Wilmington Strength

Two of our younger athletes, both eleven years old. Jacob’s hitting a power jerk with great form, and Grant is hitting a couple power position cleans, in season I might add. Thank you guys for making me look good.

People ask why we teach lifts this technical at this age. Here’s why:

1. Kinesthetic awareness. Learning to do complicated lifts like this that require a lot of technique and coordination teaches the athlete how to move their body, how to control their body, especially quickly and under load, much like in sport. The coordination benefits are massive.

2. Mobility. Loading their body through full range of motion in their shoulders, upper back, hips, knees, and ankles is huge for maintaining and developing good mobility for these athletes at a young age.

3. Power and relative strength. Everyone talks about the power benefits you get from Olympic lifting. Yes, that’s huge. Relative strength, that’s big too.

4. Controlled aggression. This one is underrated. You can’t do these movements slow. You have to commit to the movement, do it as fast and explosively as you can, and fine tune it over a lot of reps. There’s a massive benefit to learning how to be explosive and aggressive but control it. You have to have a cool mind. It can’t be uncontrolled aggression. Massive for sports, especially contact sports, but any sport in general.

5. Everything else gets easier. Learn to clean, jerk, and sn**ch at 11, and whenever you move on to any other strength movement, because these lifts require such technique, speed, and coordination at such a high level, other lifts and movements just feel super simple and easy.

This is what long term athletic development looks like.

Feels good to be back!

7:30am semi private group getting after it this morning. I feel super lucky I get to hang out with cool people and help them get stronger for a living.

This is what makes us proud.

Watching these athletes show up, put in the work, and see it pay off with new PRs never gets old.

Stay consistent. Trust the process. Keep getting better.

Proud of these kids. 💪

Stretching gets a lot of credit for injury prevention.

But if reducing injury risk is the goal, strength training deserves a lot more attention.

We're not saying stretching is bad. It has its place. But it shouldn't be the foundation of your injury reduction strategy.

Build stronger muscles. Build stronger tissues. Give your body the capacity to handle the demands of your sport.

Get strong. Stay strong.

That's the strategy we want our athletes to understand.

Great job this summer, Brooklyn. You were awesome to have in the gym.

Brooklyn wanted to get quicker laterally. So we measured it and trained the engine behind it. Her RSI, basically how springy she is off the ground, jumped way up this summer. That carried straight over to her approach jump, which went up every single test, 2 inches total, which is a lot for an already trained athlete. And her 505, our change of direction test, dropped from a 2.51 to a 2.38. That’s a big deal.

Can’t wait to see what you do in college this season. Proud of you, Brooklyn.

Brodie came to us recently with one goal: get faster. We’re just getting started, but we’re certainly starting off on the right track.

Welcome to the 21 mph club, Brodie. Time to hit 22.

Julia Connor showed up and showed out in her first session Saturday. Welcome to the 18 mph club.

Second fastest girl we’ve ever timed, and she tied the gym record in the 5 10 fly.

Athlete spotlight: Dot Shapiro

Dot started with us in July 2024 and has been one of the most consistent athletes in the gym for two straight years. That’s the whole secret. Show up, keep showing up, and the numbers take care of themselves.

And this summer the numbers took off. Since February her RSI has more than doubled, she went from 5 chin ups to 10, added 30 pounds to her sn**ch and front squat, and put 4 inches on her vertical. Every single thing we track went up.

Great job Dot. Can’t wait to see what you do in flag football and softball at Hoggard this year.