Anthony Donskov

Anthony Donskov is the founder of DSC where he serves as the Director of Sport Performance. Donskov holds a Masters Degree in Exercise Science & is the author of Physical Preparation for Ice Hockey.

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Anthony Donskov

Anthony Donskov

Anthony Donskov is the founder of DSC where he serves as the Director of Sport Performance.  Donskov holds a Masters Degree in Exercise Science & is the author of Physical Preparation for Ice Hockey.  

I just had the opportunity to read an incredible book that was impossible to put down.  Dan John’s “Never Let Go” was a gem full of information from a coach with decades of experience in program design, application and trial and error experience.  I enjoy learning so much from coaches like this.  Whenever I look for good read, I always look at “suggested readings” from coaches that I respect.  I also look for two variables that I think are important attributes the author must have: experience and application.   Does he/she train athletes’ regularly and what have they learned along the way?  I want to learn from someone that doesn’t sit behind a desk all day.  I also want to learn what not to do through previous experience and mistakes.  I want to learn from the great coaches that have gone before me.  This is the essence of true understanding. 

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There is a pre-determined path for success that few strength and conditioning coaches decide to take on a daily basis.  Small, yet important decisions that separate the good from the great, the mediocre from the magnificent.  There is no secret that the best coaches in the world practice “deliberately”, constantly pushing their boundaries and growing their horizons, never afraid to fail, only afraid of not trying.  It is not by chance or luck, it’s by sweat, time and energy. Robin Sharma states: " Lucky breaks are nothing more than unexpected rewards for intelligent choices we've chosen to make.  Success does not happen because someone's stars line up.  Success, both in business and personally is something that's consciously created.  It's the guaranteed result of a deliberate series of acts that anyone can perform."

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Posted by on in Coaching Development

The bedrock of success is hard work. I’m not talking about force x distance or any other quantitative calculation. I’m talking about good old-fashioned roll your sleeves up, pack your lunch box and hard hat WORK!

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It’s truly sad that in this day and age we have not set a firm bar/measure of strength in the weight room.  Bench press, front squat, trap bar dead lift maxes have all been inflated to show unrealistic numbers with sub par form.  The truth behind the reality is that coaches inflate their own egos just as much as their athletes’ bench press numbers. The results are arbitrary.  Want to get your athletes strong?  WORK!  The Wikipedia definition of work states: “In physics, mechanical work is the amount of energy transferred by a force acting through a distance.” In the strength and conditioning world, work is defined as the weight (gravity acting on the bar/object) multiplied by the distance the object travels.  If we as coaches don’t set the distance the bar travels, how can we accurately measure our athletes’ strength gains?  The truth is we can’t!  In fact not only do we set inaccurate standards, we guess, which further sets our profession back. 

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Posted by on in Programming

“It’s so easy a caveman can do it!” That’s what Gieko says about car insurance.  I wish I could say the same for strength and conditioning.  The fact is in this day and age there is too much sizzle and not enough pop, too many machines not enough free weights; too many exercises not enough logical progression, and too much gimmick without the RESULTS.  It’s scary to walk into a gym and see where we currently are in the fitness industry.  Leg curl machines are being maintenanced while rust and cobwebs are being collected on the free weights and barbells.  Records of progress and exercise prescription are not being kept, technical proficiency is non-existent, and exercise selection is just plain scary. We now have “The Kettle bell Man”, “The TRX Man”, “The Resistance Band Man”, one tool wonders expected to solve all the problems.  As Coach Boyle said “Would you hire the chain saw man, to trim the shrubs in your front yard?”  The following is a list of solutions to many exercises that are currently plaguing mainstream gyms. 

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I have had the privilege of learning from some of the best strength and conditioning coaches in the world.  Attending mentorship programs from Coach Michael Boyle, listening to Alwyn Cosgrove and Gray Cook lecture, reading books from the likes of Stuart McGill, Shirley Sahrmann, Hoppenfield and Myers, and becoming a member of StrengthCoach.com, a web site leader in strength and conditioning information and research.  Some may say that I spend a lot of money on continuing education.  I would disagree wholeheartedly! I choose the word invest!  In fact, my business (2,700 sq foot facility in Columbus, Ohio) has prospered enormously from the valuable information that I have gathered from these coaches and put into practice. 

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There is an evolutionary process involved in most professions called learning that can change the way we view things.  Alwyn Cosgrove or Michael Boyle might call these “Ah ha” moments.  Moments that make you scratch your head and think aloud, moments that challenge the way we have done things in the past, moments that allow us to grow (many of us are reluctant to grow for fear or just plain stubbornness).  It is in these moments that good coaches become great, or good coaches remain stagnant because they are stuck with “the way things used to be.”  Alwyn Cosgrove said “If you put a group of the most successful strength coaches in one room and their students in another, the students wouldn’t agree on any training philosophy or principal, whereas the coaches would agree on almost everything.” Indeed it is my personal experience that there are far more similarities than differences between good strength coaches.  Our job is to make athletes bigger, stronger and faster while reducing the chance of sport related injury. 

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When we think about a recipe for success in sports such as hockey, soccer and lacrosse, we think of speed, power, strength and anaerobic capacity.  Although these are all mandatory ingredients needed to enhance the final product (athletic potential), one of the ingredients missing in many of today’s strength and conditioning programs is the ability to accelerate. Acceleration is simply the rate at which speed increases. Very few times in the sports mentioned above do we reach top velocity and sustain this for prolonged periods of time.  However, we do accelerate constantly!  Simple physics states: “The higher the velocity, the lower the rate of acceleration.”  If we don’t sustain top velocity on a regular basis, acceleration is then one of the keys to success. 

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Although I am a relatively young strength and conditioning coach, I continuously take the time to educate myself through lecture, readings, DVD’s, seminars, mentorship programs, and most importantly through experience in training my athletes/general clients. I have had the opportunity to learn, apply and grow from many of the best in the industry. If this business has taught me one thing its that the learning process is truly ever evolving!

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