Garage Blog

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Selecting the right rep scheme is just as important as exercise selection when tailoring a program to a specific type of athlete. The typical break...

Explosiveness is probably the most desired quality to have by athletes. Being explosive means you can be quicker and faster, jump higher, throw fur...

Going in to the FinalX: Bethlehem, the final qualifier for the upcoming World Championships for wrestling, I think both Nick and I were feeling some pressure. Nick needed to beat Adam Coon, who had previously beaten Kyle Snyder, an Olympic Champion.

Often times weightlifting coaches and throws coaches alike have asked why I use close grip snatch as a variation.  They want to know where the transfer can be found from the strength side and if there is even a transfer from the technical side of the movement.  Then the never ending question arises….who did I learn the movement from?

I think almost every athlete has been in this situation before: creeping closer to a major competition, beginning your peak, and yet things just feel slightly off. Your legs aren’t moving as fast as you thought they would, and you aren’t throwing as far or lifting as much as you thought you would. Here, I’m going to explain why this is perfectly fine--and even expected.

There are many successful women on the world stage who coaches look to for inspiration. I think many coaches lose sight of the fact that these athletes are throwing, at the heaviest, a 4 kilogram implement (in the case of shot and hammer). The women’s discus only weighs 2.2 pounds! Yet I hear high school coaches telling female athletes things like, “you gotta go to McDonald’s, you gotta put on weight.” This is exactly the wrong attitude to take. Women don’t NEED to be huge to throw far. You can take one of a number of examples of excellent female throwers who are muscular, but not terribly overweight: Maggie Ewen, Valarie Allman, Whitney Ashley, Sandra Perkovic, the list goes on. Perkovic is easily the most dominant female discus thrower alive right now. Ewen is the most well rounded thrower, female or male, on the planet.

A lot of people point out that when you see my athletes benching on Youtube or Instagram, you primarily see them benching with a fat bar. I want to address some common questions I get about why my athletes use a fat bar to bench with, and why I see it as much more beneficial than benching with a standard 45lb bar. For the purposes of this article, we’ll assume a fat bar is any bar with a diameter larger than that of a standard bar. Although, ideally, I’d have athletes use a bar with a 2” diameter. So, let’s start.

We’ve all been there before. The season is a few meets old, you feel like everything is moving pretty well, and then suddenly it feels like you have no idea what you’re doing in the circle. This sort of midseason technical slump can really impact an athlete’s season, so I wanted to address why it happens and what you can do to combat it.

For those of you who haven’t read my article on why I tend not to program deadlifts for my throwers, check it out here. Since I try not to completely write-off any movement, I wanted to write a quick follow-up that would address a situation where I might program deadlifts for a thrower.

First, I just want to address what some people have probably already decided based on the title: no, I don’t hate deadlifts. Deadlifts can be an extremely effective tool for increasing strength. I really like deadlifts for a sport like wrestling, where more brute strength is required, and the sport itself is more of a grind. But for now, let’s dig deeper into why I don’t have my athletes deadlift in general.

For this article, I’m going to get into some squat variations: which ones are my favorites, and how I choose to program them for certain people. To start, I’ll just lay out the variations I can think of--Single Leg Squat, Cambered Bar Squat, Duffalo Bar Squat, Safety Squat Bar Squat, and Zombie Squat. Each has their own benefits and I’ll get into them below