9 Essential Lifts for Superior Athletic Performance

with Andrea Hudy,
Director of Sports Performance for UConn Women's Basketball;
2025 NCAA Women's National Champions;
Head Coach, Basketball Strength and Conditioning at The University of Texas from 2019 to 2021;
University of Kansas Assistant Athletic Director for Sport Performance from 2004 to 2019;
while at Kansas, the Jayhawks produced 35 NBA Draft picks, including 11 Lottery selections, and won the 2008 NCAA Championship;
Labeled as Kansas' "secret weapon" during the 2011-12 Men's Basketball Season;
2017 National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) Impact Award recipient;
2013 NSCA National College Strength & Conditioning Coach of the Year;
UConn Sports Performance Coach from 1995 to 2004;
primary sports performance coach for the 1995, 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004 NCAA National Championship teams for the Women's Basketball program, the 1999 and 2004 Men's Basketball program and the 2000 Men's Soccer NCAA Championship.

Andrea Hudy, long touted as Kansas men's basketball's 'secret weapon', breaks down nine essential lifts, with over 150 variations, for successful training in any sport.

The nine essential lifts are explosive movements, cleans, snatch, jerk, squat, deadlift, lunge, upper body pull, upper body push. Coach Hudy uses a whole-part-whole method as she builds all nine essential lifts, using athlete demonstration in the weight room to talk through and describe the demonstration that her athletes are showing.

Coach Hudy begins with all explosive movements and explains how they help with the athletic performance in various sports. Each movement explained in this section is very detailed with demonstrations in the training room with multiple athletes. You will witness first-hand Hudy's specific instruction in order to maximize your time with your athletes and ensure their safety as well. Each demonstration has faults, identified by Hudy, that are common in technique and will happen within every weight room. Through teaching the complexity progression of each of these lifts, Hudy's athletes are given many precise variations of lifts that will pinpoint their specific athletic output needs. Each exercise can be changed to create variations of each lift.

Coach Hudy moves to her next essential lifts:

• A variety of olympic style lifts such as the clean, snatch, and jerk exercises. These are great power exercises that recruit muscles throughout the entire body.
• A variety of squat, deadlift, and lunge exercises that develop the lower body. The lower body is the most heavily used muscle group in our lives and in athletic performance.
• a variety of upper body pull and push lifts. These lifts will work the entire upper body but really develop the arms and back. Push movements are some of the most common upper body movements in sports.

She takes her time with teaching proper technique for each lift to help build elements that make the clean an essential lift. You will learn the importance of grip when to use a wide grip or when you should use a narrow grip, and where to place pressure on your feet to help you obtain proper posture. Hudy shows how to advance each lift to be tailored to your athletes based upon their level of achievement in the weight room. All of the lifts focused upon test stability and core strength while building performance in those two areas.

This video will undoubtedly enhance your weight room by improving safety, structure and implementing more sport specific lifts, as well as having alternative lifts that can be used for athletes that either cannot complete certain lifts, or if an athlete is more advanced than what is being asked.

79 minutes. 2014.