Garage Blog

Over the past two years, USA Weightlifting has taken a hard stance on the use of performance enhancing drugs (PED’s) inside and out of competition. The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has done an excellent job enforcing the guidelines for athletes, including strict guidelines for whereabouts reporting and extensive education among coaches and athletes. The case we are about it investigate raises a few question marks on the principles of USAW and USADA.

Todd Lee speak is a unique. When children are learning language his or her parent is sometimes the interpreter. Toddler’s learn to be good at charades, in addition to language, to communicate their wants and needs. There are two things to focus on when children are developing language, word recognition and word pronunciation. This focus will depend on the child’s age and the situation.

The Arnold Sports Festival held the Pan American Trials session as a subsection of the American Open Series event held in Columbus Ohio on March 2, 2018. These sessions helped to determine possible qualifiers for the Senior Pan American team. There was some very impressive lifting during the Pan American sessions particularly women’s session and there was also some controversy. At the center of this controversy is a young woman named Quiana Welsh.

I like to train in Olympic Weightlifting, a sport that takes a high amount of precision and practice with technique. It also requires takes repetition to improve performance and numbers on the platform. There are two lifts in olympic weightlifting, the snatch and the clean and jerk. The best weightlifters train 15 to 20 hours in the gym working technical and strength movements to improve their lifts. At best, I have 10 hours per week to train, and yet I have still managed to improve my lifts with limited training time. Olympic lifting is my hobby, I am also a mom, a gym owner, and a business professional. The following are some ways to balance work/home/fitness life when I am being pulled in many different directions.

Did bedtime get pushed back a few hours? Mealtime actually just a bunch of snacks? Kids thrive off of a regular schedule. Mentally strong parents stick to a schedule as much as possible. Life is not always perfectly consistent, but don’t let the chaos be an excuse for more chaos.

Before we really get rolling into the critical side of this blog, I would like to make a few things quite clear. When I begin to criticize something, it means I care. It means I want the institution or individual to improve by learning and changing and thus growing from the criticism. When my critical voice is no longer heard, it generally means I have stopped caring and that individual or group is simply inept and not able to grow from their past experiences.

I have been inundated with tons of questions regarding progression of strength, mobility and general fitness.  Many of these questions are based around strength improvements specifically, typically from the “hard gainer” that claims they are genetically incapable of making gains, and they have literally tried everything.  After a few emails back and forth, the real issues rise to the top and the fixes are simple ...

Picky eaters are tough. I have written about dealing with picky eaters before, and how to introduce foods to babies to avoid the picky eater scenerio. And yet, Dane and I found ourselves smack dab in the middle of a toddler food war. Our kid wouldn't eat anything! And what is worse, the majority of foods that we put on the table he wouldn't even touch. How can you claim you don't like something when you have not even had a bite!!

Check out more from Caitlin @traditionalfoodsmodernlife 

Last week USA Weightlifting flew myself and two other coaches out to the Olympic Training Center.  My group was the first group of the coaches summit, so of course we kicked off the summit with a bang!!!  

Blood flow restriction. The latest craze in fitness.  Does it work? Who is using it? When did it start?  Under the influence of one of our Junior W...

This past weekend was a super exciting weekend for Hayley Kate, and Jules posting huge totals at the AO Finals. Jake, Jess, and DJ all earning medals. That is 1/2 of our team earning medals!!

Special thanks to John Giacalone, DJ, and Dan Marrone coaching along with me this weekend.We had certain sessions with 2 different athletes lifting at the same time, and I am extremely grateful for their help!

Here are a few very simple principles of Deep Work: Focusing without distraction on a cognitively demanding task Cultivating deep work will mea...