Let's start with what this article is not. It is not a top 5 exercises to develop great looking delts with lateral, front, and rear delt raises to develop each of the heads. Don’t worry, you will develop some amazing looking delts in the process as that also happens to be the output of strong healthy shoulders.

The Author’s Shoulders

It is a piece to help you develop strong, healthy, and powerful shoulders that can deliver tremendous power while reducing risk of injury in such a complex joint. This top 5 is for developing functional strength movements for the shoulders. Yes, I said the dreaded word ‘functional’. But I’m not talking namby-pamby soda can exercises, I’m talking real movements that develop strength while helping improve the operating mechanics of the shoulders. If you’re not familiar with my background or approach I am certainly a coach and athlete interested in real-world results and believe that stronger is better,...

Brandon Senn competes in Powerlifting and is the Head Coach at Kabuki Strength Virtual Coaching. His mission is to support athletes through global management systems that directly influence their performance within the competitive realm.

Over the past decade, the idea that you can fluidly manage training loads based on defined scales has gone from a distant idea to being adopted as a critical tool that many lifters use every day in their training. Some coaches even base entire training philosophies on this concept. That’s not to say the formalization of autoregulation was the beginning of its application. Since man began training for sport or towards desired physical outcomes we have been managing how heavy, or how hard we push at any given time mostly based by feel. Not since the creation of specified scales have we began to put a name to it. But as with formally attaching a name to this idea, everything must evolve. This article is going to expand on the idea of...

Call it whatever you like. Flossing, voodoo wrapping, compressing, blood flow restriction; you name it. There are a lot of terms floating around that describe a similar activity. We have gotten to a point where you can find compression bands just about anywhere. There is a reason it’s becoming more popular, it works. What most people don’t realize is there are a lot of different ways to use deep compression and a lot of different reasons someone may do it in certain situations.

1. Improving Lymphatic Drainage & Reducing Swelling

The idea of deep compression has been around for a very long time. The first time I heard about using this kind of compression was from Dick Hartzell and a book titled, Don’t Ice that Ankle Sprain. In the book, Dick goes into detail about leaving that ice bag in the trash and applying super compression to the ankle to stabilize and flush swelling. The super compression also can be analgesic (acting to relieve pain), allowing...

It has now been twelve and eighteen months, respectively, since I had hemicap surgery on my left and right shoulders. Performed by Dr. Anthony Miniaci at the Cleveland Clinic, the shoulder surgeries have performed better than I had hoped. In reviewing the introductory article I wrote in June of 2016, my goal then was to rehab the right shoulder ahead of the October surgery on the left, and to get back on the platform by the spring of 2017. I can report now that the second surgery was equally successful as was the follow up rehab work led by PT’s Jim Cavin (right) and Jason Vila (left) at North Lake Physical therapy who pushed me to the limit. It was a long, frustrating road as I wanted the pain to subside sooner than it did. However, by using our Duffalo and Transformer Bars, I was able to train the squat well ahead of regaining the shoulder range of motion necessary to get my myself under a straight bar and the Duffalo bar allowed me to start benching sooner...

Andrew Lock
Welcome to another World First.

In this landmark article I’ll explain the flexed spine and neutral spine controversy, how to understand it, and why movement patterns are the key to successful rehabilitation. Let’s begin – There is no joint range that the body naturally has that is bad for you. Yes, and lumbar spines do flex, and for a very good reason. Now it’s time to make like Charlton Heston and strap yourself in for some time travel (except we are going backwards in time).

It’s evolution baby. We are Homo Sapiens. Approximately 300.000 years as our current form and in the multiregional origin model, the evolution of humanity begins about 2.5 million years ago in the Pleistocene era continuing to the present day within a single, continuous species, evolving worldwide modern Homo sapiens sapiens.

Herein lies the key to the flexed spine.

Let’s consider an important key to survival – Calorie Expenditure Minimization (CEM). To...

It is not uncommon for athletes to develop restrictive patterns inhibiting hip extension due to postural deficiencies or imbalances.  The output of this may be pain, or just simply a reduction in performance.  In this article we will teach you how to quickly identify if you have these problems as well as how to resolve them in a safe, efficient, and methodical manner.  To accomplish this we will use several videos from our private video movement library.  There are hundreds more videos and drills all indexed along with guided tutorials on this website as well.  This piece will also highlight what we can accomplish with our multidisciplinary approach.  Our goal is not to be dogmatic to any one particular method, but to get you back training with the best movement possible to increase performance and reduce your injury risk.

Our first step is to perform a Hruska Lift test which is a tool from the PRI discipline.  When performing this test it is...

Make sure you listen to the episode here or by clicking play below!

Dr. Craig Liebenson was kind enough to lend us an hour of his time to discuss movement, strength, and the concept of becoming Anti-Fragile for an episode of Strength Chat. We dove into all areas of human performance but his priority list for becoming anti-fragile is what stood out the most to me. We often hear about mental toughness or cringe worthy statements such as “pain is weakness leaving the body”. But, it’s not so often we get to pick the brain of a professional as respected as Dr. Liebenson. Aside from his work as the Director of L.A Sport and Spine (a pain management, rehabilitation, and performance enhancement center) Dr. Liebenson is an active consultant for professional sports organizations such as the MLB and NFL.

I’ll set the stage for Dr. Liebenson’s formula for anti-fragility with a quote below.

“Isn’t the pursuit of perfection really the opposite of...