OUR MISSION

Mission Statement

Scientific facts represent the only credible source for your success in sport. We translate the complicated and often abstract research lingo of the sports sciences into everyday English so athletes and coaches can quickly and easily implement the latest findings in order to enhance their sports performance. We include only scientific research that has risen to the highest standards of peer review (click here to review the list of journals). We do not editorialize; just the facts matter. Our emphasis is on strength and power sport and we cover strength training and conditioning, exercise physiology, sports nutrition, sports medicine and physical therapy, sport psychology, women’s/youth sport, and other fields of study related to sports performance enhancement.

Why JOPP?

Strength and power sports are highly “feeling”-oriented activities. This means that when you engage in sports ranging from strength training, weightlifting, and powerlifting to wrestling, football, volleyball, and anything in between, you obtain immediate physiological and psychological feedback about your activity. This feedback is then typically interpreted as it relates to the effectiveness of your approach, and this information is often shared with other athletes and coaches. However, since human physiology and psychology are highly complex, these “signals” can be very easily misread, resulting in completely false training and competition approaches. Scientific research, however, considers the complexity of the physiology and psychology of both coach and athlete in order to control for any variables that can lead to misinterpretation. Thanks to this process, research findings related to performance enhancement in strength and power sports are highly accurate, apply to almost everyone, and are not diluted by personal opinion, myth, or conjecture. But there’s a problem…

The problem is that the process of scientific research is designed to advance the understanding of, say, exercise physiology as it relates specifically to the particular researcher’s area of interest, such as strength training. The research is critically reviewed by other experts in the field, so, once published in a scientific journal, the findings generally stand the test of criticism. The findings, however, are written and presented in a scientific manner that only other scientists can understand and generally do not reach beyond the journal’s audience. As a result, most sports research remains within the purview of scientists and hardly ever makes it to the athletes and coaches, those that need to know about these critically important findings the most. Until now…

Most athletes’ and coaches’ training and competition approaches are based on myth and conjecture and decades-old information, passed down from generation to generation. JOPP aims to change this by presenting you with factual information and explaining exactly how to use it to your advantage. In plain and simple language, we take the most critically important information out of the realm of research and make it widely available to all athletes and coaches. In short, we take science to practice because you need the facts to excel.

Staff

Publisher/Editor in Chief: Dan Wagman, PhD, CSCS

Editor: James Krieger, MS, ACSM-HF

Photo Editor: Daniel Fred

Copy Editor: Laurie Lieb, PhD

Graphic Design: Shawn Warren, and Sundance MediaCom

Counsel: Lucian Gillis, Esq

Advisory Council

Jim Bauman, PhD
Sport psychology; U.S. Olympic Training Center

Katherine A. Beals, PhD, RD, FACSM
Nutrition; University of Utah

James W. Bellew, EdD, PT
Physical therapy; Indianapolis University

Joe Berning, PhD, CSCS
Exercise physiology; New Mexico State University

Rafael Escamilla, PhD, PT, CSCS
Biomechanics, California State University

Avery Faigenbaum, EdD, CSCS, FACSM
Youth exercise science; College of New Jersey

Jeff Falkel, PhD, PT, CSCS*D
Sports medicine; VDP Enterprises

William Kraemer, PhD, CSCS, FACSM
Physiology and neurobiology; University of Connecticut

Stephen Long, PhD
Sport psychology and leadership development; Institute for Level Six Leadership

Jeffrey Potteiger; PhD, CSCS, FACSM
Physical education, health and sport studies; Miami University, OH

Ken Ravizza, PhD
Sport psychology; California State University

Dan Wathen, ATC, CSCS, NSCA-CPT
Athletic training; Youngstown State University

Gregory Werner, MS, CSCS, SCCC, ACSM-HFI, CSNC
Strength training and conditioning/kinesiology; James Madision University

About the Publisher

UPDATE: In May 2011 our publisher won his 10th national title in a fourth different strength sport: Power Sport, Open division. He also broke the American Record in the strict curl twice and won Outstanding Lifter honors for the entire competition. Science ROCKS!

JOPP’s publisher is Dan Wagman, PhD, CSCS. Dan has devoted his professional career to disseminating sports science research to those who need to know about it most—athletes and coaches. His devotion to science stems from his firsthand success in applying science to sports. He set a world and American record in the bench press, holds all AAU Raw Powerlifting American records (squat, bench press, deadlift, total), and has earned four gold medals, a silver, and two bronze medals in international powerlifting and bench press competition. He has won strongman, power sport, and Highland Games competitions and is a multiple national powerlifting and bench press champion, a national strict curl champion, a national All-Round Weightlifting champion, national Power Sport champion and American Record holder, and has held all Army powerlifting records, State records in every State he's lived, etc., etc. And in 2007 he set the all-time greatest strict curl by coefficient in Power Sport.

Professionally, Dan was a U.S. Army infantryman assigned to the 82d Airborne Division, where he also completed mountain warfare and Special Forces training. He earned a master of science degree from Michigan State University and a doctorate from the University of Kansas and is certified by the National Strength and Conditioning Association as a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, the premier strength coach certification in the world. He has also been a member of that organization's Certification Commission Exam Development Committee. At the University of Kansas, Dan worked as a counselor for athletes of most NCAA sports at the KU Peak Performance Clinic and after receiving his doctorate he started a private-practice consulting firm, advising athletes from high school, professional, and Olympic level in matters related to strength training and conditioning and sport psychology. He then continued his effort to disseminate sports science information as an editor, publisher, and visiting professor at the University of Colorado. Dan’s research has appeared in many peer-reviewed journals, including Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, Perceptual and Motor Skills, Strength and Conditioning, Journal of Athletic Training, and Applied Research in Coaching and Athletics Annual. He’s also published literally hundreds of articles in magazines such as Powerlifting USA, Muscle & Fitness, Men’s Fitness, Kansas Sports, Fitness Plus, USA Volleyball, and, of course, Pure Power. Dan has also spread his message of science via seminars for such organizations as Amway, the National Strength and Conditioning Association, USA Weightlifting, the Kansas Golden Gloves Association, the International Paralympic Committee, the Los Angeles Chiropractic College, and the U.S. Army Recruiting Command.

Dan’s publishing efforts culminated in the creation of Pure Power, which followed the highest editorial standards in producing readable articles based on scientific research in order to give athletes solid, no-nonsense information they could apply directly to their training for superior results. Launched in 2001, Pure Power represented the first and only publication in the area of strength training and conditioning to do so, yet Dan, always seeking to enhance his performance, whether in training or professionally, was looking for more creative and progressive ways to deliver a message of science. The final issue of Pure Power appeared in the summer of 2005 as Dan began work on his latest creation, Journal of Pure Power (JOPP), an online publication devoted 100% to the dissemination of science sans personal opinions or editorializing. With JOPP Dan takes advantage of the latest website technology to provide hard-core facts that will help strength and power athletes and coaches achieve superior sports performance. And he continues to implement science not only in his own training, but also in his work with the Body Intellect Sports Performance Enhancement Consortium.