Give your body a break from traditional squats and deadlifts and smash your wheels with this growth-inducing plan. …read more

Well 2013 has been a great year for me and for the site.  Last year I picked an arbitrary number of hits I’d like to have on my site over the course of the year.  I wanted 100,000 total.  I had no idea if this was good but decided to set a goal and go for it.  I ended up falling horribly short by the year’s end.

Fast forward one year.  Now fitnesspainfree gets almost 100,000 hits per month.  My newsletter started with just my mom and now is well over a thousand.  I’m incredibly grateful and excited by all of the people who use the site and gain insight from the content.  Thanks to everyone for reading and here’s to another successful year!

Here are the most popular posts written in 2013 in order of popularity (#1 is most popular):

10) Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) Certification and Exam Review

My review of the CSCS examination and certification

9) 10 Critical Principles Physical Therapists Need to Know About Crossfit for Successful Rehabilitation

Only a few weeks old and already gaining a lot of ground.  Hopefully this sheds some light on rehabbing crossfitters.

8) 6 Common Causes Of Knee Pain and How to Fix Them – Part 1

This series of articles was very popular and probably should serve as a sign to start writing more about the knee!

7.  Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA) Level 1 Course Review

Big fan of Gray Cook and what he has properled forward with the movement revolution.  i use the SFMA on a daily basis.

6) 3 Reasons that Kipping Pullups are Causing Injuries

This series of articles landed me in crossfit head quarters chatting about pullups with some smart fellows.

5.  Why Is Overhead Pressing Hurting My Lower Back? 

Deadlifts aren’t the only thing that can leave your back …read more

Are you getting hung up on improving technique when you should be just concentrating on getting stronger? …read more

Doing a back workout once a week isn’t going to cut it. You need to crush it and crush it hard several times a week. …read more

At last, the definitive answer to the age-old question of whether direct arm work is really necessary for big guns. …read more

A deadlift variation as old as the barbell that will pack on mass and kick up your pulling power. …read more

The hip hinge is the single most-important movement pattern for squats and deadlifts. Can you even do them correctly? …read more

Time to spread some holiday cheer. Or, in this case, a little hardcore motivation. …read more

Shock your body into building more muscle in just two weeks using Opposite Training. …read more

1) What Crossfit is:

I field emails every day with questions about crossfit injuries.  The biggest complaint I hear from these individuals about other physical therapists is that they don’t understand crossfit.  Obviously, understanding what you’re trying to send your patients back to and what they’ll have to be capable of performing is going to be critically important in the rehab process.

To add to that, the amount of misinformation and bias out there in regards to crossfit is staggering.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been wearing a crossfit shirt and I’ll hear negative remarks about crossfit from other therapists who have never even set a foot in a crossfit gym or have any idea of what crossfit even is.  

I was at CSM (Combined sections meeting, a very large physical therapy conference) and one of the presenters named Joe Black made a very interesting statement.  He sends his patients to crossfit after therapy to address some of the problems he found in therapy.  He believes that crossfit can be helpful in the rehab process (With a well designed program I completely agree).  This was a very refreshing statement.  Many therapists hold the completely opposite opinion.  In fact there was a whole presentation at CSM that year talking about the dangers of high intensity programs like crossfit.

After Joe’s statement you wouldn’t believe the gasps from the audience.  They sounded disgusted.  You would have thought that Joe just took off his shirt and looked just like Edward Norton from American History X.

Obviously there is a lot of negative belief about crossfit in the therapy world.  Crossfit is certainly not a perfect system and I don’t mean to raise it up on a pedestal but crossfit is certainly not the demon it is made out …read more