You may have noticed that lately in the powerlifting universe, there has been a trend toward low RPE training.
This trend has been misunderstood by many people, and mischaracterized by others. There are certainly aspects of it that we at RTS agree with, and we find ourselves in support of, and then there are other aspects of it, where we maybe see things a little bit differently.
Since this has been a question that has popped up in our Instagram Q&A's more than once, and it's a bit of a more nuanced conversation, we thought we would record podcasts with the RTS coaches.
Today, you'll be listening to John Garafano, Ross Leppala and Mike Tuchscherer have a conversation about lower RPE training, and ways for you to make use of this in your own training program.
Hope you enjoy.
Today's conversation is a candid one. Coach Ross, Mike and John talk about the value of coaching. After his recent meet at USAPL Nationals, Ross reflects on his responsibility in executing the training program and Mike reflects on what his role is in helping him get the best results possible.
Do you need to run a dedicated hypertrophy blocks? Can or should you train your comp lifts in a high rep range running into a meet? What constitutes as a hypertrophy block?
Coach Ross Leppala, John Garafano and Mike Tuchscherer discuss all these questions and more as they sit down to share their perspective on how to program hypertrophy for powerlifters.
In today's episode, Mike, joined by Ross Leppala, sits down to chat with new RTS coach Peter Lucey.
Peter was a recent hire of ours out of a pool of very highly qualified coaches and we're super excited to have him joining the coaching team here at RTS. Peter is also the head team coach for the Thailand powerlifting team.
In this episode, we talked with Peter, about coaching online versus coaching in person, a really interesting topic and a very important one to consider as an online coach.
There's a lot of advantages and disadvantages to both settings. Understanding what those advantages and disadvantages are for each setting can help the coach and their supportive efforts of the lifter strength journey.
Meet the new RTS Coach: Hayden Pritchard; PhD, International competitor, and veteran coach
New Zealander Hayden Pritchard has his PhD in Strength and Conditioning from AUT where his focus was on tapering strategies. He's competed twice himself at the IPF world level -- and coached lifters to those same championships. Lately he's been focusing on training and coaching Weightlifting, which has given him some unique perspective. He's very well rooted in the Exercise Science literature, but still understands that the most important thing is getting a result for the athlete.
You'll find Hayden to have a positive tone with a can-do attitude. His experience gives him great perspective when helping athletes make decisions.
Programming with Emerging Strategies (online course): https://courses.reactivetrainingsystems.com/emerging-strategies
All Access Coaching with RTS: https://store.reactivetrainingsystems.com/products/all-access-coaching
Having a bad competition prep can be nerve-racking to say the least.
What are you supposed to do when your internal expectations are aren't matching up with the results that you see in the gym leading up to your competition day? What actionable steps can you take to make the most of it?
2021 USAPL Nationals have just gone down and coach Ross Leppala sit down with his coach Mike Tuchscherer and colleague John Garafano to discuss what it's like to go into an important meet after a bad prep.
Have you ever thought about quitting?
If you're like most of us, the thought has probably occurred to you at some point.
With many of us stuck in our homes and facing rapidly changing circumstances, the year 2020 certainly brought us opportunities to question the true reasons that we enjoy our training.
When things get really hard and motivation seems far away, should we always try and add more fuel to the fire? Or can there perhaps at times be a benefit to letting the flames simmer down for a while?
In this episode, RTS coaches Mike Tuchscherer, John Garanfano and Isabella von Weissenberg discuss how to stay engaged in training when things get tough.
Last week Team RTS spoke about stress management, recovery modalities, and hypothetical scenarios we may want to implement to help encourage long-term progress in powerlifting.
In this episode, we wanted to bring a real-world case-study for how to manipulate training variables when life gets overwhelming. We had the pleasure of speaking with Team RTS Lifter Adam Jones as he describes how a health-related scare helped him to re-imagine what powerlifting means to him and how he changed his training approach for the better.
In this episode coaches John Garafano, Ross Leppala, and Jim Elli talk about how hectic life can get, how it impacts our training, and what we can do about it.
Life stressors build up over time, and if left alone can prevent us from achieving our lifting and life goals. Bringing awareness to these stressors helps us to accept them and make the next positive step forward. Training is not done in a laboratory and we hope that this episode helps you in your journey wherever you may be.
Build Momentum
In this podcast, the RTS coaches, John Garafano, Mike Tuchscherer, Jim Elli, and Ross Leppala discuss how volume manipulation can beneficial or detrimental during a development block. Should you do it? Afterwards, we hear from LS McClain as he introduces his brand new "Let's Eat" adaptive template.
In this episode, Coaches John Garafano, Ross Leppala, Jim Elli and Mike Tuchscherer discuss the Emerging Strategies Tool that gets the least amount of love...Pivot Blocks.
Can we "optimize" pivot blocks? Can we increase the success of development blocks if we put more emphasis on the pivot blocks that we write as coaches? If so, how?
In the second half of the podcast, Coach John Garafano chats with Team RTS Lifter Amanda "The Sleeper" Allen about her powerlifting journey.
Spoiler Alert: She's a nighthawk, training in silence, building her strength in the shadows, ready to fight.
Stay tuned until the end for a special announcement.
In this episode, Mike Tuchscherer speaks with Bryce Lewis, from The Strength Athlete, about the potential drawbacks to a Bottom-Up Coaching Paradigm, and what we might be able to learn from using a more Top-Down model. This one is interesting...so we hope you take some notes and send us feedback on instagram @reactivetrainingsystems.
In this fantastic episode, Mike Tuchscherer and Jim Elli chat with Jacob Tsypkin a wonderful crossfit coach and next-level thinker from Anarchos Training Methods, AND the One and ONLY Eric Helms from 3D MUSCLE JOURNEY about finding meaning within your training.
We dig deep into lessons we’ve learned through our training careers, what coaches can do to help their lifters during this difficult time, and what athletes can do to continue to train while the future remains uncertain.
If you enjoy this episode, please consider pressing the following us on Instagram @reactivtrainingsystemspodcast and sharing this to your stories.
In this episode, the coaches on team RTS discuss the experiences of coaching and training during this unprecedented time. Many of our lifters have limited equipment and resources, but hopefully we can find a way to optimize our training experience in uncertain times.
In this episode, RTS Coach Jim Elli, Mike Tuchscherer, and DeNovo Nutrition founder Ben Esgro discuss the potential issues with Data-Based coaching within the Powerlifting world.
In this episode we had the honor of chatting with 8x USAPL/IPF Champion @ 90kg/105kg/120kg, 5x 🇺🇸 IPF Master’s World Team Member: Ryan Stills.
Did you know that Ryan Stills used to play semi-pro football and won multiple championships while taking a break from a (at the time) 14 year powerlifting career?
Yeah, neither did we.
The fact is Ryan Stills is a The Perennial Savage because each year of his life he continues to one-up himself! Truly his experiences are fantastic to learn about and we had a fantastic time speaking with him and RTS Coach Mark Robb.
In this episode, Mike Tuchscherer and Ben Esgro dive deep into programming, coaching philosophy, building businesses, and Ben's recent decision to go ALL-IN on De Novo Nutrition. When in doubt, blame it on Ben.
The episode you've all been waiting for.
The Great Debate (that definitely is NOT a debate) about Periodization. Is it really useful for coaches in 2020?
This episode features Dr. Mike Isreatel of Renaissance Periodization and John Kiely a senior lecturer at the University of Lancashire discuss Periodization "theory" and how useful it is for coaches in the modern era.
Of course your host Mike Tuchscherer shares his insights and personal anecdotes for a bottom-up style training that we've dubbed "Emerging Strategies".
Please share this with your fellow lifting enthusiasts if you found it valuable!
In this episode, Mike Tuchscherer and RTS Coach and Internationally Competitive Powerlifter Isabella von Weissenberg chat Pre-Arnold 2020. The last time we chatted with Isabella was Monday, May 21st, 2018 before IPF worlds 2018 and we talked about The Mental Side of Training.
This conversation between Mike and Isabella builds on the last one and adds 2 years of both coaching and training experience. We hope you enjoy this one.
In this episode, RTS Founder Mike Tuchscherer chats with Stronger By Science (The Online Home for Thinking Lifters) owner Greg Nuckols. Greg has immense experience in the Exercise Science world, and recently completed his thesis on The Effects of Biological Sex on Fatigue and Recovery From Resistance Exercise. Not only that, but Greg is freakishly strong. |
So we wanted to learn more about Greg and how he approaches life with the accumulation of knowledge, scientific practice, and experience. Fun fact, it's pretty awesome. Enjoy!
In this podcast, we had the pleasure of speaking with USAPL Lifter, former 93kg National Champion and world level competitor David Woolson. This was a brilliant conversation as David and Mike Tuchscherer talk about overcoming injury, reintroducing exercise, how to have fun in training, and developing a sustainable training approach for long term progress.
In this episode, RTS Coaches Mike Tuchscherer, Jim Elli, and John Garafano discuss some of their most interesting case studies using the Emerging Strategies Framework in their coaching processes. If you haven't heard of Emerging Strategies before, go back and listen to some of our Emerging Strategies Basics podcasts. Happy New Year!
Enjoy
Born on February 18th, 1953, Rickey started training with a barbell at 3 years old, he started competing in powerlifting 1963. Dale's father competed back when powerlifting was called “oddlifts.”
Rickey was a 5 time World Champion and a 10 Time National champion during his 35-year competitive career. Rickey and his family have more IPF world champions of any other family in existence. To us, that is something to remember, forever. As we advanced further as a community, it can be easy to forget where it all started. What it "used to be like."
He is one of those lifters that helped to make a huge impact on the growth of the sport of powerlifting and we had the privilege of speaking with him for 1.5 hours to learn about his experience as the sport has evolved.
You can find the link to the podcast in our bio above. Let us know what the most interesting thing about the conversation was. We'd love to know and we hope you enjoy listening.
#BuildMomentum #TitansOfPowerlifting #ReactiveTrainingSystems
In this episode of the Reactive Training Systems Podcast, Mike Tuchscherer chats with head coach of Team Juggernaut, Max Aita.
Max has coached National Record holders in Weightlifting and All Time world record holders in Powerlifting. Max has also trained under legendary Bulgarian weightlifting coach Ivan Abadjiev and shares stories from his experience training and coaching weightlifting/powerlifting all over the world. Glad to have the opportunity to speak with him and we hope you enjoy!
In this podcast Mike Tuchscherer chats with The Strength Guys coach and current PhD candidate Kedric Kwan. Kedric is studying how to maximize weight cuts and nutritional strategies to optimize athlete performance in training and in competition.
Reminder the RTS Classroom Emerging Strategies Framework Early Bird enrollment starts this Thursday, September 19th 2019. Use code FRAMEWORK for 30% off your first month.