Let me walk you through a new weight room and share my processes for creating an exercise selection chart to best meet the needs of your athletes.
Do you swing more towards one side than the other? I can tell you that I did. So, we decided to try a progression to work both single-leg and double-leg exercises. Here is what the eight weeks looked like for our athletes.
The muscles and connective tissues that are loaded make for a trifecta of hypertrophy, strength, and conditioning. Time under tension is a beautiful thing. Try this today!
I’m giving more emphasis on “core” than I have ever before. After four weeks of adding in this X work, it’s amazing how much better our athletes feel and look while running, doing agilities, and lifting.
I’m talking about the athletes that play one sport and one sport only year-round. In short, build trust and DON’T be afraid to lift your athletes. Here’s what a yearly plan looks like.
To reach peak performance, you must build a solid foundation dedicating time to GPP. Here’s how to widen the base with GPP, when to use it, and how to implement it. Download the GPP Giant Circuit to get started.
Lifting, and the bench press for that matter, is not rocket science, but you do need to use your brain. Use these twelve tips to fix your damn technique and showcase all of your strength.
If you’re not monitoring your sodium intake, you’re leaving a lot on the platform or stage. Here’s how.
What does the literature tell us about using exercise before the main work we want to improve that day? It tells us A LOT.
This is your six-step blueprint for creating the lean, strong, powerful, and healthy physique within you.
Lifting your first PR wasn’t the end of training for you. It was hard but it motivated you to get stronger and stronger. The same concept will work for your business through these tumultuous times and I’m here to help share a plan with you today.
Westside Barbell, 5/3/1, 5thSet, and Juggernaut Training Systems all play a role in the creation of this program. Let me know how you advance using it.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, as the ubiquitous aphorism goes. Averting the zigzag requires one to suffer and succeed in silence.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I was tired of floor presses off unstable pickle buckets and the inability to squat, so here’s my attempt at building a home gym.
Our revisited phase 2 will give you good ideas as to how to start your teams back up after an extended layoff. Waverly had one of their best years in school history following this.
The training we perform off the field (eccentrics and isometrics) can add to our hamstring robustness to keep us in the game longer.
Hip thrusts are my go-to exercise for minor league baseball players to improve strength and acceleration. Here’s a typical progression I use for my players. And no, we don’t load this movement at the start.
In this program, you will use strength and conditioning, and all of the gears in between to be an energy-efficient player. Consider this an extension of my sumo deadlift article published in January of 2021.
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…
I instruct all of my clients to get a full hormone panel at least once a year. Here’s how to prepare for these labs and what a comprehensive hormone panel looks like.
When the rubber hits the road, this will make you a smarter and faster runner (heavily applicable to race car drivers and military forces, too).
It’s a long way to the top so find the main players who’ll walk beside you to make you better along the way. It’s easy to find people that look impressive but are they really everything they say? Are they all fluff with no substance?
Implementation is the easiest part of this exercise because you are using only your available range and not approaching this with a “must have the mobility of a 12-year-old gymnast” mentality. Here’s your chance to access planes and ranges of motion that most of us forget even exist.
Now, it’s time to expect the unexpected, ask questions, be proactive, continue your own education, take it to the edge, sacrifice, present yourself accordingly, hustle, and seven more to-dos (part three of three)!
Now, it’s time to get our hands dirty… Let’s start with the internship search. You have to ask yourself what you want. Assuming you want to be a strength and conditioning coach, ask yourself the following questions (part two of three).
I was very lucky to come from a great undergrad program, which prepared me to handle the demands of big-time strength and conditioning programs. Here’s a reference for the college student aspiring to be a strength coach (part one of three).
In my fifties, I started to experience knee pain during and after Olympic lifts, squats, and deadlifts. After a career full of lifting and contact sports, my options were anti-inflammatory medication and gels, surgery, braces, ABI, and PRP. Here’s what helped me.
My football players were being held back by strength deficits that are left underdeveloped in most high school programs—development of speed and maximal strength in the weight room. Here’s how I filled in the gaps.
At Varsity House Gym, there have been three major contributing factors in continuing to stay above water and keep our team engaged in daily progress.
Hip flexor quality can be the difference between a fast, efficient athlete and an athlete that will struggle greatly in competitive sport.
Remember, you’re human. It’s OK to feel this way about training and one day you inevitably will. With these six suggestions, plan and prepare for this ugly feeling and destroy ASAP to enjoy training again.
Although collegiate athletes are not powerlifters, powerlifting is the ultimate inspiration for their training. Hands down, the barbell Romanian deadlift should be a part of their exercise selection.
Meet two love birds, Aaron and Kelly Grosos, and learn how they make it work as competitive powerlifters.
How different can programming be for swimmers? Let’s take a deeper dive into how the Tier System fits perfectly into portions of the swim event and the number of days we train (no pun intended).
Many of my clients have a love/hate relationship with this finisher technique. Use it for other body parts, too! Here’s what to do…
Program these five key areas to improve your clients’ results and keep them injury-free while staying motivated to train.
A personal account of my two-year journey from a broken radius, broken ulna, and a torn ACL (all on the same day) to coming back stronger than ever. Tons of people have broken bones and torn muscles and ligaments before, in and out of competition, and this is just one of those stories.
Looks easy, but you’ll have an entirely different opinion once you or your athletes give it a try. Remember, an athlete is only as strong as the weakest link, especially related to relationships between sprinting and the posterior chain.
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).
Skimping out on accessory work because you don’t have enough time? Get a nasty pump with giant sets and kiss your time constraints goodbye.
This is certainly anti-quit training. Learning to be uncomfortable and not stop or run away is priceless in hard training.
This is the first-week break-in program that I will put in place. I will also keep some players on this three-day-a-week programming based on needs-based discussions with the playing group upon their return and what other work-ons they have from a physical and skills perspective.
When you’re not in class (or preparing for class), maximize your nutrition, lifting schedule, strength, and size. Life’s only going to get more complicated once you graduate so build your foundation now.
Here’s what I’ve learned to become an elite lifter at 220: accumulate faults and then fix them over the course of an off-season. You’ll be surprised how it all aligns if you just stop, reflect, work, and listen.
