For most things in life, you start with nothing. Get comfortable with this.
How you choose to prime your body for a training session is up to you, but not all warm up and recovery methods are equal.
There are benefits to having a crew and there are benefits to relying on only yourself. Which are most important for you?
Life stress is unavoidable. It can overwhelm you and have a negative impact on your training…if you let it.
In this profession, you are going to experience career limbo. Sometimes you don’t know where you’re going next — or if you’ll even have a job next season.
No amount of strategic planning can account for your body’s unexpected responses to training and life. Be prepared to stop bowing down to your program and start listening to your body.
Every year my wife and I take our kids on a vacation, and that usually means a cruise. If you’ve been on a cruise, you know what I mean when I say “white trash.”
Train with me for one day and I will know more about you than I could learn from a year outside the gym. If you spend time with the weights, you’ll learn more about yourself, too.
This case study, derived from my extensive rehabilitation, details every aspect of the steps I took to overcome an unexpected and immediate halt to my training.
A proper weight room strategy provides adequate attention to the development of strength and size — two qualities necessary for your team’s improvement.
How many of you feel “broken” or immobile when you’re not under a bar? How are you accommodating?
Before making the assumption that all women have wide hips and should therefore squat wide and deadlift sumo, consider these other factors that will inform good technique.
Nobody who is serious about forward progress enters the gym without a plan, without a set of guiding principles. I’ll argue the same is true in life.
The seminar era produced stories about cabs and airports and churches and bomb shelters. This is one of my favorites.
For correcting weaknesses in a given portion of a lift, you need to use what I call Mechanically Similar Movements.
A logical process of elimination begins by considering all possible causes of your sticking point. I don’t have the answer but I can help you find it.
What good is that 500-pound squat if you’re taking a knee in the fourth quarter desperately gasping for air?
As a powerlifter, you have one goal: move the weight. The faster, the better. Or maybe not.
If you spend all your time in high gear, you need to find a way to downshift. This technique is what works for me.
This is my journey: to help people find strength, like I found strength.
Building calf size takes time—a lot of it. This is the system I’ve used countless times to bring up my calves and the calves of my clients.
After two heart surgeries, I was starting to recover. I was making progress. That’s when my cardiologist called with more bad news.
The first thing that you need to do is decide on what your limiting factors are: time, equipment, physical abilities, skill, and audience.
Instead of telling you about the event, I’ll do you a favor: here is an eight-hour video of every presentation.
We’ve utilized Mann’s method with great results as written and with a few tweaks — breaking up the fourth set is just what our basketball players needed to bust through their strength plateau.
Men and women have different needs. Pay attention to these eleven factors when programming for your female clients.
On the quest for hypertrophy? Take note of these facts before shunning cardio.
If you ever want to reach an elite level in this sport, you have to get the rookie mistakes out of the way. These are the most common problems I see in intermediate lifters.
It’s not all glitz and glamour in the world of gluttony — but there are some perks.
The success of your program depends on your ability to balance what your head coach wants to do, what you want to do, and what your team really needs.
Training in the S4 Compound means knowing when and how to turn up the intensity. In this back session, Dave and John do exactly that.
These training types are rooted in movement that naturally progress the child from private training to play dates with a friend.
This three-part competitive conditioning challenge will leave you searching for a puke bucket. Can you handle it?
There’s a way to know if your genetics suck — but not until you’ve given 100%. If you don’t spend enough time trying, you’ll never know.
A lot of lifters show huge discrepancies between their strength in training videos and their performance in competition. If you design your program correctly, your best lifts will happen where it counts: on the platform.
It’s taken me a while to grasp just how necessary these blood pumping sessions can be. Ditch the excuses and start doing these today.
Are you conscious of where you’re placing your elbows during presses, rows, flyes, curls, and pullovers?
The rivalry between Duffin and Byrd has pushed both lifters to higher numbers and bigger squats. Hear them talk about their training, history, and competing against one another.
Now that we’ve tackled the squat, let’s break down the bench set up and introduce a cue system to use during every set.
If we want to get better, if we want to improve the future of our profession, we need to be honest with ourselves. We need to understand and address the real issues.
When new athletes come into your program you don’t know their abilities, training history, or technical proficiency. This is a crucial part of your program: preparing your athletes for their sport.
When you test your clients, are you using the assessment to improve a fitness quality or simply to make yourself appear knowledgeable?
Athletes get banged up over the years through training, especially for high-endurance events. How do you factor in all these variables when programming to keep your clients healthy , competitive, and injury free?
It’s only a matter of time before I fail again. I used to cringe at the thought of failing, but not anymore.
You can love training more than anything else in your life but that doesn’t mean it’s always going to be fun. What will you do when training becomes the most difficult part of your day?
You need someone who isn’t afraid to criticize; you need to listen to what you’re doing wrong.
Success is a personal definition. I can’t tell you what it is. But I can tell you about passion.