The past few days, I've been doing some reflecting on my experiences that led me to where I'm at today. As much as I like to tell myself, "stay in the present moment, but don't forget to prepare for the future," I also believe occasional reflection into your past (more specifically what you learned from your past) is beneficial.

Thinking back to my time playing college basketball (one year at Northwood, three at Calvin), I've come up with 5 things playing hoops has taught me about life...

When it comes to global movement of the human body, I like to break things down into the following movements: push, pull, squat, hinge, lunge, rotate, walk/run/jump....and carry.

Loaded carries (aka "farmers carries, suitcase carries, bottoms-up carries, front-racked carries, etc.,"), are often used for conditioning, rehabilitation, and building stability or strength. For twelve variations of loaded carries, I recommend checking out my friend Zach's post on the topic. 

While driving to work this past week, I was listening to a recent podcast interview of Gray Cook. In the interview (at 51:02 if you want to skip right to it), Gray mentions his use of the loaded carry as a test for an athlete's postural integrity. His reasoning was that failure of postural integrity is often a bottleneck (aka limiting factor) to strength. Gray states,