This Spring Luke Worthington and I will be putting on our popular Strategic Strength Workshop in both Boston, MA and London, UK.
A hometown switcharoo extravaganza if you will.
The purpose of this workshop is to give attendees a more thorough look into our assessment process and how we connect the dots between that and setting our clients/athletes up for as much success as possible.
I.e., turning them into deadlifting Terminators.
There’s plenty of talk surrounding the traditional x’s and o’s of program design, but we also take some time to dive deep into the soft(er) skills of coaching:
How to improve motivation
How to build better rapport
Learning to meet your clients where THEY are.
You can click the respective links below for more information and to register:
On top of my cameo in London this Spring I am also putting on a BONUS 1-day workshop further north, in Leeds. I’m pumped for this one. I’ve never visited northern England and am very much looking forward to this.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll attend my first soccer football match.
SOCIAL MEDIA SHENANIGANS
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I’d say 75-80% of the time when I am on Twitter perusing and watching what other coaches are doing with their athletes – different exercises or ways of setting them up – I am thinking to myself how much of a nincompoop I am for not thinking of that very thing myself.
I’m excited to announce that I will be part of the Raise the Bar Conference. An event focused on the missing links in our industry: Communication, collaboration, connection, behavioral psychology, business & marketing skills, and much more.
I’d garner a guess that most people who have worked with a really good personal trainer for a year are better trainers than most other trainers out there.
I’d also garner a guess that if I were somehow recruited into a Squid Game I’d lose first round.
We heard this phrase all through the height of the pandemic; yet there’s a twinge of Inigo Montoya’ness whenever you hear some people shout it through the rooftops.
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
As always Doug pontificates deeper and at a level most people are unable to get to.
I’ve been following Sarah’s work for awhile now and she’s impressive. Not only is she stronger than She-Ra and Wonder Woman combined, but her approach to training is accessible and actionable, and that take talent to pull off.
Anyhow, this is a short-n-sweet post by here that I know most people can get on board with.
It’s been over 18 months since I’ve announced any IN-PERSON workshops. I’m elated to announce that I am coming to Philadelphia to put on my 1-day Strategic Strength Workshop
*Cue the trumpets*
My friends at Warhorse Barbell Club have agreed to host and I am so pumped.
The event will be in late September and you can take advantage of the early bird rate up until September 1st. For all the details and to register you can go HERE.
Hope to see you there!
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Twitter: The place where people who haven’t participated in anything athletic since Little League wax poetic about Olympians who have more athleticism in their pinky finger than pretty much everyone.
See those two teeny-tiny yellow arrows in the picture above? That’s what Dean is referring to in this practical post on how you can improve you bench pressing prowess.
It’s a common mistake and one I see often with lifters who come to my studio complaining their shoulder hurts whenever they press.
Most people would rather jump into a live volcano that be told to count their calories. While it’s a necessary evil for many, another popular (less annoying?) option is the concept of “intuitive eating.”
Like with anything there’s a learning curve and it takes practice, but it’s something that works well for a lot of people (including myself).
Many of us have a bit of extra time on our hands of late.1
You’ve finished Tiger King on Netflix.
You may have even gone a step further and watched every episode of Love is Blind.
If so, MARK, WAKE UP, JESSICA IS NOT THAT IN TO YOU.
The next logical choice in this line of binging, of course, is something revolving around shoulders & hips.
Copyright: mihalec / 123RF Stock Photo
Complete Shoulder & Hip Blueprint and (Even More) Complete Shoulder & Hip Blueprint on Sale
(Tony pulls up a chair)
Dean and I had planned to go through with this sale about two months ago, but obviously world events gave us some pause.
We went back and forth with the idea of selling during this time because we knew many people would be going through some financial struggles and we didn’t want to come across as too tone deaf.
That being said, we also understood the fitness industry has been put on pause for the foreseeable future and there are a lot of personal trainers, coaches, and physical therapists trying to figure things out and/or are sick of posting their 47th variation of split squats on Instagram.
This is an opportune time to sharpen your skills and get smarter.
Dean Somerset and I have put the ENTIRE Complete Shoulder & Hip Blueprint series on a hefty sale starting today (with finance options for those who’d prefer to spread out their payments).
A special discount code to Tony’s reenactment of the entire Star Wars saga (with shadow puppets).2
If you’re still on the fence or skeptical on just how much this series will melt your face here’s a few sneak peeks on the some of the content Dean and I cover:
1. Squat Set-Up
A ten minute clip outlining how we determine a client’s ideal stance for their squats based on their individual anatomical considerations.
2. Shoulder Stability Training
Almost 13 minutes of drills to help improve shoulder stability while getting a training effect along the way.
3. Breathing for Mobility
A nine minute video outlining how we use positional breathing drills to access more range of motion, plus make exercises instantly more challenging.
4. Plyometrics for the Elderly Client
Say what? Yep, you can use a stretch-shortening cycle with older clients to improve power output and keep their functional capacity as high as possible for much longer than slower movements. This 8 minute video shows the how and why.
Whether you’re a fitness professional or just someone who likes to lift heavy things and geek out over scapular upward rotation and the miracles of posterior pelvic tilt, the Complete Shoulder & Hip Blueprint series will undoubtedly provide you a TON of actionable, real-world, evidence-based content to help you connect the dots between assessment and helping your athletes/clients perform at a high(er) level.
We’re limiting this sale through this Sunday only (4/5/20), so take advantage while you can.
It’s official: This marks the sixth year in a row Dean Somerset and I are presenting together. We’re so excited to be coming to Athens to kickstart 2020.
Nope, this article refers to the “homework” (or drills and exercises) we trainers and coaches give our clients to do at home that help address stuff they need to work on more whether it be motor control. stability, bad breath, etc.
I’ll be making my first appearance – ever (<— how’s that possible?) – in the wonderful state of North Carolina in a few weeks to put on my popular Coaching Competency Workshop.
This is a great opportunity for other fitness professionals to gain better insight into my assessment and program design process.
And cat memes.
Can’t forget the cat memes.
Full details (date, location, itinerary, how to register) can be foundHERE.
3. Strategic Strength Workshop – Boston, MA
Luke and I did this workshop last summer in London and figured it’s only fair to bring it State side. Combined we have 30+ years of coaching experience (I.e., one Mike Boyle or Dan John) and this workshop will be two days where we uncover every nook and cranny as it relates to how we assess our clients/athletes and how we best prepare them for the rigors of every day life/sport.
This will be a unique opportunity for people to learn from myself, but especially Luke, who I think is one of the best and brightest coaches I know.
For more information and to register you can go HERE.
SOCIAL MEDIA SHENANIGANS
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My wife hitting a bench PR of 170 lbs today. Haters may cry afoul about the butt coming off the bench to which I say…puh.
This is a CLASSIC T-Nation article written by Dave Tate that they recently re-published. I re-read it myself – I remember reading it for the first time back in 2002 – and felt it prudent to pass it along to my readership in case anyone has missed it.
I’ll be making my first appearance – ever (<— how’s that possible?) – in the wonderful state of North Carolina this coming March to put on my popular Coaching Competency Workshop.
Full details (date, location, itinerary, how to register) can be found HERE.
EARLY BIRD rate is currently in effect ($50 off regular price) and ends soon.
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I think if more trainers and coaches would just shut up and let their (potential) client do more of the talking they’d likely see a better percentage of people hiring them. That, and stop talking over people’s heads. No one cares you can break down the Kreb’s Cycle.
If you train women, you owe it to yourself to consider taking this course.
What I LOVE about Sarah’s approach is that not only does she provide a thorough deep dive into the realm of postpartum training and considerations, but she ADVOCATES strength training as an integral component.
In her words:
“You need to lift shit, to fix shit.”
I’ve recently been re-acquainting myself with the material and it’s really helped to open my eyes to knowledge gaps in this area in addition to appreciating just how much ATTENTION TO DETAIL is required when working with this population.
My wife is two-years postpartum and has been dealing with right sided hip pain for a while now, and it just so happens I watched the section on glute clenching and femoroacetabular movement this morning and it punched me in the mouth.
I had several light bulb moments.
Sarah currently has this course on SALE for $150 off the regular price, but it ends this coming Monday (1/21).
….It’s the (Even More) Complete Shoulder & Hip Blueprint.
A bunch of wordsmiths we are.
With this iteration, though, we’ll be going a bit deeper into the coaching and programming side of things:
How to program around common injuries.
How to “connect” the appropriate exercises to the client/athlete.
How to squat and deadlift like a boss.
All registrants to this course (as well as future dates in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, Minas Tirith) will receive a free download of CSHB 1.0 so that you’re up-to-speed on the content Dean and I will be covering.
I’ve had to decline speaking at this event in the past due to prior engagements4, but I’m headed to San Jose this year baby.
And I…..am…..pumped.
I’ve never been to the Bay area so I’m excited for that. But I’m even more excited for the THREEdays of melt your face knowledge that’ll be under one roof.
The line-up is spectacular and I’m honored to be included amongst such esteemed company – Pat Rigsby, Mark Fisher, Molly Galbraith, Kellie Hart, Craig Ballantyne, and Scott Rawcliffe, to name a few.
I’ll be speaking about shoulder assessment.
If you’re a fitness professional looking to take his or her’s career to the next level this is an event you won’t want to miss.
Does everyone need to squat? Nope. But your ability to competently do it provides a profound upgrade to your exercise (and movement) repertoire. Also: finding the RIGHT squat for your body, injury history & ability level matters.
John first started writing for T-Nation back in the early 2000’s and eventually started Precision Nutrition which is now a 200 million dollar company and one of the most respected entities in the industry.
How?
How did he do it?
Was there some secret morning ritual, a daily hack, or maybe he cut a deal with Rumplestiltskin?
None of the above, actually.
As always John keeps it real and provides a ton of practical insights.
I’ll be in Dallas, TX later this month to put on my Coaching Competency Workshop.
I’ll break down assessment in addition to troubleshooting common strength-based exercises such as deadlifts, squats, shoulder-friendly pressing, to name a few.
This is ideal for any personal trainer, coach, or regular ol’ Joe or Jane looking to learn more on my coaching process.
Details are located on the flyer above, and you can purchase HERE.
Dean Somerset and Dr. Mike Israetel released a killer resource this week. In a nutshell they filmed a workshop they did together earlier this year. It’s 11 hours and it’ll melt your face.
Dean takes half the time and breaks down assessment, and then Mike takes over and spends the other half talking about how to get people swole.
Smart-n-swole.
It’s on sale right now for $50 off the regular price (however, it only lasts until 12/10).
I’d make the argument that this compilation article that was featured on T-Nation earlier this week – featuring myself, Chris Shugart, TC Luoma, Paul Carter, Tom Morrison, Mark Dugdale, and Akash Vaghela – may be the best and most important one to date.
My man Lee Boyce, a friend and colleague, ruptured both his knee tendons playing in a pick-up game of basketball earlier this year.
Ruptured….both….knee….tendons.
I.e., He couldn’t fucking walk.
Not only did he basically keep the entire ordeal to himself – he purposely didn’t tell many people about it6 – but he made mental notes along the way to write this amazing piece.
His resiliency astounds me.
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Two fool-proof and commonsense pairings in a strength program: Deadlift paired with a push-up OR front squat paired with a pull-up variation (or any row for that matter).
In fact, if I broke down my client roster I’d say it’s about a 50/49/1% split (women/men/Centaur7). I live in a little strength & conditioning bubble where the bulk of women I work with don’t blink an eye at the idea of adding muscle to their frame.
In fact, most want that to happen.
Today’s guest post by my boy, Dean Somerset, explains why most women can (and should) want the same thing.
NOTE: Dean and Dr. Mike Israetel released an amazing resource this week, The L2 Fitness Summit Vol 1, which delves deep into assessment and how to get your clients results (specifically, how to get them diesel).
It’s really, really good (and it’s on sale for this week only)
Women and Hypertrophy: Why Should Jill Get Jacked?
The vast majority of my clients are female, somewhere around 70% at any given time. The reason these women are training with me varies a lot, either they’re working against some medical disorder, an injury, or other significant problem, or they’re training for some performance goal like running a faster marathon or deadlifting twice their bodyweight.
In most of their goals, the thought of getting bigger muscles often ranks somewhere between stubbing their toe and waxing their eye lashes off.
In some instances it’s a pragmatic element.
If a client has invested a significant amount of money into their wardrobe and suddenly their lats are just too gunny, they’re going to have to spend a lot of money on alterations or worse, go shopping for new clothes.
It might come down to spousal support too.
It’s all too common for a female client to say their husband told them they don’t want them to turn into a man, a statement so ridiculous to hear that it’s hard to bite my tongue.
Guys, 3 lbs of muscle on a female will not make them manlier than you. Maybe you should put on a couple pounds of muscle and not worry so much about your girlfriend or wife out lifting you.
In any case, training to gain some muscle (read, some. It’s very hard for anyone to gain a lot, male or female) is very much a good thing for most if not all goals you could have in the gym.
Muscle looks better at almost any body fat percentage than not having it.
Muscle helps performance goals, like doing a chin up or deadlifting a dump truck
Muscle improves cardio performance, making you a faster runner, cyclist, or whatever the rage is these days
Muscle demands calories, which means you can justify eating a little more without affecting your body composition
Muscle can improve bone density, hormonal function, and sleep quality.
Muscle helps yoga pants or your favorite pair of “butt jeans” fit better.
Science.
Now, will training for hypertrophy make you bulkier?
Possibly, but there’s a lot of factors that have to go into that.
First, it’s a long process to see notable increases in muscle, and for the purpose of this article we’ll assume a 5% increase in body mass as notable.
So for someone who weighs around 130 lbs, a 5% increase would be around 6.5 lbs.
Male or female, an individual would look notably different with an extra 6.5 lbs of muscle on their build.
If you talk to most competitive physique or figure competitors, a 6.5 lbs gain of muscle can take a very long time of very dedicated workouts, nutrition, and frequency. What would be reasonable would be to see about 3 lbs a year of actual muscle gain in a caloric surplus, so if you’re looking to gain, you’ll likely be dedicated to 4-6 hypertrophy-focused workouts a week for a full 12 month phase while eating enough to support that development.
This isn’t to say it’s impossible to gain more than this in shorter time frames, but just what seems reasonable for a lot of female lifters.
Here’s an example of this process in action with a friend of mine, Kait Cavers. She looks to compete in figure competitions and dedicates a large portion of her training calendar to gaining muscle.
She recently posted a before and after pic of her at the same weight, and you should see how awesome a comparison it is:
To be clear, as she stated in her post, it’s not about one being better than another, or which one would be preferred, but just showing that you can look vastly different at the same body weight with differences in muscle and body fat.
She’s considerably more muscular in the right pic, but her waist and hips are miniscule compared to the left.
Now if you didn’t want to dedicate to this kind of work load, the gains of muscle will be much less, and if you wanted to phase in hypertrophy training for a few months out of the year versus make it your whole focus all the time, you could do different things without worry about packing on some lat muscle or thicker delts.
That’s the great thing about training: you don’t have to do the same thing all the time and can cycle your training calendar throughout the year to focus on different stuff as you see fit. Hypertrophy can fit into the flow, be the entire goal, or just have a sprinkling for flavor on other stuff as you go.
This is a concept used by another friend, Ben Bruno, when he trains a lot of Victoria Secret supermodels. None of them would be judged to be too bulky, but most of their training uses heavier resistance training, hypertrophy protocols, and intense conditioning elements.
Aside from gaining muscle, what other good could training for hypertrophy offer?
If you’re training for a specific goal, such as powerlifting, running, or even weight loss, shifting gears for a phase or two can offer a type of cross training that can help refresh your mind about training, and give your body a break from the stuff you were doing consistently.
An example of this is my own wife. 10 months of the year she puts in a lot of miles on her bike as a competitive road and track cyclist. During the bulk of her in-season, she’s on the bike upwards of 15-20 hours a week with a mix of long duration low intensity rides and max effort sprints.
During the offseason, she wants to jump into some heavier weights, which definitely have their place in her program, but going straight from cycling and minimal weight training into maximal resistance training isn’t that great of an idea, so we involve a phase of 6-8 weeks of hypertrophy training due to the lower relative loads, and easier recovery compared to max lifting.
This helps to prepare her for the heavier stuff, give her body a break from the bike, and still look to gain a small amount of muscle after a hard in-season, which will help her performance on the bike next year, but also prepare her for the heavier weights of the off season.
Another example was a recreational skier who tore her ACL and needed surgery to fix the injury. During the pre-op phase, we involved work to keep some muscle mass through the quad with lighter loading and moderate volume, and following the surgery her workouts progressed from next to no loading, through to loading to technique failure, and then on to muscular failure through drop sets or extended set options.
A major goal of ACL rehab is to regain quad volume, so we went after it, using the progressive range of motion her knee was re-establishing, and as her strength development allowed.
She’s back on the ski hill now and having a great time 6 months after her surgery.
Gaining muscle can be a very challenging goal, especially if someone is already somewhat well established in their training and have been at it for a while. Because of the requirements to see notable increases in muscle, women shouldn’t fear training for hypertrophy, but should involve it in their programming on a regular or even occasional basis to help augment their goals, what ever those may be.
Having some extra muscle is often a major benefit under any goal set, including fetching water from up the hill.
Maybe if Jill lifted a bit more, she wouldn’t have come tumbling down after Jack, but would have farmer carried that shit all the way back home with Jack on her shoulders, straight up Medal of Honour style, so he could get some medical attention to fix that broken crown.
She could use that water to make some tea to sip while thinking if only Jack had trained he wouldn’t have fallen from such a simple task, but that’s none of Jill’s business.
Special Limited Time Offer
Dean Somerset and Dr. Mike Israetel filmed 11 hours of amazing content at the recent L2 Fitness Summit and it’s nuts.
Half of it is Dean breaking down assessments and the other half is Dr. Mike talking about getting people jacked and swole.
It’s on sale THIS WEEK ONLY (12/5-12/10) at a heavily discounted price of $50 off the regular price. As if the content and quality of presenters isn’t enough to entice you: If you’re still seeking CEUs to finish off your certification requirements this bad-boy offers 1.2 CEUs via the NSCA.
