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
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.
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.
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.
Stop Optimizing Your Way Out of Getting Stronger
The planning conversation never gets you stronger. Only the bar does.
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.
Whose Harvest Are You Living Off Of?
Most people plant seeds and stand there waiting for them to grow. The harder question is whose seeds you're already standing on.
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.
The Powerlifter’s Paradox: Strength, Mortality, and the Mandate of the Platform
"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."
What I'd Tell the 300-Pound Version of Me (And Why He Wouldn't Listen)
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
I Read a Football Book and It Changed the Way I Train People
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 human potential is limited by the human mind, and it takes a very, very, very strong, rare, special person to break the barrier."
The Industry Got Loud. The Sport Never Did.
The strength industry I built my life in is unrecognizable, but the sport itself never moved.
You're Not the Only One in That Room Who Feels Like They Don't Belong
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 Doesn't Require a Destination
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?
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.
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
"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: 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.
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
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.
Beyond the "Single Injury": A Comprehensive Guide to the Five-Bucket System of Chronic Pain
"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%."
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 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.
























