Buddy Morris DVD

Buddy Morris: 

Buddy Morris discusses the many facets of his strength and conditioning program at the University of Pittsburg in a lecture at he recently gave.  He seems to have a program that is much like what we do at FAU.  He stressed several points and gave a lot of good information.   In his lecture he tells of the evolution and future of strength and conditioning.    

The first thing that I found interesting was that Buddy does not do Olympic lifts.  Buddy gave the argument that plyometrics, med ball throws and sprints have the same motor unit recruitment as Olympic lifts.  I could not agree with this more.  I feel that the complexity of Olympic lifts often makes them a waste of time.   Like Buddy said, “Olympic lifting is its own sport”, and when you are trying to improve your football game, you cannot get too hung up on mastering lifts.

One thing that I really like that Buddy does is the fact that he does nothing but body weight movements for the first two weeks in the weight room.  When Buddy gets a new athlete, he is interested in seeing how the athlete moves.  Once Buddy gets a good idea of this, he is able to move forward with the athlete.  With gymnastics it was always important to get a simple baseline on technique, form and general physical ability.  I feel that manual squats are an extremely useful exercise.  Buddy says, “Simplest stuff is sometimes is the best”.  I feel that the basics are the foundation for everything else you will do.  This is also important for injury prevention.

One place where I disagree with Buddy is where he said that he is “Paid to be an A-hole”.   I don’t think there is ever an excuse for being an “A-hole”.   He continued by saying that we are paid to train athletes and get athletes to work.  I agree with the second part, but I don’t think the first part Is necessary.  I fell that in order to reach athletes and make progress that there needs to be a mutual level of respect.  Athletes can become unresponsive if they don’t like the way they are treated.  I think it is more important to educate the athletes and find other positive ways to reach them.  Having said that, Buddy has been doing this for 30 years, so he has much more knowledge with dealing with athletes than myself.

Buddy does not allow yawning in his gym.  I think that this is very interesting.  There are times when I yawn in the gym, but that is just me pushing myself when I should probably be sleeping.  He has a very disciplined approach and I feel that I would more than likely find a happy medium.  I like to be strict, but I would never be that strict.  Bending over in Buddy’s gym is a sign of weakness and results in extra reps.

Buddy seems to really emphasize the fact that we are all seeking the perfect program, but that none of us are going to find it.  There is always more to learn and a program will always undergo changes.  He does that same lifts that all the programs use, but he uses the programming to make his design different.  There are certain things that I disagree with Buddy, but not two strength coaches are going to be totally in agreement with everything.