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Strength & Conditioning World Tour 2014 – Part 4: Boston, MA

After the Perform Better Summit in Providence, my journey on the U.S. East Coast took me to Boston.

On my first day in the city I headed into the Sports Museum after a great early morning training session at the Charles River playground, which is a small park with various pull-up bars and other implements that allow joggers and other trainees to get in some bodyweight action while enjoying the beautiful Charles River scenery.

The Sports Museum is located neatly inside TD Garden where the Bruins play their home games.

View from the nosebleed section at TD Garden

Strength & Conditioning World Tour 2014 – Part 3: Providence, RI

Sometime last year, I would be more precise but that would involve deep reflection and arithmetic, two things I am adamantly opposed to, I made the decision that 2014 would be the year I traveled the world, attended several seminars and talked face-to-face with some of the brightest minds in the strength & conditioning / fitness industry.

Not only that, I was determined to make it to the States this summer even if I had to cut off all my limbs and crawl there on my tongue. So after an 8-hour flight and a short stop in New York, I found myself at one of the biggest training seminars of the year with 1200 other attendees at the Perform Better Summit in Providence, Rhode Island.

To give you a glimpse into the quality of the speakers at the event, Mark Verstegen, who was supposed to give the first lecture at the seminar on Friday morning, had to cancel because he flew over to assist the German national football team at the World Cup in Brazil.

Boyle, Rooney, Cook, McGill… this pretty much reads like the who’s who of fitness

Strength & Conditioning World Tour 2014 – Part 2: Munich, Germany

Last weekend I had the chance to attend the Progressive Calisthenics Certification seminar hosted by Al and Danny Kavadlo in Munich.

For those of you not in the know, the Kavadlo brothers are arguably the most well-known calisthenics instructors on the planet.

Al especially has written several books on the topic of advanced bodyweight training for strength, and both of them have been featured in the bestselling Convict Conditioning series (you can see them on the cover of CC2 to the left).

Strength & Conditioning World Tour 2014 – Part 1: Ljubljana, Slovenia

Most guys would probably describe their ideal vacation as a combination of sun, sea, surfing and leisurely sipping pina coladas on the beach while mingling with scantily clad young ladies.

Well, I’m not most people.

I’m a geek.

So I decided to dedicate this summer to traveling to far away places like Ljubljana, Slovenia to hear one of the top strength and conditioning coaches in the US, Eric Cressey, talk about shoulder performance and lower extremity mobility as I did with my buddy Teemu Mäki this past weekend.

Mandatory seminar pic with EC.

Good Reads of the Month: March 2014

It’s that time of the month again when I’m dishing out a few good articles I’ve stumbled upon on other sites. Here are four good reads for the month of March.

• The Rules of Productive Weight Training for The Drug-Free Trainee by Casey Butt

Quite likely the most comprehensive, right on the money article ever written for the natural strength trainee.

Instead of wasting your employer’s time and money by killing your brain cells while mindlessly idling away the afternoon on social media, do something productive in the office and read this post.

8 Random Thoughts on Strength Training

I recently had the chance to attend a two-day weightlifting seminar hosted by a former World Champion weightlifter.

Each of the seminar days began with a short 30-45 minute lecture after which we proceeded to the hands-on section of the event.

Many ideas the host presented resonated with me because of their simplicity and similarity to my training philosophy that I try to pass on to my trainees.

Much of what I’m listing in this post and writing about on this blog in general is very basic stuff but in my experience, very little of that is typically applied in the modern gym setting, so let’s get down to the basics again.

1. Strength Is a Skill

Strength, especially in a sport like weightlifting, is a skill.

I know this ain’t a revolutionary thought by any stretch of imagination, but you’d be surprised by how many guys still don’t grok this concept.

15 Literary Sleeping Pills

Recovery is extremely underrated when it comes to training.

Everybody is more worried about finding the perfect training program that will magically boost their results in the gym when the simplest way to better performance is jacking up the hours spent between the sheets.

I’m a minimalist in many facets of life but when it comes to sleep, less is definitely not more.

Too many nights of less than stellar sleep and my ability to function like a normal human being is on par with the zombies in a George A. Romero flick.

In my opinion, the key to a good night’s sleep is catching the train to Slumberville ASAP. If you’re dozing off within minutes of hitting the sack, chances are you won’t have any recollection of falling asleep when you wake up in the morning, which is a sign you hit a deep state of sleep.

Then again, toss and turn around for an hour counting lambs before finally getting some shut-eye, and I can pretty much guarantee you won’t feel energized when the alarm clock goes off the next morning.

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