There seems to be a wide range of opinion on the ability to change running mechanics. I am off the opinion that you change running mechanics. This was reinforced to me yesterday when I was watching the baseball team that I work with do some running. Because of Christmas vacation I had not seen them in awhile, the head coach was doing the running so I was able to stand a little further back and obs [...]

Those are harsh words so when I was channel surfing last week and heard those words I stopped surfing and listened. One of the ESPN pundits, a former pro football player (so of course he must know everything about football and even more about strength training) was expounding on the recent failure and perceived deficiencies of a pro football team. He identified the fact that even though there had [...]

I spent New Year ’s Eve working with the Kenyon swim team, what a party! Talk about an uplifting way to end the old and start the new. These kids are great. Focused and motivated. They come to Sarasota every winter break for ten days to train. It has been really neat to see their progress since September. They have made significant strength gains and some huge body composition changes. It w [...]

Next in line of this video bonanza is an 8 minute clip from none other than the mighty, shiny-domed Dave Kerin. Although Dave has been made immortally famous and achieved rockstar status for his witty but semi-cryptic rants on ET; he is also well known for being one of the first to really point out the importance of eccentric strength development in the training of speed-power athletes. Dave is hi [...]

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. To help fight off post-Christmas depression, here's my last Pfaff lecture snippet from the USATF National Podium Project. (at least until I get back from visiting my family in NY that is). As with the other lectures, you'll find that although this one was given to throwers much of the talk actually remains the same and is generalizable to a wide range of ev [...]

Here's another 5 minute clip from Dan Pfaff from the National Podium Education Project in Las Vegas. This talk was on absolute strength and power development for world class horizontal jumpers. As you may be able to tell, Pfaff is a generalist and many of the themes that he uses for coaching one event group are used in what may appear to be very different event groups. Enjoy. [...]

Scott Belger wrote the following: However I noticed you dog Baseball from time to time. Most Baseball comments are blanket statements and not true for most Baseball coaches and/or Baseball organizations. Good observation Scott, perhaps you could contact the commissioner of professional baseball and ask him if you could help with their drug program. Just kidding. You are spot on with your comment, [...]

Relative strength- is it really that magical for vertical jump and acceleration. When tested for correlation, it doesnt always correlate that the strongest pound for pound jump the highest and accelerate 10-20 yards the fastest. But to get an individual better, it seems that in the real world, getting someone stronger for their bw is the best way to improve standing vert and accel ability. In othe [...]

I'm going to start an ongoing thematic series about some of the random training thoughts that pop in to my mind. Most of these I'll point out, I have never tried but they seem to be like ineresting ideas although relatively experimental. Since many are quite nontraditional and potentially thought provoking I thought they might be good conversation fodder for the forums. Here's my first one:What [...]

Many times we are proud as coaches of what we do and use youtube as a way to share with the world our accomplishments. Still, let's focus on every athlete that may not be the star. One of my own coaches made an effort that the slowest person on the team still be a model on how to do things the right way...just a little bit slower. Lesson learned for today is don't post a youtube video of athlete [...]