ExPhysiology

Midline stabilization is essential for effective functional movement. Kelly Starrett, of San Francisco CrossFit, explains the essential anatomy and physiology of it in this excerpt from his one day seminar at CrossFit Santa Cruz on November 9, 2008.

The midline is the entire spine, and its stability is dependent not just on the core, but also on all the prime movers of the body, including the hip, glutes, and hamstrings… Continue Reading

Midline stabilization is essential for effective functional movement. Kelly Starrett, of San Francisco CrossFit, explains the essential anatomy and physiology of it in this excerpt from his one day seminar at CrossFit Santa Cruz on November 9, 2008.

The midline is the entire spine, and its stability is dependent not just on the core, but also on all the prime movers of the body, including the hip, glutes, and hamstrings… Continue Reading

Mark Rippetoe offers another reason why pushing your knees out as you squat is essential for optimal mechanics. When the knees track in, the femur impinges on the hip pointer, and proper movement of the hip is limited.

When we squat, the standard range of motion criterion for the exercise is “below parallel,” defined as the hip joint identified at the apex of the hip angle (the “corner” in your… Continue Reading

“Lots of us treat muscle soreness like the stereotypical mother-in-law,” writes Tony Webster, PhD, a CrossFitting exercise physiologist from Victoria, B.C . “You’re not really sure if you like her or not, but you know she’ll be back, and you better find a way to deal with her.”

The article explains that you need the pain, swelling, and shakiness of DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) because it indicates that your muscles are adapting to your… Continue Reading

The first CrossFit certification seminar took place from Monday, December 2nd, 2002 through Wednesday, December 4th, 2002. There were two participants, Ted Socha and Charlie Simms, and six trainers. For three days, they were pummeled with two workouts a day, plus hours of lecture on exercise physiology, movement theory, and the bases of real fitness. They were put on their return flight with a spatula.

In this lecture from… Continue Reading

I have had many conversations with CrossFitters, and others, about the efficacy of CrossFit programming. As somebody who teaches about physical conditioning at the university level, I am interested in the unorthodox nature of CrossFit and the results it achieves.

While the majority of trainers and athletes easily understand many aspects of CrossFit programming, there is a certain mystique (the infamous "black box") regarding the metcon… Continue Reading

Simple questions are sometimes the most profound. And answers to simple questions about exercise sometimes are the hardest to find. Rather, they are often intuitive to skilled coaches or contained in knowledge that is that is passed on in the lore of the gym rather than recorded in books or formal training programs. Expert coaches, teachers, clinicians, and professors sometimes take it for granted that what we think is basic, simple… Continue Reading

Strength, as an isolated quality, can be defined and measured as the biological contractile potential of muscle--as how hard your muscles can contract to apply force. But from our perspective, Coach Glassman explains in this lecture excerpt, that is an incomplete definition and an isolated measure that doesn't really reveal much about its application to real-world functionality (just as VO2 max measurements alone tell us little about a person's capacity and… Continue Reading