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
I posted this on our FB page right after Martin Rooney’s lecture on Saturday but I’ll reiterate it here again… Rooney totally destroyed the stage with his energy, enthusiasm and delivery of stories.
And by “destroyed”, I mean he took over the scene like a hurricane on cocaine. Certainly one of the finest speeches of the weekend. I was so pumped up after it that I immediately sent a message to my buddy Teemu Mäki saying that we need to be in attendance the next time Martin comes to Europe.
I had the chance to talk to Martin for a few minutes after the seminar. Really nice guy. And his Finnish language skills certainly were better than I expected.
Dan John was funny as hell. Yet his message was extremely simple: push, pull, squat, hinge, carry and get up. You do that over and over again, and you can’t go wrong.
Mike Boyle stepped in for Don Chu on the last day of the event, talking about his Functional Strength Coach 5.0 system. Man, that was good stuff! I know a lot of internet warriors diss Mike online because he doesn’t advocate heavy bilateral back squatting (and he also mentioned he rarely has his athletes do heavy bilateral front squats anymore).
When people hear that, they automatically assume you can’t get strong training like that.
Well, Mike showed a few vids that completely crushed that notion.
Charlie Coyle of the Minnesota Wild was cleaning around 290 pounds (for a double, if I remember correctly). Ben Bruno, who used to work at MBSC, did rear-foot elevated split squats with 300 pounds (DB’s + weight vest) for 4-5 reps per leg. Mike had a 17-year-old high school football player power clean 315×3. One guy even did single-leg deadlifts off the floor with 315 pounds for 4 reps.
Mike also said his female hockey players routinely RFESS around 60 or 70 kg for 10 reps, power clean 60 kg for 5 and chin 10+ kg for 5.
Is that not strong?
I think those are all great displays of strength. And if you’re familiar with Mike’s system, his heavy leg days are mainly built around knee- and hip-dominant single-leg exercises. Single leg!
I had of course read Mike’s books in the past, but I believe his lecture drove home the concept that there are other ways to get strong than the basic barbell squat, bench, deadlift routine many people in the industry desperately cling onto.
Hiking and climbing rocks is a great way to unwind after a long seminar day
So many great presenters at the PB Summit that I am still trying to digest all that I learned. And let’s be honest here, seeing that great white ‘stache of Stu McGill probably was worth the price of admission by itself. Everything on top of that was just gravy.
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