If so, were the early-day strength athletes stronger, faster, and more powerful than present-day competitors? Studies about nostalgia suggest the answers to these questions root in nostalgic accounts from both positive and negative emotions.
Wealth, power, and fame. Some might say those are inherently negative characteristics. I, however, believe the way those characteristics are wielded determines whether they are good or bad.
Dave Tate’s bringing yet another amazing athlete to the table… Talk Podcast! (See what we did there?) This time, it’s elitefts athlete Casey Williams.
Carb cycling: A fancy phrase for rotating calories. Nutritionist Justin Harris breaks down why you should be carb cycling and why it works in simple terms.
This competition was preceded by my dad’s unexpected death, a delay in his death certificate, and burying him the Monday before my wedding. It’s been a tough year, and my training and diet reflected that. Still, I did pretty well all things considered.
I’ve been told I do a good job of being a heretic of the strength and conditioning coach profession, so I might as well keep it up and stir the pot with some of my hot takes on sumo deadlifts, box squatting, and more.
“Buy nice; don’t buy twice.” That saying might apply to elitefts equipment, but it might also apply to running shoes when it comes to doing cardio… Any suggestions for replacing a 27-year-old pair of sneakers?
A few pro tips from Coach Matt Rhodes: Not everything you learn in a book can be applied to strength and conditioning. Open your mind to new ideas and influences, and learn how your mentor wants things down.
Learn the secret that we’ve kept under wraps until now: How to properly wrap your wrists for the Big Three: bench, squat, and deadlift.
Want to get the most out of your wrist wraps? Or maybe you don’t know where to start when it comes to all of the wrist wraps elitefts offers. Look no further than this article, which rounds up some of the best wrist wrap guides and related workouts.
When a doctor who knows how I train gave me his diagnosis, I had no idea what to do because I hadn’t met anyone that had this constellation of stuff. Neither had he. The best foundation we came up with was based on the same principles in the previous articles.
I am currently working as a consultant for a pro rugby team, and I was asked about the type of player I would require moving into a pro team. Fair warning: What I wrote here may be considered heretical in the strength and conditioning world…
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.
Your employees are like your clients in the gym. They want to build their skills and strengths and hopefully, are able to do it on their own. If you’re unable to manage your management, you are doing your employees and yourself a major disservice.
The cue “push into your belt” has lifters focusing on the front of their bodies. But this operates under the assumption that the torso will expand in 360 degrees, not just out toward the front. In order to have the best brace, we need to rework our understanding of doing so in the first place.
In bodybuilding, numbers aren’t represented on stage; you’re scored based on your overall look or (I almost hate to use that phrase for reasons I won’t get into here). It makes no sense to add 20 pounds of muscle only to have your midsection increase by 4 inches or more.
It’s better to have one cheat meal a week than to go off of the program and eat on a day that you’ve burned off a lot of calories and now have taken in more calories than lost. Don’t turn a fat-burning day into a fat-gaining day.
Plyometric work is easy to teach, and depending on the variation you choose, easy to recover from. It doesn’t need a huge investment of time from both a learning curve and application perspective. Its inclusion is a no-brainer!
“To be able to give back is a much bigger legacy than anything you’ll leave on a platform.” elitefts coach Vincent Dizenzo finds his calling in helping others by passing on knowledge, especially when it comes to dieting and weight loss.
Clint Darden is taking some time to travel out of Cyprus and to the U.S., where he’s finally made his way to the elitefts S5 Compound as a Table Talk Podcast guest.
As strength athletes, we care only about lifting the weight from Point A to Point B, but from a bodybuilding perspective, that is dead wrong, but how does that translate to powerlifting? The idea is to challenge the muscle — not just focus on completing reps and sets.
One of the hardest things I’ve ever done was train less. But thanks to a little advice from Dave Tate, I started looking at training in a whole new light. Strength comes from so much more than lifting heavy weights in the gym.
Enough with the “back in my day, kids did this…” crap. Today is today. Things haven’t changed that much, and if you can’t adapt to what has changed, maybe you shouldn’t be a strength coach.
Recording a podcast episode with my mentor (and cousin) John Alvino made me reflect on the pivotal role training has played in my life. Quite frankly, without it, I don’t know where I’d be. Inside these four walls, training has been my therapy, my drug, and my anchor.
I could write a big article covering every detail about physical therapy and strength coaching, but I’ve chosen to spare your computer screen space and discuss the most important topics about what physical therapy school taught me about being a strength coach.
Although this article is directed at those supervising GAs and interns, if you’re a student reading this article, you can use these strategies to help to plan your own professional development as well.
Over the last few years, I’ve had more time to visit some major universities and professional teams and talk shop with some very good strength and conditioning coaches, and these are some of the trends we’ve noticed in the weight room and think powerlifters should start implementing.
I am personally giving you permission to skip today’s workout — but only if you learn about muscle origins and insertions and how they move. Watch some videos about this instead of binge-watching Stranger Things or whatever. Just sit down and educate yourself.
As with anything in training, the answer always is “it depends.” With the max effort method, I can do one of these things for two hours just on advanced principles that deal with the max effort method, or I can do one very that’s simple. I choose simple.
It was in the year of 1993 and he weighed somewhere between 218 to 220 pounds. Who does that narrow it down to?
A few weeks ago I blogged about how I was mistakenly looking for a one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with my injuries, and my circumstances are different. But with the help of four friends (and my wife), we came up with a BAMF program. Here it is.
The doctor is in! Specifically, Doctor Deadlift (whose real name is Cailer Woolam) is here to teach you why you should switch over from your alternating grip to a hook grip and show you how it’s done.
I quit my personal trainer job to become a strength and conditioning coach. I lived in my car, slept on a couch, and I even had a raccoon living in my apartment wall at one point. But all of these struggles and sacrifices were worth it.
I’m here to remind everyone that we all have a part to play in making our field better and safer for our athletes. It’s on us to ensure our athletes, schools, and overall profession are all the best they can be. Start by implementing these 5 simple steps in your program.
Joe and Janis are returning for another episode of Table Talk Podcast with host Dave Tate. Expect all sorts of thoughts, questions, and answers for all things powerlifting-related.
When it comes to selecting meet attempts, there are a lot of things to take into account. The big one is your goal, but the strategy for getting that goal varies depending on lots of factors. You wouldn’t use the same process for selecting your opener and for winning — at least, I hope you don’t.
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again to get a different result. That pretty much sums up the strength and conditioning industry, doesn’t it?
Before you go find yourself a hill to sprint up via Google maps (steep hills, such as those in landfills, are ideal), don’t forget to warm up and stay hydrated. It’s a sprint, so go all out!
Most strongman competitors I work with don’t have a strongman gym nearby — but they do have a commercial gym. This 4-week program will help just about anyone in that all-too-common situation.
The content calendar for August is packed with special content from Justin Harris, Vincent Dizenzo, JM Blakely, and Jordan Shallow that’ll bring you gains in muscle, strength, and knowledge. For a sneak peek at what’s to come, read on ahead!
It’s hard to think of a word that has been devalued in the strength and healthcare industry as much as the word “expert.” Luckily, “mastery” hasn’t taken the same hit. But what does it take to become a master? What defines mastery? Read on to find out.
I love the Internet. I really do. But at the same time, I can tell you that I absolutely miss those days where I was able to feel like a big fish in a small pond before the Internet came about. It’s a paradox for us as we’re all small fish in a very big pond.
This isn’t a hickey from your teenage years; the kind of hickey I’m talking about is created from a recovery modality known as “cupping.” Does cupping work, or is it just a fad that could leave you bruised and broken? OK, it DOES leave bruises, but broken? Not so much.
Even Doctor Deadlift has bombed out, and for him, it was at his first meet as a 15-year-old in high school. Cailer Woolam was ready to quit, but he kept on pushing, and look at him now: one of the youngest people to make the deadlift world record.
The Safety Squat Bar is a great tool to help build strength in the upper back, but if you’re looking to get the full effect out of this bar, you should consider applying this subtle cue in order to load the erector muscles of the spine in their purest function.
Dave Tate sits down with bodybuilding contest prep guru Justin Harris, who helped bring Dave down to single-digit body fat levels — a feat few people thought possible.
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.