As more people spend more time on their phones in the gym, reclaim your training time and take control of your workout environment.

Use AI to supplement your strength, power, and muscle quest. Eric Maroscher shares how to use this tool.

Use your fleeting meet prep time wisely, as Azrael, the killer of training time, will be coming for you…

He seemed like he was from another planet, a planet where the gravity was turned all the way up, and all its inhabitants were strong, powerful, and muscular.

Is bodybuilding a lifestyle, a sport, or two mutually exclusive things? Learn how the greats used hypertrophy along their journey.

There is more to building the deadlift than variety, and there is also a point of diminishing returns to consider.

Absolutely nothing. That may not be the best question to ask if we’re looking to improve this wonderful sport.

I can’t see Arnold doing a set of squats with Ed Corney, as Ed scrolls through his social media or texts Franco Columbo. Can you?

What does Ed Coan, Robby Robinson, Mark Felix, and Dexter Jackson all have in common? You’ll find the answer in a Yoruba proverb.

You are only a new lifter once, and that is a gift to take seriously. Don’t squander it by dabbling in the post-elite aspects and methods of training.

He taught the first Mr. Olympia, Larry Scott; seven-time Mr. Olympia, Arnold Schwarzenegger; three-time Mr. Olympia, Frank Zane; Lou Ferrigno; Rick Wayne; Don Howorth; and Freddy Ortiz. Learn more…

What you are about to read is a truly loving portrait of a powerlifting legend, written by one of the few who knew him best (and a great powerlifting coach in his own right).

Aside from Santa’s elves personalizing your hand-made gifts. Oh, and Santa traveling from the North Pole to your residence to deliver your gifts with Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.

As athletes and lifters, many of us have been fortunate to have had a great coach in our lives—we are collectively thankful. Without someone like this in your life, would you tweak squat form to go from a 500-pound squat to a temporary 365-pound squat? What if that 365-pound squat evolved into a 700-pound squat?

The only way I know how to explain this concept is by retelling the familiar story of Priorities and a Jar. What are you filling your empty jar with?

Is it mathematically and scientifically probable that within the last twenty years, humans’ DNA changed so drastically that their total, collectively, is many hundreds of pounds greater?

This was the good advice my mentor and powerlifting legend Ernie Frantz gave to me some 20 years ago when I had come back from a quad tear.

There are countless reasons for the disorganization in the warm-up room, and hopefully, some of this information will help those new or newer to the competition scene to survive in the warm-up area and benefit from it.

What is intriguing today with the backdrop of COVID-19 is observing the few remaining relics of an era gone by. The hardcore lifter-built gyms. These modern-day dinosaurs that refused to become extinct…

We are on a budget and in a hurry and we don’t have the space, we just need stuff to press, hoist, lift with and not break the bank.

A crisis does not make the person, a crisis exposes the type of person one actually is. What type of person are you in these unsettling and uncertain times?

Every gym has a few clowns, and they are always entertaining. Think about your gym: can you picture them in your mind’s eye? Yup, that is them.

What can a retired Navy SEAL teach us about managing stress and fear in our lives? Robert O’Neill says carrying stress is like carrying around an unnecessary bag of bricks.

Hardly. Those who think the world of weights has a definitive destination are unfortunately on the wrong path.

One might act a certain way at a concert Saturday night but act entirely different at church Sunday morning… and of course, one might lift a certain way for the sake of Instafamousness and socialookatmedia versus how they should lift and train for the pending meet or competition.

If you have gym friends with different focuses, no worries! The gifts on this shopping list are sure to please both of your powerlifting pals, regardless of their goals, focus, or social media presence.

I read about the loss of bodybuilding legend, powerlifter, and two-time Mr. Olympia, Dr. Franco Columbu. I hardly need to go into the impact he had on bodybuilding. His life was a life well-lived, one with a deeply personal and meaningful purpose.

The legendary Frantz Gym was the place where the top powerlifters trained, where the collective whole was greater than the sum of its parts. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” can often be tossed around, but that was a large part of the magic that was Frantz Gym.

It’s one thing to read about elitefts equipment, but it’s something altogether different to see it being used in the hands of competitive powerlifters at Monster Garage Gym.

To this day, that month-long experience of a geology class at Yellowstone helped shape how I look at duration, time, patience, and longevity. That experience helped me apply the view of time to virtually all facets of life, including strength training.

If you’re a Marvel fan, you might know that Ant-Man and The Wasp produced an evil offspring, Red Queen. Likewise, elitefts’ heroic Rackable Cambered and SS Yoke bars came together and created the nefarious Spider Bar. What makes this bar so villainous? Read on if you dare…

This life we live is comprised of sheep, and it is also comprised of shepherds. Followers or leaders. The flock goes where it is directed. Shepherds set the course for the journey. Are you part of the flock? Or are you a shepherd? Are you a serious powerlifter or not?

Not unlike with your spouse or significant other, the relationship between training partners depends on many things, but at the central core to this relationship is the quality of one’s honesty with their training partner.

Nobody wants to watch their favorite athletes practice what they do best. But if you want to be the Michael Jordan or Reggie Jackson of powerlifting, you’ve got to work on the eccentric.

You see lost lifters jumping from one diet to another or from one program to the next, thinking they bought a long-lost ingredient to the stew that is strength and power. But the actual missing ingredients are right in front of them: consistency and an understanding of the basics.

There is a tool for every job, and as there are many jobs for the powerlifter, there are many tools at their disposal. The key is to apply the proper tool to the proper job at the proper time. Let’s focus on the tool known as the wrist strap.

Whenever one of the greats of bodybuilding or powerlifting passes away, it’s a good time to pause and reflect on the present and learn from the past. With the recent death of Ed Corney in mind, let’s take time to do just that.

As you add ornament after ornament, string of lights after string of lights, and trinket after trinket, don’t lose sight of the tree underneath.

Monolift commandments for those new to the monolift, monolift commandments to heed today as a way to avoid tragedy in the future, and monolift commandments to help get the most out of this amazing piece of powerlifting equipment.

They’re here because they travel during the week and are training out of the hotel’s fitness center, or they work days and can train only late at night, which requires him to go to one of those 24/7 fitness places where there is “no yelling, no chalk or pretty much no anything you would require for serious training.”

There are two worlds in which we all reside. There is the “gym world”, a world where everything pertains to the gym and your training, where your goals and aspirations for the platform are created, pursued, and lived out. The other world is the outside world, comprised of everything else.

There is a huge list of things the sport of powerlifting has produced over these seven decades. Within this sizable list, the sport has consistently produced two specific items over and again, each and every single decade.

What do I ask a man who built a physique back in 1965 and if he walked into any contemporary gym today in his Mr. America condition, every lifter in the place would stop to behold a build somehow created with nothing fancier than barbells, dumbbells, steak, eggs, and elbow grease?

For you, as a serious powerlifter who has aspirations of achieving greatness in this amazing sport, the advent of a single technological implement just might be the one thing that delivers on all of the aforementioned promises.

The game of powerlifting is and always will be a choice of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. These lessons challenge us in many ways, not least of which is the challenge to our ego. Will you follow them?

Your future in this sport deserves to be worked on not only at the gym and with your physical strength and power, but outside of the weight room as well, with your mental focus and contemplation.

There is often hope that the future is the timeframe where many problems and questions of humanity will be solved. But sometimes the questions have already been asked, pondered, explored, researched and answered.

The weights weigh what they weigh and I can either lift them or I can’t. They never try to convince me of anything. They are what they are and that is what they will always be.

The period of time that a lifter is a the top of their game is a delicate balancing act between utilizing the tools that got them to an elite status and backing down from those tools at appropriate times so as not to tip the scales from continued success to prematurely landing at the expiration date.

Although we have had a number of 1000-pound squatters and 800-pound benchers at the Monster Garage Gym, I can tell you—and so would the majority of the powerlifters at the gym—that Jerry is the strongest man in the gym.

All that the S4 embodied—all the history, all the depth of meaning, all the blood, sweat, tears, sacrifice and giving—will live on as those traits come to life and are reborn with S5.

I have never witnessed a singular item more capable of disrupting a training session than the cell phone. There’s a better alternative that gives all the benefits of technology with none of the downside.

As powerlifters we are, in the sense described in ‘The Egg’, reincarnated. We live and die and are reborn several times over our lifting career.

Within the environment of the serious gym, race, religion, political ideation, and gender identity fall a far second to the bond of power, strength, and living life to its fullest. This is the story of strongman and powerlifter Kristian Johnson.

Through articles two and three we have now shared the first fourteen, of many, perspectives for the beginner and intermediate powerlifter to consider. Let’s dig into the next five.

In deadlifting, the Goldilocks Zone might not be pulling conventional, nor sumo, nor even Old English Style. For those lifters, what I call the hybrid sumo stance could perhaps be best.

We’ve covered the first ten perspectives for new lifters. Now it’s time to get more specific about what it takes to break through the beginning stages of powerlifting.

In five locations on earth, the people live 30% longer and continue to be active and healthy until their final days on earth. What’s the secret?