Written by: Kevin Cann I had a situation a couple of weeks ago that shattered who I thought I was as a person.  I have always held my ability to overcome adversity at my core.  It has been my greatest asset.  I had received a text message that brought to my attention that I have years of my life that I have no recollection of. At first this really threw me off.  I was trying incredibly hard to remember Read More

Written by: Kevin Cann I was originally going to write about selecting appropriate volume, both exercises and number of sets and reps, but I feel that just gets lost in the noise of the internet.  People only want to read what matches their bias and argue about the things that don’t.  Not many are really trying to learn. I love when coaches will share a picture of their “big” athletes to show everyone why their way is Read More

Written by: Kevin Cann We bend over to deadlift, we start to pull, and suddenly, we feel a sharp pain shoot down our leg causing us to stop in our tracks and drop the bar to the floor.  We struggle to stand up straight and the pain is so severe that we think we just did something major to our back. Chances are that most reading this will have experienced this at one point or another Read More

Written by: Kevin Cann The constraints-led approach (CLA) is a teaching/coaching methodology that utilizes task, environmental, and performer constraints to elicit self-organization in skill development.  This is viewed more as a “hands-off” approach to coaching where the coach creates an environment that offers learning for the performer instead of using a lot of verbal feedback. Typically, we see a program of high frequency competition lifts with a coach that gives verbal feedback through the viewing of Read More

Written by: Kevin Cann I love sports, always have.  Being from Boston I am a huge New England Patriots fan and I have had the pleasure of getting to watch a 20-year dynasty up close and personal.  I read a book by Michael Lombardi titled “Gridiron Genius.”  This was a book that covered his experiences and knowledge from being an assistant on the New England Patriots coaching staff.  Probably the closest information to seeing how Bill Belichick operates. I Read More

Written by: Kevin Cann Last week when I was benching, I felt a snap on the eccentric portion right on the inside of my elbow.  10 years earlier I had torn my bicep on that same side, and I knew I had just done the same thing, except to my triceps this time. This is a very rare injury in powerlifting, especially for a drug free lifter.  The good news is it could have been much worse.  I Read More

Written by: Kevin Cann A conjugate program is a thinking man’s game.  I think this fact deters many coaches and lifters from doing I, and in many cases is why certain people do not see success from running this type of program.  It doesn’t take too much knowledge or thought to write a top set followed by some backdowns with all competition lifts in the name of “specificity.”  Throw some cues in a comment thread of the lifters’ Read More

Written by: Kevin Cann This is a hotly debated topic in the lifting world and I feel that it always has been.  Should you bench in a straight line, or should you push the bar back towards the rack?  However, you decide to do it, you need to be sure that your accessory work is building the right areas. First, when you read the articles of those arguing for a bar path where the bar goes back Read More

Written by; Kevin Cann The fun part about a conjugate program is there is no definitive one way to do it.  A conjugate program is one that combines the methods of strength training in a way that works for the individual.  This can take some time for everyone to learn about training and to also learn about themselves.  We all love to max out, but for some they need to spend more time doing some of the things Read More

Written By: Kevin Cann Coaches and lifters will argue these days that you just need to train the main movements to get stronger at the main movements.  There are some serious flaws with this thinking.  For one, straight weight acts a particular way. Peak contraction occurs where the leverages are weakest.  As leverages improve, deceleration occurs.  This is known as the peak contraction principle.  You can try to move straight weight with intent, but this deceleration is still going to Read More