Ballatore Strength

The order matters:

Legs → body → arms on the drive.
Arms → body → legs on the recovery.

Slow it down, separate the pieces, and you’ll row smoother, stronger, and more efficiently.

A simple gym safety tip that can save your foot.

When carrying metal plates, don’t hook your thumbs through the plate.

Instead, keep all four fingers on the inside curve of the plate. This gives you more control, a stronger grip, and makes it much less likely that the plate slips out of your hand and lands on your foot or toes.

It seems like a small detail, but small habits like this keep the gym safer for everyone.

If you feel like you’re sinking when you swim, the problem isn’t that you need to kick harder.

It’s your body position.

At the Ballatore Strength Swim Clinic, we worked on a simple side-kick drill: one arm extended in front, one arm by your side, using as little effort from the legs as possible.

The goal is to make floating feel effortless.

Your eye should be close to the water, your chin should stay high, and your body should feel long and balanced.

If you have to kick hard just to stay up, or you feel like your legs are dropping, that’s feedback that your position needs work.

Train with people you actually enjoy being around.

When training becomes something you look forward to, it becomes a lot easier to keep showing up.

1. I stay consistent.

When you take frequent breaks from training, especially longer than a week, you may not lose all your strength right away, but you do lose your ability to tolerate hard workouts.

That means when you jump back in and try to train the same way you did before, your body may not be ready for that stress. Consistency builds strength, but it also builds durability.

2. I train with variety.

Variety keeps training fun, challenging, and interesting, but it also serves a purpose.

Different ranges of motion, stances, speeds, and intensities help prepare the body for more than one type of stress. Heavy strength work, fast explosive training, and different stances all matter.

The more ways your body is prepared to move, the more resilient it becomes.

3. I work on weaknesses.

If I’m bad at something, avoid something, or don’t like doing it, that usually tells me I need more of it.

Last year, I noticed I couldn’t run without my feet hurting. That was a clear sign something was off. My feet and ankles were weak, and I needed to build tolerance in those areas.

Strengthening my calves, feet, ankles, and legs has helped tremendously with running, foot pain, knee pain, and ankle pain.

4. I start light when introducing something new.

A new exercise, new stance, new range of motion, or new training style can stress the body in a way it isn’t used to yet.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means you need to respect it.

Start light and give your body time to adapt before you push hard.

5. I set my ego aside most of the time.

The ego is a great tool, but a terrible master.

Training hard is important, but trying to prove something every single workout is one of the fastest ways to get hurt.

The goal is not to win every workout but to keep improving for years.

Train hard and train with purpose

Coach AJ breaks down the sled pull and how we modify it at Ballatore Strength.