Strong, Slow & USELESS
For those of you in the states, wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving for tomorrow in case we don’t chat.
I wanna give you a few tips that you wanna use with your workouts that will have you feeling infinitely better in a very short time.
I no longer compete in wrestling but one thing that helped me feel healthier was to train MORE like an athlete and LESS like a meathead.
I had to get away from always grinding with heavy weights. I lost flexibility, got injured more often and did NOT feel explosive at all. When a friend of mine was talking to me about this, I told him that the same holds true for ALL athletes.
I keep seeing athletes getting trained by their coaches and they are either following the same ol’ squat, bench, power clean workout with NO REAL understanding of how technique should look like, how to build athletes up to using these BIG lifts and how to PROPERLY test athletes VS testing their 1RM every month…. which is, in a nut shell, moronic.
Speaking of technique…. More often than not, the power clean looks like some strange cheat curl + jumping jack + back bend motion and the coaches in these dangerous weight rooms don’t have the knowledge to even realize this as being dangerous…. or downright wrong….
Or…. we have the coaches who simply use circuits and nothing else for training…
Go from this exercise to that exercise and repeat for 10 times and the weights are SO light that none of these athletes develop ANY useful strength what so ever.
The problem that bugs me is that in the end, it HURTS these athletes, they NEVER realize their true potential because they are stuck following a program that…. well, a program that sucks.
Above, Underground Trained, Brenden “Curly” Calas after winning a state title as a sophomore.
Seeing athletes succeed is near and dear to my heart, so when I hear of the horror story workouts they follow it seriously breaks my heart.
I’ve trained LOTS of BIG, Strong guys…. but they were absolutely useless when it came time to compete.
Sure, they could bench 315, squat and dead 405 but they were WEAK mentally….
They were Weak when we took them out of their comfort zone of only lifting heavy.
They were weak with the basic bodyweight movements such as push ups, lunges and simple animal crawls. They also got hurt by doing Simple tasks such as deadlifting the farmer walk bars that were only 110 lbs in each hand.
Hell, I have COUNTLESS wrestlers who weigh 110 – 120 lbs and they can farmer walk the 106 lb kettlebells in each hand. Many can do more. We’ve built them up to carrying over 100% of their bodyweight in EACH hand.
Strong is useless when there is no athleticism behind the strength.
As soon as I got through a few of these big, strong and useless athletes, I decided it was time to push the bodyweight training for speed, throwing of objects, use of lighter weights for higher speed…..
I had to re-build these useless athletes into agile, mobile and hostile BEASTS.
We got rid of the excuse of being too heavy or too big to jump, throw, sprint, climb rope, etc.
NO excuses.
For your own training, start implementing some form of speed / power before each workout or as separate workouts.
You’ll feel a million bucks better in no time.
You’ll be more athletic, more explosive and healthier.
That’s your homework for your early AM workout tomorrow.
You are training tomorrow morning, aren’t you?
Have an AWESOME Thanksgiving tomorrow, eat BIG but eat clean and wake up before everyone else and sneak in a workout tomorrow morning.
I’ll be up at 5 AM to get ahead of the family 
Live the Code
Peace
–Z–
PS: By a LONG shot, I’ll tell you straight up….
This is the most POWERFUL DVD I have ever watched, no pun intended.
Check it out and put an end to being Strong, Slow & USELESS.
Share and Enjoy
Related posts:
Filed under Articles, Strength Building, Zach's Workouts, muscle building by on Nov 23rd, 2011. Comment. 
Comments on Strong, Slow & USELESS
Zach, what I don’t quite get is *why* those coaches let their athletes always do the “same old stuff”. One would think that in the last 30 to 40 years, quite a bit of research was done in the field and at least some of it should filter down to the practitioners.
Doesn’t it or do these coaches simply ignore improved methods, because “we always did it that way”?
[Reply]
admin Reply:
November 25th, 2011 at 8:37 am
@Evilcyber: It’s not ALL Coaches, but those that tend to be stuck in their egos and NOT accept help, even if it is for the better of their athletes, are high school football coaches
not ALL, but many…. such a shame
[Reply]
Functional strength is the key to success. A balance of being strong, flexible and fit should be the goal of every athlete or regular bloke.
[Reply]
admin Reply:
November 25th, 2011 at 8:37 am
@Niko: TRUTH, homie
too many focus on only one trait…. strength….. or ….. muscle building… athletes need it ALL…
[Reply]
Thanks, Zach! You inspired me! Yesterday, thanksgiving day, I woke up at 5:30am and trained hard and effective, but also plenty of bodyweight work, too along with a clean and jerk and overhead squat. Man! I didn’t realize how much I should be doing Olympic lifts. They are tough!
I Went out of my comfort zone this time! I hate training early andI have always been afraid of OLY lifts. I used to think that bodyweight exercises are for weaker people. At least until I found your site! Now I add in at least two bodyweight exercises each workout.
Keep being hardcore and inspirational, Zach!
[Reply]
Hey Zach Happy Belated Thanksgiving. You are right on man. This reminded me of something Pat Tillman said God rest his soul. An interviewer once asked him how many times can you bench 225? He laughed and said “Like dude, I max that then I rack it.” Yet you know what a beast he was. In my case, I wasnt an elite athlete when I was little but I could hold my own. When I started lifting weights on my own and poor form I injured my hips and bad, still recovering from it. I could feel my athletcism slipping. But there were moments when a simple game of catch brought me back and I said to myself this is what its about. Not to say I dont lift weights, but like you I believe you have to do bodyweight stuff and you gotta play any sport. Do that and one will be set for life.
[Reply]
If you want to look and perform like an athlete you got to train like one. Agree that athletes need to do movements that closely relate to their sport. But not only that, “their position as well”! Thx Zach
[Reply]