May 11th, 2009

Robertson Training Systems Newsletter 5.10

Recapping Rhode Island

I was back on the road this weekend, this time headed to Providence, Rhode Island for the first Perform Better Summit of the year.  This was my second year on tour, and my first time heading to RI, so needless to say I was pretty excited.

Now I’m sure most of you are expecting me to talk about all the great presentations I saw, as that’s what I’ve done that in the past.  This time, however, I went about my entire seminar experience a little bit differently.  My goal was to really sit down and chat some people up on their area of expertise.  So you’ll get a little bit of feedback on the seminar, but also some tidbits I picked up from other coaches and entrepreneurs.

Basically, here’s my experience over the past weekend.  Enjoy!

Friday

Rolling in on Friday afternoon, the first friendly face I recognized was Lee Taft.  If you coach athletes and haven’t heard of Lee, you’re seriously missing out!  This is one of, if not the premiere, speed guys in our industry.

Lee and I chatted about athletes we were currently training, and we’re really hoping to get something together in the near future where he comes into IFAST for a day to teach speed and movement training.  While I think I know enough to be dangerous in this regard, it’s definitely not my wheelhouse and I’d love to learn from a guy of Lee’s caliber.

The first presentation I got to attend was the one and only Thomas Plummer.  While I haven’t talked to Tom personally, this guy just has a phenomenal mindset when it comes to the fitness business.  If you’re in the private sector of this industry, do yourself a favor and listen to Tom speak sometime.  Not only will he light a fire under your ass, but he’ll get you thinking about your entire future, not just your future within the industry.

The most fascinating part of Plummer’s talk was the 50-hour rule. Quite simply, he mentioned that you have approximately 50 hours in the week to really get stuff done.  Anything more than that, and you’re kidding yourself, or doing things poorly.

HOWEVER, there is about 8-10 years in your life where you can succeed working up to 70 hours.  This time generally comes between the ages of 25 and 35.  Strangely enough, I thought he was describing me to a T!  With the gym, my personal business, and everything else going on, I knew exactly what he meant.  I can keep this pace for a while, but definitely not forever!

Following Plummer’s talk, it was time for free beer and some schmoozing courtesy of Perform Better.  The social is possibly one of the best parts of the weekend – as a presenter, not only do you get to catch up with all your friends and colleagues, but you also get to talk with and meet some great attendees as well.

At the social, I spent a good part of my evening chatting with Dewey Nielsen and Tom Oberhue from Portland, Oregon.  These guys are totally entrenched in the MMA world, and I was more than willing to pick their brains about the training of MMA fighters.  While I’m definitely not your prototypical MMA strength coach, I want to learn as much as possible to help the fighters I train.  I feel like I should’ve paid these two for the insights they provided, and we’ll be sure to get them on the Podcast in the very near future.

Following the social, we headed out for a fantastic dinner, but I hit the sack as early as possible so I would be fresh the next day.

Saturday

I was one of the presenters leading off Saturday morning, and you never quite know what its’ going to be like.  Are your attendees hung-over from the night before?  Are they totally overwhelmed from all the information they took in the day before?

In my case, the group couldn’t stop talking about how smoked they were from Martin Rooney and Alwyn Cosgrove’s training sessions they day before!

My hands on covered the practical aspects of training people who have had back issues. Most importantly, I want trainers/coaches who attend my sessions to be able to use my information immediately.  The primary concepts we covered were neutral spine, moving from the hips/thoracic spine versus the lumbar spine, and how to properly coach core training exercises.  I guarantee my presentation isn’t as sexy or cool as others, but I sincerely hope that people who attend my hands-on sessions are better trainers as a result.

Following my session, I started my own personal day of learning.   I began by checking out Mike Boyle’s presentation on training clients with obesity and/or low back pain.  The aspect I like the most about Mike’s presentations are his analogies.  I don’t want to steal his thunder, but his analogy for training a heavy client is second to none.  You have to see the presentation to understand it, but it gives you a new perspective on what it must be like to be overweight!

A little side note about the Boyle presentation as well:  I’m standing in the back of the room chatting with an attendee, when I feel a tap on my shoulder.  I turn around, and it’s Stuart McGill!  He says, “Hey Mike – how are you?”  I was so caught off guard, I’m pretty sure my voice cracked like a 14 year old and the only thing I could muster was “Good!!?!?!”

We all have our moments.  That was one of mine.

Luckily, I got to talk with him at length later about principles that I can use with my athletes to help them improve their performance while keeping their backs healthy to boot.  This guy is an absolute wealth of knowledge, and very easygoing to boot.

Next, I got to have a chat with Pat Rigsby and Nick Berry of the Fitness Consulting Group and International Youth Conditioning Association (IYCA).  If you want to talk about two guys that really know the business side of the equation, you could do a lot worse than chatting with Pat and Nick.

In this case, we really talked about their plans (along with Brian Grasso) to develop the IYCA.   If you work with kids, and especially young athletes, the IYCA is the premiere group to be working with.  I’m so sick of hearing about “youth training facilities” where overweight kids go and lift on a machine circuit.  The IYCA takes intelligent training and gives it back to today’s youth.  At the risk of sounding like I’m preaching, kids simply need to learn how to move again – run, jump, skip, throw, etc.

I may be a bit of an idealist, but hopefully we can all make a difference and get youth fitness programs going in the right direction.

After chatting with Pat and Nick, it was lunchtime.  As I was sitting in the presenters lounge chatting with Brian Grasso (BG), we quickly realized we were surrounded by greatness.  In one corner of the room, Mike Boyle was chatting about training with Stuart McGill.  In the middle, we had the one and only Al Vermeil chatting with Don Chu.

Recognizing our place on the totem pole, we quickly shut our pie-holes and listened to every word they uttered.  Needless to say, this was an amazing experience!

After lunch, I continued chatting with BG about the IYCA and his vision moving forward.  As I’m sure I’ve mentioned time and again, I can’t imagine being more passionate about a demographic than young athletes.  I know the IYCA has big things in store moving forward, so hopefully you’ll see myself partnering up with them in the future.

Before I went back on for my lecture, I got the pleasure of sitting down with Alwyn Cosgrove for a while and talking shop.  Alwyn has such a great perspective on business; it’s like the points you’ve been mulling over for weeks he can help you figure out in a matter of minutes.  IFAST has been extremely lucky in the fact that we’re growing quite rapidly, and I’m looking for ways to continually make us better.

Most importantly to me, Alwyn has been there and done that.  Not just with his gym, but with damn near every aspect of his life.  Quite simply, he talks the talk and walks the walk.  Alwyn is a great trainer and a great businessman, but most importantly, he’s a great person.

I finished up the afternoon by giving my presentation on Low Back Health.  When you realize that 80% of the US population is going to suffer from low back pain, it only makes sense as a trainer or coach to understand the topic.  I do my best to explain the most biomechanically efficient way to train the body, not only to prevent pain/dysfunction, but for optimal performance as well.

We finished up the day by heading out to Chris Poirier’s place for some dinner and drinks.  I got to hang out with my good buddy Eric Cressey and his finance Anna the entire evening, which totally rocked.  As a side note, Eric is totally marrying up in this world.  Between dinner, a few Heineken’s, and some solid conversation, it really was a great night.  I met a ton of great coaches/trainers/presenters that evening, but I already sound like I’m name-dropping so we’ll save them for another day.

Sunday

Sunday morning always come a little early.  I’m not sure if the adrenaline is wearing off, the fact that you don’t sleep enough, or the fact that Sunday’s start at 8 am, but it doesn’t ever seem to get easier.

Stu McGill was first on the docket Sunday, and needless to say his work is fantastic.  In this case, he was covering many of this low back sparing training methodologies in regards to performance training.  The cool think about Dr. McGill’s presentation is that he takes information from anyone who moves well – Olympic lifters, powerlifters, martial artists, anyone.  He can then take their natural movement skills and figure out how the best athletes in the world not only perform at high levels, but also keep themselves healthy in the process.

Eric Cressey was up next with his presentation on Inefficiency vs. Pathology.  People are quick to point out that Eric and I aren’t physical therapists, but then again, we don’t want to be!  We simply try to fill in the gaps between physical therapy and the other trainers/strength coaches of the world.  Eric’s presentation discussed all the things you would come to expect – anatomy, compensations, why some people get injured and others don’t, etc.  As they would say out East, “That boy is wicked smart!”

I finished up my time in Rhode Island by watching Alwyn Cosgrove take a group through a typical Results Fitness workout.  The thing I think people forget about Alwyn is that, sure, he’s a great speaker, sure he’s a great businessman, but this guy is a great coach as well.   Plus, it’s always amusing to see people get smoked by his warm-ups alone!

While watching AC I got to catch up with Anna a little bit more and hear about what’s going on at Cressey Performance.  Did I mention Eric is marrying up?

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend and I learned a ton.  Most importantly, I would like to thank Chris Poirier and the entire Perform Better crew for hosting such an amazing seminar.  I’ve held small seminars myself, but with 40+ presenters and 500+ attendees, this is absolutely the premiere fitness lecture series in the industry.  I’m humbled and honored to be a part of it.

If this sounds like something you would enjoy, I implore you to check out one of the summits that are still coming up.  I will be attending/presenting at the Chicago Summit in June, and there’s also a left-coast version in Long Beach in July.

If you are serious about your education and your coaching, you owe it to yourself to attend a Perform Better Summit.  You won’t be sorry you did.

Stay strong
MR


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