Posted March 25, 2013

Recapping the CPPS Certification

 

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to spend in New Jersey at DeFranco’s Gym at he and James “Diesel” Smith’s CPPS certification. They asked me to come and speak for a little while, which was a fantastic honour in itself, let alone a remarkably cool experience to be able to spend time at one of the premier gyms in North America.

CPPS talkThat’s me standing at the table with the Peak Performance t-shirt. I laid out the crux of my talk on my last blog post HERE if you want to see what I was throwing down. For those who don’t want to click the little link above, I’ll give you a little video preview. I essentially broke down what I do in my assessments in a way that seemed to make sense and was practically available for trainers and coaches to use, whether it’s with teams, athletes, old folks, or anyone who asks. It goes something like this, the part of myself is being ably played by the kitten:

[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLnS9SyRexw’]

This was a really cool experience. I’ve attended a bunch of different certifications and one of the big things that separate this one from others was the high involvement of hands-on interaction and working as a coach instead of simply reading text and understanding theory. They laid out the concepts of how to train anyone, moving from getting a highly effective warmup through strength training and sport-specific training into different ways to generate a reaction through different performance variables.

One of the things that kind of made me sit back and say “woah,” not necessarily in a new stuff aspect, but in a “this is so cool, am I getting set up for something like Jack Ass?” was the fact that Smitty kept referring back to how awesome he felt my presentation in Muscle Imbalances Revealed: Upper Body on fascial anatomy and function was. I thought it was pretty cool, but later found out it’s on heavy rotation in his iPod and he’s listened to it almost as many times as he brought up Joe D not bringing in the t-shirts from his truck. It’s an inside joke, they’ll get it.

Honestly, by the end of that first day I was sure I was getting set up they kept referring back to my stuff so much. I was starting to get paranoid. I kept imagining I would say something and Joe would snap, get pissed and pile drive me through a squat platform and then some hidden cameras would bust out screaming “YOU GOT PUNKED!!!” and I would head back to Edmonton about six inches shorter. You know, because of the pile driver on the squat platform.

Thankfully that didn’t happen, and I soon realized that it wasn’t an act. Smitty liked my talk presentation and used a lot of the bones from it to form the presentation on fascia and rolling concepts. Sweet.

CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO SEE WHAT SMITTY LIKED SO MUCH

The course was fantastic, and gave me some really good ideas to take back to my own clients, as well as for my own training to help me get more fired up before any heavy lift so I can make sure my spine is way more bullet proof and less likely to make me hate life completely. On top of that, Joe and Smitty are freakin big dudes. They make me look skinny and I’m 6’2″ and 240 lbs.

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The feedback I got from my session was very positive, and hopefully everyone got a lot out of it. I even grabbed Smitty and took him through an on the spot assessment to help him get through some hip issues and fix his feet. I took him a little out of his comfort zone for a few seconds and then got him to hit some sweet new squat depth without any hesitation.

One of the guys in attendance was the recently hired head of strength and conditioning for the WWE, Matt Wichlinksi, who is an incredibly cool guy and ridiculously strong guy from all angles. I watched him back squat 405 for 8 reps like it was just a bare bar.

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While that was cool and all, the big surprise came on Sunday afternoon when an unadvertised guest decided to show up for a workout with Joe.

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Yep, that’s Triple H, the WWE heavyweight champion who is getting ready for Wrestlemania in 2 weeks. I think I peed a little when he walked in. While it’s cool and all to see a celebrity, I’m a big training nerd and wanted to stick around to see his workout and see what he could do. To say he’s a beast is an understatement.

The workout Joe put him through would make most average people gassed after just the warmup, and after talking to Triple H for a few minutes, he confirmed that when they started training 3 years earlier he used to be completely done after the warmup as it was. He’s had to work a lot on mobility, movement mechanics, and simply doing things from a different perspective than the redlining bodybuilding and powerlifting fashion he did for decades. It was cool to see a lot of the concepts discussed in the course being done with a very high level athlete prepping up for one of the biggest matches of his life.

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Considering the guy is one of the prime superstars of pro wrestling, running the day to day operations of a billion dollar company, travelling all over the world and has a young family, he still finds a way to train up to 12 times a week, between steady state cardio, boxing training, and training with Joe. He manages to get in his workouts typically around 12-2am when he gets home, and Joe travels to his house to get his workouts in. Typically he trains after only 2 hours of sleep or an hour nap here and there, but still finds a way to get it in.

For everyone who says they don’t have time to train, please re-read that last paragraph until it sinks in and it makes you cry.

As Joe said during his interview, wrestling combines a lot of the best aspects of wrestling, boxing, gymnastics, power training and even bodybuilding, all while trying to keep them moving while recovering from God knows what kind of injuries or issues that would cause them to miss a match.

I’m pretty sure if 99.9% of the population were to come face to face with the daunting task of keeping the Game in peak form while keeping up with his hectic schedule would make most trainers wind up looking like this:

[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V2TY6OE4tE’]

It was a very cool experience, and as someone who watched probably too much wrestling as a kid it was cool to see someone who’s a big name getting after it in the gym.

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As small as I felt around Smitty and DeFranco, Triple H made me feel downright puny.

It was a pretty surreal experience from the start, but this definitely capped it off.

If you’re interested in taking this course, I would highly recommend it. As a member of the certifications’ board of directors (and the only one from Canada, ah-thank-you), I have a hand in seeing and adjusting the curriculum as necessary, and can honestly say this is one of the best laid out and comprehensive courses you would ever hope to take, and having guys like Smitty and Joe D running it, two incredibly humble and gracious guys while also being incredibly smart and successful, you can’t help but learn and get better.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO ON THE CPPS CERTIFICATION

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