New month, new list of random thoughts. Hopefully it sparks a little thinking. Enjoy.

1. Every athlete has a trainable exercise menu. That menu isn’t necessarily the same for each and every athlete. We as coaches need to adapt and work with the athlete, not have the athlete adapt and try to fit them into our program.
2. Deceleration is more important then top speed.
3. Everyone likes to argue about basically everything in strength and conditioning, but at the end of the day the only thing that matters are the results you get. Whether you agree with the methods or not, the results don’t lie.
4. Sometimes I wonder if strength coaches are training athletes to be better powerlifters or training athletes to be more resilient/better performing athletes.
5. I become more and more of a med ball fan as the days go by for a couple reasons. For starters, Eric Cressey always talks about how power is plane specific – there is very little correlation between someone’s vertical jump and how hard they can shoot a hockey puck. Something like a med ball side toss can specifically train that rotational power that it takes to shoot a puck. Also, med balls allow you to train in various planes, something you don’t necessarily get from traditional Olympic lifts, which is important in developing an all around athlete. I think its extremely important to try to find ways to train power outside the sagittal plane.
6. Integrating strength & conditioning with what the sport coach is doing at practice is something I think our industry needs to do better. We have a pretty good idea of the way the body deals with stress. Big stress days should be big stress days across the board. Low stress days should be low stress days across the board. Stay out of the middle. Integrate.
7. Mike Boyle on deadlifting versus squatting: “Deadlifts involve flexion moments, versus extension and compressive forces. In squatting you are trying to produce extension and you are involved with a deliberate compressive load running down your spine. In deadlifts, none of those are present.”
8. Coach when and if necessary. And that’s not all the time.
9. I’ve completely eliminated loaded bilateral hip thrusts/bridges from all my programs. Too many people turn the movement into a lumbar extension instead of a hip extension, which isn’t a good thing. There are numerous better ways of training hip extension.
10. If you are bigger stronger and faster but gave up movement integrity to get there, you’ll get hurt. – Gray Cook