Philosophy

Since most training programs come from either athletics or a military background it becomes important to learn how to train with a sustainable philosophy for the general population non competitive sporting or military minded individual. Now this may seem simple but it's not without issues as well. If the general thesis for training the general population is to engage sustainably with training then you still have to make progress in the gym otherwise you are just doing a wei

If you are familiar with the work of Louie Simmons one of the most insightful parts of his programming at Westside Barbell was the implementation of training specifically based on energy systems. This was implemented for the purpose of creating the strongest powerlifters possible. For those of us not interested in pursuing that mountaintop what we can still take away from his teachings is that in order to display competency in specific physical domains you have to train spe

I know there are a lot of people who have looked under every rock and bush as far as why CF got derailed/failed or otherwise became another fad fitness approach. There are many, many complicated answers here but I want to explore what I feel was the most critical flaw. This is not to say that CF failed completely. Did they make some big mistakes.....yup. However, they nearly single handedly brought barbell lifting culturally back from the dead in the United States and man

About 10 years ago I had the exceptionally rare opportunity to learn from a living legend in strength sports. Boris Sheiko has potentially created more elite level lifters than any other coach in history. So when he was going to travel the West Coast giving Seminars it was an opportunity of a lifetime for anyone who coaches any kind of strength training or strength sport. Here are some of the takeaways from that seminar. Sheiko has a training system that is high volume comp

One of the challenges with training to remove osteoporosis risks and osteopenia risks from the general population is that the individuals who need the most amount of help aren't readily given good solutions. Often what happens is that ladies are given poor options and poor guidance when it comes to strength training and conditioning. So imagine my surprise when I learned about the LIFTMOR study. The study consisted of many different barbell lifting exercises which to my su

In a world full of online coaches, athletes, clients and influencers what we currently have in the training landscape is the reality that there are a lot of people looking to help as well as people looking for help. It's really easy to put a program out there with little in the way of consideration and immediately people will be looking into it and training with it. The wild part is that it could be the dumbest program in the world and people will try to run it for months a

When you are looking for people to learn from in a field rife with phonies it always is refreshing and invigorating to learn from those who have done way more than most. It was my privilege earlier in my career to be able to learn from and spend some time with many great powerlifters and powerlifting coaches. These included but were not limited to Matt Wenning, Donnie Thompson, Boris Sheiko, Mikhail Koklayaev, Andrey Malanichev and Richard Hawthorne. There are always inter

When we look at training programs of powerlifters, bodybuilders, strongmen/strongwomen and many other kinds of strength sport athletes what you see is a wildly diverse amount of training. Some people approach their training from a higher intensity, lower volume perspective. Others have a training program that revolves around greater volumes of work with less intensity baked in week after week. Ultimately what matters most is the reality that the training and recovery proce

Strength coaching as well as personal training in the United States are relatively young professions. If we can use Boyd Epley as the first example of what it looks like to have a codified program at the University of Nebraska in 1969 we start to understand that the profession as a whole is still relatively young. This is why it is not abnormal to run into a lot of training programs that very much have a wild west style. What happens on Monday has nothing to do with what h

For many people the landscape of training is highly nebulous. Are we training like bodybuilders, powerlifters, olympic lifters, swimmers, triathletes........and what does that even look like at year 5? 6? 10? It's hard to give people answers beyond the things that I have experienced as a coach. I literally don't know what it's like to compete in a triathlon so I don't know what that is going to feel like in year 5, 6, 7, 8. What I can advocate for though in any athletic

The squat in strength and conditioning is probably one of the most debated, researched and dogmatically approached movements. Just in a couple of sentences you could pile up tons of different topics upon which to silo yourself. Do you squat full ROM or partial? Do you let the knees go over the toes? Do you keep your back upright or do you lean over? Do you put the bar in a high bar or low bar position? Do you use Olympic Lifting shoes or do you squat in Chuck Taylors? S

People pursue all sorts of different kinds of fitness goals and training programs for all sorts of different reasons. Some people want to look better for aesthetic reasons. Some people want to prepare their bodies for athletic pursuits. Some people need to train to improve their mental health. Some people do it just because they like to maintain an active lifestyle. Some people are just following orders from their doctor.