Today’s episode features Mike Guadango, coach and owner at Freak Strength in Oakland, New Jersey.  Mike has mentored under coaching legends such as Buddy Morris, James “The Thinker” Smith, and Joe DeFranco.  He has coached athletes from NFL, MLB, NBA, MLL, Rugby League, Rugby Union and Olympic medalists to pre-pubescent athletes.  including 10+ NFL Super bowl Champs, 10+ All-Pro/Pro-bowl selections, 5+ College National Champions, 10+ Division 1a All-Americans, 20+ Collegiate All-Americans & players from every Division 1 conference.

Mike’s coaching success aside, he is one of the most authentic and transparent coaches in the industry.  As a field, we are always looking to push forward into more efficient and effective systems that serve athletes to a greater capacity.  Mike has been transforming himself into a “one stop shop” as a coach, and upcoming acupuncture practitioner that allows him a greater versatility in his role in the high performance spectrum.

If you listen to this show often, you know that I value real and authentic conversations, and this talk is the epitome of that.  For this episode, Mike talks extensively on the role of the strength coach in context of high performance sport coaching, and the potential of the physical preparation industry to evolve into something greater.

He also discusses things like his own personal journey in sports performance, and how he now views athletic development and training.  This show ties into James Smith’s global dynamics model (of which many previous podcast guests are evolving towards) and offers great insight into the future of sport training from a philosophical perspective.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.





Key Points

What led Mike into getting a degree in acupuncture as a sports performance coach
Mike’s journey over the last decade that have changed his thoughts on the goal of sports performance
How little we actually know of training in regards to the grand scheme of things
How Mike’s views on barbell and maximal strength training has changed over time
Mike’s view on the role of a strength coach and who should be assigning GPP exercises and work loads in a high performance program
How Mike performs his movement training for his athletes to help them feel and perform at their best




“The bigger a business gets, the more inefficient it becomes”

“More tools in the tool box, now there are less people that need to man the tools”

“If you asked me a question 6 years ago, I had an absolute answer”

“It takes 10 years to start learning someone else’s techniques, then you spend another 10 years developing your own techniques, then it takes another 10 years you spend honing your techniques, and then you teach”

“The whole industry is a big salesy industry, and no-one is doing anything new”

“Unless you know your why, there’s no reason to be doing it”

“Isn’t that the goal, use as little stimuli as possible to yield the same result”

“Getting stronger is as easy as falling out of a boat and hitting water….As long as you aren’t dealing with weightlifters and powerlifters, let’s not overcomplicate it”

“If you get one leg strong… aren’t you getting both legs strong? We are splitting hairs here with so much stuff.”

“Because we don’t know enough, stay the f^@k out of their way and let the athlete perform”

“What is the true measurement of the exercises we are doing, why are we doing them, why are we so married to them, what are they going to do?”

“If an actual skills coach was able to learn and apply what we do we (strength coaches) are done; from a general standpoint I don’t think there is a need for a strength coach.”

“The skills coaches should be able to acquire this information with relatively little effort, what I think is that strength coaches are going to start to become ...