Apollo Performance Therapy

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Apollo Performance Therapy Helping people frustrated by recurring pain and injury get back to feeling strong and athletic.

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10/23/2026

Clamshells get poo-poo’d quite a bit on the interwebs. But they aren’t a bad exercise at all.

The biggest issues I see when they are prescribed to people are:

1. Poor coaching or intent. They just aren’t done very well. The benefit you get from them is going to be pretty small (or nil) if you aren’t doing them in a useful way 🤷.

2. No progression. They just do their clamshells, never adding reps, load, or time to truly progress the ability to fully shorten your glute max.

3. They are already squeezing their glutes all the time. That’s why it’s “weak”. Hard to squeeze a muscle that’s already squeezed. This person needs to learn how to lengthen their glute before they worry about squeezing it again.

Is the clamshell a super important exercise that everybody should be doing or else your going to have knees caving in and hips that are out of alignment forever?

No.

But I think it’s useful as a way to learn how to actually fully shorten your glute without cheating at your pelvis, low back, or lower leg.

If you want to get the most out of your mobility/activation/accessory drills, you have to have some focus on HOW you are doing them.

Your body will always take the easy path. Don’t let it.

10/13/2026

If the only way you know how to stabilize her shoulders is by squeezing your shoulder blades together and down, you can lead the problems

Not because that position is bad, but because you’re always loading the same tissues if you never actually use or are able to use a different position.

It doesn’t matter how many different exercise variations you do if in every one of them, you are just squeezing your shoulder blades the same way.

The other issue here is that if you are squeezing your shoulder blades together, there is nowhere else for them to go, but up towards your ears.

Learn how to keep your shoulder blades wide, and maintain that position when doing arm training to learn how to stabilize in a different way from normal.

Shoulder blades wide is a better starting point for pulling/rows (because they actually have space to squeeze together), it’s a better stabilized position for pressing because it frees up your arms in front of you.

it’s also the best way to access a good overhead position.

This is one of many drills that we can use to find this feel and learn how to use it in training.

August recap!1. Camping with friends in goldstream means running the bike trails, apparently (Archie likes running more ...
09/01/2026

August recap!

1. Camping with friends in goldstream means running the bike trails, apparently (Archie likes running more than biking)

2. She’s so cute.

3. Archie loves coming to work so he can play with all the cool gadgets.

4. So many family walks. My step count 🚀.

5. Coordination is often more important than power or strength when doing many athletic things. Timing, positions, rhythm all matter.

6. I’m a big ol’ sloot for a smash burger…and this one from Coop’s Chicken & Smash Burgers was 🤤

7. Nothing like making grown men shake like a leaf with breathing drills. Learning what it feels like to have his shoulder blades away from each other.

8. We are an e-bike family now! It’s been epic.

9. Hip impingement/FAI’s worst enemy is learning how to manage your weight over top of your foot and getting good at loading a lengthened glute.

10. Flat top grill >>>> any other grill. Meal prep is SO easy.

11. Going through a little tempo squat phase to clean up some tendon issues on the knees before football starts back up. It’s disgusting. But still don’t feel bad for making clients do it.

12. We like our dog friends (this is not an open invite to bring dogs to the clinic, Sasha generally hates other dogs 😂)

13. Always repping the brand 👊

What. A. Month.

08/29/2026

Shoulder pain with bench press, part 2!

in the last video, I talked about how limited forearm pronation may be contributing to your shoulder pain when you bench.

In this video, I’m going over how I tend to help clients work on this by manipulating how you’re setting up and performing certain exercises.

Obviously, you could/should also be doing specific mobility work, shoulder work, etc.

But I like to give my clients simple things like that for home, and then prioritize adjusting the things THEY ARE ALREADY DOING AT THE GYM so they can work on it there too, without adding extra time or spending 35 minutes of their precious workout time doing “physio exercises”.

More specific exercises aren’t necessarily better. Just do the s**t you’re already doing, differently. You’ll probably get something different out of it.

08/27/2026

Shoulder pain doesn’t mean you have a shoulder problem.

Maybe it’s the victim.

I mean, You probably need to work on your shoulder too, but it may not be the MAIN problem.

Let me put this as simply as I can.

Bar hold hands still.
Forearm needs to turn as bar lowers.
No forearm turn? Shoulder do instead.
Maybe make shoulder do more than shoulder like?
Maybe put shoulder in weird/weak position for you?
Train forearm to turn better.
Shoulder do less turning and can focus on pushing bar away.
Feel pecs go 🚀.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the exercises I like to work on this! (It was too long to put together 🙈).

08/25/2026

Your ribcage has a lot of cartilage, and a lot of joints.

So tt should be able to change shape.

We blame the shoulder blade for lots of things.

But the shoulder blade is a solid piece of curved bone.

It just follows the shape of the ribcage.

SOOOoOoOo…..

If your ribcage is stuck in one position, you’re going to have a hard time getting your shoulder blade to move.

Then you’re gonna blame your rotator cuff, your traps, or call it an “impingement” when really….you just can’t move your stiff ass ribcage so other areas are trying to pick up the slack.

Get the ribs moving, and enjoy the freedom you’ll feel at your shoulder neck and low back.

08/13/2026

Muscle inhibition is a significant thing that you have to battle after a surgery.

That shaking in the video is the muscle fibers trying to figure out how to coordinate together again against resistance.

After a knee surgery, them quads gonna shut off as a protection mechanism.

So most of the first few weeks/months is spent just getting that quad to fully fire again.

This is why starting physio as soon as possible after a surgery is important to make sure we can get things heading in the right direction as soon as possible.

I usually try to have my ACL surgery clients get into the clinic within the first few days of surgery.

Muscle atrophy waits for nobody.

Electrical muscle stimulation (NMES), BFR, and isometrics are all your friends in the early stages to battle inhibition.

That gets following up with slow tempo controlled movements and isolated joint work (knee extensions).

Then we move into using speed as a way to force the muscle turn on.

If you sink quickly down into a squat, your quad kinda has to turn on or you’ll just fall on your ass, and nobody wants to do that.

Inhibition is a bitch though, it can stick around for months/years. Which is why it’s important to keep working on things, even when you’ve been cleared to return to sport.

08/12/2026

Hinging well is hard.

But figuring it out is also very worth it.

The top mobility drill you can do for your hips is get really good and a kickstand or single leg RDL.

We spend a lot of time dialing it in with our clients because nothing quite opens up the back of the hip like some pause kickstand RDLs.

If you are somebody that struggles with low back discomfort during a deadlift, the drop test at the end of the video is usually pretty enlightening that you are shifting further back than you think and are relying on the weight + your back to not fall on your ass.

Get forward over your foot and stay there.

Address

1410 Quadra Street
Victoria, BC
V8W 2L1

Opening Hours

Monday 7am - 7pm
Tuesday 7am - 7pm
Wednesday 7am - 7pm
Thursday 7am - 7pm
Friday 7am - 7pm
Saturday 9am - 12pm

Telephone

+17784014460

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