Strength Gains

You want the simple answer? No. Even though you hear a ton of people saying it the fact of the matter is you don’t have to and, in fact, shouldn’t always use a full range of motion on every exercise you do. People who recommend this are well intentioned. I’ve recommended it myself and still do to beginners. In a general sense it’s very good advice. But when we get more advanced and examine things more closely we get a different story. Sometimes a full range of motion can be dangerous. Other times it can simply be less productive for… continue reading.

To build muscle fast you need to present the body with a stimulus that it isn’t used to. This stress will cause the body to adapt by building itself up bigger and stronger. Where most people go wrong is that they think they need to annihilate the muscle in order to elicit any type of response. This is counterproductive. When you annihilate the muscle with tons of sets, reps and constantly train to failure and beyon you drastically increase your recovery time. The problem with that is that training frequency is very important. So when you increase your recovery… continue reading.

Originally written For Elite Fitness Systems in 2004 When Part One of this article was written a few years ago the focus was on college strength coaches. Unfortunately the unmaking of an athlete begins long before college. It starts at a very young age with uninformed but well intentioned parents. By doing what they think is best for their kids; many parents actually end up destroying their children’s athletic futures. For this story to be complete we have to go back to the beginning. The father of three high school aged boys I used to coach is one such example… continue reading.