Top 10 articles: Dave Tate

I am a big fan of Dave Tate.  I can probably quite fairly claim that his articles taught me how to bench properly.

But many people only know Dave Tate from one type of article or another.  They think of him as the bench guru or more generally as a powerlifting writer.  However, Dave has written a surprising number of articles and they span a remarkable number and variety of topics.

Here is a selection of my favourites:

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1. Education of a powerlifter (one and two) – this series is possibly the most remarkable piece of creative writing (in a good way!) that I have ever read in the context of strength and conditioning.  It captures all of the greatness of powerlifting and competing and the achievement of goals.  If you read nothing else this week, read these.
2. Nine secrets of training success (one and two) – over these two awesome articles, Dave sets out his key recommendations for achieving success with your training.  (1) Set high goals and keep them to yourself, (2) build yourself up and don’t tear other people down, (3) let your programme guide you but be prepared to detour where necessary, (4) do stuff you are bad at, (5) get your head right when it comes to building muscle or losing fat: if you’re 6 foot and 135lbs then start eating and if you’re 300lbs and can’t walk 100 yards without pausing for breath then stop, (6) don’t get carried away with arguing about training when you could be focusing on what’s important, (7) believe in yourself, (8) focus on one thing, (9) shut up and listen.
3. The evolution of Dave Tate -  if you are curious to read more about Dave’s training history and background then this is the potted version.  If you already know about Dave then this is probably not going to tell you anything you didn’t know already.
4. Eat my meat (one and two) - in these quite remarkable articles, Dave cuts out all the waffle and distills years of training wisdom into tiny nuggets of information.  There is so much of technical value in here that other people might spread it out over ten or even twenty different posts.  Not Dave, though.
5. Periodisation (one and two) - Dave takes his first article to explain the traditional Western model of periodisation.   He then uses the second article to explain how the Westside model of conjugate periodisation works.  I have been thinking a lot about periodisation recently and keep banging into the same idea that Dave mentions in his first article.  I just can’t understand why people would want to spend so much time doing work with such low intensities.  To my mind, that’s the fastest way to lose strength.
6. Excerpt from Under the Bar – as you’ll have figured out by this point, Dave has written quite a lot in his life.  He’s also written a book (or two) and this excerpt is from the chapter on honesty.  I am a big fan of honesty, particularly when it comes to yourself.  Most of the biggest plateaus I think people have are usually from a complete lack of honesty with themselves, whether in respect of where they are as a beginner/intermediate or advanced lifter or what they are actually eating…
7. The Dave Tate Project by John Berardi (one and two) –  over the course of two long articles, John Berardi details his discussions with Dave as he looks to lean out and start eating properly, hopefully getting into better shape and improving his health in the process.  As you might expect, there is humour aplenty to be found, as Dave reveals some really quite shocking eating habits and resolves to change things going forward.  By the end, he has an enviable physique and some great blood work.  Just goes to show that you can achieve anything if you put your mind to it…
8. A day in the life - I really liked this day in the life that Dave wrote a long time ago, when he was still competing at powerlifting.  It is a remarkable testimony to the man’s drive to overcome any and all obstacles in his way to building a great company, a great total and a great family.  At the end, he gets philosophical and considers how he will feel about everything on his deathbed.  Will the PRs mean anything?  The money? No.  The thing that matters is doing what you loved doing, all of the time.  Everything else is rubbish.
9. The Not Safe For Work rant - don’t read this if you are easily offended but, in this bizarre article, Dave spends the first half discussing why most modern trainers and strength coaches don’t know what they are doing and the second half talking about, well, you’ll have to go and find out because I’m not going to tell you.  All I can say is that he is remarkably creative…
10. Jason Ferruggia interviews Dave Tate – if you’ve made it all the way through this batch of articles, congratulations!  Enjoy this light-hearted interview about everything under the sun.  Pay particular attention, however, to the debate about dynamic lifting.  Jason is not a fan and, to put it bluntly, Dave is.  I liked the way they aired the key issues around this training technique and it’s definitely given me the spur to go and read more about it.  In a nutshell, Dave thinks that without it, it is hard to learn the skill of applying maximum force to a barbell.  Interesting stuff.

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That’s all folks.  If I missed an obvious one, please let me know in the comments.