Strength is the foundation of all physical and athletic endeavors. With greater strength, all other aspects of athletic training become easier and more effective, while your risk of injury lowers dramatically. An injured athlete can't perform and if you can't perform, you can't do your job. Therefore, our primary objective is to promote safety and prevent injury.
A basic philosophy of mine is to keep your training as simple as possible as long as you're making progress. If progress slows or ceases, we will adjust training to stimulate new growth. Our bodies can only process so much new information at a time, therefore novice athletes should focus most attention on skills first and foremost while keeping strength training simple yet intense. I am a firm believer in progressions in our training. We progress from simple to complex, which seems obvious, but far too often many athletes jump right to the most difficult variation of an exercise without having mastered the basics. Imagine teaching advanced algebra to a second grader, it would not be very effective. The basics always provide the most long term benefit.
What makes a Champion Athlete?
• Strength before conditioning
• Sound position before movement
• Sound movement before speed and momentum/velocity
• Prioritize your core first with full body movement before training your extremities with isolation movements
• Our program combines athletic and aesthetic training, you should PERFORM and LOOK like a Superstar
• Develop an appreciation for the basics, don't rush progressions
• Focus your training on the core body, between the shoulders and hips
• Train with ground-based lifts and bodyweight calisthenics for the primary work
• Train with athletic lifts and incorporate body building where appropriate
• Train for power and athleticism
• Train with the attitude that your audience is always watching, be inspirational
• Train and LIVE with a CHAMPIONS ATTITUDE
Although team strength training workouts are very important, the success or downfall of the athlete has a lot to do with what the athlete does between the training. Habits dealing with sleep, diet, alcohol, drugs, and social life play an important role in the athlete's success. If the athlete has "lost control" in any of these areas they will greatly diminish his chances of reaching their athletic potential.
The champion athlete will evaluate him/herself for weaknesses and seek extra help from the coaches to fill in the deficiencies in order to improve their chances for success. Hard, smart extra workouts are what the champion athlete will do. If he is inflexible he will work on becoming more flexible. If she is not strong enough in the upper body she will spend more time improving upper body strength. If foot speed or agility is a problem the champion will spend extra time bettering his foot speed or agility. I refer to this as weak point training, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, what are you willing to do to eliminate your weakness and improve your ability? The coach will never "make" an athlete into a champion nor "prevent" an athlete from becoming a champion. The athlete makes a concrete decision to make him/herself into a champion.
You must have a success mindset, you must see the opportunity where others see an obstacle. What are you willing to do to differentiate yourself from everyone else, who will we remember?
Success Formula
Ability + strategy = results
Success comes from good judgement, good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgement, mistakes and failures.
1. Set your goals, write them down and keep them with you at all times
- write down your goals or you only have dreams and wishes
- share your goals with everyone, make them public
2. Get focused
- follow one course until successful, we can't go in multiple directions at once
- do less stuff, do only what fits in to your plan of success, eliminate everything else
3. Get going, take action
4. Get into it
- get fired up
- get motivated
- be inspirational
- be entertaining
5. Get comfortable being uncomfortable
- make sacrifices
- get prepared, never make excuses
- accept this will not be easy road and embrace the work
6. Get your average up
- you're the average of the five closest people to you
- hang out with better people
- remove your anchors
When someone gives you a task, always do more than expected, always over deliver, do it long enough and hard enough, I promise there won't be anything you can't achieve.
A basic template for our training sessions goes as follows:
1. General warm up - 5 minutes
2. Joint mobility/SMR therapy/light stretching - 5-10 minutes
3. Specific warm up - 5-10 minutes
4. Primary Work - 20 minutes - we ramp up to the most intense part of the session
5. Supplemental Work/Body building - 10-15 minutes - address individual weaknesses
6. Conditioning - 5-10 minutes
7. Stretching/cool down - 5-10 minutes
In an attempt to optimize training & recovery, we will rotate the three major areas of our training, strength, speed and stamina. The actual exercises are far less important than the intent for the day, the main objective or purpose of what we are trying to achieve. Methods are many, principles are few, methods may change but principles never do!
Ideally I would like to see you train 4 days a week, with additional light workouts in between consisting of light stretching and low intensity full body training such as calisthenics and core work to get the blood flowing that are designed to facilitate recovery, not annihilate the system.
I prefer training on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday to optimize recovery, but anything that best fits your schedule is suitable. If only three days a week is possible, that is fine, just drop the 4th day or incorporate it into the other days. The following describes our primary work split.
day 1 - hinge (hip dominant lower body)
- deadlifts, rdls, swings, cleans, snatch, sandbag shouldering, jumps, running, sleds
day 2 - push & pull (upper body)
- pushing= push ups, hspu, dips, bench press, overhead press, basic gymnastic strength, push press, jerks
- pulling= pull ups, levers, rows, arms
- combos- clean & press, muscle ups
day 3 - squat (hip & knee lower body)
- barbell, sandbag, kettlebells, jumps, sprints, sleds, lunges, pistols,
day 4 - body building, conditioning, mostly upper body
- weak point training, shoulders, running, complexes, anything that will improve your career such as fat loss
Here's how we rotate the waves and determine our intent for the day (every 3 weeks is a wave)
WEEK 1
Day 1- hinge strength, Day 2- push-pull speed, Day 3- squat stamina, Day 4- Body Building, Conditioning & Therapy
WEEK 2
Day 1- hinge speed, Day 2- push-pull stamina, Day 3- squat strength, Day 4- Body Building, Conditioning & Therapy
WEEK 3
Day 1- hinge stamina, Day 2- push-pull strength, Day 3- squat speed, Day 4 - Body Building Conditioning & Therapy
WEEK 4
Recycle the Wave with increased intensity
- we repeat the same exercises with little variations for the duration of the cycle, however we increase the intensity for the next wave. There will be a progression in exercise selection after we begin a new cycle, and dependent upon athletes mastery of the previous movement.
Wave 1:
(sets x reps)
Strength day - 5x5 - Heavy @ 75-80% (sets last approx 15-20 seconds with 90 sec rest)
speed day - 8x3 - Fast @ 60% (sets last about 5-10 seconds with 60-75 sec rest)
stamina day - 3-5x8-15 Smooth & controlled tempo @ 65-70% (sets last about 30-45 seconds with 90-120 seconds rest)
Wave 2:
strength - 5x3 @ 85%
speed - 10x2 @ 65%
stamina - 3-5x8-12 @ 75-80%
Wave 3:
strength - 6x2 - @ 90-95%, as heavy as possible without missing
speed - 8x2 @ 70%
stamina - 1x15, 1x12, 1x10, 1x8
Adjust and design new cycle.
3-5 training days in a week
3 weeks in a wave
3 waves in a cycle
5 cycles in a year
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