Happy Monday! Here are a few thoughts bouncing around in my head after a week of reading, podcasts and other continuing ed. Enjoy!
- “Maintain the squat, train the deadlift.” Direct quote from Grey Cook. I buy into this thought process more and more every day. To stay healthy you need to maintain the ability to perform a bilateral squat correctly whether you are a weekend warrior or an athlete. If you have lost the ability to do so then something isn’t right and needs to be fixed, ASAP. But I don’t know if it is hugely important to chase huge squat numbers. Dan John has gone as far as saying that for both health and athletic performance, the Goblet Squat (lowest system load?) will do wonders. I tend to agree and have recently really started to enjoy 2KB Front Squat for myself, something I would implement with athletes more regularly if I had more kettlebells to work with. On the other hand, for real strength development, I think training the deadlift for strength is the answer as the hinge pattern seems to be more important for athletic development. At least that’s how I feel right now.
- Develop athleticism. Develop better movers. Develop strength. Develop well conditioned athletes. Do all that and its hard to believe that good things aren’t going to happen.
- Developing opinion training basketball athletes; not many freshman come in with much weight room training experience. That’s fine, as a coach I realize that I’ll have to adapt to them. First adaptation – KISS. Really simple things with really simple progressive overload. Working well thus far.