Another month, another post full of random thoughts that have been going through my head. Hope it sparks a little thought in people and you enjoy!

1. In programming for the athletes I work with, I’ve started to try to get as close to a 50/50 ratio between vertical and horizontal power/strength movements. It’s hard to get a perfect ratio, but the main point is that I am trying to include more and more horizontal work into what we do.
2. In most cases, speed is what kills in sport. I’d always take a 280lb super fast but averagely strong defensive lineman that gets off the ball explosively then a 300lb defensive lineman that is super strong but not that explosive. Speed/power kills.
3. “Never let today ruin tomorrow. Accept small gains today and move on to tomorrow.” – Tony Holler
4. I am a firm believer that we need to start looking at strength and conditioning as health oriented first and performance oriented second. And if you are doing it right, you can get both at the same time.
5. Coaches should be doing everything they can to build buy-in from the athletes they are coaching, and the foundation of buy-in is trust.
6. Put athletes in positions to maximize the good and minimize the bad. Good things should happen from there.
7. As strength coaches we need to get out of the mindset that more and more strength is always better – it isn’t, there is a point of diminishing returns.
8. It’s not how much we can do and get away with in the weight room, its how little can we do to get the results we are after.
9. More and more smart people are starting to say the same thing, and if you think about it logically, it makes sense – squatting on 2 legs isn’t going to carryover to sprint speed nearly as much as we would like to think and hope.
10.  I think a lot of coaches are afraid or reluctant to share their thoughts because it may not agree with what some of the ‘big time’ coaches are thinking or doing. But the more we share as coaches, the more we will be able to learn from one another and as a result allow us all to have more tools to build better athletes.