Have strength coaches contributed to rising injury rates? Explore how performance gains, programming decisions, and risk management intersect in modern sport.
I have a lot of friends in the coaching industry, most of whom are sport coaches at the high school level. I don’t get a lot of inquiries on soliciting training advice... yet at least... but invariably the most common inquiry I receive is something along the lines of “hey man, we’re starting our off-season program next week, and we don’t have a strength staff, what should I be doing?” (Insert eye roll emoji...)This is a tough question to provide a prudent, thorough response to, but my immediat
What’s that old adage again... “there are a thousand ways to skin a cat” ... or something like that? I certainly can’t think of a more fitting cliché than this one when it comes to writing programs. By now, there are literally countless programming models out there, a lot of which have been scientifically studied hundreds of times over and have been proven to be successful. The issue with arguing about programming preferences is that there are several, several, variables to be considered when
When you hear the word ‘strength’ what comes to mind? For most of us, strength connotates to physical prowess or ability. Maybe you envision someone like Eddie Hall pushing the threshold of human ability while standing up an 800-lbs. squat, or perhaps you think of Mattie Rogers defying gravity hitting a snatch at nearly twice her bodyweight. Maybe you recall a vicious hit delivered by Ray Lewis as he obliterates an unassuming receiver coming across the middle, or LeBron James barreling through
Every coach loves when a new athlete enters the gym eager to learn the sport of Olympic Weightlifting. You immediately see their passion for the sport with each demonstration and explanation of the lift. Sometimes all of that energy can be overwhelming and intense for a new athlete. When I first started coaching new athletes, I would catch myself talking a mile a minute. In an effort to share my knowledge, I would start an explanation and then run-off into a tangent that wasn’t needed at that
The overarching goal of any successful strength program is to, well… make you stronger. No groundbreaking news there. But as a coach, it’s incumbent on us to fluctuate, modify, and temper a host of training variables to effectively and appropriately apply the necessary stimuli for our athletes in order to achieve ‘progressive overload’, making them stronger and ultimately better athletes. This is something that is concentrated on ad nauseum in academic and credentialing realms. The primary var