Recapping the Weekend: Complete with Exercise Voodoo

This was a crazy busy weekend, as I was playing host for the Spinal Health and Core Training seminar at my home facility, featuring some big names like Tony Gentilcore, Rick Kaselj, Dr. Jeff Cubos, and for some as of yet unknown reason, myself. I mean, these are some serious smart guys, and being the low man in the totem pole of influence, I had to go last, which meant every time they brought up something I was going to touch on in my presentation, I had to pretty much strike it out because they stole any mojo I could ever hope to have said it way better than I ever could.

While I’m sure everyone would love to hear about my inner turmoil late Saturday evening trying to wrestle with what I was going to put into my seminar which had already been finished and now had to be ripped apart, about how I stayed up until 11 pm (11 P to the mutha effin M!!), which is way past my usual old man bedtime, trying to fit more information into the slides so I wouldn’t have dead air, and hoping the encription error that was preventing me from saving the file wouldn’t wind up screwing everything up in the end.

I’m sure everyone would rather hear about the lifting of heavy shit.

As Tony and his girlfriend had just flown on a trans-continental flight, they both wanted to get in and simply move around so they wouldn’t feel like a bag of crushed assholes. Also, as Tony had alluded to in the past, he’s been wrestling with some low back stuff, so he wasn’t about to push heavies right after being stuck on planes for the better part of the day. That being said, I wasn’t going to let the opportunity to have someone in the group lifting something larger than a ham sandwich that day, so I decided to go for a max lift deadlift, comprised of a few progressive sets building up to 405 with 50 lbs of chains thrown in for good measure.

Environment is everything, and you better believe I nailed it with some of the top strength coaches watching and cheering on.

Full disclosure, if I had been alone for this one, I would have probably set it back down after it only got about 6 inches off the floor, but with Tony yelling “HIPS!! HIPS!! HIPS!!” at me and Rob King treating it like it was a major world event, it was only a matter of time before the hips came through. I’ll give Tony his 5% for helping me get the drive through on that one, but if he ever decides to come out with an iTunes playlist of him yelling motivational slogans and demeaning the listener to help get them jacked up to lift heavy shit, I want 5% of that.

The seminars were awesome, and I even learned some new tweaks on some old tricks, plus found a few new concepts I wasn’t aware of before. When my seminar time came, it was clear that everyone had their brains almost completely filled up to that point, so it was up to me to try to throw in some additional nuggets around the corners. Check it out.

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The big finale came at the end of the day when I had a volunteer go through a mini-assessment in order to help her figure out what was going on with some key areas. After checking her active and passive mobility, I found her left hip was restricted significantly, and only in one direction, and assymetrically compared to the opposite hip. We did a very simple core activation pattern and re-tested only to show a dramatic increase in hip rotation on the affected side. No stretching involved, and pretty much nothing directly using the hip, but it proved my point nicely of building a strong foundation on which to create movement.

I’d show you the video, but you’ll have to get the package when it comes out. To be honest, it’s pretty jam-packed with info, and shot in HD with multiple cameras, and it’s going to be pretty boss when it’s time to hit the market.