Upper East Side

We’ve all got problems. The great thing about problems is that more often than not, they have solutions. I’ve compiled a list of the four most common complaints I hear from CrossFitters — newbies and veterans alike. The first three deal with the most common movement faults and limitations. I’ve provided ways to warm up those problem areas, as well as how to strengthen, stabilize and stretch.

Lastly, we’ll talk about why you might not be getting stronger and what you can do to change that. Here’s to the strongest you in 2019!

Your knees cave in.

“Knees out!” You’ve heard it many times from every coach, but what does it actually mean? You can think about pushing your knees out until you’re blue in the face, but if you’re not getting to the root of the problem, it’s never going to improve. What exactly is at the root of your collapsing knees? Usually one of two things, or a combination of both.

• Poor hip strength or muscle activation, often a weakness in the glute medius or outer hips
  • Warm up with
    • Banded squats
    • Banded glute bridges
    • Side lying clamshells
    • Banded lateral walks

• • Accessory exercises
    • Lateral step ups
    • Single-leg deadlifts
    • Cossack squats

• Poor ankle mobility
  • Warm up with
    • Foam roll/lacrosse ball calves (gastrocnemius and soleus)
    • Slant board stretch
    • Box ankle stretch (foot elevated on box, push knee over toe until you feel the stretch around your achilles tendon)

You have chronic back pain.

Many athletes, especially novices, experience lower and mid-back pain after deadlifts, kettlebell swings, cleans and more. Many rush to assume that they have “hurt” their back — a pulled muscle, a herniation — when more often than not, the pain is coming from weakness in the posterior chain and core, tight glutes, hips and hamstrings, or both.

• Posterior chain and/or core weakness
  • Warm up with
    • GHD hip extensions
    • Glute bridges
    • Light good mornings
    • Birddogs
    • Hollow holds and planks

• • Accessory exercises
    • Romanian deadlifts
    • Weighted hip extensions
    • Good mornings
    • Single-leg deadlifts
    • Stability ball hamstring curls
    • Front rack holds & carries

• Tight glutes/hamstrings/hips
  • Warm up with
    • Foam roll mid & lower back
    • Foam roll hamstring, glutes, piriformis
    • Cat/cow stretches

• • Cooldown with
    • Forward folds
    • Seated straddle
    • Pigeon stretch

You can’t overhead squat.

For many people, the saga of developing the overhead squat is a lifelong journey. It requires maximum shoulder stability and mobility, hip mobility, core strength — the list goes on. For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on the two main issues: shoulder and thoracic spine mobility and shoulder stability.

• Tight shoulders and thoracic spine
  • Warm up with
    • Foam roll thoracic spine
    • Pec and lat release with LAX ball
    • Banded shoulder distraction
    • Box shoulder stretch
    • PVC dislocates

• • Accessory exercises
    • Not much to say here except overhead squat more often! The more you can get your body into that position, even just working with a PVC pipe, the better off you’ll be!

• Shoulder stability
  • Accessory exercises
    • Overhead static holds
    • Handstand holds
    • Single-arm Sotts press
    • Behind neck strict/push press
    • Dip support holds

You’re not improving or getting stronger.

While it’s easy to blame outside circumstances for not improving, often it just takes a small tweak to your routine and a bit more discipline to start seeing the changes you’d like to see.

• Better recovery

If you feel you’re not getting stronger, take a look at your recovery. How much are you sleeping? Are you eating enough? Do you have the right balance of carbs, protein and fat? (Not sure? We can help.) How much are you stretching? How much water are you drinking? How much alcohol are you drinking? All of these things can seriously improve or inhibit your performance in the gym.

Sleep is paramount! If your cell phone battery were on 20% and you didn’t have a charger, you’d cut down on your usage in order to make it last longer. Likewise, if your body is on 20% power, forcing it to work as much and as hard as it does when it’s fully charged is only going to kill your battery even faster.

Additionally, taking rest days is critical. You should be taking at least one full day off per week. Working out, especially lifting weights, breaks down your muscle tissue. Rest days allow your muscles to heal and therefore BUILD, which is the goal! Continually breaking your body down without rest days will ultimately lead to lack of improvement and possible overtraining and injury.

• Less ego

Another major contributing factor to lack of improvement is too much competing and not enough training. Do you find yourself avoiding scaling and missing the stimulus of a workout to get that RX distinction? Check your ego at the door. You’ll never get better by struggling through reps and reps of low quality, not-to-standard handstand push-ups or ugly snatches that are far too heavy. Forget about the “RX” next to your name and do full range of motion pike push ups on the box. Scale the weight back on the snatches and make every rep perfect. You may be frustrated in the moment, but in the long run, training the movement and getting stronger is more important than taking shortcuts just to say you did the workout as prescribed.

• Stick to the program

Stop going to failure every day. We need to spend time under the bar, working reps at moderate to heavy loads. The percentages and weights are what they are for a reason. If the prescribed weight is “no heavier than 75%,” why are you trying to PR? We all want to get stronger and hit big lifts, and the best way to do that is to trust the process and only max out when the program prescribes it.

So now you’ve figured out your problem, you have the tools to fix it, and it’s up to you to implement everything you’ve learned. If you need any guidance with the movements above, recovery techniques, etc., don’t hesitate to ask me or any other coach and we’ll be happy to assist!