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.