Zach Even-Esh is the Founder and Director of Sports Performance for the Underground Strength Gym. He is also the creator of the Underground Strength Coach Certification, which has certified people from around the world including independent strength coaches, active military personnel, athletic coaches, and college coaches. Since creating the Underground Strength Gym, he has consulted with Division 1 athletic teams, Olympic-level athletic clubs, Spartan Race, pro teams, and independent coaches and athletes around the world.
Zach created The Underground Strength Gym in his parent’s garage while he was teaching health and physical education in 2002. He has moved from training a handful of high school athletes to a full-time career advising athletes worldwide. Zach lives in New Jersey with his wife and two kids, and he continues to inspire and educate people on strength through his gym and seminars and on his website.
Coach Even-Esh delves into his use of odd and unconventional training methods as the core of his program. He gives examples of the incredible results with his athletes. He also describes his general mission as a coach. Zach lays out what he sees as sometimes-disturbing trends over the last two decades in terms of youth performance and the decline in the physical readiness of these athletes.
In this podcast, Coach Zach Even-Esh and Joel discuss:
- The process that led him to use alternative training methods for athletes.
- How the environment you train in can affect training outcomes.
- Youth injury rates and how they differ from the 1990s to today.
- Challenges in training youth athletes in today’s culture.
- Battling overuse and the lack of general physical readiness.
- Odd object training and its benefits.
Podcast total run time is 59:49.
Keywords: strongman, alternative strength, culture, strength development
