Monday...

the OPT family...that is one happy guy in the middle..I am so grateful

Black Box Summit Part 2 - learn how to get to the next level!

an old interview of one of the best - Charlie Francis:

Q: If an athlete hits a personal best, you usually stop the workout, regardless of what's left on the paper. Why is that?

CF: Well, it's dangerous. The time people get hurt is the next session after they've had a tremendous performance.

Q: Because they're trying to top themselves?

CF: Not just because they're psyched up and trying to beat their PR, but because their bodies haven't recovered from it. With very heavy weights it can take ten to twelve days to get over a maximal lift, same thing in sprinting. There's a huge difference between 95 and 100% performance. So instead of the 100 meters in 10 flat, it becomes 10.45 or 10.50. The difference in output and effort is unbelievable. Even though it's in the 95th percentile and qualifies as high intensity work, it's a joke. Keep in mind this only applies at the highest levels. If a kid gets a personal best, so what? We're talking about world record levels.

Q: In your book, The Charlie Francis Training System, there's a picture of Mark McKoy benching 315. The caption reads, "This is an indication of the upper body strength required to be a 10.19 second 100-meter sprinter and the number three hurdler in the world in 1987." Can you clarify that? Does a person need to bench a certain amount to be a contender?

CF: It's not a formula that says, you've got to be able to bench this and squat that. What it means is that high-quality performances are the result of high-quality training. There's nobody who can go out there, for example and say, "Oh, I want to beat Michael Johnson in the 400, well, I'll just go do what he does." Look, if you can't beat him in the race, you can't do his workouts! It would take years to build up to those things, so who cares what he does in his workout? You can't do it, so don't worry about it!

love it...