Affiliation: Co-founder, Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning (MBSC), Woburn and Middleton, Massachusetts. Strength coach, author, and educator. Founder of CoachBoyle and BodyByBoyle Online.
If Sisu has a single methodological backbone, it is the work of Mike Boyle. The Sisu training framework was not invented from scratch. It was adapted from Boyle’s three decades of strength and conditioning practice with athletes and adults at MBSC and translated for a longevity population. Members at Sisu are training in a Boyle lineage, scaled and refined for adults in their forties through eighties.
Key contribution
Boyle’s influence on modern strength and conditioning is hard to overstate. With Gray Cook, he co-developed the joint-by-joint approach that reorganized how coaches think about mobility and stability across the kinetic chain. He has been a consistent voice for unilateral training over bilateral, kettlebell and dumbbell work over barbell symmetry demands, and movement patterns over isolated body parts. His “same program, scaled individually” model gave coaches a tractable way to deliver progressive group training without fragmenting it into custom plans for every person in the room.
His books, New Functional Training for Sports and Advances in Functional Training, are reference texts in the field. MBSC has been named one of the best gyms in America. He has worked with Olympic and professional athletes across multiple sports and has trained Boston Bruins and Boston Red Sox players, but his most influential work may be the curriculum he has built for general adult clients, a population the boutique fitness industry largely fails.
Boyle’s positions are unusually clear. Hip hinge before squat. Unilateral before bilateral. Kettlebell and dumbbell as primary tools for the general adult population. Skip the back squat for most adults past 40. Train movements, not muscles. These are not stylistic preferences. They are clinical decisions matched to what the population in front of him actually needs.
How Sisu applies this work
The connection between Sisu and Boyle is direct.
- Same program, scaled individually. This is the central organizing principle of every Sisu cohort session. Everyone in the cohort follows the same template. Individualization happens through regression and progression ladders, not through separate programming tracks.
- Tool selection. Sisu’s choice of kettlebells, dumbbells, and bands as the loading toolkit, and the deliberate exclusion of the barbell back squat from default programming, comes directly from Boyle’s recommendations for the adult general population.
- Movement-pattern programming. The foundational patterns Sisu trains (hinge, squat, push, pull, carry, rotate, gait) are the patterns Boyle and Cook have taught for two decades. The session structure that teaches the pattern unloaded before loading it is straight Boyle pedagogy.
The full methodology is detailed in our Strongest Decade pillar and white paper.
Where to learn more
- Personal site: Mike Boyle, Strength Coach
- MBSC training: Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning
- Programming subscription: TV
- Key books: New Functional Training for Sports (2016) and Advances in Functional Training (2010), both available through On Target Publications
