So last week I was doing some of my normal weekly reading, and one of Tony's posts really hit home with me about something.
Tony talks about how he's changed his view on things over the years that he's been training and coaching, but how he still leans towards doing things the certain way that they see fit at CP. He has grown and matured to the point where he understands why/how certain things can be applicable for certain people, but doesn't necessarily feel the need to use those things in his training on a routine basis.
This got me thinking...being biased as a strength coach is actually a really good thing. There are a hundred and one different ways to train someone in todays fitness landscape. Bodybuilding, strength, crossfit, yoga, zumba, P90x, circuit training, strongman, functional training, weightlifting, the list goes on and on.
With all of these training options nowadays, it is very easy to get confused and overwhelmed. It's not uncommon to see a trainer in a commercial gym who's business card says that they have a training certification, and certs for TRX/Boxing/Pilates/Kegels/Jazzercise/Bosu/Shake Weight. A trainer like this sort of falls under the old adage of "if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything".
It's correct to say that everyone can be useful and appropriate at some point for some client. Who knows, maybe someday you come across a client who is only motivated to work with a shake weight; it's your job to help them get results with that (however little those results might be). This is where being biased about something is actually a good thing.
You see, the coach or trainer that you're working with should ideally be educated about these things. I myself have been training for 6 years, while going to school and studying exercise and health science. I've gone to a number of seminars and read countless articles, papers and books on all topics relating to strength and conditioning. All of this formal and informal education has lead to me to do this thing called "thinking for myself". I train and program the way that I do because my education has taught me that it's the best. I think it's the best way to get someone happy, healthy, fit and strong. I don't think that any of the other numerous ways of getting "results" are wrong necessarily, I just don't think they are the best. I look at as many things as I can with a mind that is half open and half closed; I know that the way that I train is what I consider the best, but maybe sometimes other things can be applicable and folded into my own system. You can't ever count something out completely until you know everything there is to know about it.
If you can get results with your clients training some other way, then that is all that really matters. But, to me, a trainer who tells you that every style or program is great just doesn't know anything. That is a trainer who is struggling to make a sale and just wants you to be happy. A trainer or coach that is worth going to will have a particular style and they will make you understand why it's the best. Just a little food for thought.
Weightlifting combos are nothing new, they've been around for a very long time in the Olympic weightlifting world, but came to prominence recently in light of one extremely savage combo done by The Man himself.
Not for nothing, but that's 455 pounds.
First off, what's the difference between a "complex" and a "combo". As I know the terms, a complex is a series of exercises down sequentially for a given number of reps. Example: deadlift, hang power clean, push press, front squat, RDL, bent over row for 8 reps each. These are done for speed and generally for a metabolic conditioning effect; the reps are also too high to allow you to work on technique. A combo is several exercises done sequentially for a prescribed number of reps...sound familiar? The example here would be: clean pull, power clean, 2 push press, 1 jerk, with the purpose being to work on a particular weakness during a lift. I suppose its a small difference, but this is how I define the differences when I talk to someone about it.
WHY
I think the big difference is, indeed, in the purpose of the prescription. A weightlifting combo should be used to over-emphasize one aspect of the lift (snatch or clean and jerk) while under-emphasizing another aspect. It also allows you to get in more volume in that lift, with a specific weight and specific positions for a specific training effect.
Lets use the Klokov Complex from above as our example. Clean pull + clean + paused front squat + push press + paused jerk. In one of his american seminars someone asked Dmitry why he did so many deadlifts and presses and he said that it was because those are his weakness. This gives us some insight into the design of this complex. Since he wants to work on pulls, he gets in two of them (the pull and the clean). Since 205 is a "light" front squat for him (he did a 5-second paused front squat with 250kg) he adds in a slight pause to increase the difficulty. He challenges himself with a heavy push press, and since it's a relatively light jerk for him, he adds the pause during the jerk which also reinforces his jerk dip position. This combo is very specifically designed to address his weak points and reinforce some important positions.
WHO
Combo's are appropriate for any level of lifter, but the combo itself must be appropriate for that persons ability level. Taking a lifter who's been training for 5 months and throwing the Klokov complex at them is probably a poor idea. If their front squat position is poor, that will be a shitshow. Re-racking a bar from the overhead position is a skill that takes a while to learn and a paused jerk would result in a missed lift.
A more appropriate clean and jerk combo for a beginner (with a poor bar path on their clean and a lot of missed jerks) would be something along these lines: 2 clean pulls, above the knee hang clean, front squat, jerk, behind the neck jerk. This combo would give the lifter 2 pulls to the waist where they can focus on positions. Then the hang clean would allow the lifter to focus on keeping their shoulders in front of the bar without having to worry about clearing their knees. The added front squat is because, well, front squats are awesome. The front/back jerks allow the lifter to get two jerks in without having to re-rack the bar onto their clavicle, and the second jerk is the easier variation when they are already smoked.
WHEN
There are very few wrong times to use combos, in my eyes. They are very useful for building hypertrophy and work capacity at the beginning of a phase, just after a competition. They are useful for working on positions in the middle of your training cycle when you're still ironing out the kinks, so to speak. I would not, I think, use them pre-competition. That's when you should be focusing on getting comfortable handling the weights you need for your competition. They would be, however, useful during a deload week since combo's are, by nature, a lower intensity exercise.
HOW
I use combos' pretty regularly in my training/programming. Let me outline a couple of my favorite combos and why I apply them.
1 Snatch Pull + 1 Hang Snatch below the knee + 1 hang snatch above the knee
- I use this combo because one of my big issues is clearing my knees in the snatch. The pull to my knees is pretty good, but once I get to my knees shitty stuff starts to happen. This let's me work on various aspects of the first and second pulls in sequence, and I can feel where I'm messing up.
2 Hang Power Snatch + 1 Hang Snatch
- I do these above the knee; I'm really bad at hang snatches. I get my hips way back and shoulders over the bar instead of out in front; this makes me bang the bar off my hips and gives me a shitty bar path. I am able to use a lighter weight and focus on my positions and really pulling the shit out of the bar. The last full snatch lets me use that long pull I just developed and really dive under the bar without any "weightlifters disease".
2 Power Clean + 1 Jerk
- I clean more than I jerk, so I tailor my combos to reflect that usually; this is the exception. I power clean less than I full clean, so this combo allows me to work on staying over the bar and pulling hard on a lighter weight. The jerk still takes "thought" for me to do, and I can focus on getting a really solid dip out of it, rather than bench pressing it.
Clean + Push Press + Jerk
- I actually really like this combo for myself. Performing a push press before the jerk forces me to drive with my legs and (hopefully) keep my heels down. I go to my toes too early during my jerk (just like everything else) so doing my push press without lifting my heels reinforces that motor pattern.
1 Clean + 1 Jerk + 1 BTN Jerk
- I apply this combo to myself to get the feeling of higher percentages. My jerk is a shithole, so doing a jerk double with a high percentage is doomed to failure or shitty technique (same thing, right?). I skirt this issue by doing my first jerk and then dropping the bar onto my back, where I can do a BTN (behind the neck) jerk. This second jerk feels "easier"and let's me get in a second rep with that heavy weight.
As I said before, there's nothing magic about simply performing combos. You need to do the right ones at the right times in order for them to be successful. Practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect. Start making up some of your own, focusing on your weak points and see what happens...and don't forget to track your progress!
Let me know what you're trying and how it works for you. Have a great day and go lift some heavy shit!
This past Monday I got to witness one of the more special events I've been able to see. I got to see my girlfriend Kelsi run the 118th Boston Marathon.
This was special for a few reasons; the most unfortunate of which is what happened last year when a couple of assholes turned the city of Boston into an episode of CSI for a week. We all know what happened, so I won't delve into that anymore than I needed to.
The coolest reason that this was a special event was because of how fucking hard Kelsi worked for this. I always knew that she was a hard worker, but that took on a whole new meaning when she started her marathon training about 4 months ago. She was running a ton of miles in the middle of winter in a place that isn't exactly friendly to running 20 miles outside (it snowed on Sunday during her long run for like 6 weeks straight). She will be modest and tell you that her training isn't anything different than that of all distance runners, but I'm not there to watch all the other distance runners bust their ass for a race.
Training for all sports is tough; I've considered training for weightlifting to be some of the most arduous training that I've ever done. It's repetitive and painful and frustrating and just brutal at some points; but it doesn't hold a candle to what I saw Kels go through. Aches and pains and zero programmed days off while running 70-75 miles a week. I used to think that doing 6 or 7 sets of 3 clean and jerk was brutal; it's nothing compared to having to run 13 miles between classes and then find some time to study.
All of her hard work paid off, though. She ran a 16 minute PR and broke the 3-hour mark which was her ultimate goal. She ran 2:59.06 and said it was the hardest race she's ever run. The hills in Newton were worse than she'd thought and she wasn't sure if she'd make it at some points. But she loved it and was thrilled with how she did. The whole event was amazing for her, and she had a great time doing it. The signs, the crowds, the whole spectacle of the event was worth it.
I know that she now feels a little bit weird; she'd trained so hard for this race that she's got that "lost" sense that athletes tend to feel when their event/season is over. I know that once her training starts up again in a week that she'll fall right back into stride (pun not intended, but totally intended) and get ready to smoke her next race. To her coach and teammates, I personally want to thank you for helping her so much during this race prep; I know she couldn't have done it without you all.
Kels, I'm proud of you babe. You did an amazing job.
While running a marathon is pretty much the last thing I personally ever want to do, we can all certainly learn a lesson (or 8) about how to work hard to achieve a goal. Anything that you're doing that is "so hard" could always be worse. Work as hard as you can, and the results will be worth it.
So you've taken the plunge and decided to actually participate in a strength and conditioning program. Maybe you contacted a professional like me or Tony to start getting awesome with a personal touch (don't make it creepy). You could've searched around and purchased Show and Go, High Performance Handbook, 5/3/1, The Juggernaut Method or The Cube Method. You could've even gone to T-Nation or *shudder* Bodybuilding.com and found one of their pre-fab programs. (What I'm trying to say is that you have a lot of options, there's no excuse for following a non-program program.)
Now that you've got your shiny new program in hand, you'd think that it would be a simple matter of following directions, but people often like to make simple stuff hard. I've written a lot of programs for people that I wasn't physically training and as such have come up with a few tips to help you make your experience easy and successful. Listen up!
1) Follow the fucking directions. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it's not unfortunately. I used to program for a guy that came to my gym, and one day I walked into the weight room and say him pulling 335 pounds for a single...and his previous max was 315. I asked what exactly in the blue fuck he was doing since I'd not programmed in any max attempts. He told me that he "felt good deadlifting the other day and was pissed about missing this weight the first time (when he maxed pre-program) so he wanted to try it today after benching". Yup, he'd already pulled once that week and decided to max out post upper body workout because YOLO.
Don't ad-lib on your program unless you absolutely have to. Don't change front squats to back squats because you don't like front squats. If your program uses percentages, don't add extra pounds because you feel like it. If it's a 3 times per week program, do your lifts 3 times per week. Whatever you're thinking about changing, just don't. It was written that way for a reason. If you have a legitimate issue, then talk to your coach/trainer about it before you go changing it.
2) Ask questions! If your coach isn't a bum, then he/she will be more than willing and able to answer questions about the program they wrote for you. If you got a pre-fab program (5/3/1 or Show and Go) then ask a trusted fitness professional for their opinion. I've had people go through a full month of programing doing the wrong variation of an exercise because they thought it was something it wasn't. Don't be that person. The only stupid question is the one you don't ask.
3) Track your progress. There are many ways for you, the athlete, to track your progress when performing a program. One of the simplest and most effective ways is progress pics: take a picture of yourself in a bathing suit at the start of the program and continue to do so every 4-6 weeks and again at the end of the program. It will allow you and your coach to both see the progress in a very clear cut way.
The next best way to track your progress is by keeping a workout journal. Track how you're feeling, the weights your using (if they aren't prescribed), what you're eating and how you're sleeping. Give your coach this feedback and they can use it to develop your next month of programming.
4) Work hard. Pretty simple, really. When provided with the proper instructions you should be able to just put your head down and go. Do the work that's put in front of you and give it everything you have. Training is pretty simple, you get back exactly what you put into it.
That's it for today; follow these tips next time you start a training program and I guarantee it will be a much better experience for you. If you have any questions or want to start your own personalized program shoot me an email at michaelkaneanderson@gmail.com and I'll get you going.
In the last year or so it has become increasingly popular to prescribe tempo to any number of lifts; Charles Poliquin has used them for years and Cal Dietz made them popular again with Triphasic. If you've ever performed one of my programs over the last few years then you know that I personally use a lot of tempo stuff during the A-tier (primary lifts) portion of the lift.
how you feel after tempo front squats
First off, what is tempo? Tempo simply refers to the pace of the lift. Tempo prescriptions (should) have 4 parts: the eccentric/lowering phase, the amortization/isometric phase (ooooh big word), the concentric/lifting phase and the period of rest at the top of the lift. When written out, it could look like this "5873". This would ultimately be the worst tempo in the world: a 5 second eccentric, 8 second pause at the bottom, 7 second concentric movement and a 3 second pause at the top. That would suck donkey balls, truthfully.
If tempo sucks, why do we use it?
Great question! Tempo-ing a lift can do a lot of things for a lot of different people. For beginners, it can allow them to feel their way through the particular positions that you want them to learn on a lift; sitting their hips back, keeping their elbows tight, keeping their core braced, etc. Since they are going to be moving in a controlled fashion, it will limit the amount of weight they can use which will, again, allow them to focus more on their technique than on mashing their way through reps.
For an intermediate lifter, it will increase the time under tension (TUT) of a lift, which will help make you stronger and bigger. There have been a bunch of studies done on eccentric training that show significant increases in strength and force production. This is because your muscles have to produce more force to slowly control a weight on the way down, rather than simply produce some force and using your lever system to lift the weight up. This can help intermediate lifters break through some plateaus in various lifts.
Advanced lifters can use tempo for all the same reasons, and also for a change of pace. You can't just always hit it hard and aim for X reps at Y percentage, you'd run yourself out. Switching it up and using some tempo for a phase or two here or there will keep bodies healthy and keep training fresh.
This has nothing to do with anything.
Con's of Tempo
Despite how much I like using tempo for various populations and at various times in a programming phase, there are some legit negatives to it. The first is that it does indeed force you to use a lower weight, which is good sometimes and bad sometimes. You will, occasionally, want to work at a normal pace to see what sort of weights you can push. If you increase that weight, then the weights you can do a tempo with will also increase (obviously). Another con is that if someone can't control their bodies during a tempo'd lift, they are just going to end up ingraining a poor movement pattern. If you bench with your elbows flared way out normally and don't understand HOW to keep them in, then this isn't going to help clean up your form. It's not a replacement for good coaching.
Probably the biggest con of applying tempo to lifts (dependent on which phase the athlete/client is in) is the overall stress it provides to the body. Heavy eccentric work will often leave the trainee with significant soreness in the affected body parts; I did some tempo front squats yesterday and my legs and upper back are feeling it today. Ask anybody who does 5-second negative pushups for the first time with me how their upper body felt for the next couple of days! The soreness you experience diminishes when you do them more, but if you're doing them right you'll still feel the systemic "tiredness" that you get when you're really taxing your CNS. Make sure your athletes/clients are aware of this so they understand how they are going to feel and make sure you're programming it at the appropriate time of year (i.e. not an in-season prescription).
How to Apply Tempo to Your Lifts
In the most literal sense, you can apply a tempo to any lift that you want to; but you really should be considering the muscle groups and actions before just throwing a tempo at anything you happen to be doing. If you start doing that you're just going to have a lot of sore muscles and a big pot of Shit Soup.
Traditionally, tempo is best with big compound exercises. Some of my favorites include: squats, pushups, pullups/chinups, bench press, bodysaw, RDLs and Trap Bar Deadlifts. These are lifts where you can go (relatively) heavy with good form and reap all the benefits of the increased TUT. Pullups are tough, you've gotta be pretty damn good at vertical pulling to be able do them; I'd more likely start someone on a cable pulldown first.
Some exercises that I really don't like doing a lot of tempo on are conventional deadlifts (too big a ROM), vertical pressing (DBs or Barbell), and most rowing variations. The reason for most of these is that it puts your body in such a tough position to create and resist force. You end up compensating a lot and using poor positions that will (again) create bad habits or, worse, put you at risk for injury. There's no serious benefit to adding a tempo to a bent over barbell row.
I suppose you can derive benefits by adding a tempo to curls, triceps exercises and other bodybuilder style exercises, but it's not something that I personally would do. If that floats your boat then go for it.
Regarding the tempo prescription itself; there's no hard and fast rule. I personally prefer 3-5 second eccentrics with various pauses at the bottom depending on the desired training effect. This is enough of an eccentric component to create a change, but not so much that it will drastically reduce the training load or put form at risk. For some more advanced clients, 8-10 second eccentrics can produce some pretty serious strength advantages, but I think that beginners won't really benefit because the load used will be so minimal. All in all, my most used tempo is 31X0 and 53X0.
don't tempo this
Remember that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with tempo, but there needs to be a time and a place for it. Take everything into consideration and as long as you can give a good reason about why you're doing it, then you're ok.
If you have any questions or comments, hit me up below. Have a great day and go lift some heavy shit.
I love the snatch. It's one of the two lifts I compete in, and when performed correctly it's a beautiful combination of speed and power. But, when it's performed poorly it's an awkward clusterfuck of limbs and joints and barbells.
People (myself included) often debate about doing the snatch with general population clients; I personally never snatched with a client when I was a personal trainer, but that doesn't mean it is inappropriate. It just means that I never saw had a person with whom I said "they need to start snatching". Whether it was a coordination issue, a mobility/flexibility contraindication, or simply that it wouldn't benefit their goals I never saw a reason to teach it.
With athletes, however, I've done quite a bit of snatching. At Boston University a majority of the teams snatched, exclusively the hang-power variation. Many of the teams did the clean-grip or close-grip variation that has been popular in collegiate settings for quite a while. At my current job, too, nearly all of the athletes snatch. But do they really need to?
First off, I'm not a big fan of the clean-grip snatch. Most people, myself included, don't have the mobility to be able to keep a bar close enough to our bodies to have a good bar path, nevermind catching the bar overhead in the power position with a shoulder width grip. This variation promotes a poor bar path and catch position, and to be successful with it the athletes have to use a very low load. There are very few people who do this exercise well, more often than not they are elite level weightlifters. Call me crazy, but I'm not a huge fan of exercises that inherently promote poor form and require an obnoxiously low load.
Now, should athletes be doing conventional hang power snatches? Truthfully, I'm uncertain. It's a fantastic exercise where the barbell has to be moved at a high speed requiring a ton of power. However, this is all sacrificed for the sake of technique. If an athlete has poor snatch technique they will leak power all over the place and their weights be consistently be limited. They could start trying to compensate for poor bar paths with awkward catches and put themselves at risk for injury.
Not that the clean is an easy exercise, but it's certainly much less complicated than the snatch. The mobility requirements are also significantly less which means more athletes can do it and with less time spent on correcting all the contraindications preventing them from doing it in the first place. This means that you can get athletes training earlier, with less time spent on technique, with a training load that will induce more changes.
And yes, I'm aware that you can move a lighter weight faster but I'd still rather have a freshman in college who can hang clean 225 pounds rather than one who can awkwardly hang snatch 95.
I'm in no way suggesting that the snatch is a bad exercise or that athletes don't need to perform it; there are oodles of team sport athletes out there snatching big weights with fantastic technique. But it's not a one-sized-fits-all exercise (none of them really are). When you're deciding whether or not to include this in your athletes programming, please consider if you are a good enough coach to make it effective and if your athletes are good enough to be able to benefit from it.
Thanks for reading. Have a great day and go lift some heavy shit!
Now that the Arnold is over, I've started prepping for the next meet. Mark said there might be one in early April and I really want to be ready for it. I'm tired of "being happy about competing", I'm ready to get some motherfucking PR's in this bitch.
I did something that I always say not to do and I wrote my own program. I learned quite a bit during my time doing Risto Sports programs, and I've learned just as much during my time so far in Ohio training with Mark. Mark has been brutally delicately dissecting my technique flaws over the last few weeks and I'm using certain exercises to address those issues in this next month of training.
I'm also addressing my strength issue. My squat max hasn't gone anywhere in a long time, and that bugs me. Will it make me a better lifter? Not directly, but when your squat goes up it always has an indirect effect on your lifting.
Snatches:
My snatch technique was super-fucked, to put it bluntly. Now, after some work, I think it's just regular fucked. My bad habits have been whittled down and are now (as far as I know): my second pull, my extension, bar path and"frozen feet". During the second pull, I was bringing my hips forward to the bar rather than bringing the bar into my hips. This is short changing my power and creating a shitty bar path that makes me miss forwards. It also causes the second problem, which is my extension. I'm early onto my toes every time which causes an even shittier bar path. I didn't realize it was an issue, but I suffer from "frozen feet", which is when my feet never leave the pull position. You often hear "pull position/squat position" but those were the same for me, which I thought was ok because I squat with a really narrow stance. Mark has been working on correcting this and I'm finally starting to get the hang of it.
You can see in that picture that when the bar is in my hip crease, I'm already extending through my ankles (i'm also throwing my head back). At that point my feet should still be flat on the ground while I push through my ankles.
To address and correct these issues I'm going to be performing a lot of hip snatches, power snatches, "no hook no feet" snatches (a full snatch without using a hook grip or moving your feet at all, Mark wants me staying completely flat on my feet the whole time) and some 3-pause snatches to work on my positions (just off of floor, at knees, final position). These are all pretty lightweight training lifts (I've been performing them so far at just less than 80%) but working on my technique will have the biggest benefit for me right now.
Clean and Jerk:
My clean technique isn't nearly as bad as my snatch, but I'm still early into my toes and bringing my hips to the bar and not bar to hips. I think one of the culprits of this is the way that I performed RDLs for such a long time. I have a "frozen foot" when I clean because my right foot will shoot out but my left stays planted. My jerk is my weak point (I out-clean my jerk by probably 15kg), and it all starts with my dip. I have a tendency to let my chest fall forward and my hips drift back, which causes me to push the bar out in front of my body. This happens at heavier weights, so my plan is to spend more time working with weights closer to my max than I would have previously. I also want to spend more time performing the jerk in a more fatigued state, like you would be after hitting a max clean.
To address these issues I'm actually going to be doing a few combo exercises and a lot more jerks. The reason I'm doing some combos is because of the difference in my clean and my jerk. I can use a lighter weight and still get a training effect for my clean while working at a high percentage of my jerk. The exercises I'll be training are: power clean+2 jerks, clean pull/power clean/full clean and jerk (did this yesterday and loved it), BTN jerks, and clean pull/hang power clean. I'll be able to work on some positional stuff and get in some good jerk volume at a good percentage. We'll see how it works!
Squats:
I'm just going to do a fuckshitton of squats this month. Whether it directly helps my lifting or not, I really want to squat 200kg this year. No real plan this month for that, just a lot of triples and a volume day of sets of 5. And probably some ammonia.
That's what I'm up to. Any new plans from you guys?
This will be a bit of an inflammatory post, but it's not meant to be that way. I'm taking an honest look at the landscape of the industry that I love and where we will all be in the next several years. If your butt is hurt by this, well...
There is always a ton of anti-CrossFit posts going around by strength and conditioning types lambasting the system for all of its faults; a lot of with which I agree. I don't think Joe Schmo should walk in off the street and start doing snatches on day 1, or learn how to kip a pullup before being good at strict ones...but those are rarely issues in CrossFit gyms nowadays.
Gone are the days of everyone following the apparently random WOD's posted on the mainsite; the vast majority of boxes write their own programming. On top of that, much of the programming is being written by qualified coaches who have degrees in exercise science and a background in strength and conditioning. Off the top of my head, I can think of 8 CrossFit coaches that I know personally who have either a Exercise Science degree or a background in S&C, or both. These coaches are setting up intake assessment protocols for their gyms so they can provide more individualized programming, they are setting long-term goals for clients and setting up periodized programs to help them achieve these things.
What is CrossFit and what makes it different than traditional strength and conditioning anyway? The famous saying is "A regimen of constantly varied (CV), functional movements (FM) performed at high intensity (HI) in a communal environment leads to health and fitness." So let's break that down: "constantly varied" means they change the exercises a lot, "functional movements" relates to compound barbell lifts and gymnastics movements and "high intensity" means that you go hard. Well, truthfully, that's not so different than strength and conditioning. If you train 5 days a week with a trainer or a coach, you're going to be doing different exercises every day, and hopefully they will be barbell lifts performed at a pretty significant intensity. Sooooooo how's it different again? I'd say the big difference is that traditional strength and conditioning programs train athletes for specific contests and seasons...but what if you're a 26 year old office worker with no season to speak of? Then you might want a program that increases your General Physical Preparedness consistently over time, right? That's what I did with people as a personal trainer; work consistently to get them stronger and fitter with (often) no specific time frame.
So, it's the idiots, I think. The CrossFit idiots make themselves pretty obvious and it annoys people.
There are plenty of idiots in the CrossFit world, but there are plenty of idiot personal trainers, and even idiot strength coaches. For a long time the strength and conditioning world focused their vitriol onto crappy personal trainers (and there was/is a lot of them). But what happened? Trainers started to learn more and more and now there's a ton of really good, qualified personal trainers in commercial gyms out there.
Here's an interesting thought; CrossFit gyms far outnumber traditional strength and conditioning gyms, by a lot. I know, I was recently looking for work. What does this mean? It means that more and more classically trained strength and conditioning coaches will be finding jobs at CrossFit gyms. The level of coaching at these gyms will get better and better and more post-grad athletes will start finding their way to a CrossFit gym for training programs. They will probably end up doing normal CrossFit classes either, but following traditional performance programs.
Athletes will see a CrossFit gym with good coaching, where they can get faster and stronger, that has bars and bumpers and sleds and ropes and all the good toys that any strength and conditioning facility should have, that commercial gyms do not. Many CrossFits are already training athletes who just don't have any other place to go; there isn't exactly a Cressey Performance or IFast on every corner of each city.
I'm not suggesting we all go run out and get our level-1 certifications, just some food for thought. What do you guys think?
This past Friday, Kelsi and I took a trip to Columbus so that I could compete in the weightlifting competition at The Arnold Classic.
Gotta say, it was pretty fucking awesome. I really wanted to lift there because of the size of the event, the whole thing is massive. Let's be honest, I'll never make it to the Nationals or American Open. I'm not exactly what I'd call a "good lifter"; a few weeks ago Dan Bell said "you're not exactly what I'd call a lightning fast guy". Lifting at the Arnold will pretty much be my only chance to lift at events of that size, so I'm going to take it where I can get it.
When I first got there, I got lost trying to find the weightlifting event and ended up walking around the expo and it was awful. There were a million people there and it was cheesedick central; an absurd number of bro's in affliction shirts or v necks with fake tans and tight jeans. The sleeve monster had apparently come through and eaten a large majority of the sleeves and also deposited a ton of hair gel. I was surprised at the ratio of skinny guys with fake tans vs. huge guys with strong beards.
I finally found my way to the platforms and it was really cool. My coach Mark had just finished lifting so I found my training partner Nate and went into the training room to get weighed in. When we walked in Nate started telling me who he'd seen already, I asked if Jon North was going to lift without warming up and then I realized he was sitting directly behind me tying his shoes. This ended up being the coolest part of the meet for me; I got to sit in the training room and see a ton of the best American weightlifters go through some light training. All in all I ended up seeing North, Farris, Spencer Arnold, Natalie Johnson, Sam Lower, Holley Mangold, Caleb Whitby, Collin Burns, Lidia Valentin (she was so fucking fast) and the whole MDUSA team.
Sitting around watching these athletes all train let me see little differences in everyones technique, which helped me realize how silly all of the internet debates about technique are. Every lifter is different, and thus there is no single technique that is right for everyone. As you advance, you'll find out what is the most efficient way for you to move the bar and complete the lifts, the minutiae isn't so important. I also got to see how they warmed up and prepped for lifts; Sam Lower would step away from the bar and "re-set" herself before every rep, even during triples. Jon North makes the same noises for an empty bar snatch as he does for 155kg. James Tatum did more pre-lift mobility than anyone else. Lidia Valentin is embarrassingly fast and is way bigger than you'd expect.
Valentin snatching 115 kg...which is what I clean and jerked. Photo: Hookgrip
As for the competition itself, it could've gone better for me. Truthfully, I should be "happy" about it, but I expected more out of myself. I ended up snatching 90kg and clean and jerking 115kg for a 205kg total at 94.47kg bodyweight. This was my second competition; 90kg ties my meet PR (training PR is 95) and 115kg ties my training PR and becomes my new meet PR.
I'm pissed at myself because 90kg was my opening weight for the snatch and I had to use all 3 attempts to make it. In the warm-up room, 85kg felt like nothing; I smoked it and went to the main platform extremely confident. I caught it too far behind my head and couldn't hold the weight. My head was all fucked for attempt 2 and I wasted it. I finally made the lift on attempt 3 and the announcer said "well that looked easy"...because it WAS easy. I wanted to give myself a chance at 100kg but I fucked it up. Mark and Dan Bell have been drilling my snatch technique a ton since I started lifting out here, and while I think I've shown improvements I didn't get to realize it on this day. I was pissed but was able to clear my head going into cleans.
When I was warming up my cleans, everything felt easy. Mark noticed that I was basically catching 100kg as power, and it was because it felt light. Jerks were crisp (for me) and fast. I was super confident going out to open at 110kg and it felt like a great lift. The lifter going before me had also dropped his ammonia tab on the ground right next to me, so I had a whiff of that before going out. I went back and power cleaned 90 to stay ready and grabbed an ammonia tab out of my own bag. When I stood up with 115 on the main platform I felt lightheaded but made the jerk anyway. As I walked backstage I guess I looked glassy because Mark had to ask if I was going to pass out. I had given myself the opportunity try 120, and was pretty excited about it. The clean was easy, but my form turned to shit and I basically pushed myself away from the bar during the jerk.
Overall, I'm pretty unhappy with how I did. I really want 100/120/220 and I know that it's in my grasp. But that's the "fun" part about training; there's always more work to be done. Even if you're the best in the world, you can always improve.
My new program starts today. I'm going to cut the volume of my competition lifts a little and focus on quality reps on exercises that will help me clean up my technique. My snatch technique needs a ton of work (always early into my toes, have trouble moving my feet out when I receive the bar) and I'm going to make a big push on fixing that before I compete again. With my jerk, my technique feels pretty ok at lighter weights but falls to shit when it starts to get heavy. I need to get more comfortable jerking heavy weights, and my next month of programming will help to fix that. Above all that, I want to get stronger. I don't feel strong enough right and I really want my squat numbers to go up. I know this added strength will aid in me feeling more stable with heavy weights overhead.
All in all, I'm really happy I went to the Arnold, and I'm looking forward to getting better. Loving the process of training is the best part of competition. I really want to thank Mark Hansbrough for taking me under his wing and helping me out, and congratulate him for taking 3rd in his group with a 268 total. I also want to thank and congratulate Nate Napolitano for training with me and for qualifying for University Nationals as an 85kg with a 208 total. Great job guys; when's the next meet?
It's no secret that we live in a technology driven world. We all walk around with little mini-computers in our pocket that ensure we can find the nearest coffee shop or check the thermostats in our homes. Hell, I have a 5-dollar application on my iphone that gives me all of the capabilities of a program that normally costs a thousand bucks and be otherwise unavailable to someone like me (people sans wealth).
Needless to say, technology does a lot of amazing things. It increases the amount of information we have available to us, helps with the speed with which we learn certain things and gives us constant access to things that make us happy, like movies and music.
It's also been a part of strength and conditioning/fitness for a very long time now too. Some of the earliest examples are things like heart rate monitors, GPS watches and pedometers; nowadays we use electronic communication for distance coaching have websites that act as training logs so we don't have to carry pens and notebooks everywhere. But the newest advances are going above and beyond what we would even think is possible.
Simple devices like the Nike+ FuelBand, FitBit and Jawbone can be worn on the wrist and will track all of your activity, the intensity, your calories in vs. calories out and even your sleep rhythms. These aren't products being worn exclusively by elite athletes, these are available to anyone with a couple of hundred extra dollars.
Even beyond that, we have giant performance monitoring systems. Systems like HRV/Ithlete, Zephyr, Edge10 and Kinetic-Athlete essentially plug your athletes into the computer. You can monitor dozens of athletes at once and have every aspect of their training and performance loaded into a computer and analyzed for you. You can get readouts for heart rate (variability and recovery), blood pressure, intensity, acceleration, sport load, core temp, respiration rate even their supplementation, nutrition and schedule. Literally every aspect of training and performance.
While I can really understand the application of products like these and how they can benefit athletes, I still don't like it. What happened to being a coach? What happened to the days of talking to your athletes and finding out how they are feeling, reading their body language and watching how they perform during their practices and training sessions. When I was in training in Boston, I knew all of my clients so well that I could see them walk into the gym each day and know what kind of session they were going to give me. Same with the athletes at BU; there would be days when they come bopping into the gym ready to go and there would be days where they would be dragging their feet. Could I give you an hard number of what their sport load had been that week, or what their heart rate variability was from the day before? Nope, but who truly cares about that? The number of athletes in this world that are so dialed in with their training and lifestyle that truly NEED a system like any of these is pretty low. We aren't even talking about all professional athletes or all Olympic athletes; there's probably only a handful of athletes in specific sports who could truly benefit from all of this knowledge about their bodies. Does a pitcher in baseball need to know? Sure as hell not. Nor does a wide receiver or a figure skater. Maybe cross country skiers, distance runners and cyclists (this includes triatheltes); essentially sports where the demands of the sport are so taxing on your neurological and hormonal systems that you're most often on the edge of over-training. I truthfully can't see too many team sports that I think could seriously benefit from these things.
These products are all being scooped up by pro teams and top ranked Universities, too. If the trend in strength and conditioning continues on the road that it's headed with products like these, then there will eventually be no need for real coaches. Schools will be able to plug athletes into computers and get programs printed out from excel that correlate to all of that data. Some exercise physiology turds will be sitting at computers creating freaks like in Rocky 4. There's always a time and a place for things, it's true, but the time and place for most systems like this is pretty rare.
I'm a coach. It's what I like to do, and I'm pretty good at it, I think. It's an art (not a science) that I've learned from some studying some pretty great coaches; guys like Cressey, Gentilcore, Dan John and Mike Robertson. The secret to success in a training program is not really a secret: train hard, eat more, sleep more, suck less.
The medical world has done a pretty good job rubbing Bacons good name in the mud for the last several decades. It's been accused of causing everything from atherosclerosis, cancer and diabetes to the extinction of the Barbary Lion as well as Communism.
This is all, frankly, horseshit. Bacon has made a strong comeback in the last year or two after being labeled a devil for so many years. It's a push thats mainly been fueled by foodie hipsters in snug skinny jeans drinking Pabst and riding fixed-gear bicycles, but we can forgive and forget that part.
Athletes of all shapes and sizes have been jumping on the bacon-bandwagon as well, calling it things like "meat candy" and including it in every dish and recipe imaginable. Well, what's the truth? Is bacon a killer or should we all be investing in Oscar Meyer?
The truth, like always, lies somewhere comfortably in the middle. Bacon is not intrinsically a "bad" food, it's just another part of the pig (pork belly). Pretty much no natural food source is "bad" for you, it just doesn't work like that. Eggs, beef and milk aren't bad for you either. We've learned quite a bit in the last several years about cholesterol and animal fat and what is actually good and bad for you. The Cliffs Notes version is that animal fat is not bad for you; especially if you're training hard (like you should be).
The problem with bacon is that it is often processed in such a way that a bunch of shit gets added to it like sugar, sodium phosphates, nitrites and food coloring (shit we don't want to be eating). This bacon is pretty cheap and readily available; really, it's what most people know as "bacon". However, real bacon is even more delicious than Oscar Meyer. You can buy just straight up "pork belly" and pan fry it; it's a little thicker and meatier than normal bacon but it's amazing. You can also spend some dough and buy uncured, nitrite-free bacon. This usually comes thick-cut and looks and feels more like traditional bacon than pork belly. It's often smoked as the curing process, but doesn't contain all the shit that normal grocery store bacon has in it. Both of these options are getting more and more available to general consumers; Trader Joe's even sells a pre-cooked pork belly that is amazing, and normal grocery stores usually carry a few varieties of all-natural uncured bacon.
"some wonderful, magical animal..."
So, why bacon? Well, there's truthfully a pro's and con's list for the consumption of bacon. Let's start
CONS:
It's expensive. The really good stuff gets up towards $10/pound.
The suggested "serving" is ridiculous. 2 fucking strips of bacon? If you don't cook/consume the entire package of bacon, I don't know how to talk to you.
It's delicious, obviously. It will make any dish it's combined with more delicious-er.
The fat in it will keep you satiated for a long time.
You can save the fat from when you cook the bacon and use it to cook other dishes.
The good fats in there are a testosterone-boosting gift from the Gods of Girth.
It's pretty calorically dense, so if you're looking for extra kcals it's useful.
There it is folks, the truth about bacon and why it's such a popular food source. I'd say that if you can spare the kcals in your diet, it's very very useful. If you're looking to cut some calories from your diet then it's probably a good place to start since you're not getting much besides fat from it. Take it for what it's worth.
As is often the case in strength training, the simplest things that you do will often have the biggest effect on your training. The "nuts and bolts" is what holds it together and makes it better, not all the fancy bells and whistles.
Your Idioms. I have them.
Just recently I started a new job at The Spire Institute working with Michael Johnson Performance training high school/prep kids. Yesterday I had the opportunity to go down to the courts and watch the boys basketball team run through their practice, which brings me to todays point: go watch your athletes play/practice once in a while.
This point is something that I'd never really thought about before (although I'm sure it's old-hat to a lot of coaches). When I was at BU, I never really got the chance to watch the athletes practice or play because of my own personal schedule. I watched women's hockey skate once, but I didn't learn a whole lot because there wasn't a ton to learn. Those girls were already creeping up to the top tier of their sport; BU is one of the better hockey schools in the country and many of those girls had been weight training for at least 2-3 years.
Going to watch the boys practice gave me all sorts of information about them as individual athletes that I wasn't getting from seeing them in the weight room. I could see the guys who were lacking in flexibility/mobility/stability and couldn't get their center of gravity low enough to dribble the ball and run fast at the same time. I got to see the guys who couldn't stabilize their body to produce enough power to get to the rim during layup drills; guys I would've expected to be able to dunk. The guys who are snipers, but lack the quickness to be able to separate themselves from defenders for a shot.
It's very easy, as a coach, to sit down to write a program and say "this athlete plays this sport so they will have poor mobility here, bad flexibility here, be dominant in this muscle group and weak in this muscle group". This isn't a bad thing, because as coaches we have learned enough to know that this is usually true, but we can't forget that each athlete is still an individual and will have very individual needs. Fine tune each of your programs so that your clients and athletes are getting the best of what will make them better.
CrossFit has been a hot topic for the last few years and will continue to be. Followers of the trend are zealous about their training and detractors go to great lengths to discredit the system and those who practice it.
Let me state that I do not "do" CrossFit. I have enjoyeddone floundered my way through a few WOD's and just don't like that "redline" feeling that I get from them. I love training and lifting, but don't get anything out of pushing myself to that limit metabolically during a workout. With that being said, I have a bunch of friends who train CrossFit and two very close friends who manage different CrossFit Gyms (Dan and Brett). Both of those guys come from traditional (dare I say, elite) Strength and Conditioning backgrounds and have found a love and appreciation for CrossFit.
I've also made a bunch of good contacts in the online strength and conditioning community and have noticed (as you all have as well) a huge contingent of people who think that CrossFit is the devil. Literally Satan himself. Even something as tragic as the Kevin Ogar injury was being blamed on the CrossFit "system" of training (and other factors), which I don't really agree with.
I've got a pretty varied background: I interned with a D1 S&C program at BU, I've been more or less mentored by Tony Gentilcore, the co-owner of one of the most highly respected private strength and conditioning facilities in the country, I've coached classes in CrossFit gyms and I now train exclusively as an olympic weightlifter. It was during a conversation a few months ago with a colleague when I mentioned something about a CrossFit athlete and was met with the response "I don't pay attention to CrossFit".
That's when I started thinking about this post. So many people in traditional strength and conditioning are still dismissing CrossFit as a fad or some bullshit training system like P90X. Tony recently wrote a post about how strength training existed before CrossFit, and I know what he's saying. Just because you're holding a barbell or breathing hard doesn't make it CrossFit. When you've dedicated your career to something and people can't recognize it for what it is, it will be frustrating.
Things Have Changed
But for any strength coach or personal trainer out there to still be dismissing CrossFit or thinking it's some bullshit training system needs to remove their head from their anus ASAP. It's difficult to not acknowledge the growth that CrossFit has seen since it's inception. What was once someone blindly following the mainsite programming (which was mainly just WOD's) on a daily basis at home has become people going to their gyms and working with coaches on programming that creates better movement and progressive overload designed to work on weak points and get people stronger.
I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but tens of thousands of people are heading to CF gyms on a daily basis and working hard doing the things that we preach: mobility, compound movements, sprinting. Shit, there are a ton of random people who sit at desks all day who can do freestanding handstands, a movement that I can't do. People also love to bash on the coaches and how anyone who has a thousand bucks and a weekend can become a CrossFit level 1 coach...but that's true of any certification. You can become a CSCS and USAW level 1 coach without having an Exercise Science degree or being able to do the movements you're going to be coaching. But, I know a bunch of CrossFit coaches with credentials such as: BS in Strength and Conditioning, BS in Kinesiology, MS in Exercise Physiology, CSCS, ACSM HFI, USAW, PICP, in PT school and more. Gone are the days of gyms filled with coaches who were good at CrossFit but couldn't tell their ass from their acetabulum. CrossFit has attracted some serious coaches with serious backgrounds and they are doing great things.
The Greater Effect
It's easy to look at the "global" level of CrossFit and say "ok, those athletes look amazing and perform well but they are pro athletes". Sure, Froning and Khalipa and Thorisdottir look, perform and train like pro athletes because that's what they are. But when the Regionals happen this spring, go to your local event and tell me how those athletes look to you. Many (most?) of them are regular 9-5'ers who have to work their training schedule around their regular lives; work, school and family. Look at the levels of performance these men and women have achieved and tell me if you think CrossFit is still a joke.
You can now take it a level beneath that as well; go walk into one of the local CrossFit gyms in your area (be fair, don't go to the shitty new one with 3 members, but also don't go to the giant one with 450 members) and watch a class. Well, most gyms won't really let you do that, so let me tell you what you're going to see in there. You're going to see a bunch of regular people, people you'd normally see on the elliptical, starting their workout with a dynamic warm-up. Then you'll see them get their hands on a barbell and do some compound movements; true, you're going to see varying levels of proficiency, but that's not different than people you'd see in a normal commercial gym or even a varsity weight room (trust me, I've seen people training in both with technique that made my soul weep). You'll even see these people get into their WOD and push themselves pretty damn hard. Again, form can get a little dicey here, but if the coaches are good then nobody will be using a weight for a lift that they can't handle. I've coached classes and we were more than happy to tell someone mid-WOD to lower the weight or regress the exercise for them. These people are seeing changes in droves: weight loss, muscle gain, improvement in movement quality. The coaches are doing something right. Also, not everyone who tries CrossFit is going to love it! There will be people who don't like pushing themselves to the "redline", or don't like the group setting or the CrossFit Bro's in snapbacks and Vibrams. These people will find the right trainers/coaches for themselves.
One of the downsides of traditional strength and conditioning is that it's not exactly "accessible". In the greater Boston area I can only think of a handful of legit places (CP in Hudson, TPS in Everett, Ranfone Training in CT which is a few hours away...someone remind me if I'm missing any) where someone can get hands-on with a real strength and conditioning coach. Sure, you can do distance coaching via email but it's not exactly the same. Civilians can't get access to collegiate weight rooms/coaches, so you're left to roll the dice with commercial gyms and personal trainers. Meanwhile I think I counted 25 CrossFit gyms within 10 miles of downtown Boston. Strength coaches love to tell you to see a qualified strength coach...but there isn't one standing on every street corner.
What I'm Saying
No, I'm not suggesting that all personal trainers and strength coaches run out and get jobs at CF gyms or get their level 1 certifications. Nor am I suggesting that CF is the king of training systems. But CrossFit has introduced barbell training, and metabolic conditioning and the simple concept of movement quality to the masses. The things most Americans know about fitness are The Biggest Loser and The CrossFit games, we can't change that. The CrossFit system of training is no longer the clusterfuck that it used to be; there are tons of (over)qualified coaches out there applying the same good ol' fashioned strength and conditioning practices to their gyms that any S&C coach would be happy to have in their weightroom.
Rather than bash CrossFit and those who adhere to it, I suggest we all acknowledge the impact it has had on the greater good and find out how to translate their success into our success. Isn't that what we all want anyway? For people to get off of the treadmills and arc trainers and start lifting weights and moving like we are supposed to. Or do we only want them to do that within the walls of our own facilities?
If you disagree with me, that's fine. That doesn't make either one of us an asshole or a bad person. It just means we disagree. Let me know what you think.
Here's the hard, honest truth, in case you didn't already know: you're not an elite athlete.
You're not Klokov. You're not Lu Xiao Jun. You're not Froning or Brandon Lilly or Zydrunas Zavickas.
You're a regular athlete with a regular life. They are elite athletes with an elite life. Admire them, learn their training techniques and aspire to achieve their level. But don't emulate them, that will just serve to stunt your own growth.
I'm not trying to be negative here; I love that so many people train their asses off and and I love that elite athletes like the ones I mentioned above are so accessible via social networking that you can literally see their training and talk to them almost daily. But this has caused a bit of a problem in todays training landscape. Everybody and their mom can see what Klokov is doing on his FaceBook page or Instagram feed. You see his daily training, his technique and even what he is eating for breakfast.
While this is really cool, it's stunting peoples growth. There was once a time when you only saw your sports heros on TV when they had a game. I'd watch Alonzo Mournings post moves and go outside and try to emulate them. I'd see Griffey Jr's swing and go get my bat and pretend I was him.
This was ok because you didn't have 24/7 access to it. What it did was get athletes outside and practicing their sport. You'd see it in your head, but didn't have the ability to pore over it all the time. You just spent the time in your driveway taking 100 shots from the baseline, and you'd develop naturally.
Now, in place of real coaching people have YouTube and Instagram. You see these stud athletes do something and you presume that that is what you should be doing as well.
Dmitry pulls with a weird staggered stance, I guess I should be trying that! Froning seemingly eats nothing besides peanut butter and milk, time for a diet change! Ilya Ilin takes a ton of weird selfies and apparently became a vegetarian...Selfie Saturday here I come!
I'm sure Dmitry uses it for a particular purpose for himself and that it serves a pretty specific purpose in his training, but for the average Joe what does it do? It looks cool and it's probably uncomfortable as shit.
I've written before about how when we first started weightlifting we practiced a lot of stuff that we shouldn't have, and ingrained some bad habits. When Ivan was breaking us of these habits, he had a pretty good explanation. He first mentioned it when discussing the dynamic start.
We assumed it was the proper way to start a lift since the majority of elite level weightlifters started off like that...plus it looks awesome. Coach's explanation, which is the whole point of this post, is that these athletes have spent countless hours and reps in the gym perfecting their technique. Every little thing that they do is for a reason, and the reason they do it probably doesn't apply to us. As we practice and practice and practice we will figure out what works for us individually...but we had to start with the basics. The basics are the basics for a reason, practice them to perfection and get strong at them before you move on.
That's the thought process that I see many people with nowadays: they don't want to stick to the basics. Wether its an aspiring powerlifter who only squats 225 thinking it's time to hit a Smolov cycle or an athlete new to weightlifting who thinks they should be practicing the same assistance lifts as Klokov and maxing out 13 times a week like North, people want to jump the gun and think that they are much more advanced then they are. If you take a moment to bring yourself back down to reality, you'll see much smoother progress and you'll get to where you want to be way easier.
Any athlete that has reached the level of the people I mentioned has spent an absurd amount of time training. They have gone through several hundreds of thousands of repetitions in their particular sport and have grooved their technique to the level where it's absolutely unconscious. They started with the basics and over years of training, they've had to develop various small techniques to keep improving.
Stick to the basics, trust me when I say that you're not as advanced as you think you are. Master the technique and then you can play with different variations further down the road once you've achieved a significant level of proficiency.
I've got a lot of new things going on right now. I'm in a new city/state, I'm training with new guys and I'm looking for a new job. I thought it might be a good time to take a step back from myself and give myself an honest self-assessment (re: my profession, that is). The ability to do that is something that is I think would help a lot of new trainers and coaches figure out where they belong in this whole world.
Just like anybody else, I've got things I'm good at and some things I need to work on. I'm just gonna go ahead and list them out in a pretty simple format.
THE GOOD
I think my strongest suit as a trainer is my ability to convey what I want to my athlete or client. I've honed my exercise cues pretty well and don't have to waste a ton of time and energy coaching an exercise. I'm able to pretty easily figure out the glaring mistakes and know the right ways to fix them so I don't fluster the athlete/client.
I'm really strong at programming. I'm usually able to write a program that will be fun and hold the attention of the trainee for 4-weeks and will still provide a ton of benefit. People get strong on my programs and usually end up feeling way better than when they started; performing better as well.
I'm a very adaptable. Regardless of the situation and whom I'm working with, I can make that person feel comfortable. Whether it's an 83 year old Holocaust survivor or a 15 year old basketball player from the inner-city, I'm able to connect with that person and relate to them on a level that makes them feel good about the session.
I have a good network of people to go to if/when I have a question about something I don't know very well. Guys like Tony, Wil and Ivan have been instrumental in my development. If I don't know something, I'll admit it.
I'm pretty good at figuring out the pathology of someones pain. I'm no where close to Eric Cressey's level when it comes to this, but I do ok for myself.
I've trained myself a lot of different ways so I have a lot of insight into different things. I pretended to be a powerlifter for a little while (hahahaha). I did a few Cressey programs, which left me feeling extremely balanced and strong. I spent some time playing around with strongman implements, so I understand the benefits even though I wouldn't say that I trained for it. Some of my closest friends are CrossFit coaches and I've even done a few miserable fucking workouts. I'm not playing at being a weightlifter and I'm seeing the pro's and con's to this type of training. I've never been a bodybuilder though...fuck that noise.
I'm very open-minded to new ideas. I like learning, and when information is presented to me about something I'm unfamiliar with I like to try and figure it all out.
THE BAD
I can be really closed-minded to new ideas. I love learning, but when I hear something new that I "think" is dumb, I'll close down immediately. Much like I first was with things like CrossFit, running (Kelsi!) and even (shocker!) olympic weightlifting. I'm getting better at this though!
While I think that I'm really good at programming for things like strength, power, mobility, postural restoration and sports performance, I don't think I'm particularly good at writing programs for fat loss. Not the kind of fat loss where someone starts off 40 pounds overweight, that I can do; but if someone had 5-10 pounds to lose for an event. When I write those programs I start to second guess myself and then I start asking others for advice. Which leads me to my next point...
I'm not super comfortable with my nutrition. My basics are all pretty good, but I realize how little I know when I start hearing people talk about it who are very well versed in the subject. If that person who needed to lose 10 pounds asked me about nutrition, I'd end up referring them to Dan.
I will sometimes impart my own bias onto a program/client. This is really not that bad; let's say someone comes to me and says "my only goal is to gain upper body size". Well, that's a good goal, but I'm still going to give you squats and deadlifts because 1) you're going to look ridiculous if your upper-body is big and your legs are tiny and 2) getting stronger in your lower body will help you increase strength in your upper-body.
As you can see, I wasn't too hard on myself but I was still very honest. Despite my proclivity for suggesting that I am the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be...I don't really believe that. I know I've got things to work on, and I'm going to keep doing that.
