Best Max Strength Method??

[James_Smith]

@star61

Very interesting comment, coming from someone who has devoted his life (at least for the present) to 1) being a strength coach at the university level, 2) has studied and written extensively about this very subject, and 3) has had some less than flattering things to say about other university strength programs in general. This is not meant to be a flame in any way, I was simply suprised to see such an opinion coming from someone who seems so immersed in training for peak athletic performance.

Sizerp said it well.

No worries though, I’ll clarify some things for you as I have some free time here (get to sleep in tomorrow morning) and it is clear that it would behoove me to elucidate what I stand for: (In the order of your points 1, 2, and 3)

1. While I’ve used the term and work in the business, I’ve never considered myself a ‘strength coach’ or 'strength and conditioning coach’; etcetera, as the business/industry is complete shambles. I state this because in my professional career I’ve met, or heard of, less than a handful of individuals that are qualified to truly prepare an athlete beyond the one dimensional nature of what is currently defined by the status quo of the industry.

I have no hesitation in stating that I feel like an alien in a strange world.

I refer to my self as a physical preparation coach because that is what I do.

A strength coach, or strength and conditioning coach, and I don’t believe this to be semantics by the way, is, in my view, a job description that requires not much more than the aptitude necessary to pass a personal trainer certification course.

Hence, the lack of qualified individuals in this field. Hell, it’s an apprenticeship business. Most only know what their coach or their team did.

I have coaches visit and contact me routinely and when I begin to describe how this job ‘should’ be done and that it DEMANDS an understanding of the bioenergetic and biodynamic structure of the sport discipline I get these strange looks.

I take my valuable time to explain that programming and organizing training is not limited to ‘strength development’. That the block system, Charlie’s Vertical Integration System, the Conjugate Sequence System, etcetera are NOT STRENGTH DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGIES they are complete training models and encompass the totality of training irritants and we coaches must account for the totality of training irritants and do our job to ensure that the training transfers more positively as the SPP approaches.

Again, more strange looks.

2. Trust me, in the scope of furthering my understanding of sport preparation the novel concept of ‘strength training’ is elementary dear Watson. If you review my work you’ll notice that the vast majority of any writing I’ve done, solely directed towards ‘strength training’, has been done in the form of explanation.

In terms of exploratory efforts, believe me; it took me a New York minute to realize that strength development for ‘athletes’ is something you simply let happen.

Yup, just let it happen.

The novel concept of ‘strength training’ is something that I could fully explain to any reasonably intelligent person in an hour or so and the simplicity of it is referenced in my falling out of a boat and hitting water analogy. Again I must clarify that I am not speaking to the elite level powerlifting/weightlifting community.

Hell, why do you think my good friend Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 method has received such enormous interest, or Starr’s 5x5 method, and so on…because these methods are galactically SIMPLE yet EFFECTIVE.

You won’t find such elementary formulas for speed development, or sport form development, for instance, because THERE AREN’T ANY.

Shit, in this business, S&C coaches fall into championship programs, win rings by default, and so on. How often, on the other hand, does a T&F coach, for instance, squat, press, clean, ‘functionally train’, jump, and run the shit out their athlete and win a medal or break a world record…NEVER But a whole plethora of S&C coaches muddle the fuck out of the training process and hang their hats on all the trophies and rings their program has earned.

3. No doubt that I have little positive accolades to direct towards most of what I’ve witnessed in this business. That’s precisely because I am immersed in my endeavors more than most people could possibly know in a direction that diverts far from the common course; however, don’t be surprised by my statements because if you’ll agree that I am in the athlete construction business then you’ll also agree that ‘strength training’ constitutes only one of the many tools on my belt.

…and a partridge in a pear tree