Over the winter break I have a little more time to sit back and catch up on some continuing education, which can sometimes be tough to keep up with during the school year. One presentation that I was looking forward to listening to again was Charlie Weingroff’s “How to Make a Monster” presentation. I’ve watched it before and found it to be a wealth of knowledge, much of which I wasn’t in a place to understand it all at the time.

As I was sitting listening to Charlie talk, I realized he had so many little tidbits of information that I thought was compelling that would be great to share with everyone. Additionally, if you ever get a chance to listen to Charlie present this, I highly recommend it.

1. Breathing and segmental rolling tell the brain that everything is cool and to allow for change.
2. The muscles and joints do totally different things when on all fours compared to standing.
3. Joint centration is the balance of mobilizers and stabilizers acting on a joint.
4. The vertical jump is a great indicator of sport performance.
5. I want to do as little corrective exercise as possible.
6. You can’t go hard all the time, sometimes you can get less with more.
7. We have our training template in place when working with an athlete/team. All the FMS does is tell us what we shouldn’t be doing so I don’t hurt you.
8. People can say whatever they want, but you can’t cheat your ways through the little four of the FMS.
9. Every muscle has a stabilization and mobilization function.
10. If someone can eat their knees on their back, they have the mobility to squat. Look elsewhere to fix the squat pattern.
11. I could give two shits what they can lift in the weight room or their ‘Fran’ time. I only care what they do in sport.
12. You must have a synergy between tonic and phasic muscles in order to function properly.
13. Lactic capacity is the monster.
14. It always goes back to the autonomic nervous system, its the ultimate governor for the body.
15. Pain is simply the perception of threat.
16. You aren’t getting strong standing on an unstable surface, that’s crap.
17. I’m not that smart, I just study more.
18. There is no way we should all be receiving the same input, the same training.
19. You should not be training a spectrum of strength if you already have enough it.
20. If someone does not have the needed/requisite HRV they will not be in a state to learn and get better.

Hopefully some of these quotes from Charlie spark some thought in you, I know it did for me each and every time I have listened to this presentation.