming. I was the guy who reached out to you a little over a year ago about my issue with femoral acetabular hip impingement. Ever since starting your programming and especially implementing the specific daily warmup and mobility …read more

As discussed in prior articles, ankle mobility restrictions can be a large player in knee pain.  It makes sense that we should probably be correcting these issues if we’re finding them, especially in our patients with knee pain.  One issue I’ve found with traditional ankle mobility exercises is that they can recreate the same knee pain that patients are coming into the clinic to correct.  Obviously if we have a better less painful option it would be beneficial.  Here’s a variation I like better that’s usually well tolerated in individuals with knee pain.

There it is,

Dan Pope DPT, CSCS

P.S. If you enjoyed this article then sign up for the newsletter to receive the FREE guide – 10 Idiot Proof Principles to Performance and Injury Prevention as well as to keep up to date with new information as it comes out via weekly emails.

…read more

Probably not the first step in building a foundation for solid pistols. Steve Cotter is a monster by the way…

Last week we spoke about mobility for the pistol.  Now that you’re all mobility wizards we can get down to the fun stuff, actually practicing pistols.

Super Important Side Note: It’s very important to understand that building stability safely in the pistol is going to take months to years depending on how strong/mobile/stable you currently are.  Doing too much too soon is a great way to end up in my office complaining of cranky knees.  Just looking at a pistol can tell you that it’s going to place high stresses on the knee.  I generally recommend performing some pistol work 1-2 times in a 7-10 day cycle.  I’m also mindful of how much accessory work we’re doing that also stresses the knee in the current cycle.  (i.e. how much squatting / lunging / oly work is currently in my program, and how much volume of these exercises)  Again, too much too soon is a sure fire way to hurt yourself.  

There are 3 things I think are vital to mastering the pistol

1) Mastering the short foot and tracking the knee over the toe properly

We all know just how important it is to keep the knee tracking over the toe during squatting movements.  The amount of valgus I see during pistols sometimes makes me feel like vomiting.  I can’t tell you how often I end up treating this at my clinic.  Now, valgus can happen for a large variety of reasons.  I’ve written about this extensively HERE.  The idea is that we’ve got to promote people …read more

The Pistol – World’s Dumbest Exercise?

I’ve got a little secret.  I used to absolutely hate pistols.  I used to watch people who are good at them and just get mad.  How the heck do they make it look so easy?  At the time I was 170lbs and able to take 400lbs for a deep squat but couldn’t manage to complete 1 stupid pistol?

It’s frustrating.  Everytime I’d go try to go down to the bottom of a pistol it would look like bambi on ice and I’d either fail miserably on my depth or fall backwards on my butt.  I mean, it was really bad.

Over the years I’ve slowly become a little more proficient in the pistol.  I’ve put in several years worth of knowledge, mobility, practice and accessory work to make them both look and feel a bit better.  I wanted to share this knowledge with you.

First off, for proficiency in the pistol you’re going to need enough mobility in 3 basic places:

To test to see if you’ve got the mobility for it you’ll need to be able to squat comfortably with your feet together.  It’s an easy test:

1) Ankle Dorsiflexion Problems

Don’t have it?  Time to see where things fall apart.  First check the ankles:

Failed the test?  Better get to work:

2) Hip Flexion Problems

Pass the ankle mobility test but still can’t squat with the feet together?  Must be either a hip or lumbar spine issue.  You can check hip mobility by seeing if you or your athlete can lie on their back and pull their knees to their chest without their lower back rolling off the floor (Part of the SFMA deep squat breakout).  To be strict try and keep …read more