Here are another 15 random thoughts on strength and conditioning. Enjoy.
- Don’t be afraid to try new things. Some will work, others won’t. If they don’t work, ditch them. If they do work you’ve potentially stumbled across something good. You never know until you try though.
- Generally speaking, athletes will never have too much posterior chain strength.
- Coaches who understand why they do what they do, always out-perform a coach who doesn’t understand why they do what they do.
- Demonstrations are crucial to great coaching. Most people are visual learners. It’s hard to demo too much.
- Always remember why athletes train, which is to reduce performance related injuries and to ultimately improve sport performance, not chase weight room numbers. I’ll take wins and health over weight room numbers every day of the week.
- Steal ideas from people that are smarter then you. I’ll steal as much as I can from people like Eric Cressey, Charlie Weingroff, Michael Boyle, Gray Cook and Mike Robertson…and I have no issue with admitting it. “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”
- Piggybacking off of the previous thought, it’s hard to grow by surrounding yourself with people who share the same opinions and ideas — all that does is confirm everything you already know. Embrace people who don’t share the same exact ideas and opinions as you.
- Pain is an indicator that something is wrong. If somethings hurts, don’t do it. It’s really that simple.
- Lactic capacity is how you build monsters.
- The worth of an exercise has nothing to do with the amount of weight lifted.
- “Stabilizers don’t do their job by being strong, they do their job by being fast.” – Gray Cook
- Programming should be 80% what you know works, 15% what you think works, and 5% of stuff that you have no idea whether it will work or not.
- You can’t become more skillful in the presence of fatigue.
- The goal of the coach is to eliminate the coach.
- Some exercises have become sacred cows in our industry. No sacred cows, just do what’s best for the athlete standing in front of you.