Strength Training Teachers– Who is Worth Learning From?
I was wondering about what you think about Ian King and his methods. He seems to share some similarities with Charles Poliquin, but in the area of flexibility work, he recommends static stretching pre-workout, which Charles Poliquin does not agree with. What is your stance?
The Continuum of Strength Coaching – What It Means
This question is actually two questions in one. The first deals with understanding how to differentiate between degrees of what I like to think of as the Continuum of Strength Coaching. Therefore, I am going to answer that question first, and separate it from the other one so as to keep the format of this column short. I’ll begin by first outlining the differences, as I see them, between someone who currently coaches athletes, and someone who teaches or lectures about strength coaching for a living.
I took some seminars and a boot camp in New York City and Boston with Ian King about ten years ago. At that time, he was already retired from professional strength coaching, and was involved in creating and marketing a training program for developing strength coaches and personal trainers.
Coaching is Doing; Teaching is Talking About Doing
My personal opinion is, when a coach leaves the active phase of their coaching career in favor of pure education, they are at the beginning of falling behind the cutting edge of strength and speed development, because they are now in the process of reviewing, collating, and regurgitating the results of their past experience as coaches, rather than figuring out how to produce a better result than the other guy. Another way of saying that is that they begin to stop collecting strength coaching experience by doing, and begin to recount past experience by talking about what they did.
That does not mean that they have nothing valuable to offer new coaches, or even experienced or master coaches. It just means that their information growth rate begins to slow down. However, you can still get a lot of great information from someone who has had past experience, especially if you are new to your field.
Ian King Has Something to Offer the Strength Training World
With that in mind, I think that there is plenty to be gained from Ian’s books, because there is something to be gained from just about everybody. Back when I was a young student of Charles’, he told me to go and see Ian, despite the fact that he did not agree with many of his methods, because he felt that a well-rounded educational experience was of primary importance.
I think that is a very important concept to adopt if you want to reach the top of your profession. Go and see as many experts as you can in the field, collect a great deal of knowledge, and, through experience, make your own decisions about what works and what does not.
In addition to Ian King and Charles Poliquin, I’d also recommend the experts below in the More Information section. This list is by no means exhaustive. For the purposes of integrity, I have only recommended people that I have learned from directly, or whose writings or work I follow or admire. Read, learn, intern with other coaches, amass knowledge and experience, and ultimately, learn to think for yourself.
More Information
Joe DeFranco
Larry Jusdanis
Ian King
Charles Poliquin
Ben Prentiss
Louie Simmons
Dave Tate
Strength Training Preparation – Is Static Stretching a Good Idea Pre-workout? (part II of this article)
