Michael Boyle's Strengthcoach.com Blog

One of my Strengthcoach.com members, Danny James, wrote a pretty extensive review of
Functional Strength Coach 4.0 that I thought I’d share below.

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The latest product from one of Strength and Conditionings most formidable pioneers, Functional Strength Coach 4.0 covers Coach Michael Boyle’s current ideas on Performance Training, Personal Training, and success from the vantage point of a coach at the helm of a leading Strength and Conditioning Facility and business model.

The material is divided into two sections:

Part I: Training Clients and Athletes (both lecture and practical format)

• Why a facility without a program is doomed to fail (programs beat systems!)
• The only 3 goals of any strength and conditioning program
• How to divide your time within each training session (for athletes vs clients)
• The last 3 things you should do with your clients
• Specific effects of Joint Dysfunction you’re probably overlooking
• Mobility versus flexibility and why it matters
• Why you should foam roll before every session and exactly how we do it
• 7 Patterns of Strength Programming
• The Key to Program Design…regardless of population
• How we approach Basic and Advanced Periodization
• Specific linear speed and multi directional speed day warm up progressions
• The Truth about Functional Training
• Why squatting starts on the ground
• Why Everything Changes When You Stand on One Leg
• Understanding Hip Flexion and the 7 factors affecting performance
• Advanced Load and Strength Progressions
• Two Things To Avoid with ‘Core Training’ (and why I don’t like that term)
• Rotary Training progressions and regressions
• Complex Training progressions and regressions
• Dealing with Injury – Boyle’s Theory
• Single Leg Versus Double Leg…when, where and why
• 5 Keys to Conditioning
• 3 Simple Rules for Designing Interval Programs
• Off Season Conditioning Protocols
• Tips for Hockey, Football, Basketball ‘specific’ conditioning
• Much more. Including:
  – Sample 2 Day In-Season Program
  – Sample 3 Day Off-Season Program
  – Full Summer 4 Phase Program

Part II: Owning your own facility

• Why the 10,000 hour rule will make or break your business
• The truth about the ’4 Hour Work Week’
• How to run a successful facility
• How big your first facility should be
• 3 Rules for purchasing equipment
• Why you should…or shouldn’t…buy a franchise
• Financials and knowing your numbers
• How to approach Sponsors…literally and figuratively
• The simple truth about managing and developing staff
• Why getting clients comes down to the ‘crazies’
• 21 suggestions guaranteed to lead to success…in business and life

Also included is Boyle’s renowned one hour ‘Success Secrets’ lecture filmed at the 2011 Perform Better One Day Seminar, which explores:

• Why Aren’t You Successful? Follow this rule and everything changes
• My personal take on Goals…setting them and achieving them
• 2 types of people who succeed…and why
• The #1 thing that happens to Anyone who is Excellent at Anything
• The Speaking Circuit
• Articles and Books
• Do you Really want your Your Own Facility?
• The Mike Boyle Strength Coach Story
• The Pros and Cons of Membership Sites
• Have Something to Offer, not Something to Sell
• Specific Action steps to help you build momentum

With an impressive volume and variety of content, one would be hard pressed to deny the relevance of FSC4 finding its way into the resource library of not only coaches and trainers of all levels, but also athletes, non-competitive active populations and individuals involved in the areas of therapy, rehabilitation and business.

FSC4 is the crystallisation of everything Boyle has gleamed from his thirty years of study and application in the field of functional performance, training and facilitating the rehabilitation of a diverse population that includes everyone from active adults to scores of athletes in every major high school, collegiate and professional sport, including US Olympic Women’s teams in Soccer and Ice Hockey.
It is also three decades of Boyle’s private education from books, articles, seminars and interactions with his peers, as well as observations of innovative leaders in the areas of rehabilitation, business and personal development.
Boyle removes the applicable components of these environments, those that lend themselves to successful performance enhancement outcomes, and effectively blurs the delineation between the landscapes, distilling his conclusions into ten + hours of open book on the integrated model that mass-produces sustainable athletic potency in a timely and less importantly, profitable fashion.
It is not so much a ‘how to’ blueprint with follow along catch-all programs (although some sample programs are included) as much as ‘here is what we are currently doing, this is why’ not unlike previous instalments of the Functional Strength Coach series.
The content is delivered in somewhat of a refreshingly relaxed and open format without the text-book tone one might expect of a professional of such standing and standard with the typical Michael Boyle blunt-force, colourfully quote laden and analogy rich approach to efficiently and effectively articulate his ideas, much like a good coach will employ urgency and economy of words or cues, to communicate with his athletes and extract an immediate understanding.

Repeatedly the presentation careens into lengthy off-the-cuff discussions and demonstration that for any devout student of the game, proves gold upon gold.
Each topic is explored open-ended to the utmost width and breadth of its parameters including references to relevant literature as well as Boyle’s own anecdotal evidence derived from unrelenting in-house trial and error. Boyle shares candidly his thoughts, often humorous and trend defying, on many subjects hotly debated amongst industry professionals, to encourage critical thinking rather than rouse controversy, which of itself has brought upon him much of the latter. Ideas which he unapologetically admits, are subject to flux.

”It’s called learning.”

says Alwyn Cosgrove in his video review.
Constantly learning, in this industry, as in life, is a necessary and lifelong discipline, without which nought but mediocrity, stagnation and bareness thrives.

”Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.”
– Herbert George Wells

Expanding further with many real world examples, case studies and personal in-the-trenches perspectives provides rare and fascinating insight into some of the daily occurrences at a world-class facility, including the many hard-fought triumphs and humbling errors that have helped build a business, shape the prevailing thought process, and certainly the field as we presently know it.

Thoughts

For anybody that has been closely following Boyle’s material for some time, much of the training and programming information will be somewhat familiar. There are however still many updates and sprinklings of new information to be relished that will not only challenge your previously held notions of sound programming, but can be immediately incorporated into your current system for athletes and general population clients alike.

Particularly enthralling were the hands on components of Part 1: Training Clients and Athletes. From foam rolling to movement preparation all the way through FMS correctives to exercise hierarchy and progressions, this is where we are able to witness one of the fields foremost experts indulge his exhaustive knowledge of the human body and passion for teaching AND sharing that knowledge, personally take the coaching floor, cueing movement and identifying and correcting live faulty patterns and imbalances of many of the participating attendees. I pulled countless gems out of these demonstrations.
A repeating decree in FSC4, as in all of Boyle’s products, that serves as a kind of strength Coach manifesto can be extracted and expressed as follows;

• Don’t hurt anyone
• Get results
• Share what you learn

These same concepts when translated and applied to daily life;

• Don’t hurt anyone
• Be productive / Effective / Useful
• Pay it forward

Immodesty I confess, prior to viewing FSC4 I was quite confident that my programming and coaching efficacy was as good as it could possibly be at this time, given the monumental amount of information at my disposal. How could it not be? I spend almost the same amount of money on continued education in a week as I spend on food. I read more hours in a day than I sleep. My eyes are wide and my mind is open. My net is ready and this slate is clean.
As with the first page of a new book, I am giddy at the journey with hope that I may happen across new and useful input or by delightful correction intervened be. I follow other lifelong learners and unsatisfied seekers past reputations reach and safety’s scope into the eon of our responsibility. There is not much that escapes me along the way.

”Each generation’s job is to question what parents accept on faith, to explore possibilities, and adapt the last generation’s system of values for a new age.”
– Frank Pittman

I viewed all seven discs in their entirety sitting increasingly unassertive throughout as Boyle succinctly and profoundly proceeded to punch holes through some of what I considered to be a rather durable training philosophy. There was the gaze of realisation, as when a bullet finds its home beyond the Kevlar. An acute cognisance that things were about to completely change.

It was wonderful.

Closing

Within the realm of Functional Performance Michael Boyle is the glowing standard which we should all strive to equal. I say equal rather than surpass because frankly, I can’t yet comprehend how anybody could possibly contribute more to the science and practice of Strength and Conditioning than Michael Boyle now or ever, and I hope that I am wrong.
New information will always emerge but lacking those individuals who are at the frontline to locate it, question it, trial it and report on the outcome, would not only subdue the influence of such information, but indeed arrest the advancement of human performance training as a result.

Functional Strength Coach 4.0 is an expression of that standard, that serves also as the hand rail that you would use, on your climb up to that lofty marker.

Simply put, you WILL do better. FSC4 will compel you, in every aspect, to lift your game.

If you are unfamiliar with Coach Boyle’s work, I assure you that FSC4 will represent a redefining shift in thought as it pertains to training the human body, for the very best.

Purchase it here.

While you are at it, also get this and this.

Because the best just don’t miss anything.