Garage Strength Methodology

Over the past century athletes, coaches and spectators have dreamed up new ideas and methods to improve performance output. There are constantly new models coming out that will forever change the sporting arena. However, most of these ideas are not new as humanity has been involved with competitive athletics since the beginning of recorded time. The key is to unlock a logical progression while utilizing ancient training methods, respecting modern science and understanding the human body.

Over the past decade, sports performance enhancement has been an integral part of my life. Through discussions, training sessions and studies, numerous methods of training have been experimented in my training. It seems that nearly everyone has an answer for sports problems and they are always the end all be all for these problems. After training under hundreds of programs, one conclusion has been found. Just about every form of strength and performance enhancement works. Programs work for different reasons but what it comes down to is: stimulation and restoration. When proper stimulus is administered and the body is given time to recover and adapt, progress will be accomplished. The next step is figuring out when the body has adapted and to provide the body with a new foreign stimulus.

Improving performance is a tremendous journey. It is a time for the athlete to understand and grasp their mental and physical attributes and push themselves to the limit where they never before ventured. The same is true for the coach. The coach must understand and decipher the type of athlete, induce the proper stimulus and learn from the responses. It is a special give and take process. No athlete is the same nor is any coach. Each experience is unique to those individuals. The coach and athlete are always in a relationship of learning and processing. This is one of the most important aspects to performance enhancement.

Understanding the individuality of training was one concept that I struggled to grasp until I began training with Anatoli Bondarchuk. For months I would ask him how Yuri Sedych, Sergei Litvinov and Yuri Tamm trained. How did his close friend Vasiliy Alexeev workout? What did he know about Karelin? Dr. Bondarchuk was very roundabout with his answers. He explained; everyone wants to know how the great ones trained and what exercises they did at certain points of the year. People wanted to know in hopes they could then go and train like the greats and have a firm understanding of their struggles. Dr. B informed me that that is precisely the problem. It is great to see how they trained and use their exercises as guidelines but along with the aid of their coaches, the greats figured out the best way to trained based off their body, not another elite athlete’s training program.

Each athlete is a unique organism. All respond to stimulus in their own way. It is possible and likely that all athletes fit into the three type mold but the programming and timing of each period is different from athlete to athlete. Understanding the individuality of training answers many questions of sports performance enhancement. There is no direct recipe book and in reality, nothing replaces an athletes drive or a coaches logic in the process of periodized development.

After understanding the program dilemma, the next key to training is understanding the chosen exercises and their correlation transfer from training into competition. This can be seen in football with the bench press. I do not believe having a 600 pound bench press would highly correlate onto the field. However, I do believe that having the ability to violently move 225 pounds does have a high correlation. This is where the coach must figure out the proper training in regards to highest correlation of transfer.

Clearly, this process involves logic and reason for training. Anyone can get strong but the key is not getting strong in the weight room. The key is to mold the weight room movements and speed around the specific sport. Again, the training must vary from athlete to athlete and sport to sport depending on the competitive movement. With that being said, the coach and athlete must clearly understand the movement and its paths, speed and power produced to effectively train. This is not a difficult task, merely requiring logic from both parties and a bit of effort toward the created system of training.

For an athlete to be successful, their must be a clear determination coupled with proper stimulus programming and restoration. This will create a result in peak sports performance. This journey is a fantastic experience that sparks emotions in anyone who has the urge to train and achieve.