Hi Mike!

You did an AWESOME job with your article on Elite Fitness. I read most of the articles on that site, and I feel like the issues you addressed are going to be of great value to powerlifter-types who many not normally be hip to soft tissue work or shoulder stability exercises.

I have and love both Bulletproof Knees and Single Leg Solution. One thing I’ve wondered is why you truncated the number of single leg movements for the latter manual. Was it that you found you could get what you needed with slightly less variety? I know you’re very busy, so perhaps you could do a blog post and address it!

Thanks for all your EXCELLENT content. In addition to the above mentioned items, I also own Assess and Correct, I’ve listened to every episode of In the Trenches Fitness, and I’ve probably read every blog post and article you’ve written for the past three years.

I’m smarter and more effective at helping people safely reach their fitness goals because of you.. And I owe you big time.

Thanks,
Mark Fisher

Mark –

First of all, thanks for the kind words! Dedicated and passionate people such as yourself are the reason I do what I do.

To answer your question regarding the lack of variety of single-leg exercises, I guess I never really thought of it like that. In other words, I never felt like I was excluding a lot of quality exercises from the program.

With regards to training and exercise in general, YouTube has changed the game.  We now have every coach and trainer imaginable trying to come up with gimmick exercises that are new and/or cool to bump up their web traffic.

Rather than coming up with newer/cooler stuff, my goal is to take the exercises that we know work, and really dial in our performance.

Think of it like this – at the end of the day, we know that squats, deadlifts, chins, presses, etc. should be the bread and butter of a strength training program, right?

So if we know those work, why would we try and find alternatives to them? Doesn’t it make sense to improve our performance on them instead?

I probably could’ve shown a zillion different single-leg exercises, but I chose instead to focus on the basic exercises and progressions we use at IFAST and that I know can net you results.

Rather than bouncing around from exercise to exercise, why not really try and milk an exercise for everything it’s worth?

A great example would be the split-squat.  It looks basic, but as I’ve shown in my recent 90-90 and blocked split-squat videos, there’s a lot we can do to improve our performance and get MORE out of these basic exercises.

I’m sure I’ve kind of bastardized this saying, but I agree with it 100%:

I don’t make the exericses you use – I make the exercises you use better.

I guess at the end of the day, I’m a bit of a minimalist. Rather than looking for the newest tweak or modification, I’d rather focus on getting more out of the exercises that we already know work well.

I hope that answers your question. Thanks again for your loyalty and support!

All the best

Mike

(Lead Photo Courtesy of Fitness Anywhere)