It’s baaaaack. The largest fitness competition on Earth, the CrossFit Open,  is finally here. Maybe you’ve trained all year for this, maybe you’re still new to CrossFit and are curious about all the excitement. Maybe you’re a seasoned vet, maybe this is your first Open you’ve ever participated in. Regardless of your CrossFit background, your fitness will be tested, your mental toughness will be challenged, and you will certainly have a blast working through these workouts with your crew at your local CrossFit affiliate.

That being said though, this is typically a time where we start seeing an uptick in the people we see coming in for CrossFit related injuries. Having an athletic background, where I had to personally sit out multiple seasons due to injuries, I speak from experience when I tell you there is nothing worse than working all year towards a goal/competition/test and not being able to perform at an optimal level, if at all, because of an injury. And, look, I get it. There is inherently an increased risk of injury when you're pushing yourself in a competitive environment. However, there are some very important things you can do to minimize this risk and allow you to perform your best. Let’s take a look at the three easy things you can do:​

#1 Don’t Be Reckless

This is huge and something I see year after year. If you’re a CrossFit coach, or even just an observant CrossFit athlete, I’m sure you’ve seen what I’m about to explain...You’ve worked all year to create movement patterns that are both safe and effective. You know the importance of good, quality movement. However, throw in the element of an international competition and it seems like all these lessons about technique go out the window.
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For example, last year’s first Open workout (18.1) consisted of three movements:  toe-to-bar, dumbbell clean and jerks and rowing. Can you guess what type of injury we saw coming into our clinic after this workout? If you said back pain, you’re correct. But why? Well, with this workout people were trying to perform as many rounds as possible for 20 minutes. To get better scores people weren’t maintaining core control for a solid hollow position with their toes-to-bar, they stopped getting full hip and knee extension for optimal power production during the drive portion of the clean and jerks, and/or they started to over-extend during the rowing component.  All of these create situations that are destined to increase stress on your low back. Keep in mind that this was just the first workout! Now you’re either completely unable to participate in the other workouts or will not be performing at an optimal level because you’re trying to grind through an injury.​

#2: Protect Your Sleep

There are four main pillars of health care that we look at with every patient who walks in the door at Athletes’ Potential: Movement, Stress, Sleep, and Nutrition. Sleep is easily on of the biggest problems that we see out of these pillars. And check this out, Sleep affects everything you do and everything you do is positively affected by quality sleep. Good, quality sleep literally improves everything: every marker on a blood panel, weight management, sport performance and recovery, productivity, and numerous types of disease management. The list goes on and on, yet the percentage of sleep deprived Americans, particularly in Urban areas, continues to rise at an alarming rate. In fact, the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than 30% of Americans are sleep deprived getting fewer than 6 hours of sleep per night.

If you’re not getting enough sleep, you’re not giving your body a chance to recover. If you’re not recovering appropriately then you're leaving yourself at risk for injury and decreased performance. So bottom line, create an optimal sleeping environment, protect your night time routine, and get some good quality sleep sleep.

For more info on how to optimize your sleep. Check out this article we wrote.

#3: Maintain Perspective

This comes full circle with tip #1. For those of you trying to make it on to regionals, those extra few reps I mentioned could be the difference in making the cut vs staying home. However, for the vast majority of athletes competing in the CrossFit Open this is not reality. You all have careers, kids you need to take care of, and numerous other responsibilities that you need to keep rocking with once you leave the gym. Is bouncing off the top of your head to get an extra rep or two really going to mean that much if by doing so now you can’t look over your shoulder while driving? (yes this is a real scenario that we’ve worked on at our clinic...I’m looking at your 17.4). Or is that 2 position jump on the leaderboard really all the important if now you can’t bend over to pick up your kids? ​

Crossfit is meant to be a competitive, fun and challenging way to make all aspects of life outside the gym a little easier. This time of year is huge for all CrossFit athletes and it is truly impressive to see the physical accomplishments and PR’s that happen every single year in the Open. However, the Open isn’t an excuse to throw all safety out the window but it isn’t something you should be afraid of either. Following these three easy tips will ensure that you have a great time, reduce your risk of injury, and maybe even hit a PR or two.

Thanks for reading.


Dr Jake, DPT, CSCS, CF-L1

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​This drill is an all time favorite of mine for a couple of reasons. First, it allows you to feel how your lats should be contracting while you are going a pull up. Second, it allows you to strengthen your shoulders in a vulnerable/weak position. You’re only as strong as your weakest link and being strong in a weak position is a great way to prevent injuries.


Drill #2: Lat Pull Over

​Breaking up a bilateral movement (using both arms)  into a unilateral movement (using one arm) is a highly underutilized training modality that allows to balance out weaknesses. Plus, as an added bonus, you’re able to perform a vertical pulling drill at a slightly different angle which, as we talked about above, is how you train for healthy shoulders.


If you have shoulder pain while doing pull-ups, or want to prevent pain from coming, this two-part post is a great place to start. Ensuring appropriate mobility and then building appropriate strength is a common occurrence in the rehab world.

If you’re in the Atlanta area and are interested in working with a unique professional that can help you optimize your health in all of these areas, we need to talk. Being proactive and staying on top of your health will help you avoid serious health problems down the road.

Submit a contact request by clicking the button below and we’ll get you set up with one of our Doctors for a free 15-minute phone consult.​

​Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jacob, PT, DPT, CSCS

                                                                  (Banded Overhead Opener)

• This drill is an all time favorite of mine because it does two things really well. 1. It opens up your latissimus dorsi, which a lot of people need work with, and 2. It provides a distraction mobilization at the joint capsule itself, which is really important for improving range of motion. ​

                                                                    (Thoracic Spine Opener)

• If you watched this video and thought to yourself, “What in the world does my back have to do with my shoulder mobility?" - you’re not alone. However, your thoracic spine being able to extend appropriately is crucial to being able to reach fully overhead without restriction.

2. External Rotation

​Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jacob, PT, DPT, CSCS

Ok, so now that you’ve stepped up to the bar and have set yourself in a good position by following the “3 B’s” (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see Part 1 of this series), it’s time to safely pick some weight off the floor.

There are a number of different nuances you can get into when teaching someone how to deadlift, but for this sake of this post we are going to break the lift into two main parts: First Pull and Second Pull.​

1. First Pull: This is where you lift the bar from the ground to your knees. During this part of the lift you should be keeping your spine in a neutral position by having your hips and shoulders rise at the same time until the bar reaches your knees. If you let your hips rise faster than your shoulders then you’ll end up rounding your lumbar spine, and if you let your shoulders rise faster than your hips then you’ll end up over-extending your lumbar spine. Both of those approaches increase the shear forces at your vertebra, which our spines are not designed to handle.

So the big takeaway here is that, when you initially starting lifting the weight off the floor, you need to keep your hips and shoulders moving in the same direction, at the same rate, until you get to knee height, and at that point you start to shoot your hips forward as your shoulders continue to rise. Sounds simple enough; right? Well, there are techniques you need to also remember in order to not just perform the lift correctly, but to also keep your back out of harm’s ways. ​

• Keep your lats engaged: We discussed the importance of the lats in Part 1 and the reasoning applies here too. As you lift the weight from the ground you want to keep your lats engaged by trying to “break the bar.” Doing this will allow you to keep the bar close to your shins and thighs, which is crucial to keeping your back safe. The closer that bar stays to your body, the less shear force that go through your low back.
• Neck Position: Don’t flex or over-extend your neck while deadlifting. You want to keep your neck in a neutral, or ever-so-slightly extended, position.
• Push with your legs, don’t pull with your back: This one sounds simple enough; right? In theory, yes. But in practice we see this performed wrong on the time. You want to imagine that you’re pushing the ground away from you vs pulling the weight off the ground. A good way to ensure that this is the case is by creating a “wedge” position. Dr. Travis Jewett does a great job of explaining what that is in the video below.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jake, PT, DPT, CSCS