Chandler Stevens
Breaking Muscle
Cincinnati, OH, United States
Contact Chandler
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
| Recent: |
|
| Past: |
|
Past articles by Chandler:
How Strong Is Strong Enough?
Overemphasizing strength often leads us to miss the forest for the trees, limiting the real-world applicability of our training. → Read More
Be Strong to Be Useful
The point of your training should be to enable you to improve the world around you. → Read More
A Head-to-Toe Approach to Back Tension
The causes of your back pain aren't just in your back, and neither will be the solutions. → Read More
Release Tension With a Psoas Reset
Our response to a cranky psoas is often to try to stretch or strengthen it, but we may need to just relax it, instead. → Read More
The Perks of Play to Better Your Movement
You can use play as an incredibly effective and enjoyable way to improve your quality of movement. → Read More
Your Posture Isn't the Problem
Your body is never truly static, so why worry so much about a static position? → Read More
Shift Your Perspective on Your Body
We will never be able to get what we want from our body until we supply what it needs. → Read More
Still Stretching? Think Bigger
() Look, I’ll be honest with you: all that time you spend stretching and limbering up is just a drop in the bucket. And it’s really not that much fun, is it? If it’s not fun and not effective, there’s surely a better alternative, right? → Read More
Connecting to Training and Life With Your Breath
Today I want to talk with you about the idea of your breath, and what it means to your movement practice and your training. Our breath is pretty important for things like metabolism, cognition, stress management, awareness, small stuff like that. Our breath is the dialogue we have with the world. → Read More
Short on Time? Stack Your Practice
If you’ve hung around the natural movement space long enough, you’ve likely heard of a smart gal by the name of Katy Bowman. She’s a biomechanist... sort of. What she really excels at is highlighting just how little we move (in big ways). → Read More
Mix Up Your Get Ups for Resilient Legs
If you’re like most of us humans, you’re going to spend a pretty large amount of time using your legs to get from Point A to Point B. They’re quite good at that, if you teach them to be. As others have mentioned before, there’s not really a reason to have a major leg injury, barring traumatic impact. → Read More
Forget Fitness: Do Human Things
The big, messy problem of this fitness and movement culture stuff is that we’re developing crazy physical prowess devoid of all context. We emphasize the superhuman at the expense of the human. It’s glaringly obvious on Instagram; we’re flooded with sexy movements, performed in isolation, in heavily edited environments. → Read More
Find Joy in Your Practice
I love handstands, muscle ups, and pistol squats as much as the next guy. But not because they’re particularly functional, or natural, or any other buzzwords. When someone asks why I practice them, the only reason I can come up with is “Just because.” I think they’re fun, and I feel good doing them. → Read More
You Aren't as Fragile as You Think
There’s an epidemic of articles out there crowing about the “5 Exercises You Should Never Do,” or warning you about the “10 Most Dangerous Exercises.” The nonsensical assumption at the heart of each is that your body is fragile and static, unable to adapt to new stressors. → Read More
Go Big: Be Your Own Coach
If I told you the earth was flat, you’d laugh me off as some kind of nut. Yet this was the dominant perspective for thousands of years. I know it’s a hyperbolic example, but too many of us still live with a 2-D view of the world. We have a limited view of what’s possible and what we’re capable of. → Read More
Mobility Matters Every Day
If foam rolling and flossing is the extent of your mobility practice, we’ve got some work to do. It’s easy to brush off your mobility training for sexier things like lifting heavier or flooding Instagram with sunset handstand pics, but improving mobility should be a cornerstone of your program. → Read More
Pain Is Not a Life Sentence
Look, there’s no clearer way to put it: pain is a signal that something is wrong with your body. Masking it with pills or shots is only going to prolong the problem. Your pain will simmer and smoulder, just waiting for its next chance to flare up. If something hurts, it’s time to address the sticky root cause. → Read More
Change Your Story to Change Your Performance
Stories have shaped human communication as long as we’ve existed. Look around. Our money, our religion, our businesses are all stories. And your story can shape your physiology, too. If it sounds like new-age manifestation mumbo jumbo, hang tight. I’ll show you how the story you tell about yourself helps or hinders your progress. → Read More
Prep Your Joints for Muscle Ups
Let’s face it: the muscle up is one hell of a cool skill. And beyond the cool factor you can use it to develop a powerful base of upper-body strength. But too many people rush headlong in pursuit of the coolness and set themselves up for acute and chronic injury: wrists sprains, elbow tendonitis, and shoulder impingement. → Read More
Willpower Won't Work: Hack Your Habit
The beautiful thing about your body is that it can change itself at any time. It’s capable of tremendous improvement. You’ve likely heard of the SAID principle, Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand. We often get stuck thinking of this in the context of training. → Read More