New Basketball Shooting Video

Hey guys,

Just posted a new basketball shooting video. Check it out!

Taylor

New Basketball Training Blog

Hey guys,

If anyone is interested, I've got a new basketball training website over at http://www.BasketballRenegades.com.

Check it out!

Taylor

Legalize Raw Milk!

Raw milk has long been known to be an incredible food. Unfortunately, it has been made illegal to purchase in many places all over the world, including my home of Ontario canada. Please contribute to the health of Ontario by signing this petition to legalize raw milk:

http://www.petitiononline.com/rawmilk2/petition.html

Until the law is passed, here is a great resource to find raw milk in your area:

http://www.realmilk.com/where.html

Lets bring food back into it's natural state and eliminate many of the diseases caused by modern man. 

- T

How Bad Do You Want It?

I just saw this post on Joe DeFranco's blog and I had to put it up here for those who don't check out his blog regularly. This goes hand-in hand with my earlier comments about alcohol. I suggest more people take this advice to heart:

Q: Joe,

I just turned 21 and i play division iii football in pa. I grew up in philly and have been partyin with my friends there since i was 13. Problem now is, I take my training and health very seriously. But all my friends want to do on the weekend is go out and get drunk or high, then stumble into a diner at 4AM and eat crap. Alcohol and drugs really mess with my training and the late nights on the weekends throw off my sleep cycle. What should i do boss? I don't wanna be a social outcast but at the same time i'm inhibiting my progress by going out like that. any response, even if its not on the site would be helpful. thank you

dave

A: Dave,

After reading your question, there was no way in hell I WASN'T going to post it on this site!

I'm going to give you a wake-up call brotha - YOU'RE A BULLSHITTER! That's right, I'M CALLING YOU OUT, SON! Do you really expect me to believe that you're "taking your training and your health very seriously" when you're telling me that you're drinking and getting high??? Now I'm not going to turn this into a "Don't Do Drugs" lecture because I'm sure you heard it all before. But, what I will tell you is that anyone worth a shit to me is NOT a follower. Call me cocky, but I was raised to be a LEADER, not a follower. I won't associate with followers or haters anymore - I only surround myself with other leaders and self-motivated people. And guess what? NONE of the people I associate with are losers, nerds or "social outcasts" (as you say)!

Here's a quick story for you...

I have a client that I've been training since high school. He's always been his "own person" and he's always been in the "cool" crowd - even though he doesn't drink and party a lot. You see, this kid never wanted to be "ordinary"...he always wanted to be "EXTRA-ORDINARY". Now don't get me wrong, he still goes out and he's very social, but unlike YOU, he doesn't abuse his body because he really "takes his training and his health" seriously. In fact, before this kid left town a couple months ago, I went to dinner with him and his girlfriend. After dinner, we hung out at the bar for 2 hours. While everyone else was drinking, he drank water. About an hour into the drinking he even excused himself, went out to his car, drank a protein shake, then came back in the bar and continued to have a great time with the rest of us. Not one person busted his balls because everyone knows this kid has a desire to be the BEST. He doesn't give a shit what YOU (or anyone else) thinks...and he doesn't give a shit if he doesn't "blend" with the crowd, either. Instead of following in other people's footsteps, he blazes his own trail. In fact, the morning after the night I'm referring to, he blazed his own trail to Houston, Texas.

Yes, the individual that I'm referring to is Brian Cushing. I'm going to assume that you and your friends think Brian Cushing is pretty cool. But guess what? He wouldn't be half as cool if he "blended" with your crowd. Because if he did blend with your crowd, he wouldn't be "Brian Cushing". He would be "just one of the guys"...and he sure as hell wouldn't be where he is today!

Now I'm not trying to say that if you stop drinking, you're going to make it to the NFL. But my point is that every person that I know that is successful in their field has been a LEADER. Leaders (regardless of their age or their profession) don't give a shit what other people say about them. In fact, when people start talking shit about you - that's when you know you've made it!

The choice is yours, Dave. If you truly want to start "taking your health and training seriously", you already know what you have to do. Drinking, doing drugs and staying up until 4AM obviously isn't going to help you accomplish your training and health goals. This doesn't mean that you can't hang with your boys or you're never alloud to have a drink. But if drinking and doing drugs continues to be a regular occurance for you, I will continue to call you a bullshitter.

Are you a follower...or are you a LEADER?

The choice is yours, Dave...

-Joe D.

------------

This should be a call to arms for a lot of athletes out there. Decide what you want to achieve for yourself in this life. Recognize the price that you have to pay to achieve greatness and then get busy paying that price. 

Train hard. 

- T

 

Training - Summer 2009

Training for the Circus

Stability balls and BOSU balls have become a pet peeve of mine lately. You'd be hard pressed to come into the gym at my university on any given day and avoid seeing some moron squatting with their feet up on a BOSU ball, or trying to stand on a stability ball while doing their bicep curls. I was about to write up a long winded post about how dangerous and pointless these activities were, but Charles Poliquin summed up my thoughts nicely in today's T-Nation article:

About 70% of Swiss ball exercises are worthless. It's just one of those things where people are taking an idea too far. There's some value to it, but it's not a cure-all.

Most personal trainers and strength coaches just don't know how to get people strong. I remember talking to this one trainer who uses all these stability gizmos. I asked him why he used all that shit and he said, "I'm not good, so I have to do these weird things so people will come to see me."

I call it "entertainment training," not strength training. And any time I see that horseshit, I want to kick the personal trainer in the head with a pair of steel-toe construction boots.

— Charles Poliquin

If you don't know who Charles Poliquin is, and question the validity of this statement, maybe it's you who needs a kick in the head with a pair of steel-toe construction boots. 

I'll leave you with one final thought: Let's take two twins and put one of them on a strait-line mission to take his squat from 225 lbs up to 405 lbs. Let's give the other one a steady dose of squats with 45 lbs standing on a BOSU ball. At the end of the year, which twin do you think will be jumping higher? Running faster? Looking better naked? The answer should be obvious. 

And when the hell does the ground move under your feet in the real world anyway? 

I will make an exception to this rule, however, and say that if the instability is above the waist, then the movement is fine. This means unstable pushups and things of that nature are fine, and can actually be very productive movements. Eric Cressey goes into detail on this topic in his product The Truth About Unstable Surface Training. 

Until next time, stay off the damn BOSU ball and train hard!

- T