Speedcoach, more great info thanks. This is very relevant since I hope to become a coach.
That is a great success financially and also due to the fact you are doing what you love, but as you said, I’m sure it can be very draining. I understand you want to spend more time with your daughter. That’s completely understandable.
I want to get some of Ian’s books soon but I’m guessing the shipping from Aus to me (UK) would be horrendous lol. Might have to get saving.
Thanks for your time and good luck for Physician’s school!
very kind words GymRob. Follow your passions, they never steer you wrong. I consider myself to be fortunate to have been able to wake up pretty much daily for 15 years never feeling like I am actually working. I guess like all things, I need to push myself to newer bounds, to help people in a different way. I have had the pleasure of working with some athletes from ages 10 to college and beyond. it is amazing watching then get scholarships and know that you had a small part in their success. I have some lifelong friends who were former clients. It is the best career, but it comes with hard work. You are already doing the right things. I learned more about training from Charles, Ian, and Charlie than all my years in University. Look forward to hearing more about your journey. Ian likely has ways to ship things to England reasonably as he has many devotees there. Best of luck in your journey. I hope you find it as rewarding as I have.
he know’a too much about training to follow that crap. Charles is an excellent marketer of his method’s. He pushes the envelope on many frontiers. I read his stuff, but follow a different path. Not saying better or worse, just different.
You ever seen German Volume Training? Complete opposite approach to HIT! :DI went through two years of the old 1 set sof 12-15 reps to failure, 3 days a week, same workout everyday forr 12 weeks. since i played football, we did 2 sets of bench for 12-15 reps, the first set was warm up, the second was a max out.
Zach Marcy: In recent days I’ve been involved in numerous debates on a lot of your methods vs. the methods of HIT promoted by the late Mike Mentzer. What arguments can you make for your basic methods versus some of the other philosophies in HIT?
Charles Poliquin: Dorian Yates has been and is still under the care of my clinic as often as we can meet. We have had the chance to exchange concepts in training. One cannot argue with his results, but he realizes that varying the exercises more would have given him a healthier longer career. But exercise tolerance is a very unique thing as discussed in the book I co-authored with Will Brink Muscle Building Nutrition (it is available on Charles’s web site) HIT does work, but I don’t think it is for every body. For example, Brian Haycock system also works. I trained that way in University and made zero progress. I am blessed with a high percentage of fast-twitch fibers, therefore I need more sets of low reps to progress.
Charlie and Ian became friends.
There was never any bad blood between Charlie and Ian and my heart would break thinking there was at this late date.
I will be in direct contact with Ian to discuss this.
Charlie was my husband for 21 years. His influence on my life from a personal and professional life was compounded by the simple fact that I met him at the beginning of my adult life.
Most agree Charlie Francis changed the way many view sprinting, and preparation of speed at almost every level including the very elite in the world over the past 30 years for sure.
Ian King also changed my life in a very different way for very different reasons.
Charlie thought Ian did an excellent job in learning new information and organizing it for popular consumption.
Ian in his own right has as much experience needed to be a great strength and conditioning coach and has proven this long before he began working to monitize training and his methods.
I created CharlieFrancis.com against Charlie’s interest initially. I pushed the idea upon the push I received from a few dear friends Steve Monardo and Tony Craddock. Both men attended Charlie’s funeral and are close friends of mine today.
Charlie spent the majority of his time in the past 20 years defending, not creating.
The last 5 years he spent fighting for his life so that my son could be a great man, person, child and little boy. Thank gosh he left both of us so much and our life in the past 10 weeks has been a testiment to this fact.
A some point in the future I will re puplishing Canadian historical material which includes SpeedTrap, CHarlie’s Training Manual ( both will include forwards by me and post scripts by some very interesting people). Finally I will make sure The Extensive Graph collection is available when the time is right for all to see and study.
The idea that Charlie was all about stories and un structured material is flat out ridiculous.
Reminds me of the swiss conference he attended when we first met Ian king. Charlie had 400 hundred people sign up to see his section. within the first 5 minutes 350 or more got up and left. The pt and like couldnt follow and un code Charlie’s style. Not too many can to this day. Those who do have experienced the results.
I hope this note helps to clarify.
Cheers to all of you for your interest.
Ange
Ange, I might be mistaken but I think the suggestion of possible bad blood was between Ian and Charles Poliquin and not Charlie. I look forward to all of the potential new releases. Thanks.
While clearly unconscious to them at the time, no doubt this was likely the most self limiting decision of their professional careers.
A fact that if remedied would likely improve the state of western sport training and physical education, personal training, physical therapy, athletic training, and wellness training- exponentially.
Ange,
It was Ian and CP. It got to the point that some of CP’s main followers were trashing Ian right and left when he had seminars set up, trying to ruin attendance. Of course, you know Ian held himself above it all. I know Ian loved Charlie; he told me in Toronto that he was brilliant way back in 3 day. Perhaps that is why I sat and asked so many questions over dinner that night. Ian and Charlie have different delivery and different styles, but both are extraordinary men. Nobody who knew Charlie on a personal level ever had anything but love and respect for him. Next time I am in Toronto, I will buzz you and maybe we can hook up for a tea or something. Got enough Tim’s and Starbucks over there. Haha.
I hope my comments were not miscontrued. I guess I was saying that Charlie had a different way of communicating. I loved his seminars. They were insightful, colorful, and funny. I loved learning from him and I loved sitting talking to him after sessions on many different subjects. He was easily one of the 2-3 smartest people I have met in my lifetime. The people who walked out of SWIS are short sighted fools. I saw a certain coach who ranted on drivel for the full session plus and the room was packed. If people don’t appreciate Charlie, they didn’t deserve his knowledge. Charlie had a mind that I wish I had one tenth of. Sheer brilliance, beautiful person, and excellent coach. He is the standard in this industry for going the extra mile for his athletes. True commitment.
I have most of Ian’s courses and books related to physical prep and coaching and have always been a big admirer of his. I haven’t met him in person but I did talk to him on the phone when he hosted a conference call with Charlie back in 2002 for people who had purchased tapes of a seminar he did with Charlie. I found him to be very easy going and laid back.
Ian definitely has his own approach, but when you understand the overall structure of how he does things and how everything fits together you really see Charlie’s influence. Like Charlie, Ian places a lot of emphasis on looking at the overall load the athlete is performing (not just strength training) and how the components of training interact. As a result, he often de-emphasizes strength development for other priorities (he’s a fanatic about stretching) and typically advocates very modest volumes of strength work to keep the overall workload manageable. If you study Charlie’s and Ian’s respective materials you can tell they are very much on the same wavelength in terms of training philosophy, adapted to their respective experiences and clients.
Poliquin is another matter. I went to a seminar he gave in March 2000 on strength training for speed development. Based on what I learned at that seminar and all of the other material of his I’ve read over the years I would say that Poliquin is primarily (if not exclusively) focused on strength training. I know that sounds obvious, but you have to understand the implications of that when attempting to incorporate his methods into an overall program. As Charlie pointed out a couple years ago, most of Poliquin’s published material seems to apply to the context of a concentrated strength block performed during the off season when there is not much competing work from the sport itself. That makes sense when you consider that is probably his primary time of involvement with the athletes. I’m sure he does continuous follow up consulting throughout the season, but it’s subordinate to the sport and customized for the athlete. And you’ll probably never see that stuff published publicly. The point is, you have to be very careful when studying Poliquin’s methods and attempting to incorporate them into a program that might have other concurrent high intensity elements that Poliquin was not taking into account. In fairness, I think that is true of the majority of strength training literature.
After interacting with Charlie over the last eight years and having trained with him in person (briefly and not nearly as much as I would have liked), I am much less impressed with Poliquin than I was 15 years ago. Having said that, I’m always interested in Poliquin’s writings because he’s a smart guy and there are a lot of valuable nuggets in there, even if I’m not buying into the overall package.
That’s indicative of the industry - sorry state of affairs. A couple of years later Paul Chek presented and the conference hall was packed to the rafters for over 2 hours.
Charlie presented a superb no BS approach - his Q+A was outstanding. Conversely Chek filled the presentation with no substance, no experience…etc etc
Flash echoes my sentiments as I spent a fair amount of time with Poliquin back in the late 90’s-early 2000. Strength is a big focus with Charles, but he does show concern for organizing all things CNS, particularly the lower extremities, whether strength, power, or speed.
It is interesting to see that very few of his earlier disciples are still around or have pursued PICP certifications. I think they realized that the value was in the information and not having more letters to place after their names.
I’d be curious to hear what Charlie thought of Charles, in as polite a way as possible.
I’m sure spending time with him like that probably gave you the opportunity to see elements of Poliquin’s work that never make it into print for the general readership.
I’m curious to know what he was like personality wise. In my one encounter with him he came across as an arrogant jerk to be blunt. I’ve heard the same from many other people, but I’ve also heard that outside of a seminar setting he’s much more down to earth and pleasant to deal with.
This prhaps was the seminar I was alluding to. My wife wanted to walk ou of the “dirt facts” talk, but the room was too full of Chekies. I could have summed it up in one sentence. The farmers don’t get paid enough to use proper mineral and nutrient replacement, so they just use NPK fertilizer, make food devoid of many important minerals. End of seminar. I honestly think Charlie knew how complicated vertical integration was for the masses to consume, so he would deliver it for people to be able to digest it. Ange said it best when she said most of the people didn’t understand enough to unlock Charlies info at SWIS so instead of trying to shift to a new way of thinking, they would just prefer to leave and stay in their comfortable little box. I always told Ange, every time I visited Charlie, I left feeling like he kept growing intellectually by leaps and bounds. I loved the challenge of trying to keep up, which was tough when you are dealing with a true genius.