Movement Science - The Fit Ethos

The Serratus Anterior: The Forgotten Muscle of the Shoulder

The shoulder is a complicated region of the body. It contains the most mobile joint in the body (the glenohumeral joint, or the ball and socket we all associate with the shoulder) that must also be strong and stable or else risk injury during heavy movements and exercise.

The fitness and sports industry has come up with many ways to strengthen, rehab, and prehab the shoulder, and for good reason. There are many muscles to address and if injured, shoulder rehab can potentially become a lengthy and complex process.

The 1 Shoulder Exercise I Refuse to Do or Prescribe

One of the great things about strength training and lifting is the amount of variation that you can find in exercise, programming, philosophy, and culture. Things almost never get stale and people fall in love with this world all of the time. However, in all of that variation, a mediocre idea or two will inevitably sneak in. Or thousands, as seen daily on Instagram.

Such is the case with this one shoulder exercise. It is considered a bodybuilding staple and has torn the lifting community apart since physical therapists and strength coaches alike have discussed (or fought about) the potential harm and misgivings of the movement.

If You Had to Pick One Muscle to Train… The Glutes

Physical therapists often have trouble getting their patients and clients to perform all of the exercises that they prescribe. Whatever the excuse, this is a good reason to keep any exercise program as short and concise as possible. If you can keep it to less than 3-5 exercises per day, this is plenty. To keep it concise, you need to know what is important and which exercises will give you the most bang for the buck.

Also, if you’re a therapist and your home exercise programs are 20 exercises on average, then you don’t know how to efficiently prescribe exercises.

How to Quickly Fix For Your Knee Pain (And The Long Term Solution)

Bothersome knees are the worst. They affect almost every activity imaginable from running, going up stairs, and even sitting! For a joint that seemingly only does one thing (hinge back and forth), it seems like a lot can go wrong with it. Of course, there is a component of rotation, but that is beyond the scope of this article.

In my experience, most knee pain (barring any acute mechanism of injury) is relatively simple to address. Outside of acute injury, creaky and bothersome knees really come down to poor strength and mechanics of the hips (particularly the glutes), hamstrings, and quadriceps.

So the long term solution is exercise and strength training (big deal. That tends to be the solution to every problem). But what can we do to get some short term relief?

3 Ways to Achieve Progressive Overload Without Adding Weight

We have all heard the basic tenant of strength: progressive overload. But, when we talk about progressive overload, we only ever think of adding more weight to the bar (or dumbbells).

Even going through graduate school, this was the main form (and often the only one taught) of overloading and increasing the challenge for patients and clients. Somehow, adding weight was the real bee’s knees to being a great trainer or clinician.

It definitely made me question if I got my money’s worth from my doctorate.

Should You Even Bench Press? The Truth (and 5 alternatives)

There are two constant truths of life. The first is death.

The second is that all bros will bench press and curl on Mondays.

This act of suspending heavy weight over our supine body, lowering it and lifting (or bouncing) it back up seems to be a constant ritual in the iron world. Go to any gym, and the bench press (along with squat racks and deadlifting platforms) will be a revered piece of equipment that is analogous to an altar in a church.

3 More Exercises to Bulletproof Your Legs: The Posterior Chain

If you missed the first part of this series, check it out here: 3 Exercises To Bulletproof Your Legs. In that article, we briefly talked about some principles of injury and how to prevent them as well as Nordic hamstring curls, Bulgarian split squats, and hill sprints.

The 3 Elements Your Program Needs To Get Jacked – Part 1

Human beings are relatively predictable beings, so in general they will have a number of needs in order to achieve something. It is no different in strength training or getting jacked. There are general needs that everyone has, and if they are not addressing it, they are shortchanging their results. Give me any program and I can tell right away what it will do for most people.

There are many elements of training that need to be addressed. For the benefit of your jackedness, let’s go over the big three.

3 Exercises To Bulletproof Your Legs

Lower extremity injuries are all too common from the average person to the elite athlete. Often, these injuries are predictable and thus preventable through proper training and maintenance.

Before we run through the exercises, we need to establish a few principles to work with.