This was originally written and posted by Dr. Brad Cole here! He will be presenting this weekend at CFB at 11AM.  This seminar is free to Whole Life Challenge participants or $20 for members who are not part of the challenge.  He has asked me to repost the blog for your reading pleasure so here it is.  Also, if you are interested in some great writing on injury prevention, rehabilitation, and mobility make sure to keep up with Dr. Cole's blog.  We are so happy to have him working with us!

Your knee is the trash can of your lower extremity.  It collects all the garbage of poor stability and starts causing pain.  It is painful during or after activity because of improper use.  While poor movement drives inflammation and pain, proper movement is like massage for our joints.

Too often, I hear people explain that they can’t squat down properly, because they have bad knees. They cannot run like they want to, because they have bad knees.  The truth is that even in the presence of advanced knee arthritis, fixing the motion can only improve their situation.

In keeping with the theme of the self audit of this series of blog posts, let’s look at a quick screen that reveals poor knee control and review corrective strategies.

Step 1) stand barefoot on a staircase step (which should be about 7″ tall according to Wikipedia)
Step 2) step forward with one foot, tap your heel the the step below, and return.
Step 3) observe the path of the knee upon which you are standing.

Sidenotes: If you cannot keep the feet pointing forward and the heel of the stance foot flat to the step, then read the Ankle Mobility Audit.
If your stance foot keeps rolling in when stepping forward with the opposite, read the Foot Stability Audit.

ITB in red. Gluteus medius in green.

A knee that turns inward when performing the step down test is either poorly controlled by the hip or by the ankle/foot.   At the hip, it may be the product of a weak gluteus medius with or without a tight iliotibial band.  Correction should focus on addressing these problems at the hip and, if indicated, the ankle/foot.

Stability of the knee is crucial during walking, running, and landing from a jump. In fact, a lack of strong control from the gluteus medius is a major contributor to non-contact ACL (ligament) injury of the knee.  As you can see in the high speed camera images below, this lady cannot control the knees diving in. Inefficiencies like this compromise performance and, ultimately result in injuries.

This landing test reveals both knees turning in, uncontrolled by weak gluteus medius. This is preventable risk factor for knee injury.

Here is one example of the many ways one can strengthen the control that the gluteus medius has on the knee.  Each individual is different, so is no substitute for a professional evaluation and customized movement correction.  Here is one great way to strengthen the strengthen the hip and gain better stability of the knee.  Thanks to Mike Reinold for the video.

Enjoy.

This week's challenge for the whole life challenge participants is to practice a skill for 10 minutes everyday.  Even if you are not part of the challenge do you practice skills?  Most people tend to avoid the things they are not good at.  If you avoid the things you are not good and only do the things you are good at, then you will never get better at the things you are bad at.  One of the awesome things about CrossFit is that we work on skills that you may not necessarily be good at.  If you continually work on the things that you are not good at eventually you will get good at them.  It's very important to practice skill work.  This will make you better at those things and increase your overall fitness.  Do you avoid workouts with double unders in them?  Do you cringe at the site of handstand push ups?  Instead, you should embrace the opportunity to hone your skills.  You should also make it a part of your daily routine to practice those things you are bad at.  Try to make your weakness your strength.  This is the path to great fitness.  What will you practice this week?

Austin killing some double unders!

While flying to Pensacola, I was engaged in conversation with the girl sitting next to me.  One of the questions she asked me was why did I get into my field.  Besides being a fat kid, and getting heavily into fitness when I was in college.  The main reason why I run a gym now is because of the difference we make in other people's lives.  It's so amazing to see someone who, before CFB, never worked out hard before.  Soon their fitness grows and they become more confident.  The day they hit an accomplishment like completing their first pull up it's an amazing event for everyone.  As the people get stronger and more fit, the workout becomes the hardest thing they do that day. It's awesome when you know their whole outlook on life has changed.  CrossFit changes your perspective.  It makes you mentally tougher.  After completing the workouts of the day, many times things that used to be burdensome, begin to not seem so bad.  Physical things like running a marathon, or climbing a wall, or even moving a wheel barrow full of rocks don't seem so outlandish.  Having a program that allows people to live their lives is truly amazing to be a part of.  That's why we do what we do.  We love every minute of it and we hope you do too.

Chris, Jeff, Chris, and Amanda hitting the mud run in Millington.  They did an an awesome job!

Road Trip!!

The whole life challenge crew decided to take a road trip to climb the wall that humpty dumpty sat on in Nashville, TN (well not really). We had an awesome trip and one that we would never forget! We had some much needed fun, conquered fears and tried something new. We even had our own personal photographer, Melissa Crutcher.

Sometimes we just need something to take our minds off of the real world.  What better way to do that than to climb a wall! Ada and Isabella conquered their fear of heights and said that this was the most fun they have had since her husband went to Afghanistan. Donna, who was at first skeptical, did a phenomenal job climbing. She didn't think she would make it all the way to the top, but we did what we know best at Crossfit Bartlett, we rallied around her and she persevered to climb all the way to the top. Ryan, Jessica, Kenzie, Ana and the Moss family did a fantastic job climbing. Even the rookie Amy did an amazing job for her first time. In between climbing the wall Crutcher snapped some great pictures.

Of course when we went to the restaurant we had to make a Paleo Impression. At first sight the Calypso Café’s menu seemed like the perfect choice for our cave man needs. However, upon further investigation everything on the menu had sugar in it!! So we had to settle for just plain old chicken. Not quite what we had our mouths set for but it turned out to be pretty darn good. Overall we had a great time with the waitress, who by the way thought we were all a bunch of crazy nutrition nuts, service was great and the food was good.

In a nutshell the road trip was a blast (even though no one went streaking), fears were conquered and new beginnings climbing walls were started. Look forward to everyone coming with us on the next road trip in May. Make sure you are there!!

Achy knees and creaky joints are common among anyone who has spend much time trying to be athletic. No matter what the itis or chronic pain in the knee, there are usually a few things that can be done to help alleviate it. Those things are copious amounts of drugs and surgery ha! just kidding! The fact of the matter is, if there is a non- acute, aka chronic issue in the knee, it is about 99% of the time caused by something mechanical. What do I mean by that? I mean that there is something wrong with your movement pattern that is causing undue stress on your knee joint. This is the case with most joints, and the problem usually lies with something either up or down stream. With the knee joint, there are two things that you should be concerned with; creating slack and stability.

Creating Slack

In my last mobility post I spoke about the kinetic chain and how ankle mobility can cause all kinds of problems up the kinetic chain. If you are having knee pain a good place to start would be down stream and that’s with the ankle. You can check out my ankle mobility post here! If you are lacking mobility in your ankle, this can create extra tension on the knee joint. If you create a better range of motion at the ankle, this can help with knee pain by alleviating pressure aka creating slack.

If your ankle is all loose and supple then you have to begin moving up the chain or upstream for all you country thinking folk. The next stop would be the calf muscles. Your Gastrocnemius muscle (side bar ms word thinks I misspelled that word. Apparently they are not up on their anatomy terms) also known as the very large calf muscle, crosses the knee joint. If you have tension there, it will create tension in the knee joint and can potentially cause problems with your knee movement patterns. Foam rolling and lacrosse balls can help the Gastroc improve its mobility, if you don't have a foam roller, barbells work as well! Here is a video to discuss that.

Stretching the gastroc and soleus complex will also help with creating more slack in the knee joint.

Moving upstream, we will now check out the muscles above the knee. The quadriceps (this word is in ms word’s dictionary!) hip flexors and Illio-tibial band can get all junked up (yes this is a technical term). The major issues I see here are flexibility and myofascial trigger points. Often times the flexibility issues are addressed with simple stretching. The problem that sometimes occurs in the case of knee pain, is traditional quadriceps stretches put the knee in a more painful position. What should we do? Find a stretch that still accomplishes the job, but doesn’t put the knee in a deep bend, or spend some quality time with lacrosse balls working on your hamstring, quads, and IT-Band.  Here is a video to help here:

Hamstring tightness can be another issue that causes knee pain. The hamstrings can be rolled or stretched in a variety of ways like this:

Click here for a great article on the hamstring!

Another major issue I see with hamstring tightness in an athletic population is tightness of the flexor causes an anterior rotation of the pelvis. This puts the hamstring in an elongated non-ideal position. It makes the hamstring feel tight (because it is pulled tight like a guitar string), but stretching will not help it in this situation. The most important thing to do here, is actually strengthen the hamstring and spend some quality time on loosening up the hip flexors.

Now that we have spent quality time working on creating slack both up and downstream, it is time to look at the stability portion of alleviating knee pain.

Many times, the knee has issues due to the quadriceps strength to hamstring strength ratio. Usually it’s been my experience that people with chronic knee pain are anteriorly or quadriceps dominant. When this happens the hamstrings don’t engage as much as they should in movements like the squat, and the knee will slide forward causing sheer forces on the tendons and ligaments of the knee joint. If this continues without being addressed, all those ugly words like chondromalasia, patellar tendonitis, jumpers knee, etc start to appear.

How do we fix this? The best way to fix these problems is with the box squat. Squat to a position that can be done pain free, then work on engaging and teaching the proper movement patterns to create hamstring recruitment. Here is a great video on how and why to do this:

It is my belief that squatting can fix 99% of non-surgical knee problems if done correctly. We begin with body weight and progress safely up, but if taught and executed correctly, the hamstring will become stronger and work in harmony with the quadriceps. This will take unload the heavy tension on the quads and create a better movement at the knee joint.

CrossFit is on the rise. Last summer ESPN2 covered the CrossFit Games, and they reran the coverage on new years day. I know personally, the number of people I’ve had question me about CrossFit has been increasing more and more. Our gym membership has been increasing, and even the number of gyms in the midsouth area has been increasing lately. With all of growth that CrossFit has been experiencing, I’m sure we’ve all heard so many different reasons to CrossFit. Here are five reasons why you shouldn’t CrossFit

1) You don’t like change

It’s true I’ve seen people achieve amazing results with CrossFit. Those results came with a lot of change. CrossFit will change everything, from the way you eat to the way you sleep. If you truly commit to CrossFit you will achieve amazing results, but you will experience a lot of change. If you don’t want to change, or if you don't have an open mind, then you probably shouldn’t come check out CrossFit Bartlett.

2) You don’t like people

CrossFit is more than just a gym, it’s a community. It is a worldwide community that is unlike anything. CrossFit is a community of hundreds of thousands of people all united in their pursuit of fitness. I’ve never once heard a conversation between two people that consisted of: Person A, “Oh hey you go to ATC too?” Person B, ”Yeah I just got back I spent like two hours on the treadmill, and it was so awesome!” Not trying to bash people who run on a treadmill, but the CrossFit community is unlike any other.

3) You want to be better then everyone else

As great as the community is in CrossFit and CrossFit Bartlett, it is also an individual journey.

You are not measured against anyone but yourself. We don’t judge our PRs (personal records) based off of how other people did. We measure our PRs based off how we do against ourselves, how much we have improved. This is what is so great about CrossFit it doesn’t matter what other people do.

4) You don’t like discomfort

This goes along with the changes I talked about earlier. CrossFit is uncomfortable. You come in and for a specific amount of time every day, you make yourself uncomfortable. There is good news to this. Discomfort makes you better, and you will get incredible results. Also you can condition yourself to be ok with discomfort.

5) You want to win lots of money from Reebok

The short story is, unless your last your name is Froning, Spealler, or Thorisdottir it’s probably not going to happen any time soon. Sorry. If you'd like to try we'd love to help, but it'll be a very long road ahead of you!

Can you think of any reasons why you shouldn't CrossFit? Post Comments Below

Rest and recovery is paramount in CrossFit. While we often discuss mobility and stretching, we rarely mention sleep. Getting a full night’s sleep (8-9 hours) will keep you more alert and functional throughout the day, This will increase your productivity at work, improve your mood (and possibly your boss’s mood), and improve your overall health.

While many complain there simply isn’t enough time in the day to get that much sleep, the increase in your performance throughout the day will result in getting more work done faster- the same goals we have for our workout of the day. In February 2011, Dallas Hartwig wrote an article for Performance Menu. The PM is an online journal published each month by Greg Everett of Catalyst Athletics. The article touches on how important all the minute details are in your training. They spent a majority of time specifically focusing on sleep and the detrimental affects that happen when we don’t sleep enough.

Justin talked a little about sleep and it’s role in recovery here! Here are some recommendations directly from the article on how to help your sleep.

Feel free to read the entire article here!

"Sleep in a cool, dark, quiet room. Cover all your windows and block out as much light as possible from other sources. Turn down the thermostat, too.

Unplug everything electrical in your bedroom, and put your mobile in a non-transmitting (“airplane”) mode. Electromagnetic fields (EMF) disturb melatonin production from serotonin, which is critical for restful sleep.

Get more sleep in the winter, and worry less about it in the long summer days. This is straight out of the Lights Out playbook, and I like it.

No TV, computer or video games within an hour (minimum) of bedtime. Even better, avoid exposure to electronic screens and blue light after dark – the intensity of light and duration matter, too. Dim your lights after dark.

Try to make your sleep/wake times regular. Your body likes rhythm.

Take naps. The studies that demonstrate increased athletic performance prescribed additional sleep. If you’re peaking for a competition, take the two weeks prior to your event to sleep a LOT.

Avoid sugar and starchy veggies within a 1-2 hours of bedtime, as elevated blood glucose dramatically impairs the secretion of growth hormone in early sleep. Free fatty acids (FFAs) in the bloodstream have a similar effect. If you’re on a mass gain program and are eating at every opportunity, choose a chunk of protein as your pre-bed snack. Even if you’re desperate to ingest more total calories, the additional intake of significant quantities of carbs and fat shortly before sleep might not confer the big picture benefit desired.

Alcohol, although it expedites most peoples’ initial trip to Dreamland, causes fragmentation of late sleep, decreasing SWS (the really good stuff). It also suppresses GH secretion at a “dose- dependent rate” (i.e. drinking less is better). I’m not suggesting you drink in the morning, but before bed is especially detrimental to your sleep.

No caffeine after noon. Play with caffeine timing if you want, but don’t trust your defensive “I can slam an espresso right before bed and be totally fine” justification. Caffeine can have subtle influences on the quality of your sleep. Sleep disturbances, like poor nutrition, can have insidious and creeping effects on your well-being, often undetectable on a day-in, day-out basis. If you use caffeine as an ergogenic aid when you train in the afternoon or evening, do so with caution. Potentially higher performance in training that compromises your recovery (due to reduction in sleep quality/quantity) is a net loss. If you have an afternoon/evening competition, however, the case could probably be made that increased performance in (infrequent) competition outweighs the sleep disruption of occasional late-day caffeine intake. (P.S. Your regular training is not “competition”. It’s training.)

If you do shift work, you’re already a little bit screwed. Remember that total sleep cycles count, so even if you’re napping in church, get those hours in any way you can. Your tolerance of sleep cycle disruption is that much smaller, so you might consider avoiding caffeine altogether, since it worsens aspects of adrenal fatigue that may already be present due to your daily schedule.

If you don’t get 6 hours of sleep, you don’t get to train (and I know you want to train). Turn off the TV, stop browsing the web (even if you’re learning good stuff about healthy living - there’s that irony again) and get to bed. Optionally, spend a few minutes winding down, reading an actual book or published article about nutrition or training or whatever won’t stress you out or wind you up. (No work.)

Training in the late afternoon or evening can be a problem for some people, since high-intensity exercise releases neurotransmitters that are stimulatory, and make it harder for some people to fall asleep. Assuming adequate sleep the night before, we generally like training in the morning. The natural “ramping up” for the day corresponds with (healthy) morning elevations in cortisol, and training in the morning seems to make good sense to us.

If you’re having trouble sleeping, make sure you’re doing at least some activity during the day, albeit at a much lower intensity. Even walking or easy swimming can help with sleep quality that night.”

As you can see sleep in extremely important and often overlooked in our training. Make it a focus and you will see improvements across the board! Sweet Dreams!

-Coach Shawn

Kelly running in a workout.

I get a lot of questions about why we do the type of strength training programs that we do.  As you may or may not know we have experimented with many different programs here at CFB.  Most strength programs will work for most people if you stick with them and stay consistent.  We at CFB study all the literature, and try to find what the best program would be to provide the greatest adaptation to the largest number of people (aka what will make the gym stronger faster?).  In doing so, we are constantly tweaking and experimenting and implementing things that we've seen work, taking out things that we have seen didn't work and using techniques that we come across in our studies that we think may work.  We also rely heavily on our back grounds and experience in exercise science, sports medicine, and Division 1 athletics to make informed decisions.  All that being said let's visit some strength training concepts.

In order to understand strength training, one must first look into a couple of different concepts.  In an effort to not bore you to tears, I will try to keep this brief.

The first concept is training age or maturity.  Mark Rippetoe, a strength coach who has literally written books on strength training and been in the business for more years then I've been alive, has some great strength standards where he divides you into your training maturity.  The standards can be found here! In it, he classifies people as untrained, novice, intermediate, advanced, and elite.  These are some good classifications, and the charts are pretty good reference points, if you are wondering where you fall in the strength training world.  For all of my lifts, I actually fall somewhere between Intermediate and Advanced.  I have to say, you are pushing some serious weight to be classified as elite!

The second concept that should be noted is the idea of the weight training spectrum or rep ranges.  This can be more specifically classified as time under tension, but that is way too deep for this conversation.  The idea is that the higher a % of your 1 rep max a weight is, the less reps you will be able to do, but the stronger you will get by doing it.  To put it more clearly this is what you'll see in most exercise physiology text books (these are not written in stone, in fact a common theme with the human body is nothing is written in stone):

1-6 reps = strength ; 6-12 reps= hypertrophy (muscle growth); 12-20+ = endurance

If you get real technical these rep ranges vary from person to person and from muscle to muscle.  It also depends on how fast you do each rep.  The real factor involved has to do with how much time the muscle is under tension.  This will generate the type of stimulus you are trying to elicit.  Ok, ok enough exercise physiology.

Our goal is to get stronger, be more functionally fit (generally physically prepared) and let's be honest, to look better naked, so what the heck should we do?

There are tons of "cook book" methods out there to choose from depending on what you want.  The problem with cook books is that no matter how well the dish looks in the picture, you do not have a professional chef in your kitchen preparing it.  You also do not have the chef's experience or thought patterns.  Following the same logic, it is hard to find a cook book program that will work for you.  You don't have the same knowledge base, experience, body type, etc etc to make the program exactly work for you.

We have tried many different methods in our gym and most of them worked for a time.  We did the Conjugate Method proposed by Louise Simmons.  This method is great, and will get people stronger who follow it.  The problem we saw in our gym is that you are supposed to change different types of lifts.  For example, bench press, floor press, 2 board press, rack press, etc. etc. etc.  This is great if you are following it one on one with someone, but in a large group setting and with 130 members with some people coming only 3 times a week and some people coming 4 or 5, it's very difficult to keep everyone on track and moving in the same direction.  The other problem with the Conjugate method is that it is for advanced lifters aka people who will stop progressing on a novice-intermediate program.  This isn't to say that novice and intermediates will not get stronger on the Conjugate method, but there are better options that will produce better results.

The other options are used primarily for untrained- advanced lifters and they are called linear progressions.  There are many forms of linear progressions some of the most popular include Rippetoe's Starting Strength, and Wendler 5/3/1.  There are also some popular ones in the CrossFit world called Max Effort Black Box, and CrossFit Strength bias. At CFB we have incorporated versions of all of these at one time or another.  Most people have progressed with these programs as well, but we are always looking for something better.

The program we are doing now is hybrid of a couple different linear programs but it takes advantage of several key elements.  One of the top reasons we like the current cycle is it's easy for people to understand.  One set to 5, one set to 5, then one set to failure.  Not a hard concept.  The use of 5 reps is fairly important.  If you remember our discussion earlier, 5 reps falls into the "strength" side of the rep range.  The beauty of this program is that the 5 reps, with volume built into the set of failure also lean towards hypertrophy (that's a good thing for the looking better naked part).  The failure set also has several other key benefits.  It helps the athlete neurologically.  Being able to push one's self to failure creates neural and hormonal responses to stress.  This all leads to better strength and body composition.  The set to failure also helps build strength endurance.  Strength endurance will help you push a heavier weight longer.  This will build strength and cause muscle growth.  Besides all those benefits, for me personally, the best part of this program is trying to hit a personal record each day.  Every time we do a lift our goal is to either hit more reps or more weight.  Even if you went up by 1lb that is still a personal record!  This is extremely motivating for me, and it helps me push harder then I would normally.

As you can see, a lot of thought goes into picking what type of program we do.  We have been doing this type of program for 15 weeks now, and for the most part everyone is improving fairly quickly.  In fact, the last time we tested it was not uncommon to hear, "I added 30lbs on to my deadlift!"  That is truly awesome to hear, and I am excited that people are getting results.  We are continually tweaking to make it better, but for right now, let's see some PR's!

Jeff focusing on his jerk!

In CrossFit there are certain shoes that we wear to help you perform at your best. I'm not talking about your Air Jordans with the huge heel and cushion.

If you notice when you’re in the gym, you tend to see what's called a minimalist shoe on most of our athlete's feet.  The two most popular brands at CFB are Inov-8's and New Balance Minimus.

The reason we wear minimalist shoes is because there is very little drop from the heel to the toe and little to no cushion in the shoe’s sole.  The less drop there is in a shoe, the closer that shoe is to mimicking the bare foot.  The more cushion their is in a shoe, like your air Jordan’s, the more likely you are to lean forward during lifting.  These shoes also cause a loss of drive off of the ground and will decrease the application of force between the athlete, the ground, and the barbell.  This is why most CFB athletes and CrossFitters in general, find a low drop, minimalist shoe to wear.  If you’re still wearing the old Jordan’s grab you a pair of low drop shoes and see the results you will gain.

There are many runners and CrossFitters that run in minimalist shoes as well.  When you begin to run with less, it is imperative to understand that the technique (stride) is vastly different and you have to relearn the patterns by starting with the fundamentals. Running with supported shoes promotes a heel strike (not always, but usually) and minimalist and without shoes promotes a mid- or forefoot landing pattern. Therefore, it's not as simple as taking off your shoes and going out for a run. Making this transition is a lot more taxing on the muscles in your foot, ankle, calf, hamstrings. It isn't bad, but it is different.  It takes time to adapt to moving with less under our feet because we have become dependent on the support and cushioning in our shoes.  We will have to spend some time breaking 10+ years of running habits to learn how to POSE run, but once you do learn it'll be worth the effort.

Now lets talk about how to pose run.

1) Raise ankles straight up using the hamstrings.

2) Keep your support time as short as possible.

3) That support should always be on the balls of your feet.

4) Let the heel kiss the ground but do not have a large impact on the heel.

5) DO NOT shift your weight over your toes. As soon as the weight is on the ball of your foot, raise your ankle.(Wow! This is a challenging technique but already I can see the amazing benefits from pose running).

6) Always keep your ankle relaxed and at the same angle.

7) Always keep your knees bent. (So imagine if you were over-striding and stretching your leg way out. Your knees would be forced to straighten and would absorb a lot of pounding and stress).

8) Your feet will always remain behind the vertical plum line that runs from your head, through your body, through your knees, and into the ground.

9) Keep your stride length short.

10) Knees and thighs should be down, relaxed, and kept close together.

11) Keep your focus on using the hamstring to pull the foot from the ground and not on the landing. The landing will take care of itself.

12) REMEMBER Try not to land on your toes and do not point your toes. Always land mid-foot.

13) It is the force of Gravity, and not any muscle action on your part that controls the landing of your foot.

14) Keep the vertical alignment (in other words…hold the pose) in your shoulders, hips, and ankles.

15) Your arms are strictly for balance and not for producing any type of force.

It is important to note that without proper technique injuries can occur when attempting to learn POSE running.  It may benefit you to seek out a coach who is familiar with this running style rather than go it alone.

On the other hand, people who spend the required time to learn proper POSE running technique seldom ever get injured.

There are those who can perfect this technique within a month, but keep in mind that it is not in ones best interest to go back and forth between running styles.

I know I’m going to give it a try because I like to run long distances and pose running really seems to be perfect for it.

-Trai