A few nights ago my wife and I watched  The A-Team, the newest version, with Liam Neeson starring as Col. Hannibal Smith.

Hannibal Smith is big on plans – “There is a plan in everything,” he says.

Planning is in my nature; if I don’t have a plan for my day (even the days off) I am not comfortable. So, I paid attention and found quite a few take home points from the A-Team that we, as strength coaches and trainers, can use.

#1: The A-Team specializes in the “insane operations” - the operations that can’t be done.”

Take home point: Choose a niche and define yourself with a twist that is different from everybody else. Marketing expert, Dan Kennedy, calls this “creating a category of one.” Incidentally, Paul Chek built his business that way, by taking on the clients that no one else could rehabilitate.

What is it that you can do that no one else can do in quite the same way?

#2: The plans used by the A-Team are very creative does not recognize obstacles.

Take home point: We move from looking at obstacles to seeing opportunity, when we change our questioning from “IF” something can be done to “HOW” something can be done. We move from being derailed by problems to exploiting opportunity when we change our questioning from “What’s the problem?” to “How can I take advantage of this situation?”

In University I learned that developing speed is difficult. I am gradually revising that belief as I exploit the opportunities for developing speed that exists within the mental realm. Twice I have seen IMMEDIATE increase in speed, simply by asking athletes to show me “How does the world’s fastest players move?”

The mental realm is “the first cause” and The Flexible Periodization Method recognizes this fact in the programming process.

If you have any experience or questions regarding  the mental aspects of the strength and conditioning process, I would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment.

Dedicated To Your Success,

Karsten

PS: What I learned from the A-TEAM (Part2) will be posted next week – stay tuned!

Dear Strength Coach and personal Trainer,

Last week I told you about a customer who was frustrated with our planning and programming sheets.

The customer found that the sheets were “useless”.

That is interesting, because it is the exact same sheets that I have used for more than 10 years, to plan and create long-term training programs for world class and Olympic athletes.

The only difference in the sheets we are selling and the sheets I personally use, is that each column is carefully explained in the version that we sell.

(I love the comment boxes in the Excel worksheets!)

I am interested to know how much time this customer spent trying to “get to know” these sheets.

5 minutes? 30 minutes? 1 hour? 2 hours?

I compare creating a long-term training program to walking to the mall. There are many steps, but you can take only ONE STEP at a time. And if you take a wrong turn, you can walk back and resume in the right direction.

Don’t expect to learn to properly create a long-term program in 1-hour.

Don’t expect things to be simpler than they are.

And here is the lesson from Einstein:

MAKE IT AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE,
YET AS COMPLEX AS NECESSARY.

What does this statement mean to you?

To Your Success,
Karsten

PS: In next week’s blogs, I write about ONE THING that in my opinion distinguishes smarter coaches and trainers from “not-as-smart” coaches and trainers.

Unless your client is attempting a power lifting world record, (s)he should NEVER hold the breath during lifting (passing out is messy and looks bad on your resume). Another unattractive consequence of breath holding during lifting is ruptured veins in the eyes. Ask my friend Matthew who missed a meet for this reason.

Here is how to use French Press Breathing during an isometric hold or an eccentric phase of 5 seconds or more.

Specifically, what do you say, when you see that a client holds their breath during a lift?

I honour the place in you where we are both one,

Karsten
PS: These cues can be effectively applied to “Combination Exercises”