Perform Better Long Beach 2013 Recap

So team Okanagan Peak Performance Inc has just returned from Long Beach, CA where we attended the Perform Better conference. This is an incredible event with many of the top experts in our industry presenting over 3 days in sunny California. Here are our take-aways from who we got the chance to see.

Dr. Stu McGill - Mechanisms and Training Techniques Used for Elite Performance and Painful Backs: Cause, Corrective Exercises and Progressions to Performance

Dr. McGill is one of the leading spinal bio-mechanists in the world and it's really cool that he's from Canada. Often times if you have the chance to see a presenter that is a leader in the field of research they are great at giving lectures where they present their findings. But put them in a fitness setting however and ask them to lead a hands-on where they incorporate their theory into actual demonstrations and they become lost. This is not the case with Dr. McGill.

His lectures are excellent and his hands-on presentations match this quality as well. A few of the key take-aways from his presentations include:

* lots of split stance lunges or squats may not be appropriate for everyone * when the core fires there is a double action which he described as 'setting the stone' and 'bringing the hammer' * the best athletes in the world are great not because they can activate a muscle faster than the rest but because they can turn it down faster than everyone else * with this idea of activating muscles McGill used the analogy of a dimmer rather than a regular light switch to indicate muscles being more or less activated rather than on or off

Dr. Greg Rose - Developing Power for Rotary Athletes

If you watch the Golf Channel you may be familiar with Dr. Rose as he works for the Titleist Performance Institute and hosts a segment on fitness for golf on this channel.

Dr. Rose is an incredible presenter because his information is interesting and useful. Plus he is a charismatic speaker that can be funny if the opportunity presents itself organically rather than trying to have jokes worked into his presentations ahead of time.

For this presentation I attended the hands-on component which included four tests to assess for rotary power. What is rotary power? This is when an athlete develops force with speed around the axis of the body. So rather than producing power straight forward or to the side, power is generated by turning through the hips and upper torso. When you think of a golf swing it makes sense to see that Rose is well positioned to speak to this topic.

Here are the key points from this talk:

* Rose showed 4 categories to describe the level of power an athlete can generate * he described these categories as diesel, gas, jet and rocket going from low to high levels of power * he then showed four tests to target all areas of the body and assess power * with scores on 2-3 of the tests he shows how you can predict power * he showed how what you do with young athletes will influence the power that can be produced (or not) later in life

Dr. John Berardi - Fitness 2.0: The Next Generation of Nutrition and Body Transformation

Dr. Berardi runs an online nutritional business called Precision Nutrition which has helped 20,000 people lose over 300,000 lbs. Some pretty impressive numbers for sure. Especially when you consider that he never meets with any of his clients in person but only online.

Berardi is one those types of people that is always looking at the alternative hypothesis. Where everyone is looking at the obvious outcomes he is seeing things from a novel perspective. And while this is an often-used marketing trick of some to garner attention as they position themselves opposed to everyone else in the industry Berardi does so with thoughtful consideration of the alternate option.

For his presentation he spoke of where the fitness industry is going which is online. He believes that:

* more people have access to smart phones and tablets at the gym * training is more mobile and varied which doesn't require a physical location and set hours to train * online programs and apps are easily accessible * online training options can be used for a fraction of in-person training * the results his company achieves for online clients beats almost all off-line businesses

These are just three of the presentations we were able to attend in Long Beach and doesn't include Dr. Charlie Weingroff, Dr. Kelly Starrett, Michol Dalcourt, Lenny Parracino, Paul Robbins, Josh Henkin and more. Yeah our brains were about ready to explode. But definitely worth it and we can't wait to apply this new knowledge to helping our clients get better results in less time.

Chris [fb-like]