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Scars Aren't Wisdom

The same lifter who dismissed beat-up guys in his twenties is now selling his own injuries as credentials in his fifties, and both takes are wrong.

Conjugate Off-Season Training for Rugby

Conjugate Off-Season Training for Rugby

The rugby off-season is the time to build the strength, power, size, conditioning, and durability needed to perform at the start of the season. Ashley Jones explains how the Conjugate Method can be adapted for rugby players using mechanical, neural, metabolic, and CARE-based training to build athletes who are stronger in contact, faster under fatigue, and more resilient week after week.

Dave 1990 squat

Strength Is What You Build. Strong Is What You Become

Strength is something you can measure. A meet total. A one-rep max. A rep PR at a bodyweight you didn't have last year. It sits on paper. It shows up on a record board. You can prove it.

Matt Mills

The Best Educated Guess

The honest truth about training that most coaches won't admit: it all comes down to the best educated guess for the specific person, on the specific day.

tom dl

Stop Optimizing Your Way Out of Getting Stronger

— Dave Tate

The planning conversation never gets you stronger. Only the bar does.

I Thought I Had Nothing Left to Say by Chad Faria

I Thought I Had Nothing Left to Say by Chad Faria

After years away from writing, Chad Faria realized he never ran out of things to say—he just stopped believing they were worth saying. From family challenges and coaching growth to an 1,800-pound total and lessons learned under pressure, he reflects on consistency, self-doubt, mentorship, and why sharing experience is simply another form of coaching.

prowler pulls

Whose Harvest Are You Living Off Of?

— Dave Tate

Most people plant seeds and stand there waiting for them to grow. The harder question is whose seeds you're already standing on.

TYAO

Your Leverages Are Not a Liability

The lifter who spends their career trying to look like someone else's highlight reel will never find out what they were actually built to do.

clint daren

The Powerlifter’s Paradox: Strength, Mortality, and the Mandate of the Platform

— Dave Tate

 "I can promise you one thing: my body has been dying for 2 years, but I'm living more than any other person in this room."

dave and kid

What I'd Tell the 300-Pound Version of Me (And Why He Wouldn't Listen)

— Dave Tate

Dave revisits the article he wrote over 20 years ago and gives his honest assessment of what he got right, what he got wrong, and what he would have actually done differently if he could go back

s3

I Read a Football Book and It Changed the Way I Train People

— Dave Tate

In 1995, a book picked up at a Franklin Covey store in downtown Columbus reshaped how Dave Tate thinks about coaching, autoregulation, and building elitefts.

The Strength Foundation: A Primer on Maximal Strength and Human Potential

The Strength Foundation: A Primer on Maximal Strength and Human Potential

"The human potential is limited by the human mind, and it takes a very, very, very strong, rare, special person to break the barrier."

 

deadlift

The Industry Got Loud. The Sport Never Did.

— Dave Tate

The strength industry I built my life in is unrecognizable, but the sport itself never moved.

Dave and Eric

You're Not the Only One in That Room Who Feels Like They Don't Belong

— Dave Tate

Most people misunderstand imposter syndrome. Here's the real distinction, and why the only ones certain they belong are the ones you should worry about.

Driven

Driven Doesn't Require a Destination

— Dave Tate

What if being driven has nothing to do with knowing where you're going, and everything to do with knowing what you refuse to become?

trail

How High Would You Go? A Better Way to Figure Out What You Actually Value

— Dave Tate

A simple thought experiment with a plank reveals more about your values, your training, and your life than any goal-setting framework ever will.

aj roberts

Analysis of the Westside Barbell Training Method and Culture

"It was a Brotherhood yet not a friendship like you were there to get each other better one thing one thing only and if if the person didn't want to be a part of that get the fuck out".

 

The Poly-Athlete Blueprint: 5 Surprising Lessons from Jujimufu and Dave Tate

The Poly-Athlete Blueprint: 5 Surprising Lessons from Jujimufu and Dave Tate

"I'm a poly athlete, I do everything, not all year round. Usually, I layer things seasonally, in the right time period, and I periodize them correctly in blocks."

 

The Void

The Void: Mastering the Mind Under the Bar

— Dave Tate

"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.

 

Kyle

The Strategic Rise of Legends Gym

"I didn't think I would ever get there, but I committed to it, and if you really go all in and you just commit to something and you really believe in yourself, you can absolutely do it."

 

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.

dr chris

Beyond the "Single Injury": A Comprehensive Guide to the Five-Bucket System of Chronic Pain

— Dave Tate

 "Adhesion is the most common condition in the muscular skeletal system; an EMG or NCV will catch a nerve that's damaged when it's like 90 to 100% bad, but there's nothing catching it between 0% up to that 80 or 90%."

 

Matt Mills

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.

Paul Carter

The Ultimate Guide to Explosive Training: 5 Hardcore Myths Debunked!

Paul Carter argues that because every set accumulates fatigue, which can hinder performance, lifters must mitigate this fatigue by utilizing more extended rest periods to ensure high-threshold motor units are recruited in subsequent sets. He challenges the traditional belief that fatigue is a stimulus for growth, suggesting that straight sets with adequate rest are mechanically superior to intensity techniques, such as drop sets, for maximizing effective reps.