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I am not a guru

training principles Aug 29, 2013

A friend of mine from Explosive Sports Performance posted this on Facebook the other day...

Here is the link to the article

I bring this up for two reasons.

1.  The content.  Go read the article to which Phil is referring.

I don't always enjoy the tone of voice of T-Nation articles, but Mark Rippetoe (author of Starting Strength) says so many things here that I'd be too polite to say myself.

My favorite part is the second to last sections where Rippetoe emphasizes the difference between training and exercising.

What's the difference? I'll refresh your memory. Briefly, capital-"T" Training is the process of driving a physical adaptation in a specific direction for a specific purpose, while capital-"E" Exercise is what we do for the way it makes us feel today: before, during, and after the workout itself.

But go read the whole section because it's way more informative/hilarious/insulting depending on your point of view.

2.  The Quote. "Some of us learned this on Day 1..."

Awhile back at an ultimate conference I was casually introduced to someone as "the fitness guru of ultimate."  While I am an expert, the word "guru" has come to mean someone with special or secret knowledge.  And that is something I don't have.

What I do have to offer is pretty much the same base of knowledge that is agreed upon by most people in the modern field of strength and conditioning. In fact, you probably have an ultimate playing strength and conditioning coach on a field near you!

I know just a few of them - Jools Murray in the UK, JP in Montreal, the Janzen brothers Phil and Alan in Texas, Tim Morril in Boston, Jorge in Bogota. I am positive that all of these experts would agree about the basic law of competing demands.  They all would agree that there is a difference between training for general fitness and training for athletic performance. They would all agree on the fallacy of high-rep Olympic lifting.

And yet, about once a week I get an email asking me if Insanity/Assylum/Crossfit/p90x is a good option for training for ultimate.

Why do strength and conditioning coaches have a conniption (see question #3) every time someone mentions Crossfit?

I dunno, why might a pediatric specialist tire of fielding questions about the link between vaccines and autism? Why might an environmental scientist dread a conversation with a Tea Party acolyte? The truth is, there is absolutely no controversy about these issues among people in the field who actually study these things for a living. And yet there remains a dangerous (or in my case, at least unproductive) level of ignorance among a far too high percentage of everyone else.

The point I am trying to get across here is that, aside from the sport specificity, most of what I offer in my products and on my blog is common knowledge  within the field of strength and conditioning.  And yet due to marketing and a lack of education this knowledge still doesn't get through to the people who need it most, the players themselves. 

Training with a capital "T"

I'm getting ready to open The Ultimate Athlete Project to new members in about a week.  As I get ready for opening day, I'll be talking a lot about what it means to train like an athlete.  These are principles that have stood the test of time.  There is nothing magical about the training we do (though the results seem magical at times).  It's just stuff that works. Stuff that professionals agree upon.

If you would like this "common knowledge" to become common to you, I encourage you to sign up for The Ultimate Athlete Project wait list.  Even if you don't end up signing up for my programs, I'll be sending you a bunch of information that will help you to better understand what training like an athlete is all about.

Knowledge (and strength plus speed!) is POWER!

Ready to take the next step?  Sign-up for my 6 week Sprint-Agility-Quickness program!

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