Coach Josh

I hear “I need to get stronger” from athletes constantly. It sounds like a plan. It is not. It is a starting point.

Sometimes the honest answer is not more strength at all. It is speed of force, how fast you can apply what you already have. That is where accommodating resistance comes in. Chains change the loading curve through a lift so the resistance builds as you move through range, training the part most athletes actually lack, not raw strength, but strength expressed quickly.

This is the conversation I have before I ever write a session. Not because it sounds good, because vague goals get vague programs, and vague programs waste people’s time.

Your goal is probably fine. You just have not found what is actually standing between you and it. Sometimes the answer is not more of what you are already doing. Sometimes it is chains.

I forgot to post this one, it has been sitting with me for weeks.

An athlete of mine came through a huge surgery, the kind that makes you question whether the thing you love is still yours to have. He did not think he was coming back. I remember exactly where we were standing when he said it out loud.

We rebuilt it piece by piece. Not just the body. The belief that it was still possible in the first place.

He came back. Not just back, some of the best footy of his career. Then he went and won the flag with it.

This is the part of the job nobody warns you about when you sign up to coach. You do not just help someone get stronger. Sometimes you help them believe again. And then you get to watch them win.

Eleven years ago this was just an idea nobody believed in.

No building. No equipment. Just a stubborn idea I would not let go of, and a lot of people who thought it would stay one.

I built it anyway. Every piece of equipment in this place is Australian made. Every part of getting here cost something, years where this dream took more than it gave back before it ever gave anything at all.

Haters gonna hate. They were never going to be the ones building it.

Take a look at what eleven years turned into.

I say this to athletes every off season and I will keep saying it. Off-season is like fine wine. It only gets better with age.

Not the first one. Not even the second. The compounding is what does it. Every off season you actually commit to stacks on top of the last one, and that is where the real gap opens up between athletes who look the same on paper.

I have watched this play out over and over. The athletes who keep showing up off-season after off season are not the most talented ones in the room five years in. They are just the ones who never skipped a rep of it.

This one is on you more than any other block of the year. Nobody is watching. That is exactly why it matters.

But internal rotation is the movement nobody is addressing. And in almost every athlete I assess it is the weak link sitting quietly underneath every overhead movement, every throwing pattern, and every contact situation their sport places them in.

A shoulder that cannot internally rotate with strength and control is a shoulder that compensates. It finds another way to get to the position the movement demands. And that compensation lives somewhere in the body until it eventually becomes a problem.

I started addressing this gap specifically with my athletes and the difference in how their shoulders move and feel under load has been significant enough that I cannot not talk about it.

This is the missing piece in most shoulder programs.

Train both directions. Own the full range. Build a shoulder that holds up in everything your sport demands of it.