Tag: Program
I exist in a dilemma. One of my favorite pastimes is Western hunting, usually in the mountains. I love the animals, love the physical beauty of the terrain, and I love the challenge. The problem is that I live, work, and train on a coastal plain—low and flat. For two decades, I struggled to find […]
“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”—Zen Buddhism The Essential Must be Done Regularly After some rare downtime, I was watching the show “Life Below Zero” on the Nat Geo channel. It’s a documentary TV series about the daily challenge of living off the grid in remote areas of the […]
I first became aware of kettlebell training in 2000 and began using them two years later, when I recognized their ability to make people more powerful and flexible. One of my driving forces was finding ways to fix my own shoulder issues, and when I saw the true potential of kettlebells firsthand, I knew this […]
These are difficult times for everyone. The COVID-19 emergency has already forced home half of the world, and it’s rapidly spreading. In January 2020, the infection seemed to be circumscribed in China. But within a month, it reached the rest of Asia, then the Middle East, Italy, and finally the rest of Europe. To date, […]
Adapting to load is what makes us stronger. But because training loads can be manipulated in so many ways—intensity, magnitude, repetition, duration, frequency, direction, speed, acceleration, exercise, equipment, sequence, rest, etc.—some people get paralyzed by the seemingly overwhelming options; frozen by the insecurity of making a wrong choice. Too many do nothing. Others bounce around, […]
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 […]
This workout is likely as old as the pushup itself and I am not sure who created it. Maybe the Aztecs or Egyptians. Who knows? Pythagoras was into triangles and math so maybe the Greeks. Whoever invented it, it has been a classic workout of mine since the 80s, when I learned it in my […]
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 […]
A couple of years ago, I wrote an article, Strength in Numbers, about my journey towards a set of 100 pushups. I used ’grease the groove’ (GTG) sets regularly throughout my day to achieve a high daily volume. With Pavel’s advice, I added cycles of explosive pushups using Strong Endurance™ principles. I became a sort […]
Why not give students a motivating win while they’re working on building a foundation of strength? This was my inspiration for creating a 5RM kettlebell front squat program.
