Charles Poliquin: A Tribute to the Strength Sensei
Everyone one of us begins our quest for strength knowing nothing. Through our journey to become the strongest versions of ourselves, we learn from those who traveled the path before us. Who we decide to listen to and learn from on that journey may accelerate our progress or throw us off the track, completely derailing us forever. Lucky for me, I found Charles Poliquin and his Strength Sensei website early on in my own quest. While I regrettingly never went to a seminar or met him in person, I’ve read much of his work, listened to him on multiple formats, and watched many of his videos online. While Charles undoubtedly had many, many haters because of some controversial methods, training techniques, and opinions, you cannot argue with his results. When the conversation of greatest strength coaches of all time comes up (which is probably one of the most popular family debates at Thanksgiving dinners across America), Charles is sure to be on that list.
What I loved about listening and learning from Charles was the way he dispersed information. He was extremely sarcastic and vivid with his wording. There are so many examples of how Charles spoke but a few I remember him saying were (and I’m speaking from memory so if it’s slightly off, don’t kill me) “early on in his career he was so poor he had to paint the furniture on his walls” and another being “if your body fat was over 10% the only carbs you were allowed were 10 licks of a dried prune”. This is how he spoke and I loved it. Many of the “experts” in the scientific fields know their material but are boring as hell when they talk about it which causes you to lose interest and not retain anything. Charles was the opposite. The way he spoke made you remember what he said because it was over the top and funny, and he knew it. He spoke like this on purpose so people would remember what he said.
Charles was not only an entertaining speaker, he is one of the most accomplished strength coaches of all time. Hailing from Canada, Charles began his career with the Canadian national volleyball team back in the mid 1980s and continued to train top athletes until his death in 2018 at the age of 57. Throughout his career he trained high level athletes in most major sports and famously trained multiple Olympic medal champions in multiple sports. Charles earned his bachelors in Kinesiology and masters degree in Physiology. While searching through peer reviewed articles, Charles found that the best peer reviewed information on strength training was in German. So he set out to learn German. He spoke multiple languages including English, German, Spanish, French, Chinese, and Italian. He was a lifelong learner and believed that “learning leads to earning”. Poliquin taught himself to speed read and would talk about reading stacks of peer reviewed research or multiple books on his long flights. He made it known that in order to be the best strength coach he could be, he had to learn from the best coaches out there. He flew all across the globe to learn from the greatest coaches in specific fields to add more tools to his tool belt.
Charles indeed had many, many tools in the tool belt. I remember watching a video with Poliquin and Mark Bell where Mark was so tight and inflexible he could not get his hands on the bar properly to squat. After some voodoo with a pen being jammed into his pinky finger along with a few specific stretches Mark could get into a position on the squat he hadn’t been able to do in years. This was not unique or a one-off situation for Poliquin who used unique and obscure techniques from other sensei’s all across the globe in a variety of fields to get the best out of his athletes.
What made Poliquin different was not only his knowledge, which was vast, his attention to detail helped to put him a step ahead in the strength and conditioning world. He developed and popularized cutting edge programs such as German Volume Training, German Body Comp,1-6 method, as well as training techniques such as tempo oriented programming, cluster sets, antagonistic training (A1/A2), and the use of waves. He was a proponent of using different parameters for different muscle groups such as low reps for hamstrings because of the muscle fiber typing in hamstrings which tend to be faster twitch and therefore need heavier weight. Poliquin also helped to pioneer many things that seem normal today, such as: food sensitivity testing, hormonal testing, peri-workout carbohydrates,training based on individual neurological typing, the level of importance he placed on biomechanics for athletes and how to train their weaknesses, and so many more training and performance enhancement techniques and tools.
You can find much of this information in the 8 books he wrote and hundreds of articles for websites and magazines. He developed certification systems that are still run today by his mentees. Coach Polquin was one of a kind in many respects. I’m thankful to have found him and his information early on in my lifting life and wish I would’ve taken the next step to go learn from him in person. His information continues to live on today through the work of so many who’ve learned so much from him.
Charles Poliquin 3/5/1961 - 9/26/2018, Legends Never Die.
