WATCH: Equipment Feature with Marc Bartley — Zercher Straps
It’s tools like this that work to boost a lifter’s confidence and make the difference between completing a lift safely versus risking an injury.
WATCH: Learn to Train X — The Squat Checklist with Swede Burns
Don’t wish for the best as you get under the bar and attempt to squat. Instead, get under the bar with a plan.
Training to Build New Neural Pathways
All too often, I see people missing the importance of thinking about the muscle-brain connection when it comes to training. And that’s a bit of a shame because creating neural pathways that allow you to train and move correctly is a component of making gains.
A Question of Strength
Sixteen questions covering the basics (and often neglected) beginning with bench press templates to dimel deadlifts.
Be Afraid
You hear people in an attempt to salvage their fragile egos say they are afraid of nothing. But I have never understood why being afraid of something is a bad thing.
Gym Management — Lessons from Culture and Criminology
If you walked into a gym where plates and dumbbells were scattered everywhere, you likely wouldn’t think twice about leaving your weights on the bar, right?
Make Recovery Great Again
Your ability to recover is arguably one of the most misunderstood and undervalued aspects of strength and conditioning. As a goal oriented and driven lifter (possibly Type A too), avoid these common pitfalls.
The SAID Principle — Training Optimally for Sport
We as strength coaches have a way of screwing training up even with this ancient, written-in-stone principle.
Determining the Needs of an Athlete
If an athlete is training on heavy squats but is unable to get into a good technique, he is risking injury, plus he is not getting the most of his training because he is in bad positions. First things first, let’s start with an assessment.
Minimizing Pain for the Active Meathead
Still want to play softball, play basketball, practice martial arts, hike, bike, and swim? Although these things are extremely fun and I highly recommend them for mostly everyone, they can certainly take their toll on your body, especially when combined with hard training.
Start Here Before You Clean
A lot of individuals take what’s arguably the most highly coordinated regimen you can perform in the weight room and start individuals doing it day 1. At the collegiate level, these are the movements I make sure that my athletes can do before they are allowed to perform a proper clean motion.
How to Teach a Team to Lead Itself
If the majority of leadership has to come from coaches, that’s usually a sign of a rough season ahead. In my experience, I’ve found this to be 100% true.
Championship Nature Series: General George S. Patton and James J. Braddock
Most historical figures aren’t single-faceted, and if your athletes truly connect with them, you can bring other aspects of them to light to aid them in their journeys. General George S. Patton leads by example and James J. Braddock overcomes opponents using visualization.
The Yoke: A Reflection of A Person’s Intangibles
These training samples, along with hard work, allowed me to get a 20” neck, sizeable traps, and a sizeable upper back—all done with minimal equipment, mostly at home, and with extremely high rep counts.
Resurgence After the Rust
When the dust settles and I turn the lights off in that weight room for that final time, what legacy will I leave, how many lives did I touch?
The Freak Show Exodus
You will have your supporters and your naysayers as with everything in this world, but I am in complete support of this shift in the paradigm. Why?
The Founder Phase — How to Get out of It
This is the phase of #hustle and #grind, when the Founders’ wallets are empty but their energy is boundless. It’s as exciting as a roller coaster! But roller coasters aren’t exciting for long.
Valuable Accessories for Your Strength and Conditioning Program
Beyond a rack, bar, and plates, here are the smaller pieces of equipment I feel have added the most value to my strength and conditioning program.
WATCH: Rapid Fire Table Talk with Dr. John Rusin
Over half an hour of non-stop Q&A, responding directly to questions from elitefts readers.
Why the Smartphone is Your Greatest Advantage in Meet Training
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.
It's Time to Recover
Time is the multiplier that turns a tiny crack on a newly paved road into a pothole or a single tree into a forest. Here are a few tips to reduce stress on the body and to better prepare yourself to have more in the tank for your training.
Rules for Interviewing
For this month’s article, I want to write about something that I’ve been doing a lot of recently with some success: interviewing. Consider these eleven rules for your next job opportunity.
Who Defines You?
In this interview with Mark Dugdale, we discuss the mental side of training and competing, along with the various challenges that we meet when life, training, family, work, and all of the other areas of our lives intersect.
Good Training Gone Bad
In training, many choices must be made. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
A Semester with Conjugate U
After meeting Nate Harvey and reading his ebook, I decided to try out a conjugate-based system with two of my teams, men’s soccer and women’s volleyball, during the spring semester. Here’s what we did, how it worked, and changes I’m making moving forward.
3 Scientific Theories Behind Blood Flow Restriction Training
More than a popular trend, these three theories from Dr. Leonneke receive support from studies showing increases in muscular strength, hypertrophy, and testosterone levels after BFR training.
Best Caliber Athletes
‘’Westside only gets the best caliber athletes to work with,” is something we’ve heard over the years. What does this mean?
5 Great Exercises for the Most Hated Machine in the Gym
Everything can hold a purpose in the gym, even the easily avoided Smith Machine. At Lightning Fitness, I recently made room for this piece of equipment and would like to share how my bodybuilders, powerlifters, and strongman competitors are using it.
15 Habits You'll Need as a Full-Time Strength and Conditioning Intern
High school did a terrible job of preparing you for the real world. The only way you will make it is by trial by fire and by implementing the following habits immediately.
Get in the Flow State for Peak Performance
Flow is where challenge and skill meet. These are points during your training year where you push the envelope and attempt things that might be slightly outside of your athlete’s capabilities.
Wrestling with Identity
I confess to feeling grossly inadequate while my girls seek to find their identities, and I contemplate where I may have messed up in their younger years.
WATCH: Table Talk with Dave Tate — How To Find Your Perfect Weight Class
You may be between weight classes or on the far end of the spectrum. Find out if your future should include Big Macs and candy bars or chicken and rice.
How to Cut Maximum Weight for Competitions with a 24-Hour Weigh-In
The key to stepping on the platform at maximum strength after cutting weight is to spend as little time as possible with your body weight at less than you intend to weigh when you lift — this process is difficult and requires a great deal of desire, discipline, and pain tolerance.
College Football Off-Season Max Effort Variations: Programming and Compa...
Inspired by Joe Kenn, this is how Pace programs the conjugate method (the use of variations) over an eight-week off-season for our athletes.
Becoming Elite and Beyond: A Journey from the Tiger to the Dragon
I think every sport benefits from incorporating the tiger and the dragon into their training or coaching in some way. For lifters and strength athletes on the path to progression (in strength and level of competition), this hits the nail on the head.
3 Reminders for a Healthy and Productive Training Camp
To an outsider, things may seem easy during camp as far as being a strength coach goes. You have them maybe a half hour to forty-five minutes a day if you’re lucky. Easy peasy, right? Wrong!
The Basics of a Diet Break
There are many types of diet break protocols, but for the simplicity of this article I am going to discuss four types and why I use them.
I Read a Book: Re-Implementing Conjugate Training with More Knowledge
When I practiced law, it was a standing joke at our bar that an expert was some son of a bitch from Charlotte who had read a book. Well, I read a book.
I Know Squat — Five Keys to Squatting Big Weight
I’ve squatted with some of the strongest squatters in the world at Westside Barbell. I’ve squatted with three-time World’s Strongest Man Bill Kazmaier and I was coached to a 700-pound raw squat by Josh Bryant when I was 22 years old. Here's what I know.
WATCH: Chainz for Gainz — Is Your Accommodating Resistance Doing Anything?
Using chains as accommodating resistance incorrectly can be detrimental to your athletes...and your street cred.
Three Tips for More Effective In-Season Training
You can vastly improve the effectiveness of your in-season programming by understanding submaximal maintenance training and programming flexibility, the use of concentric-only exercises, and high-rep work for recovery.
6-Week Lower Body Accessory Lane Progressions
The main purpose of this is to get you some change-up in your program and get you thinking outside your usual movement selection. I have been doing this in the gym myself and it’s amazing how mentally refreshing it can be.
Skip's Do-Overs from 1984: What I Wish I Knew 34 Years Ago
Of all of the things I wish I could go back and redo, these five things stand out as the most important or all-encompassing.
Boris Sheiko's Thoughts on Westside Barbell
Two giants in the world of strength. Two very different training styles. How can both be so successful?
Intimidation and the Fitness Industry
In this article, I will offer definitions and a technical approach to the terms involved in this problem. With this, hopefully, I may help you understand the forms intimidation can take and turn your dream gym into a nightmare.
WATCH: Table Talk — What Have You Learned Post-Powerlifting?
With the muscle-building knowledge he has gained since retiring from the sport of powerlifting, what would Dave change about his years training for the platform? We rewind to Dave's first Table Talk from 2015.
The Power of Giving — Live, Learn, Pass On
As human beings, we live through the experiences life teaches us. We then learn from these moments, whether it’s positive or negative. And ultimately, we pass on.
5 Powerlifting Lessons I Flunked Day One
With my old ways of thinking, I kicked ass and got better. But I've figured out along the way that it's like nitrous: it's great for a quick burst, but powerlifting isn't a quarter mile.
Rediscovering the Incline Dumbbell Bench Press
In response to some unusual elbow tenderness, I recently gravitated back to the incline dumbbell press — an exercise with tremendous benefits that I had not performed in a long time.
WATCH: The 6-30-30 Overload Method
Use this example to pump up your chesticles and test your metaphorical testicles. Then follow the principles of the method to create your own workouts for the other muscle groups.
Improve Your Bench Immediately Using These Training Cues
I’ve always said it only takes a single well-thought-out cue to change the way someone approaches a lift. I’m certain that one of these bench cues below are going to be that single cue that you’ve been waiting for.
New Team, New Approach: Working the Curve with the Samoan Rugby Union
What I outline in this article is the third generation of this style of programming, taken through the furnace of professional rugby and modified accordingly to fit specific needs of the playing group I now work with.
The Best Advice I Can Give to Future Physical Therapists
If you want to make a career out of working with strength athletes, there's one thing that's more important than everything else.
A Manual for Implementing Technical Cues
Everyone can benefit from technical cues, with the contingency that they are employed properly, consistently, and under the correct circumstances — which is more rare than you might expect.
WATCH: Training After Westside
What type of training comes after years of lifting in the world's strongest gym, with the sole goal of moving as much weight as possible?
A Useful Coach: The Horse, The Water, and What People Miss
Knowing what to tell the horse is a lot less important than making the horse understand why the information is important.
The Science of Muscle Memory: Is it Real?
Is it actually easier to regain lost muscle and strength than it is to build it for the first time?
The Biggest Mistakes First-Time Competitors Make in Training and at the ...
These seven mistakes are by far the most prevalent I see for powerlifters in their first meet. They're also very easy to avoid if you know how.
WATCH: The Female Athlete and Exogenous Substances — On Drugs Too Soon?
The neuroendocrine system is incredibly complex and will not always respond in only the ways that you want it to.