I’ve been coaching for almost twenty years now, and I am obsessed with hill running. I have Payton to thank for this, and since speed is the ultimate goal in all of my programs, hills (or stairs for those of you who don’t have a suitable hill close by) are an absolute must in any speed or conditioning program. I’ve spent the bulk of my career split between Cal Poly and San Jose State and both places have significant hill/stadium inclines that are perfect for hammering my athletes.

Why Hills?

Strength and power are critical when we are talking speed, especially during the acceleration phase. Forty-yard dashes, great running backs darting through a seam, a batter racing down the first base line trying to beat out a throw, or a forward exploding to the hole, the sudden burst of speed is the most important factor. It’s the first three to five steps that determine the success of the effort.

Watch the NFL combine. When you see the athletes run their 40s, it’s the start that is the greatest determiner of a good time. Inversely, when you see a guy stumble out of the gate or take a sloppy step, you can rest assured that the time will be less than impressive.

Hill running teaches the drive phase of a sprint as nothing else can. Because of the incline, the runner must use the forefoot to climb. One of the most important speed training cues we use is that front of the foot is for speed, the heels are for braking. Even big guys, who by virtue of their size and propensity to heel contact first when they run on flat ground, are forced into an “appropriate” sprinting position. Think of the lean that you see world-class sprinters use in the first 50-70 meters of a 100-meter dash — that is the position we want to teach and the hill automatically does it for us.

The most obvious benefit is the load hill running puts on the legs. I have always thought that parachute pulling, banded running, and partner towing are silly given that all of those devices or routines are targeting the benefits of time on the hills. Next to squatting, Olympic lifting and/or kettlebell training, nothing will address leg strength and explosiveness like sprints up a hill.

Use Hills for Lateral Applications

Because the vast majority of the teams that I train for speed don’t actually get opportunities in their sports to run straight ahead where track workouts would benefit them (think top-end speed), we devote nearly all of our time working change of direction training. Many kids have little or no understanding of how to turn. They have no understanding of where their body is in space, insist on using their toes to slow down, and more often than not, have little control of their momentum when they run.

Because of the incline of your chosen hill, the runner must naturally situate his/her drive foot in a “toe-in” position when they laterally climb. If they don’t, their efficiency goes down the toilet and they will feel, almost instinctively, a need to adjust. When one are on flat ground, one of the major takeaways in footing that I teach is a subtle toe-in on the outside leg of a directional turn. This does two things. First, it allows the runner to access the big toe completely when they drive. Second, it directionally is in sync with where they are trying to go. Believe it or not, this is something that many of these kids do not possess when they show up at first. And, what you get when they don’t own this technique is a slow, power-stripped attempt at redirecting themselves.

Next, gravity is a bully. The natural incline of the hill demands a very forceful push. One that is necessary on flat ground when the athlete is attempting to accelerate.  If I can get a kid to haul ass up the hill, either laterally or straight ahead, they have context and I can get that type of understanding on flat ground. 

The Benefits of Backward Hill Sprints

Hill running backward is the perfect way to hammer your athletes. The hill I use is out behind our sports complex at Cal Poly is about a 35-yard climb at approximately a 14 percent grade. Steep. We have integrated backward running into the final phase of our hill workouts. Part of it is because I want my kids considerably uncomfortable, part of functional speed for my defensive backs and linebackers, and the other part is because I want them to develop a degree of toughness.

When I was in college, we used to have to backpedal around the outside of the Begley Building at EKU. Truthfully, it was a by-design way to make us miserable. The changes in incline outside were constant and there was an intimate relationship with misery because we would be told to do this for 15 minutes or more without stopping. It was a total jerk move but it taught us a lesson — learn how to push through pain. Nothing careless, just a leg burn that would make you nearly gag on your own vomit.

The foot drive that backward hill running produces basically cannot be duplicated anywhere else. It teaches the kids how to push with all they have off of the forefoot. Remember, acceleration happens at the front of the foot and braking happens in the heel. This trains the runner on the appropriate pressures, where to put them, and how to use their feet in an economic way.

Hills Teach Running Efficiency

Again, because of the incline, the runner is put into a position where they have no choice but to give an all-out effort. Because of the distance, they have to travel up a hill, casual jumping or sissified hopping only makes the getting up the hill take 10 times longer. Because they want it to be over as soon as possible, you get a natural full effort.

The bounding has turned out to be the hardest thing for my kids. Other things might hurt more, but the bounding makes them work as hard as they can, coordinate movements to be as efficient as possible, and it completely burns their anaerobic energy systems to the ground. It’s a pleasure to watch.

Featured Image: KieferPix/Shutterstock

The post The Benefits of Hill Running — More Speed, Better Mechanics, and Power appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The methods that worked like a charm 10 years ago are relics by today’s standards. Teaching methods and coaches are evolving, as are the cookie-cutter software programs. In many respects, the convenience of these programs is worth its weight in gold. But are we losing some of the magic when we do it this way?

My Coaching History

I can’t speak for all coaches because I don’t know what they are up against. My story is a bit of an unusual one for a college strength coach. I paid my coaching dues in a unique way. I started at Eastern Kentucky University as an intern in the spring semester of 2000. Six weeks into my internship, my Head Strength Coach, Mike Kent, took the head job at the University of Louisville and had to leave. Because of the relative newness of his position at EKU, the administration was unprepared and asked me to fill in until a search could be conducted for Coach Kent’s replacement. I worked for three months alone, trying to keep an athletic department strength program afloat.

One of the most difficult tasks while filling in for him was programming the way he programmed. Get this: Kent wrote out every individual program by hand. Each team would have either one sheet or a series of sheets that would carry that team for a month or two. He created each plan in Excel, where the exercises would be built into the framework of the sheet. Then he would spend his weekend hand-programming loads for each athlete over the scope of the entire athletic department. One red pen, followed by hours and hours of work. Kent’s meticulous programming ensured every athlete got the level of individual attention that he felt they needed.

The Difference Between Sheets and White Boards

The coach-athlete relationship is an interesting one. When it comes to compliance, athletes are mandated to show up whether they like it or not, and they don’t have a say in their programming. If you are a private trainer or own a gym/box, your clients have more say. But one thing shines clear in all settings — the people training in your space want to feel like they are being given their due attention, not just as members of a group but as individuals.

There are only a few instances where using a whiteboard is acceptable in my facility. Most of the time, we use whiteboards when we are teaching. When we are trying to get techniques dialed in and where loads are not necessarily a priority, the first month or so is a great time to rely on a whiteboard. Again, in my situation, which is very specific, we will also keep a team on the whiteboard if the team members are not showing a level of dedication. Let’s face it, nobody on campus takes weight training as seriously as I do, and there are some teams who “go through the motions.” I advise my assistants to act accordingly. There’s no need to devote hours and hours of programming for a team that will not give an acceptable effort.

Again, I understand that in a CrossFit box, most clientele can be transient and not as consistent as a college team that is required to show up. That makes the individuality piece more of a headache since you don’t know the next time your clients will show up. But nothing tells your clients you are all in with them, like handing them each a sheet with their name on it. It’s a simple gesture that speaks volumes about your commitment to their progress. Yes, it can be time-consuming, but it can also be a difference between a lackluster effort and a herculean one.

Computer Programming Vs. Hand Programming

I have never used a computer to run percentages for one of my programs. I have always done it by hand. And honestly, I have never used a set percentage to assign loads except for deciding loads for the beginning of a hypertrophy cycle based on a newly minted one-rep max. The method I use is one that Coach Kent taught me, and it’s based on that method’s natural evolution after 16 years of doing it that way.

Computer programming based on percentages, to me, makes some pretty bold assumptions for the duration of a training cycle. First off, if you use a linear method as I do, you probably write for eight to 12 weeks at a time. If I write a twelve-week hypertrophy/strength/power program for a football player, code the weeks with prescribed percentages, and then tap in a one-rep max to be our baseline for the percentages, I am asking the athletes to be perfect with their nutrition, their rest, their effort — at all times. And let’s face it, none of them are. It’s nearly impossible for a person to be that dialed-in all of the time.

Hand programming gives me several advantages that a computer will never provide. First, even though I use what looks like an algebraic formula in my head to determine loads, I get the flexibility to adjust on the fly. You need that flexibility when Joe Blow rolls his ankle the Friday prior. Hand programming gives me an out when I realize that the whole team is about to bonk, and an impromptu deload week is what is needed. It allows me (or forces me, really) to get a complete read on each individual and holds my ass to the fire to stay engaged with each of my athletes. You can ask me at any time of a training cycle what the weight on so-and-so’s bench is on his second set, and 99 out of 100 times, I will know what’s going on.

How I Program

If you were to watch me program, this is what it would look like: I have a stack of sheets, and each one gets the signature “pause and think.” I have to look at the athlete’s name and quickly review and remember what this person did last week. Then the writing begins. I will program a sheet twice a week in some training phases, once for the first half, then once for the second. It keeps me as current as possible for each individual.

When it comes to coaching, I am selling an idea. I am selling a formula. I am asking my athletes to have complete faith in me as I make decisions for them. The way I operate gives my athletes complete freedom not to think. They come in, and their job is to be focused and present and, most importantly, ready to perform. I do all the thinking for them days earlier, so they can just come in and kick ass.

Hand programming is part of that. If I hand you a sheet of computer-printed numbers, it will excite you as much as combing your hair or putting mustard on your sandwich. But when I give you a sheet with my handwriting on it, you should see someone who is partnered with you. The handwriting tells the athletes I have taken the time to think about them every day of every week.

The post It’s 2021 and I Still Handwrite My Training Programs. Here’s Why appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

“Help them understand you know what you are talking about when it comes to training, and then they will be more willing to listen to some of your more fringe ideas.”

I started writing for Breaking Muscle several years back, and I have had an agenda the entire time. In an attempt to get me established as someone with some strength chops, the good folks on the editing team thought it would be a better idea to ease up on the articles centered around the mysterious, esoteric, and unconventional.

“Help them understand you know what you are talking about when it comes to training, and then they will be more willing to listen to some of your more fringe ideas.”

I wrote an original piece, What’s Daoism Got To Do With It? which was a first attempt at offering up some of these ideas. This article was my underhand toss to this community on some heavy ideas.

Well, I’ve waited long enough, and it’s officially time for my freak flag to fly.

I’m about to give you the cliff notes to a much larger project I have been working on since I was conducting clinical research for my Medical Qigong doctorate over 13 years ago.

What you are about to read is real.

Yes, some elements will feel fantastic and whimsical and moments where you will think I’m taking a form of artistic license with my claims. And you couldn’t be further from the truth.

Much of what I will present today have all been proven in studies—if you are inclined to look.

This short dissertation is the exact phrasing I use with my patients who come to see me for help with a medical concern and don’t have a tremendous understanding of Qigong or Chinese medicine in general.

But, you get to look at the world I live in through the strength lens and not the healing lens: even though you will quickly find they are not independent of one another. So sit back, and listen to some ideas that you likely have never heard before.

Everything is Energy

Okay, well, most of you have probably heard that, but it’s a fundamental concept that needs to be accepted if we will make any headway with all of this.

The good news is, any high school physics book will confirm this if you need convincing. That computer/phone screen you are looking at, the shoes you are wearing, the water in the ocean, and the stars in the sky are all energy. You are, in fact, energy.

Everything that is material in this world, everything that is not, and everything in between is, you guessed it, energy differentiating by tone, vibration, and quality.

Neo in The Matrix, the moment he is brought back to life by Trinity with the kiss and through the eyes of the one, sees the world as it indeed looks like a fantastic cornucopia of lights and colors beyond description.

Yin and Yang

With that being said, we may learn the most fundamental understanding of this through the image of yin and yang: you know, the two teardrops that have come together to represent duality, the circle of life, and the expression of opposites.

The yin and yang are established right around the first cellular division after the moment of conception.

We Daoists believe that in many ways, that moment is as important, if not more important, than when the sperm hits the egg. That division is where yin and yang take form, where every child’s virtues are escorted in, and software of the divine spirit begins to run its program.

In that moment, and all through gestation, the developing child is in a nuclear nirvana of sorts that can only be disturbed by excessive stressors that the mother is enduring.

I like to think that the yin and yang of that being are in total balance, and perfection (in almost all cases) has been achieved and maintained for nine months.

Before we go much further, we probably should give you a quick explanation of what this whole yin and yang thing is. But first, it’s yin, not ying with a G. And it’s yang as in yawn—not yang and dang. When was the last time you heard someone say daaaang and mean it?

Joe Dirt said it a couple of times, and probably one of your hillbilly friends, right. Well, for those of us in this business who hear that, immediately see the hillbilly friend in you when we listen to you say ying and yaaaang!

Forgive me, but it needed to be said.

For this article, yin and yang will be defined as the quality of the energy we are talking about:

1. Yin represents female, calm, cool, the shadow side of the mountain, the moon.
2. Yang is male, aggressive, hot, on the light side of the mountain, the stars. Inside of every single atom in your body lies these qualities.

Gather up all the atoms, and we have you, and during the time you are in the cozy confines of mommy’s tummy, all is balanced, as balance pertains to you individually.

My balance is different than yours, but it is understood and accepted that this balance exists to some degree in all of us.

In moments of true balance, everything in the body works beautifully. All systems are tuned to the maximum, and during that nine months, the miracle of life is taking shape. And then, you take your first breath.

It’s a Boy

Those words are followed by one of the most blood-curdling screams that you will ever hear. I know it well. I’ve heard that scream three times.

I was in a position with our doctor when the entire process happened for my wife and our kids, and I remember that sound. Many people think that is inherently reflexive, and it’s the baby’s way of announcing that he or she has arrived.

But I have a different theory.

If everything is energy, and energy cannot be destroyed, think about the room the woman is in having one of the most cataclysmic events of her life. Then think of the woman that was there before her, and then the one before that.

Over time, that room becomes a petri dish of emotion and the electrical charge as those events soak into the walls.

Think of how the dad feels (I can only speak for myself, but I was a nervous wreck for each delivery, probably more so than my incredible wife). Think of how jacked up the doctor and hospital staff is at the moment the pushing gets going.

Come back to the mom’s true love, elation, excruciating pain, fear, joy, terror, and all the most explosive emotions of which a human is capable are permeating into every square inch of that room.

Baby has spent approximately nine months in the most glorious environment he/she will ever know, and in one breath, all that energy of the room is taken-in for their first toke of life.

At that moment, the equal union of yin and yang is radically altered, and the rest of that person’s life is spent chasing balance.

Dis-Ease

Think about it. According to the Alexa on my desk:

• As a noun, ease is defined as freedom from labor, pain or physical annoyance, tranquil rest, comfort.
• As a verb, it’s defined as to free from anxiety or care.
• Throw “dis” in front of it, and there you go.

Now, I’m not betting my farm on Alexa being the all-knowing soothsayer that only spits truths, but if we can agree that her definition is close to accurate, then what is missing?

She never mentioned:

1. Proper diet
2. Eight glasses of water a day
3. Taking vitamins
4. Don’t live next to a power plant.
5. Using fluoride-free toothpaste

The things that Alexa mentioned had to do with aspects of life perceived from the inside and the types of things we all hope to attain.

Her understanding of the second half of disease has to do with calm, stillness, and satisfaction at the moment.

Good thing my Alexa and I are so tight because much of the Chinese Medical system is based on things like emotions, virtues, and the elements. Tie specifics to organs and what we have is an elegant way of looking at illness and the root cause of everything that delivers us to the waiting room of our favorite MD.

If ease’s opposite is centered on anxiety, discomfort, pain, and physical annoyance, can you start to put the picture together that much of our illnesses are rooted in emotional distress?

Take that one giant step forward; if you become inundated with overbearing emotions, particularly one or two, that yin and yang balance is thrown into turmoil.

The longer you stay in imbalance, the richer the soil is to grow something terrible. I am simplifying this by leaps and bounds.

If I had absolute freedom to explain all of the correlations drawn between this organ, that meridian, and these emotions, I would be able to paint a clear picture for you. Just trust that it’s all there.

The Noise of Life

I used the word noise because it captures an idea I hope you will grasp in this section.

The most centered person on earth is faced with the challenges of living this life in this time.

• Take any monk-ish person on this planet, someone who has cultivated themselves with decades of committed practice to meditation, prayer (something we will visit in the third installment), and drop them in downtown Los Angeles.
• Then, give them a cell phone, a corporate job, a bad diet, a new girlfriend, bills to pay, and a right knee giving him problems, and then watch all that work devolve before our eyes.
• See, the devout, the ones who have dedicated their lives to service, particularly service from a religious or spiritual angle, those folks go off to monasteries and seminaries and are effectively locked up and removed from society, so the noise of the day-to-day is filtered.
• They can have the ideal conditions to work their craft. They aren’t anti-social; they create the best possible setting for deep introspection, study, and cultivation.

The best way to learn to fly is in an airplane. The best place to learn how to be a priest and be in service of God is in a monastery, away from society’s day-to-day.

Now, if you are buying the whole yin and yang position, and we know that the only time in one’s life where balance is genuinely achieved is in the womb, then every second, we are boots on the ground in this world, we are chasing that balance.

I tell my patients that they will likely never achieve that absolute balance ever again unless they adopt some practice.

Our lives Are a Yang Thunderstorm.

Think about that for a moment:

• The hustle and grind of life
• Our jobs
• Our relationships
• The garbage that the media is continuously trying to shovel down our throats, like our diets.
• Everything we encounter in our waking times is stress.
• And in the case of this article, we are having yang-type energy blasted at us and into our energetic field around the clock.

If we don’t have a solution to offset this continual inundation, our teardrops should be equal to each other and start morphing into something so one-sided that illness is destined to happen.

I want to leave you with this.

And then we throw training on top of it. We intentionally add another yang activity into an already noisy day because we love it, and we think we are doing ourselves a favor.

Yes, our fitness is beneficial, our jeans look good, and I’ll be the first one to say that I go through a legit posing routine in the morning in the mirror right before brushing my teeth (quit lying, you do, too). We love our gym time, and we know it’s good for us.

Or is it?

The post The Yin and Yang in Strength Training to Optimize Balance appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Does original thought exist? Have we covered everything, or are there thinkers out there who aren’t in the box? I know my friend David Weck down in San Diego is changing the game when it comes to running, but when we get down to the nitty-gritty of strength training, we all regurgitate the same things while adding our particular flare?

The reason I ask is that working with my population (13-18-year-olds), I have needed to simplify and streamline much of my teachings to get what I need from them. Any of you who work in this demographic realize that the young ones will tune you out if you get too sciencey. I’ve learned this the hard way.

Therefore, my job has been to distill the big words, find ways for the kids to understand and create rules around the larger concepts. Then, the young ones can skillfully navigate a training session and think independently.

Before we begin, I want to acknowledge you smarties out there reading this. What you are about to read applies to most.

Yes, due to something unique to them and them alone, there will be those who make this coaching inappropriate. Someone with an anatomical issue that forces a degree of change to the rules presented might not be the perfect person for this.

But, this teaching is for the masses.

This technique is for coaches like me, who coach large groups at one time and see between 60-150 kids per training session every hour of every workday.

It’s rarely under 60 bodies, and I will coach up to eight groups a day.

• I need to be efficient.
• I need to be precise.
• I need to simplify things where the vast majority can understand what I’m asking.
• And I need them to problem-solve independently.

Simplicity is the recipe.

Don’t Share Everything You Know.

Look, I know you are not a child, but you would be lying to us both if you didn’t still require permission on a few things. We do it with our government, our jobs, the law, even within the confines of our own homes. So what I’m going to say to you might liberate many of you.

You have my permission, while coaching, to not share everything you know.

“I see this in young coaches all the time. They are so fired up about all the science they consume and all of the new technological know-how that they want to peacock and word vomit everything at their clientele.”

And what I’ve learned after almost 25 years of doing this is to tell them only what they need to know to do what you want, the way you want, and nothing more.

If I need one of my high schoolers to pry their knees out when they squat or pull, I don’t have to give them a dissertation as to why.

• Yes, I could write books about why it makes everything better, safer, and more powerful.
• I could give them the anatomical ins and outs and explain why structurally it’s a superior approach to others in clinical-level terms.
• I can give detailed reasons and justification that innervating the glutes first protects the spine and then drives the work into the hip’s engine.

But why should I do that? Just pry your damn knees out—every rep.

If I can simplify, qualify, and streamline things, so my kids know what I want and apply it at the right time, then why go any further? This article is precisely that.

It’s boatloads of experience and over two decades of painstaking distillation into the most straightforward explanation that works 99% of the time.

The Midline Is Where All the Goodies Are

The midline is where the goodies are located—your eyes, throat, lungs, heart, diaphragm, guts, and reproductive equipment.

Any structures that are worthwhile and responsible for keeping you alive run along your midline.

The further you move away from the middle, the less critical it is.

If you have spent any time training martial arts, particularly any Chinese styles, you quickly learn to attack the midline.

If you want the fight to end, immediately crush anywhere on the midline.

Remove an eye, crush a throat, slam your knee into their diaphragm or rake some testicles and watch how fast your opponent retreats.

The midline is also where movement originates, particularly athletic movement.

The best movers have uncanny control of their core (as much as I hate that word). Again, I default to martial arts. Watch high-level fighters kick, throw punches and engage their opponent. If you slow down the video, you will see how the midsection initiates the coiling and spiraling to generate speed, power, and precision.

I spent a long time training the Chinese internals.

“The movement is based on the notion that an etheric pole runs through the body from the center of the top of the head down through and out the perineum—the Taiji pole drills to the center of the earth and anchors in the heavens.”

Woo, woo sounding, I know. Once you get a sense of this and understand it’s much like one of the horses on a merry-go-round and that you are effectively a kabob with a pole going through it, your movement becomes cleaner, and your root becomes sturdy and powerful.

This control is why, when you see high-level Tai Chi players move through their sequences, one of the things you notice is how balanced they appear, how marvelous their posture is, and how they seem to have otherworldly control—it’s because they do.

If that is too fanciful for you, consider your center of gravity. As long as you own your center of gravity, things like balance become something more under your control.

It’s why we hinge, squat, push and pull in the manner that we do. Think about catching a clean. Why is it so important that we get our elbows through and up when we catch a clean? People in the know understand there are likely dozens of potential answers.

Still, the best one is to get your elbows up with your humerus parallel to the floor. Functionally, this puts the load of the bar directly in the center of your body.

However:

• In 90% of clean misses, the load is to the front.
• In 90% of those misses, it can be attributed to the elbows being down-ish.

The bar itself is to the front of the body’s center, effectively moving the lifter’s center of gravity forward of the body. The entire event leads the lifter to either dump or to lurch forward to reclaim balance.

It’s a hot mess that the lifter could have avoided if the lifter would have shot the elbows up as quickly and as high as possible.

The Importance of Feet Biomechanics

I’m not a guy who has taken any real deep dives in learning the foot’s intrinsic workings, but I know a few things. Anyone who disregards their feet, glazes over their role, or is ignorant to how important the feet are, is handcuffing themselves in any training situation.

I’m not saying that you need to buy those creepy-toed minimalist shoes or take a course on foot anatomy and biomechanics, but there are a few things you need to concede if you want the most from your training.

Yes, it would help if you considered your footwear for the job in front of you.

No, you wouldn’t wear ice skates to run sprints, so you shouldn’t wear the new balloon shoes by any of the top dog shoe manufacturers to lift.

Any closed chain exercise requires that you and the floor work together. The ground is your partner, and the more fluff you have between the ground and your foot, the more disconnect you have between the mover and the movement.

Taking things one step forward, the position you choose for your foot for a given exercise sets the stage for the entire body moving up the chain.

Toes out, toes in, toes dead straight all impact the structures, muscles, and joints up to and probably beyond the thoracic spine. So, having a whimsical approach to where your feet are in space is like wearing swimming fins to go hiking. Okay, I’ll stop with the dumb analogies.

Your Feet Relate to the Midline

Over the years, I have had to simplify things so my lifters can get moving and problem-solve and answer their questions. Sure, I don’t mind my athletes’ questions, but I will not be standing next to them for every rep throughout their lives.

Therefore, part of my job is to help them develop a tool kit for problem-solving for themselves.

“Coach, how much turn out can I have for this exercise?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

The midline rule is simple when standing with your feet on or as close to your midline, where both feet touch; the toes should be pointing dead straight.

The further away you get from the midline, the more turn-out allowance you get.

A great way of showing them this is actually with your arms.

• Put your arms out in front of you with your thumbs touching, and then slowly move your arms out to your side without moving your wrists.
• At the beginning (*on or pressed directly into the midline), the fingers are dead straight.
• As you slowly move your arms out, the more your fingers begin to angle (from your perspective of where they are in space).
• And, by the time you get your arms straight out your side (iron cross style), your fingers should be pointing directly out to the sides.

This is, in many ways, the same thing with your feet. If I have you stand feet together, your toes are virtually straight ahead.

1. If I move you out to where we teach RDL’s, the feet are directly under hips, nearly straight, and with minor angling.
2. When you move to a squat stance, the feet are just outside the hips but inside the shoulders and widen a little. We allow some more toeing-out to happen—10-30 degrees is the allowable range.
3. Then leap to a sumo stance. The feet are extensively wide apart with considerable toeing-out.

From feet together to the other end of the spectrum into sumo, the stance the exercise demands instructs the lifter on how much toeing out is allowed.

What I tell my kids as it relates to which stance to set up for a given lift is as follows:

• If you hear the word sumo in the exercise’s name- it’s a broad stance toe out a ton.
• If it’s a kettlebell ballistic- it’s in between your sumo and your squat stance, toes angling out for comfort.
• If you hear the word squat in the exercise’s name, your stance begins in your preferred squat stance with the toe rules already stated above.
• If it isn’t a kettlebell ballistic or you don’t hear the word sumo or squat in the name of the exercise, you will almost always be right to use the narrow, feet under hips stance with toes nearly dead straight. This applies to RDL’s, cleans, deadlifts, and lunge variations.

It’s that simple. I give the kids enough information to navigate a lift. They have some firm but straightforward rules to remember.

I engage them in the idea that “I’m going to tell you this once, and then you are going to be expected to apply this to everything.”

So, if they come to me and ask me where their feet should be, my answer to them is, “What’s your midline rule?”

If they paid attention to the explanation the first time and know that the name of nearly all the exercises gives them the answer to their question, they can answer it for themselves.

I know, I know, it seems like a lot as you read this. But once you understand and buy into the midline rule, you can get in a room with 125 14-year-olds approaching each set of each lift in the correct stance—just like me.

The post Midline Rule: Simplify Your Stance appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

My reason for writing this is because I have been wrong a lot.

When strung together, we should say these three words with our tail between our legs and a strong shimmy to our confidence. I’m not going to get on my high horse and go through some Pinterest list of virtuous bullet points on how personal growth starts here and how courage is found in these moments, blah blah blah.

My reason for writing this is because I have been wrong a lot.

I know what it feels like to be a young coach/trainer who has one of these epic moments where the thought, “Ohhh shit, I think I’ve screwed up,” races up your spine like an alarm going off at a firehouse.

And in that bone-chilling moment, you see your career, your approach, and your entire belief structure go flashing before your eyes.

It’s a gut punch, for sure, but one that comes with a ton of upside.

I hope you can set your ego aside and admit that some of your tried and trues might be what is holding you and your clientele back.

Toes Up

My career started in the springtime of 1999. I was a card-carrying meathead by the dictionary definition of the word.

I loved the weight room, started my collegiate strength and conditioning career, and could not have been happier. I thought beginning work at 4 am was terrific. Less sleep meant I could be in the gym longer. When I shut down training at 7 or 8 pm, it was perfect.

I didn’t want a relationship or a family anyway. I was that guy.

One of the coaching cues that we used for years was toes up! Toes up in our squats, or deadlifts, basically any closed-chain exercise.

The intention was a good one (sort of), in that we were trying to get the lifters to shift their weight back. We knew that much of the posterior chain appears online when the heels are dug-in.

It was the day and age when all problems were blamed on posterior chain issues.

“Do you have chronic migraines?”

“It’s because your posterior chain is weak.”

“Breaking up with your wife?”

“It’s posterior chain issues.”

“Do you have erectile dysfunction, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic nosebleeds, sleepwalking or severe acne?”

“A steady diet of RDL’s should fix it all.” – Yeah, so we preached.

And we preached it. And then something funny started to happen. We were getting a lot of low back issues, particularly when squatting. These ailments were also during the last few years where political correctness wasn’t a thing.

We blamed every injury or chronic problem on the kid’s lack of toughness or inherent softness.

Then, seven years into my career, I heard a friend of mine give a talk at a kettlebell course I attended on the big toe and how it has a direct neurological relationship with the glutes:

1. The big toe
2. Knuckle down
3. Glutes come on

Wait, what?

The glutes are part of the posterior chain, but it’s like the most posterior of the posterior chain.

Oh shit, I think I’ve screwed this up.

After experiencing this myself, the kids I had coached up to this point, including the soft-ass ones with the low back issues, raced through my mind. Have I been holding my athletes back (by this time, in the thousands)?

Could I have been the reason all those kids ended up with low back issues? The cold hard truth is, very likely yes.

One Message

I’ve told this story before on this site, but it bears repeating. While this comes up time and again, I was hell-bent on becoming the second coming of my mentor, Mike Kent.

Coach Kent is a national coaching treasure. There’s no one like him, and every athlete he’s ever come across loved him. I was one of them, and I was desperate to be just like him.

The problem is, I couldn’t see how adaptable he was to different groups.

I became the football version because I played football for Coach Kent, and I thought that version was the silver bullet to get any athlete to work.

Was I right? With football, I was golden:

• They loved the way I coached them.
• I was hard but playful when the time was right.
• I pushed them and wouldn’t for a second listen to any bitching or complaining from anyone.
• I challenged them as men and asked them to reach outside of themselves during every training session.

In retrospect, I was a bully of sorts, and they ate it up.

Insert our Women’s Soccer team. You can guess what is coming—same recipe. I coached hard, took no excuses, refused to let them complain, and pushed them harder than ever.

And, I lost every single one of them. When I say lost, I mean I earned the nickname The Weight Room Nazi.

They hated me.

They hated coming to the weight room, and I got to the point where my skin would crawl, knowing they were on the docket for the day.

Instead of inspiring them or showing them how to dig deep, they descended further into disinterest and lack of care. It was the worst.

Was the reason that:

• They were a bunch of spoiled rich kids?
• They had some weak coaches before me, who let the athletes walk all over them, and now they finally had someone who demanded hard work?
• I was dealing with young women who were relatively new to weight training?
• They didn’t believe that blood makes the grass grow. And, perhaps the ladies thought saying something like that makes you sound like a moron.
• These 25 young ladies, most importantly, weren’t football players, and my approach was what was failing?

Oh shit, I think I’ve screwed this up. I’ll let you decide for yourself.

Death of the Ego

There is being right, and then the insecure, desperate, and manic need to be right. Somewhere in the middle is where most of us dwell.

And the entire reason for writing this article is to challenge you to do some soul searching.

I promised no Pinterest moments, but I’m almost 22 years in the game, and I welcome the whoops-a-daisy moments. I’ve learned enough and seen so much that there are those times when I feel like I’ve seen it all.

And then, I realize that I don’t know everything.

Our egos are functioning for a slew of reasons. Some are productive, but most are toxic. And as a coach or trainer, we have chosen a significant decision-making profession. We are the final word, the long arm of the law.

Most of us have a ton of education (degrees and certs) and are confident in our thinking. Because of the physical nature of what we do and the nervous system’s incredible adaptability, even when we are wrong, the body adjusts and gives us credit when we aren’t deserving.

I Don’t Know

Dr. Susan Puhl (may she rest in peace) was my Advanced Exercise Physiology instructor and my thesis chair during my graduate work. She was as smart as they came and was a hammer in the classroom.

I love to tell this story about my first group presentation in her class.

We had taken the topic of altitude and its effects on the human body. The instructor broke us into small groups, and we spent an entire evening presenting our sections.

Each group had 3-5 people, and we were responsible for a few minutes individually for each section. We were all a tad nervous, and then the first student gets up and starts her portion.

Within the first couple of minutes, Dr. Puhl asks her a question. At that moment, the lady gave an answer that she thought might pass.

Dr. Puhl commented, “Wrong—try again.”

The young lady made another attempt at talking her way through the answer.

All we heard from the back of the room was, “Nope, the wrong answer, try again.”

The student’s portion was to be a few minutes. But, the exchange turned into 20 minutes with her sobbing in front of 18 strangers.

Round and round, they went. The more this girl tried to bullshit, the more Dr. Puhl wouldn’t let her off the hook.

Halfway through this debacle, I began to sink in my seat because I was up next and feeling the doom that might come my way.

Another guy named Victor in my group was already terrified about presenting, so I’m pretty sure that he was sitting there, in a puddle of his urine.

Right before this poor girl’s soul was about to leave her body for good, Dr. Puhl called off the dogs.

Dr. Puhl said, “Do you know why I’m not stopping?” And the wet mess of a human in front of us said, “No, why?”

Her answer was straightforward.

“It’s because you clearly don’t know, but refuse to admit that you don’t. So you would rather make up answers than admit that you don’t know. I would have happily accepted that and let you move on, but instead, I wanted to see how long you would rattle off guesses than swallow your pride and let us all know you don’t have the answer. In the future, the answer is simple; the answer is, I don’t know.”

– Dr. Susan Puhl

From that moment forward, things changed for all of us. As you might have figured, when I was to get up and answer questions, I was tripping over myself to give the reliable and bulletproof answer, I don’t know.

I appreciate the need to be right. I understand the image we are trying to uphold, and we don’t want to look unprepared. But know when to stop talking in circles and attempting to pull an answer out of thin air.

And never, ever, bullshit. Let them know that you don’t know, but will find out and get back to them with an answer as soon as you can.

What We’ve Always Done

• Do you know how many studies were in the first-ever edition of The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research? Four.
• Do you know how many studies were featured in the last edition of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research? Nineteen.

What the hell does any of this have to do with this article?

When I was on my come up, I used to, like a nerd, spend my evenings and weekends in the library at Eastern Kentucky reading all the research I could get my hands on. I have read every word of the first five volumes (currently at 34) of that publication.

Due to this journal and other scientific journals like it, the profession has accelerated discoveries and improved old ones.

When I got my start, the profession was in diapers. Now, I mean, the evolution of strength science is like a rocket ship. We are evolving at a breathtaking rate.

The reason I bring this up to you is that I’m guilty of this myself, perhaps more than anyone.

The phrase, “What we’ve always done.” rolls right off of your tongue.

It’s also the biggest cop-out answer of them all. It tells us that you are lazy. It gives me all the information I will ever need about you.

I’m experiencing this as we speak, a professional night of the soul. I’m on the back nine of my career, and what we’ve always done doesn’t make much sense.

Yes, there are mainstays in my system, those exercises or groupings that would be the hill on which I would die. But many of the things I have preached for two decades are losing their shine. Why? Because I’m tinkering with other things.

I’m listening to fresh voices and watching some brilliant people do some unconventional things that are downright better at producing the results that I want. This openness is in contrast to what I’ve always done.

To give you a glimpse, much of the traditional exercises, like squats and deads, and how we’ve executed them, don’t work.

I’m a big carryover guy. If we do this in the weight room, then we do this on the field. And to be honest, I’m struggling to lie to myself that the carryover is there in the way I need it to be or how I have fantasized it to be. Has it all been a lie? In real-time, I’m telling you, oh shit, I think I’ve screwed this up.

I am standing on the mountaintop of epic proportions in the world of admitting I was wrong. I’m questioning the very fabric of my system.

Not because I have been wrong the whole time, but that there are now better choices.

You can’t be wrong when it’s the best choice available, but when a better alternative has shown its face, It’s a real crossroads.

I’m not exactly sure where I’ll be a year from now. Stay tuned and find out.

Look, we all have to face the music at some point. The day will come when you realize that something you are prescribing to your clientele isn’t working. And that is okay. It’s pretty liberating, to be honest.

I’m too old to waste any more time.

My reputation has never really been a thing for me and certainly isn’t something I’m afraid to tarnish now. So admitting when I’m wrong and saying, “I don’t know” (big love to you, Dr. Puhl) is easy for me. It gives me room for something better.

I want to be excellent and don’t have any more time to throw away.

Embrace being wrong. It happens. Do what is required of you, and then move on. You’ll be better for it.

The post I Was Wrong appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

• Lifting weights does not equal, superior athletic performance.
• Just as specialized weight training exercises for sports do not necessarily, equal a beautiful physique.

Hell, even the words themselves are eerily similar. When, in fact, the two couldn’t be more different. The strength culture that is booming right now needs a little time to sort out some basic science.

• Lifting weights does not equal, superior athletic performance.
• Just as specialized weight training exercises for sports do not necessarily, equal a beautiful physique.

Herein lies 85% of the problems/misunderstandings for most coaches.

I’m writing this because I was that guy a long time ago, not only as a coach but as an athlete myself. A young person does not have the years of experience and a vast number of tools in their kit to have the necessary programming flexibility to suit their needs.

They all assume big is strong and powerful and fast.

And it’s just not the case. So, I’m hoping to clear up some thinking so that you can walk away from this with curiosity and the desire to investigate further.

Athleticism

I’m probably going to piss off many of my peers; I 100% don’t care.

Athleticism is not a singular quality. It is the marriage of several qualities that happen naturally in a person; Naturally, unconscious movement competence. I need you to understand that.

Our greatest athletes do things instinctively, without thinking.

Their gifts lie in the most optimal movement patterns to express:

• Speed
• Explosiveness
• Agility
• Power
• Strength

The first and best way to sniff this out is to look at a person’s feet when they stand at rest.

1. The more turned out the feet are (consistently), the more you probably have someone who would be on the unathletic spectrum.
2. The more neutral or slightly pigeon-toed they consistently stand at rest, the more likely they’re naturally athletic.

To further melt your mind, two things sound counterintuitive in what I’m saying above.

1. Pure athleticism does not automatically make you a good football player, a good baseballer, or a basketballer. A good athlete must then adopt an entire slew of sport-specific skills to be considered a good (or great) athlete. It is then, and only then, where the natural athleticism can be put on display.
2. Athleticism is something that can indeed be trained. I’m sure many of my contemporaries are getting nosebleeds hearing me say this. If even the most unathletic person has a radical desire to improve, they can, with time and masterful coaching and continual drilling, develop a certain degree of athleticism.

It must be burnt into their nervous system, but it can be done. Check out some of the great work being done here at Mater Dei High School, at WeckMethod in San Diego, or GOATA in New Orleans.

These systems radically accelerate those qualities that we inherently see in someone we would say has great athleticism.

We have seen extraordinary results in both degrees of athleticism along with reducing injuries.

Training for Aesthetics

Who doesn’t want:

• A six-pack
• Broad shoulders
• Big traps
• Swole-ass arms
• Tapered waist
• Huge wheels

I’m staring 50 years old in the eyes, and the young man still alive and well in me would love one more shot at all of the above- Ahhhh, the good ole days.

Regardless of how old you are, much of the recipe to do these things is very clear cut, such as high volume sets, lots of sets per body part, isolation exercises, and a mix of free weights and machines.

The list goes on, and that list is effective for building muscle, etching in detail, and shaping form. Yes, it takes time, incredible discipline (not just in the gym), and a true willingness to suffer.

Add cardio of all sorts to the list of weight training exercises to lean out and resistance training to build and sculpt, and you have the perfect mix.

Whereas the conditioning work is to strip away as much body fat as possible to see the muscularity beneath.

The people who invest their time in creating programs to do this are true artists.

And the folks who choose to live their lives this way to carry elite conditioning 24/7 are some of the most masochistic folks on earth.

When I was a kid and growing up into my teenage years and young adulthood, all we had access to for training advice were muscle magazines. And since our entire culture can’t differentiate between muscle for looks and muscle for function, those of us coming up in the 80s and 90s (although well-intended) ended up training like bodybuilders for sport.

The result was some of the most gruesome athletic-related injuries you can imagine.

Training for Athletics

When I sit down to write a team program, dozens of factors come into play before putting pen to paper (or keyboard clicks to screen).

The first thing we must consider is the handful of repetitive motions that a given sport forces on an athlete, such as:

• Throwing
• Swinging an object
• Heavy rotation
• Sprint and/or change of direction/acceleration-deceleration dense
• Range of motion dependent
• Weight class focused

Once we have determined the qualities necessary for the sport, we lean into whether or not we have chronic use issues (because of those repetitive motions) and the most likely catastrophic injuries this sport sees.

It all becomes really complicated versions of math, trying desperately not to introduce something detrimental to the team while addressing the pre-hab type of programming without losing sight of what the head coach’s asks are.

I promise I’m not trying to make this more fantastic than it is for effect.

What I’m trying to do is give you a glimpse into the mind of a coach who is getting ready to write a program for 30 teenage girls who play water polo, and the demands of their sport are vastly different from that of my wrestlers, footballers or my hoops kids.

See, my program can never be why we have a performance hiccup, an injury trend within a team, or the primary reason an athlete sustains a season-ending, non-contact related injury.

And what most of you readers will come to find out, we have more ability to manipulate things in either direction than you might understand.

And herein lies the most pressing reason for the difference between training for aesthetics versus athletics.

My exercise menu for sport is enormous. 25% is standard-issue stuff that you would find in both programs:

• Squatting variations
• Hinging exercises
• Vertical and horizontal pressing
• Pulling exercises

But where we start to see the most radical differences is, my facility has no machines. We are strictly free-weight-based and use all sorts of equipment that you would never find in a Planet Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, or Golds.

The biggest reason for all of this is, I need performance, not sexiness.

• I need to expose my athletes to exercises where the primary responsibility is structure even though a heavy barbell, dumbbell, or kettlebell moves rapidly around their bodies.
• I need the athletes to express power and strength in multiple planes and directions where the average person shows considerable weakness.
• I need to nearly guarantee that the soft tissues are robust in a way where their actual activity/sport won’t manifest situations that are considerably higher than that I can create in training environments.
• I need to program in a way that, over time, their central nervous system actually speeds up as an adaptation.
• And what is most difficult, I need to program (almost artistically) exercises that carry over to the field, court, or pool.

Aesthetics Does Not Equal Athletic

My last statement in the previous section is the seed of this article.

Most coaches fall on their faces because they are so blindly loyal to how we’ve always done things that the exercises selected have no legitimate use to the athlete on the field.

Big for big sake is not a reason to program certain exercises. Yes, there are a few positions in a couple of sports where considerable body mass increases are part of the job. But, most of those situations are quite isolated and can still be executed in more sophisticated ways.

Part of the reason traditional bodybuilding type workouts are ineffective and somewhat dangerous is focusing on single-joint exercises.

Left to their own devices (and I know this because it was me many moons ago), an athlete will overemphasize those exercises that load the arms and upper body because they equate form with function.

And, let’s face it, they want to look swole to themselves in the mirror in the morning while brushing their teeth. This over-focus on things that truly don’t matter to athletics creates a tremendous amount of disharmony from segment to segment of the body.

The best way to frame this is with my own experience.

I was a great bench presser. Without drugs, in my sophomore year in college, I hit 485 lbs for a set of 5. If you run percentages, that is over a projected 525 lbs single.

During that time, I hit 42 repetitions on the 225 bench press test (the one they use at the NFL Combine). I was big and had triceps for days and was truly strong… except… at that exact time, I couldn’t do a single pull up—yup, all that anterior strength and literally nothing behind supporting it.

As a result of this, after my junior year, I got to lay on the surgeon’s table and have my shoulder put back together. I didn’t dislocate it or have a sudden football-related injury. I just wore the shoulder out due to a massive imbalance. I couldn’t use it anymore. When my surgeon got in there, my labrum and much of my rotator cuff had been frayed in several places.

That’s an easy, straight to the point example. When you look at lower-body injuries, what you end up seeing are soft tissue injuries in hamstrings, hip flexors, groins, and calves.

If the programming is bodybuilder-ish, and the athlete has some of my tendencies, you can see where an overemphasis on one area will subject the rest of the body to forces that can’t be managed.

Another example of this with my own experience is hamstring tears. My hamstrings were the cause of my athletic demise. Repetitive strains and poor rehab practices eventually led to a low back that absolutely derailed my career.

There wasn’t professional football in my future, but there were the last three games of my senior year that I watched from the sideline. Thirteen years of football… ended in a thud.

Most aesthetic lifting programs create significant imbalances front to back, top to bottom. This puts an athlete trying to move his/her entire body in one grand movement to achieve a task into real danger.

If you see many soft tissue injuries in your athletes, you need to look long and hard on either how you are:

1. Programming
2. Your exercise selection
3. How you teach specific techniques

I’ve had to take those long lonely walks down the how did we get here road, only to discover that it was, in fact, something that I was teaching, emphasizing, or programming that led my athletes into a situation where they were more likely to have X injury.

As you sort through your programs, my best way to navigate these sometimes troubled waters is to ask, “What is your reason for that?”

I tell my coaches all the time; you can program however you want, but you better have a quick and satisfactory reason for writing the way you are. If you are programming ten sets of 60 seconds of the hula-hoop, great, tell me why.

And if you can’t give me a reason why it’s there, it must go—this one thing of asking their reasons why has been one of the most educational experiences for me. I think in a very streamlined way.

Yet, I give my coaches as much programming leash as they could ever want. Then, when interrogated why they put that there, more often than not, they are thinking about an exercise, rep range, or location of exercise (within the session of the lift) in a way I never thought of, and it’s brilliant.

As you sort through your programming, ask yourself why, and if your answer has to do more with how it makes that athlete look, then it’s time to rethink your prescription.

The post Athletics Versus Aesthetics: What’s the Difference? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Olympic lifting is one of the most high-level, skill-based, athletic activities one can perform. No other style of lifting demands the same level of coordination, concentration, and detail than a heavy clean and jerk or snatch.

Olympic lifts require coaching cues to develop proper motor patterns

I’ve been incredibly lucky in my coaching career to have been brought up by some true masters in the game. About two months into my coaching career, I attended the NSCA’s Sport Specific Training Conference in Anaheim in January of 2000 and listened to Mike Burgener teach the lifts.

I was mesmerized by him and fell in love with every word coming out of his mouth (and his unique skill of killing all of us in two short hours with a PVC pipe). I immediately sought him out, and he opened his home and his infinite knowledge to me. I spent the next three years paying visits and assisting him at USAW certs.

Not only does Mike have decades of wisdom to share, but the cueing he uses can somehow get a room full of novices on the same page. That’s powerful. The following are cues you may or may not have heard when teaching Olympic lifting. Many of them I have created out of necessity. They are my go-to cues for almost everyone, and I’ve had tremendous success with each of them.

Cue #1: Ice Water in Your Veins

Olympic lifting is as much psychological as it is physical. Anyone who has developed proficiency at the Olympic lifts will agree that max attempts can be incredibly stressful and invoke significant levels of fear.

Therefore, many lifters want to get into a lather prior to going after a heavy attempt. This usually involves screaming and yelling, jumping around, and trying to use aggressiveness to fuel the attempts.

I’ve got some bad news for those of you who do this. Realistically, you want to do the exact opposite. Watch high-level weightlifters train. They all have an emotionless approach to the bar. They have mastered a thousand-mile stare.

Over-excitability disrupts the flow of the motor program. I tell my athletes they need to have no emotional connection to the attempt. Once you have successfully completed the lift, go berserk, but not a moment sooner.

Ice water in your veins.

Cue #2: Commit to Shooting the Elbows

This cue is pure gold if you’re working with a lifter who isn’t getting their elbows around the full distance when they catch. I see it fifty times a day. Lifters need to make a formal decision that no matter what, they are going to shoot the elbows the full distance as fast as they can.

In some attempts, you will see lifters do the exact opposite. They’ve almost resigned themselves to the fact that they can’t get the weight, and the arms never engage. If this is the case with one of your athletes, you have to convince them that the elbows are non-negotiable.

The elbows need to be automatic and they need to finish with pace. So pull your athletes aside and convince them that even before they touch the bar, they need to make a deal with themselves that hell or high water, they are going to shoot the elbows. It works.

Commit to shooting the elbows.

Cue #3: Knuckles Down

The feeling of losing grip leads to a guaranteed failed attempt, especially for young lifters. Problems with grip are some of the first errors coaches encounter with someone who’s starting out. This is with or without using a hook.

In my experience with the thousands of lifters I’ve worked with, almost everyone will naturally have their wrists in slight extension when they grip the bar. If you look at the location of the bar in the hand when the wrists are in any level of extension, the pressure of the bar moves to the fingertips.

Think of doing a fingertip pull up. It’s ten times harder than a full grip pull up. If you don’t have your knuckles down, you use the fingertip pull up grip to pull hundreds of kilos off of the ground. Knuckles down does three important things:

• Because you have to now put your wrist into slight flexion, the bar rests in the meat of the hands instead of the fingertips. So out the gate, you are in a stronger position by virtue of a surer grip.
• Using a hook grip (like most experienced lifters do) moves a large portion of the pressure off the thumb.
• The intention of driving your knuckles straight down keeps the elbows straight for longer.

Knuckles down.

Left: Correct, knuckles down; Right: Incorrect. knuckles out.

Cue #4: Drive the Ground Away on the First Pull

The first pull can be tricky for young lifters because they want to clear their knees for the bar path. If we don’t teach that piece properly, novice lifters will either grind the shins with the bar or drive the knees back without lifting the hips up. Even though we go through a whole section helping these athletes conceptualize the need to clear the knees, in many instances it still gets muddy.

Thinking about driving the floor away while standing up with the bar organizes not only muscular coordination that fits the task, but also clears the knees from the bar. Lifters end up in a great position and are able to transition effectively.

Drive the ground away on the first pull.

Cue #5: Shrug Yourself Down

It took me several years to finally teach the third pull. I found that the minute you tell your athletes to pull themselves under the bar, they inevitably begin to pull with their arms during the second pull. And as Coach B says, “When the elbow bends, the power ends.”

Until this cue came along, I had come to the conclusion that if I was only going to be working with beginners to intermediates, I was not going to teach the third pull. In the old days, we would teach the kids that the shrug was the last-ditch attempt to get vertical lift on the bar.

Now, even though we understand that the shrug helps bring the bar up a smidge higher and buys us a fraction of a second more time to get down, we teach the shrug is the point where the drop to catch begins.

If you have a lifter who is willing and able to snap their shrug – as they should be – you likely will have an athlete who is willing and able to drop into their catch fast. Win-win.

Shrug yourself down.

Cue #6: Throw Your Bridge to the Corner

I studied Baguazhang for a lot of years and was an offensive lineman for thirteen years. The “bridge” (or what we have come to refer to as the back bridge bar) is this imaginary bar that covers the rear of the athlete from shoulder to shoulder.

When you are trying to gain a leverage advantage in a tight space against an opponent, you have a considerable advantage if you can manipulate their bridge by pushing and pulling to gain control of their upper body. Wrestlers, linemen, and BJJ fighters will know what I’m talking about, even if our terminology differs.

Know the bridge, throw the bridge to gain a better hip extension

To get a lifter to finish their hips, we explain the bridge and then instruct them to throw their bridge to the corner of the room where the wall and roof meet. As an FYI, the platforms in my facility are up against the wall, close to the corner of the room.

You could use a light fixture or something like that if your set up is dramatically different. If this bridge idea does not resonate with you, the base of the neck is something we all can understand. Either way, for a successful catch, we want the hips to finish and gain full extension into slight hyperextension to deliver the bar.

Throw your bridge to the corner.

Cue #7: Catch Like a Mountain

How many times have you caught a clean, only to be buckled by the weight once you and the bar meet? It happens a lot, especially with novice lifters. They spend all their energy pulling, so they soften at the bottom of the catch and fold up.

I tell lifters who have this problem that they need to be a mountain at the bottom. Full tension throughout the body will allow their structure to tolerate the load. The visual of a mountain gives them the feel of something big and solid. Most novices think they are having a technique hiccup when in reality, they just need to think strong. I get nearly perfect results from this cue.

Catch like a mountain.

Cue #8: Feel Your Obliques in the Squat

This one struck me several months ago when I was trying to generate greater degrees of tension in my vertical pressing. I’ve had several back injuries in the past, so much of the tinkering, I do with techniques comes from the need to create structure and stability for my back. The more you compress the same-side oblique to create a column of stability, the stronger the entire motion feels.

On the ascent from the bottom of the squat, most of us have to chase our center and power through a very deep ass-to-grass squat. Then you get to this point, feel for your obliques. Draw your attention to your obliques and lock them down, creating a pillar of structure for your midline. When you take your attention to your obliques, there is a level of an increased feeling of stability as you stand up.

Feel your obliques in the squat.

We all have some quirky cues to get what we need out of our athletes. These are just a few of mine.

You might also like:

• Cleaning Up Your Dirty Clean: It’s All About Technique
• When Good Cues Go Bad
• Reassess Your Coaching Cues to Get Results for Your Clients
• 5 Strategies to Become a Better Coach

The post 8 Unusual Olympic LIfting Cues That Get Results appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

No, this is not some politically correct, pandering to the masses, and public give-in to the pressure of what big mouths in our society deem to be mandatory ways of thinking. In fact, their noise makes most of us want to go the other direction, or at least me, in nearly any topic they are forcing down our throats.

What this is, is a coaching journeyman’s attempt at taking inventory of what works and what doesn’t, what makes things easier and what makes things harder and real self-reflection of where I fall short as a coach. The reality of it, fellas, is we don’t have all the answers for everyone under our watchful eyes.

Yes, I’m sure there are certain scenarios where having a staff full of bald-headed, pre-workout sipping, meatheaded dudes would be an advantage but to this point, I don’t know what that would be. What I’ve come to learn is no matter how well rounded you attempt to be, how educated and accepting you might become, there are certain situations where a woman on your staff is the only answer.

Weight Room Nazi

I took my last snap as a football player in November of 1999. My coaching career began immediately after Thanksgiving the same year and I have never looked back. I was one of the pseudo-lucky ones where the university where I played at (Eastern Kentucky) was just beginning to fund a full-time strength coach, my mentor Mike Kent. He was literally a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

Hundreds of athletes funneled through our brand new training space daily, so he was happy to have some help. I was dying to be a part of his program and was willing to work 20 hours a day if the job called for it. I would have slept on the office floor and gladly made dip and honeybun runs (staples of his diet) as many times a day as necessary—all to just be a part of his staff.

I was welcomed in and we worked for four months together. I was getting internship credit for my involvement and to this day, Coach Kent will tell you that Chris Holder had the greatest internship of all time. His justification for this was because, in early March, he accepted the football only strength position at the University of Louisville and promptly moved north.

And there I was, little ole me, four months into my coaching career and literally on a moment’s notice I went from intern to interim head coach. If I’m being completely honest, I was one part fired up and the other part scared shitless. Fortunately, Coach Kent was willing to mentor me over the phone and paid visits on random weekends here and there to keep my programming on track.

Prior to graduation, I made a call to the school my sweetheart was attending, Cal Poly. I spent breaks with her in beautiful San Luis Obispo and I wanted to coach there. I called their head football coach at the time, Larry Welsh, told him my story and asked if I could come work for him while I attended grad school- for free.

I knew I had coaching dues to pay and I was willing to be man enough to pay mine. Because they had no single person at Poly who oversaw football’s strength program, he welcomed me with open arms. I got on a plane on a Friday in June of 2,000, flew home, and promptly went to work the following Monday.

Showing you my hand, I was flying by the seat of my pants. I was a meathead through and through and knew how to get big, but the sciences were something I was still learning. I programmed verbatim how Kent did and hoped I could fake it and pull one over on everyone while making it seem like I knew what I was doing. I was also trying desperately to be a clone of Kent.

His mannerisms, his over the top high energy and his unique-to-Kent vocabulary that I made my own. And, as anticipated, the football kids ate it up. When the summer ended that year, the administration saw what I was doing with football and offered me $5,000 for the year to work with all 21 teams at Poly. I gladly accepted.

As fall camp for football was starting, so was our women’s soccer team. They came in for the first time early their first week and I was ready. All 270lbs of freshly bic’d head, handlebar mustache, former lineman of me wanted to impact these girls day one. And I did just that. My alter persona came out, they laid eyes on me and went in on them exactly how I did my footballers… and guess what I got? A nickname: The Weight Room Nazi.

The harder I coached, the more they pulled back. The louder I got, the more they shut me out. The heavier handed I became, the more they rebelled. What I had done was assumed that the formula I used for my football kids was going to work for everyone. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Know What You Don’t Know

I owe that Cal Poly Women’s Soccer team a massive debt of gratitude. I was a new coach and was having success. I made a big enough impression on an athletic department that even their tightwad administrators knew they had something special. What that team did for me was put my feet back on the ground. My ego was swelling to epic proportions and those 25 girls burst my balloon on day one.

They revealed something that would be a major lesson that I was smart enough to learn early in my career: I didn’t know how to coach girls/women. Moreover, this abrupt, shocking revelation has continued to help me become a coaching chameleon. Twenty years later I’ve become someone who feels confident I can read an individual athlete and contort myself into being the coach that they need versus the coach I want to be.

But one thing has become painfully clear for me over all these years. There are going to be kids I cannot reach. No matter how hard I try, how many tricks I use or what type of manipulative language I try and slip into my coaching, there will always be a handful of athletes who won’t connect with me.

Insert, Female Coach

I know you think I’m going to go on a rant about how male coaches can’t relate to a woman’s period or simply don’t understand the female mind. But that would be easy. We can’t relate. We’ll never understand the female mind and the more we try, the more we realize how different we really are and how futile of an endeavor trying to understand can be.

What I’m hoping to convey, beyond the obvious anatomical, biochemical and physiological differences between men and women, boys and girls, are the intuitive differences between the sexes. The nuance and or subtleties that a woman coach brings to a session and can draw out from an interaction with an athlete is vastly different from that of a man.

This does not mean they are better, or worse than a man. What it means is, a woman coach is going to have a different take, however minor, than their male counterpart during an interaction with an athlete. And that difference might be exactly what that hard to reach athlete needs to tear their walls down.

Taking that a step further, when thinking about the athlete’s experience with a coach, some kids will immediately close themselves off when it comes to taking orders from or listening to authoritative men. For example, my seven-plus years at San Jose State University. I came into a staff of four men and quickly hired a female GA named Summer Haines.

Summer came to me from San Diego State on the recommendation of one of my coaching friends, John Francis. We all have those individuals on our coaching tree who when they call during your coaching search and say they have your person, you hire that individual sight unseen. John is one of those people to me and Summer had a job with me before John dialed the phone.

At SJSU, I walked into a situation where the football program was stacked wall to wall with hardened street kids. I loved them but it was a humbling experience for me. I had gang members from rival gangs on this team who I had to keep my eyes on. I coached a kid who, once he graduated, became one of the biggest drug dealers in the Bay Area.

During my first semester at SJSU, we had two kids get arrested for major felonies and both went to prison (one of whom is still behind bars serving out his sentence, over a decade later). We had an athlete commit suicide two days into my first fall camp with the Spartans—and all of this was in my first year.

Several of those boys came from some of the roughest areas of California. You could tell, from the first breath in a conversation whether they were going to take coaching from you or not.

Like I said above, many of these kids have never known their fathers and even worse, never met a man they were willing to trust. And as uncomfortable as it might be for some of you to hear, a lot of those kids would have rather been dead than have another white boy barking instructions to them. It was in these interactions where Summer was able to reach them, for me. A lot of these guys typically had strong women in their lives and there was a willingness to listen when she spoke.

I would pass messages to players through Summer and we were able to get my program moving forward as a result. She doesn’t know this, but her presence was a saving grace for much of our success that year, a season where we saw the biggest turn around in program history and the school’s first bowl victory in nearly 20 years.

My collective staff committed themselves to get that team breathing one unified breath at a time, all heartbeats in synch and the success of my 2006/2007 San Jose State Spartan Football team to this day remains one of (if not the) biggest achievements of my entire coaching career.

Fellas, Humble Yourselves

… If you think you are beyond this. By adding a woman to your staff I am by no means suggesting that you are softening or a woman is going to bring some kind of girly element to your facility. Quite the contrary. On my current staff, I have two full-time assistants.

We probably have the most experienced, high-level coaching staff in all high school sports (across the country). Two men and one woman. And take a wild stab at who is the hardest among us? Who are the kids in the most fear of? Which one of us makes the hair on the back of the necks of the kids stand up more often than not?

When I took my current job, Coach Katie Guizar was the lone staffer, pulling the entire weight of the program on her own as the former head jumped ship months before. We have over 1,100 athletes who grace the floor of my facility, and any one of them would tell you that they never want to upset Coach K. She’s gritty, direct, almost monotone in her delivery.

In most situations, she is emotionless when communicating with the kids and she shows no favoritism whatsoever. She’s first in line to discipline the instant an athlete breaks a rule and I’ve never heard one coach tell kids, “NO,” at the rate Katie does. She’s a zero BS, get to work, stop trying to get over on us no-nonsense coach… and I love every second of it.

Beyond being one of the most well-respected people on campus, what Katie brings to my staff is perspective. My other assistant (male) and I don’t know what it is to be a teenage girl. We have no idea what challenges they face and if I’m being real with myself, I don’t even try to fake that on some level I understand.

I was raised by a single mom (even though my old man lived close by and was involved in everything) and have two older sisters. I am married and I have one son and two younger daughters. I’ve been swimming in estrogen my whole life and, admittedly, I don’t know the first thing about girls. Coach Katie bridges that gap for us.

What she also does is create a matriarchal role in my weight room for my boys who are having an issue taking instruction from us men. Take, for example, our football program. When we as a staff sat down to gameplan this offseason, we split the team up into three groups; bigs, skills and wideouts, and DB’s.

Any of you who work with football know the most challenging group in a football program to work with are the wideouts and DB’s. They are the individuals on the team that have the most swag, and they are the ones you have to push the hardest to get any work out of them. So guess who oversees this group when our footballers are in the room?

Our head football coach and staff thought my decision to group her with them was a bad call. They have the same read on those position groups as I do and thought those boys would walk all over her. I stood my ground, told them to trust me and from day one those boys have been little angels for her. No gruff, no talking back, no big timing, just head down hard work (hard work for a wideout or DB, if that exists).

Sara McKenzie

In 2013 I took the head job at Cal Poly (returning for my second and final stint there). Among other things, I inherited an intern coach named Sara. Sara was a University of Kentucky grad and had cut her teeth in the profession at Arizona State University. She took a leap moving to SLO and accepting an internship at Poly before my arrival.

To say the least, she was duped when she was hired. She was told things that never came to be just to get her to agree to come out and take the job. Empty promises, and being overworked like nothing you can imagine, Sara put on a good face when she met me and was trying her hardest to make the best of a crap situation.

Photograph by Owen Main of San Luis Obispo, California

What I ended up getting was someone who was wide open to my way of thinking, someone who wanted to adapt to my style of doing things and someone who was willing to work her fingers to the bone to make sure our Mustangs were in a position to have success. She worked (basically) another full-time job because we were paying her peanuts.

As a show of my loyalty to her and appreciation for how committed she was to our teams and me, I fought like crazy at each subsequent end of the fiscal year to get her raises and increase her quality of life. By the end of 2017, she was full-time faculty, full benefits and was able to quit her other job.

The reason I worked so hard for her and continued to beat the “We need to get Sara more money” drum was because whatever I was paying her, she was worth five times that. She was literally my right hand each and every day over my five years with Cal Poly. When I say I couldn’t have done what we did without her, I mean every word.

She was the glue to the program. She made it all work. Not only is she the face for half of our teams, but she also took on those little tasks (willingly) that most everyone doesn’t see—those things that make it or break it tasks that only go noticed when they aren’t done.

On top of being someone I counted on daily, she was/is one of the most badass coaches I have ever been around (male or female). See for those of you who aren’t in the know, women in this profession are rare. It’s a male-driven field and I’m not sure why.

Perhaps it’s intimidating to most women. Maybe there are other facets of the fitness industry that are more appealing than S&C for the ladies. But here’s what I have found. All of the women coaches I have been around in my tiny side of the game have all been bulldozers when it came to coaching. Sharp, smart, detail oriented, strong, assertive and true leaders.

My last task before leaving Cal Poly was to make sure that our administration and our head football coach knew that I wholeheartedly felt that Sara McKenzie was ready to be the Mustang’s head strength coach. I needed to plant the seed that they can’t pass over her (like they did when I came in—yes, we went for the same job).

They needed to know that she was ready years ago to lead that program. I don’t know if my suggestion worked, but she went through the interview process and proved to them that she was the only choice. On October 26th, 2018, Cal Poly named Sara McKenzie their Director of Strength and Conditioning.

She’s one of only three women in Division I college athletics to head a strength program.

The Women of CrossFit

No discipline in all of the fitness showcases women in the manner that the CrossFit movement has. And rightfully so. Those women are some of the grittiest, driven and flat out tough people I have ever seen. Yes, believe it or not, I have spent time training in a CrossFit box.

What anyone in my role will tell you is, there are phases in your career where you would rather eat a hand full of dirt than train in the facility you work in. It might be because we spend so much time at work and want to just get away. That was part of it for me.

The other part was I wanted to get away from everyone and wanted new eyes seeing me move. We, coaches, rarely get coached, and I decided to go into my own pocket an pay to have a local CF box make decisions for me. While I trained at CrossFit Moxie, I trained alongside some of the tenacious women I have ever been around.

Over time, I continued to meet women who were in the captain’s chairs of their respective boxes. I would then watch them coach and found myself being nearly speechless as they owned their space. One of my all-time favorite CrossFit coaches is a woman name, Natalie Talbert. I knew Nat at SJSU. She was one of my water polo kids and she took to weight training as she took to the water.

We had lost touch once I left San Jose and there was a large gap of time that elapsed until we reconnected late in 2017. I worked with her and her gym to bring the RKC to northern California. In March of 2018, I met Natalie and around 20 other inspiring kettlebell trainers. Over the course of three days, Natalie and one of her assistant coaches embarrassed the field.

If you know the RKC, you understand that it’s not a fluff cert. We push our attendees because a large part of passing (or not) is determined by the level of fitness you bring to the event. It’s physical, to say the least, and Natalie wiped the floor with the class. Her willingness to push, to put her face in the fire, and not pull it out left the others in her wake.

I then spent some time with her at her box at the time, CrossFit Moxie. As I witnessed her lead groups, I watched her one on one with clients, witnessed how she managed her staff, something dawned on me that has left a lasting impression. At home, mom and dad make the rules and decisions. Any of you who really pay attention knows, dad is more of a frontman… cause mom is the one calling all the shots.

What Natalie brought to Moxie and now the box she the head coach for, Coast Range CrossFit in Gilroy, CA, was the “mama bear” quality. The level of suffering that a CrossFit WOD induces on a daily basis can only be likened to staying home from school as a kid with the gnarly flu. And, when you have the flu, who is the only person who can make things better? Mom.

Her predecessor, at CrossFit Moxie, is a woman named Paige Sousa. Paige was the other CrossFitter who accompanied Nat at that RKC. Paige was someone I had not known in person but developed a dialogue with over social media due to her ties to Moxie. She had reached out to me in a lovely note about my relationship with the Moxie community over the years and we have kept in touch ever since.

She was my kind of coach. She believed in her place with the CrossFit community. She loved Moxie with all of her heart and made professional decisions around her role as one of the coaches at that box.

The first thing you notice when you meet Paige is how intense she is—then she opens her mouth and she confirms any notion you had of her. She’s confident, aggressive, owns her space, and coaches like her life depends on it. But what stands out with her, maybe more so than anyone else I have ever been around, is how much she loves it.

You hear about people whose identity is intertwined with their job, their political stance or some other aspect of their lifestyle (vegan, keto, yoga, etc) that nearly defines them. Then you run into someone like Paige. CrossFit doesn’t define Paige. Paige is the exact person who makes the CrossFit community so special.

The reason this fitness movement has taken over the world isn’t because of some new way of looking at fitness. It’s because it has galvanized pockets of our society who want to be pushed, who want to have their fitness reach a place they have never known and who want to be part of a family of like-minded individuals. The magic of CrossFit isn’t the CrossFit. It’s the leaders, like Paige Sousa.

Last, But Not Least

As I brainstormed for this article, I put together a list of my faves. And without question, one of the coaches who has had an undeniable impact on me in every aspect of coaching is my friend Gianna Bandoni. G is a success story that has to be told when talking about women who are changing the game when it comes to the fitness world.

Gianna came to me during my stint at SJSU as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed sophomore. She was eager to learn and asked if she could intern. Any of you who know me understand that I don’t take much of a shine to interns because 99% of them think they want to be strength coaches, but when they realize it’s not all ESPN and sidelines every day, they all flake.

It’s like clockwork and I had more than my share show up, then disappear after a couple of weeks. I humored her, told her she could come through and if she thought she could stick it out, I’d let her intern and 2 ½ years later, I did something I had never done in my career to that point. I handed Gianna the keys to her own team.

See, she was all in from the word go. She was a sponge to anything and everything we ever tried, including some of my off the beaten path stuff. My Qigong and energetics, meditation and spiritual work that has become a cornerstone to my programs since. Gianna was a part of it all.

After I left SJSU and took the job at Cal Poly, Gianna applied to grad school and spent the next two years in SLO working on her graduate studies and honing her craft. She had completed her RKC years before but spent all her time in SLO taking the deepest kettlebell dive you can imagine. I travel several times a year to teach RKC’s all over the country and without fail, I let the good folks from Dragon Door know I need Gianna to join me to help me instruct.

What Gianna has done has become one of the most ferocious kettlebell trainers I have seen. Outside of the fact she has an extraordinary eye, can coach circles around any kettlebell trainer in the country, she’s likely the best mover I have ever been around.

Part of the reason I take her on the road with me on the certs is I am dead set on my trainees seeing what perfect looks like. Nearly everyone in the movement based world is a visual learner. They will take on the tendencies of those people who taught them X, Y, or Z.

You see this in the martial world all of the time. Nuanced things that you almost can’t avoid to pick up on and to attempt. When I travel Gianna comes with me annually because I need those people under my care to see what they need to aspire to become. Gianna walks the walk and she’s the poster child of how things should be done.

Since graduation, Gianna moved back to her hometown of Merced, CA and opened her own kettlebell gym called G-Fit. She teaches group classes and privates. She still travels with me when I’m on the road teaching, and of all of the coaches who have been with me over the years, I’d take Gianna first—every time.

As much as I would like it to be the truth guys, we can’t do things the way it’s historically been done. I’ve been a coach who prides himself on having uncanny levels of adaptability when presented a problem with an athlete. And even with that skill, I have had athletes and even entire teams that I couldn’t reach, plugged in my female coach, and off they went.

We can’t solve every problem ourselves. If your primary concern is to service every single person who comes through your doors, you need to have a dynamic, versatile staff. Take it from a dinosaur in the game, one of the best hires you will ever make will be that woman who brings to the table things you could never.

The post Why You Need a Woman on Your Staff appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Okay, it’s truthfully not a secet. It’s something that all of us strength and conditioning coaches have known about for the entirety of our careers. What do I need to do to prepare my athletes for competition? How can I fully optimize their various engines (aerobic/anaerobic, strength, power) so they can dominate in their given sport? Where am I going wrong?

Over the years we have seen a ton of ideas come pouring into the strength world. In the old days, we had bodybuilding magazines in the forefront of the strength culture. Unfortunately, if you were seeking performance, magazines were the last place you wanted to look. Much of the true strength training was happening in the dingy old weight rooms in the back of some rundown building with the true strongmen of the day. Powerlifters and Olympic weightlifters never really saw the light of day, and that style of training was so obscure that it was reserved for the true specialist and the circus sideshow.

And then, in 1978, a group of strength coaches from all over the US formed the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA). A think tank of sorts to get the most up to date and cutting edge strength and performance discussions rolling. In 1987, they created the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and published the first true scientific research on strength training.

If you go into the archives, they published quarterly and the first issue had four studies in it. Four. One of which looked at the ventilation pattern of middle-distance runners… something that I’m sure all strength enthusiasts are clamoring to get their hands on. Since then, they have been going strong, published monthly and the most recent issue has 39 studies featured. A true revolution in the industry and the backbone of science for the profession.

Once you sift through all the research and block out the foolishness that often infiltrates the fitness side, there are three legs to the human performance monster: running speed (which encompasses both linear and multidirectional), absolute strength and strength endurance. No matter what sport you find yourself training for, no matter what level you’re playing at, if you can systematize those three elements into a seamless program, you are going to have the upper hand come game day.

Speed

“Speed kills.” It is a notion that I came up in the game believing, and still do to this day. If we are going to win, we must be faster than our opponent. The days of being the biggest and strongest no longer exist. If you can’t run, you are dead. I’ve spent my entire career working on and perfecting my approach to speed. Regardless of what you might have heard about me, I am a speed freak. Everything I do, from programming our weights to how I periodize my entire program revolves around my teams learning the most nuanced running techniques ever taught and peaking them so the enemy spends the afternoon chasing.

The problem with speed is like most athletic cultures, the ideas are old. They are outdated. The techniques are dead. I know I might be taking a stab in the dark but my personal feelings around the prevalence of the usage of PED’s, particularly in the track and field world, is partly to be blamed by their complete unwillingness to evolve the sport.

“We swing our arms—okay got it. Stride frequency and stride length—yep, I understand. Relax your face, lean your body, push push push the ground away—roger that”.

It’s the same cues that have been taught for eons and the ideas are as groundbreaking as the mechanical ins and outs of the 1967 VW Bug engine.

Then, one of my coaching heros made discoveries and programmed a high school sprinter into the record books. Barry Ross took a simple idea that looked at elements of sprinting techniques and turned the track and field world on its head. For the first time, someone had focused their energy on what was happening when the foot was on the ground during a stride cycle. He took Allyson Felix and tinkered with the notion that if he could increase her force production while her foot was on the ground, without increasing her bodyweight, he could make her faster.

Absolute Strength

Which brings us to the second leg of our triangle. How much can you bench? One time? The heaviest load you can muster? Or deadlift or squat? Absolute strength is the bread and butter for powerlifters but should be considered a prerequisite for anything athletic.

If you are going to be competitive, especially in this day and age, you need to be strong. What I want you to think, though, is that strength is relative. Relative to a task. Whatever your athletic endeavor is, all of the other qualities rely on foundational strength so they can be expressed.

Speed, explosiveness, power, agility, balance, mobility, flexibility—they all count on a solid strength base to be the rich soil so they may flourish (poetic, I know). I’ve seen thousands of athletes and worked with hundreds of general population people and time after time, a lack of anything mentioned above quickly becomes remedied once a base of strength is established.

When working with any athlete, this is where we start. Teaching them the most organic, multi-joint, compound movements we have is where all of our heads should be. Movements like deadlifts and squats fortify the body miles beyond simply strong legs and powerful hips.

Those exercises are phenomenal for teaching an athlete how to organize their structure, create appropriate tensions and systemically work as one unit to move the weight. As the athlete gets stronger, the whole structure upgrades. Their ability to brace gets better and from top to bottom, their neurological control increases. This is where money is made on the field, the court and on the track.

A great example of how working for absolute strength pays off in all areas is in my prep with NFL Combine guys. The 225lbs bench press repetition test is a featured test at these events giving the powers that be some indication of the athlete’s physical strength. One might think that it’s an endurance event since the footballer is asked to press to exhaustion, but you would be surprised how this test is actually, for many, conquered by training only absolute strength.

Stay with me… I had one wideout a few years ago who was blazing fast. Dude ran a 4.27 on NFL clocks. Problem was, he was so slender and slight, the concern was would he be durable? At the beginning of our prep time leading up to the testing, he successfully hit 2 reps.

Conventional thinking might lead you to believe that we drop the load to say, 185lbs, and develop some stamina that way. But our approach was something very different. We worked triples, doubles, and singles at their respective maximum loads for the duration of his preparations for the Combine, loading progressively, never going for stamina. Guess what? He hit 12 reps come test day and all because his absolute strength skyrocketed.

Time after time, we see good athletes peter out early because they have to work twice as hard as the strong guy in a game because their movement sucks or is inefficient. They can’t change direction abruptly because they don’t have the physical strength to work against the momentum they’ve created only seconds earlier. They can’t deliver a blow because they are unable to harness enough tension to overcome their opponent. By the end of the game, any game, they are exhausted and have likely taken an L.

Strength Endurance

Once you have laid a foundation that is appropriate for your body and the job you are tasked to complete, how long do you have until your ability to produce high amounts of force is sucked from your soul?

This is what separates the good from the great. The great ones can still perform at near maximums at the end of a competition. Think about a starting pitcher who is hitting mid to high 90s in the first inning. What is he touching in the 6^th? Do we see a stark drop in his velocity as his pitch count climbs or can he still deliver the goods when he is reaching the end of his outing? This is strength endurance.

Take a basketballer, for example. You have a team that plays a fast-paced offense and a pressing defense. Their transitions up and down the court to most people are a result of “conditioning”. And in part, that is true. But the weakling’s conditioning is going to be tested at a much larger scale because they are going to have to work harder (from a strength perspective) doing a general thing: banging down in the paint, fighting for possessions and enduring the physicality of playing aggressive defense. This is strength endurance.

Perhaps the best examples of a team or individual needing strength endurance are the linemen in football, wrestlers and mixed martial artists. The hand-to-hand combat of all three puts man versus man in an unending grudge match. Fighting for position, the need to overcome the enemy at every moment or on every play and the continual heightened sensory stimulus of knowing that the other person is literally trying to kill you puts enormous demands on the athlete. All three are grueling tests fitness and the best-prepared athlete from the strength endurance perspective is going to come out ahead in most cases.

You see it all the time in football. I tell my friends and family not to get too excited about the first half of a game. It’s not a real picture of what is going to unfold. It’s the middle of the third quarter and the 4^th where you see the cream rise to the top. I can’t tell you how many time I’ve seen teams come out fast, look fantastic in the beginning but run out of steam. Slow and steady wins the race.

This is where kettlebell training and much of the high tension ideas that pervade that style of training comes in handy. I’ve been a kettlebell guy for nearly 15 years now and my teams are infinitely better prepared for the long grind of a game as a result. Kettlebell training systems, ones like the RKC, provide the exact framework for a coach to utilize the most effective strength endurance driven training money can buy.

A PhD in Strength and Speed

I’ve spent the last 20 years in the trenches evolving my approach. The good news for me is I have had enough hours in the weight room and out on the field where I fully understand how to prepare my athletes for success. But trust me, it’s been a very long grind of making decisions and spending the time to see if they are the right ones—or not.

See, I’ve made some epic blunders in programming. The athletes continue to evolve, their needs fluctuate as time goes by and you have to have a solid base of understanding of the Golden Triangle to navigate these sometimes turbulent waters.

The Kettlebell, Speed, and Strength Summit

The good news for you is, you don’t have to burn the next 20 years figuring it all out. Come to the KS3 Kettlebell, Speed and Strength Summit in San Diego this July 14^th and 15^th where I am going to be working with an incredible collection of athletic minds to demystify all three unicorns featured in this article.

Breaking Muscle is the media sponsor for the event as part of their program to support independent coaches. I won’t be alone on the podium and am joined by a stellar line-up of strength and conditioning experts. First, there’s Marty Gallagher, a legend in the strength game. His contributions to the weight training world spans back for decades and his laundry list of athletes he’s trained into immortality is a who’s who in the world of strength.

Then, there’s David Weck and his speed system. It is not only the best thing I have seen in athletics over the course of my tenure as a coach but the most progressive approach to developing true, raw running speed I have ever found. David is a once in a lifetime coach who transcends the game by shattering conventional thought with some of the most practical science that you can find. His program alone is worth the price of admission.

Mike Krivka is a kettlebell expert. Hearing this guy’s martial arts resume will leave your mouth gaping and watching him move is something to behold. Kriv has taken the kettlebell doctrine and successfully implemented it into developing the fighter, the athlete, and the tactical operator. And he’s done what I consider to be nearly impossible.

Chris White works for LSU. If you know anything about anything, you are well aware of the storied history of Tigers Athletics. If there is any program in the country who has it figured out, it’s LSU and Chris White is a cornerstone to their strength department. A physical specimen himself, Chris’s approach to training athletes mixes genuine expertise of the sciences coupled by a unique approach to coaching the athlete. He’s an “athlete whisperer” and I am privileged to know him, to call him a dear friend and to have been able to watch him coach for the past five years.

And then there is little ole me. I feel with exposure to all four of these guys and countless systems for decades, I can create a tremendous amount of clarity around all three concepts. We know how to train athletes at Cal Poly, and I’m going to give you all my secrets. And, if that is not enough, for reading this article, use the code BREAKINGMUSCLE when you sign up for a $100 discount on the entire event.

Looking forward to seeing all of you in San Diego this July!

The post The Golden Triangle: The Secret to Human Performance appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

It’s you.

We need to look in the mirror and take inventory of what we are doing, or not doing, for our kids. As a father of three young athletes all under the age of 10, I am on the front lines of the issue. Additionally, as a college strength coach, I am the recipient of the adult versions of these kids.

Parents, we need to have a talk. I’ve been involved in athletics for over 30 years now, and have noticed over the last few years that we have a very big problem.

It’s you.

We need to look in the mirror and take inventory of what we are doing, or not doing, for our kids. As a father of three young athletes all under the age of 10, I am on the front lines of the issue. Additionally, as a college strength coach, I am the recipient of the adult versions of these kids.

What we as parents are doing to our children is a crime. Consider this the official line in the sand.

Cool It With the Advice

On behalf of my coaching peers at all levels, let’s make a couple things perfectly clear.

The good folks who step up to coach your kids do so for two reasons. First, they love the sport. They either played it themselves or have loved the game for their lifetime and simply want to be a part of it. They do it because of passion. They want to give your kids an experience so they can know that same love themselves.

The second reason is because they love kids. Working with young people can be one of the best experiences you can have. The ones who show up ready to work, who are fired up about being part of the team and would do anything to win—they are the reason we do it.

If you think anyone gets into coaching for the money, you are completely lost. Professional sport coaches and head coaches at upper echelon universities are making big dollars; everyone else is barely making a living. The life of a coach is an absolute grind.

Dealing with the multitude of personalities, being a surrogate parent to dozens of kids, and managing a scope of skill levels and attention spans is enough to make a person crazy.

You know those tough mornings you have with your one or two kids, or that evening you can’t get little Timmy to clean his room? Imagine 25 just like him, and you are asking them to focus on a very simple task. Keep your eye on the ball, get your glove down, use your legs, shoot your arms through, and get ready, among an infinite number of other things.

That same kid you can’t get to clean his room, he and two dozen of his buddies are standing in front of some poor coach who isn’t making a cent, but is working her ass off to get them to do the simplest of tasks as a team.

Yes, many youth coaches have limited experience. But they have some experience, which likely puts them leaps and bounds ahead of you.

As your child gets older, that experience for the coaches goes up dramatically. Don’t kid yourself for a second that a high school coach or college coach is hired because they are a nice person. Athletic directors at all levels have one job, and that is to see their teams win. Period.

So before you reach for your phone or keyboard to give a coach at those levels advice, take a deep breath, put your phone down, and shut your computer off. Chances are, you are in no way in their league when it comes to how to coach.

Stick to the Recipe

How many of you have baked a cake before? Made breakfast for your family? Attempted your mom’s legendary meatloaf? You followed a recipe, yes? You decided that you were going to make X, got in the car, and drove to the store. You filled your cart with the necessary items, stood in some God-forsaken checkout line, bagged up your goodies, and headed home.

You then systematically approached the recipe as it was written. You didn’t whimsically mix this with that, put it in a cold oven, remove it, turn the oven on, add two eggs, and then serve it to your family. You followed a procedure that has been proven in the past to work.

Do you think the coaches of your kids are any different? They are following a recipe to get your children in proper playing form.

There is not a coach in America who enters their respective season without a solid plan for how they are going to give the athletes on their team the experience they intend on giving them.

The entire body of coaches who prep for a season in any sport have winning at the top of their priority list, or a very close second. They have tons of evidence with prior seasons that their formula works, and for folks like myself, decades of successes to back up my approach.

From teaching a seven-year-old how to hold a baseball, all the way to winning the World Series, there is a systematic approach to ensure success at every turn. We call them fundamentals in my business. Regardless of the sport, there is a list of things that every athlete needs to own if they want to have any kind of upward trajectory.

When you throw your two cents in, you are asking that coach to violate their meatloaf recipe.

I’m not saying don’t play catch with your daughter. I’m not saying don’t play around the world with your son to help him get extra shots. But don’t do anything that doesn’t vibe with your kid’s coach’s philosophy.

Don’t start giving them advice about things they are not going to encounter anytime soon, like showing your 6-year-old how to throw a change-up when he’s on a machine pitch team.

I appreciate how ridiculous this might sound to many of you. My response is to go sign up to be a little league coach, and soon you’ll know what I’m talking about.

If you want to be any kind of help, attend your kid’s practice, listen to what the coaches are saying, and then repeat as much of that as possible when you are working with your child. No rogue coaching that is going to derail what this poor coach is trying to accomplish.

Your Kid Isn’t the Second Coming

I hate to burst your bubble, but your kid isn’t the angel you think he is. And your daughter, she’s pretty much a pain in the ass. When I’ve volunteered to coach one of the many teams my kids were on, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said, “This kid’s parents really dropped the ball.”

Jimmy can’t sit still for three seconds, Brian can’t help but play in the dirt, Sara just comes here to hug other kids, and Steven has no business on this team at all, because he’s made it perfectly clear he doesn’t want to be here. Yet, we coaches put our best foot forward and try to mold them into something that resembles a contributing member of the team.

Instead of defending them every minute, how about teaching them the lessons at home that will make them effective teammates on the field?

If your child acts like an ass at home, it takes a lot of nerve to pawn them off to a coach to try and fix them. “It isn’t fair that Billy doesn’t get to pitch.” You know what isn’t fair? Forcing some unpaid mom or dad to get your kid’s act together.

Help us by teaching them how to listen. Help us by showing them how to be respectful to adults and other kids. Help us by insisting on things like order, hustle, and effort.

If your kid lays around your house all day after school with some device in his hand, what makes you think they are going to understand or relate to their coach when they are barked at to pick up the pace?

There’s a Good Reason They’re Yelling

Which leads me to the crux of this article. How someone coaches is none of your damn business. This is the previous three sections rolled up into one uncomfortable climax. Get used to the idea that coaching comes with yelling. Coaching comes with insisting that things be done a certain way, with no wiggle room.

To put it bluntly, the coach’s philosophy is more important than yours. We don’t progress kids to step B until they own step A. If they can’t focus long enough to get good at A, expect frustration, changes of tone, and perhaps—just perhaps—some shouting.

If there is, rest assured that that angel of yours has earned the “strong tone.” Before you immediately jump to their rescue, ponder the notion that this coach is not some rage-aholic. Sure, one in every million coaches might have some issues with their temper, but the other 999,999 coaches are simply trying to be heard.

My wife is a volleyball coach. She’s the head coach at the private high school in town and a 7th and 8th graders club team. She’s amazing at her job.

She knows volleyball at a level that I can’t begin to fathom. She is one of the sickest athletes I have ever been around, and can coach circles around most every coach I’ve ever encountered, regardless of sport. Truly gifted, this one.

Her policy is to never scold because of physical limitations. She won’t get on her kids for things that they simply cannot do. But she absolutely prohibits crappy effort, lack of enthusiasm, and an unwillingness to listen.

She’s made it very clear to her kids that she isn’t in the business of getting on them for things they can’t control, but effort, caring, and give-a-shit are all non-negotiables.

A couple weeks ago, a parent reached out to her via email. The team had returned from a weekend tournament where they finished somewhere in the middle of the pack.

As is my wife’s style, the second the kids began to show a wane in effort, her tone changed and she’d call a timeout and bark at them. She also praised the pants off of them between points, and when they were doing things well.

Anyhow, in 11 paragraphs, this mother went on a thesis about how my wife’s yelling is killing the spirit of the team, how the only communication she should use is positive reinforcement, and basically “atta-girl” at every moment. She’s worried that any other approach is going to ruin the experience for her daughter and rob her of her love of the game.

In short, a parent who has never participated in organized sports wrote my wife, one of the most talented coaches around, a fantasy-laced field manual on what she’s doing wrong and how to correct it. Unacceptable.

How to Become a Better Sports Parent

In closing, I want to leave you with some parenting tips, from a parent who also happens to be a coach:

• Let your kids fail. Let them experience losing. I can tell you as a coach who works with college kids, we have created a community of people who don’t know how to deal with losing. Our need to pounce and protect has created a culture of ill-equipped adults. What’s the scariest is since they haven’t “lost” in youth sports, they have no emotional relationship with it once they get to me. They are like lobotomized robots, and it’s not a good thing.
• Short of a coach getting physical with your child or calling them a fucking idiot to their face in front of others, let the coach yell. Allow them rattle your kids by coaching their faces off. Let them be demanding with your kids. Athletics build leaders. Leaders aren’t built with hugs and kisses. They’re forged in hard times, during conditioning sessions where they would rather be dead than run one more step, when the clock is ticking and we have to score or all is for nothing. Let them be coached hard.
• Never, ever, call, text or email a coach with anything that isn’t dire. Don’t contact them to talk about playing time, your kid’s feelings, or your ideas on what they should do. I promise you, you do more harm to your child than good. The vast majority of coaches are very protective of their methods, so when you impose your ideas on them, they likely will take it out on your kid, even if they aren’t doing it consciously.
• One of the most important things you can do for your child in the pursuit of developing a responsible adult is to back their coaches as they play. Taking your kid’s side on everything does nothing for them but keep them immature. Back the coach. Never badmouth the coach in front of your kids. Let the coach be the authority figure, and do your part in enforcing their rules for the team as acceptable and something to support. That level of backing will pay off for the kid later in life.
• When you are in the stands, you are a cheerleader. That’s it. Don’t yell at the coaches, the refs, and especially the other kids. You make your child look bad, and yourself look ridiculous.
• If you don’t have any experience in the sport your child is playing, don’t try and coach them on the sport. Instead, coach them on sportsmanship, hustle, being aggressive, and being a great teammate. I know nothing about baseball, but have been an assistant coach for my son’s baseball team for five seasons now. I am the hustle coach. They know with me, I’m going to make them run off the field, give their best effort, clean the dugout after games, and demand they make eye contact when our head coach is talking. I don’t need to be a baseball coach to provide value to the team. Neither do you.

If this article has upset you, good. It was probably you who it was intended for. You are in the way if you become the opposition to your child’s coach.

This is not a negotiable thing. Help all of the coaches in this country develop our kids. It’s those individuals who are helping mold our sons and daughters in to the men and women we hope them to become.

The post Parents: Get Out of the Way and Let the Coaches Coach appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Whether you know it or not, your forearm and grip strength say a lot about you. Grip strength is a quick way to evaluate how much full body strength one possesses. If you have the hand strength of a 12-year-old, you aren’t picking up heavy things.

Most of the world’s knowledge of the kettlebell is limited to the swing and perhaps the Turkish get up. Both are fabulous exercises, but the kettlebell is not limited to those two movements. Many of the people I work with have tremendous grip strength, and much of that is due to how I program our kettlebell exercises.

Following are some must-do exercises for those of you who have a similar fondness for kettlebell training and want to ramp up hand strength.

If you have the grip strength of a 12-year-old, you’re not moving anything heavy.

The Swing, But Harder

Okay, okay, I know. You already know all about the kettlebell swing. But you might be doing it wrong. First off, your effort on your swings makes or breaks the usefulness of the exercise. If you aren’t bringing it, you are wasting your time.

You need to swing hard. Maximal effort, cramp your glutes, grip-it-and-rip-it type of swings. If you want to really add layers and layers of strength to your hands, add heavy swings for volume. I’m talking swinging a 32kg or a 40kg bell for sets of 15-25. The simple weight of the bell moving with that much momentum forces you to grip down hard. Layer that with high volume, and you will gas your hands in a flash.

With a similar line of thinking, high volume, heavy single arm swings are a fast track to developing strong paws. But don’t bastardize your technique. Over-rotation, shrugging up on the bell, letting the lat relax, and reaching at the top are all things that can create some really unsafe postures. Keep your traps down, stay square, and lock the lat down the whole ride, and watch how fast your hand strength comes along.

Farmer’s Walks

This one is a no-brainer and should be in every program where an athlete needs big hand strength. I will publicly admit that I hate doing farmer’s walks. There’s something about that deep forearm burn that brings the bitch out in me. Nevertheless, gut-check farmer’s walks–the kind where your fingers basically peel away with fatigue–are the name of the game. Heavy bells (48-60kg) in pairs for distance will help you significantly speed the strength gains for your hands. Also, if you want to make things interesting, carry the handles in the tips of your fingers from the beginning. The fingers are where your forearm muscles are attached, so setting them up for failure is a great way to increase the value of this insidious exercise.

Kettlebell Forearm Flips

Any athlete who needs the forearm to roll over for any reason (throwing, swinging a bat or club) can greatly benefit from this beauty. Take a fairly light bell and lay down on your belly. Hold the bell by the horn with the main part of the handle flush to the floor (with the mass of the bell straight up). Tip the bell from side to side (see the video). The pronators and supinators of the forearm get smoked from this exercise. One of the cues I give is to accelerate through the motion, especially the supination. It is not easy even with a light weight; you have to attack the motion to get the mass started. Even for a strong athlete, a 12 or 16kg bell is heavy enough for sets of ten in each direction. 3-5 sets of this one and you can forget trying to write for the day.

Kettlebell Radial Deviations

This is a new one for us at Cal Poly but it’s quickly becoming one of my favorites. Similar to forearm flips, lay down on your belly and pick a moderately weighted bell (20 or 24kg). Set both hands on the horns and tip the bell from lying flat on the ground to the classic bottoms up position. Slowly lower the bell to the floor and then return to bottoms up. This one is deceptively hard and can humble the strongest guys I know.

Your Hands Connect You to Everything

Your hands are critical in every upper body exercise you perform. They connect you to the bar, they connect you to the dumbbell, and they connect you to the kettlebell. You cannot have a weak grip and expect to get anything of value done. More importantly, your forearm strength helps keep problems like elbow tendonitis from getting momentum during pull ups and such. Do yourself a favor and try some of these suggestions to get your hands right.

More on kettlebell strength training:

Two Kettlebell Exercises to Crack the Strength Code

The post 3 Kettlebell Exercises for an Iron Grip appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

So you wanna be an Olympic weightlifter. I do too. I also want to be a fighter pilot, the President of the United States, and the Fittest Man on Earth. I would also like to be a dolphin wrangler, a Super Bowl champion, and Guy Fieri’s new sidekick on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Problem is, all of those things require an intense amount focus, dedication, and specialization—not to mention eons of time—to accomplish. And there’s just not enough Chris Holders to get it all done.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but venturing down the Olympic lifting road is the weight training equivalent to the skills mentioned above. The Olympic lifts are the gold standard for all strength and power lifts. Some gymnastic feats are incredible, and some of the foolishness that is attempted in the name of strength is impressive in its own right (you know, the guy who is standing on two 8kg kettlebell handles with 315lb on his back… with the plates on fire… blind folded… with his… well, you get the point).

From a skill set standpoint, if you can barbell snatch with a high level of execution, you can pretty much do anything else in the weight room. A seriously heavy clean and jerk says more about your level of strength, power, and athleticism than nearly all other weight lifting skills, combined. Olympic weightlifting is the mountain top.

Having said all that, do you still want to do this? You clicked on this article, which means you probably said “yes!” without hesitation, which means I have to keep writing. Fine, I’ll take the bait, but you might not like what I have to say.

From this point forward, I am going to address you like I do my own athletes. I have hundreds of college athletes who, from time to time, venture down the Olympic road. As their coach, I have made the decision that they have developed enough proficiency in other skills to give me just enough faith that they won’t kill themselves during the training cycle ahead.

In my house, you must qualify for the Olympics.

What’s Your Skill Set?

I’m not talking about what your power clean max is. I want to know if you can squat. And not just that:

• Can you high bar squat?
• What does your front squat look like? Can you keep your back vertical, your elbows high throughout, and can you sit ass-to-grass?
• What does your deadlift look like? Do you lose your spine at any point in a heavy pull? Can you slide your hips forward once you pass your knees without needing to section the lift? Do you rear your head around like bull in a rodeo pen before opening the gate, or can you keep things quiet and pull with grace?
• Can you overhead squat, and do so with a certain degree of smoothness? Do you drop into your hips with the bar high overhead, or do you have to make some horrendous compensation and fake your way into position?

Where most lifters go wrong is they don’t have enough hours under the bar doing the little things, building their lifting toolbox before attempting high skill movements like the Olympic lifts. Hear my words: You have no business attempting any of the Olympic lifts if you don’t have the above-mentioned skills somewhat perfected. If you have a hole in any one of the questions I asked, you will inevitably hit a massive training plateau that will be some of the most frustrating times of your lifting career, not to mention dramatically increase your injury risk.

Why Do You Want to Do This?

Do you want to train the Olympic lifts because they are badass? That is not a good enough reason to go down this road. They are badass, but you must be a badass yourself if you think you can wrangle the demands of this discipline of training.

Olympic lifts are the truest test of power. They are the culmination of a broad array of skills into one volcanic, choreographed movement. Power is the application of force, and how quickly you can apply it. High-level Olympic lifters are a hybrid of sorts. They can do both, and with incredible grace. If you want to train the Olympic lifts to develop speed, you picked the wrong tool. If you want speed, swing kettlebells. If you just want to heave a massive weight off of the ground, you are also only partially correct. Sumo deadlift if you want to pull something tremendous.

Olympic weightlifting is about precision. When I was doing my graduate work, we did preliminary research on ground force production and how certain shoe choices affect it. As expected, weightlifting shoes produced significant amounts of peak force over standard athletic shoes. But what was the most startling was the insane spike in ground reaction force we saw during both the second pull and the catch. There are back-breaking forces in both the acceleration and catch that the weekend warrior has no business entertaining. Because of these forces, your skill set has to be there. If you aren’t fluid, or if you can’t hit specific positions, you shouldn’t be doing it.

Are You Brave Enough?

Any coach who teaches the Olympic lifts will tell you that when their athletes attempt a heavy lift, they quickly become sports psychologists. The coach title evaporates, and we have to become the Olympic weightlifting version of Dr. Phil.

Weightlifting tests your mettle. It tests what you are made of. When the shit hits the fan and you are going for a legit 1RM, it’s fucking scary. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched an athlete miss a weight that is totally within their capability because at some point during the lift, fear took the wheel. I have watched scores of lifters smash a weight with the mastery of a professional, then add a measly 2.5kg to each side of the bar, and crumble like a novice.

The critical role of psychology in Olympic weightlifting cannot be overstated. You have to have a switch in your head that shuts fear down, and a trust in your technique that will lead the way through each attempt. You can’t punk out because the first pull felt heavy. You can’t sit slowly because things feel “off.” Weightlifting is about staying with your attempt, trusting completely and almost blindly in technique, and being fast even when everything in your body tells you to slow down. Toughen up, buttercup. This type of training is not for sissies.

Who’s Your Coach?

If you don’t have a coach, you have zero business taking this on. There is absolutely no way a person can wade through the maze of technique that is Olympic weightlifting without a coach.

Not just any schmuck will do. I was trained by the best in the world, Mike Burgener. He groomed me, not as a lifter, but as a coach. He helped develop my eye. He was my go-to, because I wasn’t going to have some random at the local CrossFit box who teaches the 6am open class—and then leaves to go to his real job at the bank—help me put the lifting equivalent of a loaded gun in my mouth. I needed someone who knew his stuff. I needed to be put through the ringer by a master.

I didn’t have time to waste with someone who has no business coaching me, and neither do you. The idea of 10,000 hours to mastery is a real thing. If your coach is younger than 25, they aren’t your best choice. Find someone who has put in thousands of hours coaching, because they can see things the average coach can’t. They have a large enough coaching vocabulary to say what you need to hear.

Years ago, I had volleyballer attempting a clean max. She continued to miss because she was scared. She didn’t need me to tell her, “Well, you need to shrug yourself under the bar, and pry your knees as hard as you can in the catch, so your pelvis will be stable enough to accept the load.” I put my arm around her, and quietly told her, “Here’s what you need to do: Push your fucking gum to the side of your mouth and pull the bar with the bomb diggity-diggity.” Like a boss, she nailed the attempt. That stupid phrase had nothing to do with the lift. It did nothing for her in terms of technique. But it was exactly what she needed to hear, at that moment.

That wasn’t luck. That was a coach knowing what this one athlete needed to hear, to bypass her fear and get on with sticking the attempt. Your coach has to know what to say and when to say it, so you can get where you need you to go.

Have You Ever Dislocated Your Shoulder?

Or your elbow? Have you ever broken your wrist, or violently bulged discs in your back? Olympic weightlifting puts you in a position where these things are a real possibility. How many of your daily activities put you into this type of reality?

I once saw a lifter bail forward on a botched snatch attempt, and because he didn’t move fast enough, the bar caught his ankle and snapped it. I don’t want to scare you, but you need to respect the dangers here. Olympic weightlifting is a symphony of movement that needs to be exact. There is no time or space for halfhearted attempts or casual approaches, because the potential for cataclysmic injury is very real. Speed in anything creates dramatic increases in risk, and when we are talking about lifting and speed, there is nothing more dangerous (or beautiful) than a heavy snatch or clean and jerk.

Look up Olympic lifting injuries on YouTube. Time how long you can watch what you see. I personally can’t make it very long, because the types of injuries that can happen in this style of lifting are life-changing and horrendous. It’s not like pulling a hamstring or straining a pec. It’s real deal awfulness that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

This Is Too Serious to Be Casual

Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I am a little burnt out. Or maybe I have done this for long enough that my standards for my lifters are no longer negotiable. When I tell you that my athletes have to qualify for the Olympic lifts, I mean exactly that. I have redshirt sophomores (that’s three years in my program) who have just now met the standard. They have performed hundreds of lifting sessions, developed enough general strength, and built enough trust for me to “let them” have a go at it. I also have teams and individuals who are finishing their careers who were never given the keys to this style of lifting. Most of those individuals did not display enough toughness, technique, or desire to where I felt comfortable enough to invest the enormous amount of time it takes to get even competent at these lifts.

Olympic weightlifting is the real deal, folks. The challenges and risks inherent in this style of training mean that having it as part of your once-a-week lifting schedule is silly.

I talk about the “weight room gods” to my athletes all the time. You know, the spirits of the place that demand respect the second you walk in the door. You honor them by wearing only Cal Poly stuff in our room. You break down your weights when you are done, and return those items where they belong. You don’t ask about changing the music. And you respect the culture, the history, and the intention of our system at all times. This includes Olympic weightlifting. You honor the weight room gods by being dead serious and not casual about the Olympic lifts. It is a privilege to train this way. I hope you feel the same.

The post Olympic Weightlifting and the Recreational Athlete appeared first on Breaking Muscle.