Best Posts of the Year

I’m currently on vacation and spending some time watching re-runs of Game of Thrones, working out, eating everything I want, and cuddling with the wife and dogs. Today I wanted to run through some of the best articles I’ve put up on this site in terms of total views and what people enjoyed or didn’t enjoy.

This has been a year where I didn’t get to write as much as I would have liked, mostly due to taking on a couple of really big projects and also doing more speaking events around the continent and even into England a couple of times. Still, in spite of this I was able to have over 650,000 people check out my site over the span of the year, which is pretty good, but nowhere near what some big guns can get on theirs. I know a few people who do in the multi millions of page views, and sometimes even within a single month, so these numbers aren’t about to break the internet or anything, but it’s still pretty cool to see that there’s a large body of people who even pay attention to what I may have to say.

1. Buttwink is Not About the Hamstrings

With close to 10,000 shares on Facebook and over 113,000 views in the last 6 months, this was definitely the best trafficked article on my site by a long shot. Funny enough, I wrote this one in about an hour after seeing a fourth article of the week trying to relate buttwink to tight hamstrings. That’s like saying you’ll become rich by saving more money. It is a small part of the equation, but a very small part, and secondary to other issues that take precedent.

Photo credit Bret Contreras

2. Why Adults Can’t Squat Like Babies And Should Stop Trying To

Another article spawned after seeing a pic of a baby in a squat and a caption “Why can’t you do this?” There was some backlash from some people saying I was limiting the ability of people to try to achieve a deep squat, which was never the case, but rather to just say the comparison between how an adult squats and how a baby squats are two biomechanically and anatomically different things.

3: Coregasms: Potential Mechanisms

This was a collaborative piece with Bret Contreras that stemmed from a discussion over pelvic floor anatomy and potential actions that could lead to a coregasm, or exercise-induced orgasm. We did a short survey of readers and then published the findings HERE. I don’t think we’re any closer to finding an answer, but it did open some eyes and hopefully get some people one step closer to figuring out whether it’s a good thing or not.

4. Side Plank for Internal Rotation Question, Answered

This article outlined my thoughts on how the hip and core are related in terms of mobility/stability and creating an integral system between the two, plus show some cool magic tricks to boot.

5. Checklist for Determining Movement Dysfunctions and How to Get Over Them

This was a blog post that turned into a presentation at the NSCA Personal Trainers conference in Washington, DC this past October, and the good news is the article and the seminar both went over very well. Essentially, the gist of it was if you move like crap, finding a way to move better and get through any current sticking points will help you get more benefit from the same workouts and also reduce the potential of injury. The rest is up to you, you little Ironmen you.