It does not PROVE anything!! Athletes require skill to win, not muscle mass (although it helps). The performance of an athlete in no way determins the ability of a strength coach. Hockey has very little to do with strength, it is all skill. Gretzky anyone? NHL athletes are not strong, most of them would be about average in a large YMCA, but they can skate and stick handle. Most people the world over have never laced up skates, so training NHL athletes means exactly FUCK ALL as far as quaifications. Check out Brzycki’s article on the secret of speed, and see how goddamn little all the “Sports Scientists” have contributed to sprinters over the last 50 years. Factor in the fact that surfaces are faster, that the starting blocks and cleets are better, and that most of the runners are ON about 1 million different drugs (as well as tons of bullshit supplements and health food products) how much are these yokel’s books worth?
colin is so right-training athlete’s - who?, we’ve all fallen for the sales stuff (I have spent a lot of $). hey I like bodybuilding and will still keep reading.
Well, I guess I’ll post here again. (Kind of nice to see this thread coming back up after a few months’ lay-off…!)
Colin, I think that the fact that the athletes themselves pay a lot of money to have CP coach them is the definitive point here. If they think they’re getting something out of his help, who is anyone else to say that they’re not? And while technique is probably (I don’t know for sure; I’m not a track coach) the most important point for speed, I would think that, technique being held constant, more strength would translate into a speed increase. It just makes sense, right? So strength training would be beneficial (aside from any mass gains).
Also, I have tried King’s stuff and CP’s stuff, and there’s no question in my mind which is more effective (CP’s, in case you’re wondering). Luke Sauder added half an inch to my calves, his tri-set shoulder routineand trap program put so much mass on my upper body that I had to buy new shirts. And I’m a 39-year-old ectomorph with 20-plus years training under my belt. For what it’s worth.
As far as the point about CP’s not being qualified to train bodybuilders (as opposed to strength athletes), um, what? Isn’t “The Poliquin Principles” geared toward bodybuilders? Or did I miss something? And CP has stated several times (with stats to back himself up) that his athletes generally gain lean body mass on his programs. Personally, I’d really like to see what he could do with someone like Shawn Ray…
Finally, in the stuff that I’ve read, CP almost always makes a point of attributing original sources. But even if he didn’t, it would still be okay with me. Number one, he’s popularizing good routines for a whole new generation of bodybuilders, most of whom would never know about them otherwise. Number two, does anyone think that Arthur Saxon invented the Bent Press? No, someone else taught it to him. And someone taught that person. And so on and so forth, back into antiquity. I’d be willing to bet that if you did some real research, you could probaby find that Roman gladiators did the Bent Press. So who really knows WHO invented any given movement…?
Personally, I like CP. I might not like him in person, but then again, as a teacher myself, I know how hard it is to keep one’s cool when faced with the same idiot question for the 10,000th time. So I can cut him some slack in that area. However, I do agree that he would do better to publish some NEW stuff when he puts a book together. Or tape a seminar with new stuff. If he did that, I’d be first in line…
Look at it this way, you pay $30 bucks for 52 pages worth of information on set rep manipulation from poliquin. On the other hand you pay $45 to $50 bucks for 450 to 500 pages of the most detailed, information packed, eastern block weight training theory in the book Supertraining by Siff and Verkoshansky. There is simply no way poliquins book is worth $30 bucks. If It is, then supertraining is should cost $300 to $400 hundred bucks. Buy supertraining and see what real science of strength training should look like.
WOW, you guys have read Supertraining?! Why are you posting on this board when you could be making thousands & thousands of dollars & getting buckets of Olympic medals coaching elite athletes?!?!