How I understand, practice, and implement strength and conditioning programs for myself and my clients has drastically changed over the past four years. Coming from a primarily high intensity training (HIT) background in my college undergraduate years and having worked mainly as a physical therapist since 1996, I had no significant need to investigate more progressive means of strength training. However, since opening my physical therapy clinic over five years ago and gradually training more athletes in the clinic (as a natural extension of my business), I quickly found out that a primarily machine-based, HIT program was self-limiting. Stated simply, people were hitting plateaus with breakthroughs few and far between. As a professional, I knew something needed to change.
As I got progressively more internet savvy (as well as revisiting PLUSA magazine), I became exposed to the writings of Louie Simmons and Dave Tate. These were very different than Chet Furman’s undergraduate strength training classes I took while at PSU in the late 1980s. As such, it took a lot of unlearning and about nine months until I had a reasonable grasp of conjugate periodization as a concept I could begin to understand. It would be another year or so until I was able to implement these ideas effectively with both athletes as well as my “regular” fitness clients. As of this writing, I’m also working these concepts into my physical therapy practice, but that is another article for another day. As most regular readers of this site can guess, once my clients started to train with a more “conjugate” approach along with fewer machines and more barbell work, everyone got stronger, bigger, leaner, and generally more satisfied with their results.
That said, over the past five years, I have learned a significant amount about not only strength training but also about my belief systems. I’ve come to grips over what I felt I knew and what others actually really do know, and I’ve made changes in my philosophy and practice outside of my “comfort zone.” Let me share a few here.
Certifications do not guarantee expertise. My credentials to a keyboard commando may appear pretty “impressive,” but the reality is that they don’t guarantee understanding of every aspect in the strength and conditioning field. My guess is that while trying to attain these things (credentials), we stop training as hard as we used to and we start listening to the professors and “experts” who don’t train, don’t see patients or clients, and don’t have to (you fill in the blank). Obviously, some knowledge of basic and applied science is nice to have in order to understand some concepts of the Westside method (or conjugated periodization or whatever you would like to refer to it as). However, many practicing powerlifters and athletes who use these methods have no real science background at all. What they have is their own experience in the competitive arena, which, when they have applied these methods to their own performance, has proven to be successful (just as a guy who finishes his basement doesn’t necessarily have to be a union carpenter).
Learning from others outside your expertise is essential. Over the past two years, I can safely say that I have learned more from powerlifters than I have from physical therapists. The funny thing is that they didn’t know that they were teaching me anything new. I simply listened and observed guys such as Dave Tate, Jim Wendler, and Joe DeFranco and applied what they said and did to my patients. Now I didn’t have 70-year-old ladies performing good mornings, but they did start to box squat with a posterior chain emphasis.
I also now utilize jump stretch bands for self joint mobilization in my shoulder patients after watching Dave mobilize his neck with a monster miniband. Listening to Joe talk about the ideal start position for a 40-yard dash led me to discover my own unilateral hip weakness and expose it and address it in my patients and athletes. The main point here is that when you open your eyes to experts in other fields, you are able to bring up weak points in your own field, which ultimately makes you a more valuable player in your arena of expertise.
Don’t be all things to all people. You can’t possibly be an expert in all areas of your chosen field so don’t even try. You will ultimately be found out. I see this among physical therapists and physicians frequently. Many are convinced they can not only treat your injury (which to be fair most do pretty effectively in the majority of instances), but they take liberties in other areas such as telling you how to train, eat, and supplement (among other things) even though they don’t even take their own advice. They also seem to have strong opinions on how coaches train their athletes even though they may never even have participated or coached themselves.
Many don’t even train, and most who do train don’t do it properly or effectively. The same can sometimes be seen in the strength and conditioning field. An excellent Olympic weightlifting coach does not always make an excellent football strength and conditioning coach, and a sprint coach does not necessarily translate to a receiver/backs coach even though both comparisons share some basic physiological traits. Bias and egos take over, and turf wars start. Ultimately, it is the athlete or client who suffers. This is not to say that some good, general rules don’t apply to both training and diet. However, the person giving the advice should be getting phenomenal results either themselves or with the athletes they train or they shouldn’t pedal the advice in the first place. Networks and team building among athletes and professionals are paramount in helping play to your own personal strength as well as managing weaknesses.
Observe the 70/30 rule. We have all heard the 80/20 rule and its variations. I propose here the 70/30 rule. We should fundamentally understand that 70 percent of what we do as professionals is largely unchanged while 30 percent changes in a process of continuing improvement. If you have the 70/30 rule backward, you probably don’t have enough practical experience in the field at this time and may need more mentoring, reading, and seasoning. If you don’t believe the 70/30 rule or if your rule is more like 95/5, please reread point number three. The 70 percent should be a combination of formal education, training, mentoring, coaching, and competition. The 30 percent can come from (but is not limited to) continuing education, seminars, and reading as well as professional networking. The 70/30 rule lends to the process of “journey, not arrival,” which is what all successful therapists, coaches, and athletes have in common.
It takes five years to achieve a good level of understanding. Just because you learn something and can recite it on a test or demonstrate it in a practicum doesn’t mean you understand it. I once heard Bob Proctor (a success coach who predates Tony Robbins) state that “you don’t understand something until you can teach it to someone else so they can understand it as well.” I believe this is true, and I believe it takes a minimum of five years to achieve a good level of understanding in any given arena.
Personally, I’ve seen this as a competitive martial artist and instructor and as an athletic trainer, physical therapist, and personal trainer. Seeds of knowledge need to be planted and cultivated, which takes effort and time, generally in that order. In our current sound bite oriented short attention span society, this runs counter to popular opinion. However, check out most (operative word being MOST) successful people in any given field and you’ll find this to be absolutely true. If you somehow don’t believe this, go see Dave Tate speak and talk about how he views a 5-lb plate and how it took several years to add that much to his bench press. Beyond good understanding, lies great understanding, which again takes time.