I’m breaking new ground on the writing front!
Muscle & Strength just published my article (my first on their site) detailing 6 great tips on building strength and athleticism for team sport athletes.
Read it here:
The vast majority of youth “strength training” or “athletic performance” programs suck.
Why?
1. They fail to make you strong.
2. They don’t teach you how to move well – which is a pre-requisite for getting strong.
Here’s one of our 17-year-olds sumo deadlifting 190 kg / 418 pounds for 5 reps.
And it’s not uncommon for our 16- and 17-year-olds to do walking lunges with 80, 90, or even 100+ kg as you see here…
Not to toot my own horn or anything…
But our guys get strong.
And they do so while displaying good lifting form.
Unfortunately, this is hardly the case with most junior hockey players.
I’ve talked about what’s wrong with our current way of training young athletes before in detail in this post.
And now, STACK.com published my article where I explain the biggest mistake in youth strength training programs.
Read the full scoop here:
I’ve received several questions on how to enter the field of strength and conditioning, and how to get into coaching athletes over the last couple of months.
Questions like:
“How do I get started with training athletes?”
“Which certifications should I get?”
“What continuing education tools do you recommend?”
“Yunus, how come you keep getting more handsome every year that passes?”
Rather than answer all those emails landing in my inbox one-by-one, I’m putting this article up as mandatory reading for all ya peeps entertaining thoughts on becoming a strength coach.
Breaking into strength and conditioning certainly isn’t easy if you don’t already have established connections within the industry.
Fear ye not, though.
I’ve compiled your 12-month curriculum for How to Become a Strength and Conditioning Coach 101 below.
Follow the five steps I lay out for one full year, and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a strength coach, and further ahead than 98% of those contemplating getting into the field.
Continue ReadingWith the off-season firmly in the books, I’ve had more time to put fingers to keyboard in the past couple of weeks than during the entire summer before that.
As a result, I should be back to churning out quality training content here and via other online publications.
However, with so many projects going on in the background, I won’t promise that I’ll be writing very frequently.
But I promise that what I’ll be sharing will mos def be worth reading.
STACK.com just published an article of mine on the importance of continuing to build upon the strength gains witnessed in the off-season, and how to keep setting PR’s all year long.
Check it out here:
BEST STRENGTH TRAINING BOOKS OF 2016
UPDATED JANUARY 16, 2017
Let's kick this article off with two alarming stats:
1. Nearly 800 million adults in the world are illiterate (which translates to a whopping 15% of the adult population)
2. 27% of US adults did not read a SINGLE book in 2015
So we have a colossal amount of people who can't or won't read.
As someone who averages two to three paperbacks per week - including the very best strength training books ever published, and quality business and fiction writings (the latter helps me fall asleep better) - I find those statistics above hard to fathom.
Just on the training/fitness/nutrition side of things, I'd estimate I'm well over 300 books in total by now.
(I lost count years ago, so can't tell you an exact number)
Having said that, my hunger for new information has never waned. In fact, it's as strong as ever.
Sure, when you've devoured a couple hundred books on any topic, you won't find much that is new or unique. And you shouldn't expect to have your mind blown anymore.
Still, I keep reading more and more because of the benefits.
ESSENTIALS OF STRENGTH TRAINING AND CONDITIONING REVIEW
UPDATED JANUARY 14, 2017
Recommended
"I hear the book's hard to comprehend - is that true?"
"How much practical stuff is included?"
"Would you recommend it for the CSCS exam?
"$100 for a textbook?! Jeez, it must have been printed by old Gutenberg himself!"
Those are only a tiny sample bunch of comments and questions I have received over the years about Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning, one massive resource on athletic performance and THE TEXTBOOK for the National Strength and Conditioning Association's CSCS exam.
And since you're reading this review, you must be wondering...
Is it worth the time and cost?
Or would you be better served spending your hard-earned moolah on Under Armour boxerjocks and protein shakes?
Time to find out...
Spanning 752 pages and weighing in at a hefty 5.2 pounds (that's almost 2.4 kilograms for all ya numerically and mathematically challenged folks out there), Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning comes equipped with some impressive thud factor.
Now in its 4th edition (released in November 2015), the book includes 24 chapters written by a number of distinguished authors and scientists with an impressive alphabet soup of credentials after their names.
Just to give you an idea of the caliber of authors who contributed to the book...
My hockey guys were hitting PR’s in the gym week in, week out during the off-season.
But it wasn’t just about lifting weights this summer.
As I’ve said many times before, pushing, pulling and squatting a heavy bar is NOT the only part of developing true athleticism.
So we sprinted, we jumped, we changed directions, we pushed the sled and carried heavy objects for distance.
Here’s a taste of what took place in our off-season program…
We had so many guys reach new levels of strength that it would take me ages to upload all their lifting videos to Youtube.
I’m a lazy bastard, so I won’t do that.
But I’ll end this post with a solid display of raw strength.
Here’s Matias Nisula of our U20 team trap bar deadlifting 235 kg for a big PR to cap off the off-season in style.
Props to all the guys for a solid effort throughout the summer. Things will only get better as we move on to in-season training starting next week.
I expect big PR’s all season long…