As crossfitters, we’re accustomed to a lot of acronyms… WOD. AMRAP. HSPU. SDHP. TFCC. KBS. MU. Wait, what? One of these things is not like the other. TFCC. Triangular Fibrocartilage Complex What is it? More popularly known as the wrist meniscus; a kind of shock absorber for some of the joints in your wrist. The TFCC can tear with rotational movements, like an awkward fail on a heavy Turkish getup or falling out of a hand stand. What does it do?...

“I can’t exercise anymore. You see, I have arthritis.” I’ve had many patients enter my exam room, look me straight in the face and say that. My mind drifts to some of the videos I’ve seen in the CrossFit Journal that show adaptive athletes and morbidly obese people exercising. On further questioning, I find the patients are usually referring to hip or knee arthritis—the most common forms of arthritis—and I proceed to ask about their...

Has anyone told you that you are UNSTABLE?  An unstable shoulder can be very dramatic or more often a silent issue that rears its ugly head only in certain situations or movements. Who would have thought that your shoulder could give way on you? What does giving way mean?  People will describe looseness, laxity, a weak feeling, instability, that their shoulder is not in the right place. Normally a shoulder provides stability with ligaments,...

Here’s the setting. Masters competition, clean and jerk with a  toe to bar ladder (sound familiar), 50 year old male lifts a barbell for a clean and jerk and feels a searing rip in his arm and has to drop the bar. He cannot lift his arm away from his side and is in agony, maybe had a little “bursitis in past” but nothing bad enough to stop him. Second scenario is 40ish year old 930 class filled with bunch of overachievers and...

Meniscus is another word for the cartilage in the knee that acts as a shock absorber. You have two of them medial and lateral or inner and outer.  They are both C-shaped structures that are made of fibrocartilage. The meniscus is located between the femur and the tibia or thigh and leg bone. It actually serves many functions in the knee other than shock absorber. It acts as a stabilizer preventing the lower leg from sliding forward on the...

Arthritis is the loss of cushion on a joint surface-period. The cushion called articular cartilage is an amazing multi faceted structure that allows us to walk, run, jump, and lift without pain. Deep to the cushion is bone. If bone is exposed then this causes pain as there are nerve endings in the bone. When bone rubs against bone the joint becomes painful, swollen and stiff. There is no cure for arthritis and treatment is directed towards pain...