What's Up for 2013 at Soar

I can't believe 2012 is coming to a close.  It has been the best year yet at Soar Fitness  I have more new clients than I ever dreamed of and my long term clients are moving on to play college sports on scholarship.  Unrelated to Soar  - I was lucky enough to marry my tremendous wife in 2012 and that has been nothing other than a blessing.......for me at least.    But how are we going to make 2013 even better?  Well......that process has already begun.

I have said before that the best piece of advice I ever received was to never be satisfied that you are doing the best job possible.  With that in mind, I am constantly learning new ways to provide the BEST service possible to all of my clients.

Recently, I purchased a video seminar  - Strength in Motion.   It featured three of top names in Strength and Conditioning - Charlie Weingroff, Patrick Ward and Joel Jamieson.   I was able to take valuable information from all three of them and it will shape how our training at Soar is designed in 2013.   I am going to summarize what I learned in layman's terms to give you an idea of what my clients will expect.

1.  Charlie Weingroff is my go to guy for information related to blending physical therapy with strength and conditioning.  Since I see tons of injured athletes per year, it is a no brainer for me to look to him for the latest in rehab and training.   I have some of his other products, so I had already heard a lot of what he presented in Strength in Motion.  However, I took one very major piece of information - The Functional Movement Screen is a must if you are training anyone!    I have used FMS for years and a lot of my long term clients have already been screened by me.  However, I somehow got a away from it just like you get away from flossing your teeth a few times per week.   I just simply decided I didn't have enough time to do it  - and that is BS!   All it took was Charlie to say,  "If you are not using FMS, you are on the B team."

That's all I needed to hear!   The FMS is simply a screen that gives a trainer an idea of what is appropriate for each individual client and what is not.  It ensures that you will not hurt a client by putting them in a position that their body is not ready to be in.   This is exactly what is wrong with many school lifting programs.  Many kids are asked to perform exercises such as deadlifts but do not possess the functional movement to do the exercise correctly.   The result is adding strength to dysfunction which ultimately leads to injury.  All new clients at Soar are given the FMS on their first day now.

If you train people and have not listened to Charlie before, I highly recommend it.


2.  Patrick Ward and Joel Jamieson both spoke in different ways about how to manage your training programs in terms of how the stress of training affects them.  Overtraining is something that I have always been very aware of and this seminar reiterated to me that I am on the right track.  The overlying theme of their presentations was that everything (sport practice, school, training, games, ect)  an athlete does during the course of a week takes a mental and physical toll on their bodies.  It is completely unrealistic to expect any athlete to train at 100% intensity day in and day out on a weekly and monthly basis.  Volume and intensity must be adjusted, even on the fly and recovery must be built in to the training model.

One topic that was completely new to me was Heart Rate Variability  - HRV.   I learned that HRV is the biggest indicator of if an athlete is ready to train at a high intensity or not.  Joel Jamieson has a product that measures HRV and I will be purchasing that very soon.   I will begin to implement HRV testing before workouts for a variety of my athletes  - especially when we are in pre-season conditioning.

Remember, this is just a summary of what I learned from the seminar.  If you are new to training seminars and these presenters, you will learn a ton.  I guarantee that if you are looking to improve the quality of training you provide to your athletes and clients, you will not be disappointed.