Interview with the Beast of Virginia Beach!!

Today’s blog post will be a little different then normal, Sunday I had the opportunity to do a phone interview with Matt Wichlinski. Matt is the owner/operator of The Strength Shop in Virginia Beach, Virginia and a true BEAST. For over an hour I drilled Matt with questions on his training styles, background, and finished up by talking shop. The interview/conversation was loaded with great information and below are some of the questions I asked Matt, as well as his responses.


Me: Matt, could you first give us a little background of how you got involved in the Strength and Conditioning field.
MattyW: Growing up I was always playing sports; football and wrestling were the two major ones that I played competitively. After High School I went on to play college football and then played a few years in the NFL Europe before it folded. When I finished my competitive career I began training at many different commercial and/or private gyms. I spent around three years at these gyms and learned a great deal as far as how to progress clients from exercise to exercise. You see many successful athletes unable to translate into strength coaches because they are unaware of how to get these clients from point A to point B. This is the time I really learned about the importance of progressions.

Me: Could you talk about how your training has evolved over the years?
MattyW: For me I was blessed with good genetics. My father and all my uncles were big strong men. Prior to working out I was always a very active kid. I was always playing and very interested in climbing trees and doing back flips and things of that nature. These are important peaces to an athlete’s success because it allows them to learn how to utilize there body better. When I began weight training I was doing your typical bodybuilding style routine, which worked well. What many people must realize is any beginning program will work for any beginner. It does not matter if your doing body weight only, bodybuilding style, or using other methods, anyone that has never worked out will get bigger and stronger off there initial program. What my goal is, is for the athletes to avoid hitting that plateau and instead continue to progress.



Me: What can someone expect from a Strength Shop Workout
MattyW: The major focus at The Strength Shop is enhancement of athletic performance. The worst thing you can have happen is having an athlete get frustrated early in the workout because they struggle with a movement. Not only will this frustration affect the remainder of the athlete’s workout but also, it may bring down the other athletes. This is why we have baseline workouts and progressions for each and every movement to avoid these issues. We will always begin the athletes with group dynamic movements and from there we focus on a lot of body weight, full body, and POWER movements.

Me: Now that you are becoming a well-known strength coach and can begin turning down clients, what would you consider your specialty or niche?
MattyW: The majority of strength coaches you talk to want to be training the elite levels athletes all day long. Now that I am beginning to build a nice worldwide following I have slowly began to pick and choose whom I train. The football and wrestling crew is always fun to train but then you have the baseball/softball players or military personal as well. What it comes down to is where the athlete’s heart is at and if they have that strong desire to get better.
Me: Have you found that with this style of training if the athlete doesn’t have that desire you speak of they problem will not stick with it?
MattyW: 100%, telling an athlete to put oven mitts on there hands and do hand walking races or flip a 600lb tire for time is not what many young athletes look at as “working out.” What we do is hard work and is going to suck while you are doing it but like I said earlier, the way we train is to enhance athletic performance, and that is exactly what will happen for any athlete who sticks with the program.


We also covered many other aspects of training in the interview ranging from Olympic lifts to building your own equipment. I will discuss the Olympic lift talk in a later posting. This is because the content and information Matt gave on this topic was so rich and valuable it is deserving of its own post! Once again I would like to thank Matt Wichlinski for taken the time out of his busy schedule on his birthday to talk shop with me! For more information on Matt and his training style you can check him out at
http://www.tssathletics.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/mwich40