Athletes are competitive people, and often too eager to jump to the hardest lifts, at the heaviest loads, at the hugest volumes—but progressing too quickly can get you into serious trouble. Before you can flip 1000-lb tires like J.J. Watt, you have to first master the bodyweight squat. And I’m talking master—because if you don’t have a black belt in “the basics” of strength training, then you better put down that tire.
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The off-season is almost over. But does that mean your resistance training should be? Coach Jace explains how in-season training can improve performance and prevent injury—as long as it's done right.
Read MoreShakira gets it. Happy Gilmore gets it. But unfortunately, many athletes don't get that when it comes to performance, it’s all in the hips. Guest author Adam Shildmyer DPT tells us why hip stability is so important, and how to get it.
Read MoreThink lifting will make you a bulky, slow runner? Think again...
Read MoreMike Favre, the Director of Olympic Strength and Conditioning for the University of Michigan Wolverines and member of Volt's Advisory Board, and Coach Jace break down the components of the vertical jump, and how you can train athletes to improve theirs.
Read MoreIt’s been a long-held belief that static stretching (holding a stretch for longer than 30 seconds per muscle) should be done prior to training to reduce injury risk and promote greater range of motion for activity. While these tenets hold true, opponents of static stretching argue that it impedes and decreases athletic performance, and should be considered an outdated method of warming up. This debate tends to get pretty heated, pretty fast, and has resulted in many an ugly comment war in forums across the Net. But a study published in the December 2014 issues of Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research might just be the tipping point in this battle.
Read MoreRecovery is the unsung hero of performance development. Ask any NFL player on a bye week: maximizing your recovery times so that you can get back in the weight room or out on the field is a huge advantage. Managing when to rest, when to take it easy, and when to get back out there and go 100% is a product of how well you manage your post- and pre-training maintenance.
Read MoreWhile our quads get a lot of love in the gym, our hammies are often neglected—partially because we sit so much, under-train our posterior chain, and just plain forget about them because they're on the back of our bodies. In the conclusion to this two-part series, Coach Christye explains the RIGHT way to train and maintain your hamstrings—and how to avoid catastrophic hamstring injury during competition.
Read MoreIf you plan on asking other people to pick things up for you for the rest of your life, feel free to skip learning how to deadlift. On the other hand, if you plan on being a strong, capable, powerful athlete, the deadlift is an essential tool in your movement toolkit. Even for non-athletes, the deadlift is worth learning in order to develop the mechanics to interact with objects in your environment—furniture, luggage, etc.—in a safe and efficient way. To learn the safest way to progress athletes into the deadlift, read on.
Read MoreThe benefits of having a strong grip go beyond just making a good impression when shaking hands or opening jars of tomato sauce. There are serious performance benefits from developing some good, old-fashioned “old-man” grip strength. Sadly, a direct focus on increasing grip strength is often neglected in strength training programs—and more grip strength can translate to better sport performance. Increasing grip strength for sports like baseball, lacrosse, and hockey helps improve the force transfer from the arms through the bat or stick. And contact/combat sport athletes can benefit from having hands like vices, which make tackles and take-downs much harder to escape. Adding focused grip work into your program doesn’t take much time or planning, and can keep your workouts fun by challenging new areas of improvement.
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