I believe everyone needs do strength training.First of all it’s what I do.Second, it is the best way to set up progressive workouts.Third, I’m a control freak and can create the specific environment needed to get the desired result.I think other stuff is great.Yoga, jujitsu, swimming are great; even ballet can be great (it did a lot for Hershel Walker, Google his name plus ballet).It is just difficult to adjust, quantify, and manipulate.Not to mention, the time necessary to learn the foundational skills before you will actually get a training effect that will carry over into other areas.Just because Yoga made all of the difference for Athlete X doesn’t mean that you should drop your program and do the same.

Doing strength training doesn’t mean you have to be a meathead.It doesn’t mean you are even trying to get bigger (I have helped hundreds of females get smaller successfully), nor does it even mean you have to lift weights.It does mean you want to get stronger (pretty damn obvious), but I feel I must point that to clarify for those who have had a bad experience lifting or picked up an injury in the weight room.

Strength training must meet the needs of each athlete in a variety of ways to be successful.

1.  You must connect with your training on some level.I have seen athlete work with brilliant coaches in well designed  programs get no results because they thought things were stupid.This is not the athletes fault entirely; there are a lot of smart people that can’t motivate a starving man to eat.

2.  It must meet your time and lifestyle parameters.Most athletes don’t want to spend 3 hours in the gym.Some actually do.It is tough to focus on putting on weight and increasing max effort strength during the season, you body doesn’t recover as well when you have to play 3 games in 5 days.

3.  It must be effective.A bigger bench press isn’t necessarily effective.Running a faster 40 yard time for basketball isn’t always of huge priority.Every athlete must recognize what will pay the greatest dividends to their game and train appropriately.I think avoiding injury is almost always priority number.Power endurance and speed endurance usually follow close behind.Big bench and squat numbers are great, but we are training for sports, not practicing lifting heavy shit for its own sake.

I admit I am biased, but I know what works for most people.Some people have their arthritis cured with magnets; others stop drinking artificial sweeteners and have their incurable cancer disappear.Crazy cures are not the answer for most people; crazy workouts aren’t the answer for most athletes.



Flexibility,Stability and Mobility

When training athletes, I want to get each person I work with stronger, more explosive, and more powerful.That is the sexy part.That is why we lift heavy weights.Heavy weights develop more fast twitch muscle recruitment, core activation, and create coordination between muscular systems.Squat and deadlift variations, heavy presses, power cleans, rows and chin up variations are the best exercises to develop athletes.They allow heavy loads and recruit the greatest number of muscle fibers.Unfortunately, if you are an athlete with significant imbalances (the answer is yes for every basketball player) you may compensate by overusing certain muscles under heavy loads or maximum velocity.In orderto make our money exercises work for us, a quality lifting program must also seek to improve the Flexibility (length of tissues), Mobility (ability of a joint to move freely), and Stability (ability of a joint to resist unwanted motion).These activities are not nearly as sexy as the explosive or heavy lifts that impress the rest of the gym with ground shaking poundage.

During the season, coming off of an injury, and as a part of our warm up, all of my athletes do movements that are meant to help get multiple joints and multiple muscles work in better coordination so that when the time for going all out comes they are better prepared to handle great stress.Every basketball player needs to improve hamstring flexibility, every basketball player needs to improve ankle mobility, and every basketball player needs better shoulder stability.The question becomes how much time and effort does an athlete need to devote to each of these needs that are required to be a professional player?A good assessment in person is the best way, but looking at your injury history, which body parts get tight and sore during activity, and some pictures and videos of posture can help give a trainer loads of information that will keep an athlete from getting “jacked up” during the season, or worse, in the preseason.

Things like side lunges, plank holds, and scapular wall slides certainly don’t look impressive to most on-lookers, but when they are done consistently they can help an athlete stay on the court more often, with better performance, and for more seasons.This leads to bigger salaries for more years. To me, this makes them money exercises.