Quarantine Fitness

I grew up hiking, skiing, mountain biking, and hunting in the mountains of southwestern Montana. Following college, I joined the military and served in the US Special Operations Command for sixteen years before transitioning to a corporate job in the private sector. When I was much younger and fitter, I experienced some of the most […]

Simple Strength for Difficult Times Part Two: Get Even Stronger in Quarantine

When I wrote the article “Simple Strength for Difficult Times” I outlined an 8-week plan, confident that within two months we would be all back to our gyms and our regular life. Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened yet. Most of us are still under lockdown and many gyms all across the world are still closed. As […]

My Minimalist Training

My journey to StrongFirst started with questions that were always on my mind, “What is strength? What does it mean to be strong?” I pursued this question through fighting, training, studying, and researching how to become strong, both physically and mentally, and obviously the name StrongFirst came up. Everything I read was intriguing, so real […]

Put “Vascular” into Your Cardiovascular Training for Greater Endurance and Fat Loss

In intense full body exercise our hearts can supply only 1/3-1/2 of the muscles. To deal with this limitation, blood vessels in muscles and organs that are not too busy constrict while those in the working muscles dilate. This redistributes the blood flow, delivers more oxygen where it is needed most, and eases the work […]

Upgrade Your “Plumbing” to Boost Your Endurance and Fat Loss

By Pavel Tsatsouline As you recall from the previous article and video, you have only so much blood to go around and during intense endurance exercise it must be redistributed: more to the hardest working muscles and less everywhere else. You can train your body to direct more blood into the muscles of your choice. […]

How to Navigate the Strong Endurance Universe

Strong Endurance™ is our umbrella term for all anti-glycolytic training methods. Anti-glycolytic training is “anti-HIIT” that trains you to produce less lactic acid instead of tolerating more of it. AGT is used by many Eastern European national teams in a variety of sports: judo, cross country skiing, rowing, full contact karate… Broadly, there are three […]

Preparing Swimmers for the Olympic Games: A Three-Year Strength and Conditioning Plan Using StrongFirst Principles

In September 2018, I was fortunate to join the elite swimming club Olympique Nice Natation (ONN) as a strength and conditioning coach. Fortunate because this meant working with Fabrice Pellerin, one of the World’s most technical coaches. Fabrice trained athletes that won nine medals at the 2012 London Olympics. As the strength and conditioning coach, […]