Most lifters hire a coach and then immediately get in their own way. Here's the framework that will make every session count.

Paul Carter and I sat down for Table Talk #303 and spent two-plus hours cutting through the noise around hypertrophy training. Here's what you need to hear.

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.

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.

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. 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.

Ashley Jones explores the evolution of his rugby strength and conditioning system from 2005 to 2025, detailing advancements in Conjugate training, CARE programming, and athlete-centered performance development.

The all-in mentality of elite powerlifting demands a high price, often including personal health, marriages, and the complete absorption of one’s identity. Looking back after decades in the sport, veterans must reconcile the brutal physical toll of multiple surgeries and prosthetics against the initial drive to prove others wrong for the sake of a plastic or sculpture trophy.

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.

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.

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

The Rackable Cambered Spider Bar combines the shoulder-friendly design of the SS Yoke Bar with the brutal instability of the cambered bar into one piece of equipment that will expose every weakness you have.

Most lifters focus on what to add. The ones who get strong figure out what to cut.

"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."

"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 walkout costs you reps you should be making, and a monolift fixes it before the bar even leaves the hooks.

elitefts Rebuild Series: Tom Sheppard sits down with powerlifter, gym owner, and brain tumor survivor Holly Torrez on autoregulation, sobriety, and what real resilience looks like.

"I wanted to know what it felt like to break a PR one more time."

By adjusting the upper arm angle and grip during a dumbbell row, you can shift the muscular focus from a lat-dominant pull with the elbow tucked near the hip to a flared, pronated position that emphasizes the rhomboids, rear delts, and traps for upper back thickness.

Quadrant Management System by Ashley Jones, a structured yet flexible strength training approach that empowers athletes through individualized programming, progressive autonomy, and performance-focused development.

Discover how to optimize your training success by aligning your program with your realistic time availability and recovery needs, featuring detailed workout schedules ranging from two to six days per week.

 "You learn very quickly that any idiot can get somebody tired, but it takes a skilled, professional coach to get somebody better."

"While a calorie deficit is typically necessary to lose fat, rapid body recomposition—gaining muscle while losing fat—is primarily achievable for beginners, individuals with obesity, those using steroids, or athletes recovering from an injury."

"Hopefully by the end of this video, not only are you going to be better at performing your dips and chin-ups, but you're going to be doing them in a way that allows you to get better carryover to the other things that you're doing outside of these lifts."