How High Would You Go? A Better Way to Figure Out What You Actually Value
A simple thought experiment with a plank reveals more about your values, your training, and your life than any goal-setting framework ever will.
Why Most Video Podcasts Fail: The Hidden Production Mistake Costing You Viewers
Most people think podcasting is as simple as hitting record. Table Talk proves otherwise. This behind-the-scenes breakdown shows the 25-hour workflow Elitefts uses to produce every episode, including guest sourcing, booking, AI-powered prep, live production, post-production, thumbnail strategy, and publishing.
The Evolution of “The Sheriff”: Matt Sharafinski’s 2,000-Pound Journey
Matt Sharafinski’s story is more than a powerlifting comeback. From high school addiction and identity struggles to becoming “The Sheriff,” an elite 2,000-pound totaler and coach, this feature breaks down how discipline, psychology, health, and the weight room helped him rebuild his life under the bar.
The Equipment Your Grandfather Trained On Is Back. It Never Should Have Left.
Five plate-loaded, old-school machines every serious gym should have, and why serious lifters keep coming back to the basics
The Void: Mastering the Mind Under the Bar
"The void" is described as a transformative mental state of freedom and peace where an athlete sheds their daily stressors to become a different, often more aggressive, version of themselves, pushing past physical limits into a space of absolute nothingness.
How to Use the elitefts SS Yoke Bar: Every Application Worth Knowing
The SS Yoke Bar is not just a squat bar replacement. Here is how to get everything out of the most important specialty bar in any serious gym.
How to Get the Most Out of Working With Any Coach
Most lifters hire a coach and then immediately get in their own way. Here's the framework that will make every session count.
The Generation That Figured It Out: How Growing Up Gen X Built the Way I Train
Gen X didn't have YouTube, apps, or on-demand coaches. We had a bar, a rack, and the stubborn refusal to quit, and that built something most lifters today never find.
I Built This Because Nothing Else Worked
I've been competing in powerlifting long enough to know what the tricep actually does in this sport. It locks out the bench. It finishes the press. So when every strap on the market kept failing me at both ends of the pushdown, I stopped looking for a solution and started building one. This is the origin of the elitefts 3-Loop Tricep Strap, why I designed it the way I did, and why it has never left my cable machine.
Why Modern Powerlifting is Falling Apart
Dave Tate and a current multi-ply competitor, Bob Merkh, go deep on fractured federations, band shirts, judging inconsistency, and the hidden cost of putting the bar before everything else.
Eight Training Principles Most Lifters Will Never Apply
Most lifters focus on what to add. The ones who get strong figure out what to cut.
The Conjugate Training Roadmap: Anatomy of a High-Performance Workout
"Conjugate training is basically the coupling... it's combining different methods of training... taking the method of Max effort... the repetition method and the dynamic effort method and combining them all together."
The "Meathead" Manifesto: 6 Unconventional Lessons on Performance, Recovery, and the Edge of Sanity
"I wanted to know what it felt like to break a PR one more time."
What a Business Strategy Book Taught Me About Why Most Lifters Never Reach Their Potential
I picked up a book about organizational strategy and ended up reading a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of every training mistake I made for the first decade of my career.
What the New ACSM Strength Guidelines Actually Mean for Competitive Powerlifters
The ACSM just updated their resistance training guidelines for the first time in over 15 years, and what the headlines say and what the document actually says are two different things.
The Mental Game: 10 Psychological Skills That Separate Lifters Who Stall From Lifters Who Dominate
The bar doesn't care about your program. It cares about what's between your ears. Dave Tate breaks down 10 mental skills he learned over 20+ years of competition, from identity and visualization to the composure that saved his career at the 1999 IPA Worlds.
Classic: 27 Reasons to Be Big
Dave Tate revisits a 2004 classic and asks the question all over again: why do we do this to ourselves?
The Bench Nobody Sits On
The noise never stops unless you make it stop, and the conversations you've been avoiding are the ones that matter most.
The Paradox of Certainty: Why Veterans Sound Less Confident
Beginners speak in absolutes; veterans talk in probabilities, because the deeper you go, the more you realize how little you know.
What You Have Is More Than You Think: A Lesson From Marcus Aurelius and a $1,000 Loan
I didn't get here by having more than everyone else. I got here by understanding what less actually looks like.
Stop Debating the Percentage. Here's How to Actually Find Your Speed Bench Weight.
The right weight for speed bench isn't found in a book — it's found under the bar, using a simple method that tells you exactly what to use based on your own strength and skill level.
Community Over Competition: Iron Sharpens Iron, Even in Business
The lifters and coaches who truly understand the phrase realize that competition doesn't kill community, it sharpens it.
Building a Powerlifting Empire: 5 Counter-Intuitive Lessons from the Origins of EliteFTS
The EliteFTS gym evolved from a simple backyard shed used for sled work in 1998 into a world-class strength facility over the course of two decades of growth and warehouse relocations.
The Puke Paradigm: The Truth About Training 'Till You Crawl Out
"Back then, you weren't training hard unless you crawled out of the gym. You thought you were wasting your time if you didn't see stars, puke in the trash can, or question your life choices on the drive home.