Recently I announced that we would be hosting the Okanagan Strength & Conditioning Conference. This two day event will bring in some of the top practitioners and researchers in our industry. And I say practitioners and researchers because these are people working in the trenches working with clients on a day to day basis. Or they are performing novel cutting-egde research that allows the rest of us to have a better insight as to what methods work better or ellicit a result sooner.

So we feel very fortunate to have these guys coming not only to our region but to our facility. While there may be a day or two in August where our regular coaching or programming is altered to account for this opportunity please know that you will benefit immensely from the enhanced knowledge our staff will gain.

If you are a fitness professional, coach, trainer, physiotherapist, massage therapist, chiropractor, physician or anyone else that trains or rehabs clients, you should attend this event.

The registration page www.strengthconference.com is now open. Besides two days of presentations and learning we are also hosting an evening social and including some of the meals for the attendees. Register before June 1 for the lowest possible rate.

Besides this conference we are hosting we are also going to start something else that new for our area and of special benefit to our members.

How many times have you heard one of our coaches make reference of a book, study, recipe or something else and wished you had a pen and paper to make note of the reference?

Maybe you have a great memory and are able to recall the correct information when you get to the book store to pick up a copy.

But in the case of one of our clients all that was recalled was the colour of the book and that it was a great fitness resource. Unfortunately this individual picked up a copy of a book we would not recommend.

So how we fix that?

We create the library for you.

That’s right. You know have access to all of our book, journals, texts, manuscripts and even notes packages from conferences. You can sign them out and read them at your leisure.

But the benefits are that you won’t have to spend any more money to acquire a copy. Or maybe you read our copy and like it so much you want to pick up one for yourself. And that’s fine.

But more importantly you won’t have to worry about buying the wrong book. Or waiting for weeks for your name to come up at the library for a popular edition.

Give us a little time to catalogue our library and then you can check the list and let us know what you’d like to sign out. Simple as that.

One more way Okanagan Peak Performance Inc leads the way when it comes ot education.

Chris                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     okanaganpeakperformance.com

Rachel Cosgrove

Charlie Weingroff

Gray Cook

Alwyn Cosgrove

Mike Boyle was scheduled to present but I can imagine his new position with the Red Sox probably limits his time and availability to participate in these events. So Gray Cook filled in for him.

Are you familiar with Gray Cook?

If not it’s like saying Crosby is not available for the shootout but Ovechkin can fill in for him.

Kudos to Perform Better for providing a fill-in such as Gray. And lucky for all of us in attendance.

But let’s get to what they all talked about.

1. Rachel Cosgrove -  Designing Fat Loss Programs For Your Female Clients

The big take aways from Rachel’s presentation was the level of system development that exists at Results Fitness which she owns with her husband Alwyn. Better systems allows for better results.

She went into detail showing the breakdown of what an hour session looks like at her gym and provided a number of examples of factors that are unique to training women.

For example there should be consideration of prone exercises, jumping exercises, time of month (menstruation) and time of their life (menopause) when training women.

2. Charlie Weingroff  – Understanding Joint Centration

If you’ve seen Charlie speak before you’ll know what a treat it is to learn from him. And while he’s great online and on podcasts etc he’s such an energetic personality you really do need to see him in person.

Click at the end of this sentence to see Charlie in Kelowna this summer www.strengthconference.com

What is joint centration? Well I hope I’m doing Charlie justice by describing it as equal co-contraction of agonists and antagonists about a joint. Further if joint centration is lacking then there exists tension which needs needs to be overcome.

Charlie has invested much time studying DNS (Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization) which has roots to Janda and more recently Pavel Kolar and sees this is as something that will be very big for those that work, train and rehab clients.

3. Gray Cook – Mobility, Motor Control, Movement

I believe it was one of the Cosgrove’s that said Gray has 8 letters in his names and 14 letters after them. When he speaks at the major events he is the guy the other presenters try and make a point to see.

Gray opened by stating that the FMS, Functional Movement Screen, is not an assessment because it does not provide a diagnosis. It simply flags movement as dysfunctional or not. Dysfunctional movement has to do with movement competency i.e. touch your toes, whereas deficient movement has to do with movement capacity i.e how many reps.

He added that the screen is not performance-based it is stability & mobility based. Hence the description of dysfunctional rather than deficient movement.

4. Alwyn Cosgrove -Cutting Edge Fitness Business Principles

Alwyn is a great speaker. Maybe it’s his Scottish accent? I don’t know? But he can command a room and get a point across.

He did a great job of conveying the point that the fitness industry needs to remove the risk. If you were able to remove the risk for a potential client what would stand in their way of working with you?

I also thought it was interesting how he dispelled a few business myths including:

dream big – Sure it’s important to have big goals but often people stop at the part where they dream and do nothing else.

do what you love and the $ will follow – Alwyn loves watching Engligh Premier League football and drinking beer yet he is still waiting for  his first pay cheque for doing this.

work hard – Not if you’re applying your efforts in the wrong direction. Better to work smart.

Overall this was a great event. Jordy, Megan and I all learned a ton and look forward to updating on our other summer learning experiences.

Chris

The goal was to raise funds for a team of women we work with that is competing in the Pull the Plane Challenge.

And while it may seem weird to state these ladies are competing in this charity event this is no mistake. These women aren’t entering this event just to take part. When I mentioned the winning time from previous year’s was 9-11 seconds their reply was ‘we’ll do it in 8!’

Right on! I love that answer!

But back to the fundraiser.

We managed to raise $700 in a one hour training session. And many of you that weren’t able to participate still were very generous to donate to this cause.

In addition to the $700 raised from the training sessions I know Ric’s Grill Restaurants, a Kettle Valley business and Dairy Queen (Gorges family) all made sizeable donations as well.

So needless to say, in addition to the forth coming effort to actually pull the plane there will be a large donation being made for this cause.

And on this Friday, May 11 these 12 ladies are going to pull the plane.

They’ve even got costumes. I know they got shirts from Big Kahuna because Megan keeps me in the loop on these types of things. But I didn’t know about the tutus!

And apparatently they bought 13.

I wasn’t too sure what the extra one is for until I realized that I am leading the warm-ups for all the teams competing in this event…

So that got me thinking about what I will do with these teams to get them ready. Because I will have all of about 3 minutes to meet them, warm them up and then send them over to pull the plane for 10-30 seconds or so.

Here’s a sneak peak of what they’re going to do.

1. Mobilize

We want them to have adequate range of motion at the ankles, hips and upper back. Imagine holding the rope and leaning your body forward. The ankles dorsiflex. The hips extend and the spine stays neutral.

2. Activate

Next we want to make sure they have stability through all the joints we’ve just given range of motion. So this will include some calf and ankle drills, a glute exercise as well as something to stabilize the trunk.

3. Movement Prep

We’ll go through a few movement to start including other muscles and joints in a variety of movement patterns. The movement prep goes from slow to more tempo, from uni to multi planar, from minimal rotation to more rotation and small level changes to larger level changes.

4. Maximal Recruitment

We aren’t warming these people up for a marathon but an event lasting less than a minute. And if everything goes according to plan for some teams much less than a minute.

Knowing this we want to make sure all relevant musles are fully activated, warmed up and ready to fire. There’s no saving it until the 4th quarter for this event.

And that’s it.

I’ll get around 3 minutes with each team. There are going to be a variety of ages, sizes, abilities and personalities. And with these types of things there are always some surprises. But that’s part of what makes it fun.

If you want to check it out the event runs this Friday May 11 from 11 am-3 pm out by the airport.

Good luck to all participants.

Chris

The body is a pretty amazing machine.

It adapts to new environments. For example, in equatorial regions we develop more pigment to prevent burning. And in arctic regions we retain more bodyfat for insulation against cold weather.

It responds quickly and measurably to stimuli. For example, step on a tack and you will reflexively flex the knee and or hip to pull away from the source of the pain. Or if you cause damage to the soft tissues of the body, which help to maintain strutural integrity, we will get an inflammatory response to provide more stability to the injured body part.

For everything we subject our bodies to there is a reaction. Sometimes the reaction is obvious and external which allows us to take notice and make the connection. Falling asleep in the hot sun on vacation may result in a sunburn which is easy for us to recognize and connect the dots as to why we got burned.

Other reactions in our body are harder to perceive.

They may not be as immediate.

Drinking 2 cans of soda a day as a young person may eventually lay the foundation for future diabetes issues. But at the time it is difficult to recognize the damage we are doing.

I guess it’s kind of like being a baby.

We are not able to communicate our needs except through crying. And unless something is painful, such as a dirty diaper or hunger pangs, we may not cry at all, giving the impression that everything is alright.

But absence of pain doesn’t mean everything is alright.

We can be putting stress and doing damage to our tissues and organs without even realizing it.

How can this happen?

Well as long as we can ‘get away’ with a lifestyle or habit there is no reason to change it, is there?

However when we discover there is a problem we always wish we had done something sooner. We wish we introduced exercise into our lives sooner. We wish we had eliminated the crap from our nutritional plan. We wish we had gotten better quality sleep.

Basically we just wish had done the basic things differently.

So what can we do? How can we find out if something is causing us pain? How can we amplify the effects of a negative lifestyle choice to see how bad it is for us really?

Eliminate it for 2 months then try it again.

What we need to do is recalibrate the sensitivity of the cells of the body. We need to reduce out toleranace for whatever the negative lifestyle choice might be.

And this doesn’t even have to be a negative lifestyle.

Consider for example if you stopped eating gluten for this period of time. There is a certain percentage of the population that are silent or latent celiacs and have not yet demonstrated symptoms for this disease. Eliminating this nutrient from the diet of these individuals would therefore be advantageous.

What else could you eliminate for two months and see how your health improves?

* alcohol

* processed food

* sugar

* corn

* diet pop

* caffeine

If you are going to test out the impact these foods have on your health use the following guidelines.

1. Keep a journal. Record as many aspects of your health including scale weight, resting heart rate, bodyfat, performance measures, BMI…and anything that applies to your goals.

2. Only test one food at a time. If you remove more than one at time it would be hard to know which one was responsible for the change.

3. Don’t cheat. Go cold turkey.

If you do this for two months and then reintroduce this same food two months later your body will quickly let you know how toxic it is for you. You may experience nausea, headaches, gastric distress, fatigue, disrupted sleep and many unfavourable symptoms when you start eating the toxin again.

The downside?

If you don’t try this test you’ll gradually increase your tolerance to these poisons. Your body becomes more desensitized to the effects  of these foods. And you slowly do more damage to your body from the inside out.

Chris                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        okanaganpeakperformance.com

Anyways this diet, and a number of others, recommended that for the best health we needed to reduce our intake of fat. Particularly saturated fat.

And so we stopped eating egg yolks. And we cut back on our consumption of animal fat. Or we eliminated animal products altogether and became vegan or vegetarian. By we I mean society in general and not me personally.

What have the results been?

Obesity has more than doubled in the USA over the last 20 yers.

But about our internal health? Have we become sicker as well? Take a look at the graph below which shows the changes in diabetes over the years.

And below we can see the increase in sugar consumption over the past 80 plus years.

So fat may not be the culprit we thought it was. Sure it has more than double the energy of carbohydrates and protein. But I’ve tried to drive home the point that a calorie is not a calorie many times before. Any five year will tell you eating 1 lbs of broccoli is not the same as eating 1 lbs of cotton candy. However many still cling to the belief that a caloric deficit is all that is needed to drop unwanted bodyfat fat.

But is sugar really that bad?

Consider the following research just coming out.

Dr. Cantley, a cell biologist and biochemist, has recently shown that cancer cells have insulin receptors just as muscle, fat and liver cells do. So when we eat sugar these receptors are able to receive the sugar flowing through our blood and supply the energy to grow the tumour.

And it appears the affinity of these insulin receptors on tumours may be greater than those on other types of cells. In other words the sugar we eat is preferentially drawn to tumour cells, causing them to grow, instead of say going to a muscle cell.

But let’s look back at our fat consumption again for a second.

One of the main reasons to reduce our intake of fat, particularly saturated fat, was to lower our cholesterol.

However, when we take the fat out of a product it is usually replaced with sugar. Take a look the next time you’re grocery shopping. The foods that have zero to no fat typically have higher levels of sugar.

Nutritional biochemist Kimber Stanhope at the University of California, Davis, has shown alterations in the diet that lead to increases in LDL (low density lipoprotein). However unlike previous warnings related to fat consumption, Dr. Stanhope has observed higher levels of cholesterol within 2 weeks of increased sugar consumption.

So even if you’ve reduced your level of dietary fat you may still be at increased risk of higher levels of HDL if your sugar intake is too high.

What is too high?

Well, the less the better. And depending on a number of factors such as age, sex, activity level and genetics it may be as little as 25 grams of sugar per day.

The small can has 39 grams of sugar and while I know none of you would drink a can of soda it gives you some idea of how much sugar is packed in one drink. And this is 60% more than some people should eat in an entire day!

So what can you do about this?

Know how much much sugar every packaged product you eat has in it. Sure you can do this with fresh foods as well but this exercise still works well for packaged foods.

For example on my desk where I’m writing you this I have the following:

mixed nuts – 2 grams of sugar per 1/4 cup

Prograde energy bar – 12 grams

Muscle Milk chocolate shake – 3 grams

Just with these few snacks, which are primarily protein and fat, I’m at 17 grams of sugar.

What I want you to do is write down the amount of sugar in everything you eat. Become aware of where sugar is getting into your body. And then look to eliminate the worst culprits.

A client used this very tactic recently and dropped 22 lbs in less than 3 weeks! This is with no increase in exercise intensity or frequency. What can it do for you?

Chris                                                                                                                                                                                                      okanaganpeakperformance.com

There are a few things Okanagan Peak Performance is synonomous. And these include physical feats, strong women and helping others.

So when we were approached about sponsoring a team for the United Way’s Plane Pull Challenge it was a no-brainer.

But we’re not just sponsoring any team. We’re sponsoring a team made up 100% of women.

And these women will probably be the only all-female team pulling a plane down the tarmac. I know they will put some of the men’s teams to shame. I already know what Jordy and Megan can do on the weightroom floor and they don’t ease up for anyone in competition.

But this event is for charity and we need your help.

The team needs to raise $750 as an entry fee. So here’s what Okanagan Peak Performance is going to do.

We’re going to run a Pull the Plane Training Session at our facility on Saturday April 14, 2011 with a mimimum $20 donation. We will run two training sessions at 11 am and another at 1230 pm with a goal of having 20 people out for each session.

40 people get an awesome workout.

The United Way collects a $800 donation for the entry fee.

We get to have fun working your butt off!

Everybody wins!

Here are all the details.

5X Bonus – We want to throw something else in for you to make this day a little more memorable. Take your donation to the United Way and times it by 5. We will credit this much towards a membership for you on Saturday April 14, 2012 should you sign up that day. For example, donate $30 and we’ll take $150 off your first month’s dues.

5X fine print -

valid for new clients only

credit cannot exceed value of membership

valid only on April 14, 2012

Your Job

I want to sell this out before the 14th rolls around. To do that we need everyone of our current training clients to find 5-10 friends that would benefit from one of our training sessions. Then make sure to send them the link to this page for all the details. Who knows? If we get 60 people wanting to make donation and get in a top level training session I will stay late on a Saturday and run a third session.

Now get to it!

Thanks for your help.

Chris

ps…even if you can’t make it for the training session on the 14th make sure to come out and support the girls on the May 11th. Okanagan Peak Performance Inc is a sponsor of this event and will be onsite leading warm-ups for all the teams

We put on seminars for our clients every few months. And of course we travel far and wide to learn from the best.

So how do we improve on that?

We bring the best to us, that’s how.

And who do we mean by the best anyway? Well bringing in 5 top level speakers from across North America. This list includes:

Dr. Charlie Weingroff – I first saw Charlie speak last year in Seattle and I was immediately impressed. He stole the show. His presentations are a great mix of both interesting and useful. He has a great sense of humour and fields questions from the audience like a pro. Besides the fact he is one super smart dude he is also an accomplished powerlifter putting up a 1915 lbs total for his squat, deadlift and bench. Unbelievable!

Want more? How about the fact he was the strength and conditioning coach for the Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA, has his doctorate in physical therapy and trained the special forces the United States Marines. Wow!

Dr. Martin Gibala -

In our industry there are a number of research papers that constantly get quoted by those of us who want to appear really smart and show what we know. Just kidding. But Dr. Gibala’s research is commonly referenced when you are talking about high intensity exercise, EPOC and other exercise related topics. As well, it turns out Olympian Adam vanKoeverden thinks pretty highly of this guy as well. I still can’t believe we’re going to have him here.

Joel Jamieson -

Have you heard of this thing called the UFC? I guess it’s kind of popular and continues to grow. Joel Jamieson is a strength and conditioning coach out of Washington that trains many of the top fighters in the UFC. Before training MMA fighters Joel worked with the Seattle Seahawks and a number of Divsion 1 athletes. He is frequent contributor to a number of publications and is an expert in the area of heart rate variability.

Dr. Jeff Cubos -

Dr. Cubos is chiropractor with a strong emphasis in working with hockey players and concussions. He has held teaching positions at a number of post secondary institutions as well as travelling overseas to present. Besides his background in chiropractic Dr. Cubos is also a certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS).

Sean Skahan -

Sean has been the strength and condtioning coach for the Anaheim Ducks of the NHL for the past 10 years. During that time Sean has helped the Ducks win a Stanley Cup in 2007 and in 2010 saw 8 Ducks participate in the Olympics. Not only that 7 of them won medals. Not a bad return for one team, eh? Sean is guaranteed to provide insights and cues as to what players should be doing with regards to their off-ice training for hockey.

I’m exciting just writing those brief bios. These guys are really going to bring it. And they are all incredible people as well.

Watch for more info coming soon regarding this inaugural event.

Chris                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               okanaganpeakperformance.com

So the #1 goal of people who go to the gym is weight loss. And it’s like finger nails on a chalk board when I see people making all the right decisions when it comes to training, rest and the foods they eat only to blow it in one area.

What is that one area?

It’s the calories they drink.

They will drink coffees with flavoured shots, artificial sweeteners, creams and other additives. They will puree enough fruit for two days and drink this. Worse they will buy the commercial varieties of the juice smoothies which often have well over 100 grams of sugar. They will finish off a hard day’s work with a glass or two of their favourite beer or wine. Which normally isn’t a problem except when you’re trying to drop 20-30 lbs.

And so for these people we make the rules very simple.

1. Get all of your nutrition from food.

2. Get your hydration from water.

But there are exceptions to the rule. And this post is all about those exceptions.

Because at a certain point you should gain control of the calories you drink back. And your water intake should be adequate. And you should be getting all your nutrition from food. And your weight loss should be on track.

And if this the case read on to find out how you can begin to reintroduce drinks back into your like. If this is you then here are 5 drinks you can reintroduce back into your lifestyle.

1. Workout Drinks – Are your workouts at least an hour in length? Are workouts fairly intense? By this I mean that you broke a sweat, lifted as heavily as you could and were out of breath at various points during the workout.

If you answered ‘yes’ to these there may be benefit to including a sports drink in your training program. I like the purple flavoured G2 from Gatorade. It has only 20 calories but still supplies some carbohydrate and electrolytes to facilitate gastric emptying.

2. Post Workout Drink – One of my favourite things to look forward to at the end of my workout is chocolate milk. I like it because it has a great amino acid profile, it has a good carbs to protein ratio and it tastes so good.

Now for those with a desire to add lean mass drink the regular version. And for those that are looking to drop a few lbs I would recommend the reduced sugar version of chocolate milk or a low sugar RTD  (ready-to-drink) commercial shake.

3. Watching a Movie – So you’re about to watch a movie you’ve beenwaiting a while to see. You’ve got some healthy snacks, a blanket and someone special to watch with. What do you turn to wash it all down with? I like Crystal Light. If you are someone that doesn’t care for overly sweet drinks you can dilute it to your preference. There are only 5 calories and the flavours are good. I’m sure someone will post a comment below regarding the fact this product aspartame. If they do, please also post the reference to the studies proving your point.

4. Get Going in the Morning – Many of us are conditioned to drink coffee first thing in the morning. But few drink it black and few limit themselves to one or two cups. Tea may be a better alternative.

I like green tea and drink it plain. Green tea has great anti-oxidant properties and is good for lowering LDL (low density lipoprotein). As well, have you heard of resveratrol? This weight loss metabolite was initially associated with red wine. As it turns out green tea has even higher levels of resveratrol than wine.

5. Open a Bottle or Crack a Cold One – Sometimes you need to pump up the parasympathetic nervous. While this will mean different things for different people it is important to relax once in a while. And while we’re not advocating initiating a drinking routine there are benefits to enjoying a glass of red wine or a dark beer with friends once in a while.

The take home message here is that if you’re still looking to lose some weight hold off on drinking your calories. But once you’re dropping the pounds you can use the 5 tips above to have a drink of something other than water.

Chris                                                                                                                                                                                                                     okanaganpeakperformance.com

There’s one thing I’ve found that consistently leads to improvements on the training room floor and in competitive performance.

And the thing is this is nothing new.

And it works in all areas of life.

For example, this approach will lead to a higher GPA in school. It leads to better fiscal health when it comes to your finances. And it improves your relationships.

So what is this magical approach that appears to make life better across the board?

Well, it’s quite simple actually. And unfortunately it’s something many people skip past.

And here it is.

Remove the negative.

What? Really? That’s what is going to lead to new gains? This will lead to more weight loss? This will reduce joint pain and allow for more efficient movement?

Absolutely it will.

So how do you identify what your negatives are? Are they the same as your training partner? And how do you go about eliminating them?

With these questions in mind here are 3 Strategies to Removing the Negatives.

Step #1 – What Do You Not Enjoy?

Do you love chin ups? Or pull ups? Maybe you’re a huge fan of Turkish Get Ups?

I’m guessing 0-for-3 on the above. Which would be no surprise. We tend to steer away from the more challenging movements and exercises.

In order to separate yourself from the average gym-goer you need to do the things the average gym-goer won’t do. Find out what it is you struggle with and prioritze this in your workout.

Step #2 – Add More Glutes, Hamstrings and Lats

Question…what do the above muscle groups have in common? Answer…you can’t see them when you face a mirror.

But most people go the gym and want flat abs, bigger biceps and a more powerful chest. So they do crunches, curls and bench press.

The interesting thing is the more people focus on these the more back, elbow and shoulder problems that tend to follow. And worse they don’t make huge gains with respect to their lifts or their physique.

Want to be pain-free and stronger? Follow step #2.

Step #3 – Listen to Your Body

Although you have left and right sides to your body there is usually a dominant side. And you may have experienced an injury on one side. So then we tend to shift emphasis on our lifts to let the strong side pick up the slack.

Whatever the reason might be our body will find a way around any aches, pains and restrictions in our movement patterns. So sometimes we need to break compound movements done into simpler parts. Sometimes we need to isolate the deficient part, address it and then re-introduce back into the mix.

Yes, that’s right. I said you may need to isolate. This is contrary to what 99% of fitness pros will tell you. They will say everything should be compound, multi-joint exercise. And the more movements, muscles and joints involved in an effort the better.

But here’s the thing.

You don’t fix a squat by squatting. And you don’t fix a deadlift by deadlifting. You determine what it is about your squat that is not working the way it should, fix that then go back to squatting.

Case in point…our staff just finished a strength training phase to increase our loads in the squat, deadlift, bench press and chin up.

And we put up some amazing numbers. By amazing I mean increases of 50-110 lbs in every lift by everyone that participated.

But here’s the craziest part of the experiment….

We made these improvements without training these lifts at all during the 2 month program. More to come on this.

Summary

Sometimes we can plateau. Sometimes we feel achy. And sometimes we are at a loss as to how we can shake up our program. Follow these 3 steps for untapped progress and improvements.

Chris

Ronnie is a former 8-time Mr. Olympia. Here’s a pic of meeting him.

He had some pretty funny stories to share about how he started working at a pizza place after university then went on to become a cop. And eventually he became the best bodybuilder in the world.

And this guy is pretty entertaining. When he trains he is famous for yelling out his catch phrase ‘yeah buddy!’ before a set in the gym.

Now you have to imagine this massive black guy, at nearly 350 lbs in his prime, yelling ‘yeah buddy!’ in a rather unique and higher pitched voice. It’s not Mike Tyson-high but it’s definitely not to be confused with Barry White.

So last Saturday at our Group Fitness trainin session we had everyone yell out ‘yeah buddy!’ as I panned the room with the camera.

Here’s the clip:

Saturday Group Fitness Training

So what’s the point of all this?

Well for a number of reasons including:

1. Strength in Numbers

It’s much easier to doing conditioning sets with others. On this day there were about 20 people out all different ages and abilities. Because of this community everyone was able to push a little harder and do a little more. You may recall on Saturday morning it was snowing. How many from this group would have ventured out had they known they’d be the only one?

2. There is No Intimidation

On this day we had NCAA Div 1 and world level podium athletes. Provincial champions. As well as people with Type II diabetes. And joint pain. And a few extra lbs. Some had years of training experience. For others this was their first Saturday workout.

It didn’t matter what your story was. Everyone was there for one purpose. To challenge themselves to give their best and get better in the process. When the focus is on something like there is no intimidation. It was one team with varying abilities and goals.

3. One Mantra

I written previously about having a mantra and of viewing your lifts like a movie. With this workout we had one collective mantra which was ‘yeah buddy!’. This was about saying ‘yes’ to the process. About supporting each other. And agreeing with what we were all doing.

And although I asked everyone to give me a ‘yeah buddy!’ one time at the start of the set it carried on through the workout. And it led to other spontaneous yells and high fives.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This was a very challenging workout. And if presented to each of the 20 people individually a small minority would have completed it. Instead due to the dynamic and energy created everyone found a little more to bring their best.

If you would like to see what this is all about leave a comment below or post a message on our facebook page. Be warned though that you may be required to give me a ‘yeah buddy!’

Chris                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  okanaganpeakperformance.com