Brilliant at the Basics – Episode I

Strength Coach Mike Boyle recently wrote a really good blogpost.  In it, he quoted Coach Dewey Neilsen:” Be Brilliant at the Basics.”

In the video below, I elaborate…

I was a guest speaker at a basketball camp today, and this whole brilliant at the basic thing, was the “theme” of my speech.  Far too often we are in such a hurry (in sports and/or training) to get to the advanced stuff, but we fail to “master” the basics.  So my next few blogposts will be real world examples of getting brilliant at the basics.  I’ll include both basketball and fitness examples.  First up… push-ups.

The first question to come out of ANY young (male) trainee’s mouth is; “how much ya bench?”  Well, I like the bench press, but 95% of these guys can’t even perform a proper push-up yet.  So why are they worrying about how much they can max out on on the bench press?  I guess it’s in our DNA… in order to become a MAN, you HAVE TO max out on the bench!

I also have some of my young high school guys asking me, “when do we get to bench press with those chains!?!”

While I LOVE that they are excited to try new things here in the weight room, there is no need for those advanced methods just yet. Let’s first learn to master a push-up!

Here are some common push-up errors that I see on a weekly basis…

So, “Be Brilliant at the Basics,” episode I is in the books.  Check back in a couple days for some more examples along these lines.

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