THE NEED FOR A PROPER PLAN
I’ve talked about the necessity of having a proper plan and the importance of having set up several counter-measures in place, whether that’s about your life, your career, your survival and your training.
Failing to plan means that you’re planning to fail. One thing that I noticed with the recent Olympics, is that all the athletes/countries that focused more on their political bs agendas failed miserably (for the most part) to dominate, while the countries that silently prepared and actually followed a proper program managed to get most medals.
Two countries that stood out in my opinion where the Chinese Olympic Weightlifting team and the Japanese Judo team. As far as I know they’re the ones that follow proper S&C programs, without adding any gimmicks or retarded unnecessary movements.
In the case of the Chinese, their team has been dominating in most weight classes for the past years and it’s pretty obvious why. Their entire Olympic sports infrastructure has been created solely to find and build the best athletes possible. By picking the best aspiring young athletes and training them systematically, teaching them proper technique and have them join local teams, they get to pick the best of the best via statewide tournaments, and those that have the potential get to join the Olympic team.
In the case of the Japanese, Ono Shohei, the best judoka in the 73kg weight class and a gold medalist, has been following the extremely structured S&C program that his coach and former Olympic gold medalist and 3x world champion, Kosei Inoue, also used to bring home 9 out of 14 gold medals.
The common theme between both programs, is the usage of Olympic lifts (makes sense for the Chinese weightlifters), the proper use of compound movements, the proficiency in the squat and other power movements, as well as smart usage and utilization of isolation exercises to bring up and strengthen important body parts. If you watch the video, you can see how every single exercise that’s used in the program, aims to build a powerful posterior chain and a strong back. If you’re looking for the ultimate secret to becoming a top level athlete or an overall bad ass, that’s it.
Heavy Cheat Kroc rows are used by both teams and for a reason. They’re an amazing exercise to pack muscle on the lats and upper back via the weighted stretch, as well as build tremendous pulling strength. People usually talk a lot of shit about using body English and about the necessity of having extremely proper form when performing an exercise, but you need to cheat. You need to be able to lift heavier weights and you need to use the power of cheat reps to your advantage.
What movement in real life or sport is ever non dynamic? All you have to do is look at your sport and realize that all movements are dynamic, so train accordingly.
Weighted pull-up/chinup variations are another perfect example of a well structured program, and how they can benefit you no matter your sport or goal. In the case of Ono, he’s using his Gi to perform isometric hangs/holds, and even does so with hammer strength rows. That’s sport specificity. Using a realistic movement that you’ll have to use during your sport will make you stronger and better than if you were to do some basic forearm workouts. Hell you can even use a pair of towels and achieve a similar result at home.
Hill sprints, and hill farmers walks with a partner on the back are another favorite of mine, and it’s good to see that they were also utilized to properly condition the body and mind. Combining them with battle rope movements for your sport specific time duration is what will make you unstoppable.
You can even do so with regular sprints, by simply studying the amount of sprints, distance and duration you’ll have to overcome when playing your sport. One of my clients, was following his team’s workouts that made them do long duration sprints, when in reality he’d never have to perform something akin to this during the game.
As soon as he started working with me, we dropped the longer sprints altogether and used 16-30m sprints that were actually sport specific to hurling. Not t only did he become faster, but he didn’t have to worry about doing any extra conditioning training. Sport specificity works, as long as you know what the hell you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
Stop aimlessly wandering around the gym doing random shit just for the sake of it and stop wandering through life without a plan.
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