Here is another quick post with a  few random thoughts that have been going through my head the last couple weeks. Hopefully it makes you think a little!

1. In my opinion, single leg exercises are more functional, better for injury prevention, and translate better to sport since most sports are essentially played on one leg. Does that mean you shouldn’t do bi-lateral lower body exercises? No, but I think single leg exercises should make up the majority of lower body training.
2. Take on as much as you can. Learn as much as you can. Develop as much as you can.
3. This seems like common sense but I don’t know if it actually is. But, if an athlete can not perform a movement well without load, you have no business loading the movement.
4. Unless an injury is caused by some type of contact injury or is due to a pathological issue, its preventable. Hold yourself accountable as a strength coach to continually evolve and evaluate your programs — they can always be better.
5. If you don’t have a ‘why’ for an exercise/movement/drill being in the program, then why is it in the program?
6. Eric Cressey recently said, “Don’t fit people to programs, fit programs to people.” I couldn’t agree more. Some exercises just won’t work for people for various reason. Adjust, progress, regress and lateralize to something that will work for the person standing in front of you. Programs are not one size fits all.
7. I may piss some people off, but I like Trap Bar Deadlift better then squatting for athletes. Both are very highly quad dominant movements, but the Trap Bar Deadlift has a much lower barrier for entry then either front or back squatting due to less joints being in play. The Trap Bar also has no spinal compression, more upper back involvement, and a grip component, and we know grip strength correlates to shoulder health. Lots of wins with the Trap Bar.
8. When it comes to actual squatting, the more squatting I watch, the more it becomes obvious that the Front Squat fits most athletes better. Mike Robertson recently said that he now only Front Squats athletes. Kelly Starrett has mentioned in the past that her prefers Front Squatting for athletic populations due to a better upright posture and a high core demand. We all know Michael Boyle’s thoughts on back squatting. Michael Thompson PhD at Springfield College no longer allows back squatting in his weight room and has moved to Front Squatting only. Joe Kenn has said he no longer would back squat any athlete, in any sport, at any level. Lots of very highly respected strength coaches seem to be in favor of the front squat, and I’m sure there are many others feel the same. We know many people lack shoulder mobility (external rotation in this case) to get the bar behind their back. Beyond this, research has shown that you can get the same increases in performance (Vertical Jump, 10 Yard Sprint, ect.) with the Front Squat as you can with the Back Squat. To me its hard to argue and makes much more sense to me to Front Squat.
9. “The movement patterns that we lose first, are typically the movement patterns that we learn first.” Gray Cook
10. Athletes need to spend time training outside the sagittal plane. Too much emphasis is put on the typical clean/bench/squat/deadlift type programs. Don’t neglect the sagittal plane, just make sure to train outside it as well.