The 4-Day Outlaw Program is a combination of conjugate and bodybuilding style training, setup for the multiply lifter yet modified for raw lifters.
In this final part of these series, let’s create a full-body training program. Rule 1…
Peaking for your meet day should happen around six weeks out. Here’s a thorough plan to make sure you get the most out of your lifts when the time comes to step on the platform.
Most people train like the athletes and Olympians they admire, but that’s poor practice. Train for YOU, and watch your progress skyrocket.
Your biological age is different than your training age. If you’ve racked up years of training in the gym, you should learn the difference between the two.
Want to get more out of your training programs? Include single-leg training.
A rack squat and a monolift squat are two different beasts. I totally underestimated the brutality of the walkout…
AJ Roberts takes a seat in this 137th podcast episode of Dave Tate’s Table Talk.
If you’re new to the squat or lose technique once it gets heavy, train the eccentric to become one with the bar.
Jim Wendler’s seminar Strength Training High School Football Players is compiled for you to implement as a coach or an athlete.
Sam talks about what it was like going from “Training HIS Ass Off” to “Training YOUR Ass Off” and going from a participant to an assistant.
Dave Tate and Sam Brown discuss how injuries can make you better, perceived maxes, and Squid Game? What’s going on?
Being lean, strong, and healthy are byproducts of moving right. Are you squatting, hip hinging, lunging, pressing, pulling, and carrying?
If you’re not spending time with each of these patterns weekly, you’re leaving gains on the table.
Sifting through Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, coaching logs, and articles, here’s the best!
When it comes to returning an intermediate-advanced lifter to a heavy compound, there are often more factors at play than we initially think. Perfect mechanics probably aren’t enough to get you back to where you need to be.
Are your glutes activated? Are you hinging? Is it hard to reach depth? Falling forward? Answers to these questions may reveal that the stance you’re favoring is doing nothing for your squat.
Without a doubt, there are some things you need to pay attention to when performing and coaching squats across the board. I will list them here.
Everyone likes putting their own tweak on popular programming. Louie Simmons was not very receptive when he learned Mark Bell had changed his, however. You’d think a 180-pound squat PR would speak for itself, but apparently it was still no good.
Being jacked as hell got your shoulders a little tight? Here’s how you fix your squat bar position for better performance, less pain, and a bigger total.
Do yourself a favor and focus on technique; don’t get too wrapped up in band tension, percents, etc. Get your technique down and worry about the other things later.
If you’re attempting to teach a squat and you’re having to constantly cue “knees out” or “chest up,” that lifter isn’t ready for a squat. Period.
If I was that young woman in the picture with my present old mind, I would do it all differently. Unfortunately, I can’t rewind that tape but if you’re reading this and you are or know of a young couple expecting a baby or handling their first one, this read may change your child-raising perspective.
I hope this letter lifts your sanity as we at elitefts continue to live, learn, and pass on – educating and outfitting the strongest athletes around the world. You’ll find new content inside!
If you think having one bar means you can’t do max effort variations, you’re wrong. It’s time to think outside of the box. If you can’t, no worries! I already have, and I came up with 230 variations you can use with a straight bar. No specialty bars required!
Training to get Instagram-worthy glutes is just as much for the guys as it is the girls. Not only will your backside look better, but working on your glutes might help out with knee and back pain, too.
The initial stages of the balance, stability, and proprioception phase will be performed through the slow rebuilding of ROM through single-leg movements and will eventually use more advanced dynamic movements, such as jumping and landing mechanics drills.
The focus of this article will put on the importance of the phase following the rehab phase in terms of the rebuilding of stability, strength, and proprioception in knee injuries, such as patellar fractures and ACL tears.
Hate to break it to you, but you can’t out-correct a corrective exercise.
What do Dave Tate, Nick Showman, Louie Simmons, and high school athletes have in common? A love-hate relationship with the trap bar… and a few other movements.
It seems that lifters do not understand the importance of the upper back or how to use it in the three main lifts. The lifters I judged at a recent meet and just about all of my clients prove that to me, so let’s fix that.
Save your back from disc compressions by shifting from heavy squats to belt squats. It’ll help you recover faster, which will give you results faster and with fewer injuries.
Want to smoke your old PRs? Try applying daily undulating periodization, or DUP, to your programming. Rather than changing sets, reps, and intensity every 6 to 12 weeks, DUP changes those variables on a daily basis.
The debate between raw versus gear has died down, more or less, but the debate of how to train one versus the other is still on-going. This might be controversial, but for the most part, I don’t think you need to train differently raw or geared with a few exceptions.
Think goblet squats are wimpy exercises? Follow this program for five weeks, and you’ll change your mind. You’ll likely improve your squat mechanics, too.
This 12-week cycle is very effective when followed to a T. If picked apart, it won’t work as well, so listen closely.
It’s hard to argue that triphasic training produces results. But what happens when you combine triphasic and conjugate training methods? I decided to find out with an experiment and apply it to my squat. The result: I added more than 50 pounds to my squat in 4 months.
Wrapping someone else’s knees might seem easy, but when it comes to being a self-wrapper, that’s another story. Luckily Joe Sullivan’s familiar with being a self-wrapper, so he’ll show you the ropes — and how to better wrap your training partner’s knees.
Want to mix up your home gym training session with the equipment you already own? Grab your rack, a pair of elitefts Pro Light Bands, and a pipe, and we’ll get you all set up in no time to do some sissy squats.
How many of these things do you think about when you’re training? What could you be doing to make yourself and your training partners better?
Ed Coan and Dave Tate explain their rationales and favorite accessory movements and variation lifts for training weak points.
You’ve probably heard Newton’s third law: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Turns out Newton DIDN’T tell you that he specifically wrote this law in anticipation of gym bros only training the muscles they see in the mirror. Let me explain.
You know, we hear coaches complain about their athletes’ excuses… but let me tell you, coaches can be just as bad. Case in point: The excuses coaches make for not making their kids do box squats.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.