Author: Pavel Tsatsouline
Pavel Tsatsouline is the CEO of StrongFirst, Inc.
In a recent article, I explained how varying your lifting speed can help you gain more strength. Today I will show you a couple of ways of applying this knowledge to boost your squat, barbell (back, front, Zercher) or kettlebell (goblet, double front). 3 x Gear Squat Protocol #1 The simplest thing you can do […]
Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion. —Francis Bacon What do successful athletes not blessed with Olympic genes have in common?—Patience to tweak their training, one variable at a time, until they have found “their” way. Contrast that with a typical trainee who impatiently switches programs before he has had a […]
Back in the USSR many gyms were closed in the summer “for repairs.” Out of necessity, lifters and bodybuilders switched from barbells to kettlebells and bodyweight for a couple of months. When they returned to the bar in the fall, after a brief re-entry most were able to set PRs. If you take a planned […]
The following article does not contain medical advice. It presents long term training strategies for increasing general resistance in healthy people. The author would like to thank Kristann Heinz, MD and Paul White, MD for their valuable input. Take care of your family and your other responsibilities. Then train. The following strategies should improve your […]
We are proud to officially present Kettlebell Simple & Sinister: Revised and Updated Edition, or simply S&S 2.0. Time is a man’s best friend if he makes good use of it and a man’s worst enemy if he lets it run him. Most people who live by the clock are miserable sorts of critters. But […]
With this article we would like to give you a taste of what you are about to learn at Programming Demystified, a new seminar with Pavel, Fabio, and Hector, this October in Phoenix, AZ or in your living room. Over a century ago Ivan Lebedev, a big name in strength training in imperial Russia, suggested […]
It is a tall order for a training method to live up to the title of this article—but one does. It checks off the following boxes: ☑ Power ☑ Strength ☑ Muscle hypertrophy ☑ Fat loss ☑ “Cardio” ☑ “Work capacity” ☑ Longevity through mitochondrial adaptations ☑ It “gives you more than it takes out […]
“If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success.” This caption for a New Yorker cartoon nails the “FOMO” mentality of a “workout of the day.” Then why, might you ask, is StrongFirst jumping on the bandwagon and introducing its own “WOD”? Please read on. The biological law of accommodation states that the response of an […]
Russian coach, Andrey Kozhurkin, made an observation on the two diametrically opposed philosophies of stimulating adaptation. The traditional one is pushing to the limit: “What does not kill me, makes me stronger.” The alternative is to train to “avoid (or at least delay) the unfavorable internal conditions… that lead to failure,” or reduced performance. [...]
I was watching Andy Bolton pull over 900 pounds from the back stage at the Arnold Classic. It struck me that his deadlift looked exactly like a hard style kettlebell swing. Afterwards, I asked Andy, “Correct me if I am wrong, it seems that you try to keep your shins vertical, don’t think about the […]
