An Interview with Ethan ReeveAbout a year ago I did a series of interviews with Ethan Reeve, the strength coach of Wake Forest University. Coach Reeve was more than willing of his time. My first interview was erased and he was kind enough to grant me a second interview, but not without poking fun at me a little in the process. This was taken in 2007 before the football season started. I wanted to get this our last year, but it didn’t happen. My apologies to Coach Reeve for the tardiness of this interview.

Courtesy of WakeForestSports.com, here is a copy of Mr. Reeve’s Bio:Ethan Reeve

Head Strength and Conditioning Coach

“Ethan Reeve is in his eighth season at Wake Forest, coming from Ohio University in 2001 to guide the Demon Deacon strength and conditioning program.Reeve, who spent six years with the Bobcats, was a two-time All-American and four-time SEC champion wrestler at the University of Tennessee. He began his coaching career at his alma mater, serving as assistant coach/strength coach for wrestling for two years.He also assisted with wrestling at Oklahoma State, Ohio and Clemson before serving as the head wrestling coach at Chattanooga from 1984 to 1990 where his teams won five Southern Conference titles.Reeve is certified through USA Weightlifting, Russian Kettlebell Challenge and the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association.He was the strength coach for the U.S. women's rowing team that won four gold medals and one silver medal in the 1995 World Championships. He returned to Ohio in 1995 to become the director of strength and conditioning, working closely with the football program. He also designed and oversaw the Carin Center, Ohio's athletic strength and conditioning facility.”Coach Reeve is one of the top strength coaches in the nation. I learned more in this interview about training than I could ever dream of, and I hope you will too. It was truly a privilege to speak to him, and I thank him from the bottom of my heart.

Chuck Zurawski

Ethan: Chuck, what’s happening?Chuck: Not much! Do you have time to do an interview today?Ethan: Yes, do you have that tape recorder turned on? (laughs)Chuck: (Laughing) Yep! I hit record instead of play this time. So how is everything going? How is football practice going?Ethan: Good! They finally had a lift this morning and we are just getting after it, we are getting ready. We have Boston College coming up this Saturday. Let’s see how we line up, I know they’re ready too.Chuck: So are you still working with the athletes? I thought from our last interview you said that you work with them and get them ready until they start their two-a-days.

Ethan: What we do is get them ready from January all the [way] up until August, and we get them three days, four, five - whatever we need. We have to give them so many breaks by NCAA rules, but we get them quite a bit. When we get in season, we get them 60 minutes, twice a week, for football.Chuck: Is that per the NCAA?Ethan: No, but we have to fit within their 20 hour limit. Actually, we used to lift them 5 days a week, and then we cut down to 4 days a week, and then we cut down to 3 days a week… we actually found that 2 days was the best.Chuck: Is that because they kept getting beat on and had no time to recover?Ethan: Yes. We are trying to balance and keep kids’ weight on, [keeping] them strong and powerful. Actually, when they practice and are playing, it seems like this is a better fit. Now we would do other things if we had more time. We would do more athletic type movements and stretching and stuff, but we don’t get that time with them. The lifting in season for most sports – we don’t think you need to go more than two days [per week]. When I was coaching wrestling at Chattanooga, we went two days a week, but everyday we would do rope climbs and chins and dips and things like that, but when we lifted such as power cleans, front squats or dead lifts we only went 2 days a week.Chuck: Now is that to make sure you normalize the strength and maintain their strength?Ethan: Some kids will get stronger on the lifts. Actually, for most athletes, it is never about how strong you are, it’s about how you use your strength. It is a very big difference. You can be very strong like on a squat and a bench, and not be very effective in sport.Chuck: Right, because it doesn’t translate into their sport.Ethan: That’s true! What a lot of the guys - and I’m sure a lot of other coaches will say this too – [is], “You spend so much time on trying to get big and strong on those lifts, and you are not spending the time on technique [for their sport].” The number one thing in sport, in my opinion - because I was a sport coach as well as a strength coach - …that is going to make you a champion is repetition. The great athletes make things look easy. If you are a great athlete naturally and you have been given this ability and you know how to use your power and know how to run and jump and it comes natural - that is a great gift. You can, however, make yourself into a pretty good athlete through repetition.Chuck: And that is from learning how to turn on and off motor units right?Ethan: That’s right! Knowing when to turn [motor units] on and when to turn them off [is] exactly what happens. The great athletes, when you watch them run, you go Wow! It looks so effortless. It’s the same when they do a snatch. They may not be good a snatch right away, but, boy, they pick it up quick. They learn how to use their body. Repetition is the answer for becoming athletic for those kids that don’t have it naturally. I remember a lot of the old Japanese wrestlers that were world champions back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, they weren’t permitted to do moves in competition unless they had done them 10,000 times in practice. Imagine a double leg takedown. If you have done that 10,000 times in practice you have that down pretty good. It’s the same as striking, or blocking, or free throws. It’s the repetition, in my opinion, that is more important than anything else, and I am a strength coach telling you this. That to me is the most important thing. You have to do the repetition.Chuck: You know what is funny is I was watching a T.V. show last week called, “The

Human Weapon.” They were talking about the Kata in Okinawa. They described it exactly like you did. They said that Kata is the way of movement that gets your body used to doing the movement and it just becomes natural and second nature. They said that when a person fights or spars, their body already knows what to. I feel that is a proper analogy of what you are saying.Ethan: Right! I got to talk to two guys that were 7-time world champions and 2-time Olympic champion wrestlers from Russia. One spoke broken English, and [the other] one had a translator. I asked both of them, “What is the number one reason why you are the champion that you are?” Both of them, on separate occasions, told me “The repetition - thousands and thousands of repetitions at the speed that you need in sport.” If they were to get tired and they were doing an outside fireman’s carry or whatever they were doing for that technique, they would do it thousands of times, but they would do at the speed they needed in competition. They didn’t do it slow. They would do it slow to warm-up but eventually at high speed. When they couldn’t do it at that speed anymore due to being tired, they would walk around the room, recover a little bit, and go back and do it at that high speed. It almost looked like they were actually wrestling, when they were really drilling. Because I have that type of knowledge of sport, I have the understanding of what an athlete needs and what a coach’s needs are. They have to put their time in to do that, and this is where the strength coach comes in. We can help them if we can get the kids a little more athletic, more explosive, more powerful, stronger. This will enhance that learned technique. You are asking me, “Do you need that top-end strength?” How much does a football player really need to squat, bench or power clean? A lot of people in the iron game would say, “Well, the more the better; you need to be able to squat 600lbs off a box.” You know what? A lot of guys can’t squat 600lbs off a box fast, or even squat 600lbs, but are pretty damn good football players and are a lot better than some guys that do squat 600lbs off a box. You see what I mean?Chuck: Right, because they can actually use their strength and translate it into sport.Ethan: That’s right!Chuck: Thank you! That makes so much sense. I appreciate that. Would it be possible to digress a little bit? Ethan: Sure!Chuck: Can we go a little into your history a little bit? You are currently the head strength coach at Wake Forest. Could you tell me a little more of your background so I can have it for the record and people can know?Ethan: I got into strength training back when I was a young kid doing spring, chest pulls and all that type of stuff. This was way back in the early 60’s. In 3rd grade I was running 3 miles a day. By the 6th grade I was doing 6 miles a day, but I would do a lot of hand grippers and pushups and things like that all throughout high school. We didn’t know anything about Olympic lifting or power lifting or anything like that. A lot of us were told by our coaches to not lift much. It was more like body weight exercises and body weight calisthenics, which I think are very good. I started a way of training that I call “DENSITY TRAINING”. From my 8th grade year to my senior year of high school, I used to do 500 pushups everyday. Now how do I get to 500? Some days I would do 50 sets of 10 in 50 minutes. Sometimes sets of 25, sometimes higher

numbers, sometimes I would do 250 in the morning and 250 at night, and I called it “density training”. When I [was accepted to] The University of Tennessee, I found a weakness in the strength that I really needed in the center part of my body. In wrestling we called it “The Hips.” Everything needed to be strong in the hips. What we meant was “center body.” Everybody today uses the term “core.” Our definition of core is the upper quadriceps, the hip flexors, the upper hamstrings, the gluteal muscles, the erectors of the low back, the oblique muscles, and the abdominals.Chuck: The posterior muscles.Ethan: The posterior, but also the abdominals and quads and hip flexors – mid-thigh to your rib cage, front and backside - everything. That, we have found in wrestling, to be the most important thing. We have also found it to be true in sports like football. If you look at the great football players like Jim Brown and Walter Payton and some of the great basketball players, we saw the strength in their core body, in their abs, in their oblique’s, in their butt muscles and their upper quads and hamstrings…. You say, “Wow! There is something different!” Well, I was this guy that was doing a lot of chins and pushups and dips. We used to bail hay and do a lot of farm work, but I really didn’t have the kind of strength and power that I really needed. When I started doing power cleans, I was at the University of Tennessee. Now I had already won 2 SEC championships in wrestling my freshman and sophomore year. At the end of my sophomore year I discovered this thing called power cleans. Man! The next two years I was again conference champion each year, but I became the two-time All-American as well. I would do 100 power cleans those next two years, every single day with my bodyweight. Whatever I weighed that day, if I was 165lbs, I would [do]10 sets of 10 on power cleans with 165lbs. The 165lbs was on the bar, but I would also superset it with chins. I would do 10 overhand chins then 10 power cleans. I would do 10 underhanded chins then 10 power cleans. I had to finish that workout in about 15 to 18 minutes - that was my thing.Chuck: Holy cow!Ethan: Afterwards I might do some front squats or stiff leg dead lifts, not Romanian dead lifts (RDLs) because I didn’t know RDLs then, or maybe just dead lifts. I never went real heavy on the dead lifts. Boy! The difference in my posture, my core strength, [and] in my legs was incredible. These things really… helped my wrestling. When I started training wrestlers, man, that’s what I did. I coached my wrestlers to do these types of lifts. It made a big difference for those guys. Then when I started as a strength coach with rowers, or basketball players or whatever, we did a lot of this type of lifting and it was very important. So anyways, I [left] the University of Tennessee and became the assistant wrestling coach at Ohio University, then assistant wrestling coach at Oklahoma State, assistant wrestling coach at Clemson, assistant [for] a couple of years at the University of Tennessee @ Knoxville where I [graduated from]. I was a head wrestling coach from 1984 to 1990 at the University of Tennessee @ Chattanooga where we won 5 Southern Conference championships in 6 years. We did power cleans, chins, dips, rope climbs and all that stuff - but we did the power cleans and front squats twice a week, every week.Chuck: How do you set up your programs? Do you [use] standard periodization like Tudor Bompa suggests? Do you [use] conjugated periodization? How do you set the programs up?

Ethan: Again, we do things a little different here. We combine a thing that I call DENSITY. I have called it density for 20 years. It all came from when I trained as a wrestler from my 8th grade year to my senior year. We would do 500 pushups a day. How was I going to get that volume? How was I to get it done? If I wanted to do 500 pushups I might do 10 reps every minute for 50 minutes. I might do 250 in the morning and 250 at night. I might spread it out throughout the day. The thing was density. If you wanted to condense it and make it [more frequent in less time], you don’t want to do so much in a set that you are too tired to do the next set. When I started out doing the pushups, at first I would do maybe 10 sets of 5, then 6, then 7, until eventually you can do 10.Chuck: So do you do that for chins and dips?Ethan: Right! But how do we do that when trying to manipulate off a 1RM [(1 Rep Maximum)]? What we use is predicated rep maxes off the 1RM. Let’s say a kid has a [1RM] power clean of 300lbs. 75 percent [of 1RM] is 225lbs…. At 225lb, it would be considered a 10 rep max. If that lift is very important to us, like a power clean, then instead of doing 1 set of 10 with high intensity…. what we would prefer is to do 10 sets of 2 in 10 minutes. [The reason for this is, with 1 set of 10]… we would only get 6 or 7 quality reps out of the ten… and the last 2 or 3 we are going to have to really grind out. There is nothing wrong with that as it shows good mental toughness. [But with the 10 sets of 2 in 10 minutes] we are making it dense. In 10 minutes, we are going to be finished with our doubles.Chuck: And you are getting good lifts each and every time.Ethan: Right! We have 10 starts and 20 QUALITY reps. We have innervated the nervous system pretty well and worked on the technique pretty well. Our thing is “step up and grab the weight and let’s go!” We don’t mess around, monkey around, getting [our] feet set and whatever. You should be able to step up, grab the weight, and hit it. Go right now! My feeling is you can overdo the technique or you can under do it. What you are looking for is [if] the technique [is] good enough that you are getting something out of it and was it safe and nobody got hurt. If you don’t get hurt and you are [using] good technique, you are getting something out of it. What more can you ask for?Chuck: Not much! That makes perfect sense.Ethan: We are not purist in that stuff.Chuck: Keep it simple. One thing I have found over the years is people try and make things too complicated, whether it be training or diet. I have found through my own training that it just seems to work best when I keep it simple. Ethan: Right! What we do is mix up those densities. We will go the first week at the density of 70 percent, which is a 12 rep max. It would be 8 sets of 3 in 8 minutes. Next week, we might go 75 percent and do 10 doubles, and the next week we might do what I call “climbing”. That’s where you start at 50 percent and go up doing 50, 60, 70 percent for triples, 75, 80, 85 for doubles and then do 90 and above depending on what lift it is and how important it is for singles. That is called “climbing”. We do that every 3rd week or maybe every other week. It’s a conjugate type thing, but it’s conjugate in that we change it every other week or 3rd week. You see what I mean? We only do a power clean once a week. A hang clean once a week. A clean and jerk once a week. A front squat once a week. A dead lift once a week. A bench press once a week. There are other pressing movements that are good, [such as a] standing press [and] one arm press.

Chuck: How do you feel the standing press translates into sport?Ethan: Well, you are standing up. A lot of people are against curls, I am not as long as you stand up. If you do a curl standing up…, feet on the ground, and the weight is in your hand, it’s athletic. I am not saying it’s athletic like a snatch or a clean, but if you have it in your hand and you are doing curls, you are obviously flexing your bicep. You still have to stabilize your erectors, your glutes and your legs. Your feet are on the ground and the weight is in your hands to get the weight up. My opinion is that where you lose the athleticism is when you sit down and do preacher curls, or sitting on the bench and putting your forearm on your leg and you do it that way. What you have done is take the athleticism out of it.Chuck: An old coach of mine used to tell me that the best way to get better at lifting is to find the movement that you are weakest at and make it the strongest because that is your weak link in the chain. That is what I have always done and it sounds like you incorporate a similar type of training.Ethan: What we do is look for athleticism in the lift, athleticism of movement. We then look at the weaknesses, and [when] we find the strength is when it becomes easier for them. We just keep it simple and that is how we do it. What we are looking for is the mental attitude of attacking the weights. Whatever we are doing - attacking it, the movement of it, the technique of it - we get after it. It’s tough to make it as an athlete and be a wussy in sports today. I don’t care - swimming, wrestling, lacrosse, football, anything - you have to be mentally and physically tough. What we are trying to do is enhance it to help those coaches and their athletes in sport.Chuck: Do you train women any differently than you do men in sport? I mean, when you were training the US Olympic rowing team, did you train them any differently than men?Ethan: I would train both women and men’s rowers the same, but I might train rowing a bit different than football. I had the women tumble, I had them play basketball because I wanted to get them more athletic. We felt that would transfer into the boat, but when I started doing it, I didn’t know. As it turned out, it worked pretty well. We did a lot of combos… where they would start out with 3 RDLs (Romanian Deadlifts), 3 power shrugs from the floor, 3 power cleans, 3 squat cleans, 3 jerks and then 2 chin ups and 3 box jumps. Every 2 ½ minutes we would do the same thing over and over again. They would do 10 sets of that. We had a couple of girls who could do 145lbs and do 10 sets. I have one of their workouts on DVD and I’ll send it to you sometime.Chuck: I would love to see it.Ethan: You would be impressed. They get after it. Would I train them differently? I don’t care too much about their high strength, but I’m going to squat them, tumble them, deadlift them, stretch them, just like I would any athlete.Chuck: Is there any advice that you can give to high school kids in preparation and training who want to play college sports?Ethan: We feel strongly about making kids more athletic. If I can give some advice to the parents first - get your kids in a variety of sports. Don’t specialize in one sport. If you are playing baseball 9 or 10 months out of the year, over the years they are going to be tired of it. Have them play baseball, have them wrestle a couple of months, do some YMCA basketball, run track - have them do different things. Take them to learn Karate - get them to do different things to be athletic. Through grade school and through junior [high] school do this. When

they get into high school, then they can specialize in one or two sports, especially [during] junior and senior year because they are trying to get scholarships. The other thing is that we need to get physical education back into our school systems. We need to get to our educators - not the teachers as they believe in this. We need to go back to where we had physical education for 60 minutes and still had recess time for them to have free play and we still did well academically. Our kids get maybe 30 minutes once every week or every other week of physical education. What are these kids getting? They are not active anymore. We need to get them off the sofa and get them up walking and doing things. That is the grass roots of what they need, so when they get to our level they know how to do tumbling.Chuck: It seems like that is the first thing to get cut when budget cuts roll through: the athletic programs, the music, and art programs. I remember when I was a child that a kid that was kind of portly and overweight seemed to get the brunt of ribbing by their classmates and stood out. It was not right, but it did happen that way. Now it seems the opposite. It seems now like the slender athletic kid stands out in a group of children.Ethan: We are leaving out things that enrich your life and are functional. Take music - there might be a child that goes into music and you offer it to all the kids. You have art. There are some great artists out there. Physical education - you do that not just for athletes, but for enriching [young people’s] lives. If all you did was walk, a little bit of stretching, calisthenics, and the PE teachers would make it fun for these kids - my God! That is the beginning of a lifetime of people taking care of themselves. I mean, you don’t know when you are going to die. You could die young, but we need to make it a greater quality of life. What we are doing is taking away things that enrich our life for the sake of computer stuff. I mean, kids are going to use the computer anyway. What we need to do is make sure they learn the science and mathematics, but also things that enrich our life too.Chuck: You mentioned “GAME DAY.” Can you tell me a little about that?Ethan: Game Day is predominantly in football. The power clean is a big lift for us. What we do (and we usually do this twice a year, the last one is before they start two-a-days) [is]… get the room filled with guys and we stick three to a platform. The offensive line and defensive line have to do 50 doubles in 50 minutes with 242lbs on the power clean, or they can do 286lbs and do 50 singles.Chuck: Whew!Ethan: The linebackers, tight ends and fullbacks have to use 220lbs for 50 doubles or 264lbs for 50 singles. Everybody else uses 198lbs or 90 kilos for 50 doubles, or 242 for 50 singles. Then when we go outside [where] we have these big sleds that weigh 250lbs or 300lbs. They have to run it for 50 or 100 yards. The first 10 sets is the first quarter, the next 10 is the second quarter and so on. The 5th set of 10 is the first overtime. Pushing the sled is the last overtime. People ask me [if] we test our athletes for conditioning. No! We run them. Why [test them] if we are running them? If they are doing what we are asking them to do, then we don’t have to test them.Chuck: Yeah, I don’t think they would be in bad shape.Ethan: Our job is to get them ready. If they are not, then we need another strength coach. If they are doing what we tell them to do, they should be ready. All you are doing as a strength coach is getting them ready for their first day of practice in shorts. [From] that point on, it’s

the coaches that get them in shape. If I am a wrestling coach and my kids are not ready for the season, I am going to the strength coach and telling [him he is] screwing up and doing a terrible job. If [the athlete is] not in shape [for wrestling since football began], you look at the football coach. The strength coach gets them ready for the first day of practice. Do you know what I mean? We are trying to help them, and keep the pace in the weight room.Chuck: How were you introduced to power cleans? Did somebody show them to you? Ethan: Somebody told me about them. At the University of Tennessee we had a free weight room and a nautilus room. The guys who worked out in the free weight room were the sprinters on the track team, the throwers, and the wrestlers. I would go in there and try and emulate them. Some of the guys at the University of Tennessee, their technique was pretty darn good. I found [a lot of people] in strength training now… are really purist about technique, but my feeling is that if you get [to] moving the bar pretty quick and you can get it from the floor to your shoulders and you don’t get hurt, you are going to be fine. We look at posture, you know, keeping the chest out and the butt out and keeping that lordodic curve of the lower back, but if you move the bar pretty quick, you are going to get a lot out of it. It almost doesn’t matter what weight you are using, you can get a lot out of it.Chuck: What is the best way for you to teach athletes how to power clean or Olympic Lift?Ethan: I am going to dispel something first. When I trained doing power cleans… wrestling at the University of Tennessee, my technique was horrible. I did not really lift that much weight. I did a lot of volume. I would do 10 sets of 10 with 165lbs. I am not as strong if you look at a 1RM as a lot of the guys here that play football or the kids that I coached. There are some people that made fun of our athletes doing power cleans or clean and jerks…. They say, “If you can’t do it well, then why do it?” Well, that is not true. I point out that everyday we are trying to get better. I don’t care how your get that weight up. From the floor to your shoulders, or the floor to above your head in one motion, or the floor to shoulders and then above the head - I don’t care how you get it up; you are going to get something out of it. When it [gets] to where it looks easy - when the athlete makes it look easy - you are on the right track. There are things… we find to be true for our better cleaners: the guys that clean, snatch and jerk are our better athletes. There are some things [they do especially well, like] make sure that you don’t jump higher (and your hips are not higher) than when your legs are fully extended.Chuck: Could you explain that one more time please?Ethan: When you do a clean - when you go to jump - your hips do not go higher than when you legs are straight and your feet are flat on the ground. Chuck: Okay, that makes sense. Ethan: People try and jump up like it’s a vertical jump trying to jump up. What [they end up] doing… when [their] body is fully extended and [their] feet are flat… [is] propelling the bar [so as it is] starting to come up, what happens is [they jump higher]…. You don’t want to jump higher, all you want to do is move your feet. You are now in a position such as a front squat and in position to accept the bar.[Ethan lists some helpful tips on cleaning:1. Jump from flat feet, land on flat feet.2. When you go to do your jump, you arms are straight.3. Do not force a shrug; the shrug is forced on you.]

Ethan: Here is what I mean: when your hips are fully extended [during the jump], the arms are almost fully straight, the feet are flat, [and]… the bar is being propelled…, something has to give, and it’s your trapezium muscles. It’s a shrug that is forced into your hand from a straight arm. You don’t try and shrug - the shrug is forced on you.Chuck: It’s efficiency in movement.Ethan: It’s athletic. To me, it’s athletic. When the guys get good at it… (we have some guys that can do 480lbs, 440lbs, 408lbs - whatever the numbers are)… the guys that do it well make it look easy. When somebody tells me that you don’t need to do [power cleans], I am not saying that you… need to do that to win. We have found that our better athletes do better at those kind of [lifts] because they are athletic. By the same token, I think a deadlift is athletic. A deep squat is athletic. It is important to have a fairly adequate number on the deadlift. We like a 400lbs deadlift for our guys. We have 74 out of 77 [guys] that can deadlift over 400lbs.Chuck: Is that sumo [stance] or any way you can get it up off the floor? Ethan: We do a hip width feet and a deadlift grip. It’s not sumo. We do not do sumo.Chuck: Sumo is pretty hard on your hips.Ethan: Personally I like the hex bar deadlift. I think that’s a great deadlift. We don’t have as many bars. At Ohio [University], we had 24 hex bars, but here we only have one. In my opinion, the hex bar deadlift is probably a better deadlift than the straight bar.Chuck: We like doing those. My training partner suggested that we should give it a shot. We found with the hex bar we get more force production or thrust from our quad because our body is in the same plane as the weight. We felt more explosive off the floor.Ethan: Here is what we found: it activates your glutes more, [places] less stress on the kneecap, and less stress on the lower back. We… deadlift about once a week. We monitor it because we don’t want to be doing heavy deadlifts all the time and you don’t want to kill yourself with a lot of volume. You have to manipulate your volume and intensities.Chuck: You know, the last time I talked to you, we had spoken about power cleans, and I said, “Okay, let’s try and incorporate these into my training.” I thought I would just check them out because I had never done them. You had given me some instructions on how to do them and I followed that. In the beginning, I couldn’t do anything. I weigh about 195lbs, and I couldn’t [clean] my weight. There was no way. I just hit 225lbs recently and can now do them for a couple of clean reps. It’s amazing the explosiveness it develops. You know what else is funny? How people look at you doing them in a commercial gym. I mean, they are like, “What are you doing? [Why is] he is not sitting on a bench?” I can honestly see how the strength translates functionally. The first time I did them, just trying to get 135lbs up and balancing it was stupid for me. I kept falling forward. Your body has to learn how to statically contract the back muscle and fire others to keep your balance.Ethan: Once you learn how to do this, Chuck - once that gets to where it looks easy - you have arrived. Once the bar floats up and you are not pulling with your arms and you are not trying to shrug, your not trying to raise on your toes, it’s how quickly you raise that back, the bar moves and then quickly under the bar. What makes it athletic is you moved the bar by pressing those flat feet into the floor, raising your back and exploding the weight - the bar is propelling. What makes it incredibly athletic is you are changing directions with your butt, getting the hips back, getting the elbows under. Now it’s the quickness of your body parts

moving around and under the bar and then standing up with it. When you do that and you have arrived at that point, you are getting alright weight. How old are you Chuck?Chuck: I’m 35.Ethan: Here is my recommendation: don’t do a whole lot of reps, and don’t do a whole lot of weight. Start a workout by warming up a little bit and then go to 225lbs or 198lbs and don’t worry about doing a lot of weight. I don’t care if you stayed back at 132lbs - it doesn’t matter. Have fun with it and then go do something else - do those other things. You have now learned to use your strength and you feel good. You don’t want to do too much of it. I was doing way too much of it, but I was a competitive athlete; it was a bit different. The thing is [if] you have fun [and] feel good, you feel yourself jumping better and running better. I’ll tell you what I found: I just wanted to grab somebody and just wrestle.Chuck: (Laughing)Ethan: I felt so powerful and so explosive, I just wanted to get in a tussle right now. I just couldn’t wait to get after it. That’s what they did for me and a lot of the kids we coach with it.Chuck: You know what is kind of funny is I had come from a bodybuilding background. A couple of years ago I found Louis Simmons and Mel Siff. They preach the posterior chain and the abdomen. I had never really focused on any of that stuff. I was into working the chest and the biceps and all that other stuff. What was funny is I had starting power lifting for a while and decided to race a friend of mine who had always beaten me before. I think we were running to get pizza and as we were racing, I could finally feel my hamstring contracting and my glutes functioning and I finally beat him. I wasn’t training to sprint, but all the training was functional and translated into sport and in life. Is that correct?Ethan: Absolutely! I will give you a “for instance”. We have some guys that can do maybe 400lbs to 440lbs on the dead lift - little guys, 160lbs-type kids, but they might be able to power clean 330lbs. Chuck: Wow!Ethan: Think about what I am saying. How many guys do you know… [who] ever did a 300lbs power clean? I don’t think Louis Simmons… did. He competed in it, [but] he never did it. But the guy can deadlift over 700lbs. My point is, for sport (and not power lifting or Olympic lifting), those are two different types of sports. For soccer and other sports, we want the kids to be strong, but we want them to be able to display that strength to us in power [rather] than show it to us in strength alone. Do you see what I mean? I love the deadlift. If you ask me the best lifts that you can do, number one would be the power clean. Number two would be the dead lift. Number three would be a front squat. Number four would be some kind of press, maybe a kettle bell standing press with one arm, or maybe a dumbbell bench press with one arm or maybe a military standing press. Next I would say chin ups for your upper body. What does a power clean do? It displays the strength that you have and turns it into athletic power. I’m telling you, if you do them, all the people that tell you how bad they are and they are going to hurt you… [they just don’t know] until [they] do them; you don’t know. You have done them Chuck. Now how do you feel?Chuck: In the beginning I couldn’t do anything, but my weights progressed so rapidly. When I first started to do them I was dipping completely underneath the bar and doing a front squat to get it up. When the weights became heavier, I just tried to get the weight up without hurting

myself. The movement became a lot easier the more I did them. I have been doing them roughly once a week to get some work in.Ethan: Just have fun with it. What happens is that power you can feel; the explosiveness you can feel; you feel athletic. I have had several guys that are known power lifters that can squat 700lbs, 800lbs, 900lbs squats. When you get them in there and tell them to do a power clean, they can’t do it fast enough to get even 300lbs.Chuck: Talking to you makes me want to power clean right now. I want to do it RIGHT NOW!Ethan: You are 35. Don’t overdo it. Don’t do too much weight. Walk away and have fun. It’s not one of those things that you want to kill yourself with too much volume or weight. Just get the feel like you are feeling right now, that you want to go do it, do it and then go do something else and have fun. That is what I try and get across to people. Don’t overdo this type of stuff. That is true in anything. If you work too much on the one end and it’s just all strength, you can’t exhibit the power. What some people will do is do squats or deadlifts which are strength type movements and then do plyometrics. That is one way of doing it. They might jump off boxes with dumbbells. That is another way of showing power. It still is kind of like power cleans. I have taught this for 30 years, and I don’t have guys with ruptured discs, we don’t have guys with cracked vertebrae. Some people tell me it’s bad; I tell them that it isn’t if you do it right and you know how to get the kids to do it with the right volume and intensity.Chuck: I get sick of that whole misconception that people have that doing good mornings, power cleans, dead lifts, that you will hurt your back. What people don’t understand is that you are strengthening your back. I am getting more functional. I am able to bend down and pick up my son. That to me is what it is all about. You know, I tended to hurt my back more when I was doing strict hypertrophy training than I ever hurt it power lifting. Speaking of [some other] lifts you [mentioned]: I tried the flat [bench] one- arm dumbbell press that you recommended.Ethan: Oh yeah? What did you think?Chuck: Man! You want to talk abdominals, obliques, hamstrings, glutes, everything hurt. Your recommendation to me when I asked you “How do you stay on the bench?” and you said, “Don’t fall off.” I had only worked up to 100lbs, but you said you do 120lbs with your athletes right?Ethan: Yeah! We have about 50 something guys that can do 125’s for 5x5. We have one kid who is a receiver and is about 160lbs. He is very fast, but he does 125lbs, 130lbs for 5x5.Chuck: That’s crazy.Ethan: What this does is display your core strength. Think about your boxer that can do that. If they got it in their right hand and their right foot is planted and they have to press that up from that shoulder to lock it out and you are driving off that foot, man, think of the punching power in hitting a heavy bag or mixed martial arts that you have.Chuck: Strength being translated.Ethan: Oh my gosh! You can’t do it without your foot being on the ground, and you have to press through it and drive through it. It is tremendous strength for your core. For sport, I think the one arm bench is far superior to the 2 arm bench. The other thing is, when you use a kettle bell or a dumbbell, your shoulders are not locked in like they are on a bar. You have all that

movement in there. Chuck: It’s not a fixed plane, so isn’t it easier on the shoulder too?Ethan: That’s right. What you do is superset it. Did you superset it with one arm rows?Chuck: No, I did not.Ethan: Our philosophy. Today we did one arm bench. We warmed up with sand ball cleans, 100lbs. They are shoulder cleans. You do 5 and 5 for 2 sets. We then do a kettle bell clean and press with 72lbs kettle bell. You take it from the floor, between your legs, you clean it and then press above your head, 5 reps, 2 sets. We did some low hurdles for hip flexibility and hip flexors, did a couple drills on that. We then skipped rope for about 3 one-minute goes, 30 seconds in between. We then did hang cleans. We only went up to 240lbs for a set of 5, but we did 5 sets of 5. We started at 154lbs and then we [lifted] 176lbs, 198lbs, 222lbs, 242lbs and almost everybody on the team hit 242lbs for a set of 5. That is pretty light, but…Chuck: That is impressive.Ethan: …we have some freshmen that need work on their technique. We have kids that, just back in January, could not even do 154lbs and now they are hitting 242lbs.Chuck: That is REALLY impressive.Ethan: Okay. Today, if you are lying down and in a horizontal position and you are pushing up against gravity - if you are doing a one arm bench or a two arm bench - then you want to superset again with a horizontal position. This means a bent row so your upper back is horizontal to the floor… and you want to do [regular] rows. What you want to do is get your upper body as parallel as you can to the floor. The angle that you are pressing should be the angle that you are pulling. If you are horizontal on a press [like with the 1-arm press], [then] you want to superset horizontal[ly] with a pull. If you are doing a one arm press, horizontal to the floor, then you would want to try and do a one arm pull, horizontal to the floor.Chuck: With the same weight?Ethan: No! The thing about that is you can emphasize what you want to accomplish. If you are a wrestler, you might want to do more weight with your rowing and keep the same weight with your pressing. If you are a football player or some of the other athletes, you might want to emphasize more with your pressing.Chuck: I see! Trying to be sport specific.Ethan: Right! You can make it what you want. The grapplers might want to move up in weight and do more rows. If you are doing a standing press and are in a vertical plane and are pressing against gravity straight up, then the movement for pulling would be…Chuck: Deadlift?Ethan: Nope! A chinup. You see because you are pressing a weight up, you want to pull the weight down.Chuck: So the antagonistic muscle pair?Ethan: Yep! When you do that, you are training more of the natural way, especially if you are standing up. If you are doing chin ups, my Gosh! Think of all the muscles being developed with the chins. If you can’t do chins, maybe do pull downs or assisted chins with bands across. If you do a standing press with one arm, kettle bell or dumbbell, then you can do a pull down or band pull down with one arm. I’m just saying if you are thinking along those lines, then you are automatically thinking supersets. If I’m a power lifting coach, things might be different because that is their sport. The bench is their lift. Supersetting - I’m not sure how

that would equate with their numbers that they would need. For most athletes, this thing works pretty good and the benches are going to be fine.Chuck: So you told me that the basic fundamentals that you train [your athletes with]: Train the core, train in a standing position, and train using athletic lifts.Ethan: Absolutely! Chuck: You also mentioned last time that the best athletes that you train have the best numbers in the power clean, the deadlift and the full, deep squat. Ethan: Actually, the numbers in the full deep squat were irrelevent; it was the depth of the squat.Chuck: That is where the hamstrings and glutes kick in, right?Ethan: I think, Chuck, it has more to do [the flexibility of a kid because he] will move better if he has strength in the full range of motion. You can go back and look at Arthur Jones and his first newsletters that came out before he got into nautilus. He would tell you that one of the most important things that you can do for your hips, knees, and back for football is the full deep squat all the way down to the floor if you can get there. That is different from the powerlifting squat. You can’t compare the two. A deadlift, especially… the way Louis and those guys do it…, [aims to] anatomically… cut the distance down and make it a partial type movement because they are trying to move big[ger] weights. When you are training an athlete, it’s range of motion that you are trying to achieve. You want to make these kids very athletic, and that’s why if you look at a lot of strength coaches today, what are they having their kids do? Squatting! It tests their flexibility, as [does] overhead squatting. We actually don’t have our kids overhead squat, but it’s a good thing to test for flexibility.Chuck: Man, I tried to do overhead squats. The owner of Anafit, Larry Berube, mentioned them to me, and I said, “Alright, I’ll give it a shot.” I could barely do 95lbs on that.Ethan: It’s brutal.Chuck: The balance aspect of that was crazy. My shoulders were going everywhere. Just the 95lbs, I felt pain the next day in my shoulder girdle.Ethan: Oh my gosh! In fact, you have to be careful. In fact, we actually prefer the front squat, because we are looking more for the hip and knee flexibility as well as the ankles. Another difference between powerlifitng [and how we train our athletes] is Louis has marketed the tibia bone as staying vertical. Basically, they are doing kind of a dead lift with the weight on their back. What we are doing is Olympic type squat: whether it’s a front or back squat - particularly the front squat – [it] is a totally different type of lift. Your knees may extend out over your toes. They may extend over the front end of your toes doing a squat. You need the flexibility in those ankles and things. People say, “Well, that’s bad for you.” You know what? I differ with them. Personally, I think it’s good to have your knees out over your toes. We found that guys who do get their knees out over their toes and get nice and deep, they are the ones with less knee problems, the ones that jump the highest, and run the fastest.Chuck: It goes back to the same misconception that doing Good Mornings are bad for your back. It’s the same with squatting. I found a parallel squat is so much worse for your knees statically on the patella than a full squat. I have never had knee problems or stress on my knees when doing a full squat. When I was young and [had] just started to train and would go only parallel, I always had knee problems.

Ethan: Absolutely. We have had a lot of kids come to us that squatted in high school that would do heavy partial lifts and squats. Partial movements you have to be real careful. I am not against it necessarily, but if that is all you do, than you are cutting down that range of motion. You will get strong in that range of motion, and that is what Louis and power lifters try and do with the bench shirts and such - cut down the range of motion to lift the weight. In [their] sport, they have to do that. With an athlete you don’t want to cut down their range of motion; you want to open it up and be more flexible. I am not talking [Yoga] and Pilates type movements. It’s good to be able to get down and get that bend a have strength through the whole range of motion.Chuck: Ethan, you mentioned [during] the last interview that you incorporate tumbling into training your athletes. Can you get into that a bit?Ethan: During the summer, when we take football [players] out, we take them outside on the turf field. To warm up, we might have them do hurdles, which gives them the flexibility, the squatting down, kicking, legs over, stepping over to really work those hips and get them flexible. We also do a thing called tumbling which is low level tumbling. I used to do much more advanced tumbling with wrestlers. Here is our tumbling routine right now to give you and idea: Three forward rolls, two diving rolls, forward roll for to crab crawl for ten yards, forward roll to bear crawl for ten yards, a cartwheel to a forward roll to another cartwheel, a forward roll to high knees for ten yards and that’s the basics. We do a thing called the Cat Drill where they get down on their hands and feet in all four positions: we have them do a seat roll to one side then belly down, seat roll to the other side then belly down, forward roll then belly down and then sprint out ten yards. We then have them do that from a standing position as well.Chuck: Is that more for dynamic flexibility?Ethan: Yes! Here is the beauty of it where we make the athlete. You are developing kinesthetic and spatial awareness. The fluid inside your ears get jumbled up. This in an old physical education thing that older gym teachers knew for years and years. The fluid gets jumbled up and you get disoriented. Go out if you have a tumbling mat. Have you done tumbling before?Chuck: Yeah, I have.Ethan: Go out and do five, six, and seven forward rolls and then tell me how you feel.Chuck: You want to throw up.Ethan: Yep, you get nauseous and you are looking for something to grab on to. If you do this drill everyday - it takes maybe 3 minutes - if you do it everyday, you quickly learn how to reorient with your eyes. Making your eyes focus and refocus. You are learning that spatial and kinesthetic awareness and that is what sport is about. You are making a better athlete. If you do that roll, I start through with my hands down, I tuck my chin and I roll from my back down to my butt and I roll through. I put my feet down on the ground and I don’t use my hand to come out of the roll. I am now getting flexibility in my feet, my ankles, in my knees because I am in a deep squat. Also [I am gaining flexibility in] my back, my hips; I am developing dynamic flexibility as well as athleticism, spatial and kinesthetic awareness. A simple thing like that, in my opinion, every athlete should do everyday in sport practice and in weightlifting.Chuck: Do you know of other weight programs that also incorporate that?

Ethan: I think that Carlisle is doing that out at USC. I am not sure if Tommy Moffitt (LSU Strength Coach) is doing it, but a lot of teams are now doing it. Some teams call them Mat Drills. I am sure there are teams out there doing them. What we are going to do is get a big mat put in here and we are going to start doing them prior to all of our strength training. We used to do it at Ohio, we used to do it here some, but when you got big numbers of kids it’s real hard to do. You have to weigh that out. Now during the summers, all summer long, we do it every day.Chuck: Here is a question for you: you hear about strength coaches doing traditional types of training and you are non-traditional in your approach. Have you ever felt pressure to conform to what others are doing?Ethan: Well, you have to be fortunate. We have a sport coach, Coach Grobe, (Wake Forest Head Football Coach) who isn’t concerned with numbers. Some of the strength coaches get caught up with having so many guys having to hit 400lbs benches and so many guys hitting 500lbs and 600lbs on the squat. If Coach had told me, “I need big numbers on the squats and benches.” To me, that is an easy get. It’s not hard to get that type of numbers. To develop an athlete that can play, that is more difficult. You are balancing a lot of different qualities that make up a good athlete. Now how do you balance that? That is a little tougher than getting a bench up or a squat up in my opinion. I don’t think it takes much. Now if we HAD to do that, and everybody had to weigh 325lbs on the line, then you have to conform to that because that is what they want. It’s the same with a lot of your sport coaches, they want better athletes. I have no problem because when I was a wrestling coach, I wanted them to be athletes before I wanted them to be [wrestlers].Chuck: Who is the most gifted athlete that you have ever worked with, Ethan?Ethan: You know, they are all different. I can’t say they were all given gifts, but I have worked with some great athletes. When I was in wrestling, I worked with a guy named Kenny Monday who was a two-time Olympic Champion from Oklahoma State; Josh Howard, who plays for the Dallas Mavericks, he is a pretty gifted athlete; Calvin Pace who plays linebacker for the Arizona Cardinals (now the New York Jets). I have had so many kids that were world champions in rowing. You have basketball, football - you have so many good ones out there, it’s hard to tell.Chuck: Okay, as far as this year in the program, I don’t know if you want to answer this, but what players should I be watching for and will stand out for Wake Forest?Ethan: Well, the (Riley) Skinner kid, the quarterback, had a real good freshman year; he really helped us last year, I am looking for another real good year from him. We have a linebacker named Aaron Curry. I think he is a real good athletic, strong kid. Gosh! We have a center, his name is Steve Justice; he’s athletic. The kid weighs probably 285lbs and is a center that can move like a cat. I am trying to think. We have some young kids that are coming back in the defensive backfield that I think are going to be pretty good for us. It’s hard to say.Chuck: Thank you! I know that is a hard question.Ethan: You know, we are probably not going to be as gifted athletically at Wake, but our kids work pretty hard and will spend the time trying to get the skills and their reps. They are going to work hard in the weight room and running and that sort of thing too.Chuck: You said that one of the biggest things about being an athlete is mental toughness. Can you describe to us your definition of mental toughness?

Ethan: The one thing, the very first thing, is that we don’t allow any complaining, whining or griping; I don’t put up with it. My thing is, they might have problems with academics, coaches, somebody in the training room. I tell them that they have come to the wrong place for sympathy. If you have a problem, be a man and go to talk to that person. The best thing is never complain, and take care of the situation. Go talk to the person you have a complaint with. You don’t have to complain about them, just go talk to them. We don’t allow a lot of whining and complaining. We just don’t allow it. They know they are not going to get sympathy in our weight room. I mean, it’s tough to step out there and work. Another thing we do is… a lot of quick training. We want an appropriate time for rest, but you don’t get too much. You are not allowed to sit in the weight room. You stand up, unless you are on the bench and you are lying down. There is no sit down, lying around. We are up, we are going, we are moving. We keep the pace. Everything we do here is by the clock. Today we did 5x5 on power cleans. From the moment the first man starts, he has 90 seconds before he is starting at 176lbs. That means that second and third guy have to do their set of 5 in that 90 seconds. So if you are doing 5 sets, you have 7-7.5 minutes, you have done 5 sets of 5.Chuck: So you are booking.Ethan: We are moving, because that is the way sport is. Now as the weight gets heavier, that might change to 2 minutes or 2.5 minutes for each set of 5. You have to coach it, you have to figure it out and feel it, but you want to keep kids together and moving. The other thing is we put kids together as teams. Working kids as individuals, doing personal training… I don’t think it’s wrong. They need that and need the individual attention, but I believe kids learn better and produce more and get better results when they work together with someone else. In wrestling, I can’t train and I’m not going to be a champion without my partner being a champion too. We work together and push each other. That is what happens when you work in groups. What we found in football, between 24 to 36 kids in a group is ideal. If I am going to go up to 40, I need some other guys helping me. I found though I can handle 24-36 guys by myself. I know some people think I am just orchestrating, but to me that is a way of coaching. Getting kids to change plates, working together, being a team, going through adversity together, coach each other, calling each other candy-asses.Chuck: (laughs)Ethan: You are trying to get them to toughen up. We found that to be a better day. We then added what we call the “Champions Workout,” and it’s a big part of our philosophy. [Only one of] our kids (and I know there are coaches that take pride in kids crawling out of the room or throwing up in buckets)… [has thrown] up in 30 years. Kids don’t crawl out of the room either. We do that density type training. I’ll give you an idea of density training. How you relate those 500 chinups to how you can work it with a 1RM for something like power cleans. Power clean, 1RM, 300lbs okay?Chuck: Alright.Ethan: 242lbs is about 80 percent. That is a predicted 8 rep max. That’s a big lift for us, so we would prefer, because we want the technique down, [to] do double the volume of 8 reps, which would give me 16 reps. If we do one set of 8, we might get 5 quality reps and then they might get out 6, 7 and 8. The technique might not be as good, or they might be a little off.

That can be a good thing for their mental toughness at times, but we do something different. We’ll do 8 doubles in 8 minutes. Now we know we have 16 quality reps as opposed to 5 good ones. Do you see what I mean? Now it might take a little longer, but we have given them enough recovery time so they can do quality repetitions and they can move the bar with a vengeance and they can attack. We don’t have to yell much at the kids to be honest with you. We put the workouts on, and I say, “First man up, go.” The weightlifting itself takes care of that. When you do deadlifts, squats, cleans - when you do compound type athletic movements - I don’t know if you need to yell at them much to motivate them. Power cleans and such…Chuck: You have to self-motivateEthan: That’s right. So I don’t need to get into a guy’s ear and yell too much.Chuck: Who are some of the influences that you have had over your career? Who are the people that have influenced you, influenced the way you do things? Who are some of the people you look up to today?Ethan: Well, my mother had a great influence on me. She died on me this past November.Chuck: I am really sorry, Ethan, I really am.Ethan: Thanks. The big thing for her, she taught me the gift of life-long learning. The love to learn. To read books, to study videos, to get on the internet, to constantly be changing and moving and going ahead and to love to learn. I love to read, I love to study, I love to learn about things. That’s probably been my greatest influence. I had a very good high school wrestling coach, John Boserman, who taught me how to keep my mind open. Organization and development of philosophy: there is a guy out at Oklahoma State, in fact, he just had a stroke - his name is Myron Roderick. He was the old wrestling coach at Oklahoma State. I learned a lot from him about organizing philosophy’s and things like that. A lot of people I studied, I learned a lot from the sport of wrestling. What I did, if you were coming to our weight room, we have the platforms. I run the weight room, similar to how I would run a wrestling practice. That organization, that discipline, keeping things moving, keeping attacking comes from my experience in wrestling. From all those coaches, to Myron Roderick, to Mr. Martin from the Grambling School of Wrestling, he had a great influence on me about studying and philosophy. He taught me a lot about the philosophy of Zen and some pretty good stuff. When I got into Olympic lifting, Gayle Hatch became my mentor. You can go to his site. He has worked with a lot of guys like Tommy Moffitt of LSU and Chris Carlyle at USC and a lot of guys have been influenced by him. Johnny Parker who was at the San Francisco 49er’s - a lot of guys have been influenced by him. He is a great guy and a great technician of the sport. These guys are all open minded and thinking, trying to make it better every day. I think it’s kind of what you are doing right now, Chuck. You are asking me questions, you are learning, you went and tried something. Would you have tried that power clean before?Chuck: Not if you wouldn’t have mentioned it. I was raised a lot by my Grandfather and he passed away in ‘98. He used to have a library downstairs and he would watch me and we would sit down in the library and pick out books to read. I got the same gift from him relatively speaking that you got from your mother. A love of learning.Ethan: You know Chuck, if you agree with the thing of evolution or not, we are evolving. Technology is evolving, knowledge is evolving, spiritually, our bodies, we are evolving and the world is changing. If you don’t keep up with the change, even in the field of strength

training, you are going to get stuck in a rut and you are not going to learn to deal with the coaches and how things are going, you are going to be out on the street. You have to keep moving, keep changing, keep staying ahead. Now there are some things that are [life-long] principles: how you work with people, how you do things; we can all learn and get better. I have to do it everyday, even with myself. Sometime you get a little frustrated at a coach, or a kid, but we have to change and go with it, or we are going to be left behind. I think it’s very important. That is the way life is. Look at 100 years ago, in our manufacturing era. Computers. Cell phones. Everything is changing. You know that song, “The Time’s They Are A-Changin’? (Bob Dylan)Chuck: (laughs) I was talking to my grandmother, who is 80. I was thinking, “How many things has she seen in her life?” I think about all the organic changes in her lifetime. It’s mind-boggling.Ethan: It is incredible. These people - what they do - I get a little frustrated with people that get into one realm, whether it’s power lifting or whatnot. They get into one coach[‘s philosophy] and think that the person can do no wrong. They think they can transfer this over into anything, or they might follow an Olympic lifter or bodybuilder, or HIT and they think, “That’s it.” You know what, it’s not. I think when I was at our strength coaches convention this year, I saw Mickey Marotti a coach who was a HIT (High Intensity Training) guy and is now at the University of Florida. If you look at his workouts, they are doing dumbbell cleans, hang cleans, power cleans in their workout. He would have never done that when he was at Notre Dame or Cincinnati. Look at the guy at Penn State, John Thomas, who was a HIT guy for many, many years. I am sure he still is in some degree, but he used to be only isolation type lifts on machines. He has his kids now doing trap bar dead lifts and squats. I don’t think he ever did them much before. He hasn’t evolved into cleans or kettle bell snatches or anything like that - but I think what happens, these guys will start realizing that these things are not bad. They are very good lifts. I think they are evolving because they have to. By the same token, many strength coaches are realizing the benefits of “High Intensity Training”. Chuck: I wish my Detroit Lions would evolve.Ethan: (Laughing) Well, you know, that’s a tough situation. In that league, one or two injuries can kill you because of the small rosters they have. They are at a real disadvantage. Imagine being a strength coach at that level. If he tweaks one kid’s finger…(laughing). At the college and high school level, it’s just taken for granted that a kid is going to hurt themselves sometime. It happens. That professional level, oh my gosh!Chuck: Would you ever want to [coach at the professional level], Ethan?Ethan: No! I mean, it might be fine later on. I’m now 52 and I enjoy the college level. I would like to retire at the college level. It’s fun for me because we can still make a difference. We are still developing athleticism!Chuck: I got it.Ethan: Getting back to that one camp, and you think you have all the answers and everybody else is idiots. I mean, I even hear this about, “Well, the people in the United States don’t know what they are doing, [in training athletes]; it’s only people in Russia that have a clue.” That’s not right. There are people in the U.S. that are doing some great things, and the people that cut them down don’t really know what is going on. We are very open. We study Louis Simmons,

we study HIT, we study Olympic lifters, we studied bodyweight calisthenic people, we read anything and everything. We study Kettle Bells, Pavel (Tsatsouline), he is a friend of ours. Louis is a friend of ours. Anybody else, we will try anything and do anything.Chuck: Years ago, I wanted to do bodybuilding when I was 15 or 16. I ended up hooking up with these guys who were into power lifting and learned from them. I still want to try and learn how to Olympic lift, I want to try new things. Maybe it’s my mind, but I have to do things different. That is why when you told me about the one arm press or the power clean, I was a kid that got a new toy. I seem to get made fun of by training partners because they are like, “You’re not getting stronger doing that.” Well, I know, but I have to try something new.Ethan: Exactly. First of all, it’s not going to hurt you and doesn’t take much effort. You are performing a skill. More than that, you are learning how to turn muscles on. You are learning how to train your body and its movements as “one”. If you are doing good dead lifts or squats, if you can get that clean up and turn that strength that you have in the squat and dead [to the] power clean, you are taking the strength that you have and USING it. You are turning it into athletic power. That is the key to being a good athlete. Think of your whole body as a “team”. You have got to get your “team” to pull on the same side of the rope, to work together! Every muscle, tendon, ligament, joint and bone in the body must work together to perform athletic skills and athletic lifts! Chuck: Ethan, I can’t thank you enough for playing phone tag with me and for allowing me not one, but two interviews because of my [inability] to work a tape machine. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.Ethan: I hope you have it on Record instead of Play (Laughs)Chuck: Yep. Did it right this time. I appreciate it. It’s been a true pleasure to talk with you.

Wake Forest Athletic Strength Training PhilosophyDeveloped By Ethan Reeve, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach

I. Focus Your Training On The Core Body

The center of all power and strength in the human body originates in the core of the body. Imagine the human body broken down into three links of a chain: the upper body (ribcage up), lower body (mid-thigh down) and core body. The movements performed in this core are: hip extension, hip flexion, abdominal flexion, back extension, torso rotation, lateral extension and flexion, hip adduction and hip abduction. An athlete is only as strong as his/her weakest link. If an athlete is weak or inflexible in this core he/she will have little chance of maximizing his/her athletic potential. The core body is the center that coordinates all ground-based human movements. Focusing strength-training attention on this core body is of the greatest importance. This core body consists of these muscle groups: abdominals, obliques, erectors of lower back, gluteals, upper quadriceps, upper hamstrings, hip flexors and groin area. The more "quality" training performed with this core body in the standing position and with ground-based calisthenics the more potential the athlete has to transfer the training to the athletic arena.

II. Train With Ground-Based Lifts And Bodyweight Calisthenics.

Most athletes participate in standup power sports. Most sport skills are initiated with the feet applied to the ground. The more force an athlete can apply to the ground, with good balance, the greater the potential for speed and power. Even swimmers and other non-ground based athletes will benefit from ground-based training. Training this way incorporates the use of more joints, bones, prime mover muscles, synergistic muscles, stabilizer muscles, tendons and ligaments together. Therefore, the training of athletes on their feet and with ground-based calisthenics trains the athlete similarly to what happens in sport. Ground based training develops more athletic abilities. The more athletic abilities developed the greater the chances the athlete will maximize his/her athletic potential, provided the specific sport skills have also been developed. The ground-based lifts and activities used are: power clean, hang clean, power clean-n-jerk, power snatch, hang snatch, dead lift, standing press, push press, front squat, back squat, one leg squat, step-ups on box, lunge, pushups, wrestler twist, neck bridge, handstand pushups, cone drills, bag drills, ladder drills, dot drills, sled pulls, sled drives, tumbling drills and bleacher runs. One of the best ways to develop the core body in the standing position is to perform one arm kettlebell lifts. When you are using one kettlebell, without a kettlebell in the other hand, your core body must provide great core stabilization to perform the lift. The standing one arm kettlebell lifts one can use are: clean-n-press, snatch, clean-n-push jerk, curl-n-press, swings, and under the leg passes.

III. Athletic Lifts Not Isolation Lifts

Athletes of all sports will never isolate a single muscle group or joint in competition. Athletes use their whole body in a natural way. The superior athlete is the one that can best use his/her whole body. It is, in many cases, not how strong and powerful the athlete is but how he/she best uses his/her strength and power that determines athletic success. When athletes train with lifts, drills and calisthenics that incorporate many muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints and bones in a natural progression they are better prepared to use their whole body in sport skills. It is of the utmost importance that athletes perform athletic lifts as their main emphasis of strength training.

What are athletic lifts? Athletic lifts are lifts that incorporate a great deal of the human body's joints, muscles, tendons and ligaments together in one lift and many times in an explosive fashion. There are no lifts in the strength room that will perfectly emulate a sport skill. However, athletes performing athletic lifts will use their whole body in a natural way much like what the athlete will do in a sport skill. Here are some guidelines for athletic lifting:

1. The more muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints used through a wide range of motion the more athletic the lift is.

2. When the resistance is held in the hands and the feet are placed on the ground, in the standing position, the lift is more athletic.

3. The further the resistance is moved, during the lift, the more athletic the lift is.

4. The faster the resistance is moved, for that prescribed intensity, the more athletic the lift is.

5. The faster the body moves around or under the resistance, during the lift, the more athletic the lift is.

Champion athletes do one thing that lesser athletes fail to do. They make the skills of their sport look easy. Their movements look effortless. They know how to turn the right muscles on

at the appropriate time and relax the right muscles at the appropriate time! Champions know how to incorporate the use of their whole body within the skills of their sport. This is done by performing thousands upon thousands of repetitions of the skills of their sport at the speed needed in competition. When performing athletic lifts, as well as athletic skills, athletes are getting the best of both worlds in developing champion athleticism.

When using weight machines you are using one plane, one dimension of movement. In many instances, there is isolation of one joint or one group of muscles without having to balance or stabilize another body part. Only prime mover muscles are being used, not stabilizer muscles, for that particular lift.

Free weight training is multi-plane, multi-dimensional, as in sport skills. Therefore you are using prime movers, stabilizers and synergistic muscles. It becomes important to stabilize and balance your body in order for the prime mover muscles to perform.

One can get strong using almost any type of strength training. However, it is best to have athletes perform athletic lifts and bodyweight calisthenics during required team workouts while encouraging extra volunteer workouts. It is during these volunteer workouts where athletes may do isolation lifts. This is done because of time constraints and the functionality of athletic lifts for athletics.

IV. Train For Power - Power Is The Function Of Strength And Speed

Power = Mass Moved (Force-Strength) x Distance Time

You know the saying. Speed kills! In all sport skills speed of movement is a desirable commodity. Along with the "feel for the game" and "mental toughness" sport coaches are in search of athletes with great speed. It is the duty of the strength coach to develop all athletic qualities, especially speed of movement. As you can see in the above formula an increase in speed of movement (decrease in time) results in an increase in power. This is important for the athlete due to his/her own bodyweight, gravity, opponent's resistance and weighted implements and other resistances that athletes must deal with in competition. Increasing speed of movement with the same mass lifted improves power.

Increasing mass lifted and maintaining the speed of movement will increase power. The less time it takes to move a mass a certain distance the higher the power output. By effectively using explosive lifts, squatting movements, medicine balls, agility drills, sled pulls, sled drives, bleacher sprints, kettlebells and speed drills you can greatly increase the potential for developing powerful athletes in sport. The power clean, hang clean, power snatch, hang snatch and jerk are the lifts with the highest potential for developing powerful athletes. No other lifts even come close. Olympic lifters, on average, have the highest vertical jumps of all other athletes (36"-42"), along with Olympic sprinters, and are the fastest of all athletes in a 25-meter sprint. The Olympic lifters perform predominately explosive lifts and deep front and back squats in their training.

V. Train Athleticism

The strength coaches' purpose is to train athletes for their maximal performance in athletic competition so it is important to train their athleticism. The positive qualities of the superior athlete are: strength, power, speed, agility, flexibility, coordination, kinesthetic awareness,

rapid reorientation from disorientation, rapid gathering from poor positions, sport specific condition, skill expertise, mental toughness and being goal-driven. It is the goal of the strength coach to maximize the athletic potential of the athletes in his/her care. So, the enhancement of these qualities must be part of any strength program regardless of the particular sport. The intensity and volume level of each quality will be determined sport by sport.

VI. Train Attitude with Team Workouts

When teams lift together it provides another opportunity to develop chemistry, teamwork, leadership skills, and a competitive environment. When the strength workout is run like a sport practice the economy of time is well spent. The strength coach can keep the pace moving with good discipline and positive results.

Attack the weights! Attacking the weights means using correct technique and lots of hard work. The athlete should focus on getting better in all areas of each workout. Everyday, better and better! The strength coach should expect and demand mental toughness, discipline, focus and intensity. The athlete should give 100% effort and perform exactly as the strength coach advises. It is the role of the coach to give the athlete the best workouts available to maximize athletic potential.

The nature of competitors in sport is to attack the weaknesses of their opponents whether it be their conditioning, tactical expertise, skill level or mental toughness. Athletes should not only search for and capitalize on the weaknesses of their opponents but also be able to handle "pressure" when it is applied to them. Weaknesses displayed by athletes in the strength room and practice field can cause the athlete to develop patterns of weaknesses that will be used by opponents in competition. Some of the negative displays are: negative facial, verbal and body language, whining, bellyaching, displaying disrespect and spreading negativity. The strength coach and sport coach have an obligation to not allow such weaknesses permeate a team. When the sport coach and strength coach work together to help athletes see their mental weaknesses and help them to emphasize a positive attitude this will have a positive effect on the success of the team as well as the individual athlete.

Maintaining a positive attitude in each athlete is of the utmost importance. This is why strength training workouts should be productive and fun for the athletes. The strength coach can plan workouts so the athlete will want to come back to the strength room to get better and not dread it. Training athletes to maximize their potential requires lots of hard work and all workouts will not be fun. Since workouts cannot always be fun they are made brief, intense and challenging.

VII. Train The Push And Pull Together

As much as possible workouts are developed to train the upper body pressing with the upper body pulling. Two birds can be killed with one stone. This is done usually in the same time it would take to do one lift in most workouts. You can do this by, supersetting, rotating each set from the press to the pull. Also, it is best to take into account the positions of press and pulling. For instance, when doing a horizontal press (bench) try and superset a horizontal pull (bent row) or superset a vertical press (standing press) with a vertical pulling lift (chin-ups). It also has no negative effect on either lift because you are using opposing muscles. Some

examples are: bench and bent rows, standing press and chins and dumbbell bench and dumbbell rows.

VIII. Single Limb Lifts VS. Two Limb Lifts

In many sport skills, athletes will transfer weight from one leg to another and from one arm to another in a natural way. For athletes, it is as important to have strength, balance and coordination on one foot as it is on two feet. Training one leg at a time and one arm at a time also brings into play more of the core of the body to help stabilize while the single limb performs its skill. To make the two-legged and two-armed lifts more functional for sport it is imperative to include some one-legged and one-armed strength training in the athlete's training. When an athlete performs one limb lifts he is forced to stabilize his core body in a unique way similar to many athletic skills. If he walks with a weight, at his side, in one hand he will be forced to contract his oblique muscles on the opposite side in order to stabilize his body to remain upright. Both the one-armed and one-legged lifts will force the core body to stabilize in a unique way compared to two limb lifts.

Some examples of single limb lifts are: one-armed dumbbell incline, bench, military press or row, one-armed kettlebell snatch, clean-n-press, bent press, swing, barbell or kettlebell one-legged squat, walking lunge, step-ups on a box, one arm kettle-bell or dumbbell walking, and lunge.

IX. Short, Intense And Organized Workouts Are Best

Some of the most powerful human beings of all time have trained under the tutelage of Ivan Abadjiev, the Bulgarian Olympic weight lifting coach. Also, today many other Olympic weightlifting teams and individual lifters throughout the world have been influenced by his methods of training. Gayle Hatch, the 2004 USA Olympic weightlifting coach, has produced not only Olympic caliber weightlifters and world class athletes but has also mentored many high school, collegiate and professional level strength coaches. Power-lifters are considered to be the strongest in the world. Olympic weightlifters are considered to be the most athletically powerful in the world. Many strongmen today uses a method of training called "Dinosaur Training" created by Brooks Kubik. There are many bodybuilders and athletes today using a method of training called "High Intensity" promoted by former Olympic/power lifter, Ken Leistner and former bodybuilder, Mike Mentzer. Boyd Epley, at the University of Nebraska, using his unique training methods, has trained many great and powerful football teams. The Bigger, Faster, Stronger Philosophy, created by Greg Shepard, has been used by thousands of athletes and championship teams, in all sports, from Jr. High through the professional ranks.

Although there are some differences in these methods of training there are three common threads that run throughout all of them. The workouts prescribed and implemented in all of these different systems of training are: 1) highly organized 2) short in duration and 3) extremely intense.

Lifting Workouts:

Pre Season (Non Competition Phase)-2 days/week-30-60 mins./workout

In Season (Competition Phase)-2 days/week-20-50 mins./workout

Post Season-3 days/week-45-60 mins./workout

Options for lifting In Season:

The absolute best option is to lift in the mornings away from afternoon sport practice.

The second best option is to lift directly prior to sport practices with lower intensity and volume so it doesn't interfere with sport practice. The lift can be used as part of sport practice warm-ups.

The worst option and least productive is to lift immediately after sport practices.

Sport Practices:

Pre Season (Non Competition Phase) 1 ½ hrs.- 3 hrs./practice (mostly skill work)

In Season (Competition Phase) 1 ¼ hrs.- 2 hrs./practice

Note: From our experiences and evaluations it has been shown that sport practices lasting longer than two hours, during the In Season, will result in more injuries than practices lasting less than two hours. Due to accumulation and fatigue, the injuries may not occur during long practices but will show up nevertheless! Fatigue and overtraining will be most evident in competition with a lot of mistakes being made by your athletes!

Special note to all sport coaches:

Your athletes got into sport because it was fun. They will leave sport when it is no longer fun. All sport practices cannot be fun. When you cannot make practices fun then you can make sure the practices are short, intense, disciplined and challenging! Don't make practice miserable for your athletes! Long practices are not fun for athletes or coaches. Plan your practice so that your athletes feel they have benefited from it and really crave to come back for the next one. Your athletes will have more fun and be much more productive. Try to remember, when you were young, how much you enjoyed playing and competing! Do you really want your athletes to dislike their sport?

X. Encourage The Champion's Attitude

Although team strength training workouts are very important, the success or downfall of the athlete has a lot to do with what the athlete does between the strength workouts. Habits dealing with sleep, diet, alcohol, drugs, study and social life play an important role in the athlete's success. If the athlete has "lost control" in any of these areas he will greatly diminish his chances of reaching his athletic potential.

The champion athlete will evaluate him/herself for weaknesses and do the extra workouts to fill in the deficiencies in order to develop better athleticism for their particular sport. Hard, smart extra workouts are what the champion athlete will do. If he is inflexible he will work on becoming more flexible. If she is not strong enough in the upper body she will spend more time improving upper body strength. If foot speed or agility is a problem the champion will spend extra time bettering his foot speed or agility. The strength coach or sport coach will never "make" an athlete into a champion nor "prevent" an athlete from becoming a champion. The athlete makes a concrete decision to make him/herself into a champion.

Workouts designed and implemented by the strength coach should allow for the athlete to have the energy and desire to do extra workouts on their own. This allows the athlete to develop creativity, individuality, leadership and ownership in their own success. In the long run, this will have a positive effect on the whole team when strongly encouraged by the strength and sport coaches.

Great champions in all sports have the ability to see themselves as champions prior to their championship performances. The champion will have vivid images themselves doing athletic skills prior to practices and competitions. A champion can see himself on top of the awards stand, performing in competition, seeing and feeling his exhilaration of winning, reading about himself in the paper prior to the event happening! Practice "visualization" each and every day. This is a must for champions. Many champions do this naturally. Athletes without this natural ability for "visualization" can improve on this skill like any other skill or athletic quality.