Morgan and Joseph are Smart

The idea of protection seems to be fairly prevalent in the blog posts this week.  Whether it be the tale of  how Morgan is protecting his body through effective rest and recovery. Or Joseph’s tumbling to help lessen the consequences of a nasty fall.  Don’t forget the X-Man taking advantage of the protection a good tire.  But most of all, the solace we can find in Leon’s never ever ending quest to protect us from the dangers of sugar by taking the bullet himself.

Protecting ourselves comes in many forms as you can see above.  But this is only a small slice of the various forms of protection.  I myself have been trying to heed the words of Morgan and Joseph through the complex arts of recovery and technique.

For the past several months I have been experiencing a chronic pain in my shoulder.  I honestly can’t remember any specific moment where I injured it.  One day the shoulder just started hurting.  Honestly, I think over-training caused the problem.  Movements like Overhead Squats and Snatches were pretty much treated like the plague because of this.

It was pretty bad, like THIS close to getting surgery bad.  But then I started recovery through many of the method’s Morgan has employed:  Amy Honeycutt[1], stretching, clean diet (certainly no gluten at least), fish oil, heat and ice.

With all this the shoulder is feeling better.  Not totally pain-free, but better.

Joseph has helped me through this by his great direction on technique.  Today’s workout is a great example of what good form can do for you.  Snatches are one of those movements that riled up my shoulder.  This was certainly true for the first few reps of today’s tabata.

But then I thought to myself, “What would Joseph do?”  And I immediately corrected my form, specifically turned armpits out and got the shoulders into an active position.  The pain immediately went away.

At times I feel like we could spend hours just trying to prefect the technique of something so simple as a squat.  But then who would want to attend a Crossfit class when all we do is talk about the squat?  Proper technique is essential for efficiency and injury prevention.

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[1] Does it seem like we mention Amy a bunch?  It’s because she is pretty much awesome.  Am I only saying this because I know she reads the website and I’m frightened of what she will do if I say something negative?  Absolutely not, Amy is wonderful and the pain inflicted during her sessions is all because of me.