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One of my recent patients came in after a cervical fusion surgery looking to get back into crossfit.  We addressed the neck issues and started reintroducing crossfit exercises back into his program.  One big issue we found was some subpar position in the front rack position (That and a lack of ankle dorsiflexion we’ve been working vigorously on).

If you lack the motion required to get into a proper front rack you’re going to have issues with a long list of exercises:

This lack of front rack is bound to leave you being far less efficient then you could be (ie: weaker, slower).  If you’re having trouble with the rack and continue pushing through these exercises you also may end up with a pretty nasty shoulder problems too.  Keep in mind that the shoulder isn’t the only area that takes a beating, you can get problems up and down the chain as well.  Anyone else out there ever experience wrist pain after thrusters or some pretty intense upper back stiffness following some front squats gone wrong?  The elbow can also take a beating here too.

I see poor front rack position fairly often and like I mentioned earlier, I actually ended up with some pretty nasty internal impingement (internal impingement explained HERE) symptoms in the winter of 2012 I attribute to a poor front rack.  Healing was slow and it took about 6 months until I was hitting new PRs with cleans and overhead work again.  My symptoms were plenty of pain right in the back of my shoulder whenever I tried to externally rotate my shoulder to end range (Or get into a front rack position).

The front rack (and subsequent push jerk/press) can be especially aggravating to the posterior musculature of the shoulder.  I see quite a few …read more

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Last month’s programming is over.  I spent my deload week eating and drinking copiously over the holiday and I’m very motivated to get started with training again.  I hit a few new bests this past month (265 x 5 front squat, 225 x 3 overhead squat) and feel my conditioning is still high.  I’m hoping to do a local competition some time this winter.  Interestingly, I’m at an all time low for bodyweight (165lbs).  I might make a run at the american open next year.  I also just joined a strongman gym and look forward to doing some heavier lifting as well.

Some of the feedback I got from the last month as well as my own thoughts:

• 4-5 days per week ends up being quite a bit.  I ended up skipping 1-2 workouts in the mix due to “life”
• Too much complexity with oly lifting.  I ended up having trouble improving my maxes and I think that was simply because I wasn’t consistently hitting heavy oly lifts.
• Sore shoulders from so much shoulder intensive work (hopefully remedied with less sessions throughout the week)
• The “optional” work makes it easier to push when you can and have time and not to when you don’t
• The consistent squatting, deadlifting and overhead pressing is giving people consistent PRs, exactly what we want.

Changes this month:

• Back to the 3-4 workouts per week model to give the body a rest and to be more practical.
• The work is spread over 6 weeks.  This is a bit longer then we’ve done in the past as far as how often we end up squatting / dead lifting / pressing.
• Met-con “Caps” to give you an idea of how long the workouts should last and hopefully allow you to better choose your modifications as needed
• All chest to bar pullups in the met-cons.  This is simply …read more
  

CrossFit is the greatest thing ever to happen to barbell training, except for all the awful parts of it. …read more