The stupidly simple reason why your stretching exercises don't work

Working out and exercising in school was simple. If the physical education teacher told you to strap on your tiny little shorts and touch your toes and swing your arms around like a monkey, you did it. Because they knew more about stuff than you.

But now it’s not so simple.

Everyone is a health and fitness expert (especially the ones that aren’t), and a quick google has us questioning the advice of ev-ery-one, and rightfully so.

But how do we know who is right?

Stretching is one of these topics that has fallen under the dark veil of interweb confusion and opinion, which ranges from research article quotes on stretching reducing performance, to the “I don’t like stretching so you shouldn’t do it," crowd.

Then on the other hand we have yogi’s and physical therapists telling us we should stretch and improve range of motion, yet the fact that it doesn’t really seem to work to...

In my line of work, there’s a lot of misconceptions around the potential danger around Crossfit.

Having worked with some of the countries best Crossfit athletes, I’ve seen the difference between what keeps a Crossfit athlete training and competing and what throws them constantly in the physical therapy room. And it has nothing to do with intensity and load, as many of the professionals would have you think.

It comes down to progression and prep, and here I want to go over the 4 things that the top athletes do to avoid injury, that you should be doing as well.

A meta-analysis showed that 74% of all Crossfitters had sustained an injury with the main areas being the shoulder and lower back, followed by the arm/elbow. 

If we consider the exercises that could be involved in injuries to these sites, the first thing to consider would be strength and range of motion in these areas. If we look to the fact that a change in joint position results in one side of the...