​Men and Motivation
 
I’ll be honest, I worry about the culture that is being manifested for men. I fear that we’ve made it an accepted norm that you finish high school/college, enter the work force, start having families, and accept that your physical well-being days are over.  Your 30’s and 40’s are about joint pain, dad bods, beer guts, and being lazy.  It doesn’t have to be this way.

​My advice to the young men I’ve coached
 
Some of you are setting to graduate high school in the coming weeks. Others are beginning to enter their senior year.  Maybe your just finished your first year of college or are going right into the workforce. You are at a very defining point in life where your path will be set.  For what it’s worth, this is a quick summary of my advice to you.

Our culture in 2020 put’s near nonexistent value in being on time.  It’s nauseating.  Think about what that really means.  Look at the phrase in itself.  The subject of the phrase is “time.”  Our most finite resource.  ​

​Youth and High School Athletics- The issue I see running though young athletes is the over emphasis on specificity and underdevelopment of general motor development and base of strength building.  The specificity occurs in multiple avenues.  First, athletes are just competing year-round much more than in decades pervious.  Gameplay is by definition a high intensity and more specifically a high velocity activity.  When you combine high intensity movement with underdeveloped motor control, movement quality, and strength, injury becomes not if but when.
Nothing combats soft tissue and joint injury like maximal strength displayed through quality movement patterns.  Strong glutes, hips, hamstrings, and core stabilizers protect surrounding joints like the knees and lumbar joints during high speed sprinting, jumping, and rotation.

Top 5 reasons to place a heavier emphasis on unilateral lower body training
 
A lot of buzz in training circles lately revolves around the subject of unilateral (or single leg) training.  There have even been debates broken out between which is better and whether you should do bilateral or unilateral training with athletes.  Like most training topics, the answer is that it depends on context and many factors.  We however, on a broad level, believe that the answer is both!
 
On top of simply doing these exercises, the training world has evolved in how these exercises are prescribed.  The common thinking is that main heavy movements consist of the big bilateral exercises(squats and deadlifts,) while single leg exercises are used for higher rep accessory movements.  While this method remains very effective, we can also use single leg exercises as our main heavy movements.
 
Before breaking down our main reasons for implementing this training style, let’s look at just a partial list of unilateral variations we use at our facility.
 

By now I hope the training world is up to speed with research to know that young kids not only can, but absolutely should lift weights.  Given this, it’s important to understand why it is so important and what we should look to accomplish with our young beginners.

Goals: Develop explosive strength, athleticism, and rate of force development

1A) Band Assisted Bounding Jumps 5x5
1B) Single Leg Box Jump 5x1 each foot

2A) Hang Clean Progressions 5x1-2 Reps

3A) Trap Bar Deadlifts. 7x2
70%, as fast as possible
40 second rest

4A) 45 degree weighted back extension
4x10

5A) Single Leg Glutei Bridge
2x10/side

Chains are a very versatile and effective tool in training.  They also admittedly, look super cool and hardcore.  However, that is not the intention of the chain.  Many may not know the practical application and benefit of incorporating this tool in to your training program. Here are my top 5 uses for chains.