“The human body is a biocybernetic entity, a self-tuning, self-adjusting, capable of finding the efficient movement pattern through repetition.” — Ilya Zhekov, Russian Sports Scientist

You have these so-called movement coaches running around claiming that strength is not important and that the most important thing is how you move. Then they try to sell you with all these movement patterns bullshits and goobly guk that sounds smart.

As the late Charles Poliquin once told me: the only reason these coaches come up with this shit is that they can’t get anybody strong!

I don’t know where the hell these people come from. I played sports and from what I know in sprints, football, and baseball is that the stronger athletes are 99% of the time the better they are in overall performance.

They are faster, stronger, and more powerful.

I have seen and been in countless races where you see athletes look smooth, move beautifully, and look so amazing with their technique or for lack of better word movement skills. And then get smashed, smashed as in don’t even make the finals in sprints or get their head taken off in a football game.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying movement is not important—I’d rather use the term Technique. But for the sake of this article to drill home my point, we will use movement.

Listen and listen to me clearly from a coach who has developed numerous athletes in many different sports.

The athlete must be exposed to high-intensity limits of 80 to 102 percent as frequently as possible. This not only improves movement patterns and coordination but to prevent injury.

These fuckheads don’t understand that your movement patterns are different at 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%,90%, 100%. So, how are you going to master your movement at 90% plus if you are always working in the 60 to 70 percent range?

In fact, the more the athlete is exposed to 92% and above intensity, the more carryover or movement coordination carry-over benefits to sports performance.

Again, I am not saying technique is not important, but I’ve witnessed countless times where athletes with great techniques are getting smoked by other athletes that don’t even have greatness techniques, but they are stronger and more powerful.

Last year I wanted to take up Jiu-Jitsu and I have no skills in that area. In one class, this guy who is bigger than me with over ten years of experience was rolling with me!

I was average strength by my standards and the dude could not move me when I decided I didn’t want to be moved—he was trying all sorts of techniques, but he was too weak to get me in the positions he wanted me in. So, if I was as close or equally skilled as this guy I would have killed him.

I felt I could have smoked him anyway as I was easing up on him so as to not make him look bad. Everyone came up to me after and said, “Wow, you are a strong man you should look into taking jits more seriously.”

I remember when I was a kid and we got into a fight with some guys from another neighborhood and some dude was literally banging his thighs off his head doing these crazy kicks, looking all sharp and shit. I was fucking scared but my friend took him on and knocked him cold with one punch.

That one is another example of a great-looking movement, but when met with shared power and speed, it becomes completely useless.

As Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

Another saying that I grew up with when I used to box, “Bags don’t hit back.”

My point of all these is no matter what these moronic movement coaches say, you have to and you must develop in the most intense environment possible to become a DOMINANT athlete.

And the fact that it is hard for most people to conceive or understand, they end up falling back to some made-up title called Movement Coach.

Back when I was interning with Charles Poliquin, I got some cards made—500 of them be exact and I was all proud of them. I wrote, “Clance Laylor, Performance Enhancement, and Movement Coach.”

Charles took one look at it and tossed it on the desk and said, “It’s only these geeks who don’t know how to get athletes strong call themselves Movement Coaches.”

A whole 500 cards and money wasted as I respected what he said. Because I knew how to get athletes strong. I was a little geeky though.

The point is that we as Strength Coaches must perverse and enhance the body’s tissues to deal with the complexity and stresses of one’s sport.

That is the real problem—not preparing athletes to handle their environment properly. No matter how hard you try, you can’t replicate sport in the gym. If a coach says he can, they are lying.

We must prepare the body, and the body moves differently at low intensity than at high intensities. So, prepare the elastic components properly and we will dramatically reduce injuries in sport.