Recognize Your Weaknesses and Limitations
This could be the simple rule to great strength — are you following it?
Supplements for Women: The Myths and Marketing Schemes
Let's discuss protein powders, fat burners and pre-workouts, and what specific things you should look out for.
Culture of the Team: The Hardest Part of Coaching
This problem started to creep up on us several years ago and I only see it getting worse.
Health Considerations of Powerlifting Technique
Consider the major powerlifting movements, cues, and technical adjustments that may prove helpful in both improving strength and prolonging health.
Elitefts Welcomes Newest Team Member and Columnist Zach Gallmann
As Zach travels the country building his new project, Finding Strength, he will deliver a new look into the world of Strongman.
LISTEN: Ashley Jones — Incorporating Games in a Pre-Season Program
With proper consideration of neural, mechanical, and metabolic elements, this podcast covers the methods used for developing a proper pre-season plan.
Troubleshooting the GHR: Are You Performing Them Correctly?
The glute-hamstring raise is one of the best exercises for lower body development. Don't ruin it by making any of these three common mistakes.
WATCH: Table Talk — Training Tips to Break a Bench Press Plateau
Stop beating yourself up after hitting a sticking point in your training. Figure out what the problem is and fix it. These tips will help the troubleshooting process.
The Best Exercise
The future success of your training program hinges on the inclusion of this one exercise. Don't train without it.
Coaching: Sometimes It's All in the Delivery
Learning to connect with and effectively motivate your athletes can go a long way. Choose your words wisely.
WATCH: Choosing the Right Weightlifting Singlet
Sleeves? Zippers? Material? Fit? Here are a few specific qualities to look for.
How I Benched 500 Pounds As A Teenager
The methods weren’t perfect, the food was mostly shit, but it worked. There are a few things I’d change before recommending this for someone else.
Coaching CJ Piantieri at the Special Olympics Southeast Meet
For over six years I have watched CJ overcome many obstacles. I am always impressed by his competitive tenacity and love for powerlifting.
Being God Awful Precedes Being Good
Personal training is like any other craft, it takes time and perseverance through many mistakes to master. I recently reflected on my climb as a professional.
The Biggest Key to Success in the Client-Coach Relationship
More than the training techniques or coaching methods, there is one thing that will make or break your success working with a coach.
Fitness Is A Prerequisite
A respectable level of fitness will not make you the best player on the field, but without it you have no chance.
WATCH: Table Talk — What You Need for the Perfect Home Gym
There are three questions you should be asking yourself before investing in equipment.
How To Increase Your 225-Pound Bench for Reps Test
Here are 23 tips to master the most famous NFL Combine challenge,
My 30-Year Love Affair with Lifting
If I never did another meet, wrote another article, or coached at another seminar, I would still love lifting.
When IT Hits The Fan: The Stress Response
There will be times that your personal life overwhelms you. Getting through these rocky times will never be easy, but there are ways to ensure you make it out alive.
Murph's Top 10 Exercises With The Biggest Carry Over
These training movements provide benefits helpful to every kind of lifter, athlete, or strength enthusiast. No matter what you’re trying to accomplish, they can help.
Finding Strength: CORE Fitness
In Mooresville, Indiana, owner Aaron Molin has amassed an amazing training facility to help grow the sport of strongman — “The Barn” is where all the action takes place.
Six Bodyweight Exercises That Should Be In Every Training Program
Each of these exercises has a variation that will fit your experience level and needs as a lifter, no matter how advanced you are.
WATCH: Getting Into A Deadlift Position
It might take you 10 reps to find your groove, or it might take you 100. Keep working until that position becomes automatic.
WATCH: Table Talk — Is Geared Powerlifting Dead?
People always want to talk about when geared powerlifting ruled the sport. Now they think raw is in charge. What’s the answer?
Here and Now: Mindfulness and Being in the Moment
Your time in the gym is precious. If you don’t summon the iron will to shut off the outside world, get out.
5 Strategic Questions Everyone Should Ask About Their Training
When moments of failure start to cloud your perspective of training, you need to return to your core philosophy. Asking these questions will force you to refocus on the big picture.
From The Quote Guy
In an endless flow of meaningless words, latch onto the lessons that challenge your mind and dictate your actions.
WATCH: Deadlift Tips on Tightness, Speed Pulls, and Hook Grip
Looking for guidance from one of the best of all time? Steve Goggins breaks down the deadlift in video form.
Take Your Training Day to the Trampoline Park
If you’re looking to explore a gym-training, flying-through-space alternative, make sure you’re aware of these less-advertised details we learned on our trips to Sky Zone and Get Air.
Everything Starts at Zero
For most things in life, you start with nothing. Get comfortable with this.
WATCH: Table Talk — Prehabilitation and Rehabilitation Techniques
How you choose to prime your body for a training session is up to you, but not all warm up and recovery methods are equal.
Training Solo vs With A Team (or Partner)
There are benefits to having a crew and there are benefits to relying on only yourself. Which are most important for you?
Is Stress Killing Your Progress?
Life stress is unavoidable. It can overwhelm you and have a negative impact on your training…if you let it.
The Dark Side of Coaching: How Secure Is Your Job?
In this profession, you are going to experience career limbo. Sometimes you don’t know where you’re going next — or if you’ll even have a job next season.
Training Heavy with Chronic Pain
No amount of strategic planning can account for your body’s unexpected responses to training and life. Be prepared to stop bowing down to your program and start listening to your body.
Observations From My White Trash Vacation
Every year my wife and I take our kids on a vacation, and that usually means a cruise. If you’ve been on a cruise, you know what I mean when I say “white trash.”
Life Lessons of the Iron
Train with me for one day and I will know more about you than I could learn from a year outside the gym. If you spend time with the weights, you’ll learn more about yourself, too.
Lessons Learned From Bilateral Bone Breaks
This case study, derived from my extensive rehabilitation, details every aspect of the steps I took to overcome an unexpected and immediate halt to my training.
Big Is a Byproduct of Strong
A proper weight room strategy provides adequate attention to the development of strength and size — two qualities necessary for your team’s improvement.
Dominance in Movement: Finding the Dimmer Switch
How many of you feel “broken” or immobile when you’re not under a bar? How are you accommodating?
Training Women: Deadlift Considerations
Before making the assumption that all women have wide hips and should therefore squat wide and deadlift sumo, consider these other factors that will inform good technique.
Foundational Guiding Principles
Nobody who is serious about forward progress enters the gym without a plan, without a set of guiding principles. I’ll argue the same is true in life.
WATCH: Table Talk — Jim Wendler Travel Stories and 7 Quick Questions
The seminar era produced stories about cabs and airports and churches and bomb shelters. This is one of my favorites.
Fixing Your 'Fail at the Chest' Bench Press
For correcting weaknesses in a given portion of a lift, you need to use what I call Mechanically Similar Movements.
The Sticking Point: How To Find Your Weakness and Fix It
A logical process of elimination begins by considering all possible causes of your sticking point. I don’t have the answer but I can help you find it.
Conditioning for the Gridiron Warrior
What good is that 500-pound squat if you’re taking a knee in the fourth quarter desperately gasping for air?
Time Under Tension: It's Not Just For Bodybuilders
As a powerlifter, you have one goal: move the weight. The faster, the better. Or maybe not.
Meditation for the Coach: Starting the Recovery Process
If you spend all your time in high gear, you need to find a way to downshift. This technique is what works for me.
Finding Strength: The Origin Story
This is my journey: to help people find strength, like I found strength.
Four Sure-fire Ways to Harvest Calf Meat
Building calf size takes time—a lot of it. This is the system I’ve used countless times to bring up my calves and the calves of my clients.
Third Time’s a Charm or Three Strikes You're Out?
After two heart surgeries, I was starting to recover. I was making progress. That’s when my cardiologist called with more bad news.
Group Training: Use Your Constraints for Program Construction
The first thing that you need to do is decide on what your limiting factors are: time, equipment, physical abilities, skill, and audience.
RMU Strength and Speed Conference Recap
Instead of telling you about the event, I’ll do you a favor: here is an eight-hour video of every presentation.
On-Court Results with APRE Cluster Method
We’ve utilized Mann’s method with great results as written and with a few tweaks — breaking up the fourth set is just what our basketball players needed to bust through their strength plateau.
Training Women: There Is A Difference
Men and women have different needs. Pay attention to these eleven factors when programming for your female clients.
Are You Getting Enough O2? — Oxygen's Role in Muscle Growth
On the quest for hypertrophy? Take note of these facts before shunning cardio.
