The Best of 2013: Strength and Conditioning Product Reviews
To wrap up my “Best of 2013″ series, I’ll highlight the top product reviews I did at this site in the last year. Here they are:
1. Bulletproof Athlete – I firmly believe that Mike Robertson created the best “beginner lifter” resource available on the market today. This resource is an awesome start-up program that’ll prepare novice trainees for a program like you’d find in my High Performance Handbook. I wrote up a detailed piece on training beginners when I reviewed Mike’s resource; check it out: 5 Mistakes Beginner Lifters Make.
2. The Supplement-Goals Reference Guide – At a price of only $39 and with over 700 pages of content and lifetime updates, this resource is a game-changer, thanks to the folks at Examine.com. I explained why in this post: The Question I Hate to Be Asked.
3. Post Rehab Essentials 2.0 – I love reading Dean Somerset’s stuff. A lot of people “think outside the box” because they haven’t mastered what’s inside the box in the first place. Dean has a great foundation of knowledge, and it gives rise to some innovative ideas and a forward-thinking corrective exercise approach. This article is a perfect example.
4. Off the Floor: A Manual for Deadlift Domination – This was Dave Dellanave’s first foray into the world of product development, and he crushed it! It’s a great resource not only for learning deadlift techniques, but also because it provides a great program for improving your pull. Check out my review here.
5. The MX20V3 Training Sneaker – This was my pick for training sneaker of the year in 2013. Full disclosure: I’m a consultant to New Balance, but that relationship was in part established because I was such a big fan of the original Minimus! Since then, they’ve taken sneaker prototypes for test-drives with our staff at CP, and done focus groups with our athletes to make sure that the products get the job done. Check out this commercial I filmed for the MX20V3 in August to learn more:
There were certainly some other great products I encountered this year, but these five proved to be the most popular with my readers. Obviously, I also introduced some new products of my own in 2013, most notably The High Performance Handbook. However, Functional Stability Training of the Lower Body and Understanding and Coaching the Anterior Core were hits as well. Hopefully, there will be plenty more to come in 2014!