Since working at elitefts™ since May, I have had some time to reflect on my career as a strength & conditioning coach. I am lucky to have been influenced by so many great coaches. I think back about the outstanding mentors I have had and it humbles me. I have made a ton of mistakes, but hopefully not the same ones more than once. I have been a loyal workhorse (even at the expense of my family). I still have a lot to learn but I am blessed that Dave Tate gives me the opportunity to provide insight on the profession. My vision to help strength coaches hopefully falls in line with Live, Learn, and Pass On.

Maybe it has been the quality time I have been able to spend with my family. Or that my actual job description matches the skills and the tasks that I always wanted to do. Probably a combination of both, but I really do not have any desire to re-enter the profession of strength & conditioning.

But, I often think about what I would do differently (and the same) if I ever were a strength & conditioning coach.

Equipment

I definitely have a biased view nowadays, but one of the reasons that I started to think about this topic was because of my exposure from the inside of a company that does business with integrity. And there IS a f*ckin difference between elitefts™ and other companies.

Racks

I would still go with a half-rack because of the footprint and the openness when incorporating Olympic lifts. A few things that I like about the Collegiate 3×3 Half Rack:

  1. The monkey bar attachments for pull-ups. I was skeptical until I started using it. There is plenty of space between the neutral grip bars, the wide grip is slanted, and it would be easy to standardize neutral grip variability with large groups.
  2. There are no pins for the j-hooks or utility benches
  3. Band pegs designed by people who actually use bands

The F-Up

At my last university, our old weight room was about 1200 square feet for 23 sports. In an effort to train more athletes in a safer, more productive manner, we scrapped up a few thousand dollars and got some temporary “racks” to set up just outside the weight room in the rec gym. This ended up being a band-aid on a much bigger issue. There were several things wrong with my decision.

  1. Putting “overflow” racks in the rec gym was unsafe. We had had basketballs flying at athletes and so much NARP traffic it was ridiculous.
  2. I let the University off the hook. Instead of the administration taking responsibility for an adequate training environment for their student-athletes; they hands-offed it. There was no need to address the inadequate facility space, or lack of qualified coaches supervising, We just added more stations so we could train more athletes during peak hours, I still have a video of us training seven sports in two hours.
  3. The “racks” we bought sucked. I was trying to be the “let’s buy something that we can do a lot of stuff with” guy. I felt like a discount shopper. That plan doesn’t work for strength equipment. So we buy these yokes from a local company. I set up a meeting with them so they can show me the yokes and I can see how I can use them as many ways as I can like I was filming an infomercial. Of course we get there and they don’t have anything ready for us to look at and we were definitely wasting their time.

So the plan was to use these yokes and add J-hooks, safety catches, and a pull-up bar. This way we could slide the racks along the indoor track if we needed to. We could use the yokes as sleds, we could put the cross bar all the way down when doing pull-ups, they would have been perfect. But, it just didn’t work out that way. These things couldn’t be manipulated very well and they slid every time you racked a bar. overall, we didn’t pay much but they weren’t worth very much either. After posting some info about how we ship most of our products, my good friend posted this recently:

The University is no longer using those racks. Before I left we deemed them “unfit for a collegiate athletic environment.” I think they may have just gave them away or threw them away.

Barbells

All barbells are not the same. My quest was to try and find some multi-use bars that had a center knurling to squat with, had good whip to pull with and good bearings to Olympic lift with. Thought I found some. They didn’t last and I feel terrible because if we bent as many as we did in the first year we had them, how were they going to last for several more years? Barbells are the most important piece of equipment in your facility and I should have had enough common sense and care for my athletes to spend the extra money to buy Texas Squat Bars for Squat and Bench Press and Elieko or York Training Bars for Olympic lifts.

The worst part was the condescending nature of the customer service when I tried to get our bent bars replaced. Not like we were dumping bars or had a ton of weight on them. One of the issues was they couldn’t replace the bars because they were all recalled. Sweet. I was wondering why all of our black bars turned silver.

Hex Bars or Trap Bars are the best bars for your money. We would incorporate Hex Bar Deadlifts because they were hybrid between a knee dominant and hip hinge movement and they are easy to teach.

I would definitely try to get at least a few:

  1. Fat Bars – These are great for deload weeks, strongman competitions, and alleviating elbow pain
  2. SS Yoke Bars – these are outstanding for injured athletes, baseball players, quarterbacks and anyone else we want to adpat their UB range of motion.
  3. Multi-Grip Swiss Log Bars – With so many overhead athletes, pressing in a neutral grip can help reduce unwanted stress on the shoulders.

Glute Ham Raise

I bought five Collegiate Glute Ham Raise Benches last year. I know I am biased and I am a GHR snob, but these are the best out of any on the market. I couldn’t figure out why at first but then I realized the angle of the pad make a huge difference. The footplate being long enough to push your toes against. The split pad option (my male athletes call them ball savers). The guide rod option. All good. These are very versatile and we would do ab work, and reverse hypers on them.

I firmly believe that the GHR is the number four piece of equipment every college and high school weight room should have behind barbells, plates (or bumpers), and a rack. I have the experience and the research to support that implementing GHRs in your programming will get your athletes fast while reducing the chance of injury. It is in my top five movements for all athletes.

Bands and Chains

I am a huge proponent of Bands and Chains and I think they are great for beginners. I would have probably implemented them even more than I did if I could do it again. I am sounding like a commercial, but I would definitely add the EZ Strap Loaders. Do you know how much time me and my interns would spend on counting links and adjusting between exercises? All athletes had the same set-up height and same amount of chains. I should have been more adamant about adjusting the chain height and number of chains used individually but it would have been a logistical nightmare. Those EZ loaders are the Ballz when incorporating accommodating resistance in a team setting.