Take a look around Instagram and you’ll see hundreds of variations of your favorite exercises. Exercise variation is critical to sustained progress, but how you vary exercises matter. Randomly copying what you see online isn’t going to do the trick. The latest training program we posted in the HMMR Classroom provides a great look at how exercise variation can fit into a training plan. Read more
Every month we take a deep dive into the latest research in sports science. In the September Sports Science Monthly we look at the continuing debate on periodization and whether periodization is more effective than simply adding variation in training. We they dive into diverse topics such as injury risk, stress for university athletes, genetics, the effect of training time on strength adaptations, and more. Read more
American weightlifting has reinvented itself over the past few years as new clubs and coaches have emerged across the country. Unfortunately, throughout this process some of the old names and pioneers have been overlooked. One of those is John Thrush. Read more
You can’t just learn a new training method from reading a book. You have to live it, you have to experiment with it, and you have to understand all the different parts. Derek Evely has spent his career studying the top training methods in sport, and there is one method he keeps coming back to: Bondarchuk. He’s working on an upcoming course to help coaches look under the hood and learn from his trials and failures. On this week’s podcast he joins us to dig deep into two concepts: exercise classification and rest phases. Read more
Repetition is the mother of learning. We are what we repeatedly do. I doubt anyone would argue with those points. The task then becomes to carefully chose what we repeat. It is necessary to have a clear idea of the technical model you wish to achieve and a plan to achieve the desired technique. It is very important to fit the technique to the person not the person to the technique. Read more
This season I had my best results in years despite little time to train. Putting together a training plan required some creative solutions, some of which worked, and some which didn’t. On this episode we debrief my season and look forward to next year. After a decade of the same training style, it is time for a change and we brainstorm different ideas for planning towards 2018. Read more
No matter how hard we try, coaches cannot avoid making mistakes. What we can avoid is repeating the same mistakes twice. With the high school track season over, Nick takes the time on this week’s episode to look back on his team’s season and find the mistakes he made. More importantly, we discuss what will work better in the future to help avoid them next time around. Read more
In my presentation at GAIN 2017 last week, I went on a tangent to talk about cutlery. Like most people, I’m attracted to sharp and shiny things, but the reason I brought up knives is that the provide a great analogy for exercise selection. Read more
Earlier this week I wrote about the new book from Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg
Over the past few months we’ve accumulated several small topics to discuss and haven’t had the time to jump into them. Well, now’s the time. On this week’s episode we discuss various odds and ends related to current events and training such as whether track and field records should be reset, the sub 2 hour marathon attempt, what makes master coaches stand out, and balancing variation and risk in training. Read more
