My experiences with Brian Carroll, powerlifter and coach..

With the huge number of people out there offering coaching services, I want to share my personal experience with Brian Carroll and his coaching. I reached out to Brian about 10 months ago stuck at a plateau where I was having trouble hitting depth, and putting all my best “gym” lifts together on a platform. I knew I needed some help. At 41 years old, my biggest concern was making progress on my lifts – injury free. The year before, I had suffered a back muscle strain from improperly deadlifting. This had set my training back 6 months at least. My long-term personal goal is to achieve a Pro total – and I also knew if I kept getting injured and set back like this, my “biological timeclock” was going to run out before I hit my goals.

Brian set me up on a 10 week program built around my goals. At first I looked at it, and I was like “Hey, why don’t we do this, or that?” .. and he said “Trust me, let me steer the ship.” .. he was right. If you are going to hook up with Brian, you need to be all-in and trust him – or don’t waste your time and money.

If you are willing to put your trust in him, and WORK HARD, (more on this later..) you will get results. Period. Its not black magic. Its just when you combine your hard work and dedication with his experience and coaching , good things happen. Regarding working hard – here’s the deal. When I saw the first 10 weeks, I said “Brian, I’ve never squatted and deadlifted both on the same day.” .. he said “Well, you have to at a meet, don’t you?” .. Game on. It was not just about getting stronger, but also making sure I could perform my best all on meet day.

The best part of following his programming, is it gives you the lifter one less thing to think about. Don’t worry about what you are going to do at training tonight. Just trust the program, and do your lifts. Regarding working hard – if you think Brian or anyone else is going to magically make you a pro lifter without working hard – stay home. Getting results requires dedicating yourself to your training and making sacrifices where necessary. I have a wife and 5 kids. If I can train 3-4 days a week, so can you. Stop making excuses and hoping for some magic results. Its 3 days before Christmas, get up early and train. Its family vacation during the summer. “Hey babe, its Monday.. I gotta go squat. Take the kids to the pool. I’ll be back in 2 hours.” .. if you bring the hard work and dedication – you will get the results with Brian.

I’d say 70% of the success comes from his adaptive programming, but at least 30% of it comes from Brian’s psychological coaching, and teaching you how to make your openers reliable, pick reasonable attempts, and peak on meet day so you can hit your best lifts. He is always asking questions like “How do you feel? What do you think about this or that?” .. and that’s a HUGE part of the game I’ve found.. come meet day.. its all about making your lifts, not “calculated misses” from an over-stroked ego.

In closing, I’ve done two meets since we hooked up last may, and in October I put 110lbs on my total, and PR’d on all 3 lifts.. and just this weekend, I put another 50lbs on my total, and again PR’d on all 3 lifts.