There's an old saying that goes, "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, but tell him about periodization, and confuse him for the rest of his life."
When I look at all the questions that people send me, one of the more common themes I notice is confusion around the topic of putting together your weekly training cycle. So for my first edition of The Staley Strategies, I thought I'd elaborate on one of my all-time favorite strategies (this one being a tactic, technically speaking): the A-B split.
At first glance, it might seem that the title of this article is a double entendre (you know, like "Kid Rock Rules!"). I assure you, it's not. My linguistic reference of choice is not a music-challenged snowboarder but the Oxford English Dictionary, or for all you acronym lovers: OED.
It's that time of year again. The most dedicated and hardcore lifters are still in the gym for two hours a day, six days per week, while the rest of us (a.k.a. the non-loser majority) are facing a time-crunched, often unavoidable four to six week period packed full of bullshit shopping, crowded malls, kick ass family get-togethers, boring-as-all-hell family get-togethers, parties with friends, parties with co-workers, parties that you just crashed, and hangovers.
Hello, T-Nation peckerheads! I'm the Critic. My job in this new article series is to call out various T-Nation contributors and put them on the firing line.
So, Mike sat in my front room after a six hour drive from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City and asked a simple question: "Dan, why do people ask you to coach them?"
Jeremy Frisch is the performance director at the Competitive Athlete Training Zone in Acton, Massachusetts, where he works with athletes from age six to college level.
"Bill Hartman is the smartest man I know," Alwyn Cosgrove said recently at a seminar. I don't know about you, but that's pretty esteemed praise, especially from someone like Alwyn who's considered one of the foremost minds in the performance enhancement industry.
"If you put a group of the most successful strength coaches in one room and their students in another, the students wouldn't agree on any training philosophy or principle, whereas the coaches would agree on almost everything."