Or...Is your training making you "anti-fragile"?

I’ve been reading a great book called Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

While reading I’ve realised that some of the concepts presented more eloquently describe my approach to training and exercise.

The book is based around the concept of anti-fragility, which stems from the fact that we have no real opposing term for something that is fragile. We have terms like robust and resilient, but if fragility assumes that something is broken under stress, anti-fragility assumes that something thrives under stress.

You may consider that any exercise meets this description of anti-fragility, that is, exercise allows us to be anti-fragile, but like the author when he discusses exercise in the book, you would be mistaken.

In my Not Really Yoga program, I talk a lot about how stretching just makes you good at stretching. That is, stretching doesn’t necessarily allow you to use...

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...

"You should diet or exercise based on your bodytype...."

 We've all heard the terms ectomorph, endopmorph and mesomorph floating around. Whether it is in the gym, or even during physical education class at school, or some trainers may have even heard it during their PT certification. It seems pretty legit right? The premise that we are all different body types? Well, no really, once you start to think about it.

 Somatotyping is a a system of taxonomy developed by psychologist (yes psychologist) William Sheldon to place different human physiques into the 3 categories of ectomorph (skinny), endomorph (fat) and mesomorph (muscle-obviously these are very simplified explanations).

Sheldon used these classifications as the basis for his theory of Consitutional Psychology where he developed a theory that involved each of these 3 physiques being related to a certain type of temperament. Basically the ectomorph is apparently a little anxious, mesomorph ...

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, despite everyone having heard of it, is still something we still haven't quite nutted out exactly what happens. We think that the soreness part is caused by inflammation as a response to muscle tearing that happens when we exercise, especially when performing exercise we aren't accustomed to, as anyone who has started a new gym program, or even taken part in exercise they aren't used to would know.

Usually DOMS is most prominent following exercise that involves eccentric actions, whereby the muscle is brought under load at length, and tends to peak at around 48 hours, but sometimes can make stairs a leap of faith, even after a few days. 

 Often, both trainers, and those getting trained look to DOMS as an indicator of whether or not the previous workout was any good, usually with the trainer taking way too much pride in how much they made their client hurt.

 In line with my philosophy on the fact that anyone can make a workout...