I have always said that to be successful in the strength and conditioning field you need to be constantly LEARNING. It is very easy to get stagnant, keep doing stale programs, not go out to see what other coachces are doing. There are also a LOT of egos out there that keep coaches and trainers from actually getting better. As my friend and colleague Mike Boyle likes to say "Most people don't want to learn new things....they want to hear about things that validate what they are already doing". Over the years, I have found this to be so, so true. My pal Alwyn Cosgrove, who seems to be TIGHT with every who's-who in the field of strength and conditioning, regularly has staff training days with his crew at Results Fitness here in Santa Clarita, CA (who, BTW has the best crew of trainers I have ever seen...). Sometimes on these days, Alwyn or his wife Rachel will pick a topic and school their trainers a bit. Other times Alwyn will bring in guest trainers to speak to his crew. Just in recent months he has had folks like Jason Ferrugia, Mark Phillipi, Mike Boyle and even ME(?!). Anyway, I use these staff training days as a way to get some serious, often BRILLIANT training information...FOR FREE! (I also get a chance to have a few beers with the speakers afterwards..this is where the REAL learning usually comes!). Okay, so Alwyn held a staff training yesterday at his place and brought in Robb Rogers to speak to his staff on 'muscle activation'. For those of you who don't know who Robb Rogers is.....well, you probably aren't serious about strength and conditioning. Robb has been in this game for a LONG time, in fact, the very first conditioning clinic I ever went to was hosted by him @ USC (where he was the head strength coach) in 1990. I'm not going to get into the specifics of his talk but I had about 8 pages of notes written in the first 30 minutes...not to mention the fact that my glutes were awakened after years of being in a coma.
It's interactions like this that tell me that I sure as hell don't know as much as I THINK I know. As Joe Paterno once said "If you're not getting better....you're getting worse".
Lastly, Alwyn Cosgrove, Robb Rogers, Mike Boyle and other great trainers are in town this weekend in Long Beach for the Perform Better 3-day
Functional Training Summit. If you're a trainer in the So. California area, this is a great chance to "
GET BETTER"!
