Another month, another post on some random thoughts that have been going through my head. Some of these thoughts come from books that I am reading, podcasts I have been listening to or working day to day in the weight room and coaching athletes.

Enjoy!

1. A question all strength coaches should ask themselves…Is an athlete in a better position to stay healthy and succeed at their sport because of the time they have spent working with you? No one truly cares about weight room numbers, they care if the athlete has gotten better or not.
2. We’ve added a little reactive agility/speed work with our women’s hockey team because of all hype it is getting lately. We are simply doing some of our acceleration work that we’ve done in the past, just having athletes react to one another. For example, with our ½ kneeling side starts we have athletes react to one another and racing/competing for 10 yards. Early results are that its added some fun and competition to the acceleration work, and we’ve seen athletes sprinting harder to the 10 yard marker. So far, so good.
3. I really, really, really like landmine presses. One, they are extremely shoulder friendly. Two, you are on your feet like most sports. Three, there is a core component that you don’t get with most pressing exercises. Four, you are essentially overhead pressing in a much safer manner. Lots to like.
4. There are so many sacred cows in the world of strength and conditioning and/or fitness that need to die. We could make a long, long list.
5. Strength coaches need to open up more. Athletes need to know you and they need to trust you. If they don’t know and trust you, you’ll be fighting an ongoing uphill battle.
6. The field of strength and conditioning is all about serving, working for the athletes that we get to work with…yet our field is over-run with egos.
7. Injury prevention is performance training. Performance training is injury prevention. I’m not sure you can have one without the other.
8. There is one coaching cue/tactic that I use that seems to have a very high rate of success – to take some weight off the bar. Its amazing how often things clean up and look better by simply going a little lighter.
9. The longer I am in this field, the more I question the value of using 1 rep max numbers to program numbers off of, especially Olympic lifts. The nervous system doesn’t understand percentages, it understands how difficult/stressful and exercise is for the body at that moment in time.
10. Though some would argue, I am a firm believer that good strength and conditioning will decrease injury rates.