Written by: Kevin Cann This was an important realization for me, to coach the person and not the lifts. At some point everyone will hit a period of stagnation. This is inevitable. The key to overcoming these periods of stagnation is in understanding the person. Of course, identifying weaknesses and all that is important, but in my experiences, it is only half of it. I will use a real-life example to explain my point. Mike D’Amico had been hitting very Read More
Written by: Kevin Cann It has been a while since I wrote a blog post. I have been building out Strength School, an online classroom where coaches, lifters, and trainers can learn the fundamentals of strength development. If interested that can be found here. Meets are starting to come at us quickly here and I feel it is a good time to discuss how to build success on the platform. Too often we see beginners jump on a Read More
Written by: Kevin Cann Anders Ericcson was the researcher who came up with the idea of deliberate practice for skill development. In his book he gave a quote tat stated, “Greatness is achieved by standing on the shoulders of giants.” This was in relation to him saying that developing high level skill begins with seeing what the other high performers are doing. In the current climate of powerlifting, coaches and athletes seem to have missed this step. There Read More
Written by: Kevin Cann I have seen a lot of posts recently discussing training frequency. I posted a video on the Precision Powerlifting YouTube page discussing what makes a quality coach. I discussed the importance of formal education in this field and experience as an athlete. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but as I witness more and more of what occurs on the internet with “coaches” the more I believe the exceptions are few Read More
Written by: Kevin Cann We all know that progressive overload is necessary to force adaptations. However, this does not mean that every week we need to add something to training in order to drive progress. I think in many cases that is nothing more than the coach becoming nervous about the lifter developing and rushing things a bit. Arkady Vorobyov was a 3-time Olympic medalist and sport scientist from Russia. He found that mixing training with high, medium, Read More
Written by: Kevin Cann I am going to begin this article by telling a story that is titled “A Cup of Tea.” An important man traveled far to seek out the guidance of a Zen master. This Zen master was said to be the best of all of the Zen masters. People would seek him out from far and wide for guidance. This important man meets with the Zen master and tells him that he is there for Read More
Written by: Kevin Cann My daughter is a big fan of the Marvel movies. We were watching the original Spiderman movies recently and in one of these moves, Spiderman is so stressed with work, school, and his duties as a superhero that he loses his powers. This made me think quite a bit about powerlifting. The first couple of years can lead to you feeling invincible as your numbers just continue to climb. These beginner gains can really Read More
Written by: Kevin Cann This is a topic that I have gone back and forth a lot about over the years. I started out with believing it was important, then it wasn’t, and now all of these years later we are back to understanding its importance. There is a difference between intellectual knowledge and experiential knowledge. Intellectual knowledge comes from reading books. All through undergrad and graduate school I learned about the importance of long term planning in Read More
Written by: Kevin Cann This article will go along with the video that I posted on the Precision Powerlifting YouTube channel. The video was titled “The Program is a Language to Communicate with the Lifter.” I wanted to highlight one part of that video because I think that it is so important for coaches to understand. As coaches I feel that we are often attempting to force our values and ideals onto our lifters. We have in our Read More
Written by: Kevin Cann John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach once said, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” This quote was to teach certain skills to his basketball players. You need to be quick to beat your opponent, but the second you begin to hurry mistakes are made. This applies to powerlifting also. Powerlifting is a sport where slow incremental progress becomes inevitable after the initial beginner gains. I think many people get fooled here because they believe beginner Read More