Evolutionary Athletics
Taking Sports Performance to the Next Level
Feb 1, In Season Jump Training
Feb 1st
How do you correctly perform your in season jump training? Read this artcile to find out what you should be doing to maximize your jump gaions and minimize the chances of injury.
Jan 31, Dunk of the Year
Jan 31st
Blake Griffin - Just an insane dunker over Perkins. Dunk of the Year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbyOevVAYQI
Jan 21, Explosive Medicine Ball Training For A Higher Vertical Jump
Jan 21st
The medicine ball is a great training tool for learning how to jump higher. Here is some medicine ball training ideas you can use to jump higher.
Jan 11, Box Jumping for Older Athletes
Jan 11th
Hi Jack, I am a 50 year old athlete who still plays basketball. I pretty much have been avoiding high impact training as my hip is kind of bad. In my
Jan 3, NFL Players – Best Athletes Period
Jan 3rd
NFL players, especially running backs and linebackers, can excel in any sport requiring strength, speed, power PLUS agility. For example, take your
Jan 3, NFL Players – Best Athletes Period
Jan 3rd
NFL players, especially running backs and linebackers, can excel in any sport requiring strength, speed, power PLUS agility. For example, take your
I’ve always been crazy, but it’s kept me from going insane.
Dec 31st
Yesterday something happened in the gym at California Strength. Just a little thing between Donny Shankle and me. No fuss was made beyond us locking eyes for a moment and both knowing what the other was thinking, but its something i had waited to see for almost a decade. I’d be lyin’ if I said I didn’t have to wipe my eyes a minute later, but thankfully no one noticed.
But nothing remains constant. As soon as a milestone is passed, it’s significance fades, and the focus is shifted to some other marker further down the road. No matter what you do or how satisfying it is in that beautiful moment in time, immedietely you want more. You have to, if you want to find out how good you can be. You HAVE to look at goals as the most significant, beautiful, wonderful things in the world to obtain, then when they are attained, curtail the joy in short order, and again look forward and begin to build the desire in your heart for another destination on the horizon. Sometimes it seems crazy to always look to what your fingers cannot quite touch, to not let yourself be satisfied, never rest, never allow complete happiness with what is. Seems like a crazy way to live.
On the other hand, I believe I would go insane without it. If my quest, my dreams, even my own white whale to chase was replaced with a mindless 9 to 5, white picket fence, sit-coms in the evening and nothing more to bitch about than taxes and the neighbors they probably would have to strap me down and start the medication.
In the words of the great Waylon Jennings, I’ve always been crazy, but it’s kept me from going insane.
Dec 31, Speed and Quickness Training
Dec 31st
Speed and quickness training goes hand in hand with vertical jump training. here is an introduction to the topic.
Q&A – 10
Dec 16th
Happy PR Friday, great day to be alive. Now it’s business time.
And in case you missed it, here’s one of the new shirts (also available for women):
Click to buy -- ON SALE
Adam W. asks on the Facebook fan page:
Justin, if you can figure out why I got 3 whites on this lift…
…and 3 reds on this one.
I will be very grateful. And since my deadlift lockout is the ugliest thing in lifting history, I was wondering if you think rack pulls might be a good way to clean them up, and if so how do you usually program them?
Dear Adam,
We talked back and forth about this on the page, but I thought it was good topic for everyone else to see. The federation is the CPF which is a WPC affiliate. Personally I’ve only coached in the USAPL, which is under IPF ruling.
Adam is a glaring example of blatantly removing tension from the hamstrings during the deadlift lockout. I don’t think the last attempt in the second video should have been red lighted, but the excessive forward knee movement emulates what would happen when the bar is hitched. Had the bar stopped moving, I would agree with them, yet it continued to move. Your feet remained in the same place, you locked your knees out at the top, and lifted the chest at the top. That jacked loader on the right was surprised it was red-lighted too. Whatever the problem was, it was something that all three judges agreed on. They must have considered your shitty knee position a hitch, I guess. My suggestion would be to go over the rule book and find out what happened.
However, the fact that you remove hamstring tension is something that you can (and need to) control. Adam told me he’s doing RDLs, but I’d still want to see how he’s doing them because I have a hunch he’s flexing his knees too much and not getting the full use of them. In any case, he asked about rack pulls. Rack pulls will definitely help this pulling issue when they are done correctly. The bar should be put right below the knee (at about the tibial tuberosity), and the lower back should remain locked in place during the movement. You don’t need to hyper-extend it (I’ve been hurt this way), but the goal is to not allow it to flex. If it flexes, then it slackens the hamstring tension. Do not allow your knees to shift forward under the bar (like you’re currently doing in your deadlift). By doing it this way, you won’t be able to use as much weight as you think you can, and it will probably be lower than what you deadlift. This is fine. Chris’ set of five on rack pulls is still below what his max is.
Lastly, when you do actually deadlift, think about keeping the knees back (cue is “knees back”). Really work on this since a) knees forward is causing you to miss lifts in meets and b) strengthening your hamstrings by maintaining tension during deadlifting and rack pulling will make for a stronger deadlift. If you’re confused, see Chris’ 650 miss on his third attempt at USAPL Raw Nationals in 2010 compared to his last three meets: 661, 666, and 677.
gumbo asks:
What’s your basic recommendation for increasing bodyweight pullups during a linear progression?
Your article on weighted pullups is great but I’m not ready for them yet, as I’m only doing 3×5 at bodyweight. I know this is discussed all over the net, but I’d appreciate the 70s Big recommendation.
Details: I’m doing SS (A day: squat/bench/dead, B day: squat, press, clean) and I’m doing three sets of unweighted pullups on A days with 2 minutes rest between sets. I’ve been getting ~5,5,6. The most I can do in one all out set is 7 reps. Do you recommend ladders or pyramids? Or just doing them more frequently, grease-the-groove style? Or a couple of weighted singles? Also, the pullups are the only assistance work I’m doing now. Thanks.
Dear gumbo,
If you aren’t progressing much with the “three sets of as many reps as you can do”, then there a few other options. The first is to use the frequency method. It’s essentially the same thing as this Monday’s pull-up post, and Johnny Pain has written about it extensively in his Greyskull LP e-book. Basically consistently do them throughout the day every day.
You could also ladder them in a given workout. Do a single, then rest a sec, then a double, and so on until you fail. Then rest, and try another ladder. Record your total reps and aim to increase that. Another method is to do a higher number of smaller sets. If you can only do 3
