By Gus
One of my passions is chess. As chess players compete in tournaments, they earn a rating of their performance. If you’re playing an opponent rated much higher than you, and win, your rating will go up significantly. At the time of the game, you were “under-rated” and the math needs to correct that. Win against […]
By Gus
Improving a skill relies upon feedback. Ideally you find an objective measure that correlates with the skill, and chart that measurement consistently. As the metric improves, you can be confident your skill improvement was a driving factor. This objective feedback is invaluable as evidence of where your efforts have brought you, but fall short when […]
By Gus
A hallmark of training at Gus’s Barbell Club is emphasis on consistency. A typical adult with specifically lofty aspirations could easily require over 2 hours of training five days a week. High-level athletes could double that for skills practice and conditioning. Most American adults train zero days a week. It is the opinion of the […]
By Gus
Every athlete should use the simplest program that progresses them toward their goal. Think about advocating the opposite: “Every athlete should use the most complex program that progresses them to their goal.” It doesn’t even pass the sniff test, right? Many people changing their habits assume it must be a complex or difficult. Ten different […]
By Gus
One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again. Abraham Maslow The Event Strength Training begins with creating stress. You create a stress event for your body to endure, eliciting an adaptation as you recover from that stress. […]
By Gus
The methods advocated in Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training, 3rd Edition (“the blue book”) maximize efficiency in the chosen lifts. With the goal of strength training being to increase force production, any inefficiency in the technique creates an artificial limitation on the lifter’s strength. If an improvement in efficiency allows for a greater load to […]
