Home Posts tagged "Pat Rigsby" (Page 4)

Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 7/11/11

Here's a list of recommended strength and conditioning reads to kick off your week: The Deadlift - This is an insanely thorough post from my buddy, Mike Robertson. The State of the Fitness Industry - I really enjoyed this post from Pat Rigsby, who really has a great handle on what's up with our industry.  While a lot of people think that the fitness industry as a whole is headed in the wrong direction, Pat does a great job here of highlighting the good things that are happening.  Call it a bit of Monday morning optimism! On a semi-related note, I should give you a heads-up that I'm actually collaborating with Mike and Pat on two projects that should be released within the next month.  I think you'll all really enjoy what we have in store for you! EricCressey.com Baseball Specific Newsletter - A lot of people don't realize that I actually have two newsletters here at EricCressey.com.  There's my main one, which most people know about (but if you don't, you can subscribe to it on the right hand side of this page).  Additionally, there is a free baseball-specific newsletter that you won't get unless you subscribe to it separately from the main one; you can do so here (and you'll receive a free copy of the post-throwing stretches our baseball guys utilize):
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Stuff You Should Read: 6/13/11

Here's some recommended reading to kick off your week: How to Use Less Plastic - While he was working with us at Cressey Performance, Brian St. Pierre really did a good job of bringing to light the problems with using a lot of plastic in packing and storing one's healthy food options.  In this post, he talks about how to reduce the amount of plastic you use. The Difference Between the Location of Symptoms and the Source of Dysfunction - This Mike Reinold blog highlights how the site of the pain isn't always the origin of that pain. Value: The Key Ingredient to Fitness Business Success - Pat Rigsby really "gets it" when it comes to building fitness business up the right way, and posts like this show exactly why. I know a lot of fitness professionals read this blog, and this is must-read material for all of you. Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a deadlift technique tutorial!
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Helping High School Athletes: A Sweet Deal on the IYCA High School Strength Coach Certification

A lot of people know me as the guy whose products and articles have helped strength training enthusiasts prevent and correct movement inefficiencies that ultimately lead to injuries. Others know me because we train about four dozen professional baseball players each winter.

The truth, though, is that the majority of our clientele at Cressey Performance is high school athletes.  In the class of 2011 alone, we’ve had 17 athletes sign letters of intent to play Division 1 baseball.  Still, that doesn’t tell the most important story. For every kid who gets drafted into professional baseball or commits to play a college sport, we have 3-4 young athletes who train with us simply to build confidence, stay healthy while they play their sports, and foster fitness habits that will hopefully carry over to the rest of their lives.  I take that job extremely seriously not only because I genuinely care about each teenage and enjoy my job, but because it is a huge deal for parents to trust me with part of their kids’ physical and mental well-being during a crucial developmental time in an adolescent’s life. And, it’s also why I’m psyched about tonight’s announcement: the IYCA High School Strength Coach Certification is now available.

Along with Brian Grasso, Mike Robertson, Pat Rigsby, Wil Fleming, and Dr. Toby Brooks, I contributed to this new certification, which features both a textbook and accompanying DVD set.  Among the topics covered are: Strength Training Technique, Functionality and Programming Speed and Agility Mechanics or Sport Specificity Mobility: Isolate and Integrate Coaching the High School Athlete Administration for the High School Strength Coach Sample Programming for football, baseball, and basketball The certification alone is something that, in our eyes, can not only dramatically help a high school strength coach’s career, but also help all the young athletes he/she encounters.  I’m going to sweeten the deal, though. The early bird price runs now through Friday (1/28) at midnight.  If you purchase the product (HERE) before midnight on Friday and forward me your receipt, I’m going to send you an upper extremity assessment tutorial video that I am filming this week as an in-service for my staff and interns.  This feature will teach you how to assess and manage the upper body in athletes – with a particular focus on overhead athletes. All you need to do is sign up for the certification and then forward your receipt to ec@ericcressey.com.  Then, next weekend, I’ll send out the video to everyone who contacts me. There are a whole lot of high school kids out there learning some really bad habits in the weight room, and you’re in a position to change that – and the IYCA High School Strength Coach Certification can help you do it.  Whether you’re in a high school or the private sector, there is a tremendous amount to be gained by checking this out.
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Cueing: Just One Piece of Semi-Private Training Success – Part 2

In Part 1, I talked about the importance of having an extensive set of effective cues to use with clients to get the ball rolling on a great training experience. However, cueing was just one piece of the coaching puzzle. It’s these other pieces that, in my eyes, make or break someone in the semi-private model. Here are a few of the factors you need to be successful as a semi-private coach: 1. Knowledge and Programming – As the adage goes, “failing to plan is planning to fail.” You need to have done your homework in order to not only write effective programming, but also know how to modify it based on individual needs. For this reason, I think that a lot of up-and-comers are actually smart to start off with some one-on-one training because it allows them to program specifically for a small number of clients and meticulously monitor the responses to those programs. And, it forces them to think through any modifications they need to make on those programs. As a frame of reference, when we hire a new employee, it takes approximately 6-12 months of education before I’m truly comfortable with them writing programs without me reviewing every one of them before the client sees the program. 2. Friendship – Here’s a straightforward one: if you’re a dork, loser, pain-in-the-ass, arrogant prick, or you smell bad, people aren’t going to want to be your friend. If they don’t want to be your friend, they certainly aren’t going to want to become your client – regardless of how good your programs and cues are. As an example, I’ve started a tradition of asking for reviews of interns at the six-week mark of their internship from some of our trusted clients. We just hand them a slip of paper with each intern’s name on it, and ask for the first two sentences that come to mind. One recent intern was not a popular one, as he received several negative responses, most notably “Kind of a douche. Not a good fit for CP.” Here was a kid who was enthusiastic, proactive, well-read, and had a strong resume – but none of it mattered because he sucked at making friends. This is a more crucial success factor in the semi-private model than one-on-one training, too. In personal training, you have time to cultivate very solid individual friendships with clients from the get-go because you have 2-4 hours of complete one-on-one time with them each week. You can ask about their kids, their vacation, their hemorrhoids, their stock portfolio, and their divorce settlement. When you have 3-6 other clients rolling at the same time, though, they chat with one another and not you – because you need to be busting your butt to keep things rolling on the training front. Don’t get me wrong; you’ll learn a ton about your clients over time and cultivate awesome friendships. In semi-private training, though, they’ll make a lot more friends beside you, too – and get results more affordably while you enjoy your job more. 3. Continuity – Semi-private models give rise to larger clienteles. A personal trainer might only be able to keep 20-30 clients at most, while in the semi-private model, coaches see a lot more people than that. As such, in businesses with more than one employee, you can’t expect to be present for every single training session. To keep the right flow, you have to hire and educate great people who you know will keep the trains running on time in your absence – whether it is with respect to programming, coaching, answering the phones, or just maintaining an unconditionally positive and energetic training environment. As a funny little example, I went on a quick trip to Orlando back in January after a speaking engagement in Tampa – so my business partners, Pete and Tony, were “manning the CP ship.” My fiancé and I were at Sea World, and I got a text message from CP client Kevin Youkilis of the Boston Red Sox: “Tony is fantastic. He really got the most out of me today. And Pete’s vert is legit.” I, of course, knew that Youk was screwing with me, and my business partners were laughing hysterically in the background because a) I am a workaholic and worry too much when I’m out of the office b) Pete’s vertical jump (37”) is slightly higher than mine (36”), and he doesn’t let me forget it. Truth be told, I was happy to be the target of the joke, as it meant that my staff was executing the exact program I’d written to a “T,” and they were joking around in the office (a sign that the place wasn’t in chaos, and they were keeping things fun and entertaining with the clients). At the same time, as much as you want continuity, it’s important to have employees with different abilities and unique traits that complement your own. For instance, Chris Howard, our newest employee, is a licensed massage therapist and has a master’s degree in nutrition. And, on a funnier note, the running joke among clients is that the second I leave, Tony puts techno music on the stereo. The clients get continuity with some variety, and Tony gets just a bit more feminine! 4. The Individual Touch – While it can be hard to completely make every client’s day when you might see 60-80 people over the course of a day, that doesn’t mean that you can’t go out of your way “after hours” to find ways to put smiles on their faces. One example: in our case (predominantly baseball players), we follow all our players – from middle school all the way to the pros – in the papers and email/text guys whenever they get some love in the press. I also make a ton of introductions between our high school players and college coaches from my extensive network on that front, or I make a phone call to find a place for our pro guys to train or get soft tissue work when they’re on the road in a city where I have a contact. Sometimes, it’s as simple as just going out there to watch a game and cheer for them. Other examples include sending thank you notes for referrals or merely connecting a client with a practitioner (e.g., manual therapy, sport-specific coach) in a related field. You may only see them five hours a week, but that gives you another 163 hours each week to be a valuable resource and friend to them. 5. Organization – My general rule of thumb is that every hour of training requires at least one hour of planning. Here are Cressey Performance’s hours: Mo: 12-7:30PM Tu: 8-9:30AM, 12-7:30PM We: 12-7:30PM Th: 12-7:30PM Fr: 8-9:30AM, 12-7:30PM Sa: 9AM-2PM That’s 45.5 hours (closer to 50 during busy seasons). My business partner, Pete, puts in about 40 hours a week on his own just handling billing, scheduling, phone duties, website maintenance, the CP blog, and other behind-the-scenes organizational tasks. I can tell you that both Tony and I spend about 6-8 hours per week on programming in addition to our coaching responsibilities, and I handle a lot of the phone calls and inquiries from agents and teams, plus the more complex questions that aren’t in Pete’s scope of expertise (exercise science). Chris Howard puts in a few hours a week on programming. There is always a staff in-service on Monday morning of at least 30 minutes. None of this includes the reading/continuing education we all do on our own, or the work Tony and I put in with our personal blogs, which are undoubtedly very influential in driving clients to Cressey Performance. And, it doesn’t cover any of the “after-hours tech support” from phone calls/text messages and Facebook/email messages that I think really separates us as a business. We are here to set the clients up for success, not just punch the clock and unlock/lock the doors. Wrap-up These are only five factors that quickly came to mind, and there are certainly many more that could have made this post much longer. Many of them will be influenced by your niche, business model, client-to-coach ratio, facility size and “flow,” hours of operation, amenities, and a host of other factors. Just make sure you’re looking past just the cues; there is much more to being a successful coach in a semi-private model.
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Cueing: Just One Piece of Semi-Private Training Success – Part 1

With the boom of semi-private training in recent years, there has also been a boom of questions from fitness professionals on how on Earth it is logistically possible to train several people when they may all come from different backgrounds and have different needs. Back in 2006, I was one of those people – so I can certainly speak from perspective. I did almost all one-on-one personal training for about a year from the summer of ’05 to the summer of ’06, when I moved to Boston and went out on my own as an independent contractor. When I arrived in Boston, all these questions on how to make it work in the semi-private model were rattling around my head. Admittedly, I entered this model cautiously, doing 50/50 private and semi-private training as I got my feet wet with it. By July of 2007, when I opened my own facility, every client was involved in the semi-private model and loving it for the affordability, camaraderie, and increased training frequency it afforded. It took time, but I’d learned the ropes. Now, three years in, I’ve taught it to an entire staff, plus the 22 interns we’ve had since we opened our doors. Looking back, I had been an idiot. I’d spent the overwhelming majority of 2003-2005 in college strength and conditioning settings – watching 18-22 year-old athletes thrive in a semi-private model (in the weight rooms, on the field/court, in the athletic training room, and in their courses and study halls). During my undergraduate years, I’d done an internship in cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation, where I watched people rehabilitate from near-death experiences – in a semi-private model. Physical therapy? Semi-private model. And, as Alwyn Cosgrove reminded me, his cancer treatments were done in a semi-private format – and he’d beaten Stage 4 cancer twice. There must be something to that. What was I missing, then? Very simply, I thought that “cueing” and “coaching” were synonymous. Basically, “cueing” amounts to knowing what to say, when to say it, and to whom to say it in order to elicit a desired change from a client. Ask anyone who has been successful in this industry, and they’ll tell you that your cues get better as you become more experienced as a coach. It’s why my staff and I can teach a new exercise to a client much faster than an intern can; we’ve built our “cueing thesaurus” to know what to say – and what to say as a modification if the first cue doesn’t get the job done. No doubt, having a good “cue” arsenal is huge. It’s essential for us in the first 8-12 weeks when we’re intensively teaching new clients technique and getting them ingrained in our system. If done correctly from the get-go, good cueing sets a client up for tremendous future success. If they know what “chest up” means on a deadlift, they’ll get it on a lunge, split-stance cable lift, or medicine ball drill. And, for me, this speaks volumes for why client retention of those who have been with us for 2-3 months or more is so imperative; they become “students of the game” and are actually easier to coach because they have more experience and a bigger exercise pool from which to draw because a) they’ve learned compound exercises (or derivatives of those exercises) and b) we’ve ironed out a lot of their imbalances. As a cool little story, since the summer of 2007, I’ve been training a kid who is has just finished his freshman year on a scholarship to pitch for a PAC-10 powerhouse. I know his college strength coach now – and he told me that this pitcher is like having an additional strength coach in the weight room. You want clients like that – because it means that you just have to write good programs, crank up the music, and continue to develop the friendships you’ve built with them. In reality, though, it isn’t always that easy. Cueing is just one piece of the coaching puzzle – and those other factors will be my focus in Part 2. - Eric Cressey
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Cressey/Robertson/Hartman Roundtable with Pat Rigsby

Mike Robertson, Bill Hartman, and I recently participated on a roundtable with Pat Rigsby at his blog.  The discussion is all about assessment and its role in the training process. You definitely ought to check it out - not only for the content itself, but also the special offer in place for Assess & Correct.  Here it is:

Are You Making Your Clients Better or Just Making Them Tired?

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Stuff You Should Read: 1/25/10

Recommended Reading for the Week: Personal Training Certifications: A Different Perspective - Pat Rigsby got the idea for this blog post from a conversation we had at dinner at a conference last weekend in Tampa, and it came out really well. Exercises You Should Be Doing: Slideboard Bodysaw - Tony Gentilcore wrote up a good blog post about an exercise we've been incorporating quite a bit more nowadays since we picked it up from Mike Boyle. Video included! On Question, Many Answers - One of our interns this semester brought this blog post from Dr. Mike Scott to my attention.  It's a collection of responses from various experts to the question, "Why are childhood overuse injuries becoming so prevalent in our society?"
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