Crab Rangoon

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The internet is an immense Chinese food buffet overflowing with greasy training information. You? You are the typical fat, lazy American frothing orally at the chance to sink your jowls into those tasty deep-fried creamy crab Rangoon’s.

Welcome. Please, have a seat. Can I start you off with something to drink?

A word before we begin, if I may…

Ignorance is bliss. Like it or not, we are all tightly swaddled in a warm blanked of delusion. It’s certainly true that you currently hold a cherished belief, position, or attitude that couldn’t be more wrong.

Hey, don’t feel bad. That’s life.We laugh now because people used to think that smoking was actually good for you. “They used to put cocaine in soda, for chrissakes! Can you believe that!?” Well, 100 years from now we will be the idiots…About something, surely.

“Can you believe those ass-holes used to eat fruit!? Man, everybody knows that shit gives you cancer! …Dummies.“

Sometimes we are lucky, though. We get the chance to put our knowledge to the test. We experiment, we tinker. Bit by bit we get closer to the truth. Sometimes we even get to experience an actual breakthrough…One of those moments when Keanu Reeves storm’s into our consciousness and rips the wool right from your eyes. I know Kung Fu now!

When it comes to training, I’ve been plenty ignorant.

I can clearly remember sharing training advice with a high school classmate back in 1996. I basically repeated to him everything I had just read in a bodybuilding magazine the night before.

How was I supposed to know any better? Here was a guy who wanted to be huge. I’m not sure he understood why he wanted that, but he wanted it. What better advice to give than that offered by really huge men wearing pink speedo’s?

I laughed at myself a few years later in 2000, and then again in 2003, 2007, and 2009…I’m still laughing. That’s what I love about training. There is always more to learn. Once you think you’ve got it figured out, the rules change. Shit stops working. You must always be a step ahead. You must keep the experiment going.

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Sometime in late 2009 or early 2010, I began to track some training thoughts on our old blog. It was an attempt to share what I’ve come to know about training. Little pearls about exercises, loading, and planning that I have accumulated during the 19 years I’ve spent under the bar.

Those posts went on to form the basis of a few publications in the Crossfit Journal. You can find them hanging on the lobby wall at Faction Strength & Conditioning.

But guess what? Over the past year, there have been more lessons learned. Thousands of hours in the gym have yielded more data.

I’ve also been observing. At Faction, we’re so lucky to have a big crew of great up and coming competitive Crossfitters and lifters, with more and more athletes being developed all the time. These folks train hard and are always open to trying new methods.

So here’s how it’s going down.

The strength series will continue, capturing the results of our little experiment. I’ll share case reports of individual athletes and how we’re approaching their training. We’ll talk Powerlifting, Strongman, Crossfit…everything you can imagine.

While you may see the methods change, the goal remains the same. Producing athletes capable of lifting more, doing more work, and doing it more often.

So, without any further delay, let’s get started.

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