Strength and Conditioning Knowledge Center

Weight Training to Lose Weight – Still Underrated An analysis of twelve systematic reviews and 149 studies published in the prestigious Obesity Reviews highlights the three key pillars to keep in mind when formulating a weight loss training strategy (Bellicha et al., 2021): “Aerobic training is more effective than weight training for weight loss”. We …

Brief Description of Both Olympic & Standard Barbells Olympic Bars have surpassed standard bars that were commonly used in most weightlifting facilities. While Olympic bars got their name from being primarily used for Olympic weightlifting, they are now increasingly seen in sports centers, whether commercial gyms or high-performance facilities. Due to their competitive use, these …

Features a Hockey Player Must Have Ice hockey requires high levels of strength, acceleration, speed, power, endurance, agility, and balance (Nightingale, 2014). Greater explosive strength and acceleration can make a player win the puck and have better offensive and defensive performance. Similarly, better performance indicators (KPIs) increase the athlete’s chances of success in their tasks, …

Resistance training is Medicine: Benefits of Resistance Training Cardiometabolic Health Not long ago, resistance training was considered solely as an activity for exceptionally muscular men competing in weightlifting sports. The rest of the population saw no reason to engage in resistance training, and even high-performance athletes tended to avoid such sessions because they believed it …

Countermovement Jump (CMJ) – The Ultimate Lower-Body Power Test Index The countermovement jump (CMJ) is a test during which the athletes squat to their preferred depth and then jump as high as they can. The primary purpose of this jump test is to measure the lower-body power and lower limb strength. Due to being more …

Powerlifting is a sport that has gained a significant number of followers in recent years. This sport, which was virtually unknown in the 1990s, reached its peak in the early 2000s and now, in 2023, it has become a social phenomenon. I’m sure you’ve seen people in your gym performing the fundamental exercises (squat, deadlift, …

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of people going to the gym with the aim of improving their physical fitness. While it is true that this increase in physical exercise levels has an effect on people’s health, when asked the main reason for going to the gym, it is always …

Velocity Based Training (VBT) is a type of training that allows you to know how hard you are training for each repetition of the workout. VBT is a system that is not new and does not work for all sports, but, nevertheless, it helps a lot to monitor the training load and the progress of …

Velocity Based Training or VBT is a type of training that considers the velocity of execution of the sporting gesture in question. Currently, the applications that measure the velocity of execution do so in certain movements such as the squat, deadlift, bench press, pull-up or pull-up, among others. These exercises allow you to monitor the …

Barbell Velocity Tracker – What’s its Purpose? A Barbell Velocity Tracker connects directly or indirectly to the bar and calculates how far it has moved and how long it has taken to move. The use of barbell speed trackers is growing exponentially in recent years (Gonzalez-Badillo et al., 2022). The use of bar speed trackers …

Max Effort Training – What is it? Louie Simmons was an American weightlifter and strength coach. One of the most important pieces of his legacy was the “conjugate method”. The creator of Westside Barbell, he gathered all his learnings as an athlete and as a coach for his athletes to obtain maximum performance based on …

The VBT App Velocity-based strength training (VBT) is an alternative approach to strength training that has gained increasing attention (research). During VBT, training intensity is controlled by monitoring the concentric velocity of each repetition using devices designed to measure this variable. Until a few years ago, only elite athletes who could afford expensive equipment  to …