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Are you looking for an excuse to get drunk or abuse alcohol? If yes then go away! This is most definitely not an article for you. Without a doubt the negative long term and short term effects of alcohol are very well documented. Particularly as an athlete, excess and even moderate alcohol use can have a detrimental effect on your powerlifting and strongman performance. From negative hormonal factors such as lowering testosterone, lowering HGH, lowering ADP generation, and increasing cortisol to dietary impacts of reducing protein syntheses, containing 7cal/g of energy, and interfering with absorption of other nutrients – all of these factors make it clear that alcohol is something to avoid as a strength athlete (or consume in very minimal quantities). The short term depressant effect, slowing both cognitive ability as well as coordination, and reducing decision making abilities makes it hard to understand how there would be any value in alcohol at all – particularly when it comes to strength sports.
Using Your Body's Mobility and Stability Mechanisms to Drive Performance
As a performance guy, I absolutely hate the ‘traction control’ button that they put in a number of vehicles today. If you aren't aware of what this button does, it operates by detuning the engine and, in some cases, the transmission. By retarding the engine timing to reduce its output and slowing the shift patterns, it effectively improves the traction but really no more than if you purposely stepped on the gas pedal a little softer and with better control. With less power, the detuned powertrain has less chance of losing control on an unstable surface and causing you to crash and injure yourself.
Westside Vs The Russian Conjugate System
Without a doubt, Louie Simmons has been one of the most iconic (and at times controversial) figures in the strength world over the last 20 years. Louie’s gym (Westside Barbell) has become what many people identify as the conjugate system. Westside may be synonymous with max effort, dynamic effort, repetition effort and a whole host of other special methods, but is that what really makes up the conjugate system of training? Should the conjugate system and the conjugate method be used interchangeably? Are the Westside conjugate system and the Russian conjugate system comparable? If you believe that the conjugate system was meant to revolve around accommodating resistance (bands/chains) and a weekly microcycle of max effort, dynamic effort and the occasional repetition effort methods, this is something you need to read.
Whether it be physical or emotional, true strength is a demand.
Not a request.
If you are asking for it, waiting for it, or even praying for it, you have misjudged its fundamental nature; It is elusive and hard to come by, and won’t politely join by request those without the will to grab it by the throat, and squeeze until it cooperates.
Rudy Kadlub, Masters Powerlifter – The Power Of Thought
Rudy Kadlub, 65, co-owns Kabuki Power in Portland, OR with business partner, Chris Duffin. It’s important that you get a sense for who he is before you put merit into his content (and you should). An American and World Record power lifter in three age divisions (22 World and 23 American/National records in four federations over a 10 year Masters career), Rudy is a former college football coach (UC Davis, University of Northern Colorado, and Boise State). He holds a master’s degree in Psychological Kinesiology from UNC where he also did his doctoral work in Sports Psychology. He’s also currently the strongest drug free 60+ Powerlifter in the world!
Optimizing Conditioning For Strength Sports
An athlete recently asked me how to achieve peak conditioning and peak strength levels simultaneously. To his disappointment, I noted this realistically could not be achieved. But the two are not mutually exclusive. In fact the correct interplay of both conditioning and strength can maximize your performance in both.
How Your Feet Dictate The Rest of Your Body
If you quickly peruse popular strength training magazines, blogs and other sources, it is common to see a majority of the content reference core and hip training. These areas are important to human function, but I would like to draw some attention to the body part we cover up, hide and neglect, despite it providing the evolutionary ability for upright locomotion, the foot.
Chris Duffin Reflects On The Privileges Of An Elite Lifter
This article isn’t meant to attack anyone, or be inconsiderate of challenges others face. What it is meant to do is to challenge the thought process of those that assume they know the privileges bestowed on others. What sparked this brief piece is being asked to reflect on my white male privilege and my elite lifter privilege before posting on social media. Specifically the elite lifter privileges of being able to train in the best facilities with the best tools, that others don’t have the advantage to use. It is this latter portion that I will address.
Watch: Investigating ‘The Reset System’
I recently had the opportunity to spend some time with Shawn Sherman and Jonathan Loos of The Reset System. They visited our facility over the course of a couple days and used their method on a number of our athletes. We were able to see some immediate results in a number of them as well as observe them diagnose known issues (unknown to them) with several of them in a very quick fashion.