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Train Like A Champion: Technique, Habits and Positivity
Greg Everett
| February 25 2013 |
Training: Weightlifting
Possibly the biggest mistake I see people making with regard to technique training is simply not investing enough time into the training itself. With the easy and usually free access to an abundance of information about weightlifting technique now, it’s easy to spend hours and hours searching, reading and asking about technique, technique training, exercises, corrective drills and then whatever tangential topics sprout out. Yet when it comes to actually applying that information, athletes ...
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Squat Stance & the Olympic Lifts
Greg Everett
| November 13 2012 |
Training: Weightlifting
With the Olympic lifts, it’s easy to wander a little too far down the rabbit hole and find yourself lost amid overwhelming detail. There are times when such detail is necessary and helpful, but at other times, the best course of action is to simplify. Sometimes this just means reassessing a problem with a perspective guided by simplicity—that is, returning to the basics to fix the complex.
If you’re struggling to figure out why your snatch and clean receiving positions are u...
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Program Design: Feelings vs. Planning
Greg Everett
| September 3 2012 |
Training: Weightlifting
There are a lot of different ways to train as a weightlifter, but two broad categories can be described by either planning and prescribing all the numbers (e.g. weights, reps, sets) or training by feel, which can mean making decisions on everything from weights to reps to the actual exercises performed on a given day.
Personally I like it all—nothing to extremes. I believe strongly that there needs to be planning, both short and long term, of an athlete’s training, particul...
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From the Performance Menu Journal - Issue 100
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How Coaches Are Failing Our Kids – And What You Can Do To Help
Yael Grauer
| May 1 2013 |
General Fitness & Training
I was never athletic growing up. Sure, I rode my bicycle around the block and splashed around the pool at my local YMCA, but I never exercising for the fun and challenge of it. I wasn’t much good at it, and didn’t think I could be. I wasn’t like the jocks at school. They were picked first on any team, they’d stay late after school whenever they could to play one more game o...
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Ask Greg: Issue 100
Greg Everett
| May 1 2013 |
Ask Greg
Lynn Asks: Hi Greg, I don't know if this is mostly in women, but I'd love an article or an answer about setting up with excessive arching in the lower back. Many people, when they learned how to lift, learned to arch the back instead of finding some type of neutral pelvis. Because most women are so flexible in the hamstrings it seems like this allows us to set up in a...
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Simplify: Sprint Your Way to Elite Conditioning
Matthew Miller
| May 1 2013 |
Strength
You can purchase a lot of equipment to increase your work capacity and recovery time, but one of the best ways to get into the best cardiovascular shape of your life is simply to sprint. It does not cost you anything and the benefits are countless. To get started on this 8-week conditioning program, you really only need two things:
1. Open space to sprint
2. Effort
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One Hundred Issues of the Performance Menu
Robb Wolf
| May 1 2013 |
Business
WOW! I’ve written a number of technical pieces for the PM over the years, and I had some ideas along this line when Greg asked me to make a contribution to this historic issue. I love the technical pieces as I get to stretch my legs a bit intellectually and I think these efforts help to elevate the games of trainers, coaches and the curious layperson. But this time I wanted to indulge myself...
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Misdiagnosis: Tendinitis
Jen Sinkler
| May 1 2013 |
Recovery & Injury Management
Though I’d felt a small flutter for at least a month, I felt a twinge of real pain in my left knee during an indoor practice at a small, local college in Bethlehem, Pa., in 2003. The U.S. women’s national 7s team had gathered together from across the country for a week of practice before our annual excursion to the Hong Kong 7s, our third international tournament that year. It was stil...
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When Lifting, Think Down Not Out to Get Under the Bar
Mark Kaelin
| May 1 2013 |
Olympic Weightlifting
Renewed interest in Olympic lifting has student athletes all over the country hoisting weights over their heads looking to improve their athletic performance. One common problem I see all the time in these folks is poor receiving position. Rather than aggressively moving under the bar by lowering the hips, new lifters jump out or spread their legs apart to get under the weight. Unfortunately, in t...
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When to Foam Roll
Jennifer Wilson
| May 1 2013 |
Recovery & Injury Management
There are lots of theories relating to flexibility training for power and strength. A large part of this is self-myofascial release, which is achieved through the use of a foam roller. The application of an ischemic pressure, as seen when using a foam roller, is thought to release adhesions in soft tissue through the stimulation of sensory-motor receptors in muscle and connective tissue. However, ...
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Recipes: Issue 100
Scott Hagnas
| May 1 2013 |
Recipes
Quick Paleo Pancakes
The first recipe that I wrote for the Performance Menu was Apple Cinnamon Paleo Pancakes. They were tasty, but a bit cumbersome to cook. I have since perfected a much quicker method, while keeping the flavor.
Time: 10 minutes
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 C unsweetened applesauce
• 1/2 C nut b...
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Supplements That Don’t Work as You Intended (But May for Other Reasons)
Kurtis Frank
| May 1 2013 |
Nutrition
Go to any drug store, and you will likely find an aisle full of supplements, all promising a healthier you. You've probably seen ads and doctors telling you how secret supplement X is all you need to unlock your potential. Is there any truth to these grandiose claims? We decided to look at some, but with a twist--instead of just saying what works or doesn't, we wanted to cover supplements that do ...
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6 Steps To Better Delegate, Manage, and Grow a Team
Sean Greeley
| May 1 2013 |
Business
One of the toughest things to do as a coach and business owner is grow beyond yourself. You invest years in acquiring the knowledge required for client/athlete assessment and program design, then several more learning the art of working with human beings and guiding them to achieve a goal. Much like a surgeon, you are a highly skilled expert at what you do. The only problem is there is a limit on ...
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For Peak Performance, Think Outside the Gym
Mark Sisson
| May 1 2013 |
Health & Wellness
A faded blue knee sleeve that’s fraying at the edges. Worn, broken-in belts supple as a newborn calf’s inner thigh. Scattered daylight filtered through airborne chalk dust. The metallic zing of barbells whipping around, the triumphant dumping of cleans, jerks, and snatches like so many aftershocks. It’s a romantic image, isn’t it - the weight room? For many, it’s wher...
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The Elements of a Weightlifting Teaching Progression
Greg Everett
| May 1 2013 |
Olympic Weightlifting
The development of a teaching progression for the Olympic lifts is something that every coach who teaches the lifts will do one way or another—some will never move past the borrowing from others stage (which is fine, of course), others will gradually develop one over a long period of time (sometimes intentionally, sometimes just naturally), and others will set out right out of the gate to cr...
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We’re On This Road Together: Performance Menu at 100
Matt Foreman
| May 1 2013 |
Olympic Weightlifting
Let me tell you a little something about how I got involved with this magazine. Back in 2008, I went out to San Diego to compete in the California State Games. I live in Arizona, but my wife and I were taking a summer vacation in SoCal and I wanted to get in a meet while we were there. I was in the warm-up room at the competition, getting ready to start lifting, when Aimee Anaya approached me and ...
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When to Move on, and When to Punch Your Missed Lift in its Stupid Little Mouth
Greg Everett
| May 28 2012 |
Training: Weightlifting
There are times in a lifter’s life when lifts aren’t made. These times are, of course, the absolute worst, and in those moments following a missed lift, athletes can generally find indisputable proof that they’ll never again succeed, why their abilities have already peaked and they’re finally and terminally on the decline, and why, being in such a stage of life, they no longer have any value to the world.
There are two basic responses following a missed lift: To accep...
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Starter Program for Catalyst Athletics Online Workouts
Greg Everett
| May 21 2012 |
Training Programs
The following is a 4-week training program that can be used to get started with the training program posted on this website. This is a good cycle to start with if you have not previously been doing the Olympic lifts frequently in your training. Ab work should be done every training day, along with any supplemental work, e.g. back extensions, upper body beach work, etc that you want to do. If you plan to do the conditioning portion of the program, add brief conditioning workouts 2 times per ...
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Grip Strength Program for Weightlifting
Greg Everett
| April 30 2012 |
Training Programs
I've written about grip strength for weightlifting before, but have remained fairly vague with regard to actual training protocols. This time, I’m going to give you a simple program that you can start using right away as is, or modify a bit to suit your training schedule or individual needs.
When it comes to grip strength for weightlifting, really what we’re talking about is the snatch. It’s unlikely that anyone would be able to hang on to the bar well in the snatch but not ...
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Six Truths of Olympic Weightlifting Technique
Greg Everett
| February 14 2012 |
Training: Weightlifting
When it comes to weightlifting technique, there are disagreements. Some are legitimate, some are questionable, and a few are downright silly. But when you sift through it all, there are a few universal Truths when it comes to the snatch and clean. If you can make these following six things happen with a given technical style, you can probably make it work for you.
Truth 1: The lifter and barbell system must remain balanced over the feet.
This is pretty simple. If the balance of the system do...
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Catalyst Athletics: Our Warm-up is a Warm-up
Greg Everett
| November 8 2011 |
Training: General
Somewhere along the line, warming up became remarkably complicated. And for some, the line between warming up and training has faded to the point that I find myself compelled to say things like the title of this post.
Whenever you start getting confused about what to do, a reliable course of action is to ask yourself a simple question: Why? What is the purpose of this? What am I trying to accomplish? If you can answer those questions, chances are you’ll be able to work it all out just f...
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The Power Snatch: Uses & Cautions
Greg Everett
| October 5 2011 |
Training: Weightlifting
I’ve nearly always defined a power snatch (or clean) by a receipt above a parallel squat. This is how I was taught. For the most part, I continue to use this definition because it’s served me fine. However, at times I change my expectations based on what I want achieved. My other definition is no less than a 90-degree angle at the knee. This is a considerably higher receiving position—there is no question at this height of whether or not a lift can be classified as power. You w...
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