Interviews With Top Experts

What makes the Westside system work for you? What makes the Westside system is science and applying science to training. Physics and the laws of motion and kinetic energy play a great role in lifting weights. As a strength coach, what is your experience of training athletes? I’ve trained two Olympic gold medal sprinters, a UFC heavy weight champion; I took three tenths of a second off an indoor sprint champ in the 100 metres- in nine weeks after the high school track coach said he couldn’t run any faster. Running faster is all force production-it’s ninety percent hamstrings as is squatting. It is also essential to know how to build up hamstrings for force production. I’ve trained a guy who can jump on top of a sixty one inch box, the only people I know who who can jump higher than that are downhill skiers. When you box squat you teach to sit back into the hamstrings and then to relax the hip flexors and hip extensors, why don’t you do a powerlifting squat onto a box l

At age 45 you performed a competitive squat with 1014 pound at a body weight of 255 pounds, a world record, how did you go about training for your world record 1014lb squat? Actually, I have never trained solely for the squat. As a powerlifter, I was obliged to train for three lifts, not one. Having said that, it’s clear that distributing my time, energy and physical/mental resources into all three lifts inevitably detracted somewhat from how much I was able to squat. In fact, I actually did 1043 (or thereabouts) on that day, but the judges gave me two red lights. To see the actual breakdown of how I trained, go to www.drsquat.com and have a look at the 12 week peaking cycle there. What is your experience of training athletes? Over the years, I had much to do with training elite athletes, college athletes, and kids just beginning to get into sports. All were treated with the same respect and attention. Here’s a partial list… Personal coach and/or advisor to several wor

I conducted this interview with Natalia Verkhoshansky last year via email. She took a lot of time over the interview and I am very grateful that she did. If you are not familiar with who she is, her father is Yuri Verkhoshansky. He passed away in 2010, but his legacy lives on. Natalia is the world's foremost expert in utilizing his methods, and probably the worlds foremost expert in explosive strength training. You can learn much more about Yuri at www.verkhoshansky.com which I highly recommend - you wont regret it. Hello Natalia. It is a pleasure to speak with you. Could you tell us a little about yourself?   I was born in a family dedicated to the sport and grew up on the Track-and-Field stadium, which was just next to where we lived, and where my mother and my father usually worked with their athletes. In 1972 I was student at the Moscow Central Institute of Physical Culture and Sport, where I also began my first scientific research at the Biochemistry department under