Video Course Score – 6/10 – Not good value for money!
Introduction
This is a review of the classroom product offered by Reactive Training Systems, with Mike Tuscherer. It is currently a series of videos you can purchase for $1000. They state their aim as “Now through RTS Classroom, you can learn all the strength-producing details of the Emerging Strategies method popularized by the company that brought you RPE training. RTS Classroom is designed to help you do that.” So, how well does it hold out?
Also included in the cost is a 6 month subscription to their RTS Lab, and a coaching feature on their TRAC system. I’ll include a separate section in the review about these.
Just a note: I purchased their emerging strategies classroom shortly after it was initially released. It has since been re-released with their new RTS Lab and unfortunately, I do not have access to the new version. However, reading different comments it appears most of the video content is the same, it is just reshuffled, with some tweaks here and there. Therefore, this is not going to be 100% reflective of the current product but should give you an idea of whether it is worth your money.
The course doesn’t really offer details of longer-term periodization, or of other programming methods, it is solely emerging strategies and RTS-style programming, however given this is all that is advertised that does seem reasonable.
Video Review
If you want to see this review in video format:
The Good
After watching the videos, you will have a very good idea of how to write a microcycle in the style of RTS programming and how to employ emerging strategies to your own (or others) training. In that regard it achieves what it sets out to do, and will make you confident in your programming ability.
The classroom also offers a list of templates with video explanations of them. These templates are good, and combined with the rest of the videos will teach you effective programming. However, I do wish to point out that the templates are available for free (with minimal explanation) within the RTS training lab subscription, it is not necessary to purchase the emerging strategies classroom.
The video lectures are definitely a mixed bag. The good ones often offer a lot of meaningful content and advice, and are really the bread and butter of the classroom. They offer a lot of good and practical advice on how to set up programs and how to incorporate emerging strategies into your own training.
Almost every topic you want covered, is covered. The course is fairly comprehensive, and there is very little missed out.
The Bad
Unfortunately, whilst some video lectures are very good, others are not. Some of the videos seem to be 20-30 minutes of Mike T. talking a lot about a topic but never really offering much information. These videos could be cut to 5 minutes without losing any meaningful content. I certainly got the impression that a huge amount of the content was just “filler”, almost designed to pad out the classroom to make it artificially longer. I do not want to speculate on whether this was intentional or not, but it certainly gave me the feeling of just being given “filler” content.
Whilst the templates I spoke about above are good, they offer different cycles for each template. Each template has three variations: early-cycle, mid-cycle, and late-cycle. Unfortunately, these cycles have minimal explanation on how best to use them. Additionally, some of the templates were explained very well, whilst others explained poorly.
The price. At $1000, this video course is extraordinarily overpriced. Other products on the market offer a similar amount of information and level of content as offered in this video course, except at a fraction of the cost. If the course cost $100, I would think it was still overpriced but may still be worth the buy. $1000 is, to be frank, ludicrous.
Video Quality
The video quality is difficult to comment on. The videos are simply powerpoint slideshows with a webcam video of Mike T. in the corner. They are not flashy or some well animated video. They are nothing special. Despite this, the videos are easy to see, and the video quality does not feel like a drawback when you are watching them, and does not detract from the content or the quality of the course. For this reason, whilst the video quality can be improved with some decent video editing, I see nothing wrong with what is being offered.
RTS Lab + Trac Coaching Dashboard
The classroom comes with the subscription to “RTS Lab” and a coaching addition to “TRAC”. Both of these can be subscribed to without purchasing Emerging Strategies Classroom for $35 per month.
The RTS Lab is basically a discussion forum at its heart, with a roughly weekly stream involving a discussion or Q&A on a specific topic. The discussion forum is not overly active, but if you are regularly engaging in the regular streams then the subscription is potentially worth the money.
The RTS Lab is fairly unintuitive to navigate. It takes time to understand and it is very easy to miss things, and this is probably why there is minimal discussion going on there.
The subscription does include access to a program library and 5 free video lectures on employing emerging strategies. The templates offered in the program library, combined with the 5 free video lectures, should be enough for you to learn how to program on your own. This makes the video-series a bit pointless in my opinion, and reaffirms my view on the $1000 price point being ludicrously expensive.
The TRAC tool is free to use to log your training. With the subscription you get access to TRAC coaching. This seems like a great bit of software that is just not fleshed out as yet. It has a lot of potential, but is difficult to use and feels fairly awkward, but I could see myself making good use of it. It does require your clients to track their progress on TRAC. However, I do feel it is worth mentioning that the RTS website does advertise this as “Early Access”, and therefore it would be unreasonable to expect a fully finished product at this point.
The Final Verdict
The classroom is good, comprehensive, and will achieve its goal of teaching you how to program whilst employing Emerging Strategies. However, at the current price I cannot, in good faith, recommend it. There is nothing overly special about RTS programming – their programming is unique, but realistically other styles of programming like Juggernaut Training Systems or that offered in the Training Pyramid will all result in very similar results (Please check out my reviews for juggernaut’s book here, and training pyramid here). I’ve given the classroom a score of 6/10 simply due to the cost being $1000. The content is simply not good value for money. If it was reduced in price then I would definitely be wanting to revisit the 6/10 score.
With the RTS Lab subscription, if you are wanting to run RTS style programs, I would recommend getting a singular month’s subscription to get access to their different templates. There are enough easily adjustable templates to last you a lifetime of lifting and coaching. If you’re not interested in the templates, I’d give RTS lab a miss, as it doesn’t seem to offer much content for a monthly subscription price.
Realistically, if you want to learn how to program RTS/Emerging Strategies style, the templates with RTS Lab subscription, the videos within the lab, and an exploration of Bondarchuk’s exercise classification (I suggest checking out this article) should give you everything you need without dropping the $1000 on the classroom.