The Power of Simplicity: How Get-Ups and Pullups Enhanced an MLB All-Star’s Program

When it comes to training, most people tend to trend in the direction of complexity and novelty. Whether that’s an athlete finding fancy movements they think will make a favorite pro-athlete look cool on social media or a coach wanting to show how competent they are in shaking things up, doing newer or more difficult […]

Surfing the Waves to Timeless Sinister

“Each time [the waves] fall, they never fail to rise again.”—Josh Billings You earned the stripes of “Timed Simple.” You took the time and mastered the weights between Simple and Sinister (40kg for gents both in the swing and the get-up, 28kg in the swing and 20kg in the get-up for the ladies). Now, you […]

From Wheelchair to Sinister: The Importance of Mental Strength

In June 2003, I was injured during my apprenticeship to become a truck driver. An 830kg stone, the size of an oak barrel, fell from my truck and hit me on my lower back as I was standing leaning forward. The result was three broken vertebrae, a broken pelvis, and both legs broken all the […]

Five Ways to Improve your Get-up (Without Doing Get-ups)

The get-up is one of those all-encompassing exercises that covers several bases. If you’ve seen anyone go from lying supine on the ground (on their back) and moving up to standing, they’ve essentially performed a variation of the get-up. Granted, the “get-up” you saw might not have been done in the exact way we teach […]

How Video can Improve your TGU: Videoception

In simple terms, proprioception is the sense of knowing where you are and what you are doing. And the get-up is the perfect pattern to help train and challenge it. But with so many moving parts and our eyes on the load overhead, it’s hard to know—to really know—if we’ve stacked the load optimally. Good […]

Blindfold Training for Mental Focus

In my last article, “From Wheelchair to Sinister: The Importance of Mental Strength,” I wrote about the power of mental strength. I am back today to discuss the mind once more, but this time the importance of mental focus and its place in the progression of our practice. As students of strength, we are all […]

How I Trained to Become a Guinness World Record Holder

“Strength has a greater purpose.” The very famous words of our leader, Pavel Tsatsouline, ran through my mind over and over. I had lost my older brother to suicide the Summer of 2021 and felt a burning desire to “do something about it.” That’s when I found an organization at West Bend High School called […]

Introducing the StrongFirst “WOD”

“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 […]

The Key to Efficient Strength—Give and Take

Regardless of their sport, high-level athletes have an astonishing ‘gift’ of making the most complex moves look easy. How? With years of practice. Learning how to balance and coordinate internal forces to deliver, or access, the power, strength, agility, and quickness they need at the exact right moment for ultimate performance. And that comes from […]

Something Old is New Again: Refining Your Get-up

Being a student of strength means having the courage to challenge habits and biases. Because of its complexity, the get-up offers many opportunities to explore, practice, and improve how we move and express our strength. Director of Education, Brett Jones, offers two get-up refinements: one that improves your body connection and another to avoid a […]