Upper-Body Maintenance
Physical therapy: $2.50. Using a only a lacrosse ball—about three bucks at any sporting-goods store—you can work a lot of tension out of tight tissue. Working with an athlete at CrossFit Santa Cruz, Kelly Starrett uses a ball to treat the internal and external rotators of the shoulder, the triceps and the lats. By getting creative and taping a pair of balls together, Starrett is able to do a little maintenance on the facet joints and erectors around the spine. The rules are pretty simple for this kind

Going Upstream - Part 2 of the Conversation
Zone creator Dr. Barry Sears had a revelation in the early ʼ80s: “I think I can treat food like a drug to control the inflammation without the side effects induced by other anti-inflammatory drugs ... . That leap was obvious to me but not so obvious to everyone else in the world.” Sears has spent the last decades proving his theories and getting his message out. He currently spends the majority of his time sifting through mountains of research articles before commissioning his own clinical studies. The key, according to Dr. Sears, is “going upstream” to treat the cause of

The Scandinavian CrossFit Challenge: CrossFit Europe Part 2
Blair Morrison wins the Eleiko Scandinavian CrossFit Challenge but finds he isn’t the only victor. He believes it’s proof that CrossFit has created a new competitive standard. It is late Monday night, and I have just returned from Halmstad, Sweden, the site of the 2009 Eleiko Scandinavian CrossFit Challenge. Even after five grueling WODs, countless hours in transit and a noticeably consistent lack of sleep, I’m still buzzing from the experience. The combination of facility, staff and competitors created an atmosphere that permeated the competition—

What to Expect From a Level 2 Cert
Tommy Hackenbruck is an accomplished athlete who’s looking to make his mark as a trainer, too. Hackenbruck, a former linebacker at the University of Utah, finished second to Mikko Salo at the 2009 CrossFit Games, and now he’s tackling another test: the CrossFit Level 2 Certification. His first time taking the Level 2, Hackenbruck didn’t have a lot of experie

Boy Genius to Boy Charlatan
Shortly after his live presentation to the CrossFit community, Dr. Barry Sears led Tony Budding on a tour of the Zone Labs. The cameras caught up them in the “Cone of Silence,” where the famous creator of the Zone Diet sifts through 300 - 500 articles a week seeking common themes related to inflammation. In this first of several parts, Dr. Sears explains how a major change in direction over 25 years ago brought him to the Zone Diet. When the