Strength Articles

NEW! Moving the Force-Time Curve to the Left

Twenty years ago, strength training was considered taboo for martial artists. Today, it is gaining in popularity, despite the fact that it is rarely carried out in a rational manner. Due to strong influences from the world of bodybuilding, most martial artists are only getting half the potential benefit that strength training has to offer.

Strength Development Fundamentals for Golfers

As an athlete, there’s nothing you can do about your genetic inheritance, but there’s always room for improvement when it comes to your training methods. Particularly, it’s important to identify and correct the most significant error you’re making, because resolving this error has the most potential to improve your athletic performance...

Acceleration: The Middle Path

Do some people-watching at the gym during your next workout. At first glance, it may seem that people have very little in common when it comes to their exercise habits and techniques. But upon closer inspection, you might notice that they have two things in common...

Understanding Training Foundation

Although people engage in fitness and sports activities for various reasons, the fact remains that they are inherently physical activities. So whether you exercise for stress reduction, weight loss, or sport, it makes sense to train in a manner which is consistent with accepted training principles and methodologies. Doing so will make the outcome of training less haphazard and more predictable. It will also enhance the appreciation of movement one should derive from any form of physical activity.

Structural Versus Randomized Training Concepts

Recently, through the work of popular fitness movements such as CrossFit and its many imitators, the previously unexplored concept of randomized training has received a significant amount of popularity throughout the fitness community.In this article, I'll compare and contrast random versus structured approaches to training, and then I'll summarize by offering a few approaches that (I think) provide the benefits of both while simultaneously minimizing the drawbacks.

The Problem With Periodization

I know, I know, I've written about this a lot. But the subject is deserving of ongoing discussion. After all, periodization is frustrating- on the face of it, the premise is both compelling and logical. Dig a little deeper though, and the problems become evident...

Quality Strength for Human Athletic Performance: A Guide to Speed Strength Training

Although most athletic skills and events depend upon a variety of physical qualities, speed strength (also called power) certainly rates among the most important. Whenever you need to accelerate yourself (as in running, cycling, swimming, skating, or skiing), an external object (such as a ball, a barbell, a javelin, or another person), or both (such as pushing a bobsled or driving through an opposing lineman in football), your ability to generate force with speed will be a primary determinant of your success.

EDT For Maximal Strength Development

Maximal strength (MxS) is defined as the maximum amount of force one can produce irrespective of time or bodyweight. The qualifiers "time" and "bodyweight" distinguish MxS from power and relative strength, respectively. MxS is perhaps the core quality that all individuals should be concerned with, because it's acquisition is the fastest route to all other motor qualities, including relative-strength, speed-strength, strength-endurance, speed, and speed-endurance...

Slow VS Explosive Lifting: The Controversy Continues…

In all the years I’ve been involved in sports conditioning, I’ve never seen an issue with as much longevity and potential for heated debate as the question of whether or not it is necessary, safe, and or effective to perform “explosive” or “ballistic” movements in the weight room....

Don't Limit Yourself To A Single Strength Discipline!

For decades there's been a happy union between throwing and weightlifting. Each discipline promoted success in the other discipline, and when throwers are "in season," they simply throttle back on the lifting a bit to accommodate the demands of track season....

Cheating To Win: Why You Should Take The Path Of Least Resistance

Cheating is perhaps the most maligned and least appreciated tactic in the weight room. It's so important, in fact, that I consider cheating to be the calling card of skilled lifters

Two Essential Skills For Weight-Trainers

While there are a lot of characteristics and traits that define skilled lifting, I believe there are two primary skills that truly separate experts from novices. The two skills I'm about to discuss allow lifters to pursue their craft for years without the troubling injuries that typically plague unskilled exercisers and Bowflex collectors...

Pain And Performance; Production And Profit

You can perform more work if you manage pain/fatigue by breaking the workload into several manageable chunks, rather than trying to accomplish it all in one all-out sprint. This is why I argue for many sets of low reps, as opposed to the reverse. It's also why I advocate accelerative performances with moderate weights as opposed to grinding efforts with close to maximal weights (for whatever reps are being used). These tactics favor performance over pain, which results in a higher work output with less pain and discomfort...

5 Practical Suggestions For Effective Programming

Here are 5 quick and easy suggestions to help make your training programs MUCH more effective. I'll apologize in advance if I shatter some of the common misconceptions in training with this one!

The Path of Least Resistance

You're on a plateau. What else is new? If you want to look on the bright side, consider that stalling out is a sign that you're an advanced lifter. Only beginners make continuous progress.

If you don't want to look on the bright side (meaning, you're determined to get out of the rut and on to new PR's), keep reading, because I have an eminently logical, simple, and foolproof method of getting back on track...

The Ten Most Common Strength Training Mistakes Made by Martial Artists

After years of training and consulting to competitive martial artists, I’ve compiled a list of the ten most common errors (all of which I’ve made myself at one time or another) that martial artists make when embarking upon strength training programs...

The Truth About Women and Pull-Ups

Recently one of our forum members made a casual comment regarding Charles Poliquin's Pull-up recommendations. That comment sparked a recollection about Poliquin's statement, so I did a little digging, and eventually found his statement regarding women and pull-ups...

Maximize Your Efficiency: Three "Tweaks" That Will Revolutionize Your Workout

Here I present three methods which, when used consistently, will help you spend less time in the gym while getting better results at the same time. Only applied knowledge is power, so don’t just read, but apply!...