Why the Barbell? At some point every person who trains for strength should learn to use a barbell. When it comes to heavy lifting, the barbell reigns supreme. Two hands on a knurled bar with a balanced load; it doesn’t get any better than that when it comes to getting strong. There are also many […]
Strength is a skill…and you’ve decided that it’s time to add SFL skills to your toolbox. But you have limited barbell experience and zero access to a coach. Plus, you don’t really want to train wrong. Can you even get ready to attend an instructor certification? This article shows that you can, with two pre-requisites: […]
On the flight home from teaching a StrongFirst Lifter certification (SFL), I was thinking about the programming section and some of our discussions. One of the questions that always gets asked is: “What about assistance exercises?” My answer is simple—until you have spent at least a year working on the movements that we taught at […]
How do you strengthen sport required qualities in the gym and practice the skills it requires in sports-specific sessions when your chosen sport is a 3000 mile ocean row? No, not by rowing machines, ultra marathon runs or sit ups. By training your slow-twitch muscle fiber strength with barbell back squats and seated cable rows. Here’s […]
With August upon us, members of the StrongFirst community from the New York City area and elsewhere have already begun their preparations for the 2018 New York City Marathon. Wait a minute. That can’t be right! Marathon training inevitably cannibalizes muscle and leads to a loss of strength. I’m not entirely sure, but I think […]
When Pavel and I wrote the SFL Manual back in 2012-2013, we decided to build it on top of what is taught at the SFG Level I Certification. Namely, the swing, get-up, goblet squat, and the arm bar. This article attempts to say more than just how to do them, but why you did them. […]
The lifts, the preparation, the weekend itself, and priceless bits of advice—the barbell and its ultimate instructional experience, the SFL Certification—are demystified.
Our Chief SFG Instructor and Director of Education is a great person to keep up on—particularly these moments of reflection on his own training and the lessons his insights impart to the rest of us.
Recently, a friend asked me what it was like to perform a max-effort lift. The closest parallel I could come up with was my time living and training at a Zen meditation center.
