Michael Boyle's Strengthcoach.com Blog

Tomorrow will be a big day. I’ll presenting at the first Irish Sport Coaches Institute event in Dublin and, my blog will hit 1.5 million views. I have to admit the numbers astound me a bit. We’ll be filming an eight hour seminar that will become Functional Strength Coach 5. I’m really looking forward to the event. Can’t wait for tomorrow. Tonight we’ll do a short one hour business seminar for twenty and then tomorrow we’ll start at 10 AM.

My Strength Question post a few days ago was one of the most viewed in quite a while so I figured I’d post a follow up piece.

I original wrote this for T-Nation in 2007 or 2008 and reposted it on my StrengthCoach.com site a few months later.

It’s interesting, ask a strength coach what a good bench press is for a 200 lb male and chances are you’ll get a good answer. Maybe everyone won’t be in agreement but, everyone will have an opinion. Ask a good strength coach what constitutes good single leg strength or good vertical pulling strength and I don’t think you’ll get the same level of agreement or, if everyone will even have an answer. The answer might even be something like “what do you mean?” Last spring and summer I set out to answer both questions. How much single leg strength and upper back strength are actually possible? I think if you are going to train, you need a goal. If we are going to train for strength, we need to know what strong is. The four-minute mile is a great example. In 1957 Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile. On that day he broke a twelve year old record. By the end of 1957 sixteen runners had also broken the four-minute mile. It’s amazing what someone will do once they have seen that it is possible. Twelve years to break the record and sixteen followers in one year. My goal is to raise the bar on both single leg strength and upper back strength by telling the strength and conditioning world how strong strong might be…

to read the rest click below

http://www.strengthcoach.com/public/1366.cfm

Got this question from a reader and thought I’d make the answer a post.

Q- “When you are in the strength phase for a specific sport that doesn’t require you to be brutally strong(basketball, baseball,tennis) would you train to be as strong as possible(how they do in football) or would you still stay fundamentally sound?”

A- The reason I wanted to answer this as a separate post is that I think we can address a couple of strength and conditioning misconceptions in one post.

If we read above,  the first assumption/ question is should you train to be strong in sports that might not appear to require maximum strength.  The answer to that would be a resounding yes. The bigger question relates to the question we pose frequently in seminars, “How strong is strong?”, or “what defines strong”?

All athletes should train to be as strong as possible, period. There may be rare exceptions but, they are few and far between.

The second issue relates to the “how they do it in football” part of the question. This relates to how we define strong. I don’t define strong by back squat or bench press. I define strong first by the ability to handle bodyweight.

Can you do a good pushup? 

How about 10 chin-ups? 

How about a one leg squat?

The simple answer is it’s not that simple.

We all know the key to shopping is to stay out of the aisles. All the grain ladened stuff that can last forever is in the aisles. Stuff that can go bad ( but is good for you) is on the perimeter.

Our trip to the store yielded lots of staples ( I know the Bud Light is a wheat product but, we all have weaknesses).

Lots of quality protein including:

Australian Grass Fed Rib Eye, Canadian Bacon, Ground Bison, and Greek Yogurt. Also, Organic Milk. Our nutrition is far from perfect but, quick perimeter trips definitely help.