It has been over fifty years since the sliding filament theory of muscle contraction was first proposed.
While at the Syracuse seminar, several of us chatted about the gyms and teams that were always kicking major ass. They all had the same thing in common—attitude. This attitude spread like wildfire throughout the gym and equated to success, BIG success.
The body doesn’t know whether you’re doing higher-faster-sports, Westside, HIT, swiss ball, kettlebell, or any other system. It only knows stimulation and recovery.
What if I told you that by adding just one exercise to your training repertoire, you would be stronger, more flexible, and more coordinated, and also be able to run faster, jump higher, and have overall better health? Would it be worth investing the time to learn and practice?
After you spend an appreciable number of years in the weight room and only the weight room, you start to really look for ways to spice up your training program and get some results.
We don’t know the guys who run EliteFTS.com. What we do know from reading the articles and asking questions is that they have helped us become better strength students.
Aside from the Atlas Stones, the tire flip could be one of the most recognizable strongman events in the sport. However, it is probably the one event most incorrectly performed by athletes and most improperly used by strength coaches.
The way that athletes are taught in our sport expert education system is a problem for me. I feel this isn’t just a problem of the sport expert education system but is also common to other educational systems as well.
For children living in the United States, sports are as common as television and snack time.
About 12 weeks ago, I started training with a local football player, Caleb Sexton.
What would be more effective is to change the dynamics of the lift slightly to stimulate new recruitment patterns and increase the use of often neglected muscles.
Keeping your athletes motivated is one of the hardest things to do as a strength coach.
This article is designed to give future strength & conditioning coaches a better insight as to what it takes to get your “foot in the door”.
Spend a few minutes listening to people and gurus talk about speed training nowadays and it shouldn’t be too hard to understand why the average person can leave a speed training conversation with a billion more questions then they had when they started.
Recently I have been flooded with e-mails and questions on the EFS Q/A, and rather than answering them one by one, I decided to put them into an article form so that everyone has access to them. There is a lot of great information in these answers.
As covered in my last article, the dynamic effort (DE) session is dedicated to speed. Max effort (ME) is dedicated to huge weights and re-writing the record books every session you train. My approach is a bit different from the traditional Westside approach.
Almost a year ago, Matt Bash and I put our collective heads together and were thinking of different ways to approach our weak point in the deadlift; the lockout.
“There are a hundred ways to skin a cat, I am only good at one of them”, is something my grandfather used to say to me all the time.
It is often said by futurists that there is an over-reaction to most new concepts in the short term, yet an under-reaction in the long term. We can all come up with countless examples of it – the high carb trend of a few years ago – which has become the zero carb trend recently.
One of my favorite things to do is to sit back and observe people. Sometimes I feel like I am a scientist looking at some weird experiment gone wrong.
I’ve wanted to write this article for awhile and there have been several questions on the Q/A that touched on this subject. For those not familiar with the term “deload” by basic definition of it is this: to take a break from extreme training.
The handoff for the bench is very important but an often-overlooked skill. There are two major mistakes that are often made.
Dan White had a lot of trouble gaining weight through his years of wrestling. As a freshman in high school he barely weighed 90 lbs and wrestled in the 103 lb weight class. As a sophomore he finally gained enough muscle and was able to wrestle at 103 lbs with no problems making weight.
Last night I closed the doors to my strength and conditioning facility for the last time. After over ten years in the same town and the same building, it was time for me to move on to new challenges.
One of the biggest things that I struggled with during my deadlift training was my grip. This was never a big deal when I was lighter (under 250lbs), but as I became bigger my grip began to suffer.
Coming up with new articles each month can be a challenging task and coming up with quality information can be even harder. After a couple hundred articles I find myself repeating myself time and time again.
This article was inspired by Alwyn Cosgrove and something that he mentioned to me in passing.
If those guys want to cheat the game and the fans while they destroy their health, then they can suffer the consequences.
In the past two articles, we have given you ideas and progressions for strengthening your torso. As you know by now, strong abs isn’t all that is needed.
In many instances team weight training consists of athletes of varying levels of strength preparedness- all performing the same training parameters.
Field day at elementary school means dunk tanks, water balloons, Italian ice, hanging with your friends, cool games and a bunch of other cool stuff.
I still get goose bumps when I think of how John Smith, two time Olympic Gold Medalist was training when I attended his intensive wrestling camps.
In this article, the second in our Torso Training series, we will cover rotational exercises that don’t specifically target the rectus ab.
There is a lot of confusion on how a fighter or grappler should train. Managing their time between training in the ring / mat and in the gym (or out of the gym) becomes important.
What is torso training? Torso training is strengthening your body from just above the hips to just below the chest. Training your torso involves many movements, but can be done effectively in just a few minutes, 3-4 times per week.
I’ve got another story for you, and it always brings back some of my favorite times in the gym. Actually, I have countless “favorite times” in the gym but this one is special to me, but honestly, all these memories are special to me.
This plan is not only mobility work but also includes some very basic pre-habitation work for many of the most common strength training injuries (pec tears, sore elbows, knees, lower back and shoulders).
[Editor’s Note: A lot of things that Glenn mentions in this article are his opinion and will not sit well with purists. Please note that this article is his opinion. For example, Travis Mash and Joe Bayles have both had success with the Zercher Squat. Also, weight releasers are extremely useful. But Glenn also makes some valid points, too. So take everything in stride. – Jim Wendler]
The IRON-ic rule of strength training for sport: The objective is not to get stronger per se but to improve athletic performance to build better athletes. I It’s important for the coach and the trainee to focus on improving sports performance.
I’m known as the Strongman guy around here because I own a Strongman/Powerlifting gym, and Dave and Jim like to make fun of me for it. It makes them feel good to laugh at me. Anyway, strongman training can be adapted to athletic training in many ways. In this article, we’ll look at how to improve our athletes’ level of conditioning through the use of strongman events.
I just have seen too many people I know become unhappy because their possessions own them, not vice versa
There have been many questions with regards to the use of The Grappler & Russian Kettlebells. I am going to discuss exactly how I train my athletes (mainly grapplers & football players) with these two tools.
We get asked all the time what the difference between an accessory lift and a supplemental lift. After doing some research, I came up with the following ideas. I got these from “A System of Multi-Year Training in Weightlifting” by A.S. Medvedyev. To make things easier here are some basic definitions;
Evan Simon recently became the head strength and conditioning coach for Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina.
Here are some actual stories from actual strength coaches. All these stories have been substantiated by coaches that I know very well and trust.
I get calls just about every day asking for help integrating strongman training and Westside style training and I see a lot of confusion with this.
Unfortunately the unmaking of an athlete begins long before college.
We have happened upon a new age of strength and conditioning. I have seen this coming for sometime now but tried to dismiss it as a fad.
As the sport of MMA progresses so must the specific means and methods of fighter training.
Most periodized training programs for athletes follow a Western or linear model.
I sometimes wonder if there are any prerequisites at all to getting a job as college strength and conditioning coach.
“Strength is an essential component of all human performance and its formal development can no longer be neglected in the preparation of any athlete”
The verdict was read without remorse or empathy. I was given the
death penalty. In the medical field there is no due process or equal protection clause.
One of the first pressing, inquisitive minds who stepped on the face of this earth was Socrates.
The individual control and systematic manipulation of volumetric management is largely dependant upon the proper integration of critical training variables.
The reason to couple super compensation work with training work is simple, gain a reciprocative function of the fatigue-frequency relationship more often in a training stage.
When planning a training protocol, one must take into account the value of work administered in terms of function and time.