strength - 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 One Thing To Transform Your Training Program Design

There is literally just one question you need to ask yourself when deciding how to design a fitness or strength program:

What is the ultimate goal of the program?

I know, I know. This is probably the most cliche and overused advice in the book but cliches exist for a reason. Let me illustrate this point with a story…

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.

How I Split and Structure Workouts

If you spend enough time in the gym or the fitness realm, you’ll find that there are a lot of things to spend your time doing. Strength, mobility, plyometrics, conditioning… but never cardio. F*** that shit (calm down, this is a joke, people).

You may also figure out that there are a lot of muscles to work. How on earth are we supposed to even begin exercising everything in a feasible and practical way?

One day, you’ll stumble upon training splits. This is essentially the answer to the given problem: How do you address all of the things that a training program is supposed to address?

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.

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 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.

9/10/2020 Program Update

This program will be done for 3 weeks.

Strength is the priority. General physical preparedness, or overall fitness, is the foundation.

This Is Still In Stock: Ab Rollers

Lately, it seems impossible to find any fitness equipment to outfit a home gym. Public gyms and health clubs are still operating at limited capacity and the situation doesn’t seem to be improving anytime soon. In the mean time exercise equipment seems to be worth its weight in gold.