What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Squats Mark Rippetoe | October 14, 2016 One of the most persistent myths in the entire panoply of conventional exercise wisdom is that squats below parallel are somehow bad for the knees. This old saw is mindlessly repeated by poorly-informed orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists, and chiropractors all over the world. Better-informed professionals such as productive strength coaches, weightlifters and powerlifters, and those willing to examine the anatomy of the knees and hips for more than just a minute or two know better. Here are four reasons why. Continue reading
The State of Strength & Conditioning Coaching Mark Rippetoe | October 05, 2016 This essay is about the state of the Strength and Conditioning profession in 2014, most of which is practiced in high schools, colleges and universities, and at the professional sports level. Those of you reading this in the distant future, while you drive your flying cars (please be careful), may observe with amusement that all these problems have long since been corrected, if I have even described them accurately here in 2014, and my concerns turned out to be about as relevant to your advanced civilization as global warming. From atop your glacier, you may look down on a landscape devoid of weak, overtrained athletes, and wonder just what in the hell I was so concerned about. I hope so. Continue reading
Risk Assessment John F Musser, SSC | September 28, 2016 A weak fat person whose goal is to be strong and lean has to make the right decision countless times a day to avoid the habits that got him fat and kept him weak. A strong person has to make the right choices to stay strong. Understanding the factors involved in calculating risk and the process of choosing and implementing appropriate counter-measures may be useful... Continue reading
The Grip Problem Jordan Feigenbaum | August 03, 2016 The grip in the deadlift is an often overlooked yet crucial piece of the puzzle when it comes to performance and the subsequent gainzZz from the lift. In the 2nd installment of The Problem series, we’ll discuss the intricacies of gripping the bar in the deadlift, and what to do about it. Continue reading
Time to Train Jim Steel | July 27, 2016 It’s noon on a Sunday and I am irritated as hell. I got up around 5am and let my Labradors outside to play fetch with them, and then I drank some coffee and then rode the exercise bike for 30 minutes, which didn’t do a damn thing for my disposition except make me sweat a little. The irritation level went up a few degrees after that waste of time. Then I wrote some lifting programs on the computer. And then I got more and more irritated as the morning went on. I knew the problem... Continue reading
