The Lightbulb Moment

This weekend I was able to present at the Kansas City Fitness Summit, which is a pretty big event that happens once a year, put on by Nick and David Bromberg and MC’d by Lou Schuler. The lineup is always stellar, and the speakers are great, but what makes this event specifically as special as it is is the intimate nature where people can mix and converse completely casually and nature of the event. Between sessions you could pop out and do some curls in the squat rack, maybe hit a foam roller, or just crush barbeque like it’s no one’s business.

I made a bit of an audacious goal known on the third slide of my seminar saying I wanted mine to the single best one of the entire weekend, and proceeded to crack jokes, talk about how neural aspects regulate mobility, had some live volunteers help me explain the stuff I was talking about, and generally hoped to smash brains left and right.

I’m thinking it went over pretty well based on the feedback. Even Alan Aragon had a couple of one-liners that I’m completely hoping he’d let me turn into a testimonial, saying I completely ran a shock and awe campaign on the audience, and that my delivery was spot on as well. That means a lot coming from a guy like him who has seen it all and heard it all, so I’ll take that to mean I’m the best in the world.

Now aside from smashing minds, crushing barbeque and bourbon, and talking to some awesome people from all over to give advice where I could or helping the odd person re-learn how to deadlift or move their shoulders, one of the best aspects of doing an event like this is seeing what I call the Lightbulb Moment. It’s the moment where someone gets what I’m talking about and their eyes just explode. Some times it comes a few minutes into a presentation, sometimes at the end of the presentation, and sometimes I’ll get grabbed afterwards and just answer some of their questions or direct them somewhere slightly else compared to what they were thinking, and then it just clicks.

This is that moment of clarity when someone understands something that’s a big change in their thought process or learns a new trick or technique. I see it all the time when I’m training clients to help them learn how to do a hip hinge or squat or press with the better options versus doing some haphazard conglomeration of joints misaligning and hating life. It’s such a fun experience to see and be a part of that it’s a major driving force for me continuing to want to train clients as much as I do in a week.

A lot of people are surprised when I say I still train with a schedule availability of about 45 hours a week in addition to everything else outside including writing this blog post plus workshop travel, etc. That’s down from about 90 hours a week when I was in my first 2 or 3 years and up until about 5 years ago when I dropped down to about 70.

So in the process of teaching the attendees how I would use foam rolling through the adductors to produce an increased range of motion at the shoulder and how a side plank could help improve range of motion at the hips, there was definitely some jaw dropping going on and a few lightbulbs that would click, but one of the best moments from where I was standing was when I put up a slide that only had a few words on it:

“Proximal stability drives distal mobility.”

I used a couple of reactive breathing exercises to alter core tension and stability, plus a few plank variations here and then, and had attendees test and then re-test their ranges of motion on things like a squat, a toe touch, a shoulder scratch, and other fun things just to see if there was an affect from it. I outlined that everyone is different and some people would see a massive difference in mobility with these simple things and some people wouldn’t see any change at all, and that it was okay. The big takeaway was just to understand the principles and concepts, and then they could use whatever tools got the job done in the best way possible.

So as part of this Lightbulb Moment, it’s so cool to see someone’s eyes light up as they understand something, and then think of how they can use it to their benefit. I know that if a trainer gets something out of a talk that they’re going to take that info back with them to use with their clients and start expanding their knowledge on the subject even more. By proxy, I’ll have helped their clients get even better results. If 100 trainers tried out the stuff I showed on even 10 of their clients, I’ve now affected 1000 people that I wouldn’t have otherwise, and hopefully in a positive manner.

I’ve had my own Lightbulb Moments. Those moments of clarity when you see something work that didn’t work before and figure out how it all goes together. Sometimes it took a couple of read-throughs on a specific book to understand what was being said, but then the words jumped off the page. In a few instances I would watch a technique over the shoulder of a physical therapist or a chiropractor I was shadowing and not know what they were trying to do for the first dozen times, but then on the 13^th time it finally clicked. There were other times, like looking through Anatomy Trains by Thomas Myers, where just seeing something from a different angle helped to give all the clarity in the world.

We’ve all had those moments. When my dog learned that the carrots in the back garden were ripe and that he was able to jump in there and pull them out for a snack, he would want to go outside every 5 freaking minutes to go nab a treat. That is until we put him on a tie up that didn’t reach the garden, therefore foiling his plans.

Those moments are what keep all of us going, and the ones who are truly passionate about what they do constantly look for those Lightbulb Moments in their learning. It’s not memorizing facts or analyzing data, but rather the seeing of outcomes that makes people’s attention perk up. “If I do this or move that way, this cool thing happens that I didn’t expect. Now if I do that again I get the same response. Awesome.

Everyone needs a Lightbulb Moment in their lives. I’ve had a lot and have been fortunate to help others have a few as well, and hopefully they’ve gone on to crack some skulls open and feast on the braingasms occurring in their clients as often as possible. I’m always hoping that the next presentation is even better, and I see more jaws hit the floor, and as always a room full of lightbulbs shining fiercely.