The idea of having no emotional biases for any exercises was first presented to me by Paul Chek a long time ago. In case you are not sure what I mean, here is an example of “emotional biases” in action.

Until 2007 I lived in Denmark and between 1999-2007. I was the Head Strength Coach for Team Denmark, the Danish Equivalent of Sport Canada. I was very fortunate to have a job description that allowed me to focus on an exclusive group of athletes. One group of athletes I did not work with was the National Sailing Team, but I watched their strength and conditioning programs.

Initially, their program was created by a strength coach who used to be the Olympic Weightlifting Coach for the national team. During that time the first exercise in their strength training program was power cleans, because “power cleans are good for grip strength and sailors need grip strength.” (Those where the strength coach’s exact words when I asked him why he started the training program with Power Cleans.)

A couple of years later, a younger strength coach, who was a mountain climber, took over. Now, the first exercise in the sailors’ strength training program was pull ups, because “pull ups are good for grip strength and sailors need grip strength.” (You guessed it, I asked him.)

Their biases in exercise selection were obvious. The question that should have been asked was, “What is the best way to develop grip strength if you are a sailor?” and approach the answer from a clean slate.

There is one more angle to this point. In 2006, I attended The Russian Kettlebell Certification, which was a great learning experience with ONE (natural and understandable) caveat that characterizes certifications that are based on one piece of equipment. Naturally, in order to make his certification as valuable as possible, Pavel tried to show how to train for any goal using a kettlebell. And in the first few days after the course, I found myself thinking, “How can I train this with a kettlebell?”

I had gotten a “mind virus” that had the name of “Kettlebell” (It could have had any other name, dumbbell, barbell, etc.). Can you understand how I was limiting myself with the structure of the question? By asking, “How can I train this with a kettlebell?” I was immediately excluding the possibility that the best way to train a certain client for a certain goal would involve ANOTHER piece of equipment (or no equipment at all).

The right question to ask is, “What is the best way, equipment or no equipment, to train this client for this particular goal (ex. Legs) at this point in time?”

You know the saying, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The implication is that in order to effectively train our clients we need a variety of tools in our tool box. Here is a short list of the most important ones (in random order).

Barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, clubbells, cables, tires/kegs/logs, swiss ball, balance boards, suspension straps, body weight/animal movements, boxes/hurdles/medicine balls, tubing/bands/chains, sleds, grip etc.

It is clear that the more tools you have in your tool box (= the more different types of equipment you can correctly, effectively and safely include in your clients’ programs) the greater the likelihood that you can choose the best possible type of equipment for your client at any point in time.

The ability to optimally answer the question, “What is the best way, equipment or no equipment, to train this client for this particular goal (ex. Legs) at this point in time?” has one tremendously important implication. You CANNOT follow “trends.” As soon as we start paying too much attention to “trends” we get biased and tend to see only what is currently trendy.

It is, and always will be, your goal, to strive for an unbiased knowledge of the pros and cons of different types of equipment, and subsequently use the right piece of equipment at the right time.

What about you?

Do you have any emotional biases towards certain exercises?

To Your Success,
Karsten

PS: When you understand how important it is to choose the exercises with the highest degree of transfer as well as HOW to choose exercises, your emotional bias for certain exercises can be released (if you want to!). If you want to be FREE to choose the RIGHT exercises then you want to attend “Beyond Functional Training’. Click here to learn more.

What is a principle? A “principle” is a basic truth, law or assumption (thefreedictionary.com). A “principle” can also mean a “predetermined or fixed policy or mode of action.”

“Predetermined or fixed policies or modes of action do not sound like concepts that enhance the quality and results of training programs. Predetermined or fixed policies may give association to political or public systems, where policies may be in action to adhere to dogma, save money or save time.

However, the principles and policies that you will see here are based on physiology, scientific research, basic physiology or pure experience from training facilities all over the world. The principles have one purpose and one purpose only, to help you, the strength coach or personal trainer, select the RIGHT exercises at the RIGHT time and thus in the short or in the long run help the athlete or client towards the stated goal.

Well-developed principles help us create better training programs FASTER, because we don’t have to start from scratch every single time. On the other hand, no principle is better and more “secure” than the results produced by using the principle. Therefore, any principle can and should be questioned over time. If the questioning process leads to more effective principles, the old principle is discarded in favour of the new and improved principle.

While some of the principles laid out in this chapter have the characteristic of “predetermined or fixed policy or mode of action”, other principles that you will see laid out in this chapter have the characteristic of a basic truth, such as, for example, the principle of Specificity.

In Chapter 1, I wrote about one example of specificity of grip strength, when the wrestler, Mark, improved his ability to lift his opponents by using a sandbag and a wrestling specific grip rather than a barbell.

Here is another great example of the principle of specificity pertaining to the jumping ability of one of the greatest athletes ever.

My first trip ever to the US was to attend the 1996 NSCA Conference in Atlanta. My first session was a pre-conference session with Vern Gambetta and James Farentinos. Vern Gambetta told a story about jump testing Michael Jordan during Jordan’s baseball time. During the tests, with no run up, Michael Jordan was in the lower half of the team, but when a run up was allowed (like in basketball) they couldn’t measure him, his jump was too high (I believe they used a Vertec).

What about you? Do you have any experiences with specificity of training?

Do you have any experiences that seem to contradict the principle of specificity?

To Your Success,
Karsten

PS: The Principle of Specificity is supported by a large number of specific rules. If you think that these rules would make exercise selection easier for you, then you will like Beyond Functional Training - Maximizing the Transfer of Training Effects through science based exercise selection Click here to find out more.

Think back to the last written program you created.

How did you choose the exercises for that program?

How did you choose the exercises for the program that followed and the program after that?

How do you know that the exercises that you suggest for the athlete transfers to the athlete’s goal?

Maybe you have thought of these questions before, in which case, you probably will agree with me that they are good questions.

If you are a professional and have NOT thought about these questions before, I hope that you realize their importance, because they CUT TO THE BONE of the work we have to do to select exercises that TRULY help our athletes and clients.

My story with the above questions began around 1998-1999, when I was working in Denmark with Pernille Joergensen and Louise Sommer, who where competing at the international beach volleyball tour and won 33rd place at the world championships the year before (1997).

I remember sitting in my apartment in the process of creating their training programs on an early version of what is now the Yes To Strength Planning and Programming Sheets.

The page was blank.

HOW do I choose the exercises for this program?

I was FRUSTRATED.

I had read Charles Poliquin’s book “The Poliquin Principles” the year before and was inspired by how he was working with “principles” for selecting each of the program variables.
Some of the strength coaches and personal trainers I meet today seem to think that learning principles for different program variables are complicated and makes things more DIFFICULT.

That day in my apartment, I realized that the REVERSE is true.

Principles makes creating training programs EASIER.

Without CLEAR principles for choosing exercises, EVERY program was like starting from scratch with nothing to guide me.

With CLEAR principles serving as GUIDELINES, creating training programs IS easier.

The uncertainty of how to choose the right exercises was extremely stressful to me.

The UNPLEASANT uncertainty combined with the motivation to properly explain the choice of exercises to the world class and Olympic athletes I worked with have been two powerful motivational forces in my 15-year research into exercise selection.

I am very interested in YOUR experiences regarding exercise selection:

• How do you choose the exercises for your programs?
• How well can you explain your choice of exercises to the athletes that you train?
• How do you know that the exercises that you suggest for an athlete transfers to the athlete’s goal?
• Do you have any questions regarding exercise selection that I can help with?

To Your Success,
Karsten

PS: My NEW one day workshop Beyond Functional Training - Maximizing the Transfer of Training Effects through science based exercise selection is the result of that 15 year process. If you would like more clarity in the process of choosing the most effective exercises for your athletes and clients and more confidence in explaining the exercises to them, this workshop is for you. Click here to learn more about the workshop.