This past week I’ve been in London, UK giving a few presentations. It started with the trip over on Wednesday, which involved Air Canada re-directing a one-stop flight from Edmonton to Ottawa and then on to Heathrow, and making it somewhat paradoxical by having me go from Edmonton to Toronto, to Ottawa, then to Heathrow. Ideally I would have flown direct from Edmonton, but for some reason they decided to pull their direct flight until the end of August as some form of protest for Edmonton bringing in Iceland Air.At least I got the executive cabin with a personal pod on the way over. Baller!!
I can’t sleep in planes at the best of times, but having a lay flat seat was a good option, even if all I did was close my eyes for an hour or two.
Thursday was a bit of a blur, what with taking the Tube to the heart of the financial district and meeting up with the guys of Key Health, Luke and Neil (L and R) who would be hosting me for the weekend.
The previous weekend in Edmonton was resemblant of Hoth, which is a fair conclusion considering it was actually colder than Mars, so being in London when it was somewhat sunny and above freezing was definitely a nice change of pace for a few days. I can’t tell you how strange it feels to walk around outside with my jacket unzipped. The funny thing is everyone was still bundled up and zipped up tight in their winter jackets. It’s like a game of “Can you spot the Canadians” by seeing everyone in layers and the Canadians in shorts and flip flops.
On Friday, after getting about 10 hours of sleep and getting used to the 7 hour time difference, I headed back downtown to meet the guys and head over to Zero Gravity Fitness in the Greenwich neighborhood to do a short inservice for their trainers. The walk across London Bridge was awesome.
One of the really cool things about walking through an old city like London is the juxtapositioning of incredibly old buildings such as the Tower of London with new and incredibly advanced buildings, such as the Gherkin and Lloyds of London buildings.
We headed over to ZG Fitness and I proceeded to melt skulls and change games all over the place with some talk on ways to get immediate improvements in squats, use varied positional exercise to elicit core training effects, and how to incorporate breathing drills to increase power and strength with their clients.
When leaving their place, we saw Forrest Griffin in the tube station getting pictures taken as the UFC was in London this weekend as well. I could probably take him.
If he had both hands tied behind his back.
And his feet were tied together.
And he was asleep.
Maybe.
Do it. I’ll wait.
Isn’t she awesome? She’s pretty hot too.
Saturday was game day for day one of Post Rehab Essentials. There was 21 people in attendance and they all brought their A games. I always feel that the attendees make the seminars work, not the presenter. If they are involved, asking questions, and bringing the energy, it becomes an amazing experience. They all brought the house down and it was an awesome group to be a part of.
Today I’m heading over to the Equinox gym in Kensington for a workout, teach an inservice to their trainers, and get a much needed massage, and then tomorrow morning I’m heading back to Edmonton. It’s been a whirlwind of a trip, but it’s been an awesome experience none the less. I even made a couple of connections to potentially bring myself and Tony Gentilcore over in the fall again for our world domination tour, so we’ll hammer out the details for that and let everyone know when it’s ready to go.
I love to travel, but the best part of travel is always coming home. Seeing, hugging and kissing my wife after being away for a few days is always amazing, and the dogs always wiggle extra vigorously when I walk through the door after guarding the house without their alpha.
It’s been a slice, but I can’t wait to get home.
Cheerio
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