The Grit and Glamour of Modern Gladiators

The Grit and Glamour of Modern Gladiators

Lu Faustin, Kailey Latimer, and Daniella Means did not become gladiators overnight. Their strength was built through bodybuilding, powerlifting, professional wrestling, adversity, and years of relentless work. This is the story of three women who prove that real strength cannot be bought—it has to be earned.

Kalil Sherrod

Why Your Athletes Are Leaving Explosive Power on the Table

Sports performance coach Khalil Sharad breaks down the three-tool progression he uses to build stronger, more explosive athletes, starting with the belt squat and ending with resisted jumping.

What Actually Works for Speed and Strength

What Actually Works for Speed and Strength

A stripped-down, no-BS guide to conjugate training structure: how to organize max effort, dynamic effort, secondary work, accessories, bands, chains, and auto-regulation without overcomplicating the system.

Dr Dwyane Jackson

The Neural Calibration Protocol: Master the Psychobiological Margin of Max Strength

By predicting a lift's perceived exertion and comparing it to the actual physical outcome, athletes develop crucial "neural encoding" that trains the central nervous system to consistently achieve true high performance.

 

Mastering Your First Powerlifting Meet

Mastering Your First Powerlifting Meet

Built from the perspective of an experienced lifter, referee, and meet director, this guide helps you show up prepared, avoid common rookie mistakes, and make smart decisions from your opener to your final deadlift. Read this before you compete, pack your bag, pick conservative attempts, listen for your commands, and enjoy the day.
Training the Lower Body for Sports Performance

Training the Lower Body for Sports Performance

Build a stronger, faster, more explosive lower body with a sport-focused training model that blends maximal strength, contrast training, plyometrics, sled work, unilateral development, and force–velocity profiling for better transfer to the field.

table talk Mike

Technique Is a Consequence, Not a Cause: What Mike Niklos Gets Right About Athlete Development

— Dave Tate

Table Talk guest Mike Niklos breaks down why your first assessment question should never involve a barbell, what the conjugate method actually means, and why communication is the only coaching skill that will matter in 30 years.

Joe and Dan

The Coach's Guide to Integrating Resistance Bands for Enhanced Athletic Performance

— Dave Tate

Highlighting the versatility of resistance bands, Coach Joe Riggio and Dan Goodman demonstrate how this low-impact tool enhances training through applications ranging from warm-ups to assisted lifts like Nordic glute hams. They emphasize that bands have been a staple in their programming for nearly 20 years, serving as an essential tool for athletes of all ages to improve explosiveness and joint health.

 

Nate Harvey

The Iron Sanctuary: How Lane Johnson Uses "Bro Barn" Secrets to Defy NFL Aging Curves

Nate Harvey and Gabe Rangel provide a comprehensive tour of NFL player Lane Johnson's "Bro Barn" gym, detailing how specific elitefts equipment like the Tiger Belt Squat and Chest Supported Row is utilized to address offensive linemen's needs for mobility, work capacity, and injury prevention.

 

Vertical jump photo

3 Jump Techniques For Instant Vertical Power.

Raw strength matters, but the fastest vertical jump gains often come from cleaning up the leak: foot pressure, descent speed, arm timing, and how violently you redirect force into the floor.

Tom Sheppard Split squats

The Foundation of Power: A Beginner's Guide to Mastering Single-Leg Training

— Dave Tate

"And this is a bit of a game changer when you do it and you get annoyed at yourself for not thinking of it sooner, so even within the regular split squat there's an almost infinite number of variations that we can kind of work with there but there's going to be a couple of key tenants that we want to see staying the same. What's up, guys? Today's video is all about single-leg training, and I know you hate it, I hate it, we all hate it, but unfortunately, it's crucial."

 

Dr Drew Donaldson

The Deflation Paradox: Hard-Won Lessons on Being ‘Every Type of Jacked’

"If you want to achieve your ultimate physical goals, you must become 'every type of jacked' by mastering autoregulation and truly understanding the biological systems that drive your performance and recovery."

 

ZERCHER SQUATS

A Beginner's Guide to the Zercher Squat

 The Zercher squat is an accessible anterior-loaded variation that builds the quads and upper back without requiring the wrist and shoulder mobility often necessary for a traditional front rack position. By placing the barbell in the crook of the elbows just in front of the bicep tendon, lifters can enforce a more upright squatting pattern that strengthens the core and balances out posterior-chain dominant training.

 

ss yoke bar JM Press

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.

Bull, Steel, and Fang on Table Talk: What the American Gladiators Cameras Never Showed

Bull, Steel, and Fang on Table Talk: What the American Gladiators Cameras Never Showed

Three elite athletes sat down at the S5 Compound and broke down the American Gladiators reboot on Prime Video, including everything the cameras didn't show.

Drew one arm pulldown

Stop Choosing Sides: How to Build an Efficient Upper Body Workout That Actually Works

Drew Donaldson brings 20 years of coaching experience to the S5 and lays out a glycolytic upper body session that merges research with what's been working in gyms for decades.

Pat Davidson

The Comical Truth About "Accidental" Muscle Growth

Dr. Pat Davidson breaks down the billionaire myth of accidental muscle growth, the meathead bell curve, and how high-ground training choices change everything for hypertrophy.

gym training at retreat

6 Hard Truths About Strength and Movement That Will Change How You Train

Dr. John Rusin redefines functional training not as a specific exercise, but as a complete human movement system that ensures you maintain physical capacities for life. He argues that adopting a "movement mastery mindset"—prioritizing foundational skills like breathing and bracing—is essential to avoid orthopedic breakdown and break through performance plateaus.

 

Dr Dwyane Jackson

The Neural Gap: Six Training Lessons From Dr. Dwayne Jackson | Table Talk #409

Dr. Dwayne Jackson returns to Table Talk with six science-backed lessons on RPE calibration, auto-regulation, the gym as medicine, and what actually separates lifters who keep progressing from those who plateau and break down.

belden bar use

The Belden Bar Framework

— Dave Tate

The Belden Bar is a highly unique training tool that adds rotational torque to traditional closed-chain movements like push-ups and glute bridges, exposing muscular weaknesses and demanding intense full-body coordination.

.

Bruss

The Milk-Chugging Marine: Why Russ Hamilton Bet His Body on the Simple, Brutal Path to the WWE

— Dave Tate

Strongman champion and professional wrestler Bruss Hamilton details his transformation from a Marine Corps veteran to a title-holding athlete, discussing the "Gallon of Milk a Day" (GOMAD) diet for mass gain, the development of his "Gentleman Barbarian" persona, and the extreme sacrifices he made to secure a WWE tryout.

 

Dr Pat Davidson

The 8-Box Framework That Explains Why Some Exercises Build Muscle and Others Don't

Dr. Pat Davidson breaks down the three mechanical variables that determine whether an exercise builds muscle, inoculates against injury, or gets you hurt.

Tom OHP

The Perfect Press: A Narrative Journey of the Overhead Press

"The overhead press is probably the single best exercise for ingraining your ability to root into the floor and maintain a neutral posture compared to any other exercise."

 

dave tate sports performance

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."