After writing about the importance of getting to know your athletes, I decided to take a real look at whether or not I’ve had an impact. I contacted two of my former athletes and asked them to tell me what they learned in the weight room.

During this stage we will teach our athletes, who should be proficient at performing basic skills, to perform those skills under competitive atmospheres in practice.

These are important rules that you will never find in any classroom or lecture, passed down from strength coach to strength coach.

I want to introduce some new training ideas to accelerate you from good to great by revisiting the past and adding a twist to several favorites.

Goodman has coached at the collegiate and professional levels and earned multiple graduate degrees. Here are the things he has learned along the way.

Whether it be to feel better, move more weight, or run a marathon, this system has something for everyone. It is the no-brainer preferred choice for group programming.

This was the first time running my program and my first time being a head guy, so I could have been completely off-base. Not many go into the season expecting to get stronger.

It is our job to be more efficient in our programming, and here is why unilateral work plays such a huge roll in that.

This program was designed for our players who spend half a day in traditional school and half a day training with us for AAA GTHL hockey, the premier youth hockey league in Canada.

In the time since I wrote the initial “Know Your Audience” article several years ago, I’ve refined my coaching methods and changed many things, but the enduring message remains the same: get to know your athletes better.

These athletes undergo rapid physical development, increased workloads, new mental health challenges, and hormonal changes. As they hit peak height velocity, it’s vital to properly manage their training.

This is a great opportunity for you as the strength coach to step in and provide the leadership and culture to propel your team forward in the fall.

If you’re going to invest the time and financial resources to hire a coach, you should be doing everything you can to get the most out of the relationship. Avoiding these common mistakes is a must if you hope to reach your goals.

In theory, it’s good to force your athletes to take a deload every fourth week. In reality, it rarely works out for the best. Here’s an alternative option and a sample program that will keep things rolling in the right direction.

We need to think about the quality of life and how to increase longevity in this profession. What we are doing does not lead to it.

Several incredible presentations from Paul Comfort, Mike McGuigan, and Bryan Mann led me me to make some key adjustments to the programming of my Metabolic Group.

Your clients are all looking for a combination of guidance, accountability, and a relationship with a coach. It’s your job to figure out which of the three they need and how to best deliver it.

Accepting a new coaching position and uprooting your life to a different city and state is one of the worst parts of our profession, but following these six steps can help simplify the process.

Direct and to the point, this short podcast led by Andy Rose focuses on only two key questions about the fitness industry.

One question I often get asked is, should I set up a conference at my college/university? Then I’m asked how to go about doing that. I hope to answer those questions here.

Last summer I was able to perform some informal research on 10 Division II football athletes examining how to reverse imbalances found in force-velocity profiling using velocity based training with a Tendo Unit and accommodating resistance.

This is the most important time in an athlete’s career for learning motor patterns, and it’s the age range that can set up athletes for long-term success in their sport.

My time in this industry has taught me a lot. I’d like to share some pearls of wisdom I’ve picked up along the way that I think will be useful to others.

In addition to the numerous, invaluable benefits of the box squat, it’s one of the easier movements to teach if you know how. Use this process to get your athletes box squatting correctly and you’ll see their weight room and sport performance skyrocket.

Joining NSCA Head Strength and Conditioning Coach Scott Caulfield, Ashley discusses the development of young coaches, trends in rugby training, and life as a coach.

This article is intended for strength coaches who are looking to take their athletes to the next level. There are some very simple things you can do to ensure your athletes reap the benefits of such a powerful system.

Mike Gittleson once told me that becoming a good coach means learning to use your voice as a weapon. This changed everything about my mindset to communicating with my team.

Host Scott Caulfield leads this discussion on the past and future of velocity based training, the challenge of balancing personal and professionals lives, and the importance of building and maintaining a network.

Tampa Bay Lightning takes home the 2020 Stanley Cup! Learn how they train off the ice with strength coach Mark Lambert.

Programming for this age must be based on the understanding that most speed and strength gains in young athletes are due to motor learning, improved motor coordination, and nervous system development/adaptation.

While there are some great things that can go on during this time period, there are also many times that football coaches run their guys into the ground with months to go before the players even see the competitive field.

After our recent bowl game, all-time great Denver Bronco and two-time Pro Bowler Rod Smith spoke to my team and shared an important message that got me thinking about my athletes and my personal mission statement.

There are many faults in the traditional model of periodization when applied in a sports setting. The conjugate method not only overcomes these faults, but also provides numerous other benefits to your athletes.

This model sequences weight training and skills, with the weight training acting as a neural primer before moving to skill work and then bringing the players back to the weight room to complete the lower body session.

If people would take their heads out of their asses and set their egos aside, they would see that what Louie teaches has nothing to do with multi-ply powerlifting.

I cannot have rep integrity, movement efficiency, and tempo in the weight room if my athletes are dumbfounded by the extremely complex exercise selection that looks like a NASA test simulator. So let’s focus on simplifying things.

Social media can be a very powerful tool to enhance your learning and your network, but you have to use it with some responsibility.

Our team is pretty strong in the weight room and it has transferred to the field, but we’re not a big team. The head coach and I have come to an agreement on changes we’re going to make, with a phase that starts January 16.

How do you build your team? How do you take a group of athletes from every aspect of society and get them pulling in the same direction toward a common cause?

I’ve often heard people ask the question, what would you tell a younger you? This is a great question all strength coaches should answer.

You must pick five and only five exercises or drills to train all of the university sports for all of the seasons. What makes your list?

Charlie Karstedt has left no stone unturned in giving his guys every opportunity they need to be successful at his facility.

After an ACL injury, the athlete is first rehabbed exclusively in the training room. Once they’re released to me, we start this phase of the recovery process.

It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to be uncomfortable. Defeat can lead to victory if you learn from it and gain experience along the way.

Using the Trap Bar Deadlift may be one of the best exercises for beginners in a team setting.

Once you’ve started with a baseline position, adjustments should first be made based on limb length and secondly based on strength history.

I had the opportunity to take one of the RPR courses this week when JL asked to hold a clinic at my university. Whether you love or hate the idea of Reflexive Performance Reset, it works!

I recently spoke to my university’s leadership committee and it got me thinking about some things that are imperative to the success of strength and conditioning coaches.

I have outlined some things that I believe will serve to help aspiring strength coaches and young strength coaches thrive in this industry.

When young athletes who plan to go into an NFL camp or enter the draft visit Coach Kav, there are two main issues he almost always encounters.

This compilation of training sessions is drawn from the minds of many great coaches, and includes initial and periodic testing to ensure intensity and distance per session challenge the metabolic systems of the athletes.

College athletics may be a giant machine, but the humans run it. We need to understand that the athletes, just like us as coaches, have good days and bad days, and instilling good character should always be number one.

Since college, I’ve worked at seven different universities and a few Globo gyms. I’ve run clinics, I’ve trained privately, and I’ve even worked construction. From all this, I’ve learned from some great leaders and some less than great leaders.

I have collated a few of my most result-producing programs for you to try, from both a sports performance perspective and also general training for size and strength for the non-sports person.

I have found there are two main types of leaders in the industry of strength and conditioning. There are those who inspire others and there are those who dictate.

This is real stuff that is happening right now — not just my opinion, but what is really going on. I am not bitching, but I am calling for change in the right way. This is what needs to happen.

The Olympic lifts will develop strength, speed, and power, but this is dependent on a few things you must do for your athletes.

This is a difficult issue to balance because people expect us to be over the top and screaming all the time. I’m asking that we raise the level of professionalism.

I am going to establish an argument against a particular misconception: the fallacy that working out to make your ‘muscles bigger’ will make you stronger, faster, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.