Training Is Only Half the Battle
As I sit here today and reflect on my journey through the crap we call the fitness industry, I can’t help but be thankful for where I am in my life as well as for the great things and people the barbell has brought me.
Zach Even-Esh: Tales from The Underground
I am busy as all heck, as always, and I am in the process of getting away from working so much and doing all of this full time.
Performance Training Center Five Questions for Mark McLaughlin
Mark McLaughlin has spent several years reading and learning Eastern Bloc training methods as well as other alternative types of training, leaving no stone unturned in the preparation of his athletes.
Old School Weightlifting for In-Season Hockey Training
The new wave in ice hockey strength and conditioning seems to be dominated by “functional” training, which often becomes dysfunctional. Let’s look at our goals for in-season lifting and the factors to consider in professional hockey. I’ll also present my program template for in-season hockey training, which has been used successfully in the American Hockey League (AHL).
Strength Sports, Gear, and Where It’s Going
I consider a strength sport to be any sport where strength plays a major role. This includes sports like powerlifting, weightlifting, highland games, Strongman, shot put, discus, hammer, javelin, and stone lifting. All of the athletes in these sports are very strong, but how much of a role does strength actually play in becoming the best?
30 Days Without Weights for Ultimate Strength, Conditioning, and Fat Loss
Weight training over long periods of time can burn out athletes from all different sports. Whether he or she is a world class MMA fighter or your average Joe who wants to stay in shape, athletes can get bored with not only their current regimen but with lifting weights period. Most will just take some time off from the gym
Weight Room Efficiency
We all know that you can spend all day lifting, conditioning, and running agility drills. There just isn’t enough time in the day whether we’re talking about a student athlete who has NCAA regulations on time spent strength training and conditioning or maybe even a professional athlete who has a hectic travel schedule mixed in with a personal life and
Filling in the Holes, Part I
Trends, fads, gimmicks…hell, they’re all part of the strength and conditioning industry.
Intense Running Workouts
When I competed in track in 1988–1992, we did what we were told. I don’t know anything about “block training” or “CNS.” So I can’t give any educated advice on where these workouts fit into a training cycle. All I know is that they killed me, and I can’t imagine one or more of these workouts not being beneficial to
Plyometrics—Physiological Mechanisms and Their Validity as a Speed Devel...
The aim of plyometrics is to increase the explosiveness of the muscle allowing an athlete to run faster, jump further, and generate force at a greater rate.
Seven Principles for Better Program Design
It’s important to recognize that effective programming can be accomplished within realistic timeframes by almost anyone willing to put in the work.
The Tendo and Its Use for Autoregulation
The Fitrodyne Powerlyzer by Tendo, or Tendo unit as it’s more commonly known, is a piece of equipment used to measure the speed of the bar. This allows the coach to know several things such as whether the athlete is training what he or she is supposed to be training and whether the bar speed has started to drop. Here,
The Thinker: An Update From Behind the Iron Curtain
The Thinker, over the past few years, has in all likelihood answered more Q&A inquiries on this site than anyone else on our staff.
The Beginner's Guide to Strength Training: Modified Max Effort Trai...
Maximal effort training is a superior method of increasing strength in a core barbell lift. Make sure you aren’t misusing it.
How Harry Selkow Trains the Arizona Sundogs
Good talking to you yesterday. I even tried to keep you on the phone longer since I knew you had to hit the “head” to relieve yourself. I have to tell you, I always walk away refreshed after talking to you. It makes me realize that there ARE other nuts out here with a different view and that’s good stuff.
Texas BBQ, Part 2: More Shop Talk with Mark Rippetoe
I haven’t made it back to Texas yet, but I have come up with some more questions for Mark Rippetoe after reading some new material and reviewing some of his previous writings.
The Overlooked Trait of a Champion
When talking about champions, everyone has an opinion just like the BCS College Football Standings. Are champions built or are they born? Are they a product of their environment or are they loners hungry for a piece of the pie?
Importance of Fast Twitch Capacity in Football Training
With the beginning of football season, the long anticipated excitement for the early powerhouse match ups has finally arrived.
Creating a Game Plan with the Right Mental Attitude
I believe that goal setting and mental attitude or sport psychology are often the most overlooked elements of any athlete’s preparation. Without a proper plan, what can really be accomplished? Without the right attitude, what can get done? The answer to both questions is not much.
An Interview with Dr. Anatoly Bondarchuk
Dr. Anatoly Bondarchuk is renowned as an athlete (1972 Olympic champion and European champion in the hammer throw as well as a former world record holder), and his coaching credentials are virtually unprecedented in the world of athletics.
Top Ten and a Half Training Tips for Martial Arts
Applying the principles of scientific training, I have come up with ten (and a half) training guidelines for the combat athlete who must be present to ensure competitive success.
Static Postural Assessments
After college, I strength trained at a chiropractic rehabilitation facility for a few years. While there, I picked up a few helpful tips that I still use today when initiating static postural assessments for my athletes.
Training Versus Talent
Times have changed a great deal since I last put on pads and a helmet back in 1990. I guess I’m becoming an old man because now I look at these lazy kids and think, “back in my day…”
A Day in the Life of a Strongman Contestant: The 10 Things I Learned
Rites of passage that involve impressive feats of strength have been around for thousands of years. They exist in many different forms and many of them originated in Northern Europe and Scandinavia. Tests like the Husafell stone carry, which originated in Iceland, have now become objects of desire for many would-be Strongmen throughout the world.
The Thinker Discusses Olympic Lifts
Question 1: I’d like to thank you for all of the helpful tips, but this is where we’re going to crash. As an athlete, I’ve been performing the Olympic lifts since middle school. I use them with the athletes I train from day one and haven’t had any problems.
Westside for Baseball?
I had finally done it! After countless hours of talking about it and planning just how I was going to do it, I opened my own performance enhancement training business. Well sort of…
Top 10 Speed Training Myths Revealed
Every day someone asks me a question about training speed. So here are those questions heard most frequently as well as the answers to them.
Cruel and Unusual Exercises
Did you ever wonder how song writers or comedians come up with their lyrics or material? As a person who loves music as well as a good comedy, I always wondered that very question. When I started my career coaching and training athletes, I researched other coaches to come up with new ideas for old exercises. Then it clicked. The
Strength Czar: An EliteFTS Roundtable Discussion
With James Smith, Mark McLaughlin, Tom Deebel, Jim Wendler, Travis Mash, Julia Ladewski, C. J. Murphy, Matt Brand, Nick Zostautas, Kevin Deweese, and Tim Kontos
Get Rid of Stubborn Hamstring Injuries!
Hamstring injuries are common but mostly avoidable. Like many other injuries, they aren’t 100 percent preventable, but there are many ways to help reduce the occurrence in your athletes. If hamstring pulls do take place, I’ve added some treatment guidelines at the end. However, this doesn’t mean that your athletes shouldn’t seek medical assistance. A physician should always be consulted
Bench and Nothing but the Bench
Russians believe that if you wish to excel at a lift, you can’t beat frequent practice of this lift with a moderately heavy weight and never to failure. Vladimir Volkov, the European bench press champion and master’s world champion in the 220 lb weight class, has proved that point with a 639 lb bench in an IPF competition.
Olympic Lifting for Athletes: Power Clean!
It’s extremely important that athletes perform Olympic lifts correctly. This means teaching lifts through a progression designed to implement proper form. Doing the lifts incorrectly, which is the case with the vast majority of young athletes, reduces the effect of the lift and creates a much higher likelihood of injury.
The Lineman’s Evolution
“The last part of progress is always easier than the next. Determination must be continually manufactured and tested.”
Sandbag Arsenal
One of the biggest problems that we face in training today’s athletes is that they’re out of shape! Whether professional or amateur, many of these athletes come to their teams severely unconditioned. With physical education programs being cut from school curriculums and child obesity rising every year, we need to take a long hard look at the values that physical
Lift Strong Excerpt: NFL Linebacker In-Season Strength Program
*The number of workouts that this athlete performed each week with me was dependent on the team’s practice schedule, meeting schedule, travel time & injuries that occurred during the season.
Football Speed: Seven Tips to a Faster 40
This is the time of the season when I’m sure you’re asked the same question over and over—how do I run a faster 40? Here are the top seven tips to increase your 40-yard time dramatically without having to run a step.
Acceleration, Part II
Speed is a product of stride length (the distance your hips travel in a stride) and stride frequency (the number of steps you take in a given time period). However, you won’t reach top speed by taking increasingly larger steps to increase stride length or taking short, quick steps to increase stride frequency.
Acceleration
In any sport, athletes need to be able to accelerate as quickly as possible to get to the ball or opponent first. As a coach, you must put your athletes in the best possible position to succeed.
Benefits of a Strength and Conditioning Program
If you’re reading this, you probably have a good understanding of why strength and conditioning is important. However, I’d like to reach the coaches, athletic directors, and lazy athletes who will never reach their potential because of a lack of education.
The Making of a Road Grater with Racing Speed: The Linemen’s Evolution
“Real deference doesn’t come based on size and intimidation but on monster work capacities and real street toughness.”
Why I Hate Joe DeFranco
Joe DeFranco is full of shit. There I said it. If you have a problem with that statement, then you are wrong.
Life Isn’t Just about Wins and Losses
Sports, physical training, and coaching have been my life for the last three decades. From the time I started playing soccer when I was five years old until today, many of the life lessons I’ve learned have either been found on the field, in the dojo, or in the gym.
Children Should Minor in all Sports and Major in None
The title says it all, which is a quote from Tom Myslinski, currently the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania. Every youth sports related newspaper or magazine article you read these days has children as young as 7-8 years-old playing organized year-round sports.
The UNO Warm Up
I’ve been working with athletes for quite some time. Even though I haven’t overhauled the way I do things, I definitely make changes on a continual basis. One thing that has seen many changes is the way I warm up athletes. I’ve always used some type of movement-based stretching, and I’ve tried to stay away from any pre-workout static stretching.
Inside the Ring: Inside the Mind of a Fighter
I guess I can begin by saying how wrong I was and how I took our Q&A staff for granted. I know EliteFTS has the best training team on the planet. Yes, this is a very cocky statement, but do me one favor here.
The Baller and the Barbell
When these young basketball players get older, they start searching for something to give them an advantage over their opponent. Most, if not all, think they must practice their skills more (shooting, dribbling, passing, rebounding) in order to gain an additional edge. However, once these skills have been developed to a high level through repetition and technique mechanics, what’s next?
No Idea Is Original
No idea’s original, there’s nothing new under the sun. It’s never what you do, but how it’s done.
—the wise words of Nas
General Preparatory Classifications for Division 1 Football
Although there are several different reasons for this, lack of time in the day is a large one (especially for the collegiate strength coach). Here at Northwestern State University (NSU), we developed a method for classifying our athletes to make their programs/training more individualized.
Insight into Baseball Training
I get bombarded with emails on a daily bases ranging from business issues, training questions, product opportunities, spam and a number of other issues. While I personally answer most of my emails there are times when I forward them onto people I feel can do a better job answering the questions than I could.
What I See in My Weight Room
It’s funny some of the things you see being a strength coach. I probably see most athletes more than their sport coaches do on average. So during a normal day in a somewhat normal week the things I see always amuse me in some form.
Strongman for Athletic Strength and Conditioning
The study of the science of strength and conditioning for sports is a huge endeavor. There are many differing opinions and many things that work. The key is to find out what works for your athlete based on his or her individual differences, strengths, weaknesses, and of course, sport.
Letter of Resignation
This letter is to inform you that I am resigning from my position as head strength and conditioning coach. I enjoyed my time while at the university and feel grateful for the knowledge and friendships that I have gained. I feel I owe it to you to offer an explanation as to why I have made this decision.
Training with the Log
We will look at three different exercises that you can do with the log: floor presses, training complexes, and font squats.
Do You Need Your Brakes Fixed?
Many articles out there deal with enhancing acceleration but pay little attention to deceleration or force absorption. However, in most cases, you must be able to absorb force before you can create force.
